“What for?”
“Major DeCola said it’d be okay.”
“Major who?”
“DeCola.”
“He’s a doc down on…?”
“Surgeon.”
“Right. He ain’t a psych. So-”
“He said it’d be okay.”
“Yeah. Well. I’m just sayin’…”
“He’s a major,” I said.
“Shit. Okay.”
The magic words.
The door opened electronically-at least, it was supposed to. The black man, who introduced himself as Rainey, had to push it open himself.
“Everything’s fucking falling apart here,” Rainey said.
Maybe it hadn’t been that hard for Dennis to run away, I thought. Maybe all he’d had to do was push open the door and scram.
There was a small desk on this side of the door. Rainey’s, I guessed. A Styrofoam cup sat on an open newspaper as neatly arranged as a place mat. A metal bridge chair sat on the other side of the desk.
The room itself was about the size of a two-stall bathroom. It smelled like one. There was the odor of stale urine and male sweat. Of confinement.
“You knew Dennis?” I asked him.
“You don’t know anybody here, man. You don’t want to know anybody. Most of them don’t know which way is up.”
“He knew which way was out, though, didn’t he?”
Rainey chuckled. “Sure. Okay. Dennis flew the coop.”
“He stuffed a lot of meds in his pocket before he left, too. What floor’s the dispensary on?”
“Not this one.”
There was a door opposite the door I’d walked through. The door to the actual wards, I guessed. The looney bin.
“Can I see Dennis’s room?”
“It’s just a bed, man.”
“Right. Show me anyway.”
He shrugged, scratched his head, said: “You’re the boss.”
He fumbled for a key and fitted it into the lock; the door swung open.
I’d expected something worse.
It looked like a dormitory. A dormitory in an old boys’ school-okay, an old, old boys’ school. But still. A regular-looking hallway led to regular doors that opened onto regular rooms with regular rows of cots.
We stood in the doorway of Dennis’s old room and Rainey put his finger to his lips.
Don’t make noise.
I doubt we would’ve disturbed anyone. The patients were tossing, turning, mumbling in their sleep. Some of them appeared to be sleeping with their eyes open.
“Which bed was Dennis’s?” I asked.
“Let’s see…” Rainy whispered. “Over there.” He pointed to the far end of the room. “He liked the window. Liked seeing the sky. He was used to living on the streets, maybe.”
“Maybe.”
“See, just an empty bed. Told you.”
“I want to take a look at it.”
“You are looking at it.”
“I’d like to take a closer look.”
Rainey shrugged.
We walked down the center aisle, past the murmuring, shifting bodies flanking both sides of the room. The smell was worse here-sour and medicinal.
Thin beams of platinum moonlight spilled across the wooden floor. I nearly tripped over someone’s shoe.
“This one?” I said. It was the last bed, directly under the window. The mesh screen sliced the moonlight into neat little squares.
“Uh-huh.”
The bed was made up in military style, the gray blanket pulled tight in impeccably neat corners. You could probably bounce a quarter off it. A wooden shelf hung over the bed, but there was nothing on it.
I sat down, tried to imagine what it was like to live here-among other disturbed people who once carried guns.
“What about that one?” I asked.
The bed directly across from Dennis. It was the only other empty bed in the room.
“That one?” Rainey said. “Oh, that was Benjy’s.”
FORTY-FOUR
Benjamin’s shelf was still filled with stuff.
Old books, mostly-primers, textbooks, comics, the kind of things that parents usually lock away in an attic chest for safekeeping. Only there weren’t any chests in a VA hospital, certainly no attics, and no parents to lovingly store the mementos of childhood.
“He was black,” I said. “Benjamin was black.”
“Black as me,” Rainey said. “What you interested in him for?”
“He flew the coop too, didn’t he? Dennis wasn’t the only one who knew the way out.”
Rainey nodded.
“I think he took something of Dennis’s with him,” I said.
“Okay.”
“How long was Benjy here? In this hospital?”
Rainey smiled. “Shit, who knows? He was a lifer, man.”
“A lifer, sure. But Benjy wasn’t a vet, was he?”
“It’s a vet hospital, ain’t it?”
“Yes. But maybe it wasn’t always a vet hospital?”
“Can’t help you. Before my time. Just knew the poor fool was here forever.”
“Was he a fool?”
“Shit, he was here, wasn’t he? Of course he was a fool.”
“You ever talk to him, Rainey?”
“About what?”
“About anything? The weather. The World Series. The price of gas?”
“Hey, I told you. You don’t want to know the people in here. They come here, they got no minds. They’re as nuts as Dennis. Benjy talked to himself.”
“Was he on drugs? Like Dennis?”
“Every color in the rainbow, man.”
“Right. Maybe that’s why he talked to himself.”
Rainey shrugged.
“I don’t think Benjy was a poor fool,” I said. “I think he was a poor something, though. When did he break out of here?”
“I don’t know-a while ago. Before Dennis.”
“Sure, before Dennis. Were they friends, Dennis and Benjy? Did they hang out together?”
Rainey shook his head. “Told you, Benjy was a lifer. Lifers stick to themselves. Dennis was fresh off the streets.”
“Do you let patients keep their wallets, Rainey?”
“Sometimes. We let them keep a little money-you know, for snacks and things. Some of them have pictures in their wallets-you know, of their wives or kids. So why not?”
“They ever get their hands on more than a little money?”
“Well, they’re not supposed to.”
“Yeah, but do they?”
“Sure. I guess. People visit. They get sent stuff. They play poker-supposed to be for matchsticks, but you know?”
“Yeah, I know. So maybe now and then, those wallets have more than just snack change and pictures.”
“Okay, sure.”
“Did Dennis ever play poker?”
“I guess. Why?”
“Benjy ended up with Dennis’s wallet. I was wondering if it had a lot of money in it. Poor fool that he was, he knew enough to know he’d need some cash to get from here to there.”
“Where’s there?”
“California. To see his mom.”
“Oh yeah? How you know that?”
“Right after he saw her, he got into an accident.”
“A car accident?”
“No. I don’t think so.”
“What kind of accident?”
“A fatal one.”
“Yeah? Too bad.”
We were whispering, but I could see one or two heads rising from beneath white sheets like ghosts.
“Where would Benjamin’s medical file be?”
“Down in Records, I guess.”
“Where’s that?”
“On four. He broke outta here just to see his mom, huh?”
“Well… he hadn’t seen her in fifty years.”
“Huh? Why’s that?”
“He didn’t know she was alive.”
“For fifty years? How’s something like that happen?”
“Easy. They told him she was dead.”
“Well, why didn’t she come see him?”
“Because they told her he was dead.”
“Who’s they?”
“Is there a TV here in the ward, Rainey?”