The Madman's Tale Read online

  He giggled a sound of release. “C-Bird, all of us always knew that you were better at paying attention to the world around us than anyone else. People liked you, even if we were all deluded and crazy.”

  “That’s nice to hear.”

  “What about the Fireman. He was your friend. Whatever happened to him? Afterward, I mean.”

  I paused, then answered: “He got out. He straightened out all his problems, moved to the South, and made a lot of money. Had a family. Big house. Big car. Very successful all around. Last I heard, he was heading up some charitable foundation. Happy and healthy.”

  Napoleon nodded. “I can believe it. And the woman who came to investigate? Did she go with him?”

  “No. She went on to a judgeship. All sorts of honors. She had a wonderful life.”

  “I knew it. You could just tell.”

  Of course, this was all a lie.

  He looked down at his watch. “I need to get back. Get ready for my great moment. Wish me luck.”

  “Good luck,” I said.

  “It’s good seeing you again,” Napoleon added. “I hope your life goes okay.”

  “You, too,” I said. “You look good.”

  “Really? I doubt it. I doubt very many of us look good. But that’s okay. Thanks for saying it.”

  He stood and I joined him. We both looked back at the Amherst Building.

  “I’ll be happy when they tear it down,” Napoleon said with a sudden burst of bitterness. “It was a dangerous, evil place and not much good happened there.”

  Then he turned back to me. “C-Bird, you were there. You saw it all. You tell everyone.”

  “Who would listen?”

  “Someone might. Write the story. You can do it.”

  “Some stories should be left unwritten,” I said.

  Napoleon shrugged his rounded shoulders. “If you write it, then it will be real. If all it does is stay in our memories, then it’s like it never happened. Like it was some dream. Or hallucination thought up by all of us madmen. No one trusts us when we say something. But if you write it down, well, that gives it some substance. Makes it all true enough.”

  I shook my head. “The trouble with being mad,” I said, “was it was real hard to tell what was true and what wasn’t. That doesn’t change, just because we can take enough pills to scrape along now in the world with all the others.”

  Napoleon smiled. “You’re right,” he said. “But maybe not, too. I don’t know. I just know that you could tell it and maybe a few people would believe it, and that’s a good enough thing. No one ever believed us, back then. Even when we took the medications, no one ever believed us.”

  He looked at his watch again, and shifted his feet nervously.

  “You should get back,” I said.

  “I must get back,” he repeated.

  We stood awkwardly until he finally turned, and walked away. About midway down the path, Napoleon turned, and gave me the same unsure little wave that he had when he’d first spotted me. “Tell it,” he called. Then he turned and walked quickly away, a little ducklike in his style. I could see that his hands were shaking again.

  It was after dark when I finally quick marched up the sidewalk to my apartment, and climbed the stairs and locked myself into the safety of the small space. A nervous fatigue seemed to pulse through my veins, carried along the bloodstream with the red cells and the white cells. Seeing Napoleon and hearing myself called by the nickname that I’d received when I first went to the hospital startled emotions within me. I thought hard about taking some pills. I knew I had some that were designed to calm me, should I get overly excited. But I did not. “Tell the story,” he’d said to me. “How?” I said out loud in the quiet of my own home.

  The room echoed around me.

  “You can’t tell it,” I said to myself.

  Then I asked the question: Why not?

  I had some pens and pencils, but no paper.

  Then an idea came to me. For a second, I wondered whether it was one of my voices, returning, filling my ear with a quick suggestion and modest command. I stopped, listening carefully, trying to pluck the unmistakable tones of my familiar guides from the street sounds that penetrated past the laboring of my old window air conditioning unit. But they were elusive. I didn’t know whether they were there, or not. But uncertainty was something I had grown accustomed to.

  I took a slightly worn and scratched table chair and placed it against the side of the wall deep in the corner of the room. I didn’t have any paper, I told myself. But what I did have were white-painted walls unadorned by posters or art or anything.

  Balancing myself on the seat, I could reach almost to the ceiling. I gripped a pencil in my hand and leaned forward. Then I wrote quickly, in a tiny, pinched, but legible script:

  Francis Xavier Petrel arrived in tears at the Western State Hospital in the back of an ambulance. It was raining hard, darkness was falling rapidly, and his arms and legs were cuffed and restrained. He was twenty-one years old and more scared than he’d ever been in his entire short, and to that point, relatively uneventful life…

  chapter 2

  Francis Xavier Petrel arrived in tears at the Western State Hospital in the back of an ambulance. It was raining hard, darkness was falling rapidly, and his arms and legs were cuffed and restrained. He was twenty-one years old and more scared than he’d ever been in his short, and to that point, relatively uneventful life.

  The two men who had driven him to the hospital had mostly kept their mouths closed during the ride, except to mutter complaints about the unseasonable weather, or make caustic remarks about the other drivers on the roads, none of whom seemed to meet the standards of excellence that they jointly held. The ambulance had bumped along the roadway at a moderate speed, flashing lights and urgency both ignored. There was something of dull routine in the way the two men had acted, as if the trip to the hospital was nothing more than a way-stop in the midst of an oppressively normal, decidedly boring day. One man occasionally slurped from a soda can, making a smacking noise with his lips. The other whistled snatches of popular songs. The first sported Elvis sideburns. The second had a bushy lion’s mane of hair.

  It might have been a trivial journey for the two attendants, but to the young man rigid with tension in the back, his breathing coming in short sprinter’s spurts, it was nothing of the sort. Every sound, every sensation seemed to signal something to him, each more terrifying and more threatening than the next. The beat of the windshield wipers was like some deep jungle drum playing a roll of doom. The humming of the tires against the slick road surface was a siren’s song of despair. Even the noise of his own labored wind seemed to echo, as if he were encased in a tomb. The restraints dug into his flesh, and he opened his mouth to scream for help, but could not make the right sound. All that emerged was a gargling burst of despair. One thought penetrated the symphony of discord—that if he survived the day, he was likely to never have a worse one.

  When the ambulance shuddered to a halt in front of the hospital entrance, he heard one of his voices crying out over the stew of fear: They will kill you here, if you are not careful.

  The ambulance drivers seemed oblivious to the imminent danger. They opened the doors to the vehicle with a crash, and indelicately pulled Francis out on a gurney. He could feel cold raindrops slapping against his face, mingling with a nervous sweat on his forehead, as the two men wheeled him through a wide set of doors into a world of harshly bright and unforgiving lights. They pushed him down a corridor, gurney wheels squealing against the linoleum, and at first all he could see, as it slid past, was the gray pockmarked ceiling. He was aware that there were other people in the corridor, but he was too scared to turn and face them. Instead, he kept his eyes fixed on the soundproofing above him, counting the number of light fixtures that he rolled beneath. When he reached four, the two men stopped.

  He was aware that some other people had stepped to the front of the gurney. In the space just beyond his head, he he
ard some words spoken: “Okay, guys. We’ll take him from here.”

  Then a massive, round, black face, sporting a wide row of uneven, grinning teeth suddenly appeared above him. The face was above an orderly’s white jacket that seemed, at first glance, to be several sizes too small.

  “All right, Mister Francis Xavier Petrel, you ain’t gonna cause us no trouble now, are you?” The man had a slightly singsong tenor to his words, so that they came out with equal parts of menace and amusement. Francis did not know what to reply.

  A second black face abruptly hovered into his sight on the other side of the gurney, also leaning into the air above him, and this other man said, “I don’t think this boy here is going to be any sort of hassle. Not in the tiniest little bit. Are you, Mister Petrel?” He, too, spoke with a soft Southern-tinged accent.

  A voice shouted in his ear: Tell them no!

  He tried to shake his head, but had trouble moving his neck. “I won’t be a problem,” he choked out. The words seemed as raw as the day, but he was glad to hear he could speak. This reassured him a bit. He’d been afraid, throughout the day, that somehow he was going to lose the ability to communicate at all.

  “Okay, then, Mister Petrel. We going to get you up off the gurney. Then we going to sit down, nice and easy in a wheelchair. You got that? Ain’t gonna be loosing those cuffs on your hands and feet quite yet, though. That’s gonna come after you speak to the doctor. Maybe he gives you a little something to calm you right down. Chill you right out. Nice and easy now. Sit up, swing those legs forward.”

  Do what you’re told!

  He did what he was told.

  The motion made him dizzy, and he seemed to sway for a second. He felt a huge hand grab his shoulder to steady him. He turned and saw that the first orderly was immense, well over six and a half feet tall and probably close to three hundred pounds. He had massively muscled arms, and legs that were like barrels. His partner, the other black man, was a wiry, thin man, dwarfed by his partner. He had a small goatee, and a bushy Afro haircut that failed to add much stature to his modest height. Together, the two men steered him into a waiting wheelchair.

  “Okay,” said the little one. “Now we’re going to take you in to see the doc. Don’t you worry none. Things may seem nasty-wrong and bad and lousy right now, but they gonna get better soon enough. You can take that to the bank.”

  He didn’t believe this. Not a word.

  The two orderlies steered him forward, into a small waiting room. There was a secretary behind a gray steel desk, who looked up as the procession came through the doorway. She seemed an imposing, prim woman, on the wrong side of middle age, dressed in a tight blue suit, hair teased a bit too much, eyeliner a little too prominent, lip gloss slightly overdone, giving her a contradictory sort of appearance, a demeanor that seemed to Francis Petrel to be half librarian and half streetwalker. “This must be Mr. Petrel,” she said brusquely to the two black orderlies, although it was instantly obvious to Francis that she didn’t expect an answer, because she already knew it. “Take him straight in. The doctor is expecting him.”

  He was pushed through another door, into a different office. This was a slightly nicer space, with two windows on the back wall that overlooked a courtyard. He could see a large oak tree swaying in the wind pushed up by the rainstorm. And, beyond the tree, he could see other buildings, all in brick, with slate black rooflines that seemed to blend with the gloom of the sky above. In front of the windows was an imposing large wooden desk. There was a shelf of books in one corner, and some overstuffed chairs and a deep red oriental carpet resting on top of the institutional gray rug that covered the floor, creating a small sitting area off to Francis’s right. There was a photograph of the governor next to a portrait of President Carter on the wall. Francis took it in as rapidly as possible, his head swiveling about. But his eyes quickly came to rest upon a small man, who rose from behind the desk, as he came into the room.

  “Hello, Mister Petrel. I am Doctor Gulptilil,” he said briskly, voice high-pitched, almost like a child’s.

  The doctor was overweight and round, especially in the shoulders and the stomach, bulbous like a child’s party balloon that had been squeezed into a shape. He was either Indian or Pakistani. He had a bright red silk tie fastened tightly around his neck, and sported a luminous white shirt, but his ill-fitting gray suit was slightly frayed at the cuffs. He appeared to be the sort of man who lost interest in his appearance about midway through the process of dressing in the morning. He wore thick, black-rimmed glasses, and his hair was slicked back and curled over his collar. Francis had difficulty telling whether he was young or old. He noticed that the doctor liked to punctuate every word with a wave of his hand, so that his speech became a conductor’s movement with his baton, directing the orchestra in front.

  “Hello,” Francis said tentatively.

  Be careful what you say! One of his voices shouted.

  “Do you know why you are here?” the doctor asked. He seemed genuinely curious.

  “I’m not at all sure,” Francis replied.

  Doctor Gulptilil looked down at a file and examined a sheet of paper.

  “You’ve apparently rather scared some people,” he said slowly. “And they seem to think you are in need of some help.” He had a slight British accent, just a touch of an Anglicism that had probably been eroded by years in the United States. It was warm in the room, and one of the radiators beneath the window hissed.

  Francis nodded. “That was a mistake,” he said. “I didn’t mean it. Things just got a little out of control. An accident, really. Really no more than a mistake in judgment. I’d like to go home, now. I’m sorry. I promise to be better. Much better. It was all just an error. Nothing meant by it. Not really. I apologize.”

  The doctor nodded, but didn’t precisely reply to what Francis had said.

  “Are you hearing voices, now?” he asked.

  Tell him no!

  “No.”

  “You’re not?”

  “No.”

  Tell him you don’t know what he’s talking about! Tell him you’ve never heard any voices!

  “I don’t exactly know what you mean by voices,” Francis said.

  That’s good!

  “I mean do you hear things spoken to you by people who are not physically present? Or perhaps, you hear things that others cannot hear.”

  Francis shook his head rapidly.

  “That would be crazy,” he said. He was gaining a little confidence.

  The doctor examined the sheet in front of him, then once again raised his eyes toward Francis. “So, on these many occasions when your family members have observed you speaking to no one in particular, why was that?”

  Francis shifted in his seat, considering the question. “Perhaps they are mistaken?” he said, uncertainty sliding back into his voice.

  “I don’t think so,” answered the doctor.

  “I don’t have many friends,” Francis said cautiously. “Not in school, not in the neighborhood. Other kids tend to leave me alone. So I end up talking to myself a lot. Perhaps that’s what they observed.”

  The doctor nodded. “Just talking to yourself?”

  “Yes. That’s right,” Francis said. He relaxed just a little more.

  That’s good. That’s good. Just be careful.

  The doctor glanced at his sheets of paper a second time. He wore a small smile on his face. “I talk to myself, sometimes, as well,” he said.

  “Well. There you have it,” Francis replied. He shivered a little and felt a curious flow of warmth and cold, as if the damp and raw weather outside had managed to follow him in, and had overcome the radiator’s fervent pumping heat.

  “… But when I speak with myself, it is not a conversation, Mister Petrel. It is more a reminder, like ‘Don’t forget to pick up a gallon of milk …’ or an admonition, such as, ‘Ouch!’ or ‘Damn!’ or, I must admit, sometimes words even worse. I do not carry on full back and forth, questions and replies wit
h someone who is not present. And this, I fear, is what your family reports you have been doing for some many years now.”

  Be careful of this one!

  “They said that?” Francis replied, slyly. “How unusual.”

  The doctor shook his head. “Less so than you might think, Mister Petrel.”

  He walked around the desk so that he closed the distance between the two of them, ending up by perching himself on the edge of the desk, directly across from where Francis stayed confined in the wheelchair, limited certainly by the cuffs on his hands and legs, but equally by the presence of the two attendants, neither of whom had moved or spoken, but who hovered directly behind him.

  “Perhaps we will return in a moment to these conversations you have, Mister Petrel,” Doctor Gulptilil said. “For I do not fully understand how you can have them without hearing something in return and this genuinely concerns me, Mister Petrel.”

  He is dangerous, Francis! He’s clever and doesn’t mean any good. Watch what you say!

  Francis nodded his head, then realized that the doctor might have seen this. He stiffened in the wheelchair, and saw Doctor Gulptilil make a notation on the sheet of paper with a ballpoint pen.

  “Let us try a different direction, then, for the moment, Mister Petrel,” the doctor continued. “Today was a difficult day, was it not?”

  “Yes,” Francis said. Then he guessed that he’d better expand on that statement, because the doctor remained silent, and fixed him with a penetrating glance. “I had an argument. With my mother and father.”

  “An argument? Yes. Incidentally, Mister Petrel, can you tell me what the date is?”

  “The date?”

  “Correct. The date of this argument you had today.”

  He thought hard for a moment. Then he looked outside again, and saw the tree bending beneath the wind, moving spastically, as if its limbs were being jerked and manipulated by some unseen puppeteer. There were some buds just forming on the ends of the branches, and so he did some calculations in his head. He concentrated hard, hoping that one of the voices might know the answer to the question, but they were, as was their irritating habit, suddenly quite silent. He glanced about the room, hoping to spot a calendar, or perhaps some other sign that might help him, but saw nothing, and returned his eyes to the window, watching the tree move. When he turned back to the doctor, he saw that the round man seemed to be patiently awaiting his response, as if several minutes had passed since he was asked the question. Francis breathed in sharply.