Eddie's Shorts - Volume 1 Page 3

  The music is near the middle of the tape so Dr. Cester won't be back at his office to change it for a good half hour. I think about waiting at his door but after the business with Dr. Palumbo and his roaches I get a little squirmy standing in the dark basement hall. I wander around some more and find John Hernandez watching TV in the lounge with some patients. John is pretty involved in some talk show; when I come up to him he grins at me, points at the screen and says, "Lesbians!" but he tells me he thought he saw Dr. Cester in the East Wing.

  Only part of the second floor is open in the East Wing. It is where some of the patients live in separate wards, with their own rooms, instead of all together in the west dorms. That means the patients there are either come from people with a bit of money, or are dangerous, or both. That's where I find Dr. Cester-pronounced-Chester.

  Dr. Cester is the newest doctor at Willow Farm. He has been here for three years now, since Dr. Mottet got removed after a catatonic patient in his care got pregnant. Dr. Cester-pronounced-Chester is sort of different than the other doctors (they say it is on account of he's from California) and he made some changes when he got here, like the music for one, and the colored walls for another. Dr. Cester got Dr. Palumbo to agree to have the walls in the patient areas all painted different colors with names like "azure," and "amber," and "kelly," though to me they look like blue, and orange, and green, and so forth. Before that all the inside walls were just white-washed, so I guess it looks nicer now.

  I find Dr. Cester in the hall outside the Psychopath ward, staring at one of his walls, a sort of fleshy-pink colored one. There is a black footprint on the wall at eye level, and Dr. Cester is studying it real close with one of his bushy blond eyebrows raised, humming to himself, and rocking on his heels. I come up next to him but he doesn't seem to notice, so I clear my throat. He jerks and turns towards me.

  "Oh, Jim!" he says, "You startled me! You sure do move quietly for a guy your size!"

  "Sorry, Dr. Chester," I say. He takes a hand out of his lab coat pocket and waves it.

  "Not a problem, I suppose I was fairly engrossed. Take a look at this, would you?"

  He points at the footprint. It looks like the black scuff of a sneaker sole, all wavy lines and treads. It is a good six feet off the ground.

  "I noticed it out of the corner of my eye," Dr. Cester-pronounced-Chester says, "and I'm thinking, 'How did that get up there?' I mean, that is one serious Van Damme jump off the floor!"

  I would have figured somebody probably took off their shoe and pressed it up there with a hand, but I don't say anything. The doctors generally aren't interested in the staff's ideas on things like this.

  "So I'm staring at this print, wondering if the guy had a ladder, and after I'm looking at it for a while, I start to make out this face, right here..."

  Dr. Cester brings a hand up to parts of the footprint. "See? Right here you've got two eyes, and a Roman-looking nose, a good square jaw, you see the beard? You see that?"

  I see lines. Wavy black scuffs on the pink wall.

  "I suppose it could be," I say.

  Dr. Cester-pronounced-Chester nods. The faint music reminds me that it was on by stopping with a click, but Dr. Cester doesn't seem to notice. I figure he is pretty busy, so I just go on down the hall past him and the bolted door to the Psychopath ward, then back down the yellow stair well at the end of the hall.

  *

  I work a double on the Saturday after Dad first showed. He still hasn't come back since the hammer thing on Thursday, and I'm not sure any more if I should still talk with somebody about him. He told me that thing about calling Ishmael if he didn't come back, but I don't know who that is. I just leave his stuff in the bedroom alone and keep sleeping out on the couch.

  Even if I was still going to talk to Dr. Wallace about Dad, Saturday wouldn't have worked. It was one of those bad days we get once in a while at Willow Farm.

  After supper I'm out in back again with John Hernandez and nine patients. The music today is the Glen Miller Orchestra, good toe-tapping music. John and I help Bobby Lee down to the lawn in his chair, then John starts doing some more golf stuff with his flashlight and I lean against a tree by Bobby Lee. He isn't real talkative today on a account of Dr. Palumbo has him on a new series of medication, so he's not all-there. Once in a while I have to wipe some drool off his chin before it gets in his beard, and he doesn't even move when I do it.

  John swings his flashlight in a deep arc and makes a popping noise with his cheek and tongue. "Hoo-wee!" he yells, "I got me all of that one, sure enough!"

  Walter is one of the patients out there with us. He is a young man and what we used to call a manic, but is now called a Bipolar, which always sounded like some kind of bear to me. He has been having some episodes this week, though he seemed okay today, and he sits on a bench the other side of John with his head lopsided because of the bright red crash helmet buckled to it. Walter has been known to do some head-banging. When John gets all of that one hit, Walter starts to twitch, and finally he shoots up off the bench and goes tearing down the hill in the direction that the golf ball would have gone, if there had been a golf ball. He is screaming, "I got it! I got it! I got it!" at the top of his lungs.

  Me and John just sort of blink after Walter for a second as he leaves the mowed area of lawn and makes for the woods, his bruised knees and elbows pumping along as the bathrobe he's wearing flaps around. Me and John look at each other then both jump: John takes off down the hill shouting, "Hit the switch!" and I pound up the stairs and smack the staff call button on the veranda. The patients on the lawn mostly just sit there looking curious, except for one forty-year-old Diso Schizoid who starts to cry for her mommy, and Bobby Lee.

  Bobby Lee seems to shake out of his fog a bit and he looks after Walter's red helmet as it disappears between the trees in the woods. He pushes himself up on his arm rests and hollers, "Ride, Stuart! Ride!" flecking spit from his mouth. Then the other patients all start whooping and Bobby Lee starts shaking harder and then pitches forward out of his chair. The quilts fall away from his lower body and the stumps of his knees rub over the grass as he tries to crawl towards the lip of the hill.

  It takes us hours to get everything settled down. I stop Bobby before he hurts himself but he still puts up a struggle until Dr. Wallace comes charging out of the facility and tranqs him. I notice Dr. Wallace is wearing white sneaker shoes and I wonder for a second about Dr. Cester's wall. Before the rest of the staff that suddenly appear have organized a search party (we have some rules for this sort of thing, though it hasn't come up much), John comes back out of the woods without either Walter or his big flashlight. What he does have is an ugly set of bleeding bite marks in his shoulder. Dr. Palumbo is there by then and he gets the search started, sending teams of staff out into the woods. The whole patient population is riled up from the alarm, though, and all the doctors, even Dr. Cester who is called in from home, spend the next couple of hours roaming the colored halls with the pockets of their lab coats bulging with vials, and syringes in their hands, tranquilizing everything that moves or makes noise. After that Dr.Palumbo is fit to be tied himself and he sends everybody out to stumble through the woods all night. Even so, we don't see Walter at all until he comes back of his own accord.

  *

  Thursday was the last time I ever saw my Dad. When I get home with the groceries after not going to the library my Dad isn't at the trailer, though his car is in front. The night before when I had gone in for the late shift Dad was gone too, but so was his car. Now the car is back, but Dad isn't. I don't know what that means, and even though I'd been up all night and I have another shift Friday morning, I can't get to sleep for thinking about it. I lie on my little half-couch, which is where I've been sleeping since Dad got here even though my legs hang off one end and I have to sort of wedge my head up on a pillow against the wall at the other end. It's light out, another sunny day, and all I've got on the windows are my duck-curtains, so inside the trailer it is all kind of
blue, with white and yellow spaces of light where the sun shines through the ducks. When the wind pulls at the curtains it looks sort of like those duck-shapes are swimming around on the walls I've got better curtains that keep out the light altogether for when I have to sleep days, but they are back in the bedroom.

  I think maybe I should go out and look for my Dad but I don't have any real idea where he could be. I know at night he has been going to the bars in Tuxedo, on account of the matchbooks I keep finding on the floor or once in a while in the garbage. Thing is, I don't think that those places are open this early in the day. Though on some days Dad has gone out "Thoreau-ing" in the woods back of the park, I'm not real clear on what that is and don't know if he'd want to be interrupted doing it, even if I could find him. There is miles and miles of woods back there, they stretch all the way to Willow Farm.

  Still, I'm almost decided to get up and at least look around the park some for him, maybe ask if anybody saw him around, but before I've made up my mind for sure, Dad comes back. This is at about four in the afternoon.

  There's a ruckus from the front door and after a struggle Dad shoves it open and almost falls inside. His pants, beige slacks again, are covered with mud and grass stains, and his shirt is only half buttoned and not tucked in. His face is beet red, like he's been out in the sun all day. He comes into the trailer, dark compared to the outside, and blinks around until he sees me on the couch. He sways in the open doorway with the smell of honeysuckle drifting in around him.

  "Jim, old fruit of my loins!" he says to me, almost in a bark. His voice is way too loud for inside and his words run together. "Where've you been all my life?"

  I'm not sure what he means by that - I've been here but I don't know about him - but he doesn't wait for me to answer anyway.

  "Have we got a hammer about?" he asks.

  I'm sitting up on the couch by this point. I look at Dad real careful. I don't know him real well - like I've said - but for some reason he just doesn't seem like a guy that would have much use for a tool. He's got real soft-looking pale white hands - except for the two fingers always stained with cigarette smoke - and I just can't picture him holding a hammer.

  "Well?" he asks. He's swaying so much he's almost pitching over. I nod at him.

  "There's some tools under the sink," I say, "In the red box with the..."

  Dad nods and walks to the kitchen: More like he just leans in that direction and his feet sort of scuff across the floor to keep him upright. I get up and follow him. He hits his knees hard in front of the counter and yanks open the door under the sink, pulling my toolbox out of the back and knocking a bottle of Liquid Plumber and a can of Raid to the kitchen floor. He opens the box, and starts scooping out pliers and screwdrivers till he gets to the hammer under everything else at the bottom. He grabs that and gets himself to his feet with a hand on the counter, pulling the hammer loose, which flips the box and spills nails all over the floor with the other tools. He holds the hammer above his head and looks at me with a huge grin that's a bit spooky.

  "Coronate me, boy!" he screams, "I'm the fucking King of England!" Then he starts cackling in a way that usually gets people strapped to a table at the Farm, and he stumbles back for the door.

  "Dad?" I say, but he passes me by. He bumps against the couch and almost goes down, but his feet are still moving faster than the rest of him and they keep him upright. It's like he's a pole somebody is balancing: Like the balancer is scampering around whichever direction the pole leans and saving it from crashing to the ground a hundred times. I'm almost sure he's not going to make the two stairs down to the sidewalk and I hurry behind him, but he stays upright all the way to the side of his car. Once there, he leans over heavy against the driver's door.

  "Dad?" I ask again, from the porch. He is singing now.

  "I'd hammer out justice, I'd hammer out freeeeeeeee-dom!!!"

  My Dad swings the hammer sideways into his driver-side window. The glass shatters loud across the front seat and the hot, quiet afternoon.

  Now I really don't know what to make of that. I'm still standing on the porch and maybe half thinking that I'm still asleep on the couch with the little duck shapes shining on me. My Dad tosses the hammer into the car, then reaches in through the broken window and fumbles around on the steering column. He pulls his arm back out, and he's holding the keys.

  "Locked myself out," he says to me, like it's just a matter-of-fact thing. He unlocks the car door with the key even though he could just reach inside for the knob. He opens the door and starts brushing glass out off the driver seat with his bare hand. I just stare.

  After a good amount of glass tinkles out onto the gravel, Dad swings into the car and flops into his seat. He slams the door behind him and the last bit of glass falls out of the broken window. He starts the car and looks out the windshield at me with a big grin. He salutes, and when he does, a big fat spot of blood splats on the left lens of his glasses.

  "If I'm not back by tomorrow," he shouts over the engine, "call me Ishmael!" He snaps the salute forward and more blood flecks on the inside of the windshield. Then he puts the car in reverse and whips hard back into the lot, pointing the car at the exit. Before he squeals out and away, I see the windshield wipers come on, and I wonder if my Dad thinks that they will wipe away the blood on the lens of his glasses. His blood. Mine.

  I could have told him they won't ever do that, but I didn't know how.

  Dad never does show again.

  *

  Two days after he makes his break, Walter comes back to Willow Farm.

  I wasn't on shift the morning Walter came back, but I got the whole story a number of times from the staff that was. Nobody had talked about anything but Walter for the two days he was gone, though of course they only talked about it to each other because Dr. Palumbo would have fired anybody saying anything to anybody else, even though he himself was almost to the point of calling the police. Dr. Palumbo did fire John Hernandez, though, and he might have fired me too, if he'd thought about it.

  But he didn't, so I was there to hear the story of Walter's return over and over again. There really wasn't much to it: All he did was come in through the front door all dirty - robe all ripped, red crash helmet still on - and tell the nurse at the desk that he was hungry. Scared the hell out of a couple people who were waiting for visiting hours in the lobby though. By the time I saw him again Walter was cleaned up and sedated pretty heavy, but he must have been a sight that morning. I heard from the nurse herself that he talked to that she thought Walter was going to kill her - he looked that wild.

  He probably could have killed her, if he'd been of a mind to. He had lost John's flashlight sometime while he was out there - wherever he was - but somewhere he had got something to replace it. A hammer. A regular one, like you'd find in any toolbox under a sink. Nobody knew where he'd got it, but nobody seemed real bothered either. I don't know that anybody even asked him. Maybe I should have said something, but I don't know what.

  I waited another week, then I went back to sleeping in the bedroom of my trailer. I put Dad's clothes that were lying around back in his bag with the bottles, and put the whole works in a closet, where it still is now, though I don't think anymore that my Dad is coming back again.

  Could be he just drove back north, back to Connecticut. Maybe he pitched that hammer out a window along the highway that runs out past the Farm. Or maybe he turned off, took one of the old rutty dirt roads that crisscross the woods that side of town. Old carriage paths, I think my Aunt Emma told me once, unused roads that nobody remembers, that went somewhere forgotten. A car could get stuck out there, and who knows what somebody would run into trying to "Thoreau" their way back to the highway in the dark. Bobcats? Something worse?

  You're lost, and you see a flashlight shining in the woods. It must be somebody looking for you, isn't that what you'd think? Your son, come to find you, like you said you came to find him.

  I can't know any of that, of course, but sometimes a
t night it is what my thoughts will run to, when I'm almost asleep and I hear a squirrel's little nails scrabbling over the roof of the trailer. I think maybe I should walk myself out into those shady woods, out into the swallowing green mouth of rustling breezes and trickling waters and things you can't see moving under the leaves on the ground. But how could anyone find anything out there? Or maybe that's the point. Maybe you only run into those woods when you're past wanting to be found. And that is not me.

  But now, I don't suppose that anybody is looking for me. Not anymore.

  Eight, Seven Central and Mountain

  Channel Two is the public station. Scenes of inner-city kids staring rapt at a TV on a stand at the head of the class and a well-known but now-aged actor whose name escapes you doing a voice-over. "If we don't do it, who will?" That goes into a show narrated by a different well-known and somewhat-aged actor whose name also escapes you. It's about Africa, the Serengeti, Cheetahs tearing the throats out of Thompson's Gazelles in long, lingering slo mo.

  Three is one of the movie channels, though as it doesn't cost anything extra it doesn't show anything made after 1984 that you have ever heard of.

  Channel Four is a network affiliate. A gentle murder show is on, well-known old people in small-town America.

  Five, another network. Sit com, unknown young people in a major metropolitan area. The laugh track goes wild.