Peter saw that immediately. No youth centers were intentionally named after child molesters.
And the person that threatened it all, was him.
Peter turned back to Father Grozdik. “You are about to ask something of me, are you not, Father?”
“Not precisely, Peter.”
“Then what is it that you want?”
Father Grozdik placed his lips together in a pursed smile, and Peter instantly realized that he had asked the wrong question in the wrong way, because by asking, Peter had implied that he would do what the priest wanted. “Ah, Peter,” Father Grozdik said slowly, but with a coldness that surprised even the Fireman. “What we want … what we all want—the hospital, your family, the Church—is for you to get better.”
“Better?”
“To that end, we would like to help.”
“Help?”
“Yes. There is a clinic, a facility, that is leading the way in post-traumatic stress research and treatment. We believe, the Church believes, even your family believes, that you would be far better suited to a stay there, than you would here in Western State.”
“My family?”
“Yes. They seem quite eager to see you get this help.”
Peter wondered what they had been promised. Or threatened. He was angry for an instant, shifted in his seat, then abruptly saddened as he realized that he’d probably solved nothing for any of them, especially his damaged nephew. He wanted to say all this, but stopped himself, and instead, shunted all those thoughts deep within him.
Peter asked instead: “And where is this facility?”
“It is in Oregon. You can be there within days.”
“Oregon?”
“Yes. A quite beautiful part of that state, or so I’m reliably informed.”
“And the charges against me?”
“A successful completion of the treatment plan would result in the charges being dropped.”
Peter thought hard, then asked, “And I do what, in return?”
Father Grozdik pitched forward once again. Peter had the sensation that the priest had discussed long before his arrival at Western State precisely how he would reply to that question. Father Grozdik spoke in a low, clear, very slow voice: “We would expect that you would do nothing and say absolutely nothing today, or at any time in the future, that might prevent great and wondrous progress from being made with such enthusiasm.”
These words chilled him and his first response was anger. A great mixture of ice and fire within him. Fury commingled with cold. He managed to control himself with great effort.
“You say you’ve actually talked this over with my family?” he asked flatly.
“Do you not think that your return here to this state would cause them great anguish, by reminding them of so much, and so many troubled times? Do you not think it would be far better for Peter the Fireman to begin anew, somewhere distant? Do you not think that you owe them the opportunity to get on with their lives, as well, and not to be hounded by terrible memories of such awful events?”
Peter did not reply.
Father Grozdik shuffled the papers on the desktop. Then he said: “You can have a life, Peter. But we need you to agree. And promptly, for this offer may not remain viable for very long. In many places, many people have made significant sacrifices and difficult arrangements so that this offer can be made to you, Peter.”
Peter’s throat was dry. When he did speak, words seemed to squeak past his lips. “Promptly, you say. Do you mean minutes? Days? A week, a month, a year?”
Father Grozdik smiled again. “We would like to see you getting the proper treatment within days, Peter. Why prolong barriers to your emotional well-being?”
This question seemingly did not require an answer.
He stood up. “You will need to tell Doctor Gulptilil of your decision promptly, Peter. We, of course, will not demand you to make it on the spot. I’m sure there is much for you to think about. But it is a fine offer, Peter, and one that will bring much good out of this terrible series of circumstances.”
Peter rose, as well. He looked over at Doctor Gulptilil. The round Indian physician had kept his mouth shut throughout the conversation. The doctor gestured toward the door, and finally said, “Peter, you may ask Mister Moses to escort you back to Amherst. Perhaps he can do this without the restraints at this time.”
Peter took a step back, and the doctor added, “Ah, Peter, when you reach what is so clearly the only possible decision on this matter, simply inform Mister Evans that you wish to speak with me, and then we will get the necessary paperwork for your transfer in order.”
Father Grozdik seemed to stiffen slightly, as he stood beside the doctor, behind the desk. He shook his head. “Perhaps,” he said cautiously, “Doctor, we could have Peter deal only with you on this matter. In particular, I believe that Mister Evans, your associate, should not be, shall we say, involved in any way, shape, or form.”
Gulp-a-pill looked oddly at the priest, who added, by way of explanation, “It was his brother, Doctor, who was one of the men injured running into the church in a vain attempt to rescue Father Connolly. Evans’s brother is still in the midst of long-term, and considerably painful therapy for burns received that tragic night. I fear your associate might harbor some animosity toward Peter.”
Peter hesitated, thought about one, two, perhaps a dozen responses, but said none of them. He nodded toward the Cardinal, who nodded back, but without a smile, the priest’s florid face set in an edge, which told Peter that he was walking on a very thin and desperately narrow precipice.
The ground floor corridor in the Amherst Building was crowded with patients. There was a buzz in the hallway, as people spoke to one another or to themselves. It was only when something out of the routine took place that people grew silent, or else made untethered noises that could have been speech. Any change was always dangerous, Francis thought. It frightened him to realize he was growing accustomed to existence at Western State. A sane person, he told himself, accommodates change and welcomes originality. He promised himself to embrace every different thing that he could, to fight off the dependence upon routine. Even his voices echoed agreement within him, as if they, too, could see the dangers in becoming just another face in the hallway.
But, as he told himself this, there was a sudden silence in the corridor. Noise dropped away like a receding wave at the beach. When Francis looked up, he saw the reason: Little Black was leading three men through the center of the hallway toward the first-floor dormitory room. Francis recognized the hulking retarded man, who easily carried a footlocker in both arms, and had a large Raggedy Andy doll stuck under his armpit. The man sported a contusion on his forehead and a slightly swollen lip, but wore a skewed smile, which he delivered to anyone who met his gaze. He grunted, as if making greetings, as he trotted behind Little Black.
The second man was slight, and significantly older, with glasses and thin, wispy white hair. He seemed to be light on his feet, like a dancer, and Francis watched him pirouette down the corridor as if the gathering there was a part of a ballet. The third man was dull-lidded, a little shy of middle age, a little beyond youth, wide in the shoulders, dark-haired and stocky. He plodded forward, as if it was a struggle to keep up with either the retarded man or the Dancer. A Cato, Francis thought at first. Or else damn close to it. But then, when he looked a little closer, he saw the man’s black eyes moving furtively back and forth, inspecting the sea of patients parting in front of Little Black’s procession. Francis saw the man’s eyes narrow, as if what he saw displeased him, and an edge of his mouth turned upward in a doglike snarl. Francis immediately altered his diagnosis, and recognized a man that deserved a wide berth. He carried a brown cardboard box with his meager belongings.
Francis saw Lucy emerge from the office and stand watching the group move toward the dormitory. He caught Little Black’s slight nod of his head in her direction, as if to signal her that the disruption that she’d set in motion had succee
ded. A disruption that had necessitated the moving of several men from one dormitory to another.
Lucy moved to Francis and whispered to him quickly. “C-Bird, tag along there, and see that our guy gets into a bunk where you and Peter can keep an eye on him.”
Francis nodded, wanted to say that the retarded man wasn’t the man they should be watching, but did not. Instead, Francis peeled himself from the wall and moved down the hallway, which returned to a busy buzz and muted talk as he passed.
He saw Cleo poised near the nursing station, her eyes locked on each of the men as they ambled past her. Francis could see the large woman’s mind working, her brow furrowed in examination, one hand lifted, pointing as the three men sailed down the hallway. It seemed to him that she was measuring, and suddenly, in a loud, near-frantic voice, Cleo shouted out: “You’re not welcome here! None of you are!”
But none of the men turned, or broke stride, or showed for a second that they heard or understood anything Cleo said.
She harumphed loudly and made a dismissive gesture with her hand. Francis hurried past her, trying to keep up with Little Black’s quick march.
When he entered the dormitory, he saw that the retarded man was being situated in Lanky’s old bunk, while the others were being moved into spaces not far from the wall. He watched as Little Black oversaw making the beds and stowing the belongings, and then took the men on the short tour, which consisted of pointing out the bathroom, the poster of hospital rules that Francis imagined were the same as the dormitory they had been transferred from and informing them that dinner would begin within a few minutes. Then he shrugged and headed out, pausing only to say to Francis, “Tell Miss Jones that there was a helluva fight over in Williams. The guy she pissed off, went right for the big guy there. It took a couple of attendants to pull him off, and the other two kinda got caught up in it by accident. The other son of a bitch is gonna do a couple of days in a detention and observation cell. Probably gonna get a whole lot shot into him to calm his butt down, too. Let her know it worked out pretty much like she thought it would, except that everyone over in Williams is strung out and upset and it’s likely to take a couple of days for everything to settle down over there.”
Then Little Black pushed through the door, and left him alone with the three new men.
Francis watched as the large retarded man sat on the edge of the bed and gave his doll a hug. Then he began to rock back and forth, with a little half grin on his face, as if he was slowly assessing his new surroundings. The Dancer did a little spin, and then went over to the barred window and simply stared out at what remained of the afternoon.
But the third man, the stocky one, spied Francis and seemed to stiffen instantly. For a second, he recoiled. Then he rose up and pointed accusingly at Francis and stepped quickly across the floor, dodging the beds, and right up into Francis’s face. He was hissing with rage. “You must be the one,” the man spat, his voice barely a whisper, but filled with an awful low noise of anger. “You must be the one! You’re the one that’s looking for me, aren’t you?” Francis did not reply, but pushed himself back tight to the wall. The man lifted a fist and held it beneath Francis’s jaw. His eyes flashed fury but it was contradicted by the snakelike sound of his voice, words that filled the space around them like a rattler’s warning sound.
“Because I’m the one you’re looking for.” He sliced words from the air.
Then, with a nonchalant smile, he pushed past Francis and out the door into the hallway.
chapter 22
But I knew, didn’t I?
Perhaps not right at that moment, but soon enough. At first, I was still taken aback, surprised by the vehemence of the admission thrust in my face. I could feel a quiver within me, and all of the voices shouted out warnings and misgivings, contradictory impulses to hide, to follow, but mostly to pay attention to what I understood. Which was of course, that it didn’t make sense. Why would the Angel simply walk directly up to me and confess his presence, when he had done so much to conceal who he was? And, if the stocky man wasn’t really the Angel, why had he said what he did?
Filled with misgivings, my insides a turmoil of questions and conflicts, I took a deep breath, steadied my nerves and rushed through the dormitory door in order to trail the stocky man out into the corridor, leaving the Dancer and the retarded hulk behind. I watched him as he paused, lighting a cigarette with a dandified flourish, then looking up and surveying the new world that he’d been transferred into. I realized that the landscape of every housing unit was different. Perhaps the architecture was similar, the hallways and offices, dayroom, cafeteria, dormitory spaces, storage closets, stairwells, upstairs isolation cells all following more or less the same pattern, with maybe little design distinctions. But that wasn’t the real terrain of each housing unit. The contours and topography were really defined by all the variety of madnesses contained within. And that was what the stocky man hesitated, assessing. I caught another glimpse of his eyes, and I knew that he was a man usually on the verge of an explosion. A man who had little control over all the rages that raced around his bloodstream contending with the Haldol or Prolixin that he was given daily. Our bodies were battlefields of contending armies of psychosis and narcotics, fighting from house to house for control, and the stocky man seemed to be caught up as much as any of us in that war.
I didn’t think the Angel was.
I saw the stocky man push aside an elderly senile fellow, a thin, sickly sort who stumbled and almost fell to the floor and just as nearly burst into tears. The stocky man persisted down the corridor, pausing only to scowl at two women rocking in a corner singing lullabies to baby dolls held in their arms. When a wild-haired, disheveled Cato in loose pajamas and long, flowing housecoat, harmlessly meandered into his path, he screamed at the blank-faced man to move aside, and then continued on, his pace quickening, as if his footsteps could keep the beat defined by his anger. And every step he traveled took him farther, I thought, from the man we were pursuing. I don’t think I could have said exactly why but I knew it with a certainty that grew as I followed down the corridor. I could see in my imagination precisely how when the fight broke out in Williams that had been orchestrated by Lucy, the stocky man had been instantly caught up in the trading of blows, and that was why he was transferred to Amherst. An addendum to the incident. He wasn’t the sort who could ever idly sit back and watch a conflict unfold, shrinking into a corner, or taking refuge against the wall. He would respond electrically, leap in immediately, regardless of what the cause was, or who was fighting whom, or the why or wherefore of any of it. He just liked a fight, because it allowed him to step away from all the impulses that tormented him, and lose himself in the exquisite anger of trading blows. And then, when he rose, bloodied, his madness wouldn’t allow him to wonder why he’d done what he’d done.
Part of his illness, I recognized, was in always drawing attention to himself.
But why had he been so specific, thrusting his face up to mine? “I’m the man you’re looking for”?
In my apartment, I bent forward, leaning my head up against the wall, placing my forehead against the words that I’d written, while I paused, deep within my own memories. The pressure against my temple reminded me a little of a cold compress placed on the skin, trying to reduce a childhood fever. I closed my eyes for an instant, hoping to get a little rest.
But a whisper creased the air. It hissed directly behind me.
“You didn’t think I would make it easy for you?”
I didn’t turn. I knew that the Angel was both there and not there.
“No,” I said out loud. “I didn’t think you would make it easy. But it took me some time to figure out the truth.”
Lucy saw Francis emerge from the dormitory, trailing after another man and not the one that she’d sent him to keep an eye on. She could see that Francis’s face was pale, and he seemed to her to be riveted on what he was doing, almost oblivious to the predinner half step, do-si-do square dance of
anticipation going on in the crowded corridor. She took a stride in his direction, then stopped, knowing somewhere within her that C-Bird probably had a reasonable grasp on what he was doing.
She lost sight of the two men as they headed into the dayroom, and she began to maneuver toward that room, when she saw Mister Evans steaming down the hallway toward her. He had the wild-eyed look of a dog that has had its well-gnawed bone stolen from him.
“So,” he said angrily, “I hoped you’re pleased. I’ve got one attendant over at the emergency room with a fractured wrist, and I’ve had to transfer three patients from Williams and put a fourth in restraints and in isolation for at least twenty-four hours, maybe more. I’ve got uproar and turmoil in one housing unit, and one of the transfers is probably significantly at risk, because he’s had to shift locations after several years. And through no fault of his own. He just got caught up in the fight by accident, but ended up getting threatened. Damn! I hope you can appreciate what a setback this is, and how dangerous it is, especially for the patients who come to accept one thing and are suddenly tossed into another housing unit.”
Lucy looked at him coldly. “You think I managed all that?”
“I do,” Evans said.
“I must be far more clever than I thought,” she answered sarcastically.
Mister Evil snorted, his face flushed. It was the appearance of a man who doesn’t like seeing the carefully balanced world that he controls upset in any fashion, Lucy thought. He started to respond angrily, impetuously, but, then, in a manner that Lucy found unsettling, he managed to gain control, and speak in a far more contained fashion.
“My recollection,” Mister Evil said slowly, “was that your arrangement here, working in this treatment facility was dependent on a lack of disruption. I seem to remember that you agreed to keep a low profile, and not to get in the way of the treatment plans already in place.”
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