I had a small incision in my chest, not far from the wound, and Alan later explained, “The way you presented, dude, I had to look around.”
By the first evening, lying in my hospital bed, I was not much worse than sore. I was even visitable. Instead of watching the television hanging from the wall above and to one side of the utilitarian sink, I looked out the door as doctors and nurses came and went. I watched them for nearly an hour before I began to cry. I cried hard but without making a sound. It wasn’t because of what had happened to me. It was because I wanted to go to work. I asked God to let me go back to work. I don’t think I had experienced such anguish before.
About then, Jinx arrived and closed my door. She stood there and looked at me for a long time. I was too miserable to speak or to dry my face, and my body shook with suppressed sobs. Jinx locked the door, got in bed beside me, and held me in her arms. I recall a moment of incomprehension, and then gratitude for the heat of her body. After her embrace had stilled my various shudderings, quite long after, Jinx got out of bed, fussed a bit with my covers, unlocked the door, and left. The next day she dropped off some bird books with the floor nurse, who delivered them. They only rekindled my astonishment.
Several of the staff stopped in to see me, and the aversion I had expected was nowhere in evidence. They were even friendly. Haack, Hirsch, Wong, even McAllister paid their respects. Bets were really off when you got stabbed. I was strangely fascinated by the telephone beside my bed, which seemed to be beckoning me to communicate, a challenge I was not entirely up to, not because of my injury but because of my all-consuming bafflement. I thought almost continuously of Jocelyn and wondered if she knew what had befallen me. I had no reasonable explanation of the facts and was using my reduced energy to make up some sort of harmless story. I fought the drag of time by picturing her and imagining how she felt; I was plunged into mild despair when I re-imagined sex with Jocelyn or tried to get my mind around her peculiarly abstract ferocity. These were lavish erotic fancies which kept me from turning on the television.
Alan thoughtfully held off the cops until I was feeling better and was less affected by the various medications, which had produced not just pain relief but a two-day erection, a various maypole around which visions of Jocelyn’s private parts danced. But then Officer Weiland, Terry Weiland, came to see me in order to file a more complete police report than the one produced when I was admitted and not conscious. Terry was in early middle age, a compact, purposeful man in the local cowboy style, very mannerly, very direct. He said, “Feeling any better?”
“Yes, I am, thank you.”
“Dr. Hirsch said he’ll have you out of here soon.”
I took this wrong at first, and then understood he meant only that I would soon be released. I had feared it meant I couldn’t work here.
“Was this a personal disagreement?”
“Not at all. You mean the guy who stabbed me?”
“Yes.”
“I don’t know who he was. He might have mistaken me for someone else. Unless I was robbed. I don’t know that we’ve checked that, have we? Where’s my wallet?”
“We’re struggling with this and just hoping you might have learned something that would help. Isn’t this your wallet?”
“Yes, oh good.”
“Was there time — I mean, did you get much of a look at him?”
“Absolutely.”
“And he just stepped up and assaulted you?”
“He seemed to recognize me. He told me to stay away from her, that she was his and his alone. He must have confused me with someone else.”
“The old triangle.”
“Except there was no triangle.” I was trying to keep this straight. I could no longer imagine why I took this tack. I suppose I was improvising and it got away from me. I began to labor mentally over a description of the assailant, which I knew I’d have to provide. I was a little bit panicked. I didn’t really wake up until I was required to supply “Caucasian” to Officer Weiland, who had drawn a pair of reading glasses from his shirt pocket and was balancing a clipboard on his knee.
“Age?”
“I’m guessing late thirties.” I did notice that I was beginning to picture the assailant. I had no answers for scars, tattoos, etc., but I was able to describe the assailant in sufficient detail to satisfy Officer Weiland: dark brown hair combed straight back, a lean and narrow face with prominent teeth, ice blue eyes; he was wearing straight-cut black jeans, work boots, a snap-button western shirt with a barbed-wire motif, and a baseball hat advertising an Oklahoma fuel company.
At the end of our interview, Office Weiland told me to make a “victim personal statement” describing the impact of the crime upon me. “These are used by the judge to help him decide on an appropriate sentence.”
I said, “I learned what anyone in that situation would learn — that life can end at any time and that whatever it is you want to do with your life you should do right away. I feel that things early in your life that were unresolved can suddenly crop up later on and try to do away with you.”
“What do you mean by that?”
“I’m not sure.”
“Well, I’ll just write it down. Maybe it will mean something to the judge.”
I don’t know what possessed me to describe Womack so exactly. Honestly, it was unintentional. By nightfall, he was featured in a composite sketch in our newspaper and, I suppose, a few thousand people were poring over it. I saw the paper myself and was startled to see what a fine job the sketch artist had done.
Deanne was carrying the paper when she visited me, my first real visitor. She was also carrying the same purse! I stared at it and asked if she was here to finish the job. If she tried again, I’d have to accept it. Her eyes filled with tears as she shook her head and pitched forward, her face against the side of my bed. I was turbulent with emotions, as I had been interrupted in the midst of a rich fantasy of Jocelyn. But this astonishing development was pushing even Jocelyn from my mind. For the moment, I had lost interest in everything. I was also overwhelmed by the sensation that I didn’t know what I would do next. Unexpectedly, I pitied Deanne and was on the verge of bursting into tears all over again. She said, “I’m worthless, aren’t I?”
“Not in the least.”
“Don’t be nice. I’m nobody.” She looked miserable, and I was aghast at what I had just done. As though parsing some term or concept for the local philological society, I tried to persuade Deanne that it was I who was worthless, not she, but I really didn’t get anywhere. Worthless seemed to apply as a general condition in Deanne’s life, and she was determined to hang on to it.
I had another wave of terror as she retrieved a Kleenex from her purse, this time to blow her nose, and having done so, she raised the newspaper as evidence and asked why I had protected her. I had to give this long thought before telling her that I believed that she was entitled to her action. “Oh, no!” she cried. I had known Deanne only as a worthily combative force, and I was desperate to absolve myself of having reduced her to this abject state. I had to believe that I was free of cruelty. Without that, in the words of Deanne, I would be Nobody. I would be Worthless.
So I poured myself into confessing my sins against her all over again. She had only one child and I’d seen to his demise. I left so little doubt that without my interference Cody might have lived that I half expected she would again try to kill me, but she seemed to absorb the long, slow death of Clarice. I really relived those scenes, and suffered them all over again. Never mind the knife, I was finally at her mercy, but she said, “I understand.” She didn’t say it quickly — she weighed my fate in her eyes for several long moments — but she said it. She said it with such gravity that I must have glimpsed what she was giving up.