The Madman's Tale (18 page)

“So, you didn’t see the other person?”

“No. I don’t think so. It was dark. I might have looked a little, though.”

“And what did you see?”

“A man in white. That’s all.”

“Could you tell how big? Did you see his face?”

Napoleon shook his head again. “Everyone looks big to me, C-Bird. Even you. And I didn’t see his face. When he walked past my bunk, I squeezed my eyes shut and hid my head. I do remember one thing, though. He seemed to be floating. All white and floating.”

The small man took a deep breath. “Some of the bodies, during the retreat from Moscow, froze so solid that the skin took on the color of ice on a pond. Like gray and white and translucent, all at the same time. Like fog. That was what I remember.”

Francis absorbed what he’d heard, and saw that Mister Evil was walking through the dayroom, signaling the start of their afternoon group session. He also saw Big Black and Little Black maneuvering through the throng of patients. Francis started suddenly, when he noticed that both men wore their white pants and white orderly jackets.

Angels, he thought.
Francis had one other, brief conversation, while heading into the group session. Cleo stepped in front of him, blocking his passage down that corridor to one of the smaller treatment rooms. She swayed back and forth before speaking, a little like a ferryboat nestling into its berth at a dock.

“C-Bird,” she said. “Do you think Lanky did that to Short Blond?”

Francis shook his head slightly, as if in doubt. “It doesn’t seem to be the sort of thing that Lanky would do,” he said. “It seems so much worse than he could ever manage.”

Cleo breathed out deeply. Her entire bulk shuddered. “I thought he was a good man. A little wacky, like the rest of us, confused about things, sometimes, but a good man. I cannot believe that he would do such a bad thing.”

“He had blood on his shirt. And he seemed to have picked out Short Blond and for some reason, he thought she was evil, and this scared him, Cleo. When we get scared, we do things that are unexpected. All of us do. In fact, I’d bet that just about everyone here did something when they got scared, and that’s why they’re here.”

Cleo nodded in agreement. “But Lanky seemed different.” Then she shook her head. “No. That’s not right. He seemed the same. And we’re all different, and that’s what I mean. He was different outside, but in here, he was the same, and what happened, that seemed like an outside thing that seemed to happen inside.”

“Outside?”

“You know, stupid. Outside. Like beyond.” Cleo made a wide, sweeping gesture with her arm, as if to indicate the world beyond the hospital walls.

This made some sense to Francis and he managed a small smile. “I think I see what you’re getting at,” he said.

Cleo leaned forward. “Something happened last night, in the girls’ dormitory. I didn’t tell anyone.”

“What?”

“I was awake. Couldn’t sleep. Tried going over all the lines of the play, but it didn’t work, although usually it does. I mean, go figure. Usually, when I get to Anthony’s speech in act two, well, my eyes roll back and I’m snoring like a little baby, except, I don’t know if little babies snore, because nobody’s ever let me get anywhere near theirs, the nasty bitches—but that’s another story.”

“So you couldn’t sleep, either.”

“Everyone else was.”

“And?”

“I saw the door open, and a figure come in. I hadn’t heard the door key in
the lock, my bunk, it’s way on the far side, right by the windows, and there was moonlight last night that was hitting my head. Did you know that in the old days, people thought if you went to sleep with the moonlight on your forehead you would wake up crazy? That’s where the word lunatic comes from. Maybe it’s true, C-Bird. I sleep in the moonlight all the time, and I keep getting crazier and crazier, and no one wants me anymore. I haven’t got anybody anywhere to talk to me, and so they put me in here. All by myself. No one to come visit. That doesn’t seem fair, does it? I mean some people somewhere should come visit me. I mean, how hard would that be? The bastards. The goddamn bastards.”

“But someone came in to the bunk room?”

“Strange. Yes.” Cleo shook a little bit, quivering. “No one ever comes in at night. But this night, someone did. And they stayed a few seconds, and then the door went shut again, and this time, because I was listening hard, I heard the key in the lock.”

“Do you think anybody asleep by the door saw the person?” Francis asked.

Cleo made a face and shook her head. “I already asked around. Discreetly, you know. No. Lots of people sleeping. It’s the meds, you know. Everyone gets knocked right out.”

Then her face flushed and Francis saw the sudden arrival of some tears. “I
liked
Short Blond,” she said. “She was always so kind to me. Sometimes she would share lines with me, speak Marc Anthony’s part, or maybe the chorus. And I
liked
Lanky, too. He was a gentleman. Opened the door and let the ladies pass through first at dinnertime. Said grace for the whole table. Always called me Miss Cleo, so polite and nice. And he really had all of our interests at heart. Keep evil away. Makes sense.”

She dabbed at her eyes with a handkerchief and then blew her nose. “Poor Lanky. He was right all along, and no one listened and now look. We need to find some way to help him, because, after all, he was just trying to help all of us. The bastards. The goddamn bastards.”

Then she grabbed Francis by the arm, and made him escort her into the group session.

Mister Evil was arranging steel folding chairs in a circle inside the treatment room. He gestured at Francis to take a couple from where they were stacked beneath a window, and Francis dropped Cleo’s arm and crossed the room, as she gingerly lowered herself into one of the seats. He reached down and seized a pair, and was about to turn and bring these back to the center where the group was gathering, when some movement outdoors grabbed his attention. From where he was standing, he could see the main entranceway, the great iron gate that was open, and the drive that went up to the administration building. A large black car was pulling to the front. This, in itself, wasn’t
all that unusual; cars and ambulances arrived off and on throughout the day. But there was something about this particular one that he could not precisely say, but which grabbed his attention. It was as if it carried urgency.

Francis watched as the car shuddered to a halt. After a second, a tall, dark-skinned woman emerged wearing a long tan raincoat and carrying a black briefcase that matched the long hair that fell about her shoulders. The woman stood, and seemed to survey the entirety of the hospital complex, before burrowing forward, and striding up the stairs with a singleness of purpose that seemed to him to be like an arrow, shot at a target.

O
rganization came slowly and unnaturally to them all. It wasn’t, as Francis noted inwardly, as if they were suddenly rowdy or even disruptive, like schoolchildren being called to pay attention to some boring classwork. It was more that the members were restless and nervous simultaneously. They’d all had too little sleep, too many drugs, and far too much excitement, mixed with a significant amount of uncertainty. One older woman who wore her long, stringy gray hair in a tangled cascading explosion on her head kept bursting into tears, which she would rapidly dab away with her sleeve, shake her head, smile, say she was okay, only to burst forth in sobs again after a few seconds. One of the middle-aged men, a hard-eyed former commercial fishing boat sailor with a tattoo of a naked woman on his forearm, wore a furtive, uneasy look, and kept twisting in his seat, checking the door behind him, as if he expected someone to silently slip into the room. People who stuttered, stuttered more. People likely to snap angrily perched on their chairs. Those likely to cry seemed quicker to their teary-eyed destination. Those who were mute descended deeper into silence.

Even Peter the Fireman, whose calmness usually dominated the sessions, had difficulty sitting still, and more than once lit a cigarette and paced the perimeter of the group. He reminded Francis of a boxer in the moments before the bout was scheduled to begin, loosening up in the ring, throwing rights and lefts at imaginary jaws, while his real opponent waited in a distant corner.

Had Francis been a veteran of the mental hospital, he would have recognized a significant tick upwards in the paranoia levels of many of his fellow patients. It was still unarticulated, and like a kettle steadily heating toward a boil, had yet to truly start singing. But it was noticeable, nonetheless, like a bad smell on a hot afternoon. His own voices clamored for attention within him, and it took the usual significant force of will to quiet them. He could feel the muscles in his arms and stomach tightening, as if they could lend assistance to the mental tendons that he was employing to keep his imagination in check.

“I think we should address the events of the other night,” Mr. Evans said slowly. He was wearing reading glasses, which he let slip down on his nose, so that he peered over them, his eyes darting back and forth from patient to patient. Evans was one of those people, Francis thought, who would make a statement that seemed straightforward—like the need to address precisely what was dominating everyone’s thoughts—but look as if he meant something utterly different. “It seems to be on everyone’s minds.”

One of the men in the group instantly pulled his shirt up over his head and clamped his hands over his ears. There was some squirming in the seats from the others. No one spoke immediately, and the silence that crept over the group seemed to Francis to be tight, like the wind that filled a sailboat’s sails—invisible. After a second, he shattered the quiet by asking, “Where’s Lanky? Where have they taken him? What have they done with him?”

Mr. Evans looked relieved that the first questions were so easily answered. He leaned back on his steel chair and replied, “Lanky was taken to the county lockup. He’s being held in an isolation cell there under twenty-four-hour observation. Doctor Gulptilil went over to see him this morning and to make certain that he’s receiving his proper medications in the proper dosages. He’s okay. He’s a little calmer than he was before the”—he paused—“
incident
.”

This statement took the assembly a moment or two to absorb.

It was Cleo who burst forth with the next question. “Why don’t they bring him back here? This is where he belongs. Not in some jail with bars and no sunshine and probably a bunch of criminals. Bastards. Rapists and thieves, I’ll bet. And poor Lanky. In the hands of the police. The fascist bastards.”

“Because he’s being charged with a crime,” the psychologist said quickly. Francis thought him oddly reluctant to use the word murder.

“But I don’t understand something,” Peter the Fireman said in a voice low enough to make everyone in the room turn toward him. “Lanky is clearly crazy. We all saw how he was struggling, what’s the word you like to use …”

“Decompensating,” Mister Evil said stiffly.

“A real dumb-ass word,” Cleo said angrily. “Just a real stupid, dumb-ass, goddamn completely useless bastard of a word.”

“Right,” Peter continued, picking up some speed. “He was really in the
midst of some big moment. I mean, we could all see it, all day, growing worse and nobody did anything to help him. And so he exploded. And he was already here in the hospital for all of his problems, why would they charge him? I mean isn’t that pretty much the definition of someone who didn’t really know what he was doing?”

Evans nodded, but also bit his lip slightly before answering. “That’s a determination the county prosecutor will have to make. Until then, Lanky stays where he is …”

“Well, I think they should bring him back here where his friends are,” Cleo said angrily. “We’re all he knows now. He doesn’t have any family except us.”

There was a general murmur of assent.

“Isn’t there something we can do?” the woman with the stringy hair asked.

This comment also inspired a round of mumbled agreement.

“Well,” Mister Evil said in a less-than-convincing tone, “I think we should all continue to address the problems that put us here. By working at getting better, perhaps we can find a way of helping out Lanky.”

Cleo snorted in obvious disgust. “Goddamn wishy-washy stupid,” she said. “Idiotic, dumb bastards.” It was a little unclear to Francis precisely whom Cleo was referring to, but he didn’t find himself disagreeing with her choice of words. Cleo had an empress’s ability to cut to the crux of the matter, in a most condescending and imperious manner. Obscenities began to sprout throughout the group. The room seemed to fill with an unruly noise.

Mister Evil held up his hand, clearly exasperated. “This sort of angry talk doesn’t do Lanky—or any of us—any good,” he said. “So let’s shut it off now.”

He made a dismissive, slicing gesture with his hand. It was the sort of motion that Francis had grown accustomed to seeing from the psychologist, one that underscored once again who was sane and thus, who was alleged to be in control. And, as usual, it had the properly intimidating effect; the group slowly settled back, grumbling, into the steel seats, the small moment heading toward rebelliousness dissipating in the stale air around them. Francis could see that Peter the Fireman was still deep within the moment, however, his forearms crossed in front of him and his brow knitted.

“I think there’s not enough angry talk,” he said, finally, not loudly, but with a sense of purpose behind each word. “And I fail to see how it doesn’t do Lanky any good. Who knows what might or might not help him at this point? I think we should be even more vocal in protest.”

Mister Evil spun in his seat. “You probably would,” he said.

The two men glared at each other for a moment, and Francis saw they were both on the verge of something a little bigger and more physical. Then, almost as swiftly the moment disappeared, because Mister Evil turned away, saying, “You should keep your opinions to yourself. Where they best belong.”

It was a dismissive statement, and it froze the group.