Wrapped in Rain(55)

We drove through San Marco, and Jase pulled the covers off his face, wiped his eyes, and said, "Mama, Donnamackles?"

I looked at Katie, the question written across my face. She didn't answer, so Jase pulled on my shirtsleeve and said, "Unca Tuck, can we go to Donnamackles?"

Katie rubbed her eyes and said, "You know, that sounds pretty good, Jase." She looked at me and said, "How about an Egg McMuffin?"

"Oh." I nodded. "McDonald's."

A few minutes later, I bit into a sausage biscuit and sipped my coffee. Jase sat across the backseat, eating his second Egg McMuffin. Katie was picking around the edges of an egg biscuit. She had been quiet since the drive-through. "You look like you want to say something," I said. She thought a moment and then shook her head.

Nobody said a word as I drove south on State Road 13 through historic San Jose and eventually through Mandarin toward Julington Creek. When we stopped at a red light, Jase tugged me on the shirtsleeve and said, "Unca Tuck?"



I rubbed my eyes, looked out at the rising sun, and realized that kid had just tugged on more than my shirtsleeve. "Yeah, buddy."

"Was your dad real mean?"

"Well"-I looked for a way to soften it-"let's just say he really licked the red off my lollipop."

Jase thought for a minute and then said with confidence, "Unca Tuck, I'm just like you."

"Oh yeah, partner, how's that?"

"My daddy hit me too."





Chapter 20


AT 7:00 A.M. WE PULLED INTO SPIRALING OAKS AND Gibby walked out to meet us. He hadn't aged a bit. Still the same scraggly, unkempt, goofy-looking man I had remembered meeting seven years earlier. Then and now, he'd have made a great picture.

"Hello, Tucker," he said, extending his hand.

"Hey, Gibby. I'd like for you to meet ... two friends of mine. This is Katie Withers, and"-I knelt down-"this little cowboy is Jase."

Gibby bent over, shook Jase's hand, and then Katie's. We didn't waste much time on small talk. Gibby's tone told me we could catch up later. We sat down in Gibby's office, and he said, "Tuck, here's what I know. If Mutt is true to the last seven years, he is soon to cycle through one of his more obsessive periods. I knew he was growing restless, more compulsive, double-checking more, but I didn't see this coming. I admit, if I have made a mistake lately in my professional career, it may be this. About thirty-six hours ago, a nurse came to check on Mutt after dinner and found his window open, dinner flushed down the toilet, and Mutt gone. Apparently, he'd taken his chess set, a few bars of soap, and my fly-tying vise."

"Soap?" I asked.

"The progression of his illness. Mutt obsesses, and one of his more recent is the cleanliness of his hands, of everything." I nodded. "He has been having a difficult time getting to sleep, and once asleep, he would wake often. In the last few months, he began to doubt his nurses and, I suspect, feared they were plotting against him. For years, he has believed people are staring at him everywhere he goes, and you know about the voices. The change since you saw him last is the volume of those voices-I believe it is almost deafening. When they're really talking, you can see it on his face. The voices have also begun to accuse him, threaten him, and argue with him.



"Mutt has no stable relationships, a growing paranoia, delusional thinking, auditory hallucinations worse than ever, and lately, he has complained of being bothered by his dreams. Specifically, he dreams of being frozen, paralyzed, unable to help a loved one in need. Until now, he's never been combative or suicidal, but I do believe he is quite possibly the most tormented man I've ever met. No matter what I give him, or how much I give him, no intervention-chemical, electric, or otherwise-is able to root out whatever is the cause of his illness. And in my professional opinion, whereas my other patients are truly insane, Mutt's insanity is a by-product of some issue he can never overcome. Some demon buried deep in his past that no exorcism can vanquish."

I wasn't sure what I expected, but it wasn't what I was hearing. Gibby continued. "Mutt's obsessions, his eccentricities if you want to be polite, are many. He washes his hands three times during any meal, holds his sandwich or a utensil with a napkin, and then throws away the napkin after every bite. He wears rubber gloves 90 percent of the time; his room is clouded with cleaning bottles; he even washes the bar of soap to get the germs off the soap. If we buy him liquid soap, he sprays the top of the squeeze nozzle with disinfectant while wearing rubber gloves. The doorknobs in his room have no brass because it's been polished off. He keeps hand sanitizer in his pockets at all times and clips his fingernails constantly. Without a doubt he is the cleanest, most germ-free human being I've ever met."



I looked out the window and let my eyes float to the river. The thought of Mutt being somehow less than what he was when I dropped him off touched a deep pain inside. Like somebody had gripped the sword by the hilt, stabbed it into my back, and turned it like a corkscrew. If I thought my people place hurt before I got here, it throbbed when Gibby finished talking. "Any ideas where he went?"

Gibby stood and walked to the window, and I followed his finger across the creek to Clark's. Behind me, Katie held Jase on her knee. I couldn't tell what she was thinking, but whatever it was, she was wrapped pretty far inside it. Jase was sucking on a Tootsie Pop and looking at Gibby's fly rods and reels, oblivious to the weight of the conversation. Gibby pointed to Clark's. "He ate dinner over there, apparently a good bit of food, and disappeared among the other people on the dock."