The Hollow Men - Episode 22
Rick is having conversations with the invisible people and everything starts to fall apart.
Last week in Episode 21 Drew learns the fate of Skeleton Dog, meets Skeleton Man, Drew’s mom wakes up screaming, the oil/gas industry takes a hard downward turn, and Drew becomes an uncle.
Remember this day, Friday, December 10, 1982. Usually I'm the first one to arrive at work. This day I was the second to arrive at the office. When I pulled into the parking lot I saw Rick's car was already there and the lights were on in the office. I parked my truck, got out and walked towards the office door. Something stopped me, just a feeling, maybe, but something. I walked over to Rick's car and placed my hand on the hood, it was cold. Rick had been here long enough for his engine to cool off. That meant he had been here at least thirty minutes. That was more than strange.
It got stranger as I got near the door and I could hear Rick shouting in the office. I didn't open the door, I listened until I could make out what Rick was shouting. What he said made no sense at all, but this is what I heard.
“Go away, you devil, you can't tempt me. Not today, not tomorrow, not ever. No matter what shape you take. I know you been here before, I recognize your smell. You can't fool me. Sometimes you're that girl Mary Ann, sometimes you're the mail lady, sometimes you even try to masquerade yourself as my friend Drew, but you can't fool me, no, you can't fool Rick Anders.”
Rick stopped talking for a moment. I opened the door and walked in. Rick looked up at me, smiled, pointed across the room and said “Drew, you see that son-of-a-bitch, don't you? Ol' Beelzebub thinks he can fool me, but he can't. He thinks he can tempt me, but he can't. He thinks he can sway me over to his side, but he can't. God damn fool Satan is.”
There was no one in the office besides Rick and me. I don't know who he was talking to but there was no one else there. Rick looked in the direction of where he said the Devil was, cocked his head as if he were listening, nodded his head and looked at me.
“Satan says you are already his. That you never were anything but his. Maybe, maybe, but I think you're not so easy of a fallen soul, I think you have Satan fooled. Drew, you're better than he is, don't fall for his message, don't. You got to fight every day. You got to fight him every day. You can't let him win.”
With that Rick rushed at me with the look of the Devil in his eye. He was running wildly, it was easy to dodge his rush, put one leg out to trip him and help him hit the ground hard with a push. Rick hit the floor, slid and came to a hard stop against my drafting table, his forehead hitting one of the legs of the table hard. I winced, he was stunned. He lay on the ground and I just looked at him.
“Ah, fuck, what the hell happened?”
“You were arguing with the devil, then rushed me. I tripped you and you hit your head against the table.”
“No, what the fuck happened?”
I thought for a moment and decided to play along.
“I walked in, you saw me, came walking over, tripped over your own clumsy feet and took a header against the drafting table. Shit, how much did you drink last night?”
“Too much, I guess. Damn, I did have some crazy dreams last night. Shit, some crazy dreams.”
He pulled himself off the ground, shook his head and regretted doing that.
“Oh God, does that hurt. Man, I need to sit down.”
“You need to go home. But first, let's get a little coffee in you. Did you even make it home last night? Are those the same clothes you wore to work yesterday?”
“I don't know. Now that I think about it I don't know if I did make it home. Damn, what happened?”
“Don't know, Rick, don't know. If you're up to it, let's get some breakfast, then I'll drop you by the house. I think you could stand to take the day off.”
“I think you're right. I could stand something to eat and I don't think I would be worth a shit today. What the hell did you mean about me arguing with the devil?”
“Nothing, man, nothing. Come on, let's go get some breakfast.”
I drove us over to Denny's on 8th street. After several coffees, two eggs over easy, sausage and hash browns, Rick was as close to normal as he would get that day. I drove him home and he waved at me as I pulled out of the driveway. In my rear view mirror he looked like a lost soul as I drove back to the office.
I didn't get much done that day. I was used to me being the one that heard voices. Seeing someone else doing it was just damn strange, and more than a little unnerving.
The following week we received our last check for $80,000 from New Mexico Chemicals and closed out the 30 separators deal. The week after that the check cleared, I took $35,000, Rick took $35,000 and we left $10,000 for operating expenses. Despite how absolutely shitty the last three months had been, we made a ton of money in 1982 and we had every intention of keeping as much of it as we could.
I started keeping a closer eye on Rick and as I did I noticed he was having regular conversations with people who weren't there. I don't know if I was just noticing it now or if in fact it was a new behavior, all I knew was that it was going on. He never had such conversations when someone else was around, but sometimes, if you walked up on him and he didn't hear or see you coming you would walk up on a conversation. Sebastian was the name associated to one of the voices and he wasn't too bad. He seemed to come around after the third beer as we closed up for the day. Rick would would be whispering and listening to him when I came back from the bathroom. As far as I could tell, for an imaginary friend, Sebastian was cool. There were other voices, but I wasn't able to catch their names. The Devil, well, he was a different matter all together. I caught Rick in a discussion with the Devil once in January but from the familiarity of the conversation I don't think that was the only conversation Rick had with ol' Beelzebub that month.
When he wasn't crazy, he was completely sane, but when he was crazy, well, I just learned to let it go, let it happen, soon enough he would talk his way out and go back to being Rick. Problem was that I couldn't talk to Rick about the business. Every time I mentioned the idea of closing the doors I could guarantee that shortly after Rick would talk to the wall. It took me a few times to notice the cause (me talking about closing the doors) and the effect (Rick talking to the wall), but once I did I stopped talking about closing the doors. I was concerned about my friend but I felt if I took care of things on my own and didn't upset him all would be fine. Remember I'm lazy, I take the easy way out and the easy way out for me in this situation was to avoid things that led to Rick talking to the wall.
Everything fell apart on Wednesday, January 19, 1983. We were down to one assembly line and our backlog was only 60 days. If we didn't close any more deals we would run out of work in late March. It rained in the early morning. When I pulled into the parking lot I saw Rick's car already there. I parked my truck, got out and noticed the tire tracks my truck left in the wet caliche. There were no tire tracks from Rick's car, that suggested his car had been parked here before the rain started falling. That wasn't good.
I walked up to the door and stopped. I could hear Rick talking inside. This time he wasn't talking to the Devil, he was talking to someone else. Rick sounded like he was in pain, desperate, down to his last bit of strength. Most of what he said I could not understand, he was speaking in a language I did not understand. It wasn't Spanish or anything close to it, it wasn't English, but I could discern a pattern in the sounds, a pattern that made it seem like a true language. I listened closely and what I think I heard was something like “Ely, Ely, lima sabathani.” This went on for minutes. It was cold outside, around 40 degrees, with a light mist falling, but I really didn't notice. Then it all got quiet.
I opened the door and walked in. Rick was in the middle of our war room, on his knees, looking up at the ceiling, his arms outstretched. His lips were moving as if he were talking, but no sound came out. Suddenly he cried out and collapsed sobbing on the floor. I ran to him, put my arms around him and tried to lift him up. He was dead weight.
“Rick, man, wake up. Come on, Rick, come back.” But my words meant nothing to him. He opened his eyes, looked at me and fear came into his eyes. He broke from my hold and crawled away to a corner, hugged himself and said quietly “Lord, why have you forsaken me? Why have you abandoned me in this evil place? Lord, what have I done to deserve this?” He pulled himself into a tight ball and cried quietly.
I didn't know what to do. I stood up slowly and watched him. He was like a frightened child and I wanted to comfort him but each time I took a step towards him he cowered. I gave up. Keeping an eye on him I walked backwards to my desk and phone. I sat on the edge of my desk and pondered the situation. I didn't know what to do. There was something clearly wrong, something desperately wrong and I had no idea what to do.
I picked up the phone and called the Anders house. I breathed a sigh of relief when Mr. Anders answered the phone, I preferred talking to him instead of Rick's mom. I told Mr. Anders what was going on. I told him all the details very calmly. He sighed over the phone.
“I'll be there in a few minutes. He didn't come home last night. He's been a little shaky lately, I was hoping it was just a temporary thing.”
I hung up the phone and keeping an eye on Rick walked over to the refrigerator and got a beer. Yeah, I know, it was a little after 7:00 am but I could tell I wasn't going to get much work done this day. Before Mr. Anders' car pulled up in the parking lot I had finished the beer, chewed a piece of gum and tossed the can into the trash.
Mr. Anders walked in and saw Rick in the corner sobbing.
“He's been like this since I called you. Before that he was talking some wild stuff. I don't know what's going on.”
Mr. Anders didn't say anything, but nodded his head in response.
“Look, the first time I noticed something strange was a little over a month ago. I came in early one morning, he was here already and was arguing with who he said was the devil. I've noticed him talking to no one a few times since. He always seems to come out of it so I just sort of ignored it. Now I'm thinking that was the wrong thing to do.”
Mr. Anders looked up at me and it nearly made him cry. His face was filled with love, sadness and fear.
“That sounds about right, Drew. About a month ago his mother and I started noticing a difference in him. Nothing much at first, he would be just off for awhile, but he would always come back and when he did he was the same old Rick. But it's been getting worse, practically day by day and I'm not so sure he's going to come back this time.”
Mr. Anders seemed to stumble for a moment. I grabbed his arm and helped him over to a chair. He sat down. Rick continued to sob, squatting on the floor.
“Sir, what are we going to do? We have to do something. This is the longest I've ever seen him gone and the worst too. We've got to do something.”
Mr. Anders fished in his pocket, pulled out a piece of paper, looked at it and handed it to me.
“Drew, please call this number then give me the phone.”
I did as he asked. A few seconds passed and then Mr. Anders spoke.
“Dr. Levenson? Yes, this is Don Anders. Yes, we had talked before about... about my son.” There was a pause before Mr. Anders spoke again. “He's not doing well, not at all. He's been hearing voices and I'm worried.... well, he's not well. He needs help... Yes, all right. How long? Okay, that should be fine. Where? We're at VP Tanks. Thank you.”
Mr. Anders hung up the phone and looked at me.
“Dr. Levenson is a psychiatrist. Rick met with him for the first time last week. We've been concerned about Rick. He's coming to see us.”
I fixed Mr. Anders a cup of coffee and we waited, me at my drafting table, Rick still on the floor sobbing and Mr. Anders sitting at Rick's desk.
Around thirty minutes later I heard something pull up into our parking lot. I rose and walked towards the front door. An ambulance had come to a stop and three men got out, one with a gurney. I opened the door and they came in.
“Dr. Levenson, thank you for coming. As you can see, there's Rick.” Mr. Anders pointed to his son.
Dr. Levenson walked over to Rick and squatted down besides him. Rick cowered even more and began to moan. Dr. Levenson watched Rick for a moment or two then stood back and faced Mr. Anders.
“Who found him?”
Mr. Anders pointed to me.
“I did, sir. But he was talking when I first got here. Not in English, not even sure it was a real language, but it had the pattern of a language.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, there's a rhythm, that... well, let me see if I can remember it.” I thought for a moment and some of the sounds came back to me. I sounded them out loud “Ely, Ely, lima sabathani,” trying to imitate how Rick said them but wasn't at all sure I was doing any good. Then I looked at Dr. Levenson and saw a look of surprise on his face.
“Does that mean anything to you?”
“If I didn't know better I would say you're trying to speak Hebrew. I recognize a few words, and some of the sentence structure makes sense, but you're speaking it in, how shall I say, an archaic fashion. Are you saying that's how Rick was talking when you got here this morning?”
I nodded my head.
“This gets stranger and stranger. Mr. Anders, I don't think there's much choice. Rick needs to be admitted, at least for observation for a few days, until we can figure out what is happening.”
Mr. Anders looked lost, dejected and defeated, but he nodded his head in assent. “Do I need to sign anything?”
At this point I quit listening. I looked like I was listening, but I wasn't. I had shut down. Mr. Anders signed something. Dr. Levenson gave him a reassuring pat on his shoulder. The two men who had arrived with Dr. Levenson approached Rick. Rick cowered even more and began to cry loudly. The two men touched Rick and a wrestling match ensued. Rick lost and in a few minutes had been bound to the gurney and rolled out of the office. Dr. Levenson followed them. Mr. Anders stood there for a moment, looked at me and smiled meekly. He then followed them out the door. The two men loaded Rick up into the back of the ambulance, one got in with him, the other closed the door. Then Dr. Levenson and the remaining man climbed in the front of the ambulance. The engine started and the ambulance pulled out of the parking lot and back onto the road. Mr. Anders got in his car and followed the ambulance as it drove back towards Odessa. The mist was still falling.
I walked back inside, looked around the office, went to the refrigerator and grabbed my second beer of the morning. It looked to be a long day.
After I had finished my fourth beer I came back into the world. It was quiet. I looked at the clock. It was 9:45 am. I was alone. Mary Ann wouldn't be in the office until 1:00 pm. The phone hadn't rang at all so far this morning. I had to try and get some work done. That or go insane.
I went back through our books and tried to get a handle on where things currently were but it was hard to stay focused.
At 11:00 I gave up on trying to do something useful and decided to leave the office. I found myself on Grandview Avenue and pulled into the parking lot of the Temple Beth El. I hadn't been in a church in years, much less a synagogue, but Dr. Levenson said the words I heard might be Hebrew. Maybe a Rabbi could help. I walked in and looked around and found an office where a man was studying something. I cleared my voice and he looked up.
“How can I help you, young man.”
“Can you speak Hebrew?”
“Yes, I'm not great at it, but I'm passable.”
“What does this mean to you? 'Ely, Ely, lima sabathani.'”
He looked at me for a moment, asked me to repeat what I said, listened again, asked me to repeat it again and I did.
“Where did you hear this?”
“That doesn't matter. Do you know what it means?”
“Not for sure, I think you've missed part of what was said or are just saying it wrong. If I had to guess I think you meant to say 'Eli, Eli, Lema sabachthani.'”
“Yes, that's it, that's what I heard. Even the accents, you've got it. What does it mean?”
“I'm still curious as to where you heard it. I was speaking ancient Hebrew, how it was spoken in the time of the Roman Empire.”
I really didn't feel like a long conversation or telling the truth of the situation so I made up a lie on the fly.
“I was driving to work this morning, just flicking through the radio stations, just looking for something to listen to, and I came across this station, a religious station, I guess and I heard this in mid-stream and I was curious as to what it meant.”
I don't think he believed a word I said, but he seemed to accept I wasn't going to say anything close to the truth.
“I can't say for sure, the phrase, I believe, actually comes from the Christian New Testament. I think it roughly translates to 'My god, my god, why have you forsaken me?'”
We talked for a few more minutes. Me, to keep up the pretense of things, him, to find out how and where I had heard what I heard. Finally, we ran out of things to say and I made my leave.
After my visit to Temple Beth El I realized I was hungry. I picked up a newspaper and stopped at Jack Jordan's Barbecue on the John Ben Shepard Parkway. The food was great, I focused as best as I could on the tastes and the newspaper. I finished up with some peach cobbler and felt somewhat satisfied, in body, not in mind or soul.
Author’s note: In its original form the chapter “The Crack-up” is over 9000 words long. I like to keep these weekly episodes between 3000 to 4000 words so we’re going to break things up a bit over this episode and the next two.
Things are not working out as Drew planned. It maybe time to end VP Tanks, but he sure didn’t think he would have to do it on his own. In Episode 23 Drew plans the end of VP Tanks with Uncle Bill’s help, Rick seems to be physically well but isn’t in his right mind.