The Insanity Defense

The Scream by Edvard Munch, 1910.
Courtesy the Munch Museum

Authors — especially those who write fiction — can be classified in any number of ways, but among my favorite categories are “uncannily brilliant,” “deeply devoted to substance abuse” and “just plain nuts.” The jury remains divided about which camp I fall into, but at last poll the Twelve Angry Critics leaned toward acquittal by virtue of insanity.

After much rumination, I’m inclined to agree. There’s plenty of evidence, after all. What else but insanity could explain the devolution of an otherwise relatively well-adjusted, reasonably intelligent, fairly articulate person into a raving lunatic who engages in lengthy conversations with imaginary friends — or worse, imaginary enemies?

No one warned me about this unnerving possibility when I signed on to write fiction. Shouldn’t there be a clause in my contract somewhere? I’d like to see a label like the ones pharmaceutical companies are required to include with medications: “WARNING: Possible side effects of the writing life may include spreading hips, estrangement from family and friends, deteriorating eyesight, insomnia, abbreviated attention span, inability to abandon lost causes, crabbiness, extended periods of depression punctuated by brief euphoria, loss of interest in the real world, self-doubt, a tendency to woolgather at odd moments, and talking to people who don’t exist.”

It’s that last one that plays most decisively into the insanity defense. (Wouldn’t we all be ecstatic if spreading hips did?)

Talking to characters is what a jury might consider the smoking gun — at least in my case. By “talking,” I don’t mean the occasional rhetorical “Hmm. What would you do if…?” I mean carrying on protracted give-and-take conversations. Actually, arguments might be a better term.

After nearly twenty-five years, my significant other has learned just to ignore the patently loony behavior. Crazy babbling and fixed stares no longer cause him to reach for the phone number of the nice men with white coats and butterfly nets. (Of course, this is the same man who frequently finds his life in jeopardy when he bursts into my writing space to tell me some horrendous, funny-only-to-men joke just as I’m about to craft the quintessential bit of dialog that will save the day, so his judgment is questionable, at best.)

But I digress (which ought to be another of those fully disclosed possible side effects). About those character interactions: Lately I’ve begun to feel like a temperamental director dealing with a herd of malcontents and unrepentant hams.

“Gah! Cut! Cut!” I yell, tearing out my hair by double handfuls.

“What? What did we do?”

“That’s a good question. Exactly what is it you thought you were doing there?”

“Improvising.”

“Improvising? You do realize there’s a script, right?”

“Yeah, but it’s all wrong right here. Nobody behaves like that. It’s bogus.”

“Bogus?” I shake my head and sigh with weariness that knows no bounds. “See — this is part of the problem: You’re from the 19th century; that word’s not in your vocabulary. Who gave you permission to take off on your own little tangent?”

Just about then, another character usually joins the fray. “You know, if I were the hero, I’d—”

“You’re not the hero,” I hiss, whirling on him. “If you’d spend as much time developing your own role as you do analyzing his, we’d all be the better for it.”

Depending on the character, at this point he’ll either sulk — meaning I have to expend valuable mental energy soothing his wounded feelings — or dive into a particularly vile tirade denouncing my writing ability. The latter does nothing to improve my relationship with a cast already doubting my fitness to be their leader.

Every so often, I find someone from a completely different project costuming himself or herself in the current project’s wardrobe and sneaking onto the set.

“You there — the Merry Man in the back. Aren’t you supposed to be on Stage 4 plotting with the rest of the gang in Last Train to Comanche Wells?”

“Uh… Well, yeah,” he’ll answer, shuffling his dusty cowboy boots. “But… Well, to tell you the truth, ma’am, they’re about to bore me to death over there. And it’s confusing — very confusing.”

“Incompetents and amateurs!” I explode. “Who’s in charge on Stage 4? I want him nuked.”

“Nuked?” (Misplaced Cowboy Guy only thought he was confused before.)

“Oh fer cryin’ out loud… Ask one of the Rigelians to explain it to you.”

About the time I begin chastising the hero from Chaste Through the Snow because he won’t stop pressing the heroine’s heaving bosom to his manly chest while for the umpteenth time uttering “Your eyes are like limpid sapphire pools” as she faints at the prospect of consummating their forbidden lust, I find myself consumed by heaving sobs of despair. It’s precisely at that moment the gaggle of slightly flighty but endearing, hard-as-nails southern belles escapes the pages of The Bougainvillea Ladies’ Luncheon Club and rushes to console me.

“Get away from me! I don’t want chocolate. Well, I do, but not right now.”

“Hon, what you need is a good roll in the sack with that hunk from Chaste.”

“You know, my deah mama always told me—”

“Oh for pity’s sake. Just gimme the damn chocolate and go back to fanning yourselves on the verandah, will you? Why can’t any of you behave?”

Half of them mutter “ingrate” under their breaths, and the others cluck knowingly and whisper, “This time the villain lives, but the writer is about to perish by her own hand.”

“I can hear you, you know.” Buncha know-it-all buttinskis. (I’m not above an occasional under-the-breath mutter myself.)

Perhaps insanity is a virtue after all. A rubber room looks more appealing all the time.

Hubris Plus Inexperience Equals Fatal Irony

William J. Fetterman, Capt., U.S. Army

“Give me eighty men and I’ll ride through the whole Sioux Nation.”

So said Capt. William J. Fetterman in late 1866 as he assumed command of a U.S. Army detail tasked with defending a woodcutting expedition against Indians in the Dakota Territory. A fellow officer had declined the command after mounting, and failing to sustain, a similar effort two days earlier.

Fetterman overestimated his abilities and severely underestimated his opponent.

Born in Connecticut in 1833, William Judd Fetterman was the son of a career army officer. At the age of 28, in May 1861, he enlisted in the Union Army and immediately received a lieutenant’s commission. Twice brevetted for gallant conduct with the First Battalion of the 18th Infantry Regiment, Fetterman finished the Civil War wearing the brevet rank of lieutenant colonel of volunteers.

After the war, Fetterman elected to remain with the regular army as a captain. Initially assigned to Fort Laramie with the Second Battalion of the 18th Infantry, by November 1866 he found himself dispatched to Fort Phil Kearny, near present-day Sheridan, Wyoming. Since the post’s establishment five months earlier, the local population of about 400 soldiers and 300 civilian settlers and prospectors reportedly had suffered 50 raids by small bands of Sioux and Arapaho. In response, the fort’s commander, Col. Henry B. Carrington, adopted a defensive posture.

Red Cloud, ca. 1880
(photo by John K. Hillers, courtesy Beinecke
Rare Book and Manuscript Library)

Fetterman immediately joined a group of other junior officers in openly criticizing Carrington’s protocol. Although the 33-year-old captain lacked experience with the Indians, he didn’t hesitate to express contempt for the enemy. His distinguished war record lent credence to his argument: Since the Indian raiding parties consisted of only twenty to 100 mounted warriors, the army should run them to ground and teach them a lesson.

Fetterman’s voice and continuing raids eventually convinced the regimental commander at Fort Laramie to order Carrington to mount an offensive. Several minor scuffles, during which the soldiers proved largely ineffective due to disorganization and inexperience, merely bolstered the Indians’ confidence. Carrington himself had to be rescued after a force of about 100 Sioux surrounded him on a routine patrol. Even Fetterman admitted dealing with the “hostiles” demanded “the utmost caution.”

Jim Bridger, at the time a guide for Fort Phil Kearny, was less circumspect. He said the soldiers “don’t know anything about fighting Indians.”

On December 19, an army detail escorted a woodcutting party to a ridge only two miles from the fort before being turned back by an Indian attack. The next day, Fetterman and another captain proposed a full-fledged raid on a Lakota village about fifty miles distant. Carrington denied the request.

On the morning of December 21, with orders not to pursue “hostiles” beyond the two-mile point at which the previous patrol had met trouble, Fetterman, a force of 78 infantry and cavalry, and two civilian scouts escorted another expedition to cut lumber for firewood and building material. Within an hour of the group’s departure from the fort, the company encountered a small band of Oglala led by Crazy Horse. The Indians taunted the army patrol, which gave chase … beyond where they had been ordered not to go.

Fetterman and his men died here. The site
now is known as Massacre Hill. (public domain photo)

The great Sioux war leader Red Cloud and a force of about 2,300 Lakota, Arapaho, and Northern Cheyenne waited about one-half mile beyond the ridge. In less than 20 minutes, Fetterman and all 80 men under his command died. Most were scalped, beheaded, dismembered, disemboweled and/or emasculated.

The Indians suffered 63 casualties.

Among the Sioux and Cheyenne, the event is known as the Battle of the Hundred Slain or the Battle of 100 in the Hands. Whites know it better as the Fetterman Massacre, the U.S. Army’s worst defeat on the Great Plains until Lt. Col. George Armstrong Custer made a similar mistake ten years later at Little Big Horn in Montana.

Whether Fetterman deliberately disobeyed Carrington’s orders or the commander massaged the truth in his report remains the subject of debate. Although officially absolved of blame in the disaster, Carrington spent the rest of his life a disgraced soldier. Fetterman, on the other hand, was honored as a hero: A fort constructed nearly 200 miles to the south was given his name seven months after his death. A monument dedicated in 1901 marks the spot where the officers and men fell.