American Science Fiction

by Gary K. Wolfe

  “No, only a gate at the entrance and hedges to keep out curiosity seekers.”

  “But how do you keep . . . them . . . from wandering off . . . from leaving the grounds?”

  He shrugged and smiled. “We can’t, really. Some of them do wander off, but most of them return.”

  “Don’t you go after them?”

  He looked at me as if trying to guess what was behind my question. “No. If they get into trouble, we soon know about it from the people in town—or the police bring them back.”

  “And if not?”

  “If we don’t hear about them, or from them, we assume they’ve made some satisfactory adjustment on the outside. You’ve got to understand, Mr. Gordon, this isn’t a prison. We are required by the state to make all reasonable efforts to get our patients back, but we’re not equipped to closely supervise four thousand people at all times. The ones who manage to leave are all high-moron types—not that we’re getting many of those any more. Now we get more of the brain-damaged cases who require constant custodial care—but the high-morons can move around more freely, and after a week or so on the outside most of them come back when they find there’s nothing for them out there. The world doesn’t want them and they soon know it.”

  We got out of the car and walked over to one of the cottages. Inside, the walls were white tile, and the building had a disinfectant smell to it. The first-floor lobby opened up to a recreation room filled with some seventy-five boys sitting around waiting for the lunch bell to be sounded. What caught my eye immediately was one of the bigger boys on a chair in the corner, cradling one of the other boys—fourteen or fifteen years old—cuddling him in his arms. They all turned to look as we entered, and some of the bolder ones came over and stared at me.

  “Don’t mind them,” he said, seeing my expression. “They won’t hurt you.”

  The woman in charge of the floor, a large-boned, handsome woman, with rolled up shirt sleeves and a denim apron over her starched white skirt, came up to us. At her belt was a ring of keys that jangled as she moved, and only when she turned did I see that the left side of her face was covered by a large, wine-colored birthmark.

  “Didn’t expect any company today, Ray,” she said. “You usually bring your visitors on Thursdays.”

  “This is Mr. Gordon, Thelma, from Beekman University. He just wants to look around and get an idea of the work we’re doing here. I knew it wouldn’t make any difference with you, Thelma. Any day is all right with you.”

  “Yeah,” she laughed strongly, “but Wednesday we turn the mattresses. It smells a lot better here on Thursday.”

  I noticed that she kept to my left so that the blotch on her face was hidden. She took me through the dormitory, the laundry, the supply rooms, and the dining hall—now set and waiting for the food to be delivered from the central commissary. She smiled as she talked, and her expression and the hair piled in a bun high on her head made her look like a Lautrec dancer but she never looked straight at me. I wondered what it would be like living here with her to watch over me.

  “They’re pretty good here in this building,” she said. “But you know what it is. Three hundred boys—seventy-five on a floor—and only five of us to look after them. It’s not easy to keep them under control. But it’s a lot better than the untidy cottages. The staff there doesn’t last very long. With babies you don’t mind so much, but when they get to be adults and still can’t care for themselves, it can be a nasty mess.”

  “You seem to be a very nice person,” I said. “The boys are fortunate to have you as their house-supervisor.”

  She laughed heartily still looking straight ahead, and showed her white teeth. “No better or worse than the rest. I’m very fond of my boys. It’s not easy work, but it’s rewarding when you think how much they need you.” The smile left her for a moment. “Normal kids grow up too soon, stop needing you . . . go off on their own . . . forget who loved them and took care of them. But these children need all you can give—all of their lives.” She laughed again, embarrassed at her seriousness. “It’s hard work here, but worth it.”

  Back downstairs, where Winslow was waiting for us, the dinner bell sounded, and the boys filed into the dining room. I noticed that the big boy who had held the smaller one in his lap was now leading him to the table by the hand.

  “Quite a thing,” I said, nodding in that direction.

  Winslow nodded too. “Jerry’s the big one, and that’s Dusty. We see that sort of thing often here. When there’s no one else who has time for them, sometimes they know enough to seek human contact and affection from each other.”

  As we passed one of the other cottages on our way to the school, I heard a shriek followed by a wailing, picked up and echoed by two or three other voices. There were bars on the windows.

  Winslow looked uncomfortable for the first time that morning. “Special security cottage,” he explained. “Emotionally disturbed retardates. When there’s a chance they’ll harm themselves or others, we put them in Cottage K. Locked up at all times.”

  “Emotionally disturbed patients here? Don’t they belong in psychiatric hospitals?”

  “Oh, sure,” he said, “but it’s a difficult thing to control. Some, the borderline emotionally disturbed, don’t break down until after they’ve been here for a while. Others were committed by the courts, and we had no choice but to admit them even though there’s really no room for them. The real problem is that there’s no room for anyone anywhere. Do you know how long our own waiting list is? Fourteen hundred. And we may have room for twenty-five or thirty of them by the end of the year.”

  “Where are those fourteen hundred now?”

  “Home. On the outside, waiting for an opening here or in some other institution. You see, our space problem is not like the usual hospital overcrowding. Our patients usually come here to stay for the rest of their lives.”

  As we arrived at the new school building, a one-story glass-and-concrete structure with large picture windows, I tried to imagine what it would be like walking through these corridors as a patient. I visualized myself in the middle of a line of men and boys waiting to enter a classroom. Perhaps I’d be one of those pushing another boy in a wheelchair, or guiding someone else by the hand, or cuddling a smaller boy in my arms.

  In one of the woodworking classrooms, where a group of older boys were making benches under a teacher’s supervision, they clustered around us, eyeing me curiously. The teacher put down the saw and came towards us.

  “This is Mr. Gordon from Beekman University,” said Winslow. “Wants to look over some of our patients. He’s thinking of buying the place.”

  The teacher laughed and waved at his pupils. “Well, if he b-buys it, he’s g-got to t-take us with it. And he’s g-got to get us some more w-wood to w-work with.”

  As he showed me around the shop, I noticed how strangely quiet the boys were. They went on with their work of sanding or varnishing the newly finished benches, but they didn’t talk.

  “These are my s-silent b-boys, you know,” he said, as if he sensed my unspoken question. “D-deaf m-mutes.”

  We have a hundred and six of them here,” explained Winslow, “as a special study sponsored by the federal government.”

  What an incredible thing! How much less they had than other human beings. Mentally retarded, deaf, mute—and still eagerly sanding benches.

  One of the boys who had been tightening a block of wood in a vise, stopped what he was doing, tapped Winslow on the arm, and pointed to the corner where a number of finished objects were drying on display shelves. The boy pointed to a lamp base on the second shelf, and then to himself. It was a poor job, unsteady, the patches of wood-filler showing through, and the varnish heavy and uneven. Winslow and the teacher praised it enthusiastically, and the boy smiled proudly and looked at me, waiting for my praise too.

  “Yes,” I nodded, mouthing the word
s exaggeratedly, “very good . . . very nice.” I said it because he needed it, but I felt hollow. The boy smiled at me, and when we turned to leave he came over and touched my arm as a way of saying good-bye. It choked me up, and I had a great deal of difficulty controlling my emotions until we were out in the corridor again.

  The principal of the school was a short, plump, motherly lady who sat me down in front of a neatly lettered chart, showing the various types of patients, the number of faculty assigned to each category, and the subjects they studied.

  “Of course,” she explained, “we don’t get many of the upper I.Q.’s any more. They’re taken care of—the sixty and seventy I.Q.’s—more and more in the city schools in special classes, or else there are community facilities for caring for them. Most of the ones we get are able to live out, in foster homes, or boarding houses, and do simple work on the farms or in a menial capacity in factories or laundries—”

  “Or bakeries,” I suggested.

  She frowned. “Yes, I guess they might be able to do that. Now, we also classify our children (I call them all children, no matter what their ages are, they’re all children here), we classify them as tidy or untidy. It makes the administration of their cottages a lot easier if they can be kept with their own levels. Some of the untidies are severely brain-damaged cases, kept in cribs, and they will be cared for that way for the rest of their lives . . .”

  “Or until science finds a way to help them.”

  “Oh,” she smiled, explaining to me carefully, “I’m afraid these are beyond help.”

  “No one is beyond help.”

  She peered at me, uncertainly now. “Yes, yes, of course, you’re right. We must have hope.”

  I made her nervous. I smiled to myself at the thought of how it would be if they brought me back here as one of her children. Would I be tidy or not?

  Back at Winslow’s office, we had coffee as he talked about his work. “It’s a good place,” he said. “We have no psychiatrists on our staff—only an outside consulting man who comes in once every two weeks. But it’s just as well. Every one on the psych staff is dedicated to his work. I could have hired a psychiatrist, but at the price I’d have to pay I’m able to hire two psychologists—men who aren’t afraid to give away a part of themselves to these people.”

  “What do you mean by ‘a part of themselves’?”

  He studied me for a moment, and then through the tiredness flashed an anger. “There are a lot of people who will give money or materials, but very few who will give time and affection. That’s what I mean.” His voice grew harsh, and he pointed to an empty baby bottle on the bookshelf across the room.

  “You see that bottle?”

  I told him I had wondered about it when we came into his office.

  “Well, how many people do you know who are prepared to take a grown man into his arms and let him nurse with the bottle? And take the chance of having the patient urinate or defecate all over him? You look surprised. You can’t understand it, can you, from way up there in your research ivory tower? What do you know about being shut out from every human experience as our patients have been?”

  I couldn’t restrain a smile, and he apparently misunderstood, because he stood up and ended the conversation abruptly. If I come back here to stay, and he finds out the whole story, I’m sure he’ll understand. He’s the kind of man who would.

  As I drove out of Warren, I didn’t know what to think. The feeling of cold grayness was everywhere around me—a sense of resignation. There had been no talk of rehabilitation, of cure, of someday sending these people out into the world again. No one had spoken of hope. The feeling was of living death—or worse, of never having been fully alive and knowing. Souls withered from the beginning, and doomed to stare into the time and space of every day.

  I wondered about the house-mother with her red-blotched face, and the stuttering shop teacher, and the motherly principal, and youthful tired-looking psychologist, and wished I knew how they had found their way here to work and dedicate themselves to these silent minds. Like the boy who held the younger one in his arms, each had found a fulfillment in giving away a part of himself to those who had less.

  And what about the things I wasn’t shown?

  I may soon be coming to Warren, to spend the rest of my life with the others . . . waiting.

  July 15—I’ve been putting off a visit to my mother. I want to see her and I don’t. Not until I’m sure what is going to happen to me. Let’s see first how the work goes and what I discover.

  Algernon refuses to run the maze any more; general motivation has decreased. I stopped off again today to see him, and this time Strauss was there too. Both he and Nemur looked disturbed as they watched Burt force-feed him. Strange to see the little puff of white clamped down on the worktable and Burt forcing the food down his throat with an eye-dropper.

  If it keeps up this way, they’ll have to start feeding him by injection. Watching Algernon squirm under those tiny bands this afternoon, I felt them around my own arms and legs. I started to gag and choke, and I had to get out of the lab for fresh air. I’ve got to stop identifying with him.

  I went down to Murray’s Bar and had a few drinks. And then I called Fay and we made the rounds. Fay is annoyed that I’ve stopped taking her out dancing, and she got angry and walked out on me last night. She has no idea of my work and no interest in it, and when I do try to talk to her about it she makes no attempt to hide her boredom. She just can’t be bothered, and I can’t blame her. She’s interested in only three things that I can see: dancing, painting, and sex. And the only thing we really have in common is sex. It’s foolish of me to try to interest her in my work. So she goes dancing without me. She told me that the other night she dreamed she had come into the apartment and set fire to all my books and notes, and that we went off dancing around the flames. I’ve got to watch out. She’s becoming possessive. I just realized tonight that my own place is starting to resemble her apartment—a mess. I’ve got to cut down on the drinking.

  July 16—Alice met Fay last night. I’d been concerned about what would happen if they came face to face. Alice came to see me after she found out about Algernon from Burt. She knows what it may mean, and she still feels responsible for having encouraged me in the first place.

  We had coffee and we talked late. I knew that Fay had gone out dancing at the Stardust Ballroom, so I didn’t expect her home so early. But at about one forty-five in the morning we were startled by Fay’s sudden appearance on the fire-escape. She tapped, pushed open the half-open window and came waltzing into the room with a bottle in her hand.

  “Crashing the party,” she said. “Brought my own refreshments.”

  I had told her about Alice working on the project at the university, and I had mentioned Fay to Alice earlier—so they weren’t surprised to meet. But after a few seconds of sizing each other up, they started talking about art and me, and for all they cared I could have been anywhere else in the world. They liked each other.

  “I’ll get the coffee,” I said, and wandered out to the kitchen to leave them alone.

  When I came back, Fay had taken off her shoes and was sitting on the floor, sipping gin out of the bottle. She was explaining to Alice that as far as she was concerned there was nothing more valuable to the human body than sunbathing, and that nudist colonies were the answer to the world’s moral problems.

  Alice was laughing hysterically at Fay’s suggestion that we all join a nudist colony, and she leaned over and accepted a drink that Fay poured for her.

  We sat and talked until dawn, and I insisted on seeing Alice home. When she protested that it wasn’t necessary, Fay insisted that she would be a fool to go out alone in the city at this hour. So I went down and hailed a cab.

  “There’s something about her,” said Alice on the way home. “I don’t know what it is. Her frankness, her open trust, her unselfishness . . .�
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  I agreed.

  “And she loves you,” said Alice.

  “No. She loves everyone,” I insisted. “I’m just the neighbor across the hall.”

  “Aren’t you in love with her?”

  I shook my head. “You’re the only woman I’ve ever loved.”

  “Let’s not talk about that.”

  “Then you’ve cut me off from an important source of conversation.”

  “Only one thing I’m worried about, Charlie. The drinking. I’ve heard about some of those hangovers.”

  “Tell Burt to confine his observations and reports to the experimental data. I won’t have him poisoning you against me. I can handle the drinks.”

  “I’ve heard that one before.”

  “But never from me.”

  “That’s the only thing I have against her,” she said. “She’s got you drinking and she’s interfering with your work.”

  “I can handle that too.”

  “This work is important now, Charlie. Not only to the world and millions of unknown people, but to you. Charlie, you’ve got to solve this thing for yourself as well. Don’t let anyone tie your hands.”

  “So, now the truth comes out,” I teased. “You’d like me to see less of her.”

  “That’s not what I said.”

  “It’s what you meant. If she’s interfering with my work we both know I’ve got to cut her out of my life.”

  “No, I don’t think you should cut her out of your life. She’s good for you. You need a woman who’s been around as she has.”

  “You would be good for me.”

  She turned her face away. “Not in the same way she is.” She looked back at me. “I came here tonight prepared to hate her. I wanted to see her as a vile, stupid whore you’d gotten mixed up with, and I had big plans about coming between you and saving you from her in spite of yourself. But now that I’ve met her, I realize I have no right to judge her behavior. I think she’s good for you. So that really lets the air out of me. I like her even if I disapprove. But in spite of that, if you’ve got to drink with her and spend all of your time with her in night clubs and cabarets dancing, then she’s in your way. And that’s a problem only you can solve.”