“That’s about what I figured. Still, it wasn’t the best way to go about it.”
I said to her, “Do you think I belong here or what?”
“Of course not. I’m trying to get you out.”
“What else went on at the staffing?”
“If I tell you, it’s going to get you down.”
“Tell me anyway. I think I have a right to know. You’re always big on rights.”
So she summed up the other stuff that had come up. The log catching fire was big. It was brought up that I wrote weird stories. It was brought up that I’m intractable and defiant; my moccasins were part of the evidence. Then she added, “There was a letter from Mrs. Bluefish and another one from Reverend Braithwaite. Mrs. Bluefish wrote that since you really and truly believe you’re going to be an Indian someday, it shows you’re psychologically disturbed. Reverend Braithwaite’s letter said you need proper religious training.”
I said, “I wear Dakota moccasins to school and told the reverend about some Indian miracles. Now I’m in the looney bin. You see how nuts that sounds?”
“I warned you this would get you down, but you had to know.”
“Right. I had to know.”
“Let’s go outside.”
We went out to this patio, which was somewhat like a sunken courtyard, so Barb could light up. She said, “We talked about a new placement.”
“Naturally.”
“You don’t like it at Gates House. Why wouldn’t you like to talk about a new placement?”
The more we talked about these things, the more depressing it seemed. “I told you once, I hate getting hung out all the time. I was hung out most of this year, up until April. Besides, if Wagner and those other agency honchos have their way, they’ll just get me placed in one of those hard-core houses like The Tunnels.”
“That sounds like you’re anticipating the worst.”
“I’d be an idiot to anticipate anything else. You were the one at the staffing. If that wasn’t a hatchet job, then what was it?”
Barb tried to blow a smoke ring, but there was too much wind. She said, “I’d like to try to find you a good placement in a foster home. One like you had with Mr. and Mrs. Gibbs. That’s what I’d like to work on. Are you interested?”
“I don’t know. I can put in my time at Gates House if I have to.”
She said, “Maybe you don’t have to. Do me a favor and think it over. I have to go to Missouri tomorrow for a wedding in Nolan’s family. I’m going to be out of town for a couple of days.”
“I’ll be here when you get back.”
“I hope you won’t be. I’m pushing for you to be dismissed. We can talk about it after I get back, when you’ve had some time to think it over. Unless of course you don’t want to; I’m not going to force you to talk about a new placement if you don’t want to.”
Just about that time, a nurse came out. She said there was a group therapy I had to go to, so Barb said good-bye. She told me to keep my chin up. “I’ll see you when I get back.”
The next day, I was reading a book in leisure time. Gary came up and wanted to talk. He wanted to know what I was in for.
“It’s hard to say,” I said. “It was a combination of little things. They had a way of adding up that didn’t make sense.”
“Such as?”
I told him about the fight and the pipe and the willow bark. I didn’t go into the log, or my moccasins, et cetera.
“My friend, you’ve been railroaded.”
I told him about Mrs. Grice, and how I refused to stand on the X when she told me to.
“I’d say you did the right thing,” said Gary. “She sounds like a dead solid hairbag.”
Then I tried to get back to my reading because I hoped the conversation was over. But no way. Gary started explaining what he was in for. It turned out he’d burned down his neighbor’s garage. “I have to go to trial for it next month,” he said.
So I asked him why he torched the garage.
“It was because of my pheasant,” he said.
I had no idea what he was talking about, but he just went right on with the story.
“See, I have this pheasant stuffed and mounted on the wall in my bedroom. It’s the first pheasant I ever bagged. I shot it with my dad a few years ago. Anyway, our neighbors put a floodlight on their garage. They said it was for security, but I think maybe they had other reasons.”
I didn’t say anything. One thing I’d figured out was that Gary was going to say what he was going to say, even if you weren’t interested in hearing it.
He went on, “That floodlight made my pheasant throw a distorted shadow on the wall, all bent out of shape. For all practical purposes, it ruined my pheasant.”
“Are you saying your neighbor did it on purpose?”
“Not for certain. I’m just saying it’s possible. I’ve had bad vibes from him before.”
“You burned down the garage to get the light turned off.”
“Not at first. At first I tried to pry the floodlight off the garage with a crowbar. It didn’t work because the light was wired up in conduit. In case you don’t know, that’s a heavy electrical pipe. Also, there were strong metal clamps.”
“Why didn’t you just move your pheasant to a different wall or close your curtains?”
“You sound just like Mrs. Greene,” he said. “You sound just like everybody else who hears about the pheasant. The answer should be obvious: Why should I move my pheasant, when it was on the wall long before he put up his stupid floodlight?”
I didn’t try to think of an answer. You couldn’t give Gary a right answer; he made up all the rules for the conversation and if you broke one of the rules, he would go into this real injured head. I picked up my book again and started reading. I guess he got the point because he left and went down the hallway.
The Elms was squeezing me. As soon as he was out of sight, I went down to Mrs. Greene’s office. Her secretary told me I’d have to wait, so I took a seat. I got to thinking that maybe I’d been jerked around long enough. The best thing for me would be to pack my few essential belongings, get on the road, and make my way to the reservation, where I could fulfill my true destiny as a Sioux.
It would be almost impossible to find me. There were several people, including Barb, who would expect me to head for an Indian reservation, but their problem would be, which one? There are hundreds of reservations, all the way from the East Coast to the West Coast. In the state of Oklahoma there are more than thirty reservations, and in California, more than seventy.
The secretary broke my train of thought when she told me I could talk to Mrs. Greene now.
The first thing I told her was, I wouldn’t take Gary for a roommate any more.
“Does Gary scare you?” asked Mrs. Greene.
“I’ll sleep in the lounge,” I said. “Or I’ll sleep in the hall, but I won’t be with him.”
“I asked you if Gary scares you.”
“Of course he scares me. Everybody scares me here. You scare me. I don’t belong here, and it can’t be good for me to be here.” But what was the alternative, I asked myself, back to Gates House?
Mrs. Greene was opening up a folder. “Floyd, I’ve tried to tell you you won’t be here for very long. Only a few days at the most.”
“Yeah, but what does a few days mean?”
“I can’t be more specific. In the meantime, I’ll see what I can do about getting you transferred to another room.”
She had her glasses on by this time, and I guess she found the papers she was looking for, because she closed up the folder. “Floyd, would you tell me about the X on the floor?”
“That’s not why I came here.”
“I know, but would you please tell me anyway?”
I sighed. “Mrs. Grice put an X on the floor of the lounge. She made people stand on it for punishment. Sometimes she made people stand on it for an hour or two.”
“It says here you removed the X from the floor several t
imes.”
“That’s true.”
“Did she know who was removing the X?”
“No. I was doing it in the middle of the night. She figured it was me, but she didn’t know.”
“Did Mrs. Grice ever make you stand on the X?”
“She tried to make me once, but I refused.”
“Floyd, why were you taking the X off the floor?”
“It was the principle of the thing. She kept giving people punishment they didn’t deserve, and standing on the X was too embarrassing. I’d say the best word would be humiliating.”
Mrs. Greene said, “Why do you think Mrs. Grice used that method of punishment?”
“Probably your basic power trip. I don’t know why Mrs. Grice does the things she does. Why don’t you ask her? As a matter of fact, if you want people in The Elms for observation, I’d say she’d be a good one to start with.”
“And yet,” said Mrs. Greene, “she’s not the only authority figure you seem to have difficulties with.” By this time, she was looking at a different set of papers. She changed the subject and started summarizing some of my test results. There was nothing wrong with me physically, but she said my mental tests showed that I was a loner. She asked me if I thought it was true.
“I suppose it is,” I said. “Does it mean there’s something the matter with me?”
“No, it doesn’t. I’m just interested. You like activities you can do alone. Have you ever had what you would call a close friend?”
All of a sudden I got real uptight with her, and real impatient. She kept asking me these obvious things in this real nitpicky way, like she was trying to chip away at something. I thought about Gary’s theory that all these things were a trap, but thinking about him only made me more impatient.
“I think I know what you’re getting at,” I said. “So let me sum it up. I’ve been moved around so many times that I’ve never had what you would call a basic circle of friends. I’ve never been in the same school more than two years in a row. I don’t know my father or my mother, so if I have any relatives, I don’t know who they are. Since you’ve got my files, I’m sure you know all of this. My way of making up for it is doing things by myself, such as reading and writing. I would say it’s only logical.”
Either Mrs. Greene didn’t care for my attitude, or she had other things to deal with. She said, “We can talk more about this later. Was there anything else you wanted?”
“Yeah,” I said. “Can I have my pipe back?”
“Your pipe?”
“My ceremonial Dakota pipe. It got confiscated. Since it’s one of my most prized possessions, I’d like it back.”
Now she knew what I was talking about. “I think we’re finished with it,” she said. “I’ll ask one of the nurses to put it in your bolster.”
“Thank you.” That was like a sign. When I left her office, my decision was made: I was taking off. There was no other way. Even if Barb worked her head off to get me the best placement, no one would listen to her; you had to admire her feistiness, but it was because of the feistiness that she would end up getting hung out, just like me.
In group therapy, everything got waylaid when Gary got into a long argument with a patient named Mr. Horderne. I don’t know what the fight was about, but it gave me time to think about making a break. The doors at The Elms weren’t locked, but you couldn’t just walk out without permission; I would have to find a way to sneak out with nobody seeing me.
After supper, I went to the lounge and opened up a magazine. I wasn’t really reading it, though, I was watching this supply closet down the hall where an orderly was going in and out. It was somewhat tense watching him, but then he finally made a trip clear down to the other end of the hall. The closet door was open.
As quick as I could, I popped inside the closet. I opened all the drawers of a cabinet until I found one with hand tools, tape, extension cords, et cetera. There were several screwdrivers, so I took the largest one. I put it in the back pocket of my blue jeans and pulled my shirttail down to cover it. Then I closed up the drawers and peeked out to scope the hallway; no one was coming, but my heart was pounding a mile a minute.
I went back to my seat in the lounge, just like nothing ever happened, and opened my magazine. I hoped my outside appearance was calm, but I was real shaky on the inside, and the screwdriver was cutting into my back.
Lights were out at ten-thirty on our wing. I was in bed, but wide awake and with my clothes on. I was waiting until eleven o’clock when there was a change of shift; the night nurses would come in and do some talking with the other nurses, who were getting ready to leave. If nobody did a room check right away, I could be gone a couple of hours or more before anybody knew I was missing.
About ten minutes to eleven, I heard some night staff coming in, and I could hear some gabbing and laughing down the hall at the nurses’ station. I got out of bed and pulled the screwdriver out from under the pillow. Gary was snoring away; he was a sound sleeper and besides that, he was on some heavy-duty medication.
You were allowed to have the door to your room closed, so I pushed it, but I was careful not to slam it. Then I slid the screwdriver in between the two doors of the bolster, right where the lock was. I popped it hard, and it broke open with a loud crack.
Gary turned over in bed and lifted his head. “What the hell was that?”
“Nothing, I just crashed into the cabinet.”
“Why are you out of bed?”
“Had to go to the john. Sorry.” My heart was pounding away again. I only hoped to God they hadn’t heard the crack down the hall.
Then Gary rolled back the other way. As far as I could tell, he was back to sleep. Anyway, he was quiet. I just stood there for a minute or two, taking deep breaths and trying to get my nerves and my pulse slowed down. Nobody came to our room.
I opened the cabinet door; there was enough light from the bathroom that I could see okay. Right next to my backpack was my ceremonial. I picked it up and held it. It was the final sign; if I needed one last piece of evidence that I was making the right decision, this was it. I was steady. All of a sudden, my nerves were like a rock.
I stuffed everything in the backpack, even the pipe, although it stuck out somewhat. I peeked out to check the hall the nurses were yukking it up at their station, probably swapping a few stories about the weirdos they worked with. What did I care, I had a date with my destiny.
It was only a few steps down the hall to the exit door; I slipped through and made sure it was quiet when I closed it. The stairway was easy; institutional stairways are run by fire codes, so they’re real private. I had to go down two flights. The exit door at the bottom took me out into the parking lot, where I had to be careful; there was lots of light and I had to watch out for security personnel.
I got across the street as quickly as I could, onto this residential sidewalk with lots of old trees. It was dark and safe and private.
The walk to Barb’s house took me forty minutes. It was only a couple of miles, so I could have made it faster, but I was keeping to the side streets to avoid public places with serious lighting. I approached her house from the back, by way of the alley; I had to be alert, in case any cops were cruising the neighborhood.
Her garage wasn’t locked; it was only pegged with a dowel shoved down through the hasp. I slipped inside and pulled the door shut behind me. I laid a quarter-inch sheet of plywood up in front of the one window so I could turn on a trouble light without it being seen from the outside. Then I went to work on Nicky’s Kawasaki.
I didn’t give it the kind of attention it deserved, but then I didn’t exactly have a lot of time to spare. I cleaned the fuel filters and the fuel lines, I cleaned the points and set the gap. I had to pump up the back tire. With the pressure to work fast, and being in the closed-up garage, I was sweating like a dog. I took five or six essential hand tools from the workbench so I’d have a basic tool kit to take with me on the road. Using the gas from the lawn mower can, I made su
re the tank was full.
I didn’t feel proud of the fact that I was about to take Nicky’s motorcycle, but I was in this real get-on-with-it head. I knew that I was taking off, I knew how to go about it, and I wasn’t in the mood for a lot of reflecting on right and wrong or consequences. Besides, he never paid any money for the bike, and he never took the time to work on it himself. Not only that, I planned to ship it back to him from the reservation, in much better shape than it was now.
I got the house key from the nail and went in Barb’s house through the back door. After I drank about a gallon of water from the sink, I took half a loaf of bread and a half-full bottle of apple juice from the refrigerator and wedged them inside the backpack.
I wrote out a long note to Barb. I told her I was only taking off because they were about to hang me out again, and I hoped she would understand and not hold it against me. I told her not to worry because I was only going home to my destiny.
I left the note on the fireplace mantel. It ended up next to the picture of her son, who was dead, and her husband, also dead. I got some wholesale guilt out of this. In fact, this was the point where I almost lost my nerve. But instead of chickening out, I was inspired to write a P.S.:
I just want you to know how much I appreciate all you tried to do for me, especially the log. You are a very quality person.
Signed, CBC
By the time I went out the back door, it was a little past two-thirty in the A.M. I stood in the yard for a few moments looking at the log, but then I began to feel the guilt again. I got the motorcycle out of the garage and closed the door.
I walked the bike about three blocks to the Clark gas station. There was nobody at the gas station, of course, and all the streets were totally silent. I sat on the bike and got ready to fire it up. The first two times I kicked down on it, nothing happened. I got a sliver of panic. I felt real conspicuous, but it was too late to think about turning back. The bike had to start.
It started on the third try.
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