Living a small life gave me leave to notice small things — like certain off-color spots in the St. Augustine grass which I correctly diagnosed as an early sign of chinch-bug infestation. Instead of saving the world, I saved the eighteen holes at Fort Pelham and felt surprisingly good about it.
Small disconnected facts, if you take note of them, have a way of becoming connected.
The great American philosopher, Charles Sanders Peirce, said that the most amazing thing about the universe is that apparently disconnected events are in fact not, that one can connect them. Amazing!
Here are a few disconnected facts, as untidy as these pesky English sparrows buzzing around the martin house.
Ellen.
Is she sick?
There is this:
Change in personality: from a thrifty albeit lusty, abstemious albeit merry, Presbyterian girl to a hard-drinking, free-style duplicate-bridge fanatic.
Her sexual behavior.
Her gift for bridge: Van Dorn says that after three rounds of play she can calculate the probabilities of distribution of cards in individual hands as accurately as a computer.
Her relationship with Van Dorn.
The Azazel convention.
Bob Comeaux and John Van Dorn. Lucy says they are “up to something.” The only evidence so far: Both are overly friendly toward me. Both want something. What? Bob wants me to work with him at Fedville. Why? Van Dorn wanted me to go to Fresno with Ellen. Why?
Three new patients (short case histories follow) who couldn’t be more different, yet there is a certain eerie similarity, certain signs and symptoms in common, such as
Change of personality. From the familiar anxieties, terrors, panics, phobias I used to treat to a curious flatness of tone. Their old symptoms are in a sense “cured,” but are they better? Worse?
Change in sexuality: Sexual feelings more openly, yet more casually, expressed. Less monogamous? More promiscuous? Or simply more honest, part and parcel of the sexual revolution? Plus certain clues to changes in sexual behavior in women: less missionary positioning, front to front, and more front to rear, six to nine, Donna backing into me. Also a hint of estrus-like behavior in Mickey LaFaye, who speaks of her “times,” not meaning her menses. Check menses in future histories.
Language behavior: Change from ordinary talk in more or less complete sentences—“I feel awful today,” “I am plain and simply terrified,” “The truth is, Doc, I can’t stand that woman”—to two-or three-word fragments—“Feel good,” “Come by me,” “Over here,” “Donna like Doc”—reminiscent of the early fragmentary telepathic sentences of a three-year-old, or perhaps the two-word chimp utterances described by primatologists—“Tickle Washoe,” “More bananas.”
Context loss: They respond to any learned stimulus like any other creature but not like an encultured creature, that is, any human in any culture. Example: Ask them out of the blue, Where is Schenectady? and if they know, they’ll tell you — without asking you why you want to know.
Idiot-savant response: They’re not idiots but they’re savants in the narrow sense of being able to recall any information they have ever received — unlike you and me, whose memory is subject to all manner of lapses, repressions, errors, but, rather, like a computer ordered to scan its memory banks. An ocular sign: eyes rolling up behind closed lids as if they were “seeing” a map when asked, Where is St. Louis?
Is this a syndrome? If so, what is its etiology? Exogenous? Bacterial? Viral? Chemical?
In a word, what’s going on here?
Can’t say. My series of patients is far too short. Three patients. I need fifty. I need blood chemistry, seven different kinds of brain scans, especially CORTscans.
Here comes a patient. Enrique Busch. I spy him a block away and hurry to get inside. Wouldn’t do for a shrink to be caught sitting on the porch zinging paper P-51s at a martin hotel. Ellen taught me that when she was my receptionist-nurse. Act like a respectable physician. Wish I had her back.
Inside, just time enough to call Lucy Lipscomb. Nothing doing. I leave a message at the hospital that I’ll see her around noon after I see more patients.
Here is Enrique.
CASE HISTORY # 1
Enrique Busch is an old, chronically enraged ex-Salvadoran. Although he was not a member of one of the fourteen families who owned that unfortunate little country, he married into one and had the good fortune to get out with most of his money and his family and remove to Feliciana, where he bought up thousands of acres of cutover pineland, which he converted to Kentucky bluegrass country with horse farms, handsome barns, hunter-jumper courses, and even a polo field.
His presenting complaint two years ago: insomnia. His real complaint: rage. Every night he lay stiff with rage. He spent the day abusing people. I have never seen such an angry man. There is nothing like an angry Hispanic. It was killing him, this rage, with hypertension, sleeplessness, pills, and booze. He hated Communists, Salvadoran liberals, Salvadoran moderates, Salvadoran Indians, nuns, priests, fundamentalists, Cubans, Mexicans (!), blacks. He hated Americans, even though he had gone to Texas A&M, chosen this country, and done well here. Why did he hate the U.S.? Because we were suckers, weren’t tough enough, were appeasing Communists, and sooner or later would find ourselves face to face with Soviet troops across the Rio Grande. And so on.
I couldn’t do much for him beyond helping him recognize his anger and to suggest less booze and barbiturates, and outlets for his energy less destructive than death squads. Take up a sport. Beat up something besides people. Beat up a golf ball. Shoot something besides people. He took my suggestion. The upshot: Too old for polo, he took up hunting and golf, joined the ROBs (Retired Old Bastards), a genial group of senior golfers at the country club. The golf, eighteen holes a day, tournaments at other clubs, helped. He competed ferociously and successfully, his blood pressure went down, he slept better, but in the end he blew it and either withdrew or got kicked out. Why? Because he never caught on to the trick of Louisiana civility, the knack of banter and horsing around, easing up, joshing and joking — in a word, the American social contract, in virtue of which ideology is mitigated by manners and humor if not friendship. He could not help himself. On the links he could hack up the fairway, hook and slice and curse with the best of them, but afterward in the clubhouse he could not suppress his Central American rage. One doesn’t do this. His fellow ROBs didn’t like Communists or liberals or blacks any more than he did. But one doesn’t launch tirades over bourbon in the locker room. One vents dislikes by jokes. But Enrique could never see the connection between anger and jokes (unlike Freud and the ROBs). He never caught on to the subtle but inviolable American freemasonry of civility. And so he got kicked out.
So here he is two years later. And how is he? Why, he’s as easygoing and fun-loving as Lee Trevino. Not only is he back in the ROBs, he’s just won the Sunbelt Seniors at Point Clear. Blood pressure: 120/80.
He even tells me a joke, not a very good joke. Here is the joke:
There was this old Southern planter who had bad heart trouble. So his doctor tells him, Colonel, you got to have a heart transplant. He says, Okay, Doc, go right ahead. But what the planter doesn’t know is that the only heart the doctor can find is the heart of a young black who’s been killed in a razor fight. So when the old planter wakes up, the doctor comes in and tells him, Colonel, I got bad news and good news. The bad news is that I had to give you a nigger’s heart. Good God, says the old planter, that’s terrible; maybe you better tell me the good news. So the doctor says, the good news is your deek is ten centimeters long.