A Movement Toward Eden

by Clark Howard

  The next page of the record was a medical report. It indicated that Abigail Daniels was a normal healthy twenty-three year old female with no detectable physical ailments or impairities.

  Following the brief medical analysis, Devlin found a lengthy report from the jail psychiatrist covering in detail the professional opinion resulting from four two-hour sessions of psychiatric examination. Lighting a cigarette and leaning forward on his elbows, Devlin rapidly consumed the contents of the report. Unlike the physical account, it did not pronounce Abigail Daniels to be either normal or healthy. The neatly typed pages were filled with ominous-sounding terms of mental illness: trauma, psychosis, psychasthenia, aberration, dementia, delirium, hallucinosis, paranoia, paranoia, paranoia—

  The report ended with a recommendation that Abigail Daniels be committed to the state mental hospital for further psychiatric examination and treatment. The last two pages Devlin found in the file were an onion-skin copy of the court order placing the patient into custody of the hospital, and a carbon of the transfer slip showing her subsequent removal from the county jail.

  Well, Devlin thought, at least that solves the problem of locating Abigail Daniels. From the tone of the jail doctor’s psychiatric report, there was little doubt but what he would find the girl still in the state hospital.

  Her body, at least. Whether her mind was there was something else again.

  Six

  The Investigator stood at his place at the panel table to make his report to the Truth Court. He spoke in a calm, precise voice; a voice that pleased the Examiner and the Moderator, both of whom had experienced growing anxiety at the young man’s obvious emotional involvement in the Keyes affair; but who, listening to him now, decided that he was going to be all right and that their original faith in his maturity had been justified. The other members of the court who shared the panel table with the young Investigator, all turned slightly in their chairs to better observe the speaker. The Blue Room was, as usual, quiet and still, so that the words of the Investigator seemed almost muted.

  “My investigation of the subject Anita Atkins disclosed that she had given birth to a baby boy in a private maternity home just outside the city. She was confined there some six and a half months prior to the birth of the child. During that period she had no visitors and received no mail or other outside communication. The records of the home describe her as a very petulant patient, with a tendancy to be petty and irritable. She was not liked by any of the home personnel who attended her, and on one occasion would have been asked to leave had not the cost of her stay been taken care of in advance. Her medical and board expenses were paid by a check drawn on the account of J. Walter Keyes Enterprises—”

  Of all the men in the Blue Room, Keyes was the only one who did not look at the Investigator while he was speaking. The captive kept his face forward, eyes fixed on the edge of the Examiner’s table in front of him. He was alert now, sensitive to everything that was being said, and his mind churned with tentative explanations, possible excuses, mitigation of any kind.

  “Subsequent to the birth of the child, Miss Atkins was approached by adoption counselors with the suggestion that possibly she would consider giving up the baby and permitting it to be adopted. She refused, and stated to one nurse with whom I spoke that the only thing she had gotten for all this trouble was fifty dollars a week until the baby grew up, and she did not intend to lose that by giving away the baby. Personnel at the home were unanimous in the opinion that Miss Atkins left their care an extremely embittered woman—”

  The Investigator paused and referred briefly to some pages of handwritten notes on the table before him. His young face was calmer now than it had been at any point since the proceeding began. It was as if being active in the trial, as opposed to merely sitting through evidence that to him was repetitious, had acted as a tonic on his nervousness and soothed some of the animosity he had earlier demonstrated toward the captive Keyes.

  “During the several years which have elapsed since her baby was born,” he continued, “Miss Atkins’ circumstances have deteriorated considerably. She has made no effort to find gainful employment of any kind, not even at her former occupation as a waitress. Her apparent attitude is that she has been wronged by the world and that no matter what she tries to do with her life, it will turn out poorly. She is obsessed by self-pity.

  “Today she lives in one of our city’s poorest sections, residing in a cheap little housekeeping room which she leaves only when necessary. She has become a virtual recluse. The child is still with her; they subsist, as well as possible, on the fifty dollars per week which she still receives from a trust fund established by Keyes Enterprises.

  “The child is left pretty much to his own means. He is a healthy, active pre-schooler, but has a tendency to play alone most of the time. The reason for this is twofold: first, he has already been subjected to considerable taunting by older children in the neighborhood because he has no father; and second, he has been ridiculed on various occasions about his mother, who, because of her marked introversion, has gained the reputation of being mentally unbalanced.”

  The Investigator stepped away from his chair and walked past Keyes to the Examiner’s table. From his coat pocket he removed a small tape spool which he placed on the recorder. He threaded the tape through the speaker head and turned the control dial to its play position.

  “This is a tape I made with a miniature recorder on the day I conducted my neighborhood investigation of Miss Atkins’ present circumstances. I was in my car parked at the curb when I saw a group of children approach the boy as he was playing on the steps. This is what they did—”

  He started the tape. There was a brief scratch of static and then a boy’s voice said, “Hey, there’s that nutty woman’s kid, let’s sing him a song—”

  A confusion of voices followed, amid the sound of running feet. Seconds later, the voices blended into a ragged, singsong chant to the tune of London Bridge.

  “Ed-die’s—mot-her—is—a—nut,

  —is—a—nut,

  —is—a—nut.

  Ed-die’s—mot-her—is—a—nut,

  And he is toooooo!”

  The crude chant was repeated, growing more shrill and uneven in repetition, its words being thrust out like needles. When the second chorus was over, a third began; the staccato continued until it was interrupted by an anguished cry—

  “Le’—le’—le’ me alone!”

  The sound of running feet resumed; a lone pair at first, then the fall of many.

  “After him—!” yelled one of the group. The running feet, slap-slapping against the cement, trailed off into the distance—

  The Investigator pressed a button to stop the recorder. One sharp, metallic click and the Blue Room was plunged into silence. But it was not a complete silence, it was not total; eerily, the cruel words of the singsong melody seemed to hover in the room’s atmosphere.

  J. Walter Keyes, frowning thoughtfully, moistening his dry lips, looked over at the panel table and saw that the five men left there were looking at him again. He glanced toward the Examiner’s table; the eyes of the Examiner and the Investigator also were on him.

  “Why are you staring at me?” he wanted to know. “It isn’t my fault. I’m not responsible. Why don’t you blame the kid’s mother, she’s the one who—”

  “Blame, Mr. Keyes, must be traced to its source,” the Examiner interrupted. “It must also be classified into primary and secondary degrees. And, most importantly, it must be diluted according to the strength or weakness of the individual upon whom it is being placed.”

  “Yes, but—”

  “Mr. Keyes,” the elderly Moderator intervened, “you will have adequate time later on in this hearing to argue your innocence of the charges the Eden Movement has brought against you. And you, Mr. Examiner, will afterward be accorded the opportunity to apply the Movement’s philosophies to the final judgment against the accused. But the present moment is not the proper time for
either presentation. I suggest that we continue according to schedule.”

  “Of course,” said the Examiner, bowing his head slightly, “my apologies.”

  Keyes clenched his teeth and said nothing.

  “Mr. Psychologist,” said the Moderator, “may we hear your projection on this phase of the matter, please?”

  “Certainly,” replied the Psychologist around the stem of his pipe. A pleasant-faced grey-haired man, he had thinly curved lips that seemed often on the verge of a wry smile. Rummaging in the pockets of his almost formless tweed coat, he brought forth several folded slips of paper which he quickly sorted and held casually before him.

  “The projection,” he began, “is devoted in this instance solely to the boy; the illegitimate son of Miss Atkins by the aforementioned Hal O’Brien. The boy’s basic dilemma is, I’m sure, quite obvious to all of us. He is fatherless, in the care of a mother who gives him little or no attention other than the bare essentials of food to eat, clothes to wear and a place to sleep. Being still of pre-school age, he has not yet come under the influence of anyone other than his mother; and, of course, because of the extremely confined environment into which his mother has placed herself, any influence from so limited a quarter would be very negligible. In short, the boy’s personality is not being guided in its early formative growth by a close personal relationship with any responsible adult.

  “Even under the most normal and ordinary of circumstances, most young boys develop mild neuroses of one sort or another; this is a normal accompaniment of mental growth. It is only in abnormal or extraordinary circumstances, however, that we find the individual whose minor neuroses progress and expand into major disturbances. The young lad in point appears to be one of these individuals.”

  The Psychologist had been filling the empty bowl of the pipe which, dry or burning, he habitually kept in his mouth. Tamping the tobacco down, now, he fished a scarred Zippo from his coat pocket and ignited it to a startlingly large flame. A gust of pungent smoke immediately clouded around him.

  “At the present time,” he went on, “the boy would appear to be developing a number of neuroses which, in his undesirable circumstances, may be expected to cause him a great deal of trouble later on. The most important of these—that is, the ones which are likely to do the most future damage—are the emotional distortions of guilt, anxiety, dread and fear. The guilt factor springs from the absence of a father in his life; he is made to feel this guilt by the children around him who do have fathers, particularly those who taunt him about it. The anxiety, I would say, is a result of his own inner doubts about his mother; he knows that she is somehow different; in exactly what way, he has not discovered yet; so he worries about it, probably constantly; and here again the condition is worsened by the other children and their highly disturbing manner of reminding him of it. The dread and fear, of course, are expected ramifications of his overall situation; he fears for himself in his day-by-day existence, he fears the children who taunt him, he fears—oh, many things; and he dreads even his own uncontrollable thoughts of the things he fears. He is, therefore, well on his way to becoming a serious neurotic.”

  The Psychologist drew in on his pipe and removed it from his mouth while he exhaled a puff of grey smoke toward the ceiling. With his free hand he tugged gently at the lobe of one ear; another habit of his, usually catered to when he had occasion to pause to collect his thoughts. His finger brushed a somewhat shaggy sideburn as he brought his hand back down and, with the strings of what he was saying now pulled into a neat weave, he reflected that his wife would most certainly scold him at length tonight for having forgotten again to get a haircut.

  “What, we ask now,” he continued, “will happen to the boy as he grows older? There is a definite answer to that question; the future for him is not even speculative, it is a foregone conclusion. Barring the entrance into his life of some radically strong influence—a friend, a teacher, a girlfriend, perhaps—he will without doubt mature from a neurotic into a sociopath. What is a sociopath? It is what a layman would call a psychopath. It is a person who has mentally deteriorated to the point where he is incapable of distinguishing right from wrong; a person who in some extremes is totally unable to profit from experience, guidance, or even punishment.”

  The Psychologist paused again, this time to stare almost moodily at the smoking pipe he held. He pursed his lips, reflectively, as if slightly puzzled or perhaps troubled. Finally he shrugged his shoulders briefly and addressed the panel again.

  “What kind of sociopath will he become? God only knows. A pathological troublemaker, a chronic criminal—the roads are many. At best, however, he can hope to be no better than a very troubled eccentric; the kind of person who might go along quietly for years—and then, for no apparent reason, suddenly murder a dozen people. His future, other than being very dark, is unpredictable.”

  The Psychologist sat down even as his last words were reaching the minds of his colleagues; without warning, he left them each to cope with in his own way the ominous impact of the hopeless future he had drawn. As before, a moment of profound quiet overcame the blue room as each of the men absorbed the last brushstroke of a foreboding word picture. It was, finally, the Moderator, ever aware of the rule of orderly, uninterrupted procedure, who silenced the silence.

  “Thank you, Mr. Psychologist,” he said quietly. “Your projection was well presented. I believe now we are to hear from you, Mr. Statistician—”

  “Yes, sir.”

  A lean, handsome Negro rose from his chair and from an expensive briefcase removed a paperclipped assortment of charts and graphs. He was elegantly dressed, this man, wearing a tailored grey suit and soft linen shirt. A blending grey silk necktie hung precisely from his collar; a perfectly folded handkerchief set off the breast pocket of his coat; exactly measured shirt sleeves allowed a show of French cuffs and silver links that was correct to a fraction of an inch. He was easily the most perfectly groomed man in the room.

  “As our eminent Psychologist has pointed out,” the Statistician began, “our subject—this young illegitimate boy who is presently growing up in our city—is currently in a neurotic mental condition, and as he grows older will probably become either a completely psychopathic personality at worse, or a very unstable eccentric at best. The question now, as I see it, is what affect such a person, depending upon just how serious his condition becomes, will have upon our society as a whole. In order to project this, it will be necessary to consider various possibilities both while he is a juvenile and as an adult.”

  The Statistician unfolded a small easel and stood a magazine-size chart on it for everyone to see.

  “Considering his lack of parental influence, the absence of a father, the environment in which he is growing up, and rapidly developing hostilities between himself and his equals, the highest probability, of course, is that he will become a juvenile delinquent. This projection is based on the fact that of approximately one-half million juvenile offenders dealt with in this country last year, better than ninety per cent fell into one or more of the classifications of our subject; that is, one: they lacked parental guidance; two: they had no father; three: they were living in a slum or other undesirable environment; or four: they had anti-social tendencies as related to other people in general.

  “Now then, what affect does this group have upon our society? A very great affect, I’m afraid.” With a pencil, he pointed to the small chart he had set up. “Last year juvenile offenders were responsible for sixty-one per cent of all auto thefts recorded; they were responsible for fifty-two per cent of all larcenies committed; forty-four per cent of all burglaries; twenty-one per cent of all armed robberies; nineteen per cent of all forcible rapes; and eight per cent of all murders. So, as you can see, juvenile offenses account for a considerable portion of our national crime rate.”

  The Statistician removed the chart and put another one in its place.

  “The odds, gentlemen,” he said quietly, “are eighty-six to fou
rteen that our subject will eventually become a juvenile offender. He has, right now, only fourteen chances out of a hundred to reach the age of eighteen without committing and being arrested for a breach of the law. Fourteen chances. The average for a child his age in the United States is ninety-eight.”

  He paused and extracted a cork-tipped cigarette from a gleaming silver case, placing it between his lips and lighting it with a matching lighter.

  “Now then, let us proceed farther in time and see what affect the boy can be expected to have upon our society after he is grown. If his present neurotic state continues and he progresses to psychopathic adulthood, we can look for him to become a major contributor to our adult crime index. We can anticipate that our rising crime rate will be increased by his efforts and that he will be among the chronic criminals who last year committed more than two million serious crimes in our country. He will be among these who annually raise the crime rate by six percentage points per hundred thousand inhabitants, those who have made the United States the most crime—ridden country in the world today.

  “Perhaps he will one day commit a murder, to add to the more than nine thousand murders we had in the United States last year. Or perhaps he will perpetrate one or more robberies similar to the nearly one hundred twelve thousand robberies our country suffered last year. Or, if killing or stealing does not happen to be his forte, maybe he will simply become one of the more than twenty thousand rapists who violated innocent women of all ages and in all walks of life during the past twelve months.

  “I cannot, of course, predict what kind of criminal our young subject will become, gentlemen; but I can tell you this: if he does progress from neurotic to psychopath, he will almost certainly become a criminal. Because, based upon the most refined statistical projection, he has only two chances out of one hundred of not doing so.”