And throughout the interview process, the most curious thing came over me: I started to see. It was as if I could envision where every pain came from. And how all those accumulated pains had over the years evolved into madness.
I felt a darkness coming over my heart.
My every fiber screamed at me to rise up and run, to get out of that room, that everything I saw and heard and learned was terrible, was information and knowledge I had no right to possess, no need to have, no desire to collect. But I remained frozen, unable to move, as frightened in those moments of myself, as I was of the hard men that came through the door who had all done something terrible.
I wasn't like them. And yet, I was.
The first time Peter the Fireman stepped outside the Amherst Building he was almost overcome, and he had to grip the banister to keep from stumbling.
Bright sunlight seemed to flood over him, a warm, late spring breeze ruffled his hair, the scent of hibiscus blooming along the pathways filled his nostrils. He hesitated unsteadily on the top step of the stairs leading to the side door, a little drunkenly, or dizzy, as if he'd been spun around for weeks on end inside the building, and this was the first moment when his head wasn't turning. He could hear traffic from the roadway beyond the hospital walls, and off to the side some children playing in the front yard of one of the staff housing units. He listened carefully, and from beyond the happy voices, he picked out the strands of a radio playing. Motown, he thought. Something with a seductively catchy big beat and siren like harmonies on the refrain.
Peter was flanked by Little Black and his large brother, but it was the smaller of the two attendants who whispered urgently, "Peter, you got to keep you head down. Don't let anyone get a good look at you."
The Fireman was dressed in white duck slacks and short lab coat, like the two attendants, although they wore regulation thick black shoes, and he was shod in high-topped canvas basketball sneakers, and anyone alert to charades would have picked up on that distinction. He nodded, and hunched himself over a little, but it was difficult for him to keep his eyes on the ground for long. It had been too many weeks since he'd actually been outside, and longer still since he'd walked anywhere without the restraints of handcuffs and his past hobbling his steps.
To his right, he could see a small motley group of patients working in the garden, and over on the decrepit black macadam onetime basketball court a half-dozen other patients were simply wandering back and forth around the remains of the volleyball net, while two other attendants smoked cigarettes and kept a vague eye on the shuffling crowd, almost all of whom had their faces lifted to the warm afternoon sunshine. One wiry, middle-aged woman was dancing, just a little, moving her arms in wide gyrations, and striding first to her right, then back to her left, a waltz without rhythm or purpose, but as genteel as some Renaissance court.
They had worked out the system of the search in advance. Little Black had called ahead to the other housing facilities on the inter hospital intercom system, and they would enter through the side door, and as Big Black went to get the subject from Lucy's list to take them back to Amherst, Peter and Little Black would process the man's living area. What this had devolved into was Little Black's keeping an eye out for any of the other nurses or attendants, who might be curious, while Peter moved swiftly through whatever pathetically small collection of possessions the man in question had managed to keep. He was very good at this, able to finger his way through clothes and papers and bedding without disrupting much, if anything, moving very rapidly. It was, he'd learned during the first searches in his own building, impossible to keep what he was doing secret from everyone there was always some patient or another lurking in the corner, perched on his bed, or merely glued to the far wall, where they could safely see out the window and across the room, preventing anyone from sneaking up on them. No limit, Peter thought, more than once, to paranoia in the hospital. The problem was, a man behaving suspiciously in the context of the mental hospital didn't mean the same thing as it did out in the real world. Inside the Western State Hospital, paranoia was the norm, and accepted as a part of the daily routine of the hospital, as regular and expected as meals, fights, and tears.
Big Black saw Peter lifting his eyes up to the sunshine, and he smiled. "Makes you kinda forget, don't it," he said quietly. "Nice day like this."
Peter nodded.
"Day like this," the big man continued, "it don't seem fair to be sick."
Little Black joined in, unexpectedly. "You know, Peter, day like this actually makes things worse around here. Makes everyone get this little taste of what they missing. You can smell the world happening, like it's just out there beyond the walls. Cold day. Rainy day. Windy and snowy. Those are the days that everyone just gets up and goes along. Never take any notice. But a beautiful day like this one, right hard on just about everybody."
Peter didn't reply, until Big Black added, "Really hard on your little friend. C-Bird still got hopes and dreams. This is the sort of day that is real hard on those, because it makes you see just how far away all those things are."
"He'll get out," Peter said. "And soon, too. There can't be all that much holding him in here."
Big Black sighed. "I wish that were true. C-Bird, he's got a world of trouble."
"Francis?" Peter asked incredulously. "But he's harmless. Any damn fool can see that. I mean, he probably shouldn't be here at all…"
Little Black shook his head, as if indicating that neither what Peter said was true, nor could the Fireman see what they saw, but didn't say anything. Peter stole a glance toward the main entrance to the hospital, with its huge wrought-iron gate and solid brick wall. In prison, he thought, confinement was always an issue of time. The act denned the time. It could be one or two years, or twenty or thirty, but it was always a finite amount, even for those condemned to life, because it was still measured in days, weeks, and months, and eventually, inevitably, there was either a parole board hearing scheduled or death awaiting. That wasn't true for the mental hospital, he realized, because one's stay there was defined by something far more elusive and far more difficult to obtain.