Rabbit Foot Bill

by Helen Humphreys

  THERE’S ALWAYS A place outside of a story from where that story is told. It can’t be told from the inside. How can it be? The story must be over before it can be told. There must be a beginning and a middle and an end, and the person telling the story must know them all. From the beginning, if you are telling the story, you must be able to see the end, just as though you were standing at the top of a tall hill, looking out into the distance.

  But sometimes there are moments inside a story that could operate as the ending, which feel like an ending. And the moment when Bill let me sleep, when he said those words, “I’ll watch out for you,” that felt like an ending, the right ending for me. If the story had only stopped there, then everything would have turned out all right. That would have been the happy ending.

  I LOOK OVER the edge of the bed, at Bill curled up on the floor, and I think of something I came across when I was in medical school. It was a photograph, presented as scientific curiosity, but I believed in it, in the idea behind the taking of the photograph.

  In the summer of 1892 August Strindberg, playwright and artist, tried to photograph the human soul. The soul he tried to photograph was his own, with a series of blurry black and white portraits. In the one I saw, he stares out at the camera, his eyes dark and defiant, his overcoat undone. He is standing in front of a wooden door and his head is in the centre of the photograph—the door rises like a sail behind him—as though the weight of this act, the baring of his soul, has sunk him down inside the frame.

  I think we were meant to regard the photograph as a delightful folly, a spiritual aside, but I believed it was true. I think that there are moments when the human soul is visible, and what I was seeing when I looked over the side of the bed at Bill curled up on the floor, was a glimpse of his soul. And what is a soul? Something between the inherent nature of an individual, and their desires—a tangible truth and a reaching, all bound up together. Like the movement of the rabbit in flight, how it runs so fast that its feet don’t touch the ground.

  I lie back down on the scratchy blanket, but I can’t fall asleep again. Instead I listen to the rasp of Bill’s breathing and the sound of the horses in their stalls. I can feel my own heart beating in my throat, like a word murmured over and over, like a name—Bill, Bill, Bill—swimming through my body.

  IT’S LATE WHEN I get back to my cottage, but Agatha is waiting for me, sitting on the porch steps, smoking. Her cigarette flickers like a firefly in the summer darkness. I can see it before I can see her.

  “Well, hello,” she says when I walk towards her across the grass. “I was just about to give up.”

  “I was working late,” I say. My heart has given a little leap at seeing her sitting there. “And I wasn’t expecting you.”

  “Well, you can never expect me,” she says. “But isn’t that what keeps it exciting?”

  “I suppose.”

  “Luke has gone out of town for the night. He has a meeting in Regina with the hospital board first thing in the morning, and he likes to already be there the day of the meeting, rather than to be driving towards it. It helps with his clarity of mind. That’s his reasoning. Or what he tells me. But maybe he has a secret girlfriend that I don’t know about.”

  I open the door and we go into the cottage.

  “Do you really think so?” I ask.

  “It would be easier if he did, wouldn’t it?” she says.

  “Less guilt.”

  “Much less guilt.” She kisses me. And then it doesn’t matter if Luke Christiansen has a girlfriend. What matters is that he has left for Regina and won’t be back until the next day.

  “You can stay all night then?” I say.

  “What’s left of it. I’ve been here ages already. Waiting for you.”

  We undress slowly, make love with the windows open so that we can hear the crickets and the call of the owl. Afterwards, we lie on our backs in the dark, our bodies still slick with sweat and come, holding hands.

  “We could go for a swim,” I say. “The river would feel pretty nice right about now.”

  “Too risky. Someone might see us. Besides, I don’t really like swimming.”

  “How could anyone not like swimming?”

  “In England, swimming is done in the sea, and the sea is always cold and wavy.”

  I roll over on my side so I can look at her.

  “What was it like where you lived in England?”

  “We were in a small village,” says Agatha. “It was quite posh and snobby. People were very concerned with their roses and the amount of horseshit on the bridle path.”

  “Is that all?” I think of the multitude of things I could say about where I come from, about Canwood, how I could talk for at least an hour on the look of the prairie grass swaying in the fields, or the approach of a storm, or the sound the poplar leaves made in the wind.

  “Of course not.” Agatha rolls onto her side as well, strokes my face with her hand. “But it would make me sad to talk about my life there, and I don’t want to feel sad right now.”

  We kiss. She trolls her fingers across my shoulders, down my back.

  “Oh,” she says, suddenly pulling away from me. “That’s a shame.” Her voice is low and tender.

  “What?”

  She still has her hand on my back, is feeling around between my shoulder blades. “You have welts. Scars.”

  “That’s nothing,” I say. “I played outside as a child. There were a lot of brambles. Once, I got caught in some barbed wire near the depot.” My skin was always scratched and torn. There were always stitches of blood laced across my body.

  “That’s good.” Agatha sounds relieved. “Because I don’t like to think of you being hurt.”

  This makes me smile. “Then you might care about me, just a little?”

  “I might. Just a little.” She kisses me again, harder, and the sound of night outside the window dissolves into our ragged breathing, the quick skitter of my heart in my chest.

  WILLIAM SCOTT ACCOMPANIES me to the hospital the next morning. Agatha disappeared before sunrise, leaving me to wake and wonder if it had all been a dream, then shower and dress, walk outside to find William just leaving his cottage. I hope that he hasn’t heard Agatha and me having sex, but there is nothing in his manner to suggest that he has, no change that I can gauge in how he interacts with me.

  “Beautiful morning,” he says, beaming at me. He always seems to be cheerful and I want to ask him how he manages this, but I don’t know him well enough for that sort of question.

  We walk across the grass. The dew glints and sparkles in the sunlight.

  “Have you thought anymore about your repressed memories?” asks William.

  “I had forgotten about them,” I say, and we both laugh.

  “Well, I haven’t,” he says. “In fact I’ve given them quite a lot of pondering. We could always take LSD together, you know. I could lead you through a session, take notes. That might unstick things for you.”

  I remember Gus Polder and how much of his experience under LSD seemed unpleasant. But I have seen him on the ward since then, and he does seem improved somehow—lighter, not so careworn.

  “Maybe,” I say.

  “We could do it in your cottage,” says William. “No need to have it take place in the hospital. It could be completely private. Just between us. I really think that it might help. Here.” He hands me a booklet. “Have a look at this when you get the chance.” It’s the handbook on LSD that we give our patients, to let them know what to expect when they are under the influence of the drug. I have never actually read it all, and certainly not from the perspective of becoming a patient myself.

  I open it up when I get to my office and look at the questionnaire that the drug-taker is supposed to fill out after the experience. The questions range from the positive—Did you feel that you could share other people’s feelings? Did you feel that you were able to think on different levels? Did you feel in the experience like laughing at many of the ideas you hel
d prior to it? Did you feel a close spiritual bond or unity with others?—to the negative—Did you find yourself too weak to move about much of the time? Did you fear that you might die during the experience? Did you feel that you were insane at any time?—to the simply baffling—Did you feel that other people were influencing your thoughts against your will? Did you feel at times that you were more than one person?

  According to the handbook the most intense part of the experience is the first two hours. That isn’t very long, but even so, I’m not sure I can go through two hours of not feeling in control, of feeling like I might die or that I was more than one person.

  At lunchtime I go out to the stables, looking for Bill. I know as soon as I enter the building that he isn’t there. I can sense it. It’s almost as though I can smell it, can smell his absence. He must be out in the fields, exercising or working the horses. There’s only one horse still in his stall. He snickers as I walk past and I reach out and touch his soft, wet nose.

  It is always the same in Bill’s small room, and I like that. There is the neatly made bed and the wooden box table beside it with a flashlight and a glass of water. Bill’s clean clothes are folded and placed in a corner of the stall. I look around for the rabbits’ feet but don’t see them out anywhere. It pleases me to think that Bill might carry them on his body, tucked into the pocket of his overalls, that he might put his hand in that pocket during his working day and feel the soft rabbit fur, the sharp needles of the toenails.

  I lie down on the bed, face down so I can inhale the scent of him. It’s almost animal, his smell, sharp and strong, a mix of sweat and earth and hay, with a sweet, heavy undertone of rotting fruit.

  I think of William Scott’s offer to lead me through an LSD experience. It might help explain my compulsion towards Bill. But then I think of the smell of earth and dark, and the way my heart blooms in my throat whenever I see Bill. The sad truth is that I don’t think I want to know what’s beneath our friendship. I don’t know that I want to be cured.

  At dinnertime I am at the stables again. Bill is waiting for me, his tray of food balanced on his knees, untouched. He looks up when I enter his stall. I sit down beside him on the bed.

  “Where’s your food?” says Bill.

  “I was late. Trying to catch up on some paperwork. I didn’t have time to go and get my supper.”

  Bill pushes his tray across to me. “You can have mine,” he says.

  I push it back. “No, I can’t,” I say. “I’m fine. I can fetch myself something later. You need to eat. You’ve been working hard all day outside. I haven’t. I’ve just been sitting at a desk.”

  Bill seems unconvinced. “I could cut my meat in half,” he says.

  “No, really.” I put my hand on top of his to stop him doing this. His skin feels as rough as tree bark. “You don’t need to.”

  Bill saws at his meat. It’s pot roast tonight, and mashed potatoes, and green beans. He jams some of the meat and potatoes onto his fork and leans across to me.

  “Open your mouth,” he says.

  I do as he says.

  I can’t explain, even now, the relief I felt in those moments with Bill, when he ordered me to do something and I just complied. What I depended on with Bill was that there were no social niceties. He said and did only what he wanted to say and do. Relating to him was on an animal level. It was a question of wills and willingness. If his need to do something was greater than my need not to have it done, then I would relent. If my need to resist was greater than his need to insist, then I would stand firm. Dealing with him I always knew how I felt, something that was often absent for me when dealing with anyone else.

  He feeds me supper the way birds feed their young, and I accept each forkful of food with gratitude. When we’re finished he puts the tray on the floor and offers me a drink from the glass of water by the bed.

  “Thank you,” I say, but there’s really no need to offer him those words. Bill did not give me half his supper for my thanks. He did it because he decided it needed to be done.

  I think again of William Scott’s offer. I don’t necessarily want to talk about Bill, but there is something I want to talk to Bill about.

  “Bill,” I say, “I need to know about the murder.”

  Bill sighs. “I don’t like to think on it,” he says.

  “But I don’t understand,” I say, “why you would kill that boy. You’re not a killer.”

  “I don’t like to think on it.”

  “But why did you do it?”

  Bill gets up and begins to pace the stall, turning quickly when he reaches an end wall and then starting back again.

  “Why did you do it, Bill?”

  Maybe, the way William has offered to help me, I could help Bill get to the bottom of why he killed Sam Munroe? Maybe I should lead him through an LSD experience?

  Bill walks past the bed and accidentally kicks the supper tray, scattering the utensils and bits of food across the floor of the stall. He drops immediately to the ground and starts picking things up, putting them back on the tray.

  “Can’t make a mess,” he says. “I can’t make a mess, can’t make a mess. There mustn’t be a mess.”

  “It’s okay.” I get down on the floor to help him pick up the remnants of supper. “I’ll help you clean this up. There won’t be a mess. It’s okay. You won’t get into trouble.”

  And while he hasn’t spoken about the penitentiary, except to describe the cell he was kept in, I can tell from Bill’s behaviour that he was punished there. He was never a fearful man, so the punishments must have been severe, and the misdeeds small.

  WILLIAM SCOTT AND I swim in the river at sunset, the colours of the sky showing on the surface of the water as pink and orange.

  “Have you done LSD with a patient yet?” I ask as we breaststroke up to the willow tree and turn for the home stretch.

  “Yes. Just once.”

  “What was it like?”

  “Well, Luke had told me before we started that it would be like the two of us were on the same journey, and that I shouldn’t try to control the experience. And it was much like that.”

  “What happened?”

  William flips over on his back and floats there. I put my feet down. The water comes to just below my neck. I can feel the slippery skin of a sunken log under my outstretched feet.

  “I tried to remember what Luke had said, and just let go of expectations. For a while it worked. I was able to concentrate on the patient, and it was like our minds were floating free and able to meet each other on another plane. But then . . .” William looks over at me. “Then I started to notice the dirt under the patient’s fingernails. He had very long fingernails and I couldn’t stop looking at them. I could see the dirt as individual pieces but no longer dirt-sized. More like enormous boulders. By then I wasn’t paying attention to what he was saying, and his words just seemed to be bubbling over my head. I couldn’t understand anything. It was like being underwater.”

  William grins at me.

  “I don’t think it could be classified as a success, even from an experimental standpoint.”

  I think of how upset Bill became at the slightest thing, the spilling of his dinner tray. His reaction to his small act of clumsiness was extreme enough that I know he would never tolerate the vicissitudes of an LSD experience, and that leading him through such an experience would be no help to him at all.

  “Would you do it again?” I ask William.

  I expect him to say no and am surprised when he has the opposite assessment.

  “Yes,” he says. “I didn’t say it wasn’t interesting. I just didn’t think it was very helpful.”

  I MAKE AGATHA a picnic on my bed after we have made love. Cheese and crackers, a cut-up peach, a bottle of wine, a bar of good chocolate.

  “Fancy,” she says, reading the label on the Camembert.

  “I went all the way to Regina to get it,” I say. “I had to take the bus and then walk several blocks.”

&nb
sp; This is the sort of comment that would have driven Amy mad, but Agatha just kisses me on the shoulder.

  “You’re sweet,” she says.

  I think of Amy again and how she would have said that to me as an insult. “Isn’t that a weak thing?”

  “Not in my books.” Agatha runs her hand over my shoulder blades. “Make sure you don’t change that, even if someone hurts you.”

  It seems a strange thing to say.

  “You’re not planning on hurting me, are you?” I ask.

  Agatha kisses me to shut me up. Her mouth is sweet from the peach she has just eaten.

  Before she leaves she tells me about the party that Dr. Christiansen is throwing the next evening at their house.

  “You need to make sure you come,” she says.

  “But I haven’t even been invited?” No one has said anything to me about a party.

  “You will be. Luke likes to leave it to the last minute so there is no chance of backing out. He will also frame it as a team-building exercise so that you will feel obligated to show up.”

  “Is it?”

  “Is it what?”

  “Team-building.”

  Agatha snorts. “It’s a drunken catastrophe, that’s what it is,” she says. “But you need to be there, because by your absence you will be conspicuous. And I can’t have him suspecting anything.”

  “But won’t it be awkward?”

  “No.” Agatha pokes me gently in the chest. “Because you and I will behave impeccably. No longing looks or furtive touching.”

  “Nothing?”

  “Nothing at all.”

  BUT IT ISN’T nothing to be inside the house where Agatha Christiansen lives. It isn’t nothing to see her coats lined up neatly in the hall closet when I go to hang up my jacket. It isn’t nothing to see the vase of flowers on the hall table and to think that she picked those blossoms herself this morning. Nor is it nothing to see the photo of her children on the living room mantelpiece, two boys of staggered heights stiffly standing in their school uniforms in front of a brick wall covered in ivy.

  “Flint!” yells Luke Christiansen, from across the room.