One Endless Hour (3 page)

    Rafe James fell in behind the group with his armful of file folders for the ritual twice-a-week walk-through of the ward. Mobley began a rapid circuit of the large room, talking steadily. He paused briefly in front of a few of the men, asking questions but not listening to the answers. The hatchet-faced head nurse, an elderly blonde known on the ward as Gravel Gertie, took notes.

    Mobley took a file folder from James occasionally and scribbled a line into the case history of the favored individual. The psychiatrist rarely spent more than two minutes with anyone. The group of doctors and nurses following him murmured chorused acquiescence to Mobley's drum-fire pronouncements like a flock of twittering parakeets. The nurses were old, the doctors young. Every one a has-been or a never-was in his profession.

    Spider Kern posted himself a careful five yards in advance of the procession. A silence enveloped each group of men he approached. Except to respond to a direct question, no one spoke again until Dr. Mobley and his troupe passed. This was Spider Kern's Law, ruthlessly enforced. The protruding knuckles on Kern's hands slashed like knives. Rumor on the ward had it that Kern soaked his hands in brine to toughen them.

    "Here's a case for you one of these days, Dr. Afzul," Mobley said briskly, halting in front of my chair. I stared straight ahead. "Been here-oh, five months. Burns resultant from the explosion of a car's gas tank while he was attempting to escape from the sheriff's department. A murder charge against him is being held in abeyance while we try to penetrate his catatonia."

    I had already noticed a new face in the group, a spindly little man with dark mahogany features, slick black hair, big brown eyes, and a pencil-line moustache. He looked dapper even in his semishapeless hospital whites. "An interesting case," he agreed after looking me over. His Oxford-accented sibilants hissed like snakes.

    He picked up one of my burned hands from my lap and turned it over to examine the back of it. He stared down at three obviously recent bright red marks in the previously burned flesh. The little knot of doctors and nurses stared at them, too. No one said anything. Dr. Afzul released my hand, and I let it drop limply into my lap.

    The dark-faced little doctor put two fingers under my chin and tilted my head back to study my face. I had long since stopped looking into the mirror mornings at the lumpy scar tissue and disfiguring discoloration that extended down almost to my mouth. "A strong conssstitution," the doctor commented. "Shock alone from extensssive burns like these would have killed many." He removed his hand from under my chin and started to step back. I held my head in the position in which he had placed it. Dr. Afzul reached out again and tipped my head down into its former position.

    "You can see that passivity is the motif in his case," Dr. Mobley said.

    The group moved down the ward. I could see them out of the corner of my eye while I stared straight ahead through the window at the rose garden. The next stop was in front of Willie Turnbull, an undersized eighteen-year-old with a purplish birthmark covering the right side of his face.

    Dr. Mobley gestured and Dr. Afzul moved forward again. His delicate-looking slim brown fingers probed lightly at the disfiguring growth. "It has always been of this dimensssion?" he asked.

    "Sure has, Doc," Willie replied in his high, piping voice.

    "And he says he steals automobiles because of it," Mobley interjected.

    Willie grinned self-consciously. "How else is a guy looks like me gonna get a gal into the back seat?"

    Mobley chuckled. One of the nurses snickered. The slender doctor dropped his hand from his palpating examination. "You would like it removed?"

    "You can't fix it, Doc," Willie said. "Ma took me to all the relief doctors. They wouldn't touch it."

    Dr. Afzul crooked a slim eyebrow. "Believe me when I say I can 'fix' it, as you put it. That is my business. Come along to my office."

    Willie looked at Dr. Mobley, who nodded. The skinny kid fell in behind the procession as it moved along. When the circuit of the ward was completed, Spider Kern unlocked the see-through ward door. "Oh, Kern," Dr. Mobley said, "I want you to meet our newest staff member, Dr. Sher Afzul. Kern is our man in charge of law and order on the ward, Doctor. Dr. Afzul is from Pakistan, Spider."

    "Pleasssed to meet you," Dr. Afzul said, extending his hand.

    Spider Kern ignored the hand. He mumbled something unintelligible while he appeared to study the key ring in his hand. After an awkward pause, Dr. Afzul pulled back his hand. The group filed out of the ward with Willie Turn-bull in their wake. Spider Kern tested the door behind them to make sure the automatic lock had caught. "Think-in' I'm gonna shake hands with the likes of him," he grumbled to Rafe James, whose pipe once again was in his mouth. "Can't they hire no white men anymore?"

    When I was first promoted from isolation to the ward, I couldn't understand why Spider Kern devoted so much attention to me. Personal attention. Physical attention. Sudden muscle punches on my arms and thighs. Longarmed feints at my face to try to make me duck. Cigarette burns on my hands and arms. I'd stopped taking showers during Kern's shift when he began following me into the shower stall with his fixed grin and goddamned cigarette. It wasn't only me, of course. Kern spread his sadistic business around, but I couldn't help thinking I received more than my share.

    Even Rafe James noticed it. "You really work out on the loony, don't you, Spider?" he asked one day when Kern was trying to make me flinch in my chair by applying the end of his lighted cigarette to my forearm. I'd steeled myself to wait for a count of five before removing the arm. "You'd think he was your mother-in-law."

    "He shot up my buddy," Kern replied.

    "Your buddy?"

    "Deppity Sheriff Blaze Franklin. You must've read about it. Blaze V me was on the force together awhile. This bastard like to blew his balls off with a thirty-eight. I'm gonna fix his clock. I think he's fakin' it, anyway."

    "He's a hell of a good faker if he can take what you been dishin' out without showin' nothin'," James observed.

    "I've seen his eyes a couple times," Kern said. "He's fakin' it, even if I can't convince of Mobley."

    I gave thought to Spider Kern after that. Not very productive thought. There was nothing loose in the ward that could be used as a weapon. All the furniture was tubular aluminum. Even a leg wrenched from a chair would be too fight for my purpose. I'd get only one chance if I went after Kern. I couldn't afford a mistake.

    So day after day I sat in my rocker and stared out over the hospital grounds. Not even rocking. Just waiting. I never doubted that I'd find a way. I'd been in tougher places. I waited, and meantime I toughed it out each time Spider Kern came down the ward to my chair.

    Nothing lasts forever, I kept reminding myself.

    Least of all Spider Kern.

    

    

    Willie Turnbull was back on the ward in three weeks. His head was wrapped like a mummy's, and his right arm was elevated above his head with the flesh of his inner arm pressed against his cheek. For three-quarters of each hour he had to he down on his bed to keep the blood circulating in his arm. The other fifteen minutes he would prowl the ward restlessly until the upstretched arm started getting numb again. His meals were liquids taken through a tube. The only way he could sleep was under sedation.

    Dr. Afzul came to see him every day. Twice a week he worked on Willie's arm and face without ever fully removing the facial bandages. "It isss coming," he said each time to Willie. "Don't get dissscouraged." Willie had become very discouraged. "You will find that it will all be worth it."

    Once a week the slender little doctor would knock Willie out with a needle, loosen the bandages, and treat him for half an hour with a thin-looking liquid in an aerosol spray can. Then Dr. Afzul would wait for another half hour before he rebandaged Willie. During the interval Dr. Afzul would roam the ward, talking to the other inmates. "How do you feel today, sssir?" he would ask me, stopping in front of my chair. I would wait for a count of five, then nod my head slowly.

    At first Spider Kern accompanied Dr. Afzul as he toured the ward, but as time went on even Kern became adjusted to the little doctor's continued presence in what Kern considered to be his own private domain. Occasionally the doctor would sit down with a magazine while he was waiting. He never looked at anything except the advertisements for cars, footwear, and men's clothing and jewelry.

    He came into the ward one day with two young doctors. The three of them set up a portable tent around Willie Turnbull's bed, and they all disappeared inside it. Most of the men on the ward drifted in that direction for what they sensed was to be the unveiling. "What does it
look
like, Doc?" we heard Willie ask impatiently several times.

    "Soon you will see for yourssself," Dr. Afzul assured him each time.

    It must have been two hours before the doctors emerged from the tent. All three were smiling. Willie Turnbull followed them. His head was no longer mummified and his arm was at his side again although still bandaged. The lumpy, purplish growth on the right side of Willie's face was gone. In its place was a shiny, reddish, taut-looking sheath of flesh that didn't look too much like skin.

    "The color will fade," Dr Afzul said calmly, correctly interpreting the doubtful expressions on the faces of his audience.

    "And it will blend," one of the young doctors confirmed.

    "It will never match exactly the other ssside of your face, Willie," Dr. Afzul said. "But we will show you how to use cosssmetics so that few can tell the difference."

    The third doctor shook hands ceremoniously with Dr. Afzul. "As fine a job as I've ever seen, Doctor."

    Willie didn't sound nearly as certain when he voiced his own thanks.

    From the time Willie walked out of the ward until the unveiling, the process had taken about twelve weeks. In another month the lobster-red coloring had faded to a dull pink and the shininess had begun to disappear. Every third day Dr. Afzul would come onto the ward and cover the new side of Willie's face with his liquid spray, wait for an hour, then do it again.

    I had watched the program with more than an academic interest. What I had just seen accomplished was what I most needed myself. I waited until Dr. Afzul sat down near me with a magazine one day while his liquid concoction "set" on Willie's face. "How long would it take you to fix me a new face, Doc?" I said in a normal tone but without looking at Dr. Afzul.

    "That isss hard to-" he began, then turned from his magazine to look at me. I was staring straight ahead as usual. The doctor glanced about the ward. Spider Kern was at its far end, out of earshot. Dr. Afzul lowered his voice before he spoke again. "I have not heard you ssspeak before."

    "I want to talk to you, but not here."

    He was looking at his magazine again. "I have my share of curiosssity. I will have you brought to my office tomorrow."

    "Fine."

    Neither of us said anything more.

    

    

    After Dr. Afzul left the ward that afternoon, I experienced another break in my usual monotonous routine. Colonel Sam Glencoe of the state police came to see me. He'd come three times before, and each time I'd let him see a slight improvement in my supposed catatonic condition. Another man was with him this time, not in uniform. He looked like F.B.I.

    They drew up chairs and sat down, one on either side of me. The first time Glencoe showed up, Spider Kern had tried to horn in on the interview. Glencoe sent him packing with a single hard look.

    I knew it was still bugging Glencoe that he couldn't get a line on Chet Arnold. It probably bugged him almost as much that after talking to Hudsonites like Jed Raymond and Hazel Andrews, he didn't hear much that was wrong with Chet Arnold. Chet had arrived in Hudson as a stranger with a tool kit and a trade. A year in a lumber camp had made me a tree surgeon when I wanted to be. That and a crack shot.

    I came to Hudson to try to find out what had happened to my partner, Bunny, who had gone there with the loot from a bank job in Phoenix. While looking for him, I did a little tree work and blended with the local citizenry. As I gradually uncovered the slimy trail of Blaze Franklin and his girl friend, Lucille Grimes, I developed an affair with Hazel that was the finest man-woman relationship I'd ever had. Then the roof had fallen in.

    The unexplained explosion had baffled the sheriff's department, too, but they'd given up a lot more easily. Colonel Sam Glencoe wasn't naive enough to believe that a man of Chet Arnold's locally demonstrated dimensions had sprung full-blown from the earth, though. With no fingerprints possible, and me out to lunch mentally, as Glencoe thought, the colonel was frustrated.

    "How are you feeling today?" he began.

    I waited for a count of three instead of five. "Good."

    His hard blue eyes inspected me. "What day is it?"

    I waited again. "Tuesday."

    "What month?"

    "March."

    "What date?"

    I shook my head negatively.

    Glencoe smiled, although it wasn't much of a smile. His frosty-looking features merely rearranged themselves in a different pattern. "If you'd known the answer to that, I'd have accused you of seeing me coming and boning up. There's plenty of days I don't know the date myself."

    It was a surprise to me that he would even attempt a smile. He certainly hadn't on his previous trips. He'd sat and fired hard-voiced questions to which I'd supplied no answers while staring straight ahead. This time Glencoe was apparently ready to try sugar instead of vinegar. It suited me fine. Up to a point, I was ready to show progress.