Love,
Annie

Turning around with ceremonial slowness, the boy with the bad teeth addressed Lewis. “It’s here, killed its own son on the bloody birch, tore him to the winds, and cried out, ‘Hail the glorious golden city, I’m pressing, pressing on the upward way, new heights I’m gaining every day.’ Your name is?”

“Lewis.”

“Lewis. Lewis of the ville, the slugger. Have you hit them out of the park? Home run!” He smiled, mirthless, with those yellow-black teeth.

The boy’s eyes frightened Lew. They seemed evil. “What’s your name?”

“Kane. That’s the two of us, carved from the bloody birch, his blood-gone-water still on us, salty. Licked off by dogs. You know those dogs with their tongues around their noses.” He laughed as if he were trying laughter out for the first time. “We killed our brothers, the two of us.” He went for that laugh again but froze in the middle of it.

“Why did you say that?”

The boy had now sat on the edge of the porch. “Listen Lewis of the ville, the slugger. Have you hit them out of the park? Home run! It’s at the back of your neck. Like an octopus. You can feel it in your throat. One of its legs is in your throat. It scratches around in there. It knows what you’re thinking. It tells them. Wah’Kon-Tah is trying to find you. Can you hear him? He’s out there. He shall give you a sign. It is the not dark valley, the sunlight, sunlight in my soul today, the love divine all loves excelling, joy of heaven to earth come down. Wah’Kon-Tah. Dying God’s last breath. Breath of death to give life. Blood of Jeeezus Christ. You can hear him in the trees. He shall find you Lewis of the ville, the slugger. Have you hit them out of the park? Home run!”

From the moment he appeared in my office, I knew the Tivot boy would be a fascinating subject. His nightmares are clearly sexual in nature. He talks about the “sinkhole” being a place at once of attraction and danger. In one dream it’s surrounded by what he calls “pricker” bushes, in another by sharp stones. It is clearly the vagina-dentata. It glitters and goes dark. It lures and then sucks those in it to the center of the earth (earth womb). Salvatore has now become—? (I shall try to find a name for this.) His traits are multifold, sometimes frightening, sometimes comforting. Protean. Other salient traits: He is both powerful and wounded (Fisher King?); he seems to have become, somehow, the genius of the boy’s dreams. (Genius Of Dreams: G.O.D. Interesting.) Is he the teeth around Sebastiana’s vagina? Oh, come on, Walthrop, you can do better than that! In this most recent dream Salvatore’s arm is clearly a phallus.

N.B. Tell night-duty nurse to wake Tivot up three times a night. Try to get down more dreams. Need catalog of dreams. Make sure to get every detail. I will try to develop a schematic for his dreams, create an overarching narrative in which those dreams can be resolved to his psyche’s satisfaction.