“Do you know what a realtor’s worst nightmare is?” Charlie Coggins went around saying to the news media. “When they find human bones under one of his properties.”
“You were still under your self-administered anesthesia,” Lachicotte said, “when the paramedics were putting your leg into alignment. But the firemen had to come and knock out a wall so the paramedics could get to you. And there you were, doubled up in that cramped enclosure. They had to stabilize your breathing first (fust) before they moved you. The next problem, at the hospital, was what kind of anesthesia to give you for the surgery when the Percocet you swallowed was still meandering through your bloodstream in dribs and drabs. So they opted for the spinal block.”
Concerning the subjects of Aunt Charlotte’s painkillers and Aunt Charlotte’s breached studio, silence reigned. Maybe each of us was waiting for the other to go first, but it felt more like an unwritten restraining order that the three of us had tacitly agreed upon.
I was still on crutches and into regular sessions with a psychiatrist in Myrtle Beach when the painkiller subject got brought up. Lachicotte’s former second wife who had become a therapist had recommended this psychiatrist as being excellent with children and adolescents. Lachicotte drove me to these sessions as Aunt Charlotte had not yet resumed driving. Both ankle and wrist were healing, though she would later insist she never did recover full range of motion in her right hand. On one of our drives to Myrtle Beach, Lachicotte suddenly spoke up. “I had to report the container in your pocket, Marcus. For a scintilla of a moment I considered keeping it quiet. But that wouldn’t have been in anybody’s best interests. You understand, don’t you?”
“What’s a scintilla?”
“A touch, a dash, next to nothing.”
“I think you probably did right.”
I was more resentful of what I considered “the worst” betrayal Lachicotte had been guilty of while I was still in the hospital. Yet I knew that eventually I’d have to forgive him for that one, too.
***
In my sessions with the psychiatrist, I had made up my mind that everything was going to be on the table, even my true feelings when I was beating up Wheezer—everything except for my sightings of the ghost-boy. Since Johnny Dace’s remains had been discovered, I had a second reason for keeping the secret. Formerly, it was because I didn’t want to be thought crazy and sent away. But if I were to tell about our relationship after his bones became public property, I would be seen as a boy who was making up things to get more attention for himself. As Aunt Charlotte had put it, back when we had been discussing the “man in gray” who was said to walk the beach before a hurricane: “People see what they want to see. Or imagine they saw. And others say they saw something in order to sound psychic or special.”
Predictably, the psychiatrist encouraged me to talk about my mother. In order to get the awful part out of the way, I described the scenario I had been creating on the night of her accident, and how when I finally remembered it as “the thought I didn’t want to think,” I hadn’t wanted to live anymore. The psychiatrist was a lady of about Aunt Charlotte’s age, whose disposition was a lovely mix of alertness, humor, and respect. Her filigree earrings swung along with her shoulder-length gray hair when you made her laugh. She wore nice clothes and shoes and spoke with a sanded-down version of Lachicotte’s accent. As I completed the story about my awful scenario, I noted, as good students do when they have pleased their teacher, that she was excited by the start we had gotten off to. This is exactly the right material for us to be facing together, I could see her thinking.
This is not meant to be condescending to the woman who helped me so much. Having chosen her profession myself, I know all too well how cautiously we must treat our young patients, how we are taught to follow diagnostic guidelines until we can glimpse the individual beneath the presenting material. We start all over again with every new patient—or we should.
The “pleased teacher” being “played” by the student was the perception of a boy whose sessions with an earlier psychiatrist had taught him a few strategies for protecting his secrets. Because he still lives in me I am perfectly aware how cunning an eleven-year-old boy can be when it comes to withholding information. Being super-cunning requires handing over another secret in place of the one you want to keep buried.
She was just what was needed and she was in the right place when I needed her. Her most lasting gift has been the little notebooks. She told me to go out and buy a small notebook, small enough to fit in my pocket, and to write things in it that were important to me.
“Anything that strikes a chord. A line a day, or nothing, or as much as you want. Anything that strikes you as worth saving for yourself. A passage from something you read, something someone said—write it down when it’s fresh and don’t censor yourself. No one’s going to see this little book but you. And when you have filled up all its pages, go out and buy another one. Store them in a secret place.”
“Can it be just thoughts I have?”
“Absolutely. And also,” she smiled, “the thoughts you don’t want to have.” By then she had glimpsed the individual beneath the presenting material.
***
“You know the words a realtor never wants to hear?” Charlie Coggins loved explaining to reporters: “Secure the site. That’s right, those three little words: secure the site.
“But in this case I gave the order myself. I was early on the scene, thanks to Lachicotte Hayes phoning me on his mobile from the spot of the accident. ‘Right now the fire squad’s knocking down a wall to get to him,’ Lachicotte said, ‘so you’d better come.’ By the time I arrived the medics were getting the boy’s breathing stabilized before they set about moving him. I knew just what had happened. He had gone and done exactly what I’d told him not to. He went into that upstairs south room and fell right through the floor. The ‘wall’ the firemen had been knocking down, on the south side of the house, wasn’t a true wall, just a boarded-up makeshift with some shingles nailed on top, so they had an easier time than they expected. The boy fell through the upper floor and landed in a small enclosure beneath the staircase and beneath part of the south upstairs room. Nobody knew this enclosure existed; even I didn’t, until our helpful Historical Society kindly obtained the old plans for me. Originally it was a wood storage closet built into the south wall, so you could load in firewood from an outside opening and then fetch it from a door inside the house so you didn’t have to brave the elements. Rice planter families stayed though November and it was cold by then.