The Madman's Tale (10 page)

Francis found Mister Evil outside his office, standing in the corridor deep in conversation with Doctor Gulp-a-pill. The two men seemed animated, gesturing back and forth, arguing vehemently, but it was a curious sort of argument, for the more intense it seemed to get, the lower and softer their voices became, so that eventually, as Francis hovered nearby, the two men were hissing back and forth like a pair of snakes confronting each other. The two men seemed oblivious to everyone in the hallway, for more than a few other inmates joined Francis, shuffling about, moving right and left, waiting for an opening. Francis finally heard Gulp-a-pill say angrily, “Well, we simply cannot have this sort of lapse, not for a moment. I hope for your sakes they show up soon,” only to have Mister Evil respond, “Well, they’ve obviously been misplaced, or maybe stolen, and I’m not to blame for that. We will keep searching, that’s the best I can do.” Gulp-a-pill nodded, but his face was set in a curious anger. “You do that,” he said. “And I hope they’re discovered sooner rather than later. Make sure you inform Security, and have them provide you with a new set. But this is a serious breach of the rules.” And then the small Indian abruptly turned and walked away without acknowledging the presence of any of the others, except for one man, who sidled up to the doctor, but was dismissed with a wave before he could speak. Mister Evans turned toward the others, and was equally irritated: “What? What do you want?”

His very tone caused one woman to instantly snatch a sob from her chest, and another old man to shake his head negatively, and stumble off down the corridor, speaking to himself, more comfortable with whatever conversation he could have with no one, than the one he could have with the angry social worker.

Francis, however, hesitated. The voices of caution inside his head shouted:
Leave! Leave now!
but Francis paused, and after a moment, mustered up enough courage to say, “I would like an outdoor pass. Mister Moses is taking some people out to the grounds this afternoon, and I’d like to go with them. He said it would be okay.”

“You want to go out?”

“Yes. Please.”

“Why do you want to go out, Petrel? What is it about the great out-of-doors that seems to be attractive to you?” Francis could not tell whether he was mocking him directly, or merely making fun of the idea of stepping beyond the front door of the Amherst Building.

“It’s a nice day. Like the first nice day in a long time. The sun is shining and it’s warm. Fresh air.”

“And you think that is better than what is offered here, inside?”

“I didn’t say that, Mister Evans. It’s just springtime, and I wanted to go out.”

Mister Evil shook his head. “I think you mean to try to run away, Francis. Escape. I think you believe that you can duck away from Little Black when his back is turned, climb the ivy and vault the wall, then run down the hill past the college before someone spots your flight and catch a bus that will take you away from here. Any bus, you don’t care, because any place is better than here; that’s what I think you mean to do,” he said. His tone had an edgy, aggressive note.

Francis instantly replied, “No, no, no, I just want to go to the garden.”

“You say that,” Mister Evil continued, “but how do I know that you are telling me the truth? How can I trust you, C-Bird? What will you do that makes me believe that you are telling me the truth?”

Francis had no idea how to reply. He did not know how anyone could prove that a promise made was truthful, other than by behaving that way. “I just want to go outside,” Francis said. “I haven’t been outside since I got here.”

“Do you think you deserve the privilege of going outside? What have you done to earn that, Francis?”

“I don’t know,” Francis said. “I didn’t know I had to earn it. I just want to go outside.”

“What do your voices tell you, C-Bird?”

Francis took a small step back, for his voices were all shouting, distant, yet clear, instructions to get away from the psychologist as fast as he could, but Francis persisted, in rare defiance of the internal racket. “I don’t hear any voices, Mister Evans. I just wanted to go outside. That’s all. I don’t want to escape. I don’t want to take a bus somewhere. I just want some fresh air.”

Evans nodded, but locked his lips into a sneer at the same time. “I don’t believe you,” he said, but he pulled a small pad from his shirt pocket and wrote a few words on it. “Give this to Mister Moses,” he said. “Permission to go outside granted. But don’t be late for our afternoon group session.”

Francis found Little Black smoking a cigarette by the nursing station, where he was flirting with the pair on duty. Nurse Wrong was there, and a younger woman, a new nurse-trainee—called Short Blond because she wore her hair cropped close to her head in a pixielike style that contradicted the bouffant do’s of the other staff nurses, who were all a little older, and a little more committed to the sags and wrinkles of middle age. Short Blond was young and thin and wiry, with a boylike physique hidden behind the white nursing outfit. Her skin was pale, almost translucent, and seemed to glow softly beneath the overhead
lights of the hospital. She had a slight, hard-to-hear voice that seemed to slide into whispers when she was nervous, which, as best as the patients could tell, was often. Large noisy groups made her anxious, and she struggled when the nursing station was swarmed at the hours medications were dispensed. These were always tense times, with folks jostling back and forth, trying to get up to the wire-enclosed window, where the pills were arranged in small paper cups with patients’ names written on them. She had trouble getting the patients into lines, getting them to be quiet, and she especially had trouble when some pushing and shoving took place, which was often enough. Short Blond did much better when she was alone with a patient, and her reedy, small voice didn’t have to battle with many. Francis liked her, because, at least in part, she wasn’t that much older than he was, but mainly because he thought her voice was soothing, and reminded him of his own mother’s years earlier, when she would read to him at night. For a moment, he tried to remember when she had stopped doing that, because the memory seemed suddenly far distant, almost as if it were history, rather than recollection.

“You get the permission slip, C-Bird?” Little Black asked.

“Right here.” He handed it over and looked up and saw Peter the Fireman walking down the corridor. “Peter!” Francis called, “I got permission to go outside. Why don’t you go see Mister Evil, and see if you can come, too.”

Peter the Fireman walked up quickly. He smiled but shook his head. “No can do, C-Bird,” he said. “Against the rules.” He glanced over at Little Black, who was nodding in agreement.

“Sorry,” the attendant said. “The Fireman’s right. Not him.”

“Why not?” Francis asked.

“Because,” the Fireman said quietly, slowly, “that’s my arrangement here. Not beyond any of the locked doors.”

“I don’t understand,” Francis said.

“It’s part of the court order putting me here,” the Fireman continued. His voice seemed tinged with regret. “Ninety days of observation. Assessment. Psychological determination. Tests where they hold up an inkblot and I’m supposed to say it looks like two people having sex. Gulp-a-pill and Mister Evil ask, and I answer, and they write it down and one of these days it goes back to the court. But I’m not allowed past any locked doors. Everybody’s in prison, sort of, C-Bird. Mine is just a little more restricted than yours.”

Little Black added, “It ain’t a big thing, C-Bird. There’s plenty of folks here who never get to go out. Depends on what you did that got you here. Of course, there’s plenty, too, who don’t want to go out, either, but could, if they only asked. They just never do ask.”

Francis understood, but didn’t understand, both at the same time. He looked over at the Fireman. “It doesn’t seem fair,” he said.

“I don’t think the concept of fair was truly one that anyone really had in mind, C-Bird. But I agreed, and so, that’s the way it is. I stay put. Meet with Doctor Gulp-a-pill twice a week. Attend sessions with Mister Evil. Let them watch me. See, even now, while we’re talking, Little Black here and Short Blond and Miss Wrong are all watching me and listening to what I say, and just about anything they observe might end up in the report that Gulp-a-pill is going to write up for the court. So, I pretty much need to mind my p’s and q’s and watch what I say, because no telling what might become the key consideration. Isn’t that right, Mister Moses?”

Little Black nodded. Francis found it all to be oddly detached, as if they were speaking about someone else, not the person standing in front of him. “When you speak like that,” he said, “it doesn’t sound like you’re crazy.”

This comment made Peter the Fireman smile wryly, one side of his mouth lifting up, giving him a slightly lopsided, but genuinely bemused look. “Oh my gosh,” he said. “That’s terrible. Terrible.” He made a slight choking sound deep in his throat. “I should be even more careful then,” he said. “Because crazy is what I need to be.”

This made no sense to Francis. For a man who was being watched, Peter seemed relatively unconcerned, which was in opposition to many of the paranoids in the hospital, who believed they were constantly being observed, when they weren’t, but took evasive steps nevertheless. Of course, they believed it was the FBI or the CIA or perhaps the KGB or extraterrestrials who were doing the watching, which made their circumstances significantly different. Francis watched the Fireman turn and head off through the dayroom doors, and thought that even when he whistled, or perhaps added some obvious jauntiness to his step, it only served to make whatever saddened him all that much more obvious.

The warm sun hit Francis’s face. Big Black had joined his brother to lead the expedition, one at the front and one at the rear, keeping the dozen patients making the journey through the hospital grounds in single file. Lanky had come along, muttering about being on the lookout, as vigilant as always, and Cleo, who spent some time staring at the ground, and peering at the dirt beneath every bush and shrub, hoping, as she said to anyone who noticed her behavior, to spot an adder. Francis guessed that an ordinary garter snake would nicely serve the serpent part of the bill, but not the suicide part. There were several older women who walked very slowly and a couple of older men,
and three middle-aged male patients, all of whom fit into the bedraggled, nondescript category that marked folks who had been assimilated into the hospital routine for years. They wore flip-flop sandals or work boots—and pajama tops beneath frayed and threadbare woolen sweaters or sweatshirts, none of which seemed to quite fit or match, which was the norm for the hospital. A couple of the men had sullen, angry expressions on their faces, as if the sunlight that seemed to caress their faces with warmth infuriated them in some internal way that defied understanding. It was, Francis thought, what made the hospital such an unsettling place. A day that should have brought relaxed laughter instead inspired quiet rage.

The two attendants kept to a leisurely pace as they moved through the hospital grounds toward the rear of the complex, where there was a small garden. A picnic table that had been through a rough winter, its surface warped and scarred by the weather, held some boxes of seeds and a red child’s play bucket with a few trowels and hand shovels arranged within. There was an aluminum watering pail and a hose attached to a single faucet that rose up on a lone pipe directly from the ground. Within a few seconds, Big Black and Little Black had the outdoor group on their hands and knees in the swatch of dirt, raking and tilling with the small hand tools, preparing the earth for planting. Francis kept at this for a few moments, then he looked up.

Beyond the garden was another piece of ground, a long rectangle enclosed by an old wooden picket fence that had once been painted white, but had faded over time to a dull gray. Weeds and unkempt grasses pushed up in tufts through the hardscrabble earth. He guessed that it was a cemetery of sorts, because there were two faded granite headstones, each slightly out of kilter, so that they looked like uneven teeth in a child’s mouth. Then behind the back picket fence was a line of trees, planted closely together to form a natural barrier and obscure a metal link fence.