It seemed like the perfect setup for a 8th grade boy. I live in the same house with this beautiful, willing girl who worships me. We go on long walks, and have meaningful experiences in the woods — every day.
Lord knows enough stuff had gone wrong in my life before that, but the Lacy situation seemed nearly perfect. It looked like ‘Little 13-year-old me hits it big.’ But things were not big for long.
Lacy was too happy in front of her mother after our hikes and maybe her clothes were too dirty. Really teenagers would all be much happier if they just screwed for a couple of hours in the woods, after a half hour walk. I know I was feeling tip-top, and felt like some doctor had given me a magic cure. I was reading books on magic in my time off from walks in the woods with Lacy. It seemed like ‘doing it’ made my powers to amuse and mystify more razor edge. I was ready for parties, I could make rabbits and little birds appear and disappear better than the books said possible. Lacy screamed in delight at my tricks. She screamed a lot. I had to constantly calm her down. I told her the driver was probably trying to follow us into the woods. I knew her mother was suspicious. Some people are looking for things to be suspicious about.
During sex Lacy was a screamer with me. I was afraid someone might hear. I think I told her every day. She had a soft big bottom, but my bliss was quickly ended in less than two weeks. When we got home from school there was a California social worker named Buster Crabgrass waiting for me, just inside the door of the house. Buster said, “Your bags are all packed hot-shot.”
Lacy’s mother said to both Lacy and I at the front door, “You young lady are going to the doctor. You took my medicine bottle that was for blood pressure, but in the easy open birth control bottle. I know what you two have been doing. Jack your leaving our house today, and your foster-mother has agreed to stay. My foster-mother wasn’t in the room. In fact she didn’t even some in and say goodbye, that was the thing with foster parents, they weren’t really your parents. I had lots of them and they were utter failures as a group. They love you not!
Lacy looked like she was in shock, but said, “I’ll stay in touch Jack” as this tall muscle man in a three-piece suit sort of pulled me by the arm out of the door I had just entered.
He carried my suitcase and I had my book bag. On the way to the new orphanage this man kept talking about me. At one point he said. “I’ve read your record Jack and your something of a firebug and trouble maker.”
“What did I burn down?”
“We don’t really know, but we’re watching you.”
“Well, ” I said, “if thats how you judge firebugs then your one.”
“Other children have constantly reported you starting fires.”
“Did anyone find anything burned up, or matches on me?”
“No, you think your slick, but I’m your social worker now, and I’ve dealt with hard-core children like you before. Another thing at the home where your going a very nice place, there are several pretty girls who you are to stay away from.. Don’t go molesting girls over there or …”
“Molesting girls,” I said, “Lacy was 4 months older than me and two feet taller. She weighed twenty pounds more than I do. How could I ‘molest’ anyone like that?”
“You diddled her. I know it, you know it, and her mother found out about it. Your not as slick as you make out. So at this new place keep it zipped up in your pants.”
He went on and on giving advice. I pulled out the books that belonged to Monroe County School District and began doing my homework. After the homework I took out a book on magic that I had checked out that day, it theoretically belonged to to the junior high school library, but actually it was my first book on magic — in my new collection.. I planned using a magic marker to cover the library stamps, a kind of eraser magic.
So I wrote Lacy, but her mother got the mail each day, so she didn’t get it. So I wrote my old school, the letter was to my English teacher Miss Dempsy. She had always been pushing the pen pal idea, and to make it more likely Lacy would get my new address I told her to give my address to five different students. I told her i was in an orphanage and it would cheer me up.
First I got a letter from the teacher saying that she gave the name to all the students, but Lacy Vanderwater who was in the hospital out-of-town, but she had the address of the hospital from Lacy’s mother and had sent her my new address. She said, “Maybe you cheer each other up.”
So this big letter came with an enclosed picture Lacy had drawn. The art was really different, a mixture of circles and squares with heads in and out of the lines. I’ve never seen anything like it, but you don’t see so much in orphanages and foster homes. Your not supposed to fold drawings, but hers were folded to fit the mailing envelope. There was a picture of me as a sort of ghost, or spiritual being and a pencil drawing of a penis and balls. I got the meaning of that.
In the letter she said, “I wrote you several times from home and gave them to the driver to mail. Of course he didn’t mail them. I first wrote to the State of California Human Services Dept. You may wonder how I got in this mental hospital?”
I had noticed that the return address was the Roston Institute of Mental Health, Inc.
“So,” she said, “the doctors here agree I have delusions about this boy i know named Jack Carter. My mistake is that i attempted to defend you to mother, then she told dad, who took me to the family doctor named Minchen. I told him the whole deal about what you knew about me. He listened politely, never saying I was crazy or anything, but then early the next morning I was off with mom and dad to the institute.
Up here there is a doctor, I guess he’s about 40 or 50 named Riser Helmitizier. He leaves out the ‘met’ part when he says his name, well I explained how he’s supposed to be a scientific person, and if he doesn’t know you, hasn’t talked to you, then how can he tell me I’m delusional because I say what I say about you?
I told Dr. Helmitzier that maybe we could do a little research and I don’t now if this will work, but I’m desperate, THEY THIINK I’M CRAZY AS A LOON! I don’t even know what kind of animal a loon is, but you’ve just got to help me. My parents are just fine to leave me in this place until I get well. It could be forever and the other people in here ARE REALLY CRAZY!
The people in here (if you can call them people) slap at bugs that aren’t crawling on then and finger fuck their pussy’s in public. No shit!
I told the German doctor that if we sent you a photo of him and a sample of his handwriting, you could tell him lots of things no one else knows but him.
I don’t know what you can do with that, but try to tell him something that will shake him up, his deepest, darkest secrets. Scare the pure shit out of the bastard. I’m mad as hell being locked up here in cells, with all these off the wall babes. There is one 17-year-old chick that listens to gospel music all day on her ghetto blaster, that she carries where ever she roams around, and is always saying, ‘I didn’t kill my mother,’ Well she did it with a kitchen knife. I’ve got to get out of here. I’ve got something else very important to tell you about US., but please, please, please tell this doctor something you couldn’t know. Make him shit his pants.
He’s going to call you and listen to your analysis. He will call you at the home where you are. Dearest, sweetest kisses. I love you, Lacy the loon.”
There was a picture of this runt of a doctor with thick glasses. I really knew nothing from the picture, I had to wait till he called me. I had known nothing about Lacy until she came home from camp. I didn’t see her on the pier as she did what she did. I knew her from what came out of her. So I had to do the doctor from a phone line and his picture.
I didn’t have long to wait before he called. He asked the house-mother that i have privacy to talk to him. He wanted me to tell him straight out about him. I asked him if the picture was a recent mon. He said “It’s three years old.”
I had a strong feeling about him, the most terrible feeling about him. Sometimes on the street I would pass someone I felt was doomed and I never said anything. I mean they were full of cancer, or turning the key later in the day and the car would explode. what can one do when passing an elevator descending into a person’s head? Would you say, “Have a nice day now,”?
So I said to the doctor, “Lacy’s not crazy, but i don’t think you need to hear what I see about you, do you?”
“If you know something son” he replied, “just spit it out quick. and don’t waste my time and effort. Have you ever heard that time is money?”
“Your full of guilt about your mother who died in the Oak Hill Manor. And before she died just you two were in the room and she told you, ‘Benny I never loved you. You were always like your father and he was a bastard with the good side you lacked.’ She died about 2 minutes after that. You could have tried to revive her but you didn’t. Fifteen minutes later when you were sure she was dead you called the nurse. You told your brother, “She died peacefully and said nothing before she died.”
There was a silence on the line I continued, “Your first wife Brenda slept with your brother every chance she got. When she got sick you treated her with medicine you knew would not help. When she died you used up the money she had been promised would be used for her church.
You think of yourself as a very good doctor, but even now thee are three complaints against you which will succeed in court.
In the army you threw down your gun and ran from the enemy. Later you got a metal. It was a bronze star for bravery. You have much trouble getting an erection and the prostitutes you hire have been known to laugh at you.” That’s when the phone went click. I was just going to tell him about how he masturbated while thinking about farm animals. He especially liked cows.
I got another letter from Lacy about 3 days after that, “ Honey, we tired and I think you, we’re not supposed to know about Doctor Helmitizer, but they deliver the local paper and the doctor shot himself in the head after talking to you. That very day.
Lord knows what you told the poor bastard, but it must have impressed him. Unfortunationlly he didn’t write on order for my release before he pressed the trigger. So here I sit.
the news about us I promised is that we’re going to have a baby. I’m getting bigger and bigger and it’s not the hospital food. I hope he or she is just like you.
There is this really fat girl who goes around pulling people’s hair. She is often put in the padded room. Well before I knew how really bonkers she was I told her your name and all about you. Well she’s about as crazy as they get because after I told her that I loved you she looked at me with this blank beady eyes and said, ‘I was his sister, his little sister until he just ate me up one day. Just like I was a piece of pork they just enjoyed me. That was a long time ago.’
I just told you that Jack so you would know how really truly crazy they are here. I don’t know yet who my new doctor will be. I don’t think we better prove that you know about people again. I think I’ll just tell them I dreamed up everything I said and now I think better of it. Tell me what you think about the baby. Your baby.”
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To contact Ray Cates write comments here, or write him directly at: rcates2@cox.net
My fax number is: 1-352-629-1573
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