by Jim Lehrer
Then came a glass of milk, which he sipped dry through a straw.
He burped loudly to a round of clapping.
The next day he sang from the same song:
“Hooray for sunshine!
Hooray for air!
They put the permanent in your curly hair,
They helped to raise you till I could praise you, baby.”
That was what led to Otis going outside for the first time since arriving at the Ashland Clinic.
Several people picked him up from his bed and sat him down in a wheelchair. They had no idea he could walk on his own. He also acted as if he couldn’t keep his head up straight, so they strapped it loosely against the back of the chair, the same way they did his chest, stomach, arms, and legs. No need to rush things.
It was a nice day outside. A nice spring day. That clearly wasn’t a Christmas decoration he’d seen on the ceiling. Must have been an illusion—a mirage. Or something else. Well, there’s the sun up there, and the sky is Kansas blue, and the clouds are white. Good for all of them. Everything is where it should be, looking the way it should look here in the Sunflower State.
And the air feels good. Hooray for air! Let’s hear it, Johnny Our Huckleberry Friend!
Otis sang, “Hooray for sunshine! Hooray for air!”
Then the second verse of “Sunflower.”
“Skies are fair in Kansas,
Clouds are rare in Kansas,
Never saw a place that could
Compare with Kansas …”
They rolled him to what appeared to be a patio, not unlike his patio in Eureka that was called an outdoor entertainment area. Here there was also something hard and gray, like concrete or slate, and there were big cottonwoods and sycamores all around.
Anybody have a spare Red Ryder BB gun?
Several people were sitting in chairs in a semicircle facing him. He recognized three of them: Madison Severy, Russ Tonganoxie the shithead, and Bob Gidney. This must be something important, for the three of them to be here. He tried to make eye contact with each of them one at a time, as a way of saying hello—also of giving them a progress event to discuss. There was another man and a woman sitting across from him, but he did not recognize them, so he did not lock eyes with them.
I’m Buck the scooter man. Who are you?
Too bad Johnny Mercer died. Boy, could he have written a great song called “Scooter Man.” It could be the fun-filled Huckleberry Friend kind of story about a bald-headed bloodsucking insurance executive who headed west on a 1952 Cushman Pacemaker, fell through a condemned bridge, and instead of drowning, became a singer just like Johnny Mercer.
“We think you can talk,” said Bob Gidney, “as well as look at us straight in the eye, as you did just now.”
“You’re playing games with us, aren’t you, Otis?” said the shithead Russ Tonganoxie.
“I feel strongly, Otis, that the words are there for you to speak, and all it takes is for you to decide to speak them,” said Mad Severy. “You spoke one—‘Sharon.’ You can speak others.”
Bob Gidney said, “These other two people with us are Drs. Ruth Humboldt and Clay F. Sublette. They’re psychiatric colleagues of ours from the University of Washington School of Medicine in Seattle.”
Otis moved his eyes toward the pair. What does the F stand for? was the only question he could think of to ask, if he were in the business of asking questions. I met a great young man whose name was T. He came to see me at the clinic, but Mad wouldn’t let him in. T spelled his name without a period, á la Harry S Truman. Is your F with or without a period, Doctor?
Bob Gidney continued, “Drs. Humboldt and Sublette have done a lot of work with the mental rehabilitation of near-drowning victims. But they have never encountered—personally or in the literature—any cases like yours.”
Dr. Sublette said, “That’s right, Mr. Halstead. No one has ever substituted singing for speaking the way you have. If people can sing, they can also talk. That is true even for those recovering from trauma, as you are.”
“Singing mostly one particular songwriter’s songs makes it even more unusual,” said Dr. Humboldt. “Our research on the issue is clear—it has never happened before.”
“Not only with near-drowning victims, Mr. Halstead,” said Dr. Sublette, “but not with any other kind of stroke or other victims left with a mental-function impairment of some kind.”
“That’s why we think you’re faking it,” said Tonganoxie the shithead.
Bob Gidney said, “No need to get rough, Russ.”
“A man who can sing a Johnny Mercer song can talk,” Tonganoxie responded. “You know it and I know it and they know it and everybody in the world knows it. You don’t have to be a shrink to know it.”
“Don’t use the word ‘shrink,’” Bob Gidney said. “That’s self-hate offensive.”
“This whole thing is offensive,” said Madison Severy. “This is obviously a sick man who needs treatment, not childish fights between his doctors.”
Wrong! A childish fight was exactly what he needed, thought Otis. Sic ’em! Fight, fight, fight! Great, great, great!
Ignoring the shrink controversy, Dr. Sublette said to Otis, “We would like to ask you some questions, if we might. We would clearly hope and prefer that you answer them—the old-fashioned way, if you will—with words, but we have composed them in such a way that moving your head slightly in a nod for yes and a shake for no will suffice. Is the strap on your head loose enough for you to respond that way? If so, please nod. If not, please shake.”
Otis nodded.
Drs. Humboldt and Sublette alternated asking questions. Sublette went first. “Our research indicates that Johnny Mercer wrote more than one thousand songs—one thousand two hundred and twelve, to be exact—that were published. Does that coincide with your information, Mr. Halstead?”
Otis nodded.
“Do you know the words to all twelve hundred and twelve?”
Otis shook his head slightly.
“More than half?”
After a pause of a few seconds, Otis shook again.
“Less than half?”
A shake.
“About half?”
Nod.
“So that means you know the words to some six hundred Johnny Mercer songs. Is that right?”
Nod.
“You’re lying, Otis,” said Tonganoxie. “Nobody in the world knows the words to six hundred of any kind of songs.”
Otis did not move his head.
“Is it correct that you learned the songs—no matter the exact number—when you were young?” Dr. Sublette continued.
Nod.
“In high school or before?”
Nod and shake.
“You mean you learned some of them in high school or before, and some of them afterward?”
Nod.
“Mrs. Halstead has told us that she had no knowledge of your ability to sing Mercer songs, or to sing at all, until your recent accident. Have you sung many Mercer songs in the last thirty-five years?”
Shake.
“Since high school?”
Shake.
“So you stopped singing like Johnny Mercer or any other way after high school?”
Nod.
“Did something happen—a specific event—that caused you to stop singing?”
Otis kept his head absolutely still.
“Did you hear the question, Mr. Halstead?”
Nod.
“But you’re not going to answer it, is that it?”
Nod.
“Why not, goddammit?” Russ Tonganoxie yelled.
“Cool it, Russ,” Bob Gidney said. “For whatever reason, he’s not going to answer the question. We’ll have to find out ourselves.”
“I think we are in the process of discovering a completely new syndrome,” said Dr. Sublette.
“I agree,” said Dr. Humboldt.
Tonganoxie, in a state of high sneer, said, “Oh, sure. Eureka! What shall we call it? The
Johnny Mercer syndrome? The Halstead syndrome? Or why not simply Otis? A disease named Otis. Every time we come across somebody who only sings Mercer songs instead of talking—I’m sure there are millions of the poor souls out there, waiting to be found and helped—we’ll stroke our beards and lower our Viennese accents and say, ‘Dear patient, you have Otis and, so sorry to report, there is no cure for Otis. You will sing Johnny Mercer songs instead of talking for the rest of your life.’”
Otis listened for laughter. There was none. Not even a slight giggle. Otis would have been delighted to laugh out loud and uproariously if he had decided to do that sort of thing. Not yet.
Russ Tonganoxie may not be a shithead after all.
Bob Gidney said to Otis, “What would you like to do now?”
Otis sang from Johnny’s 1942 song “Hit the Road to Dreamland”:
“Bye-bye, baby,
Time to hit the road to dreamland.
Don’t cry, baby …
Time to hit the road.”
Russ Tonganoxie cackled with laughter.
“He wants a nap, he’s tired,” said Dr. Sublette. He and the others were not laughing, because they were clearly unhappy. And sad and worried and concerned. That was the way they looked to Otis, at least. Finally, Bob Gidney confirmed it.
“If we don’t come up with something, this poor man—my friend Otis Halstead—is going to live the rest of his life this way, answering questions with Johnny Mercer songs instead of spoken words,” he said. “We must do everything in our power to bring him back to his old self, his old life, his old happiness.”
Drs. Sublette and Humboldt said in unison, “We will do our best, Bob.”
“You know what I think,” said Russ Tonganoxie. “I think this man Otis Halstead has absolutely no interest in being brought back to his old life—his old happiness.”
Nod.
“You found it, Otis, you found it, didn’t you?” Tonganoxie asked.
Nod.
“Eureka. You’re yelling Eureka, aren’t you, Otis?”
Otis yelled at the top of his lungs: “Eureka!”
He decided there was no harm in giving them another word—another small progress event—to ponder and to confuse.
While Buck prepared to make his move.
USS TONGANOXIE, AS always at patient assessment staff meetings about Otis, cracked jokes.
“Why don’t we make some tapes and CDs of Otis’s singing and market them to music lovers the world over? ‘Otis Sings Mercer.’ We could even create our own label. ‘Ashland Rocks.’ Or ‘Schizo Songs’? ‘Crazy Rhythms’? We could make some money, pave the parking lot, expand the cafeteria.”
Nobody laughed. Nobody had any optimistic assessments or new treatment ideas for Otis, either.
On the way out of the conference room a few minutes later, Russ Tonganoxie surprised Bob Gidney by suggesting they have lunch together. They quickly agreed on the Turkey Red Cafe, a onetime wheat farm outside town that had been converted into the Eureka area’s best and most popular restaurant.
Russ and Bob had yet to develop anything other than a working relationship. That was why the invitation surprised Bob.
They rode in Russ’s shiny, sporty sand-colored Jeep Wrangler. The Jeep’s canvas top was in place, but it was open on both sides because it was a warm day, and Russ had removed the side doors and windows.
“We’ll start with a vodka martini, on the rocks with two olives,” said Russ.
“No way, no thanks,” said Bob.
But immediately after they were seated at a private corner table at the restaurant, Russ ordered a martini for each of them from a young waitress. She was dressed in a long cotton dress with a white pinafore that matched the decor.
There was real hay up in the loft of the onetime barn, a restored 1938 Ford tractor and plow displayed like pieces of sculpture over by the bar, old scythes, rakes, and other hand implements along with farm scene photos and oil paintings on the walls.
A casual observer would have had trouble guessing Russ and Bob had enough in common to share even a meal. Both were dressed in their usual manner. Russ Tonganoxie was in faded blue jeans, white sneakers, and a wrinkled long-sleeved blue-and-white-striped polo shirt. Bob Gidney was wearing tasseled black loafers, a sharply pressed dark blue hopsack suit, a blue oxford button-down, and a wine silk tie. Russ’s hair was mostly uncombed, while every strand of Bob’s seemed freshly fixed.
After a few minutes, the martinis were delivered. Russ grabbed his and raised it. Bob just looked at his and said, “I haven’t had a real martini in years. They make me drunk and sometimes giddy, sometimes teary.”
“Pick it up,” Russ said. “At least let’s have a clink.”
“I have several appointments this afternoon,” said Bob. But he did raise his glass and knock it against Russ’s.
“So do I. But right now I want to talk about you. I have watched you sliding down some kind of slippery slope since Otis’s accident. I understand your friendship, but I sense there’s something more, something deeper, going on. Am I right?”
Bob took a sip of his martini. He said, “Sure. I hadn’t realized it was so obvious.”
“You’ve lost your spark, your verve, your involvement, your engagement. You seem distracted, mostly somewhere else.”
“I wish I were mostly somewhere else.”
“Where?”
“Anywhere else.”
Both Russ and Bob ordered the Country Sampler lunch special—a large plate that included a crisp-fried chicken breast, a small slice of sugared baked ham, a three-inch piece of buttered corn on the cob, separate spoonfuls of slightly cooked green beans and black-eyed peas, a splat of onion-flavored mashed potatoes, a thick slice of ripe tomato, and three radishes. Everything had been raised there on the farm. On the side came gigantic glasses of iced tea, a basket of warm wheat biscuits and corn-bread sticks, and freshly whipped butter served in a fruit-preserves jar.
Russ noticed that Bob took a second and then a third sip of his martini.
“Have you talked to anybody about what’s going on with you?” Russ asked.
“No.”
“Why not?”
Bob took his fourth sip. Russ covertly signaled to the waitress for two more martinis.
“It’s not ripe for talking,” said Bob. “I feel guilty about some things concerning Otis, that’s all. It’ll pass. If it gets to a point where I need to talk to you or somebody else, I’ll let you know. And relax. I am not about to kill myself… Sorry, Russ.”
Russ shook his head but said nothing.
Without comment or apparent notice, Bob soon was several sips into his second martini. So was Russ.
They idly talked awhile about the restaurant and Eureka and Kansas, as well as the clinic and a few new psychiatric studies that intrigued one or the other. Russ told Bob that something interesting had turned up on Canton, the deputy sheriff who had saved Otis’s life and then died himself. It turned out that he was a Silver Star.
“He claimed he had been a motorcycle cop in Wichita and that he had been hurt in an accident there. Not so. He spent his whole life working on farms out near the Colorado border. Nobody checked out his references when they hired him as a deputy because they liked him, he told good stories about his motorcycle days, and they happened to need somebody in a hurry.”
“I thought the sheriff said he was the best deputy they ever had,” Bob said.
“He still says that. Very common for Silver Stars. In order to keep their fantasy lie going, they have to be better than anybody else.”
Bob left for the men’s room. While he was gone, Russ used his cellphone to call the clinic. He told his secretary to cancel his afternoon appointments and to pass on the message to Dr. Gidney’s secretary to do the same.
When Bob returned, Russ asked, “Do you still get a kick out of psychiatry, Bob?”
“Oh, please, for God’s sake. I’m not interested in being one of your mature-male-in-crisis subjects.”
&nb
sp; Russ grinned, looked away, and then pressed on.
“I hit on Otis about being a bloodsucking insurance man. He hit back, calling us brainsuckers. Maybe he’s right. We live off the troubled minds and souls of humankind. It certainly bothers me sometimes, I must confess. I understand also why Otis Halstead wanted to run away. God knows I have certainly had that desire more than once. My work really does bear out that running away is one of the most common of desires among well-educated professionals. I would assume that you’ve had your runaway moments, too.”
“Shut up, Russ. Okay?”
Their food arrived with two more martinis.
“What did you do that made you feel so guilty about Otis?” Russ asked after a couple of minutes.
Bob, in a vodka-soaked monotone, said, “I’ve always tried to control my own life. I believe in conserving my mental and physical energy for things that matter to me. I talk only when I want to talk and only about what I want to talk about, when I want to talk about it. My guilt feelings about Otis, if they exist, are not on the list at this particular moment at the Turkey Red Cafe—”
“Fine,” Russ interrupted. “But if you feel guilty for not having helped Otis through his running-away crisis, forget it. I may have been the one who planted the idea of running away on the motor scooter.”
“You? When?”
“When he and I talked that first and only time at the clinic. We were talking about the scooter, and I said something flip, something smart-ass—my style—about a motor scooter not being very good for running away from home. I even advised him to stay off the interstates, which he did, and fell into a river for his trouble.”
“Well, I gave him the idea for the Cushman. We were talking about his BB gun and his toy fire engine. He asked me if there was anything I ever wanted that I couldn’t have, and I said a red Cushman. He said him, too. And he went off to Nebraska and bought one. If I hadn’t planted the idea of the Cushman in his troubled head, he might not have run away, and you know the rest.”
“Might, might, might. The three most powerful words in the rationalizing of human behavior.” Russ closed his eyes and leaned back in his chair.
