The Backslider by Levi S. Peterson

Author:Levi S. Peterson
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Novel
Publisher: Signature Books
Published: 2018-07-09T19:27:45+00:00

6. Farewell, All Sinful Pleasures

In December Frank found a steady job driving a delivery truck for Ashael Lamson, who ran a bakery and a wholesale grocery operation in Richfield. A few days before he began work for Ashael, he made another attempt to pry Jeremy from the state hospital, driving to Salt Lake and calling on Algernon Bullard, the feisty Gentile lawyer whom Jarbody had recommended. Bullard sat in his ninth floor office, comfortably tilted in a padded, high-backed chair, puffing calmly on a fat cigar and listening intently to every word Frank said.

“Is this Dr. Washley a Mormon?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Okay, Mr. Windham, you’re on,” Bullard said. “We’ll go for Brother Washley’s throat. Now the more involved I get, the more money it’s going to cost you. It’s thirty dollars for a letter. It’s a couple of hundred if I have to go down to Provo in person. Cheapest thing is for you to use my name and see if you can scare him into letting your brother go. Here’s my card.”

“Thank you, sir.”

“Now, don’t get wild with your threats. Just tell him the next step is you’ll go to court and Algernon Bullard is the lawyer who’s going to help you do it. Remind him your mother never gave her consent. Emphasize that fact. Tell him you intend to make that a big issue in court.”

It was snowing lightly while Frank drove from Salt Lake to Provo. Underneath the skiff of new snow the streets had patches of black ice left over from earlier storms. Dora gave him an affectionate greeting and fed him a sandwich. He walked to Penney’s and between customers had a good chat with Margaret. Then he walked to the hospital where, after visiting with Jeremy and waiting an additional hour and a half, he finally got in to see Washley.

“I’ve come for my brother,” he said, shaking the director’s hand. “I’ll just take him along with me today.”

Washley’s pencil-line mustache seemed to waver slightly, like a bit of yarn floating in a bathtub. “Not possible, not at all possible,” he said. “He is still a profoundly psychotic personality. In fact, he is a rather discouraging case. We have tried three kinds of tranquilizers. I can’t honestly say that we have broken through the psychosis in even the most rudimentary way.”

“So we just as well take him home and see what we can do.”

Washley cocked one leg over the other, arched his thin, tapered fingers, gazed at the light fixture, and began to instruct Frank on the technicalities of Jeremy’s case. It was uncanny how some aspects of it fit the classical definition of an Oedipal complex. It did appear that between Jeremy and his mother there had been a fundamental transversion of identities, or if you wished, a kind of exchanging of roles, the son behaving as the mother, the mother as the son, or as the daughter, since it appeared that Jeremy’s view of himself as male had always been tenuous and weak, largely overcrowded by his desire, or his mother’s desire, that he be female.

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