Rich wouldn’t let anybody see him scared.
“Yes, sir,” Dylan said. The man stared at him. Edges of the fake room wavered slightly like they’d done at the trial. “Butcher Boy,” Dylan said, in case that was what the doctor was waiting for him to admit. If the man didn’t start talking soon, Dylan was afraid he wouldn’t be able to understand him, that his brain would turn on him like it had with the lawyers. Survival instinct told him Dr. Kowalski wouldn’t deal well with that.
“And you don’t remember anything. That so?” the doctor said.
“No, sir. I mean, yes, sir. I don’t remember.” He did remember bits here and there but he knew they weren’t the bits Kowalski cared about. Besides, he didn’t think the doctor really wanted him to answer; he sounded like he had all the answers already and was waiting to spring them.
“I’m here to help you remember that night. I’ve worked with boys like you-men too. I wrote a book on a case of a woman who had blocked out drowning her infant daughter. Didn’t make the New York Times Best Seller List, but it sold well enough.” Dr. Kowalski smiled and waited.
Having no idea what the New York Times list was or whether it was bad or good that the book didn’t get on it, Dylan looked at the murky oil painting over the doctor’s chair so his eyeballs had some place to be.
“Do you believe that?” the doctor demanded.
Dylan didn’t know if he was asking if he believed he was there to help him or that his book had sold well enough. Confusion was growing up thick as brambles in a fairytale.
Tick, and tick, and tick, the doctor let more silence clock by. Dylan knew he should say something, remember something, but since he couldn’t he went as far into the murky picture as he could. The painting wasn’t laid out very well and it made him slide in his mind toward the trees on the left side. The warden’s wife wasn’t a very good artist, he decided.
“So, tell me about your dreams,” the psychiatrist said. He crossed his legs like a girl and leaned back in his chair.
Dylan came out of the painting with a twitch. The eyes behind the tortoiseshell glasses were boring into him.
“Should I lay down or something?” Dylan asked. The sofa looked clean but it smelled of damp and carbolic.
“Do you want to lie down?”
The way he asked the question made it sound important. Not knowing whether he was supposed to want to lie down or not to want to lie down, or if the doctor would think he was going to kill people if he did the wrong thing, Dylan did nothing.
Dr. Kowalski sighed.
Nothing was clearly not the right thing to do, Dylan knew then, but it was too late to do anything about it.
“Tell me about your dreams,” the doctor repeated.
Usually Dylan dreamed a lot and vividly but as he cast back in his mind he couldn’t recall a single dream. It could have been the drugs they gave him at night, but he guessed it was because the doctor was being so screwy he could hardly think.
Kowalski nodded sagely. “You’re afraid to dream,” he said. “Your unconscious mind is afraid to let you relive the bloodshed.” He jotted something down on a little note pad.
Dylan flinched. A dream jerked loose from his brain. He had dreamed. A vivid dream. “I remember,” he said excitedly.
The doctor leaned forward, his eyes intense.
“I was outside,” Dylan said. “Me and Rich were playing a game or something and Mom called from the backdoor for us to come in. When we went in she was putting supper on the table and a dog was sitting at the table in a chair like a person and we all laughed.”
Doctor Kowalski waited, pursed his lips so his whiskers fanned out around his mouth, then leaned back again.
“That’s it,” Dylan said. “That’s all I remember.” The doctor didn’t believe him; he thought Dylan made up the dream to prove his unconscious mind or whatever wasn’t hiding the things that happened.
“Shall I lay down now?” Dylan asked desperately. Dr. Olson had been hinting he might get out of the psych ward soon and he needed to do one right thing before the psychiatrist pushed him down the rabbit hole and his head shut down.
“Do you want to?” the doctor asked disapprovingly. He was just asking; it didn’t mean anything now.
For a while longer the psychiatrist asked questions. They weren’t the kind of questions anybody should ask. He wanted to know how many bowel movements Dylan had every day and if he liked the way they smelled and if he touched them. When the hour was over, Dylan thought he might actually be glad to get back to the psych ward.
The guard didn’t come for him. Draco did.
“You get any good drugs?” Draco asked.
Dylan didn’t know he was supposed to but he didn’t want to seem like a dork. “Nothing good,” he said.
“You get, you share.”
“Sure.”
“You’re alright,” Draco said. They walked down the narrow fake hall where partitions chopped up the once gracious room. “You gotta get out of psych,” Draco said suddenly. “You stay in psych you’re gonna be crazy as a loon in no time. Seriously. They make you one crazy fuck in there. Get out.”
Dylan believed him. He could feel himself becoming one crazy fuck after just an hour with the psychiatrist. “How do I get out?” he asked.
Draco thought for a minute. “What you gotta do is act like you want to stay. You know, like you’re sane but you want the easy life, the extra food, the bigger space, like that. You got to ask for drugs, not like you need ’em but like you like ’em for the high. They don’t know squat; they don’t know those aren’t, like, recreational drugs, you know. Catch 22 man. You do that and they’ll put you in Ward C before you can say, ‘Lithium.’”
“Will I still have to talk to Dr. Kowalski?” Dylan asked.
“Nothing is going to get you loose from Dr. K. He’ll suck your brain out and use it for toilet paper.”
Dylan believed it. “I’m already a few squares low,” he confided and Draco laughed.
“This candy-assed shrink is going to duh-rug you, fill you so full of pills you aren’t going to know whether you’re saluting the flag or beating your meat.” Draco let out a whoop like this was good news.
“You’re so fucking crazy, we’re going to end up millionaires.”
LOUISIANA, 2007
Charlie Starkweather. Bunch of folks killed. 1958. This one’s ancient history. I don’t know why I have to do Charlie. But he’s easy. He lived in Nebraska. If that’s not a good reason to start shooting, what is? It was probably winter, and he just went nuts. Back then, they were all into this bad-boy thing. I mean like Billy the Kid, but modern day. There were those movies and stuff about bad boys and how cool they were; women wanted to sleep with them. They just did what they wanted. Took what they wanted. Then died in a blaze of glory. That looks pretty good from where I sit. Instead of rotting in some little Nebraska berg, you grab a great car and go around the country with your girlfriend, and you live high on the hog, and if anybody tries to stop you, you just shoot them and drive off. I bet Charlie was seeing himself as a Jesse James, Bonnie and Clyde kind of guy, just having a high old time. Putting the baby down the outhouse hole. I couldn’t do that. She’s crying and all, but there’s nobody around for a million miles, so why not let her cry? She was too little to identify them.