B000FCJYE6 EBOK (19 page)

Bob leaned in. “He’s reincarnated. He took over the body of a guy named Charlie. Charlie, wasn’t it?” he said, turning to look at Geronimo, who nodded.

“That is correct.” He crossed himself. “May the poor sucker rest in peace.”

“My name is Jonathan Siebald Peters the Third,” said the man to my right, “and I am very, very, very nervous right now and I request permission to be excused from this
fucking
please excuse my French ridiculous farce of a dinner experience.” He stood, picked up his tray, and set it on a counter in the corner. His back turned, he shifted from the heels to the balls of his feet like he was exercising. “Which is not to say,” he said to the wall, “that I wish to cause any offense to any of the persons present, most especially the ladies, with the exception of the
evil bitch
at the head of the table who is in no way qualified to lock or unlock doors, let alone tell me when I can take a piss.”

“You are not well liked,” Geronimo said to the nurse sadly.

The nurse opened another folder and wrote something down.

A very small man, as narrow as a bean, sat at the end of the table. He cleared his throat. “If I may remark.”

“Go ahead, Captain,” said Geronimo grandly.

“Thank you. I would ask,” said the little narrow man to me, “after your rank.”

“He is a colonel,” Geronimo answered.

“Sir, I did not ask you, sir. The question was directed toward the young man, sir.”

“Quite so. Continue.”

“I have no rank,” I said.

“Certainly you have a rank. It is an orderly system. Without order, we would live in a state of chaos, which is no way to run things, making strategy virtually impossible. There would be,” he said, “no plan of attack.”

Jonathan whacked his head on the wall once, hard. “A sane person might reasonably ask,” he shouted, “against whom this
particular offensive
is directed.”

“Darling, now, please don’t bump your poor little head,” Ellen said. “It hurts me terribly.”

“My apologies.”

“Your rank, young man, is that of lieutenant.”

“Here here!” Geronimo cried, raising his milk carton in a toast. “Quite so, sir. With all the decorations, privileges, and rights that are afforded that fine rank.”

“Sir, thank you, sir. And he will progress through the ranks according to skill and bravery demonstrated.”

“Yes he will.
Yes
he will.” Geronimo glowered at me. “What in God’s name, Lieutenant, do you mean by showing up at mess in your pajamas?”

“Oh, my stars,” Ellen sighed. “The poor thing didn’t even know his name until just a minute ago. Let him get his bearings.”

Jonathan laughed maniacally. “Yes! He didn’t even know his
name
! Let alone his fucking
rank
!”

“Where in God’s name is the orderly? Poor Jonathan’s in terrible distress,” Ellen fretted. She shot a withering look at the nurse. “Someone’s going to be sorry if he doesn’t get his pills pretty soon, is all I’ll say.” She pursed her lips. The nurse ignored her.

I leaned over to Bob. “Are we waiting for medicine?”

He nodded. “Also, we can’t leave until everyone’s talked politely. Part of social skills program, you know how it is.”

Jonathan pounded the wall with his fist. “Doris, if you would
please
speak, it would free the
rest of us
to continue our evening, yes? Would it not?”

Doris gazed into her lap.

“Does this happen every time we eat?” I whispered to Bob.

He nodded.

“How long does it take?”

He shook his head slowly.

“My friend, we could be here for days.” For the first time, he met my eyes with terrible intensity. “But then,” he said, “it hardly matters. In the universal scale of things.”

Jonathan gave up. He slid down the wall and lay facedown on the floor.

“Who is the president?”

“President Johnson. Ladybird.”

“Ladybird?”

“Ladybird ladybird.” I chewed carefully on my right wrist. To stop from talking. The words were getting out today. I knew they were the wrong words. I hated the doctor. The room had two chairs. I was dressed, had gotten dressed before anyone else and sat on the couch in the dayroom so when the doctor arrived I’d be ready for The Assessment. So far not so good.

“You think Ladybird Johnson is the president.”

“No.”

“All right. We’ll move on. How old are you?”

“Twelve.” I got up and went to stand by the window, which looked out on the road.

“Are you uncomfortable?”

“No.”

“Are you nervous?”

“Nervous. Yes. Very nervous.”

“Why’s that?”

“Questions.” I climbed up onto the radiator and wedged myself onto the windowsill.

“What year is it?”

I paused. “I don’t know.” I hated that one. Doc Parker never asked me that one. He always skipped that one, even though I know it was on the list of questions, he always skipped it, he knew to skip it because
it didn’t matter anyway.

“It’s 1969. Do you know where you are?”

“State.”

He laughed.

“Not funny.”

“No?”

“No.”

“Tell me the names of your family.”

“Claire Arnold Kate Oma Opa.”

“Very good.”

“Very good.” He seemed to think I was an idiot. “Not an idiot.”

“I know you’re not an idiot. I think you’re a very intelligent boy, actually.”

“Math.”

“Really. Math in particular?”

I wrapped myself in a curtain with only my feet sticking out.

“What’s the square root of five hundred and thirteen?”

“Isn’t. Doesn’t. There isn’t a have one.”

“I see.”

I peeked out of my curtain. “Bats hear with their toes.”

“I didn’t know that.”

I nodded, beginning to like him better. “Two hundred and six bones in the body. Approximately. Human body. Not bats. Axial and appendicular skeleton. Mostly toes, fingers. Carpals, metacarpals. Things like that.”

“You are absolutely right. You could be a doctor.”

“Definitely not.”

He laughed. “I’m sorry. That wasn’t funny.”

“Yes it was.” He laughed again. I studied him. He was fifty-four. That was how old he was. I could tell. And he was married and he had two children, daughters, and he was okay. Yes, he was. He would not do anything bad now that he knew about my math.

“So, okay, not a doctor. What do you think you’d like to do?”

“Scientist-inventor.”

“Excellent profession. A fine choice. What will you invent?”

“Cures.”

“For?”

“Things. Bad things.”

“Brain things?”

I nodded. “And fears.”

He whistled low through his teeth. “Wow. You’ll be much in demand.”

“Probably.”

“What sort of fears you think you’d like to cure?”

I shrugged. “Darks. Snakes and sharks. Kate my sister’s nightmares. People and daytime. Dying.” I hopped off the windowsill and walked sideways over to the chair. I sat down and watched him out of the corner of my eye.

“Are you afraid of dying?”

I shook my head.

“Other people dying?”

I chewed my thumb knuckle. Nodded.

“Esau, do you hear voices?”

I thought this over. “Sometimes but not really.”

“Do they tell you to do things, ever?”

“No.
My
voices. They’re
me.
Parts of me talking. Only at night, falling asleep. All my voices at once, fast.”

“Do they have conversations?”

“Yes.”

“What does it feel like?”

I ran out of words. I looked at him, helpless.

“That’s a hard one, huh?”

I nodded.

“Okay. We’ll skip that one, how about. So what about visions. Do you see things, sometimes, and wonder if they’re really there?”

“Dreams.”

“Yes, like dreams, but when you’re awake?”

I sat quietly. I didn’t want to tell him. I took a deep breath and looked at him, hoping the words would come out straight.

“They are. My dreams. And you can’t have them.”

He looked back at me, not writing on his pad. I could tell for sure he heard me.

“Pretty good dreams.”

“My dreams.” I nodded and studied the coils and spirals of my fingerprints.

“Sometimes, are there bad ones? Where you get confused?”

“Lost.”

“You get lost. In the dream?”

“Can’t find the door. Horrible trapped.”

“I bet it’s horrible to be trapped. It is horrible.”

I got up and went over to the door.

“Are you ready to be done?”

I made sure the door was unlocked and slid my back down it to sit on the floor and wrapped my arms around my legs and wanted my dad.

“Still with me?”

I nodded into my knees.

“Esau.”

I looked up.

“Nobody wants to take your dreams. I don’t want to. But what if we could find a way to keep the good ones and make the bad ones go away?”

I watched his shoes. Black shiny shoes on the floor.

“And maybe the voices would slow down. And you could hear them better.”

I looked up at his face. I liked his thick bushy overgrown eyebrows. I wanted to touch them, but I stayed where I was. I decided I would say my secret.

“Because they have the answers.”

“The voices.”

“They tell me the answers.”

“To the math.”

I nodded and smiled into my knees. I chewed on my jeans. “And the other things. The how things work things, the bats. Wings. A hawk drops two hundred miles an hour. Birds, fish. Bugs have a thorax. Man-eating plants.”

I covered my ears with my hands. Shhh.

“Sorry too fast,” I said.

“Not a problem.”

“Didn’t make sense.” I peeked out between my knees.

The doctor smiled at me. “Sure it did.”

“Crazy crazy.” I bonked my head five times with my fist.

“Nah. Just going a little too fast, is all. We’ll get you slowed down some, and then we’ll see what’s going on. Okay. Now, I’m going to get up and come over there.”

I scootched my butt out of the way to let him pass. He opened the door.

“I’ll see you tomorrow,” he said.

The statistical likelihood was good.

“Hello.”

I was watching my hands. They were trying to shuffle an old deck of cards, some torn, some crayoned, and I was thinking, slowly, that it would be easy to memorize the cards and cheat, if only I could get my hands to shuffle them. But my hands were pretty uncooperative.

“Hello,” the voice said again.

I looked left and studied the person out of the corner of my eye.

These were the things I could figure out right then for sure: 1. It was nighttime. 2. There were three people in the dayroom not counting me. I was sitting back in the corner so I could see them all. We wore the same hospital pajamas, so we were all the Patients and not the Staff. 3. One of these people was standing by the table where I sat. It was him, I figured, who said hello.

He had a bandanna on his head and was big.

I meant to say hello but only wound up jerking my head in a nod. That was going to have to do. I resumed my shuffling attempts and now only my right hand would work; the left lay limp on the table. This frustrated me. “Fuck fuck!” I said. I shook the deck hard.

“Hey! Now. Little buddy. Calm down, there,” the big person said. He had a very soothing voice and he was not making fun of me, which was good because otherwise I would have hit him. “Mind if I have a seat?” When I said nothing, he pulled a chair out slowly and sat down.

“Name’s Beast,” he said, sticking his hand out and startling me.

“Beast!” I shrieked, rearing back in my chair.

“Whoa! Hey now. Sorry about that. Shh. S’all right.” He patted the table lightly with his giant hand. The other two in the room glanced up and then went back to their nothing.

He didn’t look too upset, but I still felt bad. To make it up to him, I offered him some crayons. I pushed an orange, a periwinkle, and a burnt sienna his way.

“Thanks, buddy.” He sounded genuinely pleased, and only took the neat row after I’d removed my own hand. He got up and returned with some paper, sliding a stack across to me. Paralyzed, I stared at it, still gripping my cards.

“You want some help with those?” he asked. I studied the tattoo of a bald eagle on his forearm, fascinated. Underneath his bandanna, his head was shaved. He was a giant. I was in love with him. I nodded. “Happy to shuffle them for you, you want,” he said.

“Stuck,” I said miserably.

“Say what?”

I held out my hand, wrapped around the worn deck.

“Huh,” he said, looking at it. “Well, shit. You want I should unwrap you there, or you gonna sit there holding them all night?”

I shook my head, wanting badly to draw.

“All right, ready? Just like getting a fishing hook out of your finger. One yank and it’s over. So gimme your hand.”

I screwed my eyes shut and braced myself. He twisted my wrist so fast I dropped the cards. He’d let go of me before I even had a chance to scream.

I looked at the pile of cards on the floor and then at him. He was whistling, a tiny stub of crayon wedged in his huge hand, drawing a field of periwinkle grass.

“Howdja?”

“Old army trick,” he said, grinning. “Disarm a fella quick.” He picked up the orange crayon and drew in the sun.

I got down on the floor and swept the cards into two piles, red cards and black cards. I would sort and memorize them later. I set them to my right and sat down in my chair.

“Been here long?” he asked.

“I don’t know.”

He looked at me. “There you go.”

I cocked my head.

“Whole sentence,” he explained. “You used a whole sentence.”

I nodded. “Sometimes, okay. But I think,” I said, tapping my head. “All the time.”

“You think in whole sentences?”

I nodded again, relieved.

“Well, fuck
me,
” he thundered. “That’d piss me
right
off, I couldn’t get the words out.”