Walker Percy: The Second Coming

Below, printed in capital letters and underlined, was the following:

INSTRUCTIONS FROM MYSELF TO MYSELF

What followed was written in her ordinary script: As I write this to you, I don’t remember everything but I remember more than you will remember when you read this. You remember nothing now, do you? I know this from experience. Electroshock knocks out memory for a while. I don’t feel bad. To tell you the truth, I’m not even sure I’m sick. But they think I’m worse because I refuse to talk in group (because there is nothing to say) and won’t eat with the others, preferring to sit under the table (because a circle of knees is more interesting than a circle of faces).

I, that is, you, but for the present as I write this, I — am scheduled to be buzzed early Wednesday morning. This is the beginning of the sixth (I think) course of electroconvulsive therapy, or ECT, known hereabouts as buzzing.

I am writing this in my room in the closed wing (you may not remember the room when you read this on October 22, but it will come back), from which there is no escape, else I’d be long gone.

After you get buzzed Wednesday, you’ll be in recovery. The adjacent hall leads to the back door, which opens into the service yard, where the bread truck arrives about 11 a.m.

You may not remember this when you come to (about 9 a.m.). Your jaw will hurt and your teeth will be sore from the mouthpiece. You will be conscious but still paralyzed from the Anectine (curare), lying there bright-eyed and still, like a parrot shot by the poisoned arrow of a pygmy’s blowgun (which you have been). You’ll be drowsy from the Brevital and your mouth will be dry from the atropine. You’ll be dressed in nothing but your hospital gown. But they like you to go back to your room under your own power, so you’ll wait on the stretcher until you can make it to the cubicle. You’ll have time — at least an hour. Nobody is going to bother you — they’re too busy buzzing the others. In the cubicle you’ll find your pj’s, robe, and slippers. But there will be something new. You will find this, this notebook open to this page, on top of your clothes where you can’t miss it. You will read it because there will be nothing else to do for a while and because you will not have entirely forgotten that you wrote it. There will also be the blue skirt and sweater (the only clothes thin enough to ball up and stuff into the pockets of the robe). Between the skirt and sweater you will find the wallet with four hundred dollars in fifties (a little anxiety here: somebody could swipe it while you’re buzzed).

As you read this, it will not be entirely new to you — it will be like remembering a dream. But if you did not read it, you would not remember what you, I, had decided to do.

You are now sitting in the cubicle and reading these words. You have time. They don’t expect you to walk back to your room for a while.

The cubicle, you will notice, has two doors, one opening into recovery, the other opening into the hall.

Ordinarily you leave by the hall door, turn right, and return to your room.

Do not do this.

Do this. Put on your pj tops and skirt and slippers. Pull on sweater. Pull out pj collar — it looks something like a blouse. Do you remember our trying this? These slippers have heels and look something like loafers.

Leave robe in cubicle.

Put wallet and notebook in skirt pocket.

When you feel strong enough, look out into hall. If it is clear, leave, turn left, not right, to back door, go out and straight across service yard to big laurel next to water tank.

Sit under it and far enough back to be out of sight.

Wait for the bread van.

The driver will deliver the bread and spend at least ten minutes inside with McGahey (I think you might remember this). He’s got something going with McGahey. The sliding panel door will be on your side (the laurel’s side).

Walk straight into it. Do not go to the rear, where the bread cartons are, but toward driver’s seat. Next to partition is some kind of carton (not bread) which is there every trip — perhaps a carton of paper bags. Do you remember studying the truck through the binoculars? I think there is enough room between carton and far wall.

He will make several more deliveries, the last one in Linwood at the Red Bam (I got this from McGahey).

When you see him unload the last carton, you count to thirty and go out too.

I can remember Linwood but I cannot remember whether I could remember it the last time I was buzzed. It varies. One time I couldn’t remember my name for a week. When you get out you may know exactly where you are and what to do. But you probably won’t. So I’ll tell you.

Go down the hill to K-Mart and Good’s Variety. Buy clothes and articles (see list below).

Go back up hill to Gulf station. Change clothes in rest room.

Check into Mitchell’s Triple-A motel one block east. Don’t worry about not having car or suitcase. You will have knapsack and they’re used to it. Pay in advance. Check your driver’s license to be sure you remember your name. Sometimes I, you, forget after a buzz.

Take a hot bath. Eat and sleep for twenty-four hours. You’ll be very hungry after the buzz (remember?) and tired and sore. You’ll feel like a rape victim in every way but one.

I wonder how you’re feeling now. It varies so much, remember?

There will also be something good about having gone through the bad experience, the buzzing, for the last time and having survived — the bad maybe even being the condition of the good, I don’t know. Like that man who crawled out of the plane crash in West Virginia last summer, remember? Everybody else dead or dying and he with a cut lip and, realizing he didn’t even have to crawl, not knowing what he was doing, not even remembering it later, simply walked away like a man getting off a streetcar, walked into the woods. They found him hours later two miles from the plane sitting on a highway culvert calm as you please, but saying nothing. In a state of shock, they said. Sitting there blinking and only mildly bemused. Yes, but also, in another way, in his right mind, as if he had crossed a time warp or gone through a mirror, no, not gone through, come back, yes, the only question being which way he went, from the sane side to the crazy side like Alice or back the other way. They took him to the hospital, sewed up his lip, and let him go. Do you remember thinking about him getting on the bus and going on into Huntington, and walking home, hands in his pockets (no suitcase)?

The only question is how the buzz job will go this time, how much of the feeling will be bad, the real done-in rape-victim feeling, and how much of the feeling of the good, the survivor.

STOP YOUR CUBICLE READING HERE. CONTINUE YOUR READING AFTER YOU’VE RESTED IN LINWOOD AND FEEL STRONG.

A bareheaded policeman stood on the corner. Feeling stiff, she rose, stretched, and walked down the block a short distance. Her knapsack was hanging from the back of the bench. From time to time she turned to keep it in sight. Leaving the bench was for her a foray. The bench was home base. She could venture halfway down the block, keeping the knapsack in sight, before turning back. The knapsack was for saving her place on the bench. Could one “save a place” on a public bench? She couldn’t remember. Soon it was possible for her to observe people as well as clothes. Though she could still not be certain of their ages, she began to notice that there were two kinds of people. There were those who had plans, whose eyes and movements were aimed toward a future, and those who did not. Some youngish people, that is, between twenty and thirty-five, sat on the sidewalk in silence. Though they sat or lay in relaxed positions, time did not seem to pass easily for them. They looked as if they had gone to great lengths to deal with the problem of time and had not succeeded. They were waiting. What were they waiting for?