The Madman's Tale Page 6

  He turned to Francis and said, “What you think, Mister C-Bird? You think the doc maybe prescribed a cup of hot coffee in the morning and a nice cold beer and a plate filled with fried chicken and cornbread at the end of the day? You think that’s what the doctor ordered?”

  Francis must have looked surprised, because the attendant quickly added, “I’m just having some fun with you. Don’t mean nothing.”

  The nurses looked over the chart, then placed it along with a stack of others on a corner of their desk. The older one, Miss Winchell, reached below a counter and brought forth a small, cheap plaid cloth suitcase. “Mister Petrel, this was left for you by your family.”

  She passed it through an opening in the wire mesh, turning to the attendant, saying, “I’ve already searched it.”

  Francis took the suitcase and fought back the urge to burst into tears. He had recognized it instantly. It was a bag he’d been given as a gift one Christmas morning, when he was young, and because he’d never actually traveled anywhere, he’d always used for storage whenever he wanted to keep something special, or something unusual. A sort of portable secret place for the items collected during childhood, because each small item was, in its own way, a sort of journey in itself. A pine cone collected one fall; a set of toy soldiers, a book of children’s verse never returned to the local library. His hands quivered slightly as they ran across the fake leather edging on the satchel, and he touched the handle. The zipper on the bag was open, and he saw that everything that the bag had once held had been removed, replaced with some clothes from his drawers at home. He knew instantly that everything that he’d accumulated in that bag had been emptied out and discarded. It was as if his parents had packed what little they thought of his life into the small luggage, and sent it to him to send him on his way. He could feel his lower lip trembling, and he felt completely and utterly alone.

  The nurses passed a second gathering of items through the wire. These included some rough sheets and a pillowcase, a threadbare army surplus olive drab wool blanket, a bathrobe much like the ones he’d already seen on some patients, and some pajamas, again like those he’d already seen. He placed these on top of the suitcase and lifted both in front of him.

  Mr. Moses nodded. “All right, I’ll show you your bed. Get your stuff squared away. Then what have we got for Mister C-Bird, ladies?”

  Again, one of the nurses checked the chart. “Lunch at noon. Then he’s free until a group session in Room 101 at three with Mister Evans. He comes back here at four thirty for free time. Dinner at six o’clock. Medications at seven. That’s it.”

  “You get all that, Mister C-Bird?”

  Francis nodded. He didn’t trust his own voice. He could hear, echoing deep within him, orders to comply, keep quiet, and stay alert. He followed Mr. Moses through a door into a large room with some thirty to forty beds lined up in rows. All the beds were made up, except one, not far from the door. There were a half dozen men lying on beds, either asleep, or staring up into the ceiling, who barely looked in his direction as he entered the room.

  Mr. Moses helped him to make the bed and stow his few clothes in a footlocker.

  There was room for the tiny suitcase, as well, and it disappeared into the empty space. It took less than five minutes to square him away.

  “Well, that’s it,” Mr. Moses said.

  “What happens to me now?” Francis asked.

  The attendant smiled a little wistfully. “Now, C-Bird, what you got to do is get yourself better.”

  Francis nodded. “How?”

  “That the big question, C-Bird. You gone have to figure that out for yourself.”

  “What should I do?” Francis asked.

  The attendant leaned down toward him. “Just keep to yourself. This place can get a bit rough, sometimes. You got to figure out everybody else, and give ‘em what space they need. Don’t be trying to make friends too fast, C-Bird. Just keep your mouth shut and follow the rules. You need help, you talk to me or my brother, or one of the nurses, and we’ll try to see you straight.”

  “But what are the rules?” Francis said.

  The large attendant turned and pointed at a sign posted high on the wall.

  NO SMOKING IN SLEEPING ROOM

  NO LOUD NOISES

  NO TALKING AFTER 9 PM

  RESPECT OTHERS

  RESPECT OTHER PEOPLE'S PROPERTY

  When he finished reading through twice, Francis turned. He wasn’t sure where to go or what to do. He sat down on the edge of his bed.

  Across the room, one of the men who had been lying down staring at the ceiling, feigning sleep, abruptly stood up. He was very tall, well over six and one half feet, with a sunken chest, and thin, bony arms that protruded from beneath a tattered sweatshirt with the logo of the New England Patriots on it, and stovepipe legs that jutted from lime green surgical scrubs that were six inches too short. The sweatshirt sleeves had been sliced off just below the shoulders. He was far older than Francis, and wore stringy gray-tinged hair in a matted clump that fell to his shoulders. His eyes were suddenly wide, as if half-frightened and half-furious. The man instantly lifted one cadaverous hand and pointed directly at Francis.

  “Stop it!” he shouted out. “Stop it, now!”

  Francis shrank back slightly. “Stop what?”

  “Just stop! I can tell! You cannot fool me! I knew it as soon as you came in! Stop it!”

  “I don’t know what I’m doing,” Francis replied meekly.

  By now the tall man was waving both arms in the air as if trying to clear cobwebs from his path. His voice was rising with each step he took across the room, “Stop it! Stop it! I can see through you! You can’t do it to me!”

  Francis looked around for somewhere to run, or to hide, but he was hemmed in by the man lurching toward him and the back wall of the room. The few other men in the dormitory were still asleep, or ignoring what was happening.

  The man seemed to have stretched in size, growing in ferocity with every stride. “I know! I could tell! From the moment you walked in! Stop now!”

  Francis felt frozen with confusion. Inwardly, his voices were all screaming in a cascade of conflicted advice: Run! Run! He’s going to hurt us! Hide! His head pivoted around, trying to see how he could escape the tall man’s onslaught. He tried to will his muscles to work, at least rise up from the bed, but, instead, he shrank backward, almost cowering.

  “If you will not stop, then it’s up to me to stop you!” the man shouted. He seemed to be preparing himself for an assault.

  Francis lifted his arms to fend off the attack.

  The tall man gargled out some sort of gathered war cry, lifted himself up, puffing out his sunken chest and waving his arms above his head. Seemed ready to leap on Francis, when another voice sliced across the room.

  “Lanky! Stop there!”

  The tall man hesitated, then turned in the direction of the voice.

  “Just stop right there!”

  Francis was still huddled back against the wall, and he couldn’t see who was speaking until the tall man turned around.

  “What are you doing?”

  “But it’s him,” the man said to whomever had come into the dormitory. He seemed, in that moment, to have shrunk in size.

  “No, it’s not!” came the reply.

  And then Francis saw that the man fast approaching was the same man he’d met in his first minutes in the hospital.

  “Leave him alone!”

  “But it’s him! I could tell as soon as I saw him!”

  “That’s what you said to me when I first showed up. That’s what you say to every new person who comes into the hospital.”

  This made the tall man hesitate.

  “I do?” he asked.

  “Yes.”

  “I still think it’s him,” said the tall man, but oddly, most of the passion had fled from his voice, replaced by questions and some doubt. “I’m pretty sure,” he added. “He absolutely could be, I’ll say that.” Despite the
conviction contained in the words, the tenor of the voice was filled with uncertainty.

  “But why?” said the man. “Why are you so sure?”

  “It was just, when he came in, it seemed so obvious, I was watching, and then …” The tall man’s voice tailed off, fading. “Maybe I’m wrong.”

  “I think you’re genuinely mistaken.”

  “You do?”

  “I do.”

  The other man came forward. He was grinning now. He stepped past the tall man.

  “Well, C-Bird, I see you’re all settled in.”

  Francis nodded.

  The man turned to the tall man. “Lanky, this is C-Bird. I met him the other day in the administration building. He’s not the person you think he is any more than I was the other day when you first spotted me. I can assure you of that.”

  “How can you be so certain?” the tall man asked.

  “Well, I saw him come in, and I saw his chart, and I promise you, if he was the son of Satan sent here to do evil inside the hospital, there would have been a notation on it, because it had all the other particulars. Hometown. Family. Address. Age. You name it, it was there. Nothing about being the Antichrist.”

  “Satan is the great deceiver. His son would be equally clever. Probably be able to hide himself. Even from Gulp-a-pill.”

  “Ah, possibly. But there were policemen with me, and they would have been trained to spot the son of Satan. They would have had flyers and handouts, and those pictures like they have on the walls at the post office, you know what I’m saying? I doubt even the son of Satan could have hidden from a pair of state troopers.”

  The tall man listened intently to this explanation. The he turned to Francis.

  “I’m sorry. I was apparently mistaken. I can see now that you are not the person I have been on the lookout for. Please accept my sincerest apologies. Vigilance is really our only defense against evil. You have to be so careful, you know, day in, day out, hour after hour. It’s exhausting, but utterly necessary …”

  Francis finally managed to crawl off the bed and stand up. “Yes. Of course,” he said. “It’s perfectly okay.”

  The tall man reached out and shook Francis’s hand, pumping it enthusiastically.

  “I’m delighted to make your acquaintance, C-Bird. You are generous. And clearly well mannered. I’m sincerely sorry if I scared you.”

  To Francis the tall man suddenly seemed far less frightening. He simply seemed old, tattered, a little like an out-of-date magazine that has been left on a table for far too long.

  The tall man shrugged. “They call me Lanky,” he said. “I’m here most of the time.”

  Francis nodded. “I’m …”

  The other man interrupted. “C-Bird. No one seems to use their real name in here.”

  Lanky moved his head up and down rapidly. “The Fireman’s right, C-Bird. Nicknames and abbreviations and the such.”

  Then he pivoted, and quickly marched back across the room, and tossed himself down on his bed, staring back up at the ceiling.

  “He doesn’t seem to be a bad fellow, and I think in reality, which is a poor word to use in this fine place, I believe he’s actually pretty harmless,” the Fireman said. “He did exactly the same to me the other day, shouting and pointing and acting like he was going to take me on single-handedly, thus protecting society from the arrival of the Antichrist, or the Son of Satan or whomever. Any odd demon that might accidentally land here. He does that to everyone who enters whom he doesn’t recognize. And it’s not altogether crazy, too, if you think about it. There seems to be a significant amount of evil around in this world, and it has to be coming from somewhere, I’m guessing. Might as well stay vigilant, like he says, even here.”

  “Thank you, anyway,” Francis said. He was calming down, a little like a child who thought he was lost, but somehow spots a landmark, that gives him a sense of location. “But I don’t know your name …”

  “I don’t have a name any longer,” the man said. This was spoken with just the slightest touch of sadness around the edge, replaced swiftly by a wry half smile that was tinged with some sort of regret.

  “How can you not have a name?” Francis asked.

  “I’ve had to give it up. It’s what landed me here.”

  This made little sense to Francis. The man shook his head, amused. “I’m sorry. People have started calling me the Fireman, because that is what I was before I arrived at the hospital. Put out fires.”

  “But …”

  “Well, once my friends called me Peter. So, Peter the Fireman, that will have to do for you Francis C-Bird.”

  “All right,” Francis replied.

  “I think you’ll discover that the naming system here, makes it a little easier. Now you’ve met Lanky, which is as obvious a nickname for someone who looks like he does as one could possibly have. And you’ve been introduced to the Moses brothers, except everyone calls them Big Black and Little Black, which, again, seems like appropriate casting. And Gulp-a-pill, which is easier to say and far more accurate given his approach to treatment than the doctor’s real name. And who else have you run into?”

  “The nurses outside behind the bars, Miss …”

  “Ah, Miss Wrong and Miss Watchful?”

  “Wright and Winchell.”

  “Correct. And there are other nurses as well, like Nurse Mitchell, who is Nurse Bitch-All and Nurse Smith, who is Nurse Bones because she looks a little like Lanky, there, and Short Blond, who seems quite beautiful. There’s a social worker named Evans—called Mister Evil—whom you’re going to meet soon enough, because he’s more or less in charge of this dormitory. And Gulp-a-pill’s nasty secretary’s name is Miss Lewis, but someone dubbed her Miss Luscious, which she apparently hates, but can’t do anything about, because it has stuck to her as tightly as those sweaters she likes to wear. She seems to be a real piece of work. It might all seem very confusing, but you’ll get it all straight in a couple of days.”

  Francis took a quick look around, then he whispered, “Are all the people in here crazy?”

  The Fireman shook his head. “It’s a hospital for crazy folks, C-Bird, but not everyone is. Some are just old, and senile, which makes them seem a little odd. Some are retarded, so they’re slow on the uptake, but precisely what got them landed here is a mystery to me. Some folks seem merely depressed. Others are hearing voices. Do you hear voices, C-Bird?”

  Francis was unsure how to answer. It seemed as if deep within him there was a debate going on; he could hear arguments suddenly swinging back and forth, like so many electric currents between poles.

  “I don’t want to say,” Francis replied hesitantly.

  The Fireman nodded. “Some things it’s best to keep to oneself.”

  He put his arm around Francis for a moment, steering him toward the exit door.

  “Come on,” he said. “I’ll show you what there is of our home.”

  “Do you hear voices, Peter?” Francis asked.

  The Fireman shook his head. “Nope.”

  “You don’t?”

  “No. But it might be a good thing if I did,” he replied. He was smiling as he spoke, just the slightest touch at the corners of his mouth, in a way that Francis would come to recognize soon enough, that seemed to mirror much about the Fireman, for he was the sort of person who seemed to see both sadness and humor in things that others would see as merely moments.

  “Are you crazy?” Francis asked.

  Again the Fireman smiled, this time letting out a little laugh. “Are you crazy, C-Bird?”

  Francis took a deep breath. “I might be,” he said. “I don’t know.”

  The Fireman shook his head. “I don’t think so, C-Bird. Didn’t think so when I first saw you, either. At least, not too crazy. Maybe a little crazy, but what’s wrong with that?”

  Francis nodded. This reassured him. “But what about you?” he continued.

  The Fireman hesitated, before replying.

  “I’m something far wor
se,” he said slowly. “That’s why I’m here. They’re supposed to find out what’s wrong with me.”

  “What’s worse than being crazy?” Francis asked.

  The Fireman coughed once. “Well,” he said, “I guess there’s no harm. You’ll find out sooner or later. I kill people.”

  And with those words, he led Francis out into the corridor of the hospital.

  chapter 4

  And that was it, I suppose.

  Big Black told me not to make friends, to be cautious, to keep to myself, and obey the rules, and I did my very best to follow everything he advised except that first admonition, and, when I look back, I wonder if he wasn’t right about that, as well. But madness is also truly about the worst sorts of loneliness, and I was both mad and alone, and so when Peter the Fireman took me aside, I welcomed his friendship along the descending road into the world of the Western State Hospital, and I did not ask him what he meant when he said those words, although I guessed that I would find out soon enough because the hospital was a place where everyone had secrets but few of them were kept close.

  My younger sister questioned me once, long after I was released, what was the worst aspect of the hospital, and after much consideration, I told her: the routine. The hospital existed as a system of small disjointed moments that amounted to nothing, that were established merely to get Monday to Tuesday, and Tuesday to Wednesday and so on, week after week, month after month. Everyone at the hospital had been committed by allegedly well-meaning relatives, or the cold and inefficient social services system, after a perfunctory judicial hearing where we often weren’t present, under thirty- or sixty-day orders. But we learned quick enough that these phony deadlines were as much delusions as were the voices we heard, for the hospital could renew the court orders as long as a determination was made that you continued to be a threat to yourself or to others, which, in our mad states, seemingly was always the determination. So, a thirty-day commitment order could easily become a twenty-year stay. A simple downhill path, marching steadily from psychosis to senility. Shortly after our arrival we all learned that we were a little bit like aging munitions, being stored out of sight, deteriorating with every passing moment, rusting and becoming increasingly less stable.