Rabbit Foot Bill

by Helen Humphreys

  He seems gentler now, more thoughtful perhaps. He seems strong and kind and tolerant of my attempts at friendship.

  I’m not writing of Tom Bright at all. I’m writing about Rabbit Foot Bill.

  THE NEXT DAY Dr. Christiansen summons me to attend an LSD session with one of my patients, an alcoholic named Gus Polder. I meet the patient and doctor in Dr. Christiansen’s office at ten thirty in the morning.

  “Gus has already taken the drug,” Dr. Christiansen informs me when I arrive at his office. “We will now ensure that he is relaxed and comfortable while we wait for the LSD to take effect.”

  Gus Polder is a man in his forties, with the thin build and weather-beaten face of someone who works outside. He perches on the edge of Dr. Christiansen’s sofa, his left foot tapping lightly, nervously, against the floor.

  “Hiya, Doc,” he says.

  “Hi,” I say back. This is the friendliest exchange I’ve had yet with anyone on my ward. I don’t, however, recognize Gus Polder.

  “This is Gus’s first session,” says Dr. Christiansen. He’s sitting down behind his massive oak desk that effectively cuts him off at the chest. I’m thinking that when Gus Polder is under the influence of the drug, he might not appreciate seeing a disembodied head talking to him, but I don’t know how to bring this up. Even with Luke Christiansen’s assurances that we are equal, that we are colleagues, I never feel this to be true. He always seems to be my boss, and I can’t talk freely with him because of this.

  “What we are trying to do,” continues Dr. Christiansen, “is to recreate the DTs for Mr. Polder, so that by experiencing the worst of being an alcoholic, he will be motivated to stop his addiction.”

  “I ain’t had the DTs yet,” says Gus Polder. “Been lucky, I guess.” He laughs and then stops, but I notice that his foot tapping has increased in intensity. Gus Polder doesn’t look to me like a man who’s been lucky at all.

  “How can we make him have the DTs?” I ask.

  “LSD is a mind-altering drug,” says Dr. Christiansen. “We will simply alter his mind while he is under the influence.”

  “We will intentionally force him to have a bad experience?”

  “It’s not a bad experience we’re after,” says Dr. Christiansen. “It’s a cautionary experience. We will simply take a shortcut to a place Mr. Polder would have arrived at anyway, and by taking a shortcut we will negate the progressive nature of the alcohol addiction.”

  “After the artificial DTs, he will be able to effectively stop the need for drinking?”

  “I would like that,” says Gus Polder, but he looks more anxious than convinced.

  “There is always a reason why people take to drink,” says Dr. Christiansen. “Come on, Dr. Flint, surely you have learnt something in medical school?”

  “There’s an emotional root cause,” I say.

  “Exactly,” says Dr. Christiansen. “And what we are hoping to achieve in these sessions is to visit that root cause, to discover what is at the bottom of Mr. Polder’s addiction to alcohol.”

  “I’ve always liked the taste of beer,” says Gus Polder helpfully, but we both ignore this remark.

  “So we deliberately induce a bad experience and hope that will release some of the negative emotions that are the cause of his alcoholism?”

  “Yes.” Dr. Christiansen stands up and comes out from behind his desk. “Now, we need to make the patient comfortable so that the experience is as pleasant as possible.”

  I don’t say that it will be impossible to make someone comfortable if you are setting him up to be uncomfortable. I don’t say that it seems risky to me to undertake behaviour modification experiments on people who are perhaps a little mentally frail to begin with.

  “What’s the success rate?” I ask.

  “Very promising,” says Dr. Christiansen. “But the data is ongoing. Now, Gus,” he says, “I want you to lie on your back and I will put a soft towel across your closed eyes.”

  “What about my shoes?” says Gus. “They’ll mark the fabric.”

  “Remove your shoes. And lie back.”

  “There are no definitive findings yet?” I ask.

  “We’re still in the experimental stages,” says Dr. Christiansen. “We won’t be able to process the data until the experiments are complete. But the preliminary findings are very promising indeed.”

  Gus Polder has removed his shoes and tucked them under the sofa. He lies back.

  “What are the preliminary findings?” I ask.

  “Not now, Flint.”

  Dr. Christiansen leans over and plumps up the pillow behind Gus’s head and then lays a folded white towel across his eyes and forehead.

  “How are you feeling?” he asks.

  “What if I accidentally fall asleep?” says Gus.

  “You won’t fall asleep.”

  “But what if I do?”

  “I want you to take notes,” says Dr. Christiansen to me. “You’ll find a notebook on my desk. Fetch yourself a pen. Note the time and write down that the patient is experiencing anxiety.”

  I dutifully do as he says.

  “Doc, you haven’t answered my question,” says Gus Polder.

  “You won’t fall asleep,” says Dr. Christiansen. “We will make sure of that, won’t we, Dr. Flint?”

  “Sure,” I say. “I mean, we’ll help you,” but I must not sound very convincing because Gus Polder suddenly takes the cloth off his forehead and sits bolt upright.

  “I don’t think I want to be going through with this,” he says. “I don’t think I’m ready. I ain’t never had the DTs. Why would I want to have them now, when I’m not even drinking?”

  “It’s too late,” says Dr. Christiansen, his hand on Gus’s shoulder, trying to ease him back down to a supine position on the sofa. “You can’t un-take the drug.”

  “I could sick it up,” says Gus.

  “It’s already in your system. In fact,” says Dr. Christiansen, exerting real pressure trying to push Gus Polder back down on the sofa, “I think it’s already working. This nervousness you feel is all part of the drug already working in your system.”

  There’s a moment of silence while we all try to come to terms with this fact.

  “You have a problem that needs fixing,” says Dr. Christiansen. “The problem was caused by pain, so the cure won’t be painless. Do you understand?”

  Gus Polder allows himself to be slowly pushed back down to a prone position. “Yes,” he says, a man not so much understanding his fate as resigning himself to it.

  “Patient emotionally resistant,” says Dr. Christiansen over his shoulder to me, and I write that down in the notebook. Then I cross out the word “resistant” and put down the word “reluctant” instead. Gus Polder’s apprehensions about the drug seem reasonable to me. “Resistant” seems too harsh a term to explain it.

  “Now, Gus,” continues Dr. Christiansen, “are you relatively comfortable lying there with the towel over your eyes?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well then, I want you to describe for Dr. Flint and me what you are seeing in your mind’s eye. Could you do that for us?”

  “I think so.”

  There’s a silence.

  “Any time you want to start would be fine,” says Dr. Christiansen.

  “It’s dark,” says Gus.

  “Perhaps the drug hasn’t really taken effect yet,” I say. “He seems to be referring to the towel over his eyes.”

  “Perhaps not.” Dr. Christiansen pulls over his desk chair and sits down on it next to the sofa. “Gus, I want you to remember back to when you were a child. Can you do that for me?”

  “I think so.”

  “What do you think about when you remember being a child?”

  “We had a dog I liked. His name was Star.”

  “What else?”

  “We lived on a farm. It were Mr. Morgan’s farm. My daddy worked for him. We had a little house in the far corner of the wheat field in sight of the main house.”
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  I sit down on the edge of Dr. Christiansen’s desk. I’m not sure what I should be writing down in the notebook. I put down the words dog and tenant farmer, and then I cross out the word dog.

  “Were your parents good to you, Gus?” asks Dr. Christiansen.

  “My mother died,” says Gus. “My older sister, Bernice, looked after us when we were babies. We called her Bernie. It was her dog. Star was her dog.”

  I write the word dog back into the notebook and put a line underneath it.

  “What happened to the dog?” I ask.

  “Daddy shot it. The dog was to keep him away from Bernie, and when he’d had enough of that, he shot it.”

  “Did your father hurt all of you?” asks Dr. Christiansen. He’s leaning forward on his chair. This is clearly what he wants to hear.

  “I don’t remember,” says Gus Polder.

  “I think you do,” says Dr. Christiansen.

  I feel suddenly that I can’t breathe. My collar feels too tight around my neck, and I reach up to loosen it only to find that it’s already loose. I hold on to the sides of the desk to stop the dizziness that has started sizzling through me.

  “Did you write that down?” says Dr. Christiansen. “Flint? What’s the matter with you?”

  “I feel a little ill, sir. Must be something I ate at breakfast.” I put the notebook and pen down on the desk. “I’m sorry, sir, I just need to get some air. I’ll be right back.”

  Outside in the corridor I squat down with my back against the wall. I try to concentrate on breathing, slowly and surely, in and out and back in again, my head resting in the bowl of my hands.

  I remember the dark and the smell of earth and the cold and the way my body hurt like it was broken.

  But I won’t think that. It’s not true. Bill would never harm me. It was always nice when I went to Sugar Hill. There were hay bales with furs on them. There was homemade bread. There was the climb up to the top of the hill and the run back down. There were the dogs and the roses in the garden.

  The office door opens and Dr. Christiansen comes out into the hallway.

  “Are you feeling too ill to continue?” he asks, “because I think we’re at a critical point. I’m starting to induce the DTs, and you might want to see how this is done.”

  I push the thoughts of the dark and cold inside Sugar Hill back down into the earth and I close the door on them.

  “Yes,” I say, standing up. “I’m all right now. I can come back in.”

  As in the birthday game we sometimes played as children, Dr. Christiansen is making Gus Polder handle various objects and substances and telling him that they are other than they are.

  He rests Gus’s hand in a small bowl of cold, cooked spaghetti.

  “These are worms,” he says. “They are worms and they are crawling over your body. Can you feel them? They have started up your arms and legs. They will crawl inside your ears and mouth and try to choke you up.”

  Gus jerks his hand out of the bowl and starts slapping at his arms and legs. “Get them off me,” he says. “Please, get them off me.”

  “I’m sorry,” says Dr. Christiansen, calmly. “There are just too many of them. I can’t do anything.”

  In his frenzied slapping, Gus has knocked the towel from his eyes, but having his eyes open doesn’t seem to make any difference to his perception that worms are crawling over the length of his body. In fact, with his eyes open, it’s as though he sees them all the more clearly.

  “Please help me,” he says. “I can feel them burrowing under my skin. They’re travelling inside me.” He’s staring at the veins on his forearm that are standing out from his skin, just like they are worms.

  “He’s upset,” I say. “We should stop.”

  “No,” says Dr. Christiansen. “It’s working. When he comes up out of this, he will remember the horror of this experience.”

  “And you think it will really stop him from wanting to drink?”

  “Yes, I do.” Dr. Christiansen turns to me from his seat next to Gus Polder. “Are you taking good notes? I’m relying on you.”

  It’s dark, I write. I’m being held down. My face is in the dirt. I can taste the grit and stick of it in my mouth. There are no sounds from outside. The earth muffles noise. It curls around me like a closed fist.

  “Please help me,” moans Gus Polder. I look down at what I’ve written, rip the page out, crumple it up, and jam it into my pocket.

  The patient is in distress, I write. He thinks that worms are slithering up his body and will make their way into his mouth and ears, choking him. He has remembered the violence he suffered at the hands of his father. He has remembered the rape of his sister and a dog that was shot.

  I’M LYING ON the sofa in my cottage with a folded towel across my eyes when there’s a knock at the door.

  It’s William Scott.

  “Hi,” he says. “I’ve come to see if you need anything. Luke said you were feeling ill this morning.”

  “I’m okay.” I don’t open the screen door to let him in, and he doesn’t open it himself to step inside the cottage. “We gave LSD to Gus Polder and made him experience the DTs.”

  “I know. Luke told me.”

  I sit up on the sofa.

  “Do you ever remember something you’re not sure even happened?” I ask.

  “Repressed memories?” William sounds instantly interested. He opens the screen door and comes into the cottage.

  “I guess so.”

  Behind William the river is a coppery snake winding through the field grass. The sun is at such an angle to the surface that I can see the dark lines on the riverbed that must be sunken logs, the holes that must be rocks.

  “There was a moment,” I say, “when I felt that everything was about me, and not about Gus Polder.”

  “Maybe you were identifying too strongly with the patient?”

  “Maybe. I did find it all a bit upsetting.”

  “He resisted the treatment?”

  “He was reluctant.” I felt sorry for Gus, but there was some other shift that happened in that room. “But, no, that’s not it.”

  William Scott comes over and sits beside me on the sofa.

  “We could explore that if you’d like,” he says. “I could analyze you.”

  “I don’t know.” What I have seen so far of psychiatric analysis at the Weyburn has left a lot to be desired. “I’ll have to think about it.”

  “Don’t think too much about it, or you’ll talk yourself out of it.”

  “That doesn’t exactly fill me with confidence.”

  William grins and stands up. “You know where to find me,” he says. “If you decide to go ahead with it.”

  After he goes I lie back down on the sofa and replace the towel across my eyes. I think of Gus and how he squirmed and shouted, the obvious terror he felt when he was made to relive his past. Perhaps William was right when he said that I was identifying too strongly with the patient? Perhaps my terror was borrowed from Gus? But the more I take myself down this route, the more I know, at the heart of me, that it is a lie.

  WHEN THE SUPPER hour comes, I intercept the food cart in the hallway outside one of the dormitories and take a tray of food. Instead of going to eat in the kitchen with my patients, I take the supper tray back outside and head over to the stables.

  The August night is coming on. Already there is the faint shape of the moon hammered into the dusky sky. The first star shines bright above the river.

  Bill is sitting in his stall, his tray of food balanced on his lap. He moves along the bed so there’s room for me to sit down, and I sit down next to him, put my tray of food across my lap in imitation of him. I can feel the shudder down the row of stalls as a horse rubs his coat against the boards.

  Bill eats noisily. I can hear the muscles in his jaw popping as he chews. He holds the tray steady with one hand and shovels the food in with the other. He barely pauses for breath.

  I run my fork over the potato crust of the s
hepherd’s pie on my tray, and when Bill has finished with his supper, I slide mine along to him.

  “You can have it too,” I say. “I don’t feel much like eating.”

  Bill grunts in response and dispatches my meal with the same admirable efficiency as he finished his own. When he’s done he puts both trays on the floor, one piled neatly on top of the other, and he stands up, wipes his hands on the front of his trousers.

  “I’ve work to do,” he says, dismissing me.

  “I could help you.”

  Bill stands beside the bed, staring down at me with a look in his eyes that I can’t quite read. He seems to be assessing both whether I can do the work that’s required and whether or not he wants my company while doing it.

  “You should take your white coat off then,” he says after a moment. “It will get dirty.”

  I help him muck out the stalls and put new straw down for the horses. We work without speaking under the light of the bare bulbs that hang on their cords over the aisle outside the stalls.

  I like the weight of the pitchfork and the smell of the clean straw. I like feeling the prickle of sweat starting at the back of my neck. I look at my doctor’s coat, folded over the door of a stall. How proud I was when I first put that coat on. How relieved I feel now to have taken it off.

  Bill is a strong and steady worker and we just do what we have to do until it’s done, moving methodically down the row of stalls until, at the last one, he shovels the horseshit out and sluices down the floor with a pail of water, and I spread the new straw. We refill the water buckets and give the horses each a small nosebag of oats. Then we lead them back into their stalls and latch each of the doors.

  The bulbs swing on their cords where the horses have brushed against them when they were ambling back into their berths. The air is close and hot. I wipe my forehead with the sleeve of my white shirt.

  “Let’s go outside,” I say to Bill.

  He follows me through the stable door. The night feels as cool as water on my skin. There are the sounds of crickets and the low loop of an owl across the fields.

  “Let’s lie down on the grass,” I say, and we stretch out on our backs, an arm’s length apart.