by Lesley Kagen
Sort of.
“I need to know more about the Broadhurst patients,” I told them in the hideout after the Fourth of ’59 fireworks show.
Viv, who’d hidden her face on Frankie’s chest for most of The Snake Pit, predictably shuddered. “That movie scared me almost as much as The Wizard of Oz did. How come you wanna know more about somethin’ awful like that?”
That was a $64,000 question I didn’t have an answer to at the time, so I told her, “I don’t know, but I really, really do. I’ve read all of Doc’s books and the files of the patients he treats up there and everything I can get my hands on at the library, and I’ve asked Jimbo a million questions. The only way I can learn more is by seeing people act crazy with my own eyes. I wanna go up to the hospital and watch them after they get turned out in the recreation yard, and I wanna to do it tomorrow.” I pointed to the “Keep Out” sign hanging by the door. “No ifs, ands, or buts.”
Considering how poorly the two of them had reacted to The Snake Pit they were reluctant, to say the least, to spend time at Broadhurst, even if it didn’t look anything like the Juniper State Hospital, the asylum in the movie. It looked like a beautiful mansion because that’s what it was before beer baron Mr. Patrick Broadhurst had it converted into a mental institution in 1952 when his wife hung herself in a tree on the estate after their only child, a little girl by the name of Charlotte, died of measles.
On our ride over to the hospital the next day, Viv called me a dumb chump a record number of times and Frankie never told her to shut up, but what a turnaround they made when we stumbled upon a massive oak that sat on the edge of the fifteen-acre property outside of town. The surrounding woods were mostly high pine or scrub, but this tree was so tall and the spread of its boughs so lush that when the girls and I stood at its base and cranked our necks back it felt like we’d received an invitation to climb a stairway to heaven. As fanciful as we were, we had no problem convincing ourselves that the magnificent oak had to be the very tree Katherine Broadhurst had ended her life in, and from that afternoon on, Frankie and Viv got as big a thrill out of spending time in what we called the “Hanging Tree” as I did.
I’m ashamed now by our insensitivity and can only offer up the ignorance of the times, our youth, and our penchant for scary movies as excuses, but the girls and I would watch the patients during their time in the hospital’s recreation yard with the same jaw-dropping looks we’d get on our faces during the Saturday afternoon creature features at the Rivoli.
I should’ve been pleased that I’d gotten what I wanted and I was at first, but after a few weeks, I found that observing the patients had left me wanting more. “Watching them from up here has been really interesting and I’ve learned a lot,” I told the girls on our special branch in the Hanging Tree. “But it’s sorta like … like eating candy with the wrapper on.”
Viv whipped my way and said, “Are you razzin’ me again?”
Frankie said, “She doesn’t mean the time you and me were fightin’ over that piece of butterscotch and you stuffed it in your mouth without taking the cellophane off, numnuts. She’s saying that she wants to do more than just look at the patients. She wants to meet ’em and she’s not kidding around. Look at her chin. See how it’s juttin’ out the same way Auntie’s does when she digs in? We got to give her what she wants or she’s gonna hang up the “Keep Out” sign.”
Those were different days. Our churches weren’t locked and rarely our homes. And other than a few pranks on All Hallows Eve and April Fool’s Day—bags of dog poop set aflame on porches and shop windows soaped—vandalism was unheard of, and no one stole from another. There wasn’t a “No Trespassing” sign posted on the Broadhurst property line, no guards walking the perimeter or barbed wire strung atop the wrought-iron fence, so there was really nothing stopping us.
“I don’t wanna meet the patients,” Viv whined. “I wanna go to Whitcomb’s. Talkin’ about candy made me want something sweet and I got to pee.”
“Got any other news, Walter Cronkite?” Frankie said. “You always want something sweet and you always gotta pee and … hey, wait a minute.” She grinned. “You’re not chicken, are ya?” She stuck her fists in her armpits and flapped. “Bawk, bawk, bawk.”
“Ha!” Viv fired back and got into position to jump off the branch.
I yanked her down and said, “Cool your jets.”
“We can’t just waltz up to the fence and start chatting with them,” Frankie told Viv. “Remember how Jimbo told us that their families can’t even visit or talk to them? We need to find a place where we won’t be seen by someone from the hospital and get into trouble. Give me the binoculars, Biz.”
After I handed them off, Frankie used them to inspect the perimeter of the property until she came to rest on the northernmost boundary of the recreation yard, where old growth pine trees loomed.
“That’d be a great spot,” I said with a sigh, “but we’ll never get through those scratchy boughs without bleeding to death.”
“Might not be as bad as you think.” Frankie passed back the binoculars, placed her hands on the side of my head and tilted me toward where she’d been looking. “See the cardinal in the tallest tree? About halfway up?”
I nodded, because I’d already noticed it. After I told Aunt Jane May that a cardinal had begun sharing the hideout with us every summer, she smiled and told me, “When red birds appear, angels are near,” so I always kept my eye out for them.
“Good. Now move a whiff to the right,” Frankie coached. “See the gap?”
Barely.
The girls and I were experts at wedging into tight spots, and the pines would offer good cover, but we couldn’t tell from up in the Hanging Tree if the clearing would give us access to the patients.
“Let’s check it out,” Frankie said.
We took the path that ran along that perimeter of Broadhurst until we reached the edge of the property that we’d not explored before. The smell was almost intoxicating and the trees created what looked like an invincible green wall. It was hard to get our bearings until I spotted the red bird we’d seen in the Hanging Tree still perched in a pine. It looked like it was bookmarking the spot, so I thought we might be getting a thumbs-up from on high, maybe even from my mother.
After the girls and I scrabbled around the buckthorn, we made our way through the scratchy pine branches with minimal damage, and slipped into the gap Frankie and I had spotted through the binoculars. We ended up in a circular patch of dirt with a sawed-off stump in the middle that made me wonder if the tree had been cut down on a long-ago Christmas Eve before Mrs. Broadhurst had killed herself.
Not much of the wrought-iron fence was exposed—say, a few yards—but Frankie nodded in approval and said, “Good enough. Now all we got to do is get Jimbo’s and Albie’s permission.”
Viv, who’d been reluctant to visit with the patients and was complaining about a couple of bloody scratches on her arms, suddenly perked up. “Pie and a pee? Count me in! Last one to Earl’s eats a bowl of grits!”
* * *
Mud Towners weren’t forbidden to eat in Summit proper, but they weren’t welcomed with a smile either, so between the hours of 6 AM and 2 PM Earl Spooner served breakfast and lunch at his club. You could order eggs done any way you wanted, and there was an array of sandwiches to choose from that outshone anything they served at Chuck’s Café on Main. Sweet apple barbecued pork piled high on a hard roll with a scoop of potato salad on the side, a sweet pickle, and a slice of baked-that-morning fruit pie with a scoop of vanilla custard was my go-to favorite.
Few with skin the color of ours felt comfortable frequenting Earl’s place—aside from Aunt Jane May, who loved the home-style food, and Doc, after he made a house call. The sheriff would stop by, too, and our mayor could often be found enjoying a ham hock—so the girls and I stood out when we came through the screen door that afternoon, but did not feel unwelcome.
The same customers we’d watch sway to live music in the wee hours
were hunkered down in booths with their lunches, listening to bluesy, juke-box tunes. Day or night, didn’t matter, the place was always packed, but we had no problem spotting Jimbo. It would’ve been like overlooking Mount Kilimanjaro. He took most of his meals at Earl’s because not only did the club have the best food in all of Summit, he’d get a discount for the evenings he’d be called on to use his orderly skills. “Liquor and trouble are married to each other ’til death do them part,” he would say about the belligerent customers who didn’t know when to call it quits.
Jimbo’s coworker at Broadhurst, Albie Johnson, was sitting next to him in the booth enjoying his lunch at a reduced rate, too, because his girlfriend, Bigger Dolores—there was another Dolores who worked as a cigarette girl at night and was as tiny as the outfit she wore—was Earl Spooner’s sister.
Both men were in their early thirties, had full faces, and deep brown eyes, but that’s as far as the resemblance went. Jimbo’s hair was close cropped and springy, and he smelled like grass clippings. Albie kept his hair smoothed into a flashy style Dell called a “conk,” and he smelled of something cheap and store bought. Hardworking Jimbo was well read and a rickety bookcase in his living room was stocked with the classics. Albie, on the other hand, found applying himself to anything other than gambling and alcohol was more trouble than it was worth and his lips moved when he’d read the Superman comic book he always had sticking out of his back pocket. But what Albie lacked in initiative and intelligence, he made up for in style. He had this loose, lackadaisical way about him, walked to a beat only he heard, wore what he called “high-tone” city clothes and, Lord, was he ever vain. Never met anybody who liked that man half as much as he liked himself—except for Bigger Dolores, and the girls and I were doing all we could to remedy that situation. We knew Jimbo was carrying a torch for her because he’d break into a sweat and get a shy smile on his face whenever her name came up. So whenever we snuck into the Broadhurst kitchen to help Bigger out, we’d remind her that Albie walked on the wild side so he probably wasn’t long for this world, and then we’d brag on Jimbo.
After we said our hellos to the patrons we’d known all our lives, Viv ran to the “Dolls” bathroom to empty what Aunt Jane May called her “thimble” bladder, and Frankie and I made our way to the back booth. When we sat across from Jimbo, he gave us a broad smile. Albie was less thrilled, but not rude. We talked about Dell and Aunt Jane May and how the heat was killing the crops and other town news, until Viv joined us and ordered a bowl of grits for me and a piece of pie for herself from a cute waitress named Hazel.
The stakes were high that afternoon, but I wasn’t nervous when I explained to the two orderlies what we were hoping to do at Broadhurst. I saw seeking their permission to spend time with the patients in the recreation yard as a formality, really, just plain good manners. Maybe Albie wouldn’t be as quick to jump on the bandwagon as I hoped, because I suspected that he knew the girls and I weren’t members of his fan club, but he knew we’d complain to Bigger Dolores if he gave us any grief. Not once did it cross my mind that when I finished my pitch that it’d be Jimbo who’d crinkle his forehead and say, “Don’t know ’bout that, Bizzy.”
“But—”
“The woods belong to the town, so you girls been all right in that tree watchin’, but ya get right up close to the fence, you’d be trespassin’ on private property,” Jimbo explained.
“Not sure what Cruikshank would do if ya got caught,” Albie threw in, “but if he didn’t call the sheriff, that bitch Holloway sure would.”
“He’s right, honey,” Jimbo said softly to me. “I don’t gotta tell you how your family’d feel about you breakin’ the law. Same goes for you, Viv.” When he turned to Frankie, there was such love and concern in his eyes. “And you know how Dell frets, baby.”
The only Buchanan who was supposed to be familiar with the insides of a police station was Uncle Walt. If the girls and I got caught trespassing, that’d be big news in Summit. My family would be horrified, and Viv’s parents, who owned both Cleary’s Funeral Home and House of Beauty, relied on good word of mouth to keep their businesses afloat. But Dell would be the hardest hit. “You girls got to be more careful,” she’d caution us after we’d gotten ourselves into a scrape. “There’s folks in this town who’re still suspicious that Frankie showed up out of nowhere with skin darker than their own. You get them talking, there’s no knowin’ where it’ll lead.”
By “them,” Dell meant the small group of Germans who were very proud of their “Motherland.” While they weren’t the only prejudiced families in town, they were the most vocal and dedicated to keeping Summit white on our side of the tracks. Every so often, they’d still give the evil eye to the Maniachis and Frankie after Mass on Sunday, probably questioning whether all three of them were “Schwarze.” And we heard Dell tell Aunt Jane May during one of their back porch meetings that Mrs. Schmidt, who owned the bakery, called her a “jigaboo” and wouldn’t sell her a coffee cake with streusel topping. And none of those Germans hired day workers from Mud Town to wash their cars or mow their lawns.
So Jimbo had a right to be concerned, but I couldn’t recall him ever refusing a request we’d made, and I couldn’t believe he’d chosen to nix this one. Not everyone who worked at Broadhurst cared about the patients, but he treated them with TLC. He thought it was wrong that they weren’t allowed to talk on the telephone, even to their families. And he didn’t like that when loved ones wanted to pay a visit that it had to be scheduled a month in advance, and how when the day drew near, someone from the hospital would inevitably cancel the get-together for the “good of the patient.”
“But,” I told Jimbo, “you tell us all the time how you think they’d get better faster if they had more contact with regular people.”
It seemed to take him forever to weigh the pros and cons of my request before he reached down to his lap, plucked up the white napkin, and waved it in mock surrender.
“All right, all right,” he said. “I can see how important this is to you, and I do believe it’d be good for the patients to spend time with the three of ya.” He tilted his head toward Albie. “But it needs to be fine with him, too.”
Far as I could tell, Albie didn’t care about much of anything except for how he looked, Superman comic books, throwing dice in the back room of Chummy Adler’s bar, Jack Daniels, the fancy Chrysler he’d been driving around, and staying on Bigger Dolores’s good side, so he responded about the way I thought he would.
“Bigger is fond of you and she’d like it if I helped you girls out,” he said, like she might give him some kind of reward. “But you gotta agree to a few rules first.” He took his sweet time sucking the last of the meat off a rib bone, and carefully placed it on top of the pile on his plate like he was putting the finishing touches on a sculpture. “When you’re talkin’ with the patients, you can’t say nothin’ about their conditions, and whatever you do don’t touch ’em. That can set some of them off real bad and I don’t wanna have to use the siren.”
Housed in a gunmetal-gray box next to the front door of the hospital, the siren made this unearthly screeching noise to let everyone on the grounds know that things had gotten to the point-of-no-return in the recreation yard and reinforcements were needed ASAP.
“Cruikshank got real mad the last time I pulled it and if I gotta haul my hind end up to his office and tell him I lost control of the yard again, he could call me a derelict of duty and fire me,” Albie added. I couldn’t tell if he said that to make sure we followed his rules or whether he wanted us to know that he was putting his job on the line for us and we owed him one, but I suspected it was the latter. “You also got to be real careful about gettin’ seen ’cause there’s eyes everywhere.”
That shot a shiver through me because it reminded me of this movie the girls and I had seen called The Crawling Eye—if you think it’d be easy to outrun a slow-moving but deadly eyeball, boy, would you be wrong. “Uh … what kind of eyes do you mean exactly?
” I asked him.
When Albie drew closer, his breath smelled so warm and saucy it made my eyes water.
“Bigger and me, we used to like to meet up in the kitchen cooler durin’ lunchtime. We was real careful,” he said, “but somehow Holloway found out were in there ballin’. Jimbo don’t agree with me, but I think Cruikshank might got cameras hidden all over the hospital and grounds so he can keep his eye on us. You don’t want no picture of the three of ya sneakin’ ’round the property,” Albie said.
He was just trying to scare us into being more careful when we were visiting with the patients so his rear end wouldn’t end up in a sling, and it wasn’t even a very good lie. Telling us that he and Bigger were “ballin’” in the kitchen cooler was too ridiculous to believe. Hanging out close to the food and refrigerated air seemed right, but no way would those two play catch in there. Neither one of them were at all athletically inclined.
“And the most important rule of all is, if ya get caught, ya gotta take your licks,” Albie said. “You can’t tell nobody that Jimbo and me told ya you could visit with them.” He sucked the spicy, peach barbecue sauce off his fingers, then slid one of Earl Spooner’s bumpy red menus out from behind the napkin holder. “Set your right hands down and swear, or no deal.”
Albie spent a lot more time eating than praying, so the menu was his version of the Bible, I guessed, and I did what he asked and so did Frankie, but I had to elbow Viv and say, “Swear.”
“Nobody’s better at sneakin’ around than us,” she said with a mouthful of pie. “And we found that good hiding spot in the trees and—”
“What d’ya mean we?” Frankie said.
When Viv grinned, we could see the cherries stuck between her teeth. “Why jinx it with a swear? We won’t get caught.”