The Alcoholics

by Jim Thompson

  Back in the days of the roaring ’twenties, he had served as chairman of the board of a hundred-million dollar corporation.

  Back in the early ’thirties, three press services and a nation-wide chain of newspapers had quoted his opinion—yes, and his firm belief—that we have but to tighten our belts, my fellow citizens, and place our trust in Almighty God, and we shall emerge from this crisis more strong and triumphant than ever…

  Back in the early ’forties, the early days of World War II, he had…

  As a matter of fact, he had done nothing; nothing wrong. Nothing that might not have been excused, even rewarded, at a different time. It was not so much what he had done but when he had done it: The artist, Time, had painted him into a picture of chaos, distorting the nominally normal, concealing virtue and exaggerating defect.

  He had been in the public eye for years. He remained in it now, the one figure in the picture that everyone recognized. Through the refracted light of familiarity, he became a symbol for Pearl Harbor, for Bataan, for the Philippines, for the accidental shooting-down of friendly planes. Perhaps the General had extended his lines too far. Perhaps his losses had been too high for the results achieved. Perhaps, and perhaps not. It did not matter. Time spun the wheel, and the arrow stopped at the General. He was not merely culpable of one doubtful action or several, but for the whole terrifying tragedy of war.

  Just as he had done nothing, nothing wrong, so nothing—nothing really wrong—had been done to him. He was not under arrest on the flight back to Washington. He was not court-martialed. There was no official demand for his resignation. True, there were official news releases to the effect that a detailed study of his conduct was being made and that “proper action would be taken at the proper time.” The stories flowed into the newspapers for months—never actually accusatory; only reciting the statistics of lives lost, of men killed and wounded and captured, and stating that the General’s responsibility was under study.

  The tides of the war changed, and the flow of stories to the newspapers ceased. But the General’s case remained “under study,” and he remained under suspension, drawing no pay. He asked for a trial. He demanded one. That put him back in the newspapers for a day—in bold-face, front-page “boxes,” ironic in tone; in editorial-page cartoons—a be-spurred and drooling idiot shaking a bloody fist beneath the nose of John Q. Public.

  But he did not get a trial. Nothing, as has been noted, was ever done to the General.

  The war ended. The powers that were turned fretful, annoyed eyes on the General’s “case.” Restore him to rank? Give him a clean bill of health? Impossible. The public would never accept it. The General himself had become impossible. A common drunk, my dear fellow. Actually! “And did you see the article he wrote for that shoddy magazine? Pure viciousness! Couldn’t have got any real money from that outfit…”

  Somewhere, somehow, in his almost fifty years of military service, a small error had been made in the General’s papers. It was so small and so obviously an error, a matter of a t struck over a p to form the anomalous abbreviation term., that it had been dismissed by everyone, the General included. But, now, when something had to be done with him but nothing to him, the error provided a way out.

  The error had occurred in the chronicling of his promotion from captain to major; thus, it affected the higher rank and all other ranks up to his present one. A little confusing? Well, it was a rather confused matter. Briefly, however, it boiled down to this. The term, in the papers was—by unanimous agreement—interpreted to mean temp. His rank was temporary, in other words; all his ranks had been temporary down to the grade of captain.

  Being by age subject to retirement, he was retired without prejudice and with utter propriety at his last permanent rank—upon three-quarters of a captain’s monthly stipend. So the case was adjusted, honorably and even with kindness. For, as a person high in authority had pointed out, the beggar managed to stay stiff enough as it was. With more money, he would simply drink himself to death.

  …This morning, the morning of the day annaled and mayhap analyzed here, he sat on the flagstoned patio of the sanitarium, his steamer chair drawn up close to the sea-side guard rail so that he might better watch Doc’s progress up the cliff from the beach. To some, the fact that the doctor chose to scramble perilously and laboriously up the rocks instead of ascending the stairs might have seemed idiotic. But the General did not so regard it. There was very little if anything that Doctor Murphy could do which, in the General’s varicosed, broken-celled mind, would be open to criticism.

  “A very fine man,” the General murmured. “Must remember to—to—to—A very fine man.”

  Doctor Murphy swung over the guard rail, rested a moment, then moved across the patio, mopping his bony face with a thin wiry arm. He stooped down in front of the General, gently replacing the houseslippers on the chilled bare feet. Then, dragging up a hassock to sit on, he grinned shrewdly but respectfully into the old man’s face.

  “Short night, eh, General?”

  “What?” The General blinked, uncertainly. “Oh, no. No, I slept very well, Doctor.”

  “Good!” said Doctor Murphy. “You’re convinced, then? You’ve decided I was right about that letter.”

  “Well, uh…” The General fumbled in the pocket of his bathrobe. “I was going to ask…I wonder if you’d mind…”

  Doctor Murphy extricated the letter from the robe, and carefully unfolded it. “There you are,” he said, “right down in black and white. ‘We have enjoyed reading your manuscript, and thank you for allowing us to consider it.’ Isn’t that what it says? Isn’t that what it means? How in the world can you make anything else out of it?”

  “Uh…you think that isn’t a mere formality? That they’re only being polite?”

  “Ha!” said Doctor Murphy.

  “Not their way, eh?” said the General hopefully. “Pretty curt lot on the whole?”

  The doctor nodded vigorously. “Any time those people say they enjoy something, they mean it!”

  “But—uh—they didn’t take it…?”

  “They were unable to. They enjoyed it and they appreciated your sending it to ’em, but—well, you can read it for yourself. ‘We are unable to use it at the present time.’ At the present, understand? Let ’em wait a while, General. Just hang on to the manuscript; well, perhaps you’d better give it a good working-over, put in those anecdotes you were telling me. Then, send it to ’em and see how fast they snap it up, by golly!”

  The General retrieved the letter, and tucked it carefully into his pocket. “I’ll do it, Doctor! By George, I’ll…” His voice faded, and the faint glow in his eyes dimmed. He would do it, but—

  He coughed nervously, nodding to the serving table at the side of his chair. “As you can see, Doctor, I have just had a hearty breakfast—scrambled eggs, wheat cakes, mil—Confound it sir! What are you smirking about?”

  “Sorry, General. You were saying?”

  “I was saying, Doctor Murphy, that I had just had a hearty breakfast and that I strongly felt the need for a drink by way of anchorage.”

  “Now, that’s what I like about you, General,” said Doc. “That’s the trait I like about all alcoholics, the thing that distinguishes them from the common gutter-drunk. They’ll try to outwit you, but they’ll almost never lie to you.”

  “I don’t—”

  “You say you had a hearty breakfast. You don’t say you ate it…You didn’t, did you, General? Your choice of words wasn’t accidental?”

  The General smiled, reluctantly. His eyes, straying to the serving table, lit up again. “You’re too sharp for me, Doctor. I don’t know why I keep trying to deceive you. Now, I don’t want to monopolize your time, so if you’ll just instruct Rufus to re-fill my cigar lighter I’ll…”

  “What do you intend to do with the fluid?”

  “What would one do with it?”

  The doctor waited. Now it was lighter fluid. He brought his hands down on his thighs wit
h a weary slap, and stood up. “Arsenic mixes well with milk, too,” he said, “and it acts a lot faster. How’ll it be if I send you a shot of that?”

  “It might,” said the General, “be a good idea.”

  Doc stared down at the bowed head, his friendly concern for the old man mingling with his irritating but ever-absorbing interest in the problem which the man presented. The General’s existence was outright defiance of all the known rules of medical science, his existence and that of practically every other patron of El Healtho. Everyone knew that when the alcohol in the bloodstream reached a small fraction of one percent, the person through whom that bloodstream flowed became a corpse. His heart stopped. He smothered. Everyone knew that alcohol rose up the spinal canal to the brain, pressing harder and harder against the fragile cells until they exploded and their owner became an imbecile.

  Everyone knew these things. Everyone but the alcoholics.

  Of course, they did die. Their brains did become damaged to the point of idiocy. But alcohol, more often than not, was only one factor in those deaths and that damage. They were run over while drunk; they were beaten and kicked, with irreparable damage to the brain, in drunken brawls. Everything happened to them except the one thing which a logical science declared should happen.

  Of his own personal knowledge, Doctor Murphy had known but one man who had died of alcoholism.

  One might justifiably feel that violent death overtook the alcoholic before his affliction had the opportunity. But how, if that were true, could such elderly alcoholics as the General be explained? The General had drunk a full quart of whiskey in thirty minutes; the alcohol in his bloodstream had been sufficient to ignite (as Doc Murphy had proved) at the touch of a match. Yet he did not die and his health, for his age, was far better than average. His brain was “wet”—at least, important areas of it were wet to an ordinarily disabling extent. Yet he was very, very far from being an idiot.

  Doc wondered, and wondered, by God, why he wondered. For, as far as he could see, El Healtho was damned well washed up. He might be wrong; certainly, he intended to take another look at his financial books after breakfast. But, hell, he knew without looking. He’d been looking for months when he should have been out looking for a practice.

  Van Twyne? Would his family now take the next cautious step toward the goal which Murphy stood in front of? They would. They would do it today, through the medium of their family physician.

  And if El Healtho was washed up, if, in short, he did intend to tell the Van Twynes and their money to go to hell—if that was the case, why had he argued so bitterly with Judson?

  Dammit, oh, dammit to hell, anyway! Skip it. Let it ride a while. Here was the General, and the General seemed in favor of a drink of arsenic.

  “I’ll send it right out to you,” he said, “but you’ll have to promise you won’t vomit it up.”

  “Excellent,” murmured the General, allowing Doc Murphy to assist him from the chair. “Oh, uh, by the way, Doctor. I’m afraid my account may be slightly in arrears…”

  “Who says so?” demanded the doctor, belligerently. “You telling me how to run my business?”

  And then he jumped so suddenly that the General was almost thrown over backwards. For he had heard screams before—he had heard screams that were screams. But he had never heard anything like this, the terrifying cry that could only be coming from Room Four.

  4

  Lucretia Baker, R.N., had had a very good night’s sleep. Not in months, not, in fact, since her sudden dismissal from a cerebral palsy case (male) had she slept so well. And she awakened well before six, thoroughly refreshed and relaxed, rejoicing in the apparent certainty of many more such pleasant nights to come. It had been an inspiration to take employment in this place. Not once, during the several weeks of that employment, had a day passed without its delighting interlude. It might be nothing more—nothing more!—than an eyelid, twisted beneath a professionally inquiring thumb. Or it might be nothing more than boiling bouillon, forced between lips too weak to protest. But once there had been a hypodermic, driving all the way to the bone, and…

  And last night!

  Ah, last night!

  Throwing open the French doors of her room, she stood naked in the cool-gray light of dawn, drinking in the tangy air of the Pacific. She looked out past the balcony and down the cliff, seeing the hunched red-tipped speck that was Doctor Murphy, reveling in the childish, age-old joy of seeing without being seen. In her imagination—a very vivid, much-practiced instrument—she mounted the balustrade of the balcony and called to him, sweetly in the voice of Circe, sweet but imperious, a Salaambo commanding the barbarian. And he came to her, scrambling up the rocks; and suddenly he was there, his feet and hands somehow bound, stretched helplessly on the bed.

  She bent over him (in her imagination). She let her full breasts brush back and forth across his face.

  “Well,” she whispered, “don’t you like me? Ith there thumpthing wrong, Doctor?”

  She shivered delightedly. The scene changed.

  Now, it was she who lay bound and helpless; and it was the doctor who bent over her. And if she was helpless…well, if a person was helpless, how could she…? A brief wave of sickness, nausea, swept over her. Her imagination, vivid and much-practiced as it was, would go no further.

  She sat down on the bed and lighted a cigarette. She tried to reason with herself, to squeeze out past the door of inhibition which always, when she was on the point of escape, crushed so cruelly and firmly against her…A doctor would be all right. Doctors had always been all right. Wasn’t it a doctor who had been nice to Mama, all those years when no one else had been nice? Well. There you were. Doctors were different.

  Doctors were all right.

  She showered in luke-warm water, then turned the cold faucet on full, letting it beat for minutes against the molded curves of buttocks and belly. She took a great many cold showers, and usually they helped; she supposed, anyway, that she might have felt much more unease without them. But even if it had helped this morning, that help fell far short of the aid she needed.

  Less than thirty minutes before she had felt relaxed and joyous, ready for anything. Now, there was no joy in her, only the old, never-satisfied hunger, and it was as if she had never rested.

  And it was his fault! It was always their fault! It had been their fault with Mama, the mean, wicked, dirty things. They had killed Mama—always demanding, and giving nothing in return…

  Miss Baker dressed in her clean white uniform, her spotless white shoes and stockings. Eyes sparkling strangely, she pinned a white, blue-edged cap upon her brown brushed bright hair.

  Last night was just a beginning. It was just a sample of what she would give him. It was his fault, and…

  And why wait until tonight?

  In the long hospital day, there is no firm conjunction of one shift with another. Their edges come together raggedly, notably with the ending of the night and the beginning of the day. Feet drag; there is much thoughtful drinking of coffee. Departures are prompt, arrivals late or present only in the flesh. Six o’clock, for all practical purposes, means six-fifteen or six-thirty.

  No harm comes of this circumstance. Patients who have not rested well are now fatigued and asleep. Those who have rested are well able to wait upon the satisfaction of their needs and wants. And, naturally, where a real emergency exists, it will be promptly—if sleepily—provided for.

  Patient is in convulsions? Oh, God, another one? Well, give him paraldehyde—two ounces. Paraldehyde orally, ACTH intravenously.

  Patient is in a coma? Caffeine, benzedrine, oxygen.

  Patient’s heart has stopped? Nicotinic acid. Jab your finger up his butt.

  Patient is violent? Hyocsin, restraints.

  Then…?

  Nothing then. That is all, brother. We can only sprinkle talcum over the cancer. Convulse if you must. Remain in your coma. Let your heart stutter and stop. You won’t die, not permanently; only for a few hours,
days, a week. The great crazy-colored snakes will coil around you, crawl lazily from your eyes, your ears, and mouth and nose. And you will slide around the wall of your room, clawing, and striking and screaming, and your heart will fail and your eyes glaze and your limbs will stiffen. And you will be dead—but not dead. Only dying. And for such a short time, brother. Think! You need only die this death for a maximum of a week. And then it will all be over…until the next time.

  …But, to return to Lucretia Baker, R.N., the sanitarium was still silent as she crept out of her room. The halls were still empty. She breathed quietly, listening, and heard only the faint, faraway clatter of Josephine and her kitchen utensils. She closed her door without a sound.

  There were only three rooms in this wing of the house; her own, the diathermy and X-ray chamber, and Room Four. Moving swiftly down the hall, her footsteps silent on the ribbed rubber matting, she paused briefly in front of a heavy oak door with a single nickeled numeral. Then, she pulled the bolt—there was no lock on the inside—and thrust all her weight against it.

  She opened it just enough to allow her to enter; and once inside, she blocked it open with a small wooden doorstop she had brought from her own room. That would allow her to leave quickly—to hear anyone coming up the stairs. And she didn’t need to worry about him. He couldn’t call for anyone.

  The room was windowless. The walls and floor were of under-padded canvas. The one item of furniture was a low, formica-topped table, its legs bolted to the floor.

  He lay on the table, an oval oblong of damp white sheets, held in place by the straps which also held him motionless. Miss Baker inspected the wrappings and was momentarily frightened. Someone had re-done them. That Judson! Would he…? But they wouldn’t think that. Why would anyone think that about her?

  She looked down at the white-bandaged head, held level with the cocoon of sheets by a stack of pillows. Van Twyne’s eyes were open. They looked unblinkingly into hers in a blank uncomprehending stare. Then, they blinked, and something crept up through the blankness.