Calling someone crazy—an equal opportunity euphemism that could have applied to someone like Freddie, who was probably bipolar or borderline schizophrenic, made worse by alcohol—was really another form of denying how troubled someone was, which made the problem, if not okay, then at least typical. No matter how bad it was, you’d hear people say, “Well, the nigger crazy, you know. He just crazy.” And no one contemplated therapy. That solution was crazy itself to a lot of people. “Oh, no,” they’d say about Freddie. “He’ll be all right. He just drunk. Probably he should eat something to coat his stomach against the liquor.”

In point of fact, Uncle Willie had been diagnosed with some form of battle fatigue or shell shock that had become progressively worse, though he was harmless. Although I wasn’t told about his condition during the time I was living in his home, it seemed he was convinced that he was in the FBI—of which he is still convinced to this day, and no one at the mental health facility where he lives has tried to correct him on that. Neither did I the first time I had direct experience working with him on “assignment,” a little later in this era. On that occasion we were driving to do an errand one day in his unassuming green Rambler—one of the classic midsixties models made right there in Milwaukee—I couldn’t help observing his cool outfit: a jacket and white shirt, tie with a stickpin in it, and little snap brim straw hat and shades. That became his undercover disguise; it helped him blend in, so he said. Without any reference to his “work,” all of a sudden he pulled over, looked straight ahead, and spoke through clenched teeth, like a ventriloquist, so as not to appear to be talking to me.

“Yeah, they’re over there checking me out right now,” Uncle Willie said. “They’re checking me out.”

“They are?” I asked excitedly, thinking of Bill Cosby’s I Spy series and all the latest James Bond stories I’d seen or read. Wow, this was cool!

Just as I turned my head to look over and see who was tailing us, Uncle Willie grabbed the steering wheel, whispering hoarsely, “Don’t look! Don’t look! They’ll know we’re on to them!”

Unfortunately, I had already turned and looked, only to discover that nobody was there. In one fell swoop, I realized that this meant many of the grandiose claims he’d made over the years, or that others had heard from him, weren’t true. One of those claims that I heard from others, for instance, was that he had some original Picasso paintings stashed in an undisclosed location and that he had willed them to Ophelia. These were glamorous, bold visions, the kind of daydreams that I loved to think about and that I hated to learn were only true in his fantasy world.