by PV
Hospital officials claim that someone apparently forged the signature of Hospital Director Timothy L. Mann, M.D., on documents ordering staff members to make arrangements to transport thirty-eight patients from the admissions ward to see the musical by chartered bus.
Dr. Lucius M. Rhinehart, whom the forged documents had ordered to organize and guide the expedition, stated that he and his attendants had concentrated on holding the three or four potentially dangerous patients and could not make an effort to pursue the majority when they fled backstage. In all, five patients were restrained within the theater.
`The excursion was ill-tuned and ill-planned - ridiculous in fact and I knew it,’ he said. `But I attempted on four separate occasions to get in touch with Dr. Mann to question him about the request, and, failing, had no choice but to carry it out.’
Police indicated that the size of the mass escape, the character of some of the patients involved, and the complicated series of forgeries needed to fool responsible staff members indicate a plot of major proportions.
Among those who escaped were Arturo Toscanini Jones, a Black Party member who recently made news when he spat in Mayor Lindsay’s face during one of the mayor’s walking tours of Harlem, and hippie figure Eric Cannon, whose followers recently caused a disturbance at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine during the Easter Mass.
A complete list of the names of those who have escaped was being withheld pending communication by hospital officials with the relatives of those who fled.
The patients who escaped were dressed for the most part in khakis and tee-shirts and informal footwear such as sneakers, sandals, and slippers. A few patients, it was reliably reported, had been wearing pajama tops or bathrobes.
Police warned that some of the patients might be dangerous if cornered and urged citizens to approach all known escapees with caution. They noted that among them were two of Mr. Jones’s Black Party followers.
A full investigation of the breakout was under way.
Officials of the Blovill Theater and Hair Productions, Inc., denied that they had managed the mass escape as a publicity stunt.
How simple it all seems now reading about it again in the Times. Forge documents, charter bus, drive to theater, flee during performance.
Do you have any idea how many documents have to be forged to get one single patient released for one single hour from a mental hospital? From the time I left Eric at 11.30 A.M. that morning until my analytic hour with Jake at 3
P.M. I was continually typing documents, forging Dr. Mann’s signature and rushing away to have the orders delivered to the appropriate staff. I got so I could sign Dr. Mann’s signature faster and more accurately than he. As it was, I still had signed eighty-six fewer documents than were legally required for such an excursion.
Would you be suspicious if someone called up in muffled voice with a hint of a Negro accent and requested a forty-five seat bus to take thirty-eight mental patients to a Broadway musical on six hours’ notice that very evening. Have you ever tried to lead thirty-eight mental patients off a ward when half of them don’t know where they’re going or don’t want to go, aren’t dressed for it or want to watch the Mets’ night game on TV? Since I didn’t know which thirty-eight of the fortythree patients on the ward my sponsor wanted to lead to freedom, I had to choose at random thirty-eight names - which naturally did not correspond with those Mr. Cannon had in mind. Do you think that the head nurse or Dr. Lucius M. Rhinehart would permit any substitution for the names on this list? `Look here, Rhinehart, two of my best men are not on this list,’ Arturo whispered desperately into my ear at seven fifty-three that night.
‘They’ll have to see Hair another night,’ I said.
`But I want these men,’ he went on fiercely.
`These are the thirty-eight names on the list. These are the thirty-eight patients whom I will escort to Hair. He dragged me farther off into the corner.
`But Cannon said only that the dice said-‘
`The dice said only that I would try to help Mr. Cannon and thirty-seven other mental patients escape. It mentioned no names. If you want to take some initiative, I assure you I don’t know Smith from Peterson from Kling, but I myself am taking only people who call themselves Smith, Peterson and Klug.’
He rushed away.
Five minutes later Head Nurse Herbie Flamm waddled up `Say, Dr. Rhinehart, I don’t see Heckelburg on this list but I just saw him leave with that last group with your attendants.’
‘Heckelburg?’ I said. `Perhaps not. I’ll check.’
I walked away.
Flamm caught me again just as I was leaving.
`Sorry to bother you again, Doc, but four of the guys on your list are still here and four guys who aren’t on your list have just left.’
��re you positive, Mr. Flamm, that you now have five patients left on the ward?’
`Yes sir.’
��nd that only thirty-eight have left?’
‘Yes sir.’
��re you sure my name is Rhinehart?’
He stared up at me and began using his big belly nervously.
`Yes, sir. I think so, sir.’
`Yon think my name is Rhinehart?’
`Yes Sir.’
`Who is that patient - over there?’
I asked, pointing to one I’d never seen before and hoped was a new admission.
‘Er … ah … him?’
`Yes, he,’ I said coldly towering over him.
��‘ll have to check with the attendant, Higgens. He-‘
`We’re going to be late for the opening curtain, Mr. Flamm. I’m afraid I can’t rely on your fuzzy memory for names to delay us any longer. Goodbye.’
`Goo - goodbye, Doc-‘
‘Rhinehart. Remember it.’
Have you ever walked down Broadway in the middle of a line of thirty-eight men dressed variously in khakis, sneakers, sandals, Bermuda shorts, hospital fatigues, torn T-shirts, African capes, bathrobes, bedroom slippers, pajama tops and sweat suits and led by an utterly serene eighteen-year-old boy wearing a white hospital robe and whistling
`The Battle Hymn of the Republic’? Have you ever then walked beside the beatific boy to lead such a line into a Broadway theater? And looked natural? And relaxed? When half the seats were in the front row? (The summer doldrums made it possible for me to get seats at the last minute - 4.30 P.M. that afternoon - but twenty of them cost $8.50 apiece.) Have you then tried to seat thirty-eight odd people when half the seats were scattered like buckshot over a five-hundred seat theater? When three of your patients were walking zombies, four manic-depressives and six alert homosexuals? Have you then tried to maintain a sense of dignity, firmness and authority when one of these unfortunates keeps coming up to you and whispering hysterically about when are they all supposed to escape?
`Rhinehart!’ Arturo X hissed at me in anguish. `What the hell are we doing here at Hair?’
`My orders were to bring you to Hair. This I have done. The die specifically rejected the option that I release you on Lexington Avenue. I hope you enjoy yourself.’
‘There’re four pigs standing at the back. I saw them when we came in. Is this some. sort of trap?’
�� know nothing about the police. There are other ways out of a theater. I hope you enjoy yourself. Be happy.’
`The Goddam houselights are dimming. What the hell are we supposed to do?’
`Listen to the music. I have brought you to Hair. Enjoy yourself. Dance. Be happy.’
Through it all Erie Cannon retained the serenity of a golfer with a two-inch putt and never once approached me -
except .for two seconds just after the end of the first act (`Groovy show, Dr. Rhinehart, glad we came’). But Arturo X
squirmed in his seat every second that he wasn’t lunging up the aisle to speak to one of his followers or to me.
`Look, Rhinehart,’ he hissed at me near the end of the intermission. `What will you do if we all get up and dance and go onto the stage?’<
br />
�� have brought you to Hair. I want you to enjoy yourselves. Be happy. Dance. Sing.’
He stared into my eyes like an oculist searching for signs of retinal decomposition and then barked out a short laugh.
‘Jesus…’ he said.
`Have a good time, son,’ I said as he left.
`Dr. Rhinehart, I think the patients are whispering among themselves,’ one of my big attendants said about three minutes later.
�� dirty joke no doubt,’ I said.
`That Arturo Jones has been going around to everyone whispering.’
�� told him to remind everyone to catch the bus back to the island with us.’
`What if someone tries to make a break for it?’
‘Apprehend him gently but firmly.’
`What if they all make a break for it?’
��pprehend those with the most acute socially debilitating illnesses - the zombies and killers in brief - and leave the rest to the police.’
I smiled at him serenely. `But no violence. We must not give our hospital attendants a bad name. We must not upset the audience.’
��kay, Doctor.’
I seated myself between the most clearly homicidal patients, and when the men in our row began to rise to join the dance to the stage, I wrapped one of my huge arms around the throat of each of them and squeezed until they seemed strangely sleepy. I then watched the interesting opening to Act II Where thirty or so oddly dressed members of the cast who had apparently been posing as members of the audience around me began to dance down the aisles and upon to the stage frolicking with each other in a friendly roughhouse way. The onstage part of the cast pretended slight confusion but continued to sing on as the new weirdies mixed with the Act I wierdies and sang and danced and frolicked, all singing the opening number `Where Do I Go?’ until most of the newcomers had gone.
The police questioned me for about half an hour at the theater, and I phoned the hospital and told the appropriate staff members there of the slight difficulties we had encountered and I phoned Dr. Mann at my apartment and informed him that thirty-three patients had escaped from Hair. My phone call had pulled him away from a hand in which he was holding a full house, aces over jacks, and he was as upset as I’ve ever heard him.
`My God, my God Luke, thirty-three patients. What have you done? What have you done?’
`But your letter said `What letter? NO, no, no, Luke, you know I would never write any letter about thirty-three - oh! -
you know it! How could you do it?’
�� tried to see you, to phone you.’
`But you didn’t seem upset. I had no idea. Thirty-three patients!’
`We held onto five.’
��h Luke, my God, the papers, Dr. Esterbrook, the Senate Committee on Mental Hygiene, my God, my God.’
`They’re just people,’ I said. `Why didn’t someone call me during the day, a note, a messenger, something? Why was everyone so stupid? To take thirty-three patients off the ward’
`Thirty-eight.’
`To a Broadway musical’
`Where should we have taken them? Your letter said `Don’t say that! Don’t mention any letter by me!’
`But I was just-‘
`To Hair!’ and he choked. `The newspapers, Esterbrook, Luke, Luke, what have you done?’
��t’ll be all right, Tim. Mental patients are always recaptured.’
`But no one ever reads about that. They get loose - that’s news.’
`People will be impressed with our permissive, progressive policies. As you said in your let-‘
`Don’t say that! We must never let a patient out of the hospital again. Never.’
`Relax, Tim, relax, I’ve got to talk some more to the police and the reporters and ‘
`Don’t say a word! I’m coming down. Say you’ve got laryngitis. Don’t talk.’
��‘ve got to go now, Tim. You hurry on down.’
`Don’t say-‘
I hung up.
I talked to police and the reporters and minor hospital officials and then Dr. Mann in person for another hour and a half, not getting back to the poker party at my apartment until close to midnight.
Lil, I’m happy to report, was winning substantially, with Miss Welish and Fred Boyd the primary losers and Jake and Arlene breaking even. They were all rather interested in what had happened to so upset Dr. Mann, but I played it down, called it a minor Happening, a tempest in a teapot, implied that some subversive underground group had conspired a series of forgeries, and insisted I was sick of the subject and wanted to play poker.
I was tremendously keyed up and could barely sit still in my chair, but they kindly dealt me in, and by ignoring their further questions I was finally left to concentrate on my abominably bad luck with the cards. I lost badly to Fred Boyd on the first hand and even worse to Arlene on the second. By the end of seven hands without a winner I was thoroughly depressed and everyone else (except Miss Welish, who was sleepy and bored) was quite gay. The phone had rung just once and I had told the police that I didn’t know how I had been cut off during my attempted phone call to Dr. Mann that afternoon, but that it obviously wasn’t me since I was talking on the phone at the time.
I told them that I talked to Arturo Jones at Hair because he was an acute drama critic and that I had single-handedly held on to two of the most dangerous patients and that I’d appreciate a little respect since I felt badly enough about losing as it was.
I lost two more hands of poker and got gloomier and the party broke up with Fred telling about how he was using dice therapy with two of his patients and Jake telling me about a sentence he’d written in his article, and they were gone and Lil, laughing happily, went off to bell. I, despite several of her most obscene kisses, remained behind slumped in the easy chair brooding about my fate.
Chapter Fifty-five
The events which occurred between 1.30 A.M. and 3.30 A.M. that morning, being of some historical note, must be recorded objectively. Dr. Rhinehart had realized for several weeks that the early morning hours of August 13 were, in effect, the first anniversary of his relationship with the Die. He had planned to do as he had at the beginning of 1969; create a list of longer range options from which the Die would choose to direct his life.
He found, however, that he was too distraught over the possible consequences of his activities of the previous day to concentrate on options running much longer than a few minutes. A year before, he had been bored and restless; now he was overexcited and restless. He lunged back and forth across the living room, gritting his teeth, clenching his fists, stroking them against his tensed belly, gulping in huge lungfuls of air, trying to determine whether the police would be able to build a convincing case against him. His only hope, as he saw it, was that when one or more of Mr. Cannon’s or Mr. Jones’s recaptured followers began alleging that he (Dr. Rhinehart) had aided and abetted their escape, their allegations would be taken as the statements of mentally imbalanced persons, creatures legally unfit to give reliable testimony. Dr. Rhinehart spent close to twenty minutes concocting his defense - mostly a lengthy indictment of the secret black and hippie conspiracy to frame all white doctors named Rhinehart.
At last, however, in exasperation at his nervousness, Dr. Rhinehart returned to reality and cast a die to determine whether he would brood about his problems with the police and Dr. Mann for zero, five, ten or thirty minutes or one day, or until the problems were resolved, and the die ordered ten more minutes. When the time had elapsed, he breathed an immense sigh and smiled.
`Now. Where are we?’ he thought.
He then recalled that it was his anniversary, and with that inhuman casualness for which future generations of healthy normal people were to condemn him and for which future generations of dicepeople have admired him, he dictated that should he flip a one, a three or a five he would go downstairs and try to engage in sexual congress with Mrs.
Ecstein. The Die fell three and he arose, informed his wife th
at he was going for a walk and left the apartment.
Since this episode is of little importance, we report it in Dr. Rhinehart’s own words .
I clumped down the stairs, past the rusty railing and cast-off advertising circular and rang the doorbell. It was 2.20
A.M., a little late this year, and certainly no time for a little tete-a-tete. Arlene came bleary-eyed clutching Jake’s old bathrobe - to her throat.
��h,’ she said.
��‘ve come to engage in sexual congress, Arlene.’
`Come in,’ she said.
`The dice told me to do it again.’
`But Jake’s here,’ she said, blinking her eyes absently and letting the robe fall slightly open.
`He’s working in his study at the end of the hall.’
��‘m sorry, but you know how the Die is,’ I said.
�� promised not to hide anything from him anymore.’
`But did you consult the Die about that?’
��h, you’re right.’
She turned and went down the hall a short way and then into her bedroom: I joined her at her vanity table, where successive flips of a die determined that she was to tell Jake everything and that she was to permit sexual congress with me, but only in Kama Sutra positions eighteen and twenty-six, which, she said, were particularly suited for women in their fifth month of pregnancy.
I then followed her up the hall and watched over her shoulder as she stood in the slightly open doorway of Jake’s study looking in at her husband hard at work at his desk.
`Jake?’ she said tentatively.
`What’s up?’ he barked back, not looking up. - `Luke’s here,’ she said.
��h. Come on in Luke baby, I’m just about finished.’
`We’re sorry to bother you, Jakie,’ Arlene said, `but the Die said Luke had to-‘
��‘ve got a ring-linger last chapter, Luke, if I do say so myself,’ Jake said, smiling, and scratching furiously with his pen across some errant phrase.