The Traveller (18 page)

‘Miller,’ Jeffers said, ‘arc you telling the group that you considered the beating rape of a seventy-three-year-old woman a satisfactory sexual experience?’

He would not be so blunt with some of the others, he thought.

Miller shook his head.

‘No, doc. Not when you put it like that,’ he sneered. ‘A satisfactory sexual experience, whatever the hell that is. What I was saying is — and freak there knows what I’m saying, don’t you, maggot? — is that she was there. I was there. It was just part of the whole scene — nothing special.’

‘Don’t you think it was something special to her?’

Miller tried to make a joke.

‘Well, maybe she’d never had it so good …’

There was a smattering of laughter, which faded swiftly.

‘Come on, Miller. You savaged an old woman. What kind of person does that?’

Miller glared across the room at Jeffers.

“You’re not listening, doc. I keep telling you, she was there. It was no big deal.’

“That’s the problem. It was.’

‘Well, not to me.’

So if it wasn’t such a big deal, what were you thinking of when you did it?’

Thinking of?’ Miller hesitated. ‘Hell, I don’t know. I was worried she might be able to make me, you know, so I made sure I crushed her glasses, and I was trying to be careful, didn’t want to wake the neighbors …’

“Come on, Mr. Miller. You left fingerprints all over the premises and you got caught trying to fence the old woman’s jewelry. What were you thinking about?’

Weil, I don’t know.’

He crossed his arms and stared dead ahead.

“Give it another try.’

“Look, doc, all I remember is being angry. You know, just flat-out pissed off. It seemed like nothing had been going any way except wrong. So I was definitely in a bad mood. And all I remember really is being pissed off. So pissed off I wanted to scream. I wanted to hurt somebody, you know?

That’s all, just make someone else hurt. I wanted that real bad. I’m sorry the old gal got in the way. But she was there, and that’s what I wanted. Got it? That do you okay?’

Jeffers leaned back. He thought to himself: I’m pretty good at this for a newcomer.

‘All right,’ he said. ‘Let’s talk about anger. Anyone?’

There was a small silence before Wasserman, who stuttered said, ‘S-s-sometimes I think I’m always angry.’

Jeffers leaned back in his chair when he heard one of the men reply, ‘Angry at what?’ There were only a few minutes left in the session and he knew that the group dynamic would take over; anger was always a fruitful subject. All the Lost Boys were angry. It was something they were intimate with.

He looked about the day room. It was an open, airy place, painted white, with a bank of windows that overlooked the exercise area. The furniture was old and threadbare, but that was to be expected in a state facility. There was a ping-pong table folded up against one wall, rarely used. Once there had been a pool table, but a pool cue in the hands of a psychotic patient one day had put two orderlies in the infirmary, so now there was none. There were magazines that flapped when a breeze found an open window, a television set that seemed possessed only to play soap operas and old movies. There was an out-of-tune upright piano. Periodically someone would step up to it and play a few notes as if hoping through some process of osmosis that it had come into tune. The piano is like the patients, Jeffers thought. We keep pushing at the keys, hoping to find a melody, usually discovering dissonance. Jeffers liked the room; it had a quiet, benign character, and it seemed to him sometimes that the room itself had defused trouble. It would be an incongruous place for a fight.

He could not remember a time he’d ever fought with his brother.

That was unusual: All brothers fight, why would we have been any different? But he was still unable to come up with a single memory of flat-out murderous brother-rage, the kind that suffuses one’s entire being one instant then evaporates the next.

He remembered a time when Doug had pinned him to the floor, easily, arms twisted back; but that had been to prevent him from chasing after their mother, who was transporting their report cards to the druggist. He had failed a course for the first time - French - and had been ashamed. He remembered his brother’s grip, which he could not break. Doug said nothing, just held him. He had not been certain what he was going to do: seize the report card, destroy it, he did not know. He simply knew that the druggist would be outraged, which he was. Locked for a week in my room each night. But next semester I got a B and the final semester it was an A.

‘Hey, Pope!’ It was Meriwether speaking. ‘Come on, Pope, you’re a killer, Pope. Tell us how angry you’ve got to be to kill someone.’

Jeffers waited, as did all the men in the room. This is a good question, he thought, perhaps not strictly from a therapeutic standpoint, but from curiosity.

Pope snorted. He had narrow black eyes and shoulders that were outsized for his small frame. Jeffers imagined him to be immensely powerful.

‘I never killed nobody I was real angry with.’

Meriwether laughed. ‘Awwww, come on, Pope. You killed that guy in the bar. You told us about it the other week. A fight, remember?’

‘That’s not anger. That was just a fight.’

‘He died.’

‘That happens. A lucky punch.’

‘You mean unlucky.’

Pope shrugged. ‘I guess from his position.’

‘You mean you fought him and he died and you weren’t even mad at him?’

‘You don’t understand so good, do you, wise guy? Sure, the dude and I had a fight. We’d been drinking. One thing came to another and he shouldn’a called me a name. But this ain’t anything special. This happens in every bar every night. But I never been so angry at some man that I sat around sober and figured out a way to do him. You’d think you could guess at that.’

This made sense to the group and they were quť

‘I was that angry once,’ said Weingarten. He’s been sac most of the session, Jeffers noted. He was a greasy-haii exhibitionist who’d gotten carried away with his disp a shopping mall and actually grabbed a young woman. She\ fought loose, easily picked him out of a lineup the next day, and he’d landed in the Lost Boys. Jeffers doubted the program would have much success with him; he had just begun to escalate his deviant behaviour. He probably remains too fascinated with his new vision to cut it out so early. The Lost Boys do not suffer from ordinary diseases. He had a sudden memory of the emphasis in medical school on catching disease early, before it progressed. Not so here, he thought. Here you had to catch the disease after it had formed and manifested itself fully. Then you tried to eradicate it. It was generally a losing proposition, he realized ruefully, despite the inflated rates of success that were created to ensure continued funding of the program.

‘I mean I wanted to kill him and everything.’

‘What did you do?’ Jeffers asked.

‘In high school there was this one guy who was always all over my case. You know the type of guy that walks up to you in front of everyone else and punches you real hard on the arm just to make you look bad. ‘Cause he knows you can’t hit him back? You know what I mean? A real jock. A real head case …’

‘Look who’s talking,’ said Meriwether.

Weingarten ignored him and continued.

‘I was gonna just kill him, at first. My dad had a hunting rifle, he liked to go deer hunting, which I thought was real gross, but he never bothered to take me anyway. It had a real nice scope on it and I had the guy, one time, right in the crosshatches. Shoulda done it, too. But then I got smart and figured I’d just get him back kinda like he’d been getting me. right? Good and public, too. So I waited, figuring I’d get him back just before the big homecoming game. I’d get him suspended, you see, it was gonna be simple. The coach had a curfew and I knew this creep was always making it with this cheerleader. I just followed them out to the place where

all the kids like to park and waited. Wasn’t too long before they was going at it. I watched for a bit, then snuck up and bam! Ice pick nice and easy in each tire. I knew they’d never get home in time. Bingo! He’d get suspended. The girl was the coach’s daughter, you see. Foolproof.’

‘So what happened?’

‘They didn’t get in till four in the morning.’

‘Did the coach suspend the creep?’

Weingarten hesitated.

‘He was the fucking fullback. All-county. Had a scholarship to Notre-fucking-Dame. It was the fucking homecoming game. What do you think?’

The Lost Boys all laughed and Jeffers joined in.

Weingarten laughed as well. ‘It was a good idea,’ he said. ‘At least the creep tore up his knee in the second quarter and kissed his scholarship goodbye.’

‘Whatever happened to him?’ one of the other men asked.

Weingarten smiled. ‘Man, he was such a creep. He had to become a cop.’

Laughter from the Lost Boys filled the day room.

His brother, Jeffers thought, could have been a terrific athlete. When he did play, it always seemed as if the ball would follow him. He was quick and co-ordinated and he had that odd strength, not muscle-bound at all, but stronger than the others. Doug always had that extra ability too, to be able to run all day if need be. He had unbelievable stamina. It came from anger. The more their parents encouraged athletics, the less Doug would have to do with them. It was another of his mini-rebellions. He remembered sitting in their room one night, lights out, listening to his brother talk about hatred. It had surprised him to know how deeply his brother felt: ‘I won’t do anything for them,’ he had said. ‘Nothing. Nothing that makes them feel good at all. Nothing.’

Now, Jeffers thought, he would say that such an attitude reflected a fundamental self-hatred. But his childhood memory was more powerful. All he recalled was the force of his brother’s words in the dark room. He could not see his brother’s face, but remembered instead the nighttime view

through the window in their room, across the yard and oat to the street, moonlight filtering through the trees. It vťs a modest house in a modest suburb that quietly contained al the anger within.

‘The only person I was ever pissed off enough to want to kill was, man, my old lady.’Jeffers looked up and saw Steele talking. ‘She complained, man, day and night. Morning, noon, afternoon. Hell, sometimes I thought she was complaining in her sleep …”

The others laughed. Jeffers saw heads nod.

‘You know, it made no difference where we were or what we were doing. She just made me feel, uh, little, you know? Small.’

There was quiet before Steele continued. Jeffers had a brief flash of the man’s dossier. He had preyed on his own neighborhood, leaving his job as a plumber on lunch hours and finding housewives alone.

The room was silent.

‘I suppose,’ Steele said, ‘if I could have figured out a way of getting back at her, I wouldn’t be here.’

Jeffers made a notation, thinking: But you did.

He glanced down at his watch. The session was almost over. He wondered for a moment why his brother refused to join him for dinner or overnight or any extended visit at all.

‘It’s a sentimental journey …’

What had he meant? He felt a rush of anger himself. Doug was capable of blistering directness one instant and unfathomable obtuseness the next. He felt a sudden empty feeling inside, wondering: How well do I know my brother? Then adding, as if by rote: How well do I know myself? He had a quick picture of the rest of his day: rounds. Several individual therapy sessions. Dinner alone in his apartment. A ball game on television, a chapter in a book, and bed. More of the same in the morning. A routine is a kind of protection, he thought. He wondered what his brother found to protect himself. And from what? That gets an easy answer, he thought. He looked around the room.

We protect ourselves only from ourselves.

‘I follow on the heels of evil…’ He smiled. That

Doug. A certain dramatic flair. For an instant he felt a complete jealousy. Then he let it pass, thinking: Well, we are who we are, and then felt embarrassed. Not much insight there, he said to himself. He wondered again: How close are we?

To his right, Simon the orderly stirred. He stretched and got to his feet.

He heard the men start to shuffle in their chairs and he thought of a grade-school classroom in the few moments before the recess bell rings.

‘AH right,’ Martin Jeffers said. ‘Enough for today.’

He stood up and thought: Closer than you think.

Martin Jeffers watched the men as they rose and wandered out of the day room singly or in pairs. He heard an occasional laugh echoing down the outside corridor. When he was left alone, he gathered his notes and papers together, made a few entries in his daily log, and walked through the day room, feeling the warmth of the sunshine as it hit his back. The room was silent and he thought the session had been a success: no fights, no irreconcilable arguments, though Miller and Meriwether would bear watching. There had been a little progress, he thought. Perhaps Weingarten’s story was something that could be followed up on. He resolved to bring up jealousy at the next session and shut the day-room door behind him.

The hospital corridor was empty and he moved swiftly past the entrance to one of the wards. He glanced in the window of the door and saw the same lethargic picture that he’d seen every day. A few people standing around talking, others talking to themselves. Some read, some played chess or checkers. So much of the time in a mental hospital is spent simply getting from one day to the next. The patients become expert at the practice of elongating time: meals were interminable. Activities were stretched. Time was wasted deliberately, passionately. It was not that unreasonable, he thought, for people to whom time had lost all urgency.

When he arrived at his office he discovered a note taped to the door: call dr. Harrison’s office asap. Dr Harrison was the hospital’s administrator. Jeffers looked at the note,

wondering what it was about. He unlocked his door and set his papers down. For a moment he stared about himself at the tired steel book shelf sagging with papers, files, and textbooks. There was a calendar on the wall with pictorial scenes from Vermont. He had a sudden pleasurable memory: That was fun there, he thought. Fishing, camping. He remembered a trout that Doug had caught and thrown back, only to hear their father laugh. ‘It’ll die,’ the druggist said. ‘Once you touch them, you wipe some of the fish slime off their bodies and they get cold and die. Can’t throw a trout back, no sir.’ And then their father had continued laughing, pointing at his brother. Martin Jeffers wondered for a moment whether it was true. He had never checked. He felt an odd embarrassment as he thought how he had gone through life believing, from that moment on, that you couldn’t throw a trout back into the water without killing it simultaneously. Doctor Harrison is a fisherman, he thought. Dammit, I’ll ask him.