The Regulators

The service at the church was packed-Bill and June had a lot of friends-and everyone was bawling. Except for poor little Seth, of course, who can’t. Or doesn’t. Or who knows? He just sat there between me and Herb with two of his toys on his lap-a pink van he calls “Dweem Fwoatah” and the action figure that goes with it, a sexy little redhead named Cassandra Styles. The toys are from a show called MotoKops 2200, and the names of the damned MotoKops vans (excuse me, the MotoKops Power Wagons, lah-di-dah) are among the few things Seth says which are actually understandable (“Doughnuts buy “em for me” is another one; also “Seth go potty”, which means you’re supposed to go in there with him-he’s trained but very weird about his bathroom habits).

I hope he didn’t understand the service meant the rest of his family is dead, gone from him forever. Herb is sure he doesn’t know (“The kid doesn’t even know where he is,” Herb says), but I wonder. That’s the hell of autism, isn’t it? You always wonder, you never really know, they’re broadcasting but God hooked them up with a scrambler-phone and nothing’s coming through at the receiving end but gibberish.

Tell you one thing-I’ve gained a new respect for Herb Wyler in the last couple of weeks. He arranged EVERYTHING, from the planes to the obituaries in both the Columbus Dispatch and Toledo Blade. And to take Seth in as he has, without a word of complaint-not just an orphan but an autistic orphan-well, I mean, is it amazing or is it just me? I vote for amazing. And he seems to really care for the poor kid. Sometimes, when he looks at the boy, a preoccupied expression comes into his face that could even be love. The begi

This is even more remarkable, it seems to me, when you realize how little a child like Seth can give back. Mostly he just sits plonked down out there in the sandbox Herb put in as soon as we got back from Toledo, like a big boy-shaped raisin, wearing only his MotoKops 2200

Underoos (he has the lunchbox, too), mouthing his nonsense words, playing with his vans and the action figures that go with them, especially the sexy redhead in the blue shorts. These toys trouble me a bit, because-if you’re not entirely sure I’ve lost it, this should convince you-I’m not sure where they came from, Jan! Seth sure didn’t have any such expensive rig the last time I visited Bill and June in Toledo (I checked in Toys R Us, and the MotoKops stuff is VERY pricey), I can tell you that. They aren’t the sort of toys Bill and Junie would have approved of, anyhow-their toy-buying ideas ran more to Barney than Star Wars, much to their kids” disgust. Poor little Seth can’t tell me, that’s for sure, and it probably doesn’t matter, anyway. I only know the names of the vans and the figures that go with them because I watch the cartoon-show with him on Saturday mornings. The chief bad guy, No Face, is tres creepy.

He’s 50 strange, Jan (Seth, I mean, not No Face, har-har). I don’t know if Herb feels that as much as I do, but I know he feels some of it. Sometimes when I look up and catch Seth looking at me (he has eyes of such dark brown that sometimes they actually look black), I get the weirdest chill-like someone’s using my spine for a xylophone. And some odd things have happened since Seth came to live with us. Don’t laugh, but there’ve even been a couple of incidents like the poltergeist phenomena they sometimes dramatize on what Herb calls “the psycho-reality shows”. Glasses flying off shelves, a couple of windows that broke seemingly for no reason, and weird wiggly shapes that sometimes appear in Seth’s sandbox at night. They’re like strange, surreal sand-paintings. I’ll send you some Polaroids next time I write, if I think of it. I wouldn’t tell anybody this stuff besides you, Jan, believe me. Thank God I know and trust your wonder… your curiosity… and your DISCRETION!

Mostly Seth is no trouble. The most a

One thing keeps nagging me, and that’s why I’ve enclosed a Xerox of the postcard my brother sent me from Carson City shortly before he died. He says on it that they’ve had a breakthrough-an amazing breakthrough is what he says, actually-with Seth. Capital letters, lots of exclamation points. See for yourself. I was curious, natch, so I asked him about it the next time we talked on the phone. That must have been on July 27th or 28th, and it was the last time I spoke to him. His reaction was very peculiar, very unlike Bill. A long silence, then this weird artificial laugh: “Ha-ha-ha!” the way it gets written out but the way real laughter hardly ever sounds, except at boring cocktail parties. I never heard my brother laugh like that in his life. “Well, Aud,” he sez, “I might have overreacted a little on that one.”

He didn’t want to say any more on the subject, but when I pressed him he said that Seth seemed brighter, more with them, once they got far enough into Colorado to see the Rockies. “You know how he’s always loved Western movies and TV shows,” he said, and although I didn’t then, I sure do now. Nuts for cowboys and posses and cuttin” “em off at the pass is young Seth Garin. Bill said Seth probably knew he wasn’t in the real Old West because of all the cars and campers, but “the scenery still turned him on”. That’s how Bill put it.

I might have let it go at that if he hadn’t sounded so fu

Bill thought it was sort of interesting, but no more. Seth, though-when he turned in that direction and saw it, he went nuts. Started waving his arms and gabbling in that private language of his. To me it always sounds like talk on a tape that someone is playing backward.

Bill and June and the two older kids went along with him the way they do-did-when he gets excited and starts verbalizing, which is rare but far from unheard-of. You know, kind of like Yeah, Seth, you bet, Seth, it sure is wild, Seth-and all the time they’re doing it, that embankment is slipping farther and farther behind them. Until finally Seth-get this-speaks up, not in gibberish but in English. He really talks, says: “Stop, Daddy, go back, Seth want to see mountain, Seth want to see Hoss and Little Joe.” Hoss and Little Joe, in case you don’t remember, are two of the main characters on Bonanza.