by Thom Jones
Bobby Dean Steele gave Joe back rubs and wiped his face and in a matter of a few days was leading him around the ward in a rigid, shuffle-step fashion. The patients began to rally around Joe, and soon everyone was giving him hugs and reassuring him. One of the corpsmen warned me that catatonics often snap out of their rigid stupors to perform sudden acts of extreme violence. It was a catatonic who had bitten off Eagle’s nose, he said.
For a brief period during Bobby Dean Steele’s tenure, my temporal-lobe visions jumped more and more into grand mal seizures. Just before the fits, instead of having otherworldly spells, I felt only fear and would see the black lights of boxing. I was having very violent fits. In one of these I bit my tongue nearly in half, and for two weeks I sat in Joe’s corner with Chandler, overloaded on anticonvulsants. My corpsman came by with a little spray bottle and sprayed my tongue. It had swollen so much that I could not shut my mouth, and it stank. It stank worse than schizophrenia, and even the schizophrenics complained. Bobby Dean Steele and I got into a fistfight over the tongue, and I was amazed at my ability to spring into action, since I felt nearly comatose when he came over to the corner and started jawing at me, kicking at me with his shower shoes. I got up punching and dropped him with a left hook to the jaw. The sound of his huge body hitting the tile was like that of a half-dozen rotten melons dropped on concrete. Bobby Dean Steele had to be helped to the seclusion room, but I was not required to go there, nor was I shot up. I guess it was because my tongue made me look miserable enough.
When Bobby Dean Steele came out of isolation, he was so heavily loaded on Thorazine that his spunk was gone, and without his antics and good cheer there was suddenly no “character” on the ward. Joe, who had seemed to be coming out of his catatonia, reverted back to it, but rather than seeking out his corner, he assumed and maintained impossible positions of waxy flexibility wherever he happened to be. It was like some kind of twisted yoga. I had heard that Joe had been at Khe Sanh during the siege and, like Jake Barnes in The Sun Also Rises, received a groin wound—that he had lost his coconuts. I often wonder why that is considered such a terrible thing. I brought this up and was roundly put down. Better to lose your sight, arms, legs, hearing, said Rouse. Only Chandler, who rarely spoke up anymore, agreed with me. “If there was a hot-fudge sundae on one side of the room and a young Moroccan stud with a cock like a bronze sculpture on the other,” he said, “I’d make for the ice cream.”
Eagle came to Chandler’s rescue, just as he had bailed me out for a while with the diary idea. Eagle appointed Chandler his clerk, and in a few weeks Chandler began to put on weight. As a clerk, he was allowed to leave the ward under the escort of one of the corpsmen. Invariably he went into Oceanside to the bookstores or to restaurants to gorge on big meals. He brought me delicious food in doggie bags, and books: Dostoyevsky, Spinoza, Sartre—the writers he insisted I read—and the lighter stuff I preferred. I was reading a lot and having fewer seizures; I had begun to get better. Chandler was better, too, and up to his old mischief. He constantly mimicked his new boss, and his devastating imitations were so accurate that they actually made me realize how much I respected Eagle, who had the advantages of a good education and presumably had a history of confidence and self-esteem, but now, with his tin nose, had been cut adrift from the human race. The humiliation of epilepsy had unmanned me, and I felt empathy for the doctor. At least I looked like a human being. According to Chandler, Eagle had no friends. Chandler also told me that Eagle would get drunk and remove his tin nose and bellow, “I am the Phantom of the Opera. Ah ha ha ha!”
Patients came and went, and time passed—I had been in the nuthouse for fourteen months. I was becoming one of the senior patients on the ward. We got very good meals on the anniversary of the founding of the Marine Corps, on Thanksgiving, at Christmas. In fact, at Christmas, entertainment was brought in. I remember a set of old geezers who constituted a Dixieland band. They did not play that well, but it made for a welcome break in the routine of med calls, of shower shoes flip-flopping across the kelly-green tiles, of young men freaking out at the security screen near Joe’s corner, of people getting high on airplane glue and Vicks Inhalers, of people trying to kill themselves by putting their heads in plastic bags, of the long nights in the ward with the bed springs squealing from incessant masturbation, punctuated by nightmares and night terrors and cries of “Incoming!,” of the same cold starchy meals over and over again, of a parched mouth from drug dehydration and too many cigarettes, of a life without hope.
When the band took a rest between sets, two old farts, one white and one black, played a banjo duet of “Shanty Town” that brought tears to my eyes. Then a group of square dancers came in. They were miserable-looking middle-aged types in Western getups, the women with fat legs. You could sense their apprehension, and I realized that I had forgotten how frightening someone like Bobby Dean Steele, who had been copping an attitude of late, wearing an Afro and a pair of black gloves, must have seemed to people like them. Once the music began, however, the misery was erased from their faces and replaced by a hypnotic expression as they mechanically went through their paces. From my folding chair, swooning on phenobarbital, overly warm from all the body heat, I was in agony until I saw—with a rare and refined sense of objectivity—that their sufferings and miseries vanished in their dancing, as they fell into the rhythm of the music and the singsong of the caller’s instructions. And for a moment I saw myself as well; I saw myself as if from on high, saw the pattern of my whole life with a kind of geometrical precision, like the pattern the dancers were making, and it seemed there was a perfect rightness to it all.
One day after chow, Bobby Dean Steele was summoned to the meds kiosk by one of the doctors, and a corpsman buzzed a pair of enormous brig chasers through the heavy steel door of the ward. They cuffed Bobby Dean Steele, while the resident on duty shrugged his shoulders and told Steele that he was being transferred back to the brig to stand General Court-Martial for three counts of murder in the second degree. It had been decided, Chandler informed us, that Bobby Dean Steele was not especially crazy—at least not according to observation, the M.M.P.I., and the Rorschach. Chandler told us that Steele would end up doing twenty years hard labor in a federal prison.
My own departure was somewhat different. Eagle called me into his office and said, “I’m sending you home. Don’t ask me whether you’re cured or not. I don’t know. I do know you were an outstanding Marine, and I have processed papers for a full disability pension. Good luck to you, Sergeant.”
“Thank you.” I was dumbfounded.
“When you get home, find yourself a good neurologist.…And keep your ass out of the boxing ring.”
“Yes, sir.”
As I turned to leave, Eagle saluted me. I returned the salute proudly, and I heard his booming, operatic laugh start up after I pulled his door shut behind me.
The next morning I collected over nine thousand dollars in back pay and I went out to the bus stop with my seabag on my shoulder. A master sergeant came by, and I asked him what time the bus came. He told me that I could not leave the base until I got a No. 1 haircut and I told him to forget it, that I was a civilian. A moment later a jeep pulled over and a captain with an M.P. band on his sleeve hopped out. I showed him my discharge papers, the jump wings on my set of blues, the Navy Cross and the two Silvers, and he said, “Big fucking deal. You got a General Discharge, Sergeant. A psychiatric discharge, Sergeant. I want you off this base immediately.”
“Well, give me a ride and I’ll be glad to get off the motherfucker,” I said. I was beginning to see cockroaches crawling through the wet sawdust inside my skull, and I kept wiping my nose for fear they would run out and brush across my lips.
“You’re a psycho,” the master sergeant said. “Go out there and wreak havoc and mayhem on the general population, and good riddance.”
“You could cut me some slack,” I said. “I was a real Marine, not some rear-echelon blowhard, and by the way, fuck the Corps. Eat th
e apple, and fuck the Corps. I curse the day I ever joined this green motherfucker.”
“I want you off this base and I want you to hump it off this base,” the master sergeant said.
“You mean I don’t have to get a haircut after all?” I said in my best nellie voice.
“Fucking hit the road, Marine. Haight-Ashbury is that way.”
“Well, fuck you,” I said.
“And fuck you. Go fuck yourself.”
I threw my seabag down and was about to fight when a Marine in a beat-up T-bird pulled over to the bus stop and asked me if I needed a lift. Without another word I tossed my seabag in his back seat and hopped into the car. Before I could say thanks he hit me up for five bucks in gas money. “It’s twenty-three miles to Oceanside,” he said. “And I’m runnin’ on empty. I ain’t even got a spare tire, no jack, no nothing.” He looked at me and laughed, revealing a mouth filled with black cavities. He said, “Hey, man, you wouldn’t happen to have a cigarette, would you?” I handed him my pack. “Hey, thanks,” he said.
“That’s all right,” I said.
He lit the cigarette and took a deep drag. “You want to hear some strange shit?”
“Why not?” I said.
“I just got six, six, and a kick.” The Marine took another pull off the cigarette and said, “Six months in the brig, six months without pay, and a Bad Conduct Discharge.”
“What did you do?” I asked. I was trying to stop the vision of bugs.
“AWOL,” he said. “Which is what I’m doing now. I ain’t going to do no six months in the fucking brig, man. I did two tours in Nam. I don’t deserve this kind of treatment. You want to know something?”
“What’s that?”
“I stole this fucking car. Hot-wired the motherfucker.”
“Far out,” I said. “Which way you going?”
“As far as five bucks in gas will take me.”
“I got a little money. Drive me to Haight-Ashbury?”
“Groovy. What are you doing, man, picking your nose?”
“Just checking for cockroaches,” I said weakly. I was afraid I was going to have a fit, and I began to see the black lights—they were coming on big time, but I fought them off. “What was your M.O.S.?”
“Oh-three-eleven, communications. I packed a radio over in I Corps. Three Purple Hearts and three Bronze Stars with valor. That’s why I ain’t doing six months in no brig. I just hope the ’P. waves us through at the gate. I don’t want no high-speed chases.” The Marine lit another of my cigarettes from the butt of the first one. “Hey, man, were you in the war? You look like you got some hard miles on you. Were you in the war? Did you just get out? You’re not going AWOL, too—that ain’t no regulation haircut. Man, you got a headful of hair. On the run? How about it? Were you in the war? You got that thousand-yard stare, man. Hey, man, stop picking your nose and tell me about it.”
Arf!
“Goddammit, are you zoned or what?”
Bow wow!
“I can’t believe this shit. That motherfucker ’P. at the gate is pulling me over. Look at that. Can you believe this shit? They never pull you over at this gate, not at this time of day—and I haven’t got any identification. Shit! Buckle up your seat belt, nose-pickin’ man, we are gonna motate. This fucking Ford has got a blower on the engine and it can boogie. Haight-Ashbury, here we come or we die tryin’. Save us some of that free love! Just hope you get some of that free lovin’—save me some of that good pussy!”
The Marine slammed his foot down full on the accelerator. The T-bird surged like a rocket and blew by the guard post, snapping off the wooden crossbar. For a moment I felt like I was back in the jungle again, a savage in greasepaint, or back in the boxing ring, a primal man—kill or be killed. It was the best feeling. It was ecstasy. The bugs vanished. My skull contained gray matter again. I looked back at the M.P. in the guard post making a frantic call on the telephone. But the crazy Marine at the wheel told me not to worry, he knew the back roads.
I Want to Live!
SHE WONDERED HOW many times a week he had to do this. Plenty, no doubt. At least every day. Maybe twice…three times. Maybe, on a big day, five times. It was the ultimate bad news, and he delivered it dryly, like Sergeant Joe Friday. He was a young man, but his was a tough business and he had gone freeze-dried already. Hey, the bad news wasn’t really a surprise! She…knew. Of course, you always hope for the best. She heard but she didn’t hear.
“What?” she offered timidly. She had hoped…for better. Geez! Give me a break! What was he saying? Breast and uterus? Double trouble! She knew it would be the uterus. There had been the discharge. The bloating, the cramps. The fatigue. But it was common and easily curable provided you got it at stage one. Eighty percent cure rate. But the breast—that one came out of the blue and that could be really tricky—that was fifty-fifty. Strip out the lymph nodes down your arm and guaranteed chemo. God! Chemo. The worst thing in the world. Goodbye hair—there’d be scarves, wigs, a prosthetic breast, crying your heart out in “support” groups. Et cetera.
“Mrs. Wilson?” The voice seemed to come out of a can. Now the truth was revealed and all was out in the open. Yet how—tell me this—how would it ever be possible to have a life again? The voice from the can had chilled her. To the core.
“Mrs. Wilson, your last CA-125 hit the ceiling,” he said. “I suspect that this could be an irregular kind of can…cer.”
Some off-the-wall kind of can…cer? A kind of wildfire cancer! Not the easygoing, 80 percent-cure rate, tortoise, as-slow-as-molasses-in-January cancer!
January. She looked past the thin oncologist, wire-rimmed glasses, white coat, inscrutable. Outside, snowflakes tumbled from the sky, kissing the pavement—each unique, wonderful, worth an hour of study, a microcosm of the Whole: awe-inspiring, absolutely fascinating, a gift of divinity gratis. Yet how abhorrent they seemed. They were white, but the whole world had lost its color for her now that she’d heard those words. The shine was gone from the world. Had she been Queen of the Universe for a million years and witnessed glory after glory, what would it have mattered now that she had come to this?
She…came to…went out, came back again…went out. There was this…wonderful show. Cartoons. It was the best show. This wasn’t so bad. True, she had cancer but…these wonderful cartoons. Dilaudid. On Dilaudid, well, you live, you die—that’s how it is…life in the Big City. It happens to everyone. It’s part of the plan. Who was she to question the plan?
The only bad part was her throat. Her throat was on fire. “Intubation.” The nurse said she’d phone the doctor and maybe he’d authorize more dope.
“Oh, God, please. Anything.”
“Okay, let’s just fudge a little bit, no one needs to know,” the nurse said, twisting the knob on Tube Control Central. Dilaudid. Cartoons. Oh, God, thank God, Dilaudid! Who invented that drug? Write him a letter. Knight him. Award the Nobel Prize to Dilaudid Man. Where was that knob? A handy thing to know. Whew! Whammo! Swirling, throbbing ecstasy! And who was that nurse? Florence Nightingale, Mother Teresa would be proud…oh, boy! It wasn’t just relief from the surgery; she suddenly realized how much psychic pain she had been carrying and now it was gone with one swoop of a magic wand. The cartoons. Bliss…
His voice wasn’t in a can, never had been. It was a normal voice, maybe a little high for a man. Not that he was effeminate. The whole problem with him was that he didn’t seem real. He wasn’t a flesh-and-blood kinda guy. Where was the empathy? Why did he get into this field if he couldn’t empathize? In this field, empathy should be your stock-in-trade.
“The breast is fine, just a benign lump. We brought a specialist in to get it, and I just reviewed the pathology report. It’s nothing to worry about. The other part is not…so good. I’m afraid your abdomen…it’s spread throughout your abdomen…it looks like little Grape-Nuts, actually. It’s exceedingly rare and it’s…it’s a rapid form of…can…cer. We couldn’t really take any of it out. I spent most of my time in th
ere untangling adhesions. We’re going to have to give you cisplatin…if it weren’t for the adhesions, we could pump it into your abdomen directly—you wouldn’t get so sick that way—but those adhesions are a problem and may cause problems further along.” Her room was freezing, but the thin oncologist was beginning to perspire. “It’s a shame,” he said, looking down at her chart. “You’re in such perfect health…otherwise.”
She knew this was going to happen yet she heard herself say, “Doctor, do you mean…I’ve got to take—”
“Chemo? Yeah. But don’t worry about that yet. Let’s just let you heal up for a while.” He slammed her chart shut and…whiz, bang, he was outta there.
Goodbye, see ya.
The guessing game was over and now it was time for the ordeal. She didn’t want to hear any more details—he’d said something about a 20 percent five-year survival rate. Might as well bag it. She wasn’t a fighter, and she’d seen what chemo had done to her husband, John. This was it. Finis!
She had to laugh. Got giddy. It was like in that song—Freedom’s just another word for nothing left to lose…When you’re totally screwed, nothing can get worse, so what’s to worry? Of course she could get lucky…it would be a thousand-to-one, but maybe…
The ovaries and uterus were gone. The root of it all was out. Thank God for that. Those befouled organs were gone. Where? Disposed of. Burned. In a dumpster? Who cares? The source was destroyed. Maybe it wouldn’t be so bad. How could it be that bad? After all, the talk about pain from major abdominal surgery was overdone. She was walking with her little cart and tubes by the third day—a daily constitutional through the ward.