The Madman's Tale (38 page)

To his right, he saw an elderly, senile man, grinning maniacally, letting milk dribble down his chin and chest, despite the near constant efforts of a nurse-trainee to prevent him from drowning himself; to his left, two women were arguing over a bowl of lime green Jell-O. Why there was only one bowl, and two claimants, was the dilemma that Little Black was patiently trying to sort out, although each of the women, who seemed to look almost identical, with scraggly twists of gray hair and pale pink and blue housecoats, appeared eager to come to blows. Neither, it seemed, was in the slightest bit willing to simply walk the ten or twenty paces back to the kitchen entrance and obtain a second bowl of Jell-O. Their high-pitched, shrieking voices melded with the clatter of plates and silverware, and the steamy sheen of heat that came from the kitchen, where the meal was being prepared. After a second, one of the women reached out suddenly, and dashed the bowl of Jell-O across the floor, where the dish shattered like a gunshot.

He moved to his customary table in the corner, where his back would be
against the wall. Napoleon was already there, and Peter suspected Francis would be along shortly, although he wasn’t sure where the young man was at that moment. He took his seat and suspiciously eyed the plate of noodle casserole in front of him. He had doubts about its provenance.

“So,” Peter asked as he poked at the meal, “Nappy, tell me this: What would a soldier in the Great Army of the Republic have eaten on a fine day such as this?”

Napoleon had been eagerly attacking the casserole, shoveling forkfuls of the glop into his mouth like a piston-driven machine. Peter’s question slowed him, and he paused to consider the issue.

“Bully beef,” he said after a moment, “which given the sanitary conditions of the times, was pretty dangerous stuff. Or salted pork. Bread, surely. That was a staple, as was hard cheese that one could carry in a rucksack. Red wine, I believe, or water from whatever well or stream was close. If they were foraging, which the soldiers did often, then perhaps they would seize a chicken or a goose from some nearby farm, and cook it on a spit, or boil it.”

“And if they intended to go into battle? A special meal, perhaps?”

“No. Not likely. They were usually hungry, and often, like in Russia, starving. Supplying the army was always a problem.”

Peter held an unrecognizable morsel of what he’d been told was chicken up in front of his face and wondered whether he could go into battle with this particular casserole as his inspiration.

“Tell me, Nappy, do you think you’re mad?” he asked abruptly.

The round man paused, a significant portion of oozing noodles stopped in its path about six inches from his mouth, where it hovered, as he considered the question. After a moment, he set the fork down and sighed a response. “I suppose so, Peter,” he said a little sadly. “Some days more than others.”

“Tell me a little bit about it,” Peter asked.

Napoleon shook his head, and the remainder of his usual enthusiasm slipped away. “The medications control the delusion, pretty much. Like today, for example. I know I’m not the emperor. I merely know a lot about the man who was the emperor. And how to run an army. And what happened in 1812. Today, I’m just an ordinary bush-league historian. But tomorrow, I don’t know. Maybe I’ll fake it when they hand me my medication tonight. You know, tuck it under my tongue and spit it out later. There are some pretty effective sleight of hand tricks that just about everyone learns in here. Or maybe the dosage will be off just a little bit. That happens, too, because the nurses have so many pills to hand out, sometimes they don’t pay as much attention as to who gets what as maybe they should. And there you would have it: A really powerful delusion doesn’t need much ground to take root and flower.”

Peter thought for a moment, then asked, “Do you miss it?”

“Miss what?”

“The delusions. When they’re gone. Do they make you feel special when you have them, and ordinary when they’re erased?”

He smiled. “Yes. Sometimes. But they sometimes hurt, too, and not merely because you can see how terrifying they are for everyone around you. The fixation becomes so great, that it overwhelms you. It’s a little like a rubber band being pulled tighter and tighter within you. You know that eventually it has to break, but every moment that you think it will snap and everything inside you will come loose, it stretches out just a little farther. You should ask C-Bird about that, because I think he understands it better.”

“I will.” Again, Peter hesitated. As he did, he saw Francis moving gingerly across the room to join them. The young man moved in much the same manner that Peter remembered from days on patrol in Vietnam, unsure whether the very ground he walked upon might be booby-trapped. Francis tacked between arguments and angers, blown a little to the right, and then the left by rage and hallucination, avoiding the shoals of senility or retardation, to finally arrive at the table, where he threw himself into a seat with a small grunt of satisfaction. The dining room was a dangerous passage of troubles, Peter thought.

Francis poked at the fast-congealing mess on his plate.

“They must not want us to get fat,” he said.

“Someone told me that they sprinkle the food with Thorazine,” Napoleon said, leaning forward, whispering conspiratorially. “That way they know they can keep us all calm and under control.”

Francis glanced over at the two Jell-O-deprived women still screeching at each other. “Well,” he said, “I wouldn’t believe it, because it doesn’t seem to be working all that fantastically.”

“C-Bird,” Peter asked, gesturing modestly toward the two women, “why do you think they’re arguing?”

Francis looked up, hesitated, lifted his shoulders, then replied: “Jell-O?”

Peter smiled, because this was slightly funny. Then he shook his head. “No, I can see that. A bowl of lime green Jell-O. I didn’t realize it was something worth trading blows over. But why Jell-O? Why now?”

In that second, Francis saw what Peter was really asking. Peter had a way of framing bigger questions within small ones, which was a quality Francis admired, because it displayed, if nothing else, the capacity to think beyond the walls of the Amherst Building. “It’s about having something, Peter,” he said slowly. “It’s about something tangible here where there is so little that we can actually possess. It’s not the Jell-O. It’s about having the Jell-O. A bowl of Jell-O isn’t worth having a fight over. But something that reminds you of who you are, and what you could be, and the world that awaits us, if only we can
seize hold of enough little things that will turn us back into humans, well, that’s worth fighting for, isn’t it?”

Peter paused, considering what Francis had said, and all three of them saw the two women abruptly burst into tears.

Peter’s eyes lingered on the pair, and Francis thought that every incident like that must hurt the Fireman deep within his core, because he didn’t belong. Francis stole a look over at Napoleon, who shrugged and smiled and happily returned to his mound of food. He belongs, Francis thought. I belong. We all belong, except for Peter, and he must be very afraid, deep inside, that the longer he stays here, the closer he will get to becoming like us. Francis could hear a murmuring of assent deep within him.

Gulptilil looked askance at the list of names Lucy had thrust across the desk at him. “This seems like a substantial cross section of the population here, Miss Jones. Might I ask what your determining criteria were in selecting these patients from the overall clientele?” He sounded stiff and unhelpful with his question, and, when uttered in his warbling, singsong voice, made all the pretentiousness sound a little ridiculous.

“Of course,” Lucy replied. “Because I couldn’t think of a determining factor that was psychological in nature, like a defining disease, I used instead prior incidents of violence toward women. All seventy-five names here have done something which can be construed as hostile to the opposite sex. Some more than others, surely, but they all have that one factor in common.” Lucy spoke just as pompously as the medical director did, an acting quality that she had honed in the prosecutor’s office, which often helped her in official situations. There are very few bureaucrats who are not cowed by someone capable of speaking their own language, only better.

Gulptilil looked back at the list, surveying the rows of names, and Lucy wondered whether the doctor was able to assign a face and a file to each. He behaved that way, but she doubted he had that much interest in the actual intimacies of the hospital population. After a moment or two, he sighed.

“Of course, your statement can equally be applied to the gentleman already in custody for the murder,” he said. “Nevertheless, Miss Jones, I shall do as you request,” he said. “But I must suggest that this appears to be something of a wild-goose chase.”

“It’s a place to start, Doctor.”

“It is also a place to stop,” he replied. “Which, I fear, is what will happen to your inquiries when you seek information from these men. I imagine that you will find these interviews to be frustrating.”

He smiled, not in a particularly friendly fashion, and added, “Ah, well, Miss
Jones. You would like, I imagine, to get these interviews under way promptly? I will speak with Mister Evans, and perhaps the Moses brothers, who can begin transporting the patients to your office. That way, at least, you can begin to fully encounter the obstacles that you are up against here.”

She knew that Doctor Gulptilil was speaking about the vagaries of mental illness, but what he said could be construed in different ways. She smiled at the medical director and nodded in agreement.

By the time she returned to Amherst, Big Black and Little Black were waiting for her in the corridor by the first-floor nursing station. Peter and Francis were with them, leaning against the wall like a pair of bored teenagers hanging out on a street corner waiting for trouble, although the manner in which Peter’s eyes swept back and forth down the corridor, watching every movement and assessing each patient that rambled past, contradicted his languid appearance. She did not immediately see Mister Evans, which, she thought, might be a good thing, given what she was about to ask of them. But that was her first question for the two attendants.

“Where is Evans?”

Big Black grunted. “He’s on his way over from one of the other buildings. Support staff meeting. Should be here any second. The big doc called over and tells us that we’re supposed to start escorting people in to see you. You got a list.”

“That’s right.”

“Suppose,” Little Black said, “they aren’t quite as eager to come see you. What’re we supposed to do then?”

“Don’t give them that option. But if they get frantic, or start to lose control—well, I can come to them.”

“And if they still don’t want to talk?”

“Let’s not anticipate a problem before we know we have one, okay?”

Big Black rolled his eyes a little, but didn’t say anything, although it was clear to Francis that much of Big Black’s existence at the hospital was about precisely that: anticipating a problem before it arose. His brother let out a slow sigh, and said, “We’ll give it a try. Can’t promise exactly how people will react. Never done anything like this in here before. Maybe there won’t be any trouble.”

“If they refuse, then they refuse, and we’ll figure something else out,” she said. Then she bent forward slightly and lowered her voice a little. “I have an idea. I wonder if you guys can help me out, and keep it confidential.” She waited as the two brothers immediately eyed each other. Little Black spoke for the two of them.

“Sounds to me like you’re about to ask a favor that might get us into trouble.”

Again, Lucy nodded her head. “Not all that much trouble, I hope.”

Little Black grinned widely, as if he saw a joke in what she said. “It’s always the person doing the asking that thinks whatever it is ain’t that big a deal. But, Miss Jones, we’re still listening. Not saying yes. Not saying no. Still listening.”

“Instead of you two going to each person and transporting them, I want just one of you to go.”