The Tin Box (24 page)

That accusation hit William hard enough to hurt. He took a step back. “No.”

“I’m sorry. I was hoping I could… keep a distance between us.” He chuckled wryly. “You see how that worked out. This is breaking my heart, but better quickly than slowly. I can’t… we can’t do this anymore.”

William had no more words for him. No more words at all, really. He’d experienced disappointment in the past, abuse, rejection. But his heart had never before felt like a shard of cold obsidian nor had his soul ever felt so hopeless.

He stood silently as Colby put on his flip-flops and went to get his shirt. And then it occurred to William that he was going to have to unlock the gate to let Colby out. For a wild, irrational moment he entertained the idea of refusing to do so. He could hide the keys and then Colby would be stuck here with him.

Imprisoned in a mental hospital against his will. Just like Bill.

William put on his sandals and walked down the hall, out into the glaring sun, up the driveway. By the time he’d opened the gate, Colby had ridden over on his bike. “I’m sorry, Will. I fucked up. I handled this really badly.”

“No,” William replied, because that was all he could manage.

He watched Colby ride away.

He relocked the gate and trudged back down the slight slope. He was going to continue looking through the files alone. He was still going to find Bill.

He was so foolish. For a little while, he’d allowed himself to believe that he could get over his shitty childhood and horrible experiences and gloomy, repressed self. He’d believed that he could find happiness with an extraordinary man.

He should have known better than to believe again.

W
ILLIAM
looked through patient files late into the night. He knew he wouldn’t be able to sleep, not when his stomach was still roiling over losing Colby. Losing him before he ever really had him. He’d had a light dinner and then turned the fan on high, hoping in vain that it would cool him a little.

It was past midnight, and his eyes felt raw and grainy when he found the file.
William James Wright
, said the slightly smeary tab.
Admitted January 5, 1938. Age: 23. Diagnosis: Sexual perversion, homosexuality.

Oh God. Twenty-three.

The file was thick, the notes extensive. William took it next door to his apartment and sat in his comfortable chair, dust sticking to his sweaty skin, a glass of ice water at hand. A moth flew in the open window and circled dizzily around his lamp. He tried to shoo it away but it kept coming back, beating itself against the hot bulb until it fluttered to the table and was still.

He began with the admission notes. The ink had faded and the handwriting was hard to read, so he had to squint a little.

Patient is a healthy 23-year-old male. Five feet, eight inches, 135 pounds. Brown eyes, brown hair. Slightly underweight and lacking in robustness. No obvious scars or physical infirmities; no prior record of psychiatric treatment. Demeanor is subdued, detached. No signs of delusions or hallucinations.

Patient was admitted subsequent to involuntary committal. His parents had been concerned for some time that he might be homosexual. Patient refused to discuss matter. When parents became aware that patient had gone to another man’s home for a homosexual tryst, they called police. Patient and the other man were discovered in flagrante. The other man fled and was able to elude authorities but patient was arrested and charged with sodomy. Judge ruled for committal in lieu of criminal conviction.

Although patient admits to homosexual thoughts and behavior, he demonstrates defiance in being unwilling to admit he is ill. Prognosis: guarded.

The thick sheaf of pages that followed detailed the various things that were done to Bill. The chart noted his reassignments from cell to dorm and back, although not the reason for them, as well as his weight and other vital statistics. William soon recognized Dr. Fitzgerald’s cramped handwriting, which usually summarized his meetings with Bill and his treatment recommendations. There was quite a bit of paperwork concerning the insulin therapy and its aftermath. Bill had nearly doubled in weight during the therapy but the excess pounds dropped away after the insulin was discontinued, and he evened out at 117 pounds. He must have been emaciated.

William mostly skimmed the notes. A few phrases cropped up repeatedly in the doctor’s comments:
uncooperative, denial, lying
. When William got to the section on the castration, he read even fewer of the details. He did manage to learn, however, that Bill had very nearly died from a postoperative infection. After the surgery, Dr. Fitzgerald seemed to have taken particular delight in repeatedly testing Bill’s sexual responses to various stimuli. There was smug self-satisfaction in his tone as he described Bill’s waning ability to become aroused.

A police report followed. Bill had been recaptured and dragged back to the hospital. A nurse dispassionately noted that when he was readmitted, Bill was suffering from extensive scrapes and bruising, as well as a broken rib. William wondered if the beating had happened at his brother’s hands or from the police.

Dr. Fitzgerald was furious over the escape. He apparently took it as a personal insult, a criticism of his ability as a psychiatrist. He recommended the Freeman-Watts procedure. It would be the first time the procedure had been tried in Jelley’s Valley.

On September 3, 1942, Dr. Fitzgerald and another doctor named Mason performed a prefrontal lobotomy. Holes were bored in Bill’s skull, and the frontal lobes of his brain were ablated. William had to look the word up—it meant destroyed.

According to the chart, there was no infection this time, and Bill recovered from the surgery fairly quickly. Dr. Fitzgerald wrote with satisfaction that the patient’s obstinacy had disappeared and that escape was no longer a risk. William had to read the scant nurses’ notes that followed to glean the full truth. After the lobotomy, Bill was unable to perform more than minimal self-care. He was incontinent. He could speak only a few words.

William James Wright, age 59, died of pneumonia at the Jelley’s Valley State Insane Asylum on February 7, 1975. No family could be found to claim his body, so he was buried on the hospital grounds. The file didn’t specify where.

William sat for a long time with the file in his lap and the dead moth beside him. Finally he stood and turned off the reading light. He gently placed the file on the shelf next to the tin box. He took off his shorts and, naked, climbed into bed.

He was still awake when the dark outside his window grayed to dawn.

W
ILLIAM
had all the solitude and quiet he could possibly need for finishing his dissertation. He worked tirelessly on it, taking breaks only to jog the hospital grounds or lift the hand weights. He allowed himself two hours in the evening to read or watch TV. Sometimes he watched porn instead, and although he got off on it, the experiences weren’t very satisfying. He accomplished a huge amount of work, though, and was able to send several chapters to Dr. Ochoa for feedback.

A week after he’d last seen Colby, William went into town. He was counting on Colby having the day off. Sure enough, when William entered the building, the older man at the post office counter greeted him with a hearty hello. The man was taller and more heavily built than Colby, with a wild shock of white hair, but his blue eyes and wide smile were very familiar. “What can I do you for?” he boomed jovially.

“I came to check my mail and return some books I borrowed.”

Those eyes lit with recognition and the smile faded. Without a word, Colby’s grandfather turned around. He grabbed some papers from one of the mail slots, spun back to William, and plopped them on the counter.

William glanced at them. Credit card bill, some kind of notice from the university, junk mail. “Thanks.” He hesitated a moment before setting down the plastic bag of books.

He didn’t know what Colby had told his grandfather about him. The old man didn’t exactly look hostile, but he certainly wasn’t friendly. And he didn’t say anything either. Feeling very awkward, William thanked him again, picked up his mail, and left.

After that, he did his shopping in Mariposa. He still returned to JV once a week to retrieve the mail. Always on a Wednesday or Thursday. He and Colby’s grandfather never exchanged more than a few muttered words.

William went to the produce stand, but the reception from Missy was decidedly chilly. He realized that an estrangement from Colby meant he’d basically broken up with the entire town of Jelley’s Valley. No more transcendental tamales from Rafa and Luis. The only person in town who didn’t seem to care whether William and Colby were friends anymore was Donald Hall, the owner of the gas station, and he’d been surly to begin with. On the one hand, William was sad to lose some of the local things he’d come to enjoy, as well as annoyed that he’d have to drive more than an hour round trip for basic supplies. On the other hand, it made him smile to know that people here cared so deeply about Colby.

The heat settled in for good, making even the cows listless and logy.

On the Fourth of July, there were fireworks in Jelley’s Valley. William couldn’t see them, but he stood outside and listened to the bangs reverberate against the hills. He wondered if Colby was watching them, smelling the sharp tang of gunpowder, maybe sitting on a blanket in the little park near the school and eating a half-burned hamburger.

Two evenings later, William drove to Fresno. It was a Friday night, so the Stockyard’s parking lot was almost full. William was wearing the green shirt Colby had given him. It was slightly tighter across the chest and biceps; William had added a little muscle over the past weeks. But his old jeans still fit and so did his blue-striped button-down.

The band was playing when he entered the bar, and it was loud. Instead of the pretty but untalented singer of last time, this band featured a fat man with a gorgeous voice who also played a mean blues harmonica. The dance floor was packed with bouncing, swaying men and a few women, and the air was thick with the smell of sweat and beer. The knots of lovers had spilled over from the bathroom hallway into the main room, each pair occupied with their own private dance. One young man was leaning back against the wall and looking blissfully breathless as two other men kissed and stroked him.

William had to push and twist his way to the bar. Once again, his height was in his favor. He caught the bartender’s eye easily and ordered a beer. Since he had to drive himself home this time, he’d need to make this one last.

None of the tables were available, so William found an empty spot along one wall and simply watched. He’d rarely been in a position to look at other men so openly and frankly, especially not when they tended to look right back. It was a racially diverse crowd, although predominantly white and Latino. The men ranged in age from barely twenty-one to well into their sixties, although most seemed roughly his age. There were all kinds of physical types: small and delicate, big and burly, thin, fat, muscular, smooth, hairy. A lot of them were dressed very much like William, while some wore Western gear or leather, and some sported something a little flashier. One tall man with shaved head and a bodybuilder’s physique wore a pair of skintight yellow shorts with cutouts for his ass cheeks.

William liked the way men moved. He admired the play of their muscles, the swell of their butts, the bulge of their crotches. He enjoyed their deep voices. He couldn’t really say which traits he preferred. While some of the men were undoubtedly better-looking than others, he could imagine himself attracted to any man in the room. Every one of them had his own charms. Sex with any of them might be fun.

“Hey. Why aren’t you dancing?”

The guy was a few years older and a few inches shorter than William. He had light-brown skin, dark eyes and hair, and a slight paunch beneath his plain black shirt. His smile was devastatingly handsome.

“I was finishing my beer.”

The man peered at the glass, which held mostly suds. “Looks like it’s finished. Want to?” He tilted his head toward the dance floor.