Sociopath? Read Free

would. Because there was, after all, that time when she got
attacked by the stray dog and he fought it off with only his
pocketknife, stabbing it in the eyes and mouth. He had some bad
bites on his hands and arms but he smiled his fleeting smile and
said at least he didn’t have to be put down like the dog.
    * *
    When Rafe was in second grade, his teacher
asked one of her colleagues if it was possible for a 7 year old to
be a sociopath because she swore that’s what Rafe Vincennes
was.
    “I’ve never had a student who made me so
nervous. I don’t see or hear him move and yet the next thing I know
he’s behind my desk. You look in his eyes and you don’t sense a
trace of emotion. The person in there doesn’t seem like a child at
all. I think he has a photographic memory. If he sees or reads or
hears something, he never forgets it. He rarely smiles and never
laughs. When he plays with the other kids, it doesn’t seem like
he’s making an effort to dominate them but he just does, almost
like he mesmerizes them.”
    Her co-worker laughed. “Dee, I can’t believe
you’d let a little kid spook you like that. You’re over-reacting
big-time.”
    “All I know is, I’ll be glad when this year
is over and he’s out of my classroom and someone else’s
problem.”
    What she didn’t know was that Rafe had, in
his silent way, come up behind her and overheard their
conversation.
    Her colleague started, “oh, Rafe, we didn’t
know you were there. Did you need something?”
    “See,” Miss Dee hissed when he was gone,
“that’s exactly what I mean!”
    *
    Rafe had always been aware that he had this
affect on some people but when he was seven, he wasn’t quite sure
what to do about it. He knew he tended to move quietly but was he
just supposed to start making sure to clomp around everywhere he
went? And how did you put more emotion in your eyes? He hadn’t a
clue. He guessed he could remind himself to smile more since that
was something his teacher had mentioned. As for being smart and
being picked to be the leader, he didn’t know how that came about
either. He never insisted and he never bragged. It just happened.
Miss Dee had wondered if he might be a sociopath. He looked the
word up in the dictionary - “a person who is anti-social and who
lacks a social conscience.” He shrugged it off. He didn’t know if
he lacked a social conscience or not. He didn’t even know what
having a social conscience meant.
    *
    He got his black German Shepherd puppy,
Raven, for his 6th birthday. It was the only gift he asked for.
From then on, when he was outdoors, he was trailed by two shadows
instead of only one, the blonde little sister and the jet black
dog. Both seemed equally as worshipful of him.
    There were occasional instances when he took
some time away from his responsibilities to Lane. (Although he
didn’t really consider them responsibilities but things he chose to
do).
    Even as a toddler, the family’s attempts to
keep track of him were relatively ineffectual. One sister or
another would be told by Magdelene to “watch Rafe” but watching
Rafe was impossible. Take your eyes off him for one minute and he
simply drifted away, like smoke.
    A search would be mounted and eventually the
three-year-old would be discovered squatted in the back of one of
the horse stalls, communing, they guessed, with its resident. Or
he’d be napping in the cabin of one of the boats. At age four, he
made it all the way up to the Cabin by himself where they found him
rocking in one of the chairs on the porch. And at five, he took a
pirogue up an inlet to fish.
    Renny whipped him for that one, whipped him
hard with his belt.
    “Don’t you ever take a boat out by yourself
again. You don’t know where you’re at and you could get lost back
in those creeks and swamps. Do you understand me, Rafe?”
    He simply looked at his father with tearless
eyes, having not made a sound during his spanking.
    “But I always know exactly where I’m