Burial of the Dead

SERENITY - II.

II.

The patient who calls himself Levon leaves his cottage just after dawn and walks down the macadam trail to the parking lot with the foreign cars and the camp’s vans. He approaches Sammy Raymond, the camp’s driver, who, with cotton rag, bucket, brushes and soapy competence, buffs the hump of one failed hood.

“Hey, Boss,” Sammy Raymond says.

“Hey,” Levon says.

“Up early this morning.”

“They give me pills for that.”

“You take them pills, Boss, cuz they can’t get to crazy less they go through sober.”

The small rim of black on rose and Perugino’s sky above flat water deeper than Black Forest green is still in the morning air, gentle breeze, sun dipping solemn tips of firs.

“We drivin’ today,” Sammy Raymond says.

“Where to?”

“The Mall. Doctor Ley says he gonna’ take Second House and teach them girls how to shop again.”

“What’s that got to do with anything?”

“Doc says ain’t nobody gonna’ get called crazy if they buy enough stuff.”

“Guess so,” Levon says, going along, allowing the cliché of wisdom to wash over him with an ordained and old voice hewn from fire, iron, earth, the refining kiln, the shriving wind, passing all thought and grammar, deleting all subterfuge, emitting one syllable insights.

“God bless us this good day,” Sammy says, desirous of life, benefits and a prescription card. “Now, Dr. Ley’s got Molly cookin’ good food this morning.”

“She can cook,” Levon says.

“She come with problems; when she leave here she’ll cook for the President.”

“I guess.”

“Today I order up her dead-man-walkin’ breakfast, all buttered up with biscuits, bacon and eggs and pancakes, two stacks of toast with jam, them potatoes fried, juices, all kinds, dependin’ what fruit you care for, and a pot of Jamaican Blue Mountain. Now c’mon, Boss, and I got you to thank for all of that.”

“Me?”

“Not just you, but everybody here, cuz you pay the Doc so much for a bed I’d never get food like that if he wasn’t fleecin’ somebody.”

“I’m not paying a dime,” Levon says. “Truth is I don’t even know how I got here.”

“You tellin’ me you don’t know.”

“That’s right.”

“This here’s Serenity Lake, Boss. Finest, deepest, purest crater lake in the world. That’s reason why Doc can charge so much, cuz it’s more than a clinic; it’s like one of them mountain retreats for rich folk.”

“So what are you?” Levon asks, “Patient, inmate, worker, rich folk?”

“All the above ’cept the rich folk,” Sammy Raymond says. “I just please the boss till I get sick of all the step-and-fetch-it, then he does his little magic, puts my head right so as I’ll give up the deep dark ones, secrets I didn’t think I’d tell anyone, black murderous secrets, and then he’s got me again, after which I got no choice but to do what he says, since the only freedom you’re gonna’ find round here is not giving a shit or killing every bastard who knows too much about your business.”

“That’s a problem,” Levon says, and he thinks about the first three meetings with Dr. Ley after enough of the medication had saturated his blood and calmed the brass band in his head, made the ego shine competent and the lowly id pass so far away he considered becoming a Republican.

“I see you worry some,” Sammy says, snapping the rag once, twice, three times. “Must be you still got some secrets you don’t want nobody to know which are them self-same little stones in the river bed Dr. Ley pans for every day, or, failing that, I figure now you feeling better, maybe you got some rabbit in you.”

“Rabbit?”

“You know, Luke, itchin’ to run-rabbit,” and Sammy casts his thumb over his shoulder to the low glass building designed by some out of fashion architect from Fairfield. “And daydreamin’s nothin,’ either,” Sammy says. “It’s just your subconscious on recess, and Dr. Ley don’t allow no recess ‘round here.”

“Go figure,” Levon says, knowing the way through sober’s got about forty stops on the local line of self-revelation and the desire not to get better greets you at every one.

“So what was it, my brother?” Sammy asks. “Wife, family, job, money, gamblin,’ drugs? You can tell me, Boss. I know ‘em all; I seen ‘em all. Drove ‘em everyone.”

“I got to go,” Levon says.

“Why you change your name, then?” Sammy asks. “I know you’re no Levon.”

“How do you know that?”

“Cuz there ain’t one white Levon in all Connecticut last time I looked.”

“We’re not in Connecticut.”

“But that’s where you from.”

“Don’t matter what my name is,” Levon says. “Don’t matter where I come from either. Not much matters once they think you’re nuts and somebody else has to pay for it.”

Sammy Raymond puckers his lips, bright pink and deep blue, a portrait of impoverished dignity.

“Hell, Boss, I know that, but that don’t mean you can talk that way ‘round here. You talk that way ‘round here to Dr. Ley and you’ll end up no better’an me – full time dare-devil flunky for a bunch of frauds with money.”