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more than a little troubled because of the letters she one day started sending to Mom. They were like the end of an Uncle Wiggily story, when Nurse Jane Fuzzy-Wuzzy says things like, “If the old tomcat doesn’t slip on a banana peel and trip over the lobster pot and hit the broom and knock the po-po-potty down”—some wacky things like that—“we’ll tell you another story about Uncle Wiggily.” Well, that’s the only time I’d heard
crazy
language like that until we got these letters from Mrs. Sally Bowdin and they read something like this: “If the piano doesn’t stop hiding my driver’s license we’ll be able to put a new toilet on the front lawn under the willow tree my husband just cut down to turn into soldiers”—and on and on they would go. When Coleman read these letters, he got real upset. He said, “Mom, this woman needs psychiatric help!” Mom just ignored him because she didn’t believe in psychiatrists and she was upset that Coleman did. As time went by and we got more and more letters from Mrs. Bowdin, Mom told us that Mrs. Bowdin was so disturbed they had to ask her to sit in the back of the balcony at church because she couldn’t keep from shouting outloud during the service, and everyone wanted the service to be calm. After all, that’s why a lot of people came to church on Sunday in the first place: they came to get calm.
    Well, anyway, that summer when Mom was away at Christian Science class, that season when madness seemed to come often, I woke up real early one morning, and at first I thought I was dreaming. Then I realized there were indeed many people having some sort of row down in our living room.
    I looked out the window and saw two police cars right in front of our house, and that gave me a real scare. Then I recognized Mrs. Bowdin’s voice. I got up and stood in my underwear at the top of the stairs to try to hear it better. It was her voice but not her words, or it was more like her words in the letters she had sent us. She was talking real wild. Her husband was down there along with the police and Dad. She was talking wild and dirty to her husband, who she was calling Jack, even though he kept correcting her and reminding her that his name was Fred. Sally Bowdin was talking like a crazy drunk, saying things like “Hey, Jack, you old poop—Jack, you old chip off the Texas block—don’t you remember those wild outhouse underwear times we had? Oh, remember how we used to run all bare-assed across the whole state of Texas? Oh, those were the days and don’t you deny it, Jack, you big hunk, you big chip off the old you-know-what! You big stinker, you! Jack! You toidy-woidy!” And you could hear her husband calmly say, real calm and quiet, “Now calm down, Sally. I’m not Jack, you know that. I’m Fred. Try to pull yourself together.”
    Then I heard this big wrestling sound but no words, like everyone was gagged and playing musical chairs only without music. This was followed by little moans like sex sounds. Then I heard Sally screaming “No! No! No!” and I ran to the window to see her being taken away, dressed only in a black negligee, all wrapped up in a straitjacket. After they had taken her away and the police cars had gone, I went downstairs to find Dad straightening up the living room as if nothing big had really happened. That’s when he told me that Mrs. Bowdin had come to the house at dawn and gotten into bed with him. She had called him Jack and began to strip his pajamas off. She was a very beautiful woman even though she was crazy, and I figured she could probably be very sexy as well. But Dad said he just jumped outof bed and called the police and they came in ten minutes. I couldn’t keep from wondering what went on in those ten minutes. But I didn’t ask him. I think I was afraid to know too much. Or maybe we both had the secret sense that madness was not far from our door and that Mom might be the next to go.

    I CAME HOME FROM my last year of