Rabbit Foot Bill

by Helen Humphreys

  I can’t get enough of her. But after a couple of hours, she dresses, fixes her hair in the tiny bathroom mirror, reapplies her lipstick.

  “Not a word to anyone,” she says. “I was never here.”

  “Of course.”

  I hand over her shoes, one at a time, watch as she slips them on. “But I will see you again, won’t I?”

  “Absolutely.” Agatha lays a hand against my cheek and I close my eyes to feel the touch more intensely. “Whenever it is possible I will come here, to you. But no one must find out. And you must never come to me. Understood? We have to be discreet.”

  “I have as much to lose as you do,” I say. “You can trust me.”

  “Yes.” Agatha gives my cheek a little pinch. “I believe that I can.”

  I decide to go for a swim after she leaves, to help wash away the terrible guilt I suddenly feel for sleeping with the wife of my new boss.

  The river is peaty, and a little metallic. It smells old and earthy, full of sloughed-off bark and wet stones. It is warmer than I expect, and when I slide off the bank, I am surprised at how good the water feels. It is as warm as bath water, but softer. I like being eye level with the sticks and leaves floating on the surface. I like the tangle of alders along the banks and the darkening sky above the trees.

  I put my feet down. The bottom of the river seems to be cluttered with rocks and logs. I touch the smooth shape of stones, the slimy decay of wood. In some spots the water is only up to my waist, and then I move a few feet to the left and the water is over my head.

  The river is a path cut between the fields. The current is strong enough that I can just lie on my back and float. I am a dark boat cast down the dark length of the river.

  I mean to go to see Bill before supper, but I swim for too long, drifting languorously downriver, remembering how Agatha’s body felt under mine, and letting my guilt slip away from me slowly. By the time I’m dressed again, it’s too late to stop at the stables on my way to the ward.

  It’s hard to reconcile the distance between the cottages and the hospital. I’m always underestimating the time it takes for me to go between one place and the other.

  The air is soft and the sun has turned everything golden. I hurry past the stables and imagine Bill in there, sitting on the edge of his cot, in his stall, eating the tray of food that someone has presumably brought out to him. I remember him as a fast eater, bolting his food like a dog. He will eat and then wipe his mouth with the back of his hand, gulp a glass of water, and then stand, rub his hands on the legs of his trousers, and return to his work without a word. He was never one to linger over meals. Food was simply an interruption to work. There was no real pleasure in it.

  I should rotate where I sit every evening at dinner, move among the men so I get the chance to talk to all of them, to know them; but when I enter the ward kitchen, the men have left the space free where I had been sitting the previous night, and so I just sit back in the same place as last night, and beside the same people.

  Supper is spaghetti and meat sauce, with bread in baskets on the table and apple pie for dessert. The bread is not as good as the bread Bill used to make in his outdoor oven. It is white and full of air and the crusts are stale and it seems like it might have been baked a few days ago, rather than having been made fresh for tonight’s supper.

  “Doc,” says the man next to me, “did you see about my package yet?”

  “I’m looking into it,” I say, but I realize that I haven’t even opened the notebook where I had the men write down their complaints and requests. Tomorrow, I think, wiping my plate around with the substandard bread because I’m hungry after swimming in the river and making love to Agatha. Tomorrow I will do a better job at my job.

  I became a psychiatrist because of Rabbit Foot Bill, because I could never shake the sight of him being taken away at the end of his trial. He was adept at living how he lived, but he couldn’t cope with the ordinary ways of society, and because I couldn’t help him with this when I was a boy, when I grew up I wanted to be able to help others like him.

  This is what I had told myself all the way through medical school. But perhaps I was wrong. Perhaps it wasn’t that I wanted to help a legion of unknown people, but that I only really ever wanted to help Bill. It was easy to pretend otherwise when he had disappeared out of my life. Now that he’s back in proximity to me, I am no longer interested in the welfare of anyone else. It takes all my strength to remain seated in the ward kitchen, finishing my supper, making polite conversation with the men around me, and not be rushing out to the stables to eat with Bill.

  THE NEXT MORNING I wake up determined to prove myself wrong, determined to better serve the men who have been entrusted to my care. I will do this by systematically visiting them where they work. I can get to know them in an active setting and on an individual basis, rather than in the passive, group setting of the ward.

  I begin with the mattress factory and Henry Tudor. From the files I know that Henry Tudor was the victim of a house fire when he was young. The fire killed his family, and not only did he never recover from this loss, but he grew up to become a pyromaniac, setting a series of fires in the ramshackle garages and sheds in the west end of the city. It’s unclear from his file whether he was the one who set the original fire, the one that killed his mother and father and baby brother.

  Like Bill, Henry Tudor was first sent to the penitentiary and then moved here to the mental hospital. Now he works in the mattress factory, a low brick building opposite the farm. There, all the mattresses for the hospital are made and repaired. There are sewing machines and bolts of fabric for the mattress covers, bundles of batting, all jammed into a space that is not much bigger than a dormitory on the wards.

  I ask the supervisor for Henry Tudor and he points to the back of the room. I see a middle-aged man shuffling towards me with an armful of mattress batting. He shuffles forward and then he seems to shuffle back, and then he shuffles forward again.

  “What’s he doing?” I ask the supervisor.

  “That’s the way he moves,” he says. “Three steps forward, two steps back. He’s slow, but he gets where he’s going in the end. Here in the shop we call him Two Step.”

  I walk towards Henry Tudor, and when I get close I can hear that he’s saying something under his breath as he shuffles forward and then back again.

  “Burn their heads, burn their bodies, burn their bones,” he says, the rhythmical incantation driving the movement of his feet, or the other way around. I cannot tell. “Burn their heads, burn their bodies, burn their bones.”

  “Hello, Henry,” I say, but he keeps his head bowed, keeps muttering his line of words, keeps shuffling his way towards the front of the room.

  “Henry.” I grab his arm to stop his forward movement, to make him acknowledge me.

  He looks up with panic in his eyes, and I realize my mistake in touching him.

  “Burn their heads, burn their bodies, burn their bones,” he says loudly, as though the words have become a spell to ward me off. “Burn their heads, burn their bodies, burn their bones.” He’s shouting now and the other workers in the factory have looked up from their tasks and are watching us. I let go of his arm.

  “It’s okay,” I say. “It’s okay. I just wanted to say hello. I don’t mean you any harm.”

  Henry has his head bowed again and the line of words is being spoken at a softer volume. He resumes his strange halting walk as though I’m not there at all, and so I retreat back to the supervisor.

  “I didn’t mean to upset him,” I say. “He’s on my ward. I just wanted to make contact with him.”

  “Henry’s not really one for contact,” says the supervisor. He has a smirk on his face. “I could have told you that, if you’d asked.”

  Again I feel that I have made another mistake, that, for all my good intentions, I am botching this job at every opportunity. Every time I reach out, something goes wrong.

  “I’ll just stand here and watch him fo
r a while,” I say.

  “Yes,” says the supervisor, a man almost as young as I am. “You can’t come to any harm doing that.”

  Henry Tudor, in his slow, uneven walk, brings his armload of batting up to a workbench where a mattress lies. The cover of the mattress is open down one side and Henry begins to stuff the mattress with the batting. Not only does he have trouble walking, but his hands appear to have tremors and the stuffing of the mattress is a long, rather painful process.

  “Do you think he’ll ever be fit to leave here?” I ask the supervisor.

  “Henry? No, he won’t be getting out. But the others”—the supervisor waves his hand over the rest of the roomful of men—“they’ll be going. We’ve already placed one so far. George Ferguson. He left last week, went to work in a feed store.”

  “How’s he doing?”

  “Fine.” The supervisor grins at me. “They’re not going off to be bank presidents,” he says. “Mostly they’re pushing brooms or fetching and carrying.” He taps his temple with an index finger. “Nothing too taxing,” he says. “If you know what I mean.”

  I find his behaviour insulting, but I can’t complain about it, seeing how he is succeeding here, whereas I am failing in my pitiful attempt to befriend Henry Tudor.

  “Is he happy?” I ask.

  “Who?”

  “George Ferguson.”

  The supervisor gives me a strange look. “What kind of a question is that?” he says.

  I GO TO visit Tom Bright in the garden. He’s tying up the runner beans that are almost ready to harvest. He’s an old man, with a thatch of white hair and dungarees that are too big for him and are held up by homemade suspenders that seem to have been fashioned out of two dog leads.

  “Those are nice-looking beans,” I say.

  “You know something of beans, then?” says Tom.

  “Not really.” I follow him down the row. He has a ball of string tucked into his pocket, cuts off lengths with a penknife he holds in his right hand.

  “They just look like good beans,” I say. “Healthy beans. Tasty beans.”

  Tom snorts. “Why would you say a thing you don’t mean?” he asks.

  “I do mean it.”

  “You just said you know nothing of beans.”

  I decide to try a different approach. “Can I help you with this?”

  I reach for his ball of string, and he snatches it out of my reach.

  “No, I have a system.”

  “I see that. It looks like a good system.”

  “You know nothing of my system,” says Tom Bright.

  Another change of direction is called for.

  “Are you hoping to find work as a gardener when you leave the hospital? Do you need me to search out possible jobs for you?”

  “I like it here,” says Tom Bright. “This is my garden. These are my beans. I don’t like any interference while I’m about my work.”

  He pushes past me to finish tying the row.

  MARCUS STEUBING SWEEPS up hair in the barbershop. He scuffs the broom across the floor, pushing the locks into a dustpan, and empties the dustpan into a large metal garbage bin in the corner of the room. Then he comes back and repeats the task.

  “Do you like your job?” I ask, following him to the garbage bin.

  “No, I hate it.”

  “Would you like me to find you something else then?”

  “No.”

  “Why not?”

  “I’d hate it.” Marcus Steubing leans on his broom and looks hard at me. “I hate this whole friggin’ place. I’m being kept here against my will.”

  “But the hospital is being emptied,” I say. “I don’t think anyone wants to keep you here against your will. No one wants to keep you here at all. I can work at getting you a job outside of the hospital.”

  “Others have tried,” says Marcus darkly. “Others have failed.”

  He knocks the broom against my shoes.

  “You’re in my way,” he says. “You need to move.”

  I skitter a few feet to the left.

  “Do you like hair, then?” I ask.

  “What kind of a question is that?” Marcus regards me suspiciously.

  “I mean, I could look for work for you at a wigmaker’s or in a barbershop in town.”

  “I’d hate that. I hate hair.”

  “But you’re doing this job, sweeping up hair?”

  “I have to do something, don’t I,” says Marcus. “They make me do something.” He mumbles something under his breath.

  “Pardon?”

  “It’s all against my will,” he says. “Including this conversation.”

  BRIDIE MCINTYRE WORKS in the kitchen. When I enter the vast underground chamber, I find him chopping carrots and onions for tonight’s shepherd’s pie. I walk over and stand beside him at the counter.

  “Hello,” I say. “I’m Leonard Flint. You’re a member of my ward.”

  “I know, Doc. I met you at supper last night.” Bridie doesn’t take his eyes from his task. The knife knocks against the chopping board with finality. No, no, no, it seems to be saying.

  “I just want to know if I can be of any assistance to you,” I say. “In any way.”

  “I’m a little busy now, Doc,” says Bridie. “I don’t really have time to help you out.”

  And that’s just it, I think, backing out of the kitchen. He would be helping me, not the other way around. The sound of the knife mocks me as I leave—no, no, no.

  Well, Bridie, I think, just because you have a concrete task to accomplish doesn’t make you a superior being. And Bridie, isn’t that a woman’s name you have?

  I INHALE THE dark of the stable as though it were the sweetest smoke. I like that I can’t see anything right away, and the moments it takes my eyes to adjust to the dimness are like moments of weightlessness, like I am falling backwards through time and I am landing as a boy inside the dark of Sugar Hill.

  Bill has one of the horses out of its stall and he’s brushing it. When I walk across the floor of the stable towards him, he reaches down and picks up another brush, hands it to me.

  “I thought you might be back,” he says. “Might as well put you to work.”

  The horses have been outside much of the morning and their coats are covered in dust. When I sweep the brush in small arcs across the back of the animal, dust rises and hangs in the air, settles on my clothes, finds its way inside my nose and mouth.

  “I’ve been trying to do my job, Bill,” I say. “Trying to help the men on my ward. But I don’t feel competent enough or old enough. I don’t think anyone respects me, or even likes me.”

  “People are not much good,” says Bill. “They never have been. It’s no use trying to make them so.”

  We are standing on opposite sides of the horse. I can feel the great shuddering heat of the animal between us, can see the top of Bill’s head above the withers.

  “Don’t you remember me yet, Bill?”

  “Nope.”

  The horse snorts and stamps its foot and a cloud of dust rises and drifts down the stale air between us.

  “I used to come and see you in Sugar Hill. You used to make me bread in your outdoor oven.”

  “I do recall an oven,” says Bill. “Out of doors, as you say.” He pauses, leans over the back of the horse, looking at me. “Go on,” he says. “Tell me something else to make me remember.”

  “You had dogs,” I say. “Two of them. A grey one and a black one. The grey one was scruffy.”

  “What were their names?”

  “They didn’t have names.”

  Bill grins. “Yes,” he says. “That’s right. What else? What else do you know about me?”

  I put my hand in the pocket of my doctor’s coat and take out the rabbits’ feet. I’ve been carrying them around all day. Each time I talked to one of my uncooperative patients, I would put my hand in the pocket of my coat and feel the reassuring softness of the rabbit fur, the hard flex of the bones, the small, sharp nail
s, and I would feel comforted.

  I pass the rabbits’ feet over the back of the horse to Bill.

  “You gave these to me,” I say.

  Bill lays the six rabbits’ feet beside one another in the palm of his hand. His hand is so big that there’s room left over for at least another three rabbits’ feet in there.

  “These were mine?” he asks.

  “They were. You used to sell them in town. In Canwood.”

  Bill looks at them carefully.

  “I must have trapped them first,” he says.

  “You did.”

  “What kind of a trap did I use?”

  “A snare.”

  I can see Bill inside his dug-out home in Sugar Hill, holding up the hoop of wire and grinning, then lowering it around my wrist and slowly tightening it to demonstrate how he killed the rabbits.

  Bill studies my face. “If I gave you this many feet,” he says, “then I must know you. I must have liked you. Do you look very different?”

  “I was a boy then.”

  “A boy, yes,” Bill says slowly. “A boy was often kind to me when I lived in Sugar Hill.” He tries to pass the rabbits’ feet back to me, but I shake my head.

  “No,” I say. “Let’s share them between us. Let’s take three each.” I reach across and take half of the rabbits’ feet and drop them back into my coat pocket. Bill curls his hand around the remaining three.

  “All right,” he says.

  I feel that we have made a promise to each other by doing this; that here in the dark of the stable with the horse standing witness between us, we have agreed to the one thing I have always known to be true: Bill and I belong to each other. We belong together.

  LATER THAT NIGHT, in the quiet of my cottage, I try to write up my notes from the day. It is hard to know what to say about each of my encounters with my patients. Each time, I felt, or was made to feel, foolish by my conversations with the men.

  I try to say something about Tom Bright. He seems the easiest to write about. My pen scratches across the page. It’s dusk, and when I look up I can see the flight of the swallows over the river. I look down at what I’ve written.