THE SONG REMAINS THE SAME
Dr. Eric Stelig had never seen anything like it in all his time as administrator at the Baltimore State Hospital for the Criminally Insane. He stood just inside the recreation room of what was affectionately known as the ‘psycho ward’ — Ward C — and gaped in revulsion. He had seen some pretty damn repugnant stuff in his time, but this was the worst. Not because it was any more disgusting than the other things, because it wasn’t. No, this was bad because of what it represented.
“How the fuck could this have happened?” Stelig muttered.
“I don’t know,” Adams said with a long sigh.
Stelig turned and looked down at the Senior Doctor. The short, balding man was sweating and he looked pained. “Why wasn’t it stopped? Jesus Christ, what’s next, a friggin’ breakout?”
“It all happened so fast, Sir. We couldn’t stop it.”
“That’s not a good enough answer,” Stelig growled. “What the hell were you idiots doing while all this was happening?”
Adams stuttered.
“Probably balling the nurses, or dreaming of balling the nurses.” Stelig shook his head and looked back at the carnage. “How the hell are we going to cover this up?”
They could cover up the deaths of one, maybe two people — he’d done it numerous times in the past — but fourteen? How the hell were they going to cover up the deaths of eleven mental patients and three nurses?
Stelig gazed around the large room, awash with blood and shit, at the fourteen dead, each and every one with their tongue either bitten off or ripped completely out of their mouth, and shuddered.
How could one man have done all this? he wondered.
“Where’s Warren now?” Stelig asked Adams.
“In the infirmary.”
“What? Why isn’t he in confinement?”
“We found him in the corner.” Adams pointed over at the far left-hand corner of the room. “He was lying in a fetal position, crying, mumbling, speaking nothing but gibberish.”
Stelig huffed. “So the psycho has gone completely nuts. They’re all nuts. Why the fuck is he in the infirmary?”
“Because both his eardrums were pierced.”
Stelig moaned. “Christ. He did that to himself?”
Adams shrugged. “Looks like it. We found a plastic bread knife next to him. Shit, you know how hard he would’ve had to…”
“So Warren’s deaf?” Stelig cut him off.
“Ah, yeah. Apparently.”
“He can still talk, can’t he?”
“If you call the nonsense coming out of his mouth talking, then yeah, he can still talk.”
Stelig turned away from the massacre. His eyes welcomed the change of scenery. “Let’s go. Maybe I can get some answers out of him. Shit, I wanna know why he did this. Why he may have single-handedly fucked up my career.”
The man sits in the corner, not looking at anything in particular, softly humming. He does nothing else all day except sit in the corner and hum.
He doesn’t speak with the others, not because he hates them, but because that would mean disrupting his glorious hymn.
Even now, as the black man glides the funny looking hairy thing around him, he doesn’t stop humming. Like a humming-bird, which is what the black man calls him.
“Hey there, humming-bird. How you going today?”
The man smiles quickly, never ceasing his song, never missing a beat. He can’t miss a beat, or else he’ll lose his stillness.
The black man, who wears the same blue uniform every day, continues pushing the funny hairy thing back and forth, around and around. “And how am I doing, you ask? Well, I can’t complain. The ticker’s still beating and the paychecks keep on coming. And I have wonderful friends like you to keep me company.” The black man chuckles.
The man stares at nothing and keeps on humming. He likes the black man. The black man likes his humming. Unlike certain other people. But that, like other things, he keeps to himself. He never tells his secrets to anyone.
“I say, you ever going to change your song, humming-bird?” The black man says. “Doesn’t matter. Me, I don’t mind. Shit, I don’t mind at all. It’s comfort, isn’t it, humming-bird? Familiarity. Me, I like comfort as I get older an’ older. With my wife gone and the kids all grown up and living their lives, comfort’s all I have. Ain’t that right, humming-bird?”
The man smiles. The black man always talks about his wife gone and his kids living their lives. Every day he talks about the same thing. And every day he stops pushing that funny hairy thing while he talks. But the man doesn’t care. He just looks at nothing and keeps on humming.
And hopes the bad man hears him.
He hasn’t heard a peep out of the bad man for awhile. They might still be punishing him — or he could be sleeping. But even in sleep, he knows the bad man can hear him. And that makes him smile. His secret.
“Yeah, my life ain’t too bad, humming-bird. I got this job. Hell, it don’t pay too well and you’d be disgusted at some of the things I have to clean up. ‘Specially in the bad wards. Psycho ward’s the worst. I’d give up half my paycheck if I was allowed to only clean this ward. ‘Cause this here ward’s the best. It’s clean, quiet and I have people like you to talk to.”
The man knows what’s coming up next. He’s heard it a million times. But he likes hearing this part. It makes him the most happy.
“Unlike that psycho ward. Shit. It gives me the creeps every time I go inta that ward. All those eyes watching me, all those devil minds wondering how they’re gonna get me. They piss and shit and spew and leave their spunk all over the floor, just to spite me they do. I’m convinced of it. Just to make my life hell. I’m almost seventy, humming-bird. I don’t got no time to be worrying about some nutter coming at me with god-knows-what and killing me.”
The black man stops to take a breath. He’s almost seventy, and he hasn’t got the wind in him like he used to. Not like back when the man first arrived here and the black man was young. Well, younger than he is now. But he’s always liked the man’s humming. Never told him to stop it like those men in white.
“But, I need the money. That’s a fact, humming-bird.”
The black man sighs, grips the funny hairy thing and begins to push it along the floor. “Still gets me that you people up here are put in the same place as those crazy nutters down there. Shit, you’re no more dangerous than my old Grandma used to be, God rest her soul. And she was the nicest lady in the world.” The black man shakes his head and makes a funny clacking sound with his mouth. “See ya humming-bird. Thanks for listening.”
The black man walks away.
The humming-bird continues to hum.
The man’s aware of things going on around him. They think he’s simple or something, but they don’t know. He knows about the large man in white doing the business with one of the women in white, the women who wear those funny hats. He also knows the large man in white has a ring on his finger, just like the ring the man used to have, only now it’s gone — taken from him by the men in white when he first arrived at this place. He knows about the small man in white that does the business with the drooling woman who lies in bed all day. He does the business when it’s dark and there are no other men in white around. He also knows that the bad man hates his humming. Always has. But these things he keeps as secrets. He’s a humming-bird, and humming-birds never talk, just hum.
The man’s good at keeping secrets. Everyone says so. That’s why he’s here. The big policeman who had yelled and hit him thought so. Said he’d make a good spy — doesn’t give nothing up, he had said. Wanted to know about Julie and Sam and little Debbie. But that was the man’s business. Not the policeman’s.