Secrets to the Grave

18

On the other side of town, in the county mental health facility, Dennis Farman wondered too, what made people crazy.

He sat on his bed in his room, all alone because there were no other kids in the place, and because people thought he was dangerous and would probably kill a roommate in his sleep. The lights in his room had been turned out for the night, but pale yellow light came in from the hall, and white-blue light came in through the window from the parking lot.

He had none of his own prized possessions here. The pocketknife he had stolen from his dad’s dresser—the one he had used to stab Cody—had been taken by the detectives. He had put all of his most treasured things in his backpack that day, including the dried-out head of a rattlesnake he had watched a gardener kill with a spade. He never got his backpack back after they arrested him.

The knife had been the most important thing. He had always pretended that his father had given it to him for his birthday when he was nine. He had made up all kinds of fantasies about his father showing him how to use it, the two of them camping out and using the knife to cut branches and gut fish. The truth was, his father had never given him a present, had never even remembered his birthday.

When Dennis had asked Miss Navarre when he could get his knife back, she had looked at him like he was crazy. Maybe crazy ran in his family. He was locked up in a mental hospital after all.

Dennis had never thought of his father as crazy, just mean. But in the end, everyone said he had to have lost his mind to do what he had done.

People didn’t think Dennis knew what all had happened, but he did. He had never told anyone, but he had been right there the night his father had beaten his mother to death. Hiding up in his room, he had heard every slap, every curse, every cry. It hadn’t been the first time (so he didn’t think his father had gone crazy, just that he was drunk and mean, as he often was) and he hadn’t thought his mother would die, but she had.

The rest of what had left him an orphan he had heard in bits and pieces, listening to people when they didn’t know it. That was one thing he was really good at.

He had been in a room at the sheriff’s office when it happened, on account of everyone making such a stink about him stabbing Cody—who didn’t die. Some stupid cow from Child Services had been trying to get him to draw pictures of his feelings. What the fuck was that? You couldn’t draw a picture of something you couldn’t see.

Anyway, his dad had come into the sheriff’s office and took the sheriff hostage and threatened to kill him. But in the end he had killed himself.

His dad was a loser. Dennis was glad he was dead. And his mother was a stupid, useless drunk who never did anything for him. All she ever did was yell at him. He didn’t need her.

He didn’t need anybody.

Nobody liked him anyway. He had never had a real friend. Everybody said Cody had been his friend, but Cody had only been his friend because he was afraid of Dennis and it was smarter for him to be Dennis’s friend than not. Stupid little cockroach. Dennis had showed him.

Miss Navarre didn’t like him. But she came to see him anyway.

Dennis knew she had married the FBI agent, but he wouldn’t call her by her married name. She would always be Miss Navarre to him. She was trying to help him. Nobody else wanted to help him. Everybody else wanted him to go to prison and rot there for the rest of his life. He had heard people say over and over that there was no fixing what was wrong with him.

But Miss Navarre was trying to help him.

Sometimes he dreamed about Miss Navarre.

Sometimes he dreamed about doing things to her. Bad things, dirty things.

Dennis knew all about sex. He used to like to go around at night and look in people’s windows. He had seen all kinds of people do all kinds of things to each other: men with women, women with women, men with men. A lot of it was gross, but he got excited anyway.

He had watched Miss Navarre with the FBI guy do it on the back porch of her house. He had never thought of her doing anything like that. She was a teacher. He never thought of teachers having sex or having to go to the bathroom or farting or anything like that. It made him angry that she wasn’t as perfect as she pretended to be. She was just a slut, fucking a guy on her back porch.

But she came to see him.

She tried to help him.

She was pretty.

She was a whore.

He closed his eyes and remembered what he had seen, what he had heard, the sounds she had made.

She would come to see him again tomorrow.

He would dream about her tonight.