Unfit to Be at Large
Elizabeth Higgins
Unfit to be at Large: Fragments from the life of Helen Fischer
Content Warning: Graphic Death, Suicide, Grief, Mental Illness
Part 1: Felling a Life
CONVEYANCE
Two men in button boots and frock coats and top hats took my arms, pulled me into a carriage, then onto a train, slid steel faces on wood benches. Boxed me in as though I had somewhere to go, all of it shaken like paints in a sea of green wax with me suspended inside, inhaled in small shudders as the railcar rocked on its tracks.
The Morning Oregonian, May 12, 1900, p. 4(i)
SATURDAY, DECEMBER 23, 1899
He left early, gray wool coat buttoned over worn blue overalls. Winchester rifle strapped flat across his shoulder. Both pockets filled with slips of pork in buttered bread, boiled eggs wrapped in paper that I handed him on his way out. The bright gray sky cast his silhouette in the doorway. I spent the day scrubbing and boiling the wash, sewing a new steel button on his green shirt like I told him I would.
Abeyance
The wife and daughter incline to the opinion that Mr. Fischer is not dead… ¹
For a long time
I still felt he might
walk through the door
at any moment,
goose in hand
ready for plucking,
sorry for taking
so long.
That I might be able
to lay my hand
on the warm breast
of his work shirt,
that his fingertips
and the outer edges
of his ears
were still red
with life.
That our story
was still unfolding.
Day XXVIII, part II
The body, by request of Mrs. Fischer, was kept out of public view. ³
I doubled over
and shielded
from my sight
white hands cramped,
arms marbled purple,
a circle of gunpowder
stamped in what once
was the soft underside
of a chin.
His chin. In his head
a dark hollow
where memories
emptied red
onto slick rocks
and green moss,
where red dried
and blackened.
Where edges
grew rot.
The face I knew
each crease of,
moldering
before me.
Plum pits
where eyes were.
Where once
I was seen.
Day XXVIII
As the weeks passed
the bells in my body
sounded one by one
until everything rang
and rang
and rang and clattered
tangles of nerves, rattled
walls, kicked up dust
from the crevices
between floorboards
and burned it with friction.
Shapes of letters
and features of faces
formed behind fumes.
An officer appeared
through the sheer curtain
over the front door,
opened a wooden
jaw, broke his words
over me,
submerged slivers
in my skin.
My mouth was
dry pulp, air taken
through tight fibers
and kept inside.
At about 10 o’clock on the morning of January 19th, 1900, my great grandfather, Irving Higgins, stood at the base of Spencer’s Butte looking down at the blue overalls that held August Fischer’s slightly decomposed body. He would have seen where the bullet entered at his chin and exited at the top of his head. He would have seen the nearby oak tree that caught his black hat. His boots would have crunched the thick underbrush. Hopefully gripped the rocks. His breath must have billowed out in white clouds. Irving was one of eight men in the search party that found August’s body. It had to be carried over a quarter mile through dense brush and was a big job, as it weighed 175 pounds and only two men could handle it at a time. ² When it was his turn, did my great grandfather carry August by the wrists, or the ankles?
Only two men could handle it at a time
Picking Up
I tried to keep track
of the days.
The fields, the farm.
The chickens.
The children.
Held myself
inside the seams
of my apron,
worked while fibers
wore thin.
Hours stretched sheer
and collapsed into weeks.
Embers settled in the ash
of a season.
Walls wavered.
Invited infirmity.
Cold air,
and with it winter moths
I thought I left
in the middle west.
Pieces
Their voices dissolved
in the air, receded
to a distant commotion.
Minnie was sixteen.
Albert twelve.
I sat in the brown chair,
brass upholstery tacks
cutting cold
against my skin, frozen
eyes fixed on
falling rain
that blew and clicked
the windowpane,
scored and scarred
the porcelain sky.
For a moment
they appeared
in the frame:
boots loose in mud,
blue dress curled
back in the breeze,
buckets swinging
under handles
gripped tight.
And then there was only
the yellow bellflower,
branches shading
a small stone lamb
and six plates of slate
laid flush in the ground.
The fields made
their last show
of sap green growth
as though frost
had passed.
As though there were
a farmer who might
open up the earth
and find life there.
Descent
Light passed.
Dogs howled
at the doorstep
to a lingering scent,
slid incisors
through the space
between the door
and its frame.
I braced myself
on the iron stove,
held tight to the lip
of the cooktop,
traced shapes
of bears outside
with my eyes as
the echo circled in,
as evil wrenched
the folds
of my petticoat,
lips and wind snarling,
fists cinched tight.
At Nightfall
Blood peppered itself
into my periphery,
slid into pools
from the carcass
carved
in my mind,
dripped each night
from a ceiling
sealed against
the elements,
into a house
where each sound
could have marked
his return
but could not have
after all,
where each sound
instead rung inside
the black hollow
of the hole
in his head,
ran down skin
strained in cheesecloth,
settled in foul flesh.
I was rendered
in hot oil.
Kernels burst
in my veins,
copper tubing
licked by vicious smiles
of green flame.
Commitment ⁴
was the headline
bled in black ink,
settled deep
in creases
and hardened
beneath the skin
of my fingers
and hands.
Near the bottom
of the fifth column
on page seven
the paper said
that Helen Fischer
was committed
to the asylum
in Salem Saturday
on the charge
of insanity.
My body sits in a small
white room with an
intake nurse, but
the rest of me
drifts, circles
the house, the butte,
watches the pack
of dogs sprint
toward the orchards
from above.
I hover over
the collars I starched
when I still thought
he would return,
inhale the scent
of skin and overripe fruit
on his coat.
Hear whispers
of pity.
The paper said
It will be remembered
that her husband August
committed suicide
near Spencer Butte ⁵
in January,
the bullet running up
through his chin,
his hat…blown
into the tree above him. ⁶
1918: The first edition of the Statistical Manual for the Use of Institutions for the Insane is published, representing the country’s first nationwide statistical standard for mental illness, listing 21 disorders. ⁸ The SMUII is renamed ⁹ and revised ten times over the next twenty-four years. ¹⁰
1943-1947: During World War II, the U.S. Army finds that SMUII diagnoses only account for ten percent of their cases, necessitating the creation of a separate classification system. ¹¹ Postwar, there is pressing demand for a cross-institutional standard.
1952: The first edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM), is published, listing 106 disorders. ¹²
1968: The second edition, DSM-II, lists 182 disorders. ¹³
1974: my mother graduates with a master’s in social work.
1980: the DSM-III lists 265 disorders. ¹⁴
1994: the DSM-IV lists 297 disorders. ¹⁵
2003: I, thirteen, secret my mother’s copy of the DSM-IV from the bottom of the tall white bookshelf in the living room. I slide my hand across its maroon cover and yellow letters, open its cracked spine. This is the source material. The words in the questions she asks me, this is where they come from. I am determined to know more about me than she does. I read, inhale the clean lines of black ink on white paper. Again and again I open it, watch the words closely as though the right gaze might bring hidden lines into focus, peel paper to reveal missing pages. By the time I’m done with it, the binding is broken clean through.
Pages amber like flypaper in the light of a century: A Timeline
⸺⸺⸺⸺⸺⸺⸺⸺
¹ “Missing: August Fischer, Farmer, Last Heard of Friday.” The Eugene City Guard (1870-1899), 30 Dec. 1899, p. 1. Historic Oregon Newspapers, University of Oregon Libraries, oregonnews.uoregon.edu/lccn/sn84022653/1899-12-30/ed-1/seq-1/. Accessed 16 April 2023.
² “August Fischer: Body Found at Foot of Spencer Butte This Morning.” The Eugene City Guard (1870-1899), 27 Jan. 1900, p. 5. Historic Oregon Newspapers, University of Oregon Libraries. https://oregonnews.uoregon.edu/lccn/sn84022653/1900-01-27/ed-1/seq-5/. Accessed 16 April 2023.
³ “August Fischer: Body Found...”
⁴ "Commitment.” The Eugene Weekly Guard (1899-1908), 12 May, 1900, p. 7. Historic Oregon Newspapers, University of Oregon Libraries, https://oregonnews.uoregon.edu/lccn/sn96088102/1900-05-12/ed-1/seq-7/. Accessed 16 April 2023.
⁵ "Commitment.”
⁶ "August Fischer: Body Found..."
⁷ “Table X: Showing the alleged cause of insanity as stated in commitments of patients admitted from December 1, 1898 to November 30, 1900, inclusive.” Ninth biennial report of the board of trustees and superintendent of the Oregon State Insane Asylum to the twenty-first legislative assembly, 1901, p. 23. Digital Collections, State Library of Oregon , https://digital.osl.state.or.us/islandora/object/osl%3A94960. Accessed 7 June 2023.
⁸ Statistical Manual for the Use of Institutions for the Insane. American Medico-Psychological Association; National Committee for Mental Hygiene, 1918.
⁹ Statistical Manual for the Use of Hospitals for Mental Diseases. 3rd ed., American Psychiatric Association; National Committee for Mental Hygiene, 1923.
¹⁰ Statistical Manual for the Use of Hospitals for Mental Diseases. 10th ed., American Psychiatric Association; National Committee for Mental Hygiene, 1942.
¹¹ Diagnostic and Statistical Manual, Mental Disorders. American Psychiatric Association, 1952, p. vi.
¹² Surís, Alina et al. "The Evolution of the Classification of Psychiatric Disorders." Behavioral Sciences (Basel, Switzerland), vol. 6, no. 1, 18 Jan. 2016. National Library of Medicine, https://doi.org/10.3390/bs6010005. Accessed 11 June 2023.
¹³ Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. 2nd ed, American Psychiatric Association, 1968.
¹⁴ Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. 3rd ed, American Psychiatric Association, 1980.
¹⁵ Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. 4th ed, American Psychiatric Association, 1994.
Elizabeth Higgins writes across genres and disciplines to consolidate information and experience, and through archival research as a way to confront the past and reframe the present. Elizabeth is an academic coach and former library cataloger with an MFA in creative writing from Oregon State University Cascades.
