Back in the bar, Luke had started to tell Johnny his latest prophecy. ‘You got to hear this,’ Johnny said. ‘Start again, Luke.’ So Luke started again.
‘I had a vision about you guys,’ he said. ‘The two of you. Only I couldn’t tell which one of you was which.’
‘I’m Johnny,’ said Dean quickly, just as Johnny said, ‘I’m Dean.’
‘In the vision,’ Luke said. ‘I couldn’t tell in the vision. Do you want to hear it or not?’
They wanted to hear it.
‘You’re standing on a road. A straight road heading right across the prairie. And a pick-up comes by and pulls over. The driver is a big white man. He’s wearing a white hat and there’s a rifle slung along the back of the cab. He offers one of you a ride, I don’t know which, and I’m saying, no, no, don’t get in.’
‘What were you doing there?’ Dean asked.
‘I was there but I kind of wasn’t, know what I mean? And I’m shouting at you not to get in the pick-up but you don’t hear me.’
‘So do I get in?’ Johnny said.
‘What about me?’ Dean said. ‘Do I?’ Because they still weren’t taking Luke seriously.
‘Neither of you gets in. First he offers you a ride. Then he offers you a blanket. I’m shouting, don’t take the blanket, it’s full of smallpox. Then he offers you a bottle of whisky. I’m shouting, don’t take the whisky, it’ll poison you.’
‘And what are we doing, just standing around while this guy offers us things?’ Johnny said.
‘Pretty much. It’s like I said, I couldn’t see which one of you he was talking to. The other one was facing away from the pick-up, looking out on the prairie. Like he was waiting for something else.’
‘For what?’ Johnny said.
‘Wait and I’ll tell you,’ Luke said. ‘The white guy offers you a piece of paper with a lot of writing on it. He offers you a kettle. He offers you a gun. It’s like he has all this stuff on the seat and he keeps showing it to you. A pair of jeans, a TV set, a cell phone. And every time he picks up something new I’m shouting, don’t take it, don’t get in the truck, let him drive away.’
‘I’d take the cell phone and the jeans,’ Dean said.
‘I’d take the gun,’ Johnny said. ‘I’d blow the asshole’s brains out and then I’d get everything.’
‘Don’t take the gun!’ Luke shouted suddenly.
From out front they heard Jubal’s voice. ‘Hey! Cool it back there.’
‘Whatever you do, don’t take the gun,’ Luke said, lowering his voice. He was out in a sweat, and shivering, like he had a fever. Johnny looked at Dean. Dean looked at Johnny. ‘It’s okay, bud,’ Johnny said to Luke. ‘I ain’t going to take the gun.’
‘The other one of you,’ Luke said, ‘is still over on the roadside, waiting. And now there’s someone coming. It’s a rider on a horse. An old warrior, painted up and wearing a war-bonnet and everything. But I can see right through him, like he’s made of air. He’s a ghost. And he stops his horse and looks down at you and for a long time he doesn’t say anything. He doesn’t offer you anything because he ain’t got nothing to offer. And then he speaks.’
‘What does he say?’ Dean asked, after Luke hasn’t spoken for a few seconds.
‘He says a time is coming. All the ghosts are coming back. The buffalo are coming back. The deer and all the other animals are coming back.’
‘Oh man,’ Johnny said. ‘Is that it? Is that your prophecy? We had this a thousand times before.’
But Luke Stands Alone didn’t seem to hear him. The sweat poured off him, and he just kept on talking, as if he were the old ghost warrior himself. ‘The uranium is going back into the earth,’ he said. ‘The garbage is all going back to where it was made. The cars are going, and the missiles and the pollution. People don’t know how to live in harmony with the earth. The wasichus never knew how, and most Indians have forgotten or been killed for trying to remember. But a time is coming. Don’t get in the car with that old man. Don’t take any of his gifts. Just wait. Don’t forget who you are.’
Luke stopped, and for a minute nobody said anything. And then Luke wiped his face and said, ‘And he rode off across the prairie. And I looked and the road wasn’t there any more. The pick-up was gone, and so was one of you guys, but the other one was still standing, staring out at nothing.’
‘Goddamn ghosts,’ Johnny said.
Luke put his head down on the table. It didn’t take much to get him drunk, but he looked more exhausted than drunk, as if the vision had taken all his energy out of him. In a minute he was asleep.
Johnny looked at Dean. Dean shrugged. ‘Well, just because he stopped drinking don’t mean we got to,’ Johnny said, and he called on Jubal.
Jubal brought them more drink. He jerked a thumb at Luke. ‘He can’t sleep in here.’
‘Looks like he’s doing it fine,’ Johnny said.
Jubal said, ‘I’m saying he can’t sleep in here. You can take him out back and he can sleep it off in one of the cars in the yard. Five dollars for the privilege. For that he even gets a blanket.’
‘We’ll be going soon,’ Dean said. ‘Just leave him be, won’t you? We’re your best customers.’
‘We’re your only customers,’ Johnny said, ‘and we ain’t going yet.’
‘He can’t sleep in here,’ Jubal said. ‘Either you take him out to the yard, or you put him on the street, but he can’t stay there.’
‘It’s going to be a cold night,’ Dean said. ‘He might freeze. He might not wake up again.’
‘That’s why he gets a blanket,’ Jubal said.
‘Leave him till we’ve finished these beers,’ Dean said. ‘Then we’ll move him.’
Jubal retreated, muttering.
Johnny said, ‘I’m drunk. Maybe we’ll all sleep in one of Jubal’s old wrecks.’
Dean said. ‘Give me your key, man. I’ll drive. We’ll buy some more beers to take with us and we’ll get Luke in the car and we’ll drive a little ways and then we’ll pull over. We’ll have another drink and then if I can’t get you to my place we’ll all sleep in the car. That way we’ll keep warm. There’s snow coming, Johnny. We ain’t leaving Luke alone, here or anywhere.’
‘I didn’t say we would,’ Johnny said.
‘We’ll have sweeter dreams in your car than in Jubal’s yard. Indian dreams.’
Johnny put a hand on Luke’s back. ‘Do you think he’s dreaming about us now?’
Dean laughed. ‘Yeah, I think maybe he is. I think he’s looking out for us, so we got to look out for him.’
They finished up, and then they hauled Luke through the front room of the bar and out to the street, which wasn’t much of a street, just the road with the bar alongside it and a sign that said MAIN STREET. Jubal looked like he’d never seen such a thing in his life, Indians leaving the Buffalo Saloon in a state of semi-sobriety, but he didn’t try to persuade them to stay. Maybe he was as tired of it all as they were. Maybe he knew there’d be another party along soon enough.
They slung Luke in the back of Johnny’s car and Johnny gave Dean the key and went back in for a six-pack.
Luke didn’t stir.
Dean stood in the road, feeling the chill air, watching the snow-lined hills fading into the dusk. Far, far off he thought he saw the lights of an approaching car. Then he didn’t, and there was nothing but darkness gathering around him.
The door of the Buffalo Saloon slammed, and Johnny staggered over.
‘Hey, Dean,’ Johnny said. ‘You all right, man?’
‘I’m good. You all right?’
‘I got some more cans. We’re going to be fine. Hey, Dean, what do you see out there? You see something?’
Dean watched a few moments longer. The sky was clouding up. There were some stars, but they weren’t going to last.
‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘Maybe I do. What do you see?’
Johnny stood beside him, the brown bag with the cans in it under one arm. He put his other hand on Dean’s shoulder, to
steady himself, and they peered into the night together for a long time, not saying anything, while, on the back seat of the car, Luke lay sleeping like a child.
Sixes and Sevens
‘This is the dayroom,’ the woman said. ‘You wait here, and I’ll see if I can find Dr Muir.’
Everything was dusty. It was cold. There was an enormous fireplace but no fire in it. There were enormous windows too but the blinds were pulled down, making the afternoon light dim and weak and vague, as if it had yellowed with age just like the blinds themselves. I walked from one end of the room to the other, under unlit lamps suspended on long chains from the ornately plastered ceiling. It took me thirty paces. I did it again because I didn’t want to stand still. When I walked I could hear the floorboards creaking.
Chairs were scattered about the place, big armchairs covered in faded, heavy, old-fashioned material, and smaller upright chairs with curved backs and tapestried seats, and every one of them was layered with dust. The room was so vast that the chairs looked like they were floating in the sea. The carpet had a pattern that moved like waves. I felt a little sick. I counted seven armchairs and six uprights. They looked as if they might have been creeping towards the fireplace in a game of grandmother’s footsteps but had stopped suddenly when someone who was no longer there had turned round.
There was total silence. Not a sound came from outside, not of traffic or sirens or birdsong, nothing. There wasn’t even the ticking of a clock in the room, because there wasn’t a clock. Only the silence, and the musty, sweetish smells of old carpet and general decay.
The woman had only been gone a few minutes but I felt as if I had been alone a long time.
‘Make yourself at home,’ she said. I could hear her voice even though she wasn’t there, and in spite of the silence. That was odd. Maybe her words were still in the room. Maybe they were part of the silence now. Mrs Jennings, her name was. ‘I’m sorry about the state of things,’ she said, ‘we’re all at sixes and sevens here. All of this old furniture is to go. They keep sending a removal van to take it away. The beds, the chests, the wardrobes, the tables – all gone. It’s always the same van, back and forth, and the same men in it. I don’t know where they take it, to the dump I expect. It’s a shame, it was the finest quality in its day. Of course, everything was of a very high standard when we first opened, and I don’t just mean the furniture. It was an enlightened place, very comfortable in the public areas, and the staff were excellent. We wanted the patients to be happy. We wanted them to be at peace.’
She made it sound as if she’d been there when the hospital opened, but she couldn’t have been. That would have made her about a hundred and twenty. She looked younger than I was. I’d have put her at about sixty. ‘I’m Mrs Jennings,’ she said when she let me in. ‘You’re the gentleman who telephoned, aren’t you? We’ve been expecting you.’ I followed her along the corridor and up the broad stairs. She said, ‘I’m managing the place till all the paperwork has been gone through. You wouldn’t believe how much paperwork there is. You can’t just throw it out, of course. People’s lives are in all that paper. That’s why you’ve come, of course.’ She was a woman who said ‘of course’ a lot.
On the dayroom walls were patches where paintings had once hung. I wondered what they had been. Portraits of wealthy benefactors, perhaps? Prints of different aspects of the city? Soothing seascapes and landscapes? I imagined the patients walking round the room looking at them, day after day.
Mrs Jennings noticed me looking at the patches. There probably wasn’t much she didn’t notice. ‘They were the first things to go,’ she said, even though she wasn’t there. Or the words said it, after she’d gone. ‘They must have had some value, but I don’t know if they were sold or just thrown away. I don’t know where all the patients are now either. Dispersed into the community, poor souls. It’s a shame. It was all very grand once, a really grand place. Now look at it. It’s done, served its purpose. Take a seat if you like. I’m sorry there isn’t a fire. It’s very chilly, this room, when there isn’t a fire and nobody to enjoy it. We used to have a great big fire here, and a great big fireguard, of course, so that nobody got hurt. But we had very few accidents. They were used to fires, the old people, they knew it wasn’t safe to get too close. They did love the heat though, and the pictures the flames made. Some of them would sit and stare into those flames all day long.
‘Anyway,’ she said, ‘you wait here, and I’ll see if I can find Dr Muir. He should be able to help you.’
She’d not been away long but I didn’t like being on my own in that room. I’d only come because I’d read that the hospital had closed, and that they were going to turn it into something else. I’d like to see it before that happens, I’d thought. The university had bought it. But what could you do with such a place? You couldn’t knock it down, it was a listed building. Mrs Jennings was right, it didn’t serve its purpose as a hospital anymore, but what purpose would it serve instead? I couldn’t imagine, but no doubt the university had some plans or they wouldn’t have bought it, would they?
‘My grandfather was a patient here,’ I said. I didn’t mean to say it out loud but that was what I was thinking and it just came out, and maybe that was because I wanted to hear a human voice in that great, silent barn of a room, a voice that wasn’t Mrs Jennings’s voice, I mean. I didn’t want to hear her voice, even though she wasn’t there.
My grandfather was brought to the hospital during the 1914–18 war. He never left. He died here. My father never talked about him, and nor did my grandmother. My mother didn’t know him, and neither did I. Even when I asked about him they didn’t say much. They changed the subject. He was a figure of embarrassment, I think, or shame, because he’d been ill and never got better, never managed to get back out into the world again. And mental illness in those days, whatever caused it, whether it was the war or something else, was mostly kept hidden away. There’s no point in being sentimental about it. It doesn’t matter how comfortable they made the place. Yes, a lot of things are worse now than they were back then, the quality of furniture and buildings in general for example, but one thing we’re better at is the way we deal with mental illness. We’re more open about it. At least, we say we are, but are we really? Maybe we only think we are.
Anyway, here I was. I just wanted to see the place, and if possible meet someone who could tell me something about my grandfather. That was why Mrs Jennings had gone looking for Dr Muir.
‘Here you are,’ a voice said.
A man had come through a door I hadn’t noticed, in the middle of one wall of the room. It wasn’t the door by which Mrs Jennings had left. I hadn’t noticed it because there was a lot of oak panelling on that wall, and the door was built into it in such a way that you wouldn’t know it was there unless you were very close. The man was advancing slowly through the chairs towards me. He was quite a young man, much younger than me, and he had a friendly smile. Yet when he reached me he didn’t hold out his hand to be shaken. He stood at a slight distance, and looked at me rather shyly, but still with that smile, and said, ‘Hello.’
If that was his manner I didn’t want to offend him. I didn’t want to force him to shake hands if he didn’t want to. Some people don’t.
‘Hello,’ I said. ‘Dr Muir?’
‘How are you getting on?’ he said.
I said, ‘I’m fine. Did Mrs Jennings tell you why I was here?’
‘Oh yes,’ he said.
‘She thought you would be able to help,’ I said.
‘Yes, well, I often can help, but there is no guarantee.’ He gestured with his hand at the chairs. ‘Everybody’s gone, you see.’
‘It’s about my grandfather,’ I said. ‘Did Mrs Jennings tell you?’
‘Oh yes,’ he said, and he smiled again. ‘And how are you getting on?’
‘I wondered if there might be some records about him,’ I said. ‘Mrs Jennings said there was a lot of paperwork. I wondered if there might be some information about
my grandfather.’
‘I expect so,’ he said. ‘Highly probable, I think.’
From his looks, I would have said he was in his thirties, perhaps forty at most. He had black hair neatly combed and parted, but I noticed he hadn’t shaved for a day or two. Mind you, neither had I. He was wearing a black suit, and a shirt buttoned up to the neck but no tie.
‘Well, is there somewhere we could go to have a look?’ I suggested.
He looked at me in a puzzled way. ‘I expect so,’ he said. ‘But there is such a lot of paperwork. One forgets.’
I was about to say something about forgetfulness and that being why we kept records, but he made the hand gesture again and carried on speaking. ‘People think if something isn’t new and modern then it’s no use. If only people looked after things, we wouldn’t have to replace them. There’s nothing wrong with this place, if you ask me. If they looked after it, it would still be standing years after all the modern places had fallen down. But you probably don’t agree.’
‘I do, as a matter of fact,’ I said. ‘Then again, there’s no point in being sentimental about the past, is there?’
‘I’m not being sentimental,’ he said. ‘Nobody wanted to leave. They liked it here. They were at peace. That’s what I think, but nobody listens. And look at the view. Magnificent, if you ask me.’
He wandered over to one of the big windows and stood staring at the blind pulled down in front of it. It didn’t seem to bother him that you couldn’t see out. There was an armchair beside that window. He looked at it for a few moments too.
‘That’s my seat,’ he said. Then he came back towards me, with the strange, kindly smile on his face, and headed back to the door he’d come through.
I began to say something, to stop him leaving, but it seemed there had been some kind of mistake, so I stopped. I decided that it would be easier, rather than try to explain or apologise, just to let him go.
‘Goodbye,’ I said.
‘Goodbye,’ I thought I heard him say as he disappeared, but I couldn’t be sure.
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