The Human Touch: Chapter Five

                                    Chapter Five.

‘Shelly May. Shelly May. Shelly May.’

     Shelly wished that just for one hour, her son would forget her name. Fifty times a day he stood immobile and yelled her full name at the top of his voice. He would never think to come and get her. Luckily for Shelly, Brenda and Jack next door loved Sammy.

    ‘Shelly May. Shelly May.’

   ‘Yes, yes, I’m coming. What’s that stupid dog done now?’

   ‘Shelly May,’

   She opened the door and went into the kitchen. Carthenage had a pair of John’s pants and was ragging them with delight.

   ‘Oops, Shelly May. Oops Shelly May.’

   ‘It’s all right, Sammy, I’ve got them. No, Carthenage, give them back.’

  ‘Shelly May is a Fibber.  Shelly May has not got her hands in John May’s underpants.’

    Damn, technically, it was true. She’d made a grab for the boxers but Carthenage pre-empted her takeover bid and as she lunged for them, he whirled around and ran off, but she’d have the brute in a minute. But did Sammy have to yell everything at the top of his voice.

   ‘I’ve got hold of one half of them,’ answered Shelly, indignantly, after her second attempt.

      She retrieved the pants and went into the kitchen to put on a wash. When she came back Sammy was holding out a doggie-treat and was lecturing Carthenage. The pup was standing in front of his master salivating and whimpering because Sammy had been holding out the treat for some time and Carthenage wanted it.

         ‘Carthenage, if you do not sit down in front of me. I can not give you the treat. You only get the treat if you sit down and then Sammy May can put your lead on and then Shelly May and John May and Sammy May can take you to the dog park where you can run and play with other dogs. And when we get to the dog park you can poop at the side of the doggie play area and Shelly May can pick it up and put it in the poop bins that say ‘Dog’ on them and John May can say, “God that stinks.” And Sammy May can say, “Good Boy, Carthenage.” And Carthenage can wag his tail.’

         Sammy, honey, it’s lovely that you talk to Carthenage a lot. He likes that, but when you want him to do something, you have to give him just little, clear commands. You know when you get too much noise in your head at once, and you find it hard to make out the voice that’s talking to you? Well that’s what it’s like for Carthenage, too. You need to just say the one word ‘Sit’ and give him the corresponding hand signal.

         ‘Is Shelly May training Carthenage?’

         ‘No Sammy.’

         ‘Is John May training Carthenage?’

         ‘No love, but—‘

         ‘Is Wanda Jackson training Carthenage?’ Sammy had gone from immediate family to his teacher at school. If Shelly didn’t break the loop before he settled into it, he’d be reeling names off for hours. He’d begin with every person he knew personally and when he ran out of them, he’d start on authors, scientist, actors, directors, pop stars and if the idea occurred to him, he’d begin on A in the phone book and start reciting the names. He had them stored in his brain and could load them from his databank to his voice box, at will.

    All, I’m saying love, is that maybe, you should look at some more dog-training books. I think they’d help you.

         ‘It was Saturday and Sammy had woken at six. He was excited about having the pup. They had been trying for months to get him to knock on their bedroom door before barging in, and it had finally clicked— until Carthenage came along. That morning, he’d burst into their room shouting Shelly’s name at top decibel and demanding that they all get up to go to the park, immediately. They persuaded him to wait until after breakfast.

         When Shelly put the idea of downloading books into his head, all thoughts of going to the park were forgotten and he wandered to the downstairs computer with Carthenage’s biscuit still in his hand. The dog whined, sighed, and flopped in a heap on the carpet. Shelly went to get him another biscuit.

         Sammy had total recall; he only had to skim read a book to photograph it to his memory. It took him ten seconds to scan each page of text. After he’d downloaded, and uploaded to his memory every book that he could find on training your dog, he scoured internet reports and searched television programmes such as The Dog Whisperer and It’s Me or the Dog.

         The next day was Sunday and the library was closed. He didn’t cope with inconvenience well. Sammy had the patience of a machine if he put his mind to a certain task, but if he was prevented from doing it due to circumstances out of his control, it was the herald for trouble. He wrote to his MP, something that he was fond of doing. In his letter, he demanded that the library be opened on a Sunday so that Samuel May could search for books on dog training. Shelly took the letter from his outgoing mail rack—Sammy hand wrote a lot of letters— before going to the letterbox with the rest of his day’s post. They had a bad day that Sunday beginning with general unease leading to three grand mal seizures in rapid succession. Sammy was exhausted. If he had been an average boy, Shelly would have kept him at home the next day, but the upheaval that a change to his routine would bring about, would be far worse than letting him go to school tired. She felt sorry for his teachers because he’d be violently moody all day. The best that she could do was to tell Sandra that he’d had a bad day, and she would pass it on to the school. At least they’d be pre-warned and would keep a close eye on him, especially around the other kids.  

         The fact that the library was shut gave Carthenage a couple of day’s grace, during which time the content pooch had no idea what was in store for him. Sammy’s poor mind was a computer. It worked like a computer. He was methodical in everything he did. He’d wanted to read everything that he could find at the library and then begin Carthenage’s training regime after lunch. That was his plan and plans, once laid, should never be upset. He made spreadsheets to chart their progress. He’d already written the date. Anybody else would have moved it on one digit and dated it from the Monday, instead. Sammy couldn’t do that. He had spent hours making the spreadsheets, all he had to do was change one number on each date cell. He couldn’t. He’d had to delete all of his work and make new ones from scratch. But even that didn’t appease him. The original sheets had been deleted, but they were still stored, on the computer’s hard drive— and his own. He saw them as coloured Tetris blocks of fragmented programme scattered untidily across his database— and similarly arranged in his brain. It offended him and worried him beyond anything that a rational thinking person could comprehend, and as the day wore on, it drove him to illness.

   Anybody else would take what information they’d found and would work on that until they could access the library. He could have begun the training as planned, and he wouldn’t need to spend the afternoon re-doing his charts and graphs, spreadsheets and working timeline because the date was a day out.

            Shelly tried to tell him that he’d probably already downloaded every book that the library carried. She doubted that he’d find anything new. But there might be one that he didn’t have. There was a chance that the small town library had something that the online shop didn’t.

         The minute Sammy came in from school, Shelly’s calm world evaporated. It was time to hang up his coat, wash his hands, urinate, and wash his hands again. It was time for Shelly to make him a snack. It was time to sit as his desk and do his homework. But it was also time to go to the library to read dog training books. He didn’t need to borrow the books; he could read anything that they had while he was there.

         As well as information on training, he wanted to scour their encyclopaedia, he needed to know everything that there was to know about canine disease and illness, diagnoses, treatment, and recovery times. He had to have every word that he could glean about canine genetics. He needed a list of dog breeds, all of them; because he was going to scientifically work out what breeds comprised Carthenage’s ancestry.

         Whenever there was a break to what Sammy considered acceptable or any alteration to an established routine, it disturbed him.

         When he was very little Shelly had devised a tool to help. Although they moved heaven and earth to keep Sammy’s routine as organised as possible, there were times, when breaking it was unavoidable. A routine could be established quickly but breaking it was something Sammy couldn’t come to terms with.

         When he was five-years old, as part of his six monthly assessments, a home visit was organised. Sammy attended consultations at the hospital, but he never did well there. His stress levels would be high and his behaviour erratic. Because he was a savant autistic, with total recall and echolalia, his progress was monitored and documented. As many of his tests as possible were done at home. A man called Peter Heller was employed by the Medical Sciences Division of Oxford University to conduct his tests. The first time he’d come, in an attempt to gain Sammy’s friendship, Peter had offered him a Polo mint. It was a simple gesture of friendship aimed at breaking down the barriers.

          Sammy had so much information in his brain that he was late talking and didn’t utter his first words until he was seven-years old. But from the age of three, he’d displayed savant abilities and drew the attention of the medical establishment. Autistic savants, while well documented are rare, and Sammy’s abilities were monitored closely.

         Peter had visited six months later. Sammy sat for the first part of his interview but five minutes in, he displayed minor symptoms of agitation. He rolled his eyes and sighed in frustration, it was clear that he was waiting for something.  When that something wasn’t delivered, he rose in disgust, huffed like a petulant teenager, and walked over to Peter; he stood in front of him with his mouth open.

         ‘What’s the matter, Sammy? What do you want?’

         Peter looked to Shelly and John for answers.

         ‘Search me, that’s a new one,’ Shelly replied with a shrug of her shoulders. They tried to complete with the tests, but Sammy was distracted and repeatedly went to Peter and opened his mouth. Shelly decided that he associated Peter with a doctor and was trying to tell him that he was in pain. The only answer that they could come up with was that Sammy had toothache. Shelly worried, Sammy didn’t tolerate any form of illness or pain well. He didn’t understand it. She said that she’d ring the dentist when Peter left, to make an appointment for him. This involved hospital time being set aside, because Sammy had to be put to sleep to have his mouth examined.

         Sammy decided that he’d been polite for long enough. The fifth time he went to Peter, only to be disappointed, he took matters into his own hands. He leaned forward and thrust his hand into Peter’s jacket pocket, grunting in satisfaction when he came up with a packet of Polo mints. He took one and put it in his mouth, handing the rest of the packet back to Peter. In just one visit, a routine had been made. Every time that Peter came, he always made sure that he had Polos for Sammy.

         Sammy was fifteen now and more dependant on routine and stability than ever. When he was little Shelly had come up with an idea to help Sammy cope with change. It had had to be tweaked over the years, but it worked, to a degree. Any change was stressful for him, but the posting, helped.

         Sammy went to his desk and got out his Basildon Bond watermarked writing pad and a matching envelope. He wrote down his home-time routine in a numbered list, and then folded it and put it in the envelope. He addressed it to himself and added a first class stamp. Then he took it into the hallway where he had a letter holder specifically for the purpose of his outgoing mail. He put the envelope in the slot and Shelly would post it the next time she went out.

         They had been doing this since Sammy was five. At first, Shelly only had to put the letter in an envelope and pretend to post it; at that point, it didn’t matter where it was going.

         Later, Sammy insisted on seeing it being posted. Shelly felt guilty about the hundreds of unaddressed envelopes with rubbish scribbled on them, first in Shelly’s hand, and later, in Sammy’s. She knew that wasting police time was an offence, what about wasting the postal sorting office time?

         Soon, that wasn’t enough, either. Sammy inevitably wanted to know what happened to his routine once the list was put in the post box.

         Shelly had devised the idea of sending it back to him. Over the years it had been both a Godsend and a financial cross to bear. At one time she got away with second class postage, but when Sammy learned about the different pricing systems according to the time the letter took, he wanted the best. Shelly bartered with him and agreed on First Class postage, in return for not having to go out to post the letter the minute Sammy had finished writing it. That made a huge difference to their lives. Usually, they averaged one letter a day, sometimes they did as well as just a couple a week, but the record number of letters that Shelly had ever had to post in one day was thirty eight. It was costly and debilitating, especially in the early days, when Sammy insisted that his letters had to be posted immediately.

         When they’d moved to a new house, while other buyers might be looking at the proximity of schools and shops, Shelly and John only cared about the nearest post box. They had one on the corner of the street.

         Sammy kept every letter that came back to him. He had suitcases full of them. It was enough for him to know that when he altered his usual routine, the routine didn’t die. It was still there, alive and well, and shooting along conveyor belts in the postal system. Sammy could pick it up and resume it as normal as soon as the letter was returned. If for any reason, the post was late, or on the rare occasion that a letter was lost there was hell to pay and that caused a whole new set of problems. Sammy had to write a new letter to accommodate for the extra time it took the first one to arrive. In effect, he would write a routine letter about his missing routine letter. It was a system that worked and kept Sammy level.

         Shelly took Sammy to the library and posted his letter on the way, along with two others that had come about due to Carthenage messing with Sammy’s routine that morning. As anticipated, they didn’t have a book that Sammy didn’t have already. He wasn’t disappointed or distressed by this, he’d expected it to be that way, and so it fell into the category of normal. It was what he’d expected, it was what came to pass, no surprises there. After what, to some, might have seemed like a wasted journey, Sammy was happy. He was ready.

         Carthenage was about to be trained.