“Thank you,” said the professor, saluting with fingers that wouldn’t straighten. “Now, do you want to know what I learned in the next fifteen years?”
“Sure,” said Penn. “Lay it on me.”
“I learned that the system is designed to preserve itself, even if it has to grind you and me up into little pieces.”
“That sounds bleak,” said Penn.
The professor picked up a walking stick that was lying on the floor and started to get to his feet. “They don’t really like me in here,” he said. “The mayor is cracking down on homeless people. We give the city a bad name.”
“Where will you go?”
“There’s a shelter a few blocks from here, but they don’t open ’til five. A better question is, why am I homeless?”
“I’ll visit you again,” said Penn, but he knew he probably wouldn’t. Man was warlike. How could he have been so naïve as to think he had been fighting for peace? It was only the terms of the next war that were being decided. Everything had happened before. Everything would happen again.
Unless, he realized, someone did something to stop it.
6.7 Danny Joiner
The doctor at the clinic abruptly changed Danny’s diagnosis from post-traumatic stress disorder to personality disorder. “What’s the difference?” asked Danny. “Why the change?”
“I’ll give you this brochure to take home with you,” said the doctor. “It should answer all of your questions, but if it doesn’t, please don’t hesitate to call.”
When Danny called, he was informed that if he wanted to talk to the doctor, he would have to make another appointment, and if he made an appointment, he’d have to make it quickly, before he was discharged from the outpatient program and his benefits were stopped.
“Why would I be discharged? And why would my benefits stop?”
“Don’t you have a brochure?” asked the pleasant female voice. “I can send you one if you want.”
“But the doctor was already treating me. I’d like to speak with him.”
“Hmm,” said the voice. “They were already treating you? That would be unusual, given that personality disorder is a pre-existing condition, but give me your name and I’ll see what I can do.”
Danny told her his name and she relegated him to hold, where a British voice was announcing the news. Just when he was about to find out whether or not the trailers that had been donated to house refugees from Hurricane Katrina were toxic, another voice came on the line to tell him that in cases of personality disorder discharge, benefits were always discontinued.
“Discontinued!”
A broom handle was sticking out of one of the garbage cans that had been set out for morning pickup, and now he used it to whack at the lid of the can. “We’re just like one of these garbage cans,” he said into the phone.
“What?” said the voice on the other end of the line.
“We’re not as useful,” said Danny. “We’re like the garbage in the cans.”
— Don’t take no for an answer, said the voice of the old drill sergeant.
“I’m not taking no for an answer,” said Danny.
“I’m sorry, sir. It’s Regulation Six-thirty-five dash two hundred, chapters five to thirteen. There’s really nothing I can do.”
— So you’re quitting? I think you should march yourself back to that doctor’s office and demand your rights. A soldier never accepts defeat.
The doctor had a bristly mustache and a black Mustang. “Do I know you?” he asked when Danny, who was holding the broom handle as if it were a rifle, stepped from behind a line of parked cars and said, “Hey, Doc.
“Apparently you know me well enough to tell me I have personality disorder.”
“Oh, yes, yes.” The doctor seemed defenseless without his white coat and hospital badge.
Danny’s arms were nearly as big around as the doctor’s thighs. If he and the doctor had met in a parking lot in downtown Baghdad, Danny could have ordered the doctor to drop his weapon and put his hands in the air. He considered doing it now, and then he did it. What the fuck? he thought. “Drop your weapon and put your hands in the air,” he said.
“What? What are you talking about?” The doctor looked like a beaver. Behind the mustache his teeth were an unprofessional yellow. “I don’t have a weapon,” he said.
“Hands up,” said Danny, moving in closer and tensing his biceps and causing the doctor to take a step backward until he was leaning against the faded fabric top of the Mustang.
Slowly, the doctor put his thin white hands in the air, dropping his keys to the pavement as he did so. “What do you want? Money? I don’t have much, but you can have it.” He was wearing a light blue shirt and a striped tie. His sleeves were rolled to show pale forearms and a gold wristwatch. It all made a nice picture against the black car, pleasing somehow.
— What do you mean “nice”?
— It’s easy to distinguish the details, that’s all. The black sets everything off.
— Then say that. Don’t use some mealy word like “nice.”
— Vivid, then. The black-as-petrified-shit background enhances the vomit-and-blood colors of the tie.
When Danny’s eyes lingered on the watch, the doctor seemed relieved. “Do you want the watch?” he asked. “Do you want the car?”
“I want to know the difference between personality disorder and post-traumatic stress disorder,” said Danny. “I want to know why you changed my diagnosis.”
The doctor let his hands drop to his sides. “The medical review board is pressuring us to give lesser diagnoses,” he said.
— Tell him to put his hands back in the air.
“Put your hands back in the air,” said Danny. And then he said, “Shut up!”
“I didn’t say anything,” said the doctor.
“What’s a lesser diagnosis?”
— Tell him to look you in the eye when he talks to you.
“What’s a pre-existing condition?”
— Tell him to lie on his belly. Tell him to eat dirt.
“Lie down and eat the dirt!” shouted Danny.
The doctor dropped to his knees, hands shaking. “It means that you were already damaged when the army got you, so you’re not their problem anymore. It means that every dollar they spend on you means less money for bullets and able-bodied soldiers.” The doctor squeezed his eyes shut after he said it, as if Danny was going to hit him with the broom handle, but Danny figured that’s what they wanted him to do. He might be damaged, but he wasn’t a fool. He knew the rules that allowed sending someone off to war and then failing to help him didn’t allow hitting a doctor. He knew that because one of the voices was shouting at him.
— If you hit him, they’ll arrest you, asshole! Now tell him to stand the fuck up.
“Stand up!” shouted Danny, and the doctor stood up, holding the keys he had dropped and pressing a button on his key ring that started a horn blaring.
The commotion scared Danny so much that he raised the broom handle and brought it down on the Mustang’s fabric top as close to the doctor’s shoulder as he could without touching him. The breeze from the stick riffled the doctor’s hair. The sound made him jump and his eyes popped open, bugging out almost comically as the car’s emergency horn ripped through the sultry air until someone shouted at the doctor to shut it off and Pig Eye exploded in the distance for the thousandth time.
“I don’t make the rules,” said the doctor in self-defense, but the words sounded as puny and untrue as the doctor himself.
— Yes he does!
“Yeah, you do,” said Danny.
“I don’t. I swear to you I don’t. There are rules and regulations.” The doctor looked hopeful now that they were talking and the physical threat had receded somewhat.