by Gil Brewer
One night when the nurse had late duty, Leda got some ethyl alcohol and fixed drinks for the patient until he was tight as a drum. Then she talked up the nurse’s quality. Later in the night the patient rang for the nurse. She came to his room, unknowing. The man knocked her out with a caster from the bed, tore her clothes off, blocked the door with a chair.
It was four hours before she was missed. She came crawling down the corridor, naked, and was hospitalized for a month.
Although Leda had the keys to the storeroom, and others were sure of some of the facts, nothing could be proved.
“Yes,” she told me. “I got the fool drunk. She’d have done the same to me if she had the chance. I think she liked it.”
The next moment she would draw the shade. “What? It’s terrible. Someone from the other wing must have accidentally left the storeroom unlocked.”
“But Leda, you just told me—”
“Oh, that. I was only fooling, darling.”
But I knew she’d done it. Funny thing was it didn’t bother me as it should have. Thinking about it when she wasn’t around was bad, some. But when she was near me, the picture changed. She could act queer, but it was all right. . . .
I sat there and pitied myself for a while. I’d heard how they could hold you in these backwater jails for God knows how long. I’d recently read in the paper about some guy who’d moldered in an iron flea-box for two years. Awaiting trial, while his case had long since been closed.
I stretched out on the bunk. The old fear about meeting Frank crept in and I thought of Leda, Mother, the business, the inheritance, my dead father, and they all got to swirling around viciously in my mind. There was a long, deep, yellow-and-black funnel like when they put the ether cup over your face and I went away spinning up the funnel into darkness.
“All right, Garth. Rise and shine.”
I propped my eyes open against the dim glare of morning, stared at cell bars. It was Morgan. From the dirty windows above the basement wall, a hand of pale dawn palmed stagnant air.
“Somebody to see you,” Morgan said. He unlocked the cell door. “Come on.”
My mouth felt like the blanket I’d slept on. My eyes were sticky, my head ached. I was stiff in every joint. I swung my feet to the floor. Might better have been in the drunk tank. Company there, anyway.
Morgan was impatient. “Come on.”
He stood there, jangled his keys, straight-faced. The long stretch of night duty had fingered blue-black circles beneath his eyes. His red bulb of a nose had paled to a gray mass.
“All right,” I said. “Who’s here?”
Morgan didn’t answer. He left the cell door swinging open, clumped down the corridor ahead of me. He had a walk like a tired bull. We went on into the office and I stood there. My heart was quite still.
Leda was class this morning. She wore a crimson nylon suit. It was like tape across her body. A glistening black purse was slung from her arm. Her coppery hair shone richly. “Hello, Eric.”
I couldn’t speak. What stopped me was the man who lounged smiling at her side.
Frank. . . . My brother, Frank.
Chapter 6
“Well, aren’t you going to say something?” Leda said.
“Hello, Eric,” Frank said. “How’s the hero?” Big and false and sleek in a rich chocolate double-breasted suit, carrying a soft gray felt hat in his right hand. He stood there in the cigarette-smoky office beneath the dim lights with his contemptuous brown eyes, his nose wrinkled a little, and with that fine false smile I knew so well.
The shaking started in the pit of my stomach. It spread like water splashed on blotting paper. Spread down into my legs, up into my throat, my arms, my head. I stood there trembling, shaking. I knew I must be a fine goddamned picture. The whole long stretch of me, mud-covered, hair standing on end, bruised face. Eric Garth.
The dream drummed in my ears. I stared at Frank.
“Eric,” Leda said nervously. “Say something.”
I heard Morgan mount the platform behind the desk, rattle papers, cough dryly.
Frank grinned. Perspiration formed beneath my arms, trickled down my sides.
“Take me back to my cell,” I said, turning to Morgan.
“Sorry.”
I started toward the steel door.
“Eric,” Leda said.
Frank cleared his throat.
“You aren’t going back to your cell,” Morgan said. “What’s the matter with you, Garth?”
I looked at Frank again. Then my voice talked apart from me. Much too loud, hoarse and hollow.
“What brought you?”
The smile had dissolved on Frank’s face. He looked overly concerned, worried. It was obviously false concern.
“I phoned him last night,” Leda said. Her fingers drummed along the top of her purse. “He flew up. I met him at the airport. They’ve impounded the car, Eric. Frank has everything taken care of already. Don’t worry about a thing.”
Something clattered on the desk. I turned sharply. Morgan had emptied my belongings from the big brown envelope where he had put them the night before. “These are yours,” he said. “Pick ’em up.”
“Everything’s fine, Eric, boy,” Frank said.
It was like a knife.
“Leda and I had an early breakfast together,” Frank said. “She told me all about everything.”
I glanced at Leda. Her breasts heaved beneath the taut nylon, her eyes were veiled.
“Leda told me about this mess,” Frank said. “I’ve made arrangements. Everything’s taken care of.”
“You said that.”
“Don’t worry, boy,” Frank said. He was overgrand, more aggressive than I remembered. He was smoother and the cruelty that had always been in him showed on the surface now. The contempt was in his voice as well as his eyes. He was trying hard to be nice. Somehow I knew Leda liked the way he acted. “Saw Norma yesterday,” Frank said. “She asked about you.”
The shaking went out of me. I went cold and it scared me for a minute. I decided I’d better get out of here, and quickly. I started for the door.
“Better get your things,” Leda said.
“You get ’em for me,” I told her. I went on to the door. “You said you had it fixed, that I can go?”
“That’s right,” Frank said.
A door across the room slammed and Redfern came toward me. He looked as if he’d slept in his clothes, paid no attention to anyone, came directly up to me, guided me through the door into the morning.
“C’mon out to the car,” he said.
“What’s up, where are we going?”
“Never mind.”
“He get my bail, or what?”
“Something like that.”
We went up a cement alley and across the courthouse lawn to a squad car parked by the curb. We stood there a moment, looking at each other. Redfern’s eyes were fuzzy with sleeplessness, but the wary intelligence was there and the energy, too. I asked him for a cigarette and we both lit up.
A stocky, fresh-shaved, bright-eyed cop clipped down the courthouse steps, came across the lawn, nodded to Redfern, climbed behind the wheel of the squad car.
Then Leda and Frank came along. She laughed at something Frank said. As they neared, Frank fished in his pocket, brought out an expensive, foil-wrapped cigar, cut the end with a knife, and carefully lit the end.
Leda touched my hand. Frank crowded into the front seat, full of elegant movement.
As we drove off around the square I saw the loungers in overalls, chewing, talking, spitting on the lawn, or slumped in the sunny heat of the steps. We went on around the square past diagonally parked cars before colorful modernistic store fronts. Pretty soon we were on a blacktop road running beside a river.
“Where we going?” I said.
Frank turned flatly in the seat and his breath came hard as he looked at me. Redfern peered out the side window.
“Look, Eric,” Frank said. “Reckon I had to do something
. You’re going to have to stay in Sordell till this hit-and-run business is taken care of. Made arrangements for you to live at a sort of, well, rest home for a spell. It’s better than the jail.”
I turned sharply to Leda. She covered a half-wild look with a sudden smile. But it wasn’t quick enough. I didn’t like any of it at all and the old crowded feeling that had been with me so long swept down again. The thing was I felt so helpless. “Rest home?” My voice was quiet. “What do you mean?” I tried to hang on but I was falling apart inside. I wanted to reach out and grab Frank’s face, tear it off. I forced my gaze to the rear of the front seat.
“The best thing,” Frank said.
Redfern felt me tense, tapped my arm, whispered, “Take it easy, pal.”
Leda’s thigh was against me and I could smell her perfume. Her attitude was all wrong, somehow. I tried to convince myself I read it that way. Forcing myself to believe I suspected things that weren’t here.
“After all, Eric—you’ve been sick, admit it,” Frank said. “It’s the best thing, I reckon. Only way it could be fixed.”
We were suddenly riding faster and I watched the driver’s red neck where it bulged over his collar. He had dandruff. And the sunny serenity of the morning was a mock. My mind was clotted with too much imagined wrong. I had to believe that. I felt secluded, wanted to talk with Prescott. I didn’t want to see these people. They, even Leda, were foreign to me. Her leg and shoulder touching me, the soft perfume I knew—everything was becoming foreign. The sound of the car’s tires whirring on the road. The still morning with the river. . . .
Somehow the only reality was the turgid silence of Redfern who peered out the window. He smelled of sweat and stale tobacco, resting inert in the seat, a quiet lump of tired flesh. I had to shut up all the way.
Abruptly I was sick with the realization that I was repeating over and over, an old phrase that I’d repeated in my early boyhood. They can’t kill me anyway. They can’t kill me anyway. . . .
It was a peaceful seeming place called the Riverview Sanitarium. A broad doorway sloped above white-painted cement steps beyond a curving sidewalk sided by immense green lawns and shady trees. The Riverview Sanitarium. There was an old man in a wheelchair out on the lawn in the blinding sunlight. A woman in a bathrobe walked with a nurse, talking and gesticulating. Two other men were mowing the lawn, far down beneath some trees while a male nurse stood nearby. Over in the shadow of the sunporch on a long wing of the building, still another woman, very shapely, lay on the ground in a blue satin robe. A nurse sat in a chair, drowsing over a book. The woman half sat up, watched our car, then suddenly lifted her hands, stuck her tongue out at the car. The nurse noticed and remonstrated with her. The woman cursed the nurse, flopped over on her stomach, and began pulling the grass with both hands.
There was a high hedge surrounding a good part of the grounds. The main building was set well back, and was sprawling and large. Other smaller buildings squatted in deeper shadow.
Leda tensed against me. Redfern climbed out of the car and walked around the other side.
“Here we are,” Frank said. He was cheerful.
“Leda, what’s this all about?”
“It’s all right, I tell you,” she whispered. “I talked it all over with Frank. It’s the only thing to do. You’d be surprised how helpful he’s been. Really, Eric, you’ve got your brother all wrong. I can’t understand it.”
“Sure, sure.”
The young, freshly-shaven driver came around the car and opened the door. Outside I felt no less foreign. There was an aura of dead quiet around the place, just the whirring of the lawn mowers and the chirping of a bird in the vacuum-like silence.
I don’t know why I went along with everything after that, but I did. Maybe I decided it was best to keep still.
There was a nurse at the desk who took our names. The nurse’s name was Watkins. Then we went through a large sitting room. Another nurse sat at the far end. In an easy chair near the doorway a blonde lounged. She was dressed expensively in black dress trimmed with gold, and she was an amazingly beautiful woman, with dark red lips and hot brown eyes. She uncrossed long shapely legs as I passed her, and she nodded and smiled at me. Her teeth were very white. She rose, stretched like a cat, thrusting out her breasts, and said, “Oh damn,” at the ceiling. Then she walked to the other end of the room. Her walk was the most terrific thing I’d ever seen, without exaggeration.
We went on down a long hall, past another open room with tables and books and magazines, then another hall at the end of which was a room. My room. As I entered, I looked down the hall. A man teetered in the doorway of the room at the other end of the hall. He reeled around, and closed the door.
There was a bed, a bureau with a large mirror, a closet, and two windows with Venetian blinds. The bed was very neatly made with a brilliantly colored red-and-blue spread. It made me remember all the other hospitals.
Frank stood in the doorway of the room and Leda leaned against an armchair. Redfern came in, sat down on the bed. He hadn’t taken off his hat and he breathed heavily. He cocked his head at me, pursed his lips, stood up abruptly and left the room.
I kept watching Frank. It didn’t seem to be like the dream. Yet all the hate was there. I’d seen my brother and nothing had happened. I wanted to tell Prescott.
“How’s Mother?” I said. My voice was flat, unfamiliar.
“Not so good.” He shook his head. “Doctor says she may pass away any time, Eric.”
“I’ve got to get home.”
“Whoa, now. You’ve got to stay here. Wouldn’t do Mother any good to see you.”
“Why hasn’t she written?”
“She can’t write.”
We looked at each other for a moment and he got how I felt. His eyes clouded. He turned, left the room. I heard him going down the hall.
“What’s it going to be?” I said to Leda. She looked lush, impatient. My voice was still flat.
“You’ll just stay here. A doctor’s coming to see you.”
“I don’t need a doctor. What’s the idea?” I stood.
Leda dropped her purse into the chair and moved toward me. “I’ll tell you this. Somehow they’ve checked and found about your record in California. They know you’ve been sick.”
“There’s nothing wrong with me now.”
Leda touched my shoulders. Her lips were damp. She held her hips against me, then her breasts. The coppery sheen of her hair came against my face. “You know I know best, Eric.”
“Sure.”
“There’s nothing to worry about.” She moved her hips.
“Why am I here?” I almost shouted it.
“It’s best.” She held tighter, moving her body in deliberate slow motion. “Frank’s only thinking of your welfare. He’s really quite nice.”
I grabbed her, yanked her closer still. She breathed heavily. “I can walk out of here,” I said.
“Don’t try it. For my sake.” She clung to me. “I could tell them not to disturb us for a while. Maybe you’d feel better if . . .”
“Yeah!” I shoved her away. “Great God, Leda! What’re you trying to do?”
“Calm you down.” She was perfectly serious.
I went over and sat on the bed. Sure, I loved her just as always. I’d probably love her forever. Maybe in a way I wanted her right now, too. She was right. It might take some of this pent-up feeling out of me. But not now, damn it. She’d been at me ever since we’d been in the room. She’d shut me up like that—only I wouldn’t let her.
I found myself thinking of the hate I felt for Leda again. That sense of being drawn, yet repelled. For the moment it looked as if I were stuck. The only person I had to bank on was Leda. I didn’t know what she was thinking. I was fogged up too much to figure things out. And she was saying nothing.
I hated the smell of this place. Swift whisking footsteps came down the hall and a nurse entered. Hipless, without breasts, she seemed to have been born in the uniform she w
ore. The professional smile was no comfort. She had a button nose and unseeing eyes.
“I’m Miss Winney,” she said. “Would you please get undressed and get in bed?”
“Look, Miss Winney. Please go away.”
“Mr. Garth. Will you lie down?”
“I don’t feel like lying down.”
“I’ll have to see Miss Watkins.” She was very stern. “These are her orders.”
“Go see her, then.”
“Please—” She glanced toward Leda, tightened her lips, then whisked from the room.
Leda and I looked at each other. It was all there; all the months we’d had together. But right now it seemed to be fraying out like the end of a rope. I was sick with something I couldn’t fasten onto.
“Eric,” Leda said. “Will you do everything they say? Will you promise? We’ve got to get the hit-and-run charge straightened out.”
I didn’t say anything. Hit-and-run. Allen.
“A doctor is coming to see you. It has to be this way.” She paused. “Won’t you be good, please? You know how much I love you.” She moved close to me. “Frank’s working everything out,” she said. “No one knows you had nothing to do with that hit-and-run. It’s the way the law works, Eric. You know that. Suppose Allen dies?” Her face was very serious.
“All right,” I said. “I’ll shut up. See what happens.” I figured I could walk out of here if need be. I was worn out, ragged, didn’t want to talk anymore. Not even with Leda. I had to be alone. I had to think. Everything was building up into a grand mess. It was all going wrong inside, too—wrong with us. There had been too many well-made beds, like this one. Too many quiet, feet-down, antiseptic hallways. And me sitting here in the same damned place, wondering what it was all about.
And then, looking straight into Leda’s eyes, I knew something. . . .
I hadn’t met Frank. I’d met only the artificial counterpart he used when in company. It had to be alone—the two of us, face to face. I hadn’t met my brother. I hadn’t seen him at all. Only the shadow behind his eyes that always would be there. I hated him just as much as ever.