Shutter Island

by Dennis Lehane

“And so now, back in the world as we are…” “Oh, back we are,” Chuck said. “Ensconced, one could even say.” Teddy suppressed a laugh, liking this guy a lot now. Ensconced. Jesus.

“Booshit. Motherfucker that lucky? He got hisself some voodoo working.”

“Mother-fucker!” Trey slapped his hand off Chuck’s fingers. “Motherfucker!” Bibby said. “Mutha-fucka,” Chuck said, and then all three of them giggled like little girls.

My experience? You can’t break a whole society that doesn’t want to hear what you have to say. Not if there’s only two of us.

How many psychiatrists does it take to screw in a lightbulb?” “I don’t know. How many?” “Eight.” “Why?” “Oh, stop overanalyzing it.”

“What’re you—fucking Einstein?”

But you know what I said?” “I’m late, honey.” “Why would I say that?

When he was finished, he had thirteen numbers: 18-1-4-9-5-4-23-1-12-4-19-14-5. “Maybe it’s a combination,” Chuck said, “for the world’s biggest padlock.”

She spit at him and Teddy heard it hit the floor and then she screamed again and there was blood on her lip from where she must have bitten it, and Cawley nodded at them and started walking and they fell into step behind him, Teddy looking back over his shoulder to see Rachel watching him, looking him right in the eye as she arched her shoulders off the mattress and the cords in her neck bulged and her lips were slick with blood and spittle as she shrieked at him, shrieked like she’d seen all the century’s dead climb through her window and walk toward her bed.

“What?” Cawley wasn’t moving his legs, but he was keeping pace with Teddy just the same, gliding.

Teddy felt a sparrow’s ghost pass through the center of his chest and flap its wings.

if he were on the outside looking in, he would tell that other Teddy to buck up and suck in your gut and get on with the rest of your life.

There was something unkempt about her face, eyes maybe a bit too far apart, lips that were so wide they seemed messy on her small face, a chin that was uncertain.

so this is what it feels like to love. No logic to it—he barely knew her. But there it was just the same. He’d just met the woman he’d known, somehow, since before he was born.

Teddy had had a dozen little shits like this in his company during the war. Most of them didn’t come home, and Teddy had often wondered if anyone really minded. You couldn’t reach this type of asshole, couldn’t teach him anything. But you could back him off if you understood that the only thing he respected was power.

Teddy had known men in war whom he’d trust with his life on a battlefield and yet never with his wallet once they were off it.

And Chuck listened, nodding occasionally, watching Teddy the way a child watches a camp counselor around the fire as the late-night boogeyman story unfolds. And what was all this, Teddy was beginning to wonder, if not that?

“I’m not crazy. I’m not. Of course what else would a crazy person claim? That’s the Kafkaesque genius of it all. If you’re not crazy but people have told the world you are, then all your protests to the contrary just underscore their point.

Patience and forbearance become the first casualties of progress.

“Baby,” he said, “why you all wet?”

He saw the logs floating in the lake behind her and he knew they weren’t logs, but he looked away, looked back at his wife.

But he’d failed her. Failed his children. Failed the lives they’d all built together because he’d refused to see Dolores, really see her, see that her insanity was not her fault, not something she could control, not some proof of moral weakness or lack of fortitude.