What It Takes to Be Human

by Marilyn Bowering

  Then I choose with what I will occupy my thoughts when I lie down to sleep. I have made it my resolve to be emotionally integrated, never to think a painful thought without balancing it with one that brings pleasure. Georgina says she sees a positive change in me. I have a better outlook. Dr. Love says the same thing.

  I lie on my cot in my cell and listen to the guard walk up and down. The Storehouse of Thought and Expression, which Georgina has retrieved for me, recommends relaxation as a means to gaining self-control. Mastery of the ego is essential in life as in writing. Such mastery requires integration of mental, emotional and physical health, adjusting to others, acquiring ideas and expressing them. I tense each muscle and let it go. “When do the best ideas come?” The Storehouse asks.

  In the twilight between waking and sleeping, in the truce between conflict. Plant and animal life are locked in the pitiless struggle for survival, but there are gardens, there is cake as well as bread.

  I sink into spaciousness, the bounds of my body loosen, my mind is free. I recall the lines of the poem “The Lake Isle of Innisfree”: I will arise and go now, and go to Innisfree, / And a small cabin build there, of clay and wattles made. As I do, a vision of the marsh and pond area behind the institution comes to me. I imagine Kosho cutting bamboo canes and packing them with mud from the pond bottom and constructing a hut; but of course that won’t do. He’d be caught. But where else could he be, in the bee loud glade and with lake water lapping with low sounds by the shore?—for surely that’s what Georgina meant? My vision expands until it is as wide as when I flew from the top of the roof: There’s the rabbitry and other outbuildings and the farms spreading through bog and ridge and wood, networked by creeks and flooded flatland. At the edge of the expanse, the inlet shimmers and the ferry, Brentwood, cuts across its living back to the far side.

  What else is there? Georgina’s father’s house, with its rear to limestone quarries, and out of sight and nearly out of mind, the labourers’ cottages, long disused. Is that where she’s hidden Kosho? It’s not a perfect fit with the poem, and there remains the question of how he was spirited away….

  I let the questions float off, and I’m in an airplane that dives and spins and climbs and soars to the heavens. Up there, in the unclouded sky, I remind myself of what is most important of all, what I hold in my breast like a nugget of gold—the truth of my love for Heather.

  In this state of unity and harmony I sleep, and am restored.

  “Sandy!”

  I jerk awake, my heart pounding. I get to my feet and stumble to the bars of my cell just as the guard passes. “Did you call me?”

  “Call you? No, Sandy, go back to sleep.” He’s a young guard, and new, but he’s taken time to get to know me. He moves on.

  Once more I settle down and pass through the stages I require to summon rest. It takes longer this time to disregard the snores and snuffles below. I curl myself around the idea of Heather.

  “Sandy!”

  I’m on my feet and at the bars again. There are no footsteps, but I can see, if I crane my neck towards the light, the young guard sitting quietly at a table, reading a magazine.

  “Psst, Ed!”

  He looks up, puts down the magazine and tiptoes my way.

  “Having trouble sleeping tonight, Sandy?”

  “Say, did you call me, Ed?”

  He shakes his head. “Having nightmares? Something bothering you, Sandy? Do you need anything?” He steps closer. “You hearing things?”

  I’ve put my foot in it and aroused his suspicions. “No, not at all! It must have been a dream.”

  “Well, sweet dreams, then.” He returns to the table, but instead of continuing with the magazine, he makes a note on the night sheet. This is worrying. The notation will go on my chart and will be there in black and white when I meet the Board.

  I get back in bed and tuck myself in. It wasn’t a dream. I’ve heard my name called, twice now, clear as a bell. Whose voice is it, if not the young guard’s? I lie awake for some time, but at length I sleep again.

  “Sandy!”

  This time I don’t move. It comes once more. “Sandy!”

  “I’m here,” I whisper into the darkness. “Who are you? What do you want?”

  There’s a pause and in that pause the words I need come to my consciousness, just as they were said by the boy Samuel in the Old Testament when a voice spoke to him in the night. “Speak, Lord, I am your servant.”

  I feel a hesitation and then the voice replies, “It’s me, Alan Macaulay.”

  “Macaulay!” A wave of relief washes over me: It’s only Alan, and not the Lord!

  “You made me a promise.” I sit up and crane my neck but I can’t be sure where the voice is coming from. “It would have been better not to start at all if you weren’t going to finish.”

  That’s it. Not a syllable more in that rich Scots accent. Memories jibble and jabble—there’s no more sleep for me. There’s Pete Cooper showing me Alan Macaulay’s grave; there’s his assertion that Macaulay’s ghost haunts the East Wing; his threat that I’d come to a similar bad end; there’s all the work I’d done with the files to convince Dr. Frank of the justice of Alan Macaulay’s cause. How had I let it drop? Even worse, I’d left off with Macaulay accused of murder, weeping beside the corpse of the man he’d mistakenly shot. I’d abandoned him at the lowest ebb of his life. No wonder Macaulay has rent the veil to speak to me!

  But there were reasons for leaving off, good ones, events beyond my control! Yes…but reason doesn’t come into it, as I know well.

  In the morning, as I’m squired to the hall, I watch for my chance. I’m not on my own anymore, I’m not special enough for that: I’m in a long tail of men who are being dropped off at various points—at the treatment rooms where the psychiatrists and their students wait with instrument trays; at the visitors’ room where “loved ones” nervously greet the slack-faced, drool-lipped, fat-bodied or emaciated-to-bone, cardigan-wrongly-buttoned, socks-inside-out souls about to be released to their care (the fate my parents wished for me). I have not, thank God, so far seen anyone I recognize, and—which is not the same thing—I have not been recognized, thank God, by any one of these lost souls.

  At the top of a flight of stairs I pretend to stumble and I crouch to fix my paper slippers.

  Others pass by. I wait as long as I can—the rearmost attendant isn’t far behind—then I see her as she passes the bottom of the stairs along the ground floor hallway as I have seen her so many other mornings—it’s the once-sunburned nurse on her way to the truth-serum room.

  “Nurse, please!” I cry out. “It’s Sandy Grey. I need pencil and paper. Please tell Dr. Frank. I have to finish my work on Alan Macaulay!” That’s all I get out before I’m scooped up from behind and shoved on my way.

  Sometimes a subject means more to me than it means to anyone else, but I’m reasonably certain that the topic of Alan Macaulay is important to Dr. Frank. He took a chance with me. He went out on a limb. If the message gets to him, he’ll understand. I believe that the nurse has some sympathy for me: She has heard my story as it came from my mouth. How could she have been unmoved by it? She’s a woman of feeling, not an automaton: She had grains of sand in her hair and on her clothing.

  At 10 A.M., when the orderly wheels the tea urn into the hall and sets it and the cups on the table near the couch and chairs of Karl’s grouping, I’m vindicated. The orderly hands me a blunt pencil and a notebook.

  “What’s this?” John asks sourly, hands on hips, shirt and belly slopping over his belt.

  “Doctor’s orders,” the orderly says. He winks at me when John’s back is turned. No one likes John. I glance up at the observer on the platform: He winks at me too.

  I sit on the couch next to Karl. He is dazed and speechless. I hold up the notebook. He bubbles saliva and nods excitedly, making the risk I took to obtain the writing materials worth it.

  “What are you writing, Sandy?” John peers over my shoulder.

/>   “Poetry, John. It’s for you.” I write a few lines and show him:

  It is not only in the rose

  It is not only in the bird

  Not only in the rainbow

  That always something sings.

  “Ooh, Sandy, who’d have guessed?” He preens.

  All morning I scribble such nonsense and read the results aloud to John, being careful to use as little paper as I can. After a while he tires of watching me.

  Part IV: The Trial

  When I first stepped out of the police wagon and viewed the courthouse, I felt relief. It was a monument to British justice in pale dressed stone, two towers, an upper portico, and large arched windows and entrance: It was a building to inspire faith. I’d seen its like in Edinburgh with defendants and lawyers strolling solemnly in and out amongst the pillars of the porch and steps that fronted the high street. My friends and I, on a day trip from our village, had gawked at the men and women, guilty and innocent, going in and out. We’d talked of our glorious Scottish history and the long struggle for fairness before the law (and quarrels with the English) and congratulated ourselves that in our day the battle was over: We were confident of the principle of presumed innocence. I remember deciding that architects think long and hard about such buildings; and citizens think serious thoughts about paying for them; and that this was only right, since the result was that nothing in such a structure could be taken lightly. Now, here, in the New World, where the majority of buildings were higgledy-piggledy wooden ones and staggered brokenly along the muddy, rutted streets, a structure such as this, magisterial in design, and well set back, with room for the planting of a lawn, conveyed an inspiring message.

  I knew that, although it looked bad for me at the outset, the killing of MacKenzie was an accident. I believed that my side, once presented to judge and jury, would prevail. How could it not? Did not judges and juries rule on the weight of truthful evidence and not on hearsay or perjured testimony?

  I entered the courtroom with my head held high.

  As soon as I could, over the next few days, I wrote to my mother and asked her to break the news of my unfortunate arrest and incarceration to Peggy Moffat, but to tell Peggy to continue with preparations for our wedding. I wrote also to Peggy’s brother Gordon, and to my friends George Falconer and William Watson and to the minister, the Reverend Duncan: To him it was most difficult to write as I felt, accident or not, that I’d let him down. It is a terrible thing to deprive a man of his life.

  I would have written to my old dog, Dandy, if I’d thought I wouldn’t look like a fool.

  All in all, I marshalled my forces: I called upon the army of my friends and neighbours and family to put in a good word for me with the authorities; I didn’t neglect to request their prayers.

  I took courage not only from the edifice in which the proceedings went forward, but from the measured pace of the process. The judge, an Irishman named Flanagan, sat at a raised desk in the small courtroom given over to my trial, the jury of twelve men to his right, and twirled his thick black whiskers, and paid close attention to the evidence against me. From the prisoner’s box, I kept my eye on my counsel, Batterbury. Although I could not speak directly to him there, he led me to believe, with his nods and winks, that all—eventually—would be well.

  I looked forward, patiently, to the presentation of my case.

  Night after night I waited in vain for Batterbury to come to my cell and discuss with me our strategy.

  My first real inclination that the judge was biased against me came like this: The Crown counsel, Fitzgerald (another Irishman—I mean no offence, but you can guess what I think), asked to have admitted into evidence a pencil sketch, made by the cook, of our camp ground and the nearby beach. Cook, on his own admission, was no artist: He stated that the drawing was meant only to be an approximation. Nevertheless, over the objections of Batterbury, it was taken into evidence.

  Then Batterbury neglected to correct several errors of date and time as they were given by witnesses—this despite my urgent signals to him to do so—and these were also entered into evidence. So it was that when Joe, my tent mate, was questioned, he reported on the fight with Kennedy that resulted in the burn to my arm as having taken place shortly before MacKenzie’s death. This was followed by the Crown’s assertion that I was a man with “a chip on his shoulder” always “spoiling for a fight” and that this behaviour had “rapidly escalated.” Batterbury wiggled his eyebrows, conveying to me that time and date were insignificant, but I knew better: On such small matters can hinge life and death.

  “It seems clear,” Judge Flanagan said to my counsel’s mild objection at this description of my behaviour, “that your client had a chip on his shoulder in general. Wasn’t there also something about a dog?”

  “Yes, your Honour,” Fitzgerald intervened, “he claimed someone in camp had tried to poison the animal. We’ll be leading evidence that the men believed Macaulay to have done this himself.”

  Poor Nellie. I hadn’t given her a thought since I’d been jailed. I hung my head—an action which the jury may have misconstrued.

  The “evidence,” when it came, was from the liar Kennedy.

  The other men were asked about my argument with MacKenzie. It sounded poor—I admit—although I hadn’t said more than any one of them might have in the same circumstance. I’d called the man a “bastard.” But I’d been let go because of my arm, and not from a question of character, and MacKenzie had said he’d have me back once the arm was healed. If Batterbury had put me on the stand, I could have said all that. In fact, the weakness in my arm should have been helpful to my cause, for how could I have aimed and intended to hit MacKenzie with such a handicap and at such a distance? Here’s where Cook’s sketch map proved fatal. As Fitzgerald put it: “The distance from myself to your Honour, as you can see from this map, is not much less than that from the accused, Macaulay, on the beach to where MacKenzie stood on the road: Alan Macaulay could scarcely have missed.” His tone implied that even a fool with a gun could have done it.

  Nobody said, because they weren’t asked, that I’d spoken to MacKenzie about Kennedy’s treatment of the horses, nor that it was Kennedy’s invasion of my tent and property that had led to our fight; nor that it was Kennedy who had attempted to kill my dog. I had no chip on my shoulder, but I did have an enemy.

  I explained all this to Batterbury in the few minutes he eventually gave me in the corridor.

  When it was our turn and Frank testified as to my character, Batterbury only asked him what kind of a man I was. Frank said, “A good one.” Frank was shy and he didn’t like speaking in public, he needed to be pushed. But Batterbury didn’t ask him how hard I worked, or how I saved my money, or about my work for the Royal Botanic or about the plans we’d made to start a business together. He only asked Frank what was the reason behind his loaning me his gun. Frank replied, “He asked for it,” and Batterbury said, “Why did he ask?” and Frank replied, “To be a better shot.” It was left like that! I could hardly believe it! I knew Frank wanted to say more, to explain that I scarcely knew one end of a gun from the other, and that we had plans to go hunting, but Batterbury simply turned away and sat down. Why? It was after lunch—was he drunk? Or was he a lazy bugger more concerned with mending fences with the judge than looking out for me?

  I sent a note through the sheriff: “Ask about my competence with the weapon.” Batterbury got to his feet to ask the judge’s permission to do so, but Frank had already stepped down and Fitzgerald interrupted Batterbury’s request to say it was well known that Frank and I were friends and he didn’t think that the testimony of such a biased witness on such an important matter should be admitted.

  I cried aloud, “Ask the cook then!”

  Fitzgerald rolled his eyes, fitted a pince-nez to look at me, and opined that although he imagined Cook to be a dab hand at pork and bannock, he hardly expected him to be an expert in weaponry. Indeed, he doubted the man “could tell a cracked egg fro
m a crack shot.” Everyone in court, even the judge, laughed.

  So it went.

  When it came to the actual killing not only the cook’s map told against me. There was the matter of the two shots.

  “My client claims he never fired the first shot,” Batterbury said, and hooked his thumbs in his watch pockets. Crown counsel snorted out, “Claims!” and was not reprimanded by the judge.

  I could have told them about Kennedy being there, I could have explained how he had time to run away, once I’d taken the gun from him after the first shot, and was then able to appear on the scene from the far side of the camp where the others saw him. Batterbury could have questioned the witnesses as to Kennedy’s whereabouts—which were utterly unaccounted for—during the crucial moments. But Kennedy, who’d lied through his teeth about me at every turn, didn’t have to account for himself at all. I cried out to Batterbury the moment I realized that he wasn’t going to put me on the stand to refute the falsehoods: “Ask him! Ask the bloody Fenian devil why he’s lying!”

  The judge’s face blackened. Batterbury frowned. “I apologize for the outburst, Your Honour,” he said.

  “Gentlemen of the jury,” Judge Flanagan said, “the accused is indicted for having committed murder.”

  So began the last act of the charade in which I had placed my hopes. As he went on to lay out the definitions of murder and homicide and culpable and not culpable homicide, I cast my eyes over the spectators. Some of them I knew: They were my friends from the camp, or those I knew by sight, from town or the hotel where I sometimes drank. With a few, including Frank, I had discussed my future plans for business and marriage. Others were perfect strangers, a number of young women amongst them. Did they have nothing better to do? Why were they there if not to have a near view of my sufferings? Despite myself, I found myself searching for Peggy Moffat’s red hair.