A Walk in the Garden of Evil

A WALK IN THE
THE GARDEN OF EVIL

(a novel)

by

Keith Quincy






“As a first rule of thumb … you can tell a true war story by its absolute and uncompromising allegiance to obscenity and evil.”

                   Tim O’Brien







Warden’s Office
Walla Walla State Penitentiary (1981)


         Warden McCreary was a bear of a man in size fourteen cowboy boots who had to stoop to pass through doorways. There was a knock on the door. The warden rolled his wrist and looked at his watch. It was time to greet the new prison psychiatrist.
         He lumbered to the door and jerked it open, stepping back just far enough so the young psychiatrist could step inside. The warden looked him over. The narrow shoulders, soft face, and drooping body shouted ‘I never played a sport.’ The kid no one wanted on the team. A dud with women. Nose in a book as life passed him by. A twerp in a suit with a shabby leather briefcase. The warden curled his upper lip as if about to touch something foul and extended a hand.
         The psychiatrist smiled, his hand disappearing inside the warden’s paw, then winced as his knuckles crunched.
         “So you’re Ankenny’s replacement?”
         “Yes, Sir,” the psychiatrist replied, his throbbing hand tucked behind his back, flapping it as though on fire. “I am Dr. William Melon. But of course you know this.”
         “You’re just a kid.”
         “I can assure you I am a qualified psychiatrist. I studied at Yale and I have served as …”
         “Yes, yes, I suppose you have.” The warden edged forward until he was in the psychiatrist’s face. “Let’s get something straight,” he snapped, the words fluttering Dr. Melon’s eyelashes. “Never seen a convict improved by treatment. Psychiatrist is the Prison Board’s idea. Think it’s modern. You know what I think?”
         “No, Sir.”
         “Psychiatry is bunk.”
         “I … I have to disagree.”
         “Listen. This isn’t a hospital. It’s a prison. A dangerous place. Big mistake to coddle inmates. You know what happened to the last warden?”
         “No, Sir.”
         “He was a coddler. Inmates blew him up with a homemade bomb.” The warden let that sink in. “Lot easier to kill a psychiatrist.”
         A sudden sheen of sweat ringed Dr. Melon’s upper lip.
         “One more thing,” the warden rumbled. “Try not to piss me off.”
         “Yes, Sir.”
         “I guess that covers everything. Dismissed!”
         “Huh?”
         “We’re done here.”
         Back in the hallway, Dr. Melon realized he had failed to ask directions to his office. He fished in his briefcase for the map of the prison sent to him by mail. The medical offices were next to the hospital ward. Perhaps his office was there.
         A guard walked by.
         “Excuse me,” Dr. Melon said. “Could you direct me to the psychiatrist’s office?”
         “You the new shrink?”
         “Psychiatrist. Yes.”
         “Ankenny’s office is in the basement.” The guard pointed to a stairway at the end of the hall. “Down there.”
         
         The office still carried Ankenny’s name. Dr. Melon tried the door. It was unlocked. He went inside and searched with his fingers for a light switch and flicked it on. The key to the door was on the desk, along with another key for the file cabinet. Also on the desk was an appointment book. He sat down and examined it. Someone, probably Ankenny, had arranged a schedule of sessions for forty-seven patients over the next two months.
         Dr. Melon was soon lost in thought. The warden’s rude behavior was one thing, but to dismiss psychiatry as baloney, hogwash, balderdash … What was the word he used? Oh, yes. Bunk. This was unforgivable. Dr. Melon’s faith in science was just as unshakable as a Bible thumpers conviction of the literal truth of scripture. He decided then and there to prove the warden wrong. Demonstrate the power of psychiatry. What he needed was a hopeless case.
         He unlocked the file cabinet and in seven trips removed every patient file and stacked them on the desk. For the rest of the day he studied the files and chose Edward Dooley as his test case. He returned to the appointment book. It was a full week before he was scheduled to meet with Dooley. Dr. Melon hoped it was enough time to prepare.
         With the intensity of boning up for a final exam, he spent every free moment studying Dooley’s files. There were so many he arranged them into separate stacks. One held Dooley’s records from the Kingsboro Psychiatric Center. Another contained the files from the New York Youth Authority. There was a stack of Dooley’s prison records for Sing Sing, Riker’s Island, and Walla Walla. And a separate folder for his Army records. Dooley’s medical records were in the fifth stack. The last item was Ankenny’s notes of his twelve sessions with Dooley, including his final diagnosis: psychotic and homicidal.
         Ankenny wrote of Dooley’s hatred of blacks, describing it as textbook paranoia. There was a cryptic line toward the end of Ankenny’s notes about Dooley’s mother. Something about a scooter. What did it mean?
         Dooley was highly intelligent with an IQ of 154. Kingsboro Psychiatric Center had tested him twice when he was eight. The first test was the Stanford-Binet. They must have thought the score a fluke because they tested him a second time with the Wechsler for children. Again, he scored 154.
         Dooley killed a policeman when he was only fifteen. While at Sing Sing awaiting execution, the governor commuted Dooley’s sentence to life. After several years at Riker’s Island, Dooley somehow wound up in the army and served in Vietnam.
         From his medals, Dooley must have been a standout soldier. He’d earned a Bronze Star with a “V” for valor, two Silver Stars, the Vietnamese Medal of Valor, two Distinguished Flying Crosses, three Purple Hearts, and two Presidential citations.
         What was curious was that the rest of Eddie’s Vietnam record was heavily redacted, twenty-three pages of mostly black marker, except for a page at the end that looked like a PX shopping list. Why the redactions? And why was a PX shopping list in Eddie’s military record?
         After Vietnam, Dooley was posted to a base in Augsburg, Germany. His fitness reports as headquarters’ clerk were excellent. Why would a soldier with two Silver Stars wind up as a clerk? Equally puzzling, why had the Army blacked out the last two pages of the Augsburg entries?
         The physicians’ reports and lab work at French Hospital in Seattle and Sacred Heart Medical Center in Spokane were not good news. Dooley was dying. Dr. Melon dwelled on this fact, weighing the possibilities. Then he studied the prison’s regulations for parole.







Hospital Ward


         Wedged into the prison’s tiny hospital ward were two rows of sixteen creaky beds, their tubular frames incrusted with countless layers of white enamel paint, the coating as thick as orange rind and so crisscrossed with cracks that in many places it had chipped away to expose rusted metal stamped with the inscription: US ARMY.
         Age took other tolls, and from every direction. Fossilized floor tiles crunched underfoot. Thread-like fractures covered the walls, the cracks branching and crossing like arteries and dingy brown from a mildew fermenting the melancholic scent of a long-abandoned home. From above, and nearly invisible to the naked eye, a fine asbestos dust dribbled from chinks in the sagging ceiling, tickling sneezes from nurses and patients on its way to their lungs.
         As a concession to hygiene, and because state rules required it, sheets and pillowcases were freshly laundered. Also, banks of overhead fluorescent lamps kept the ward as bright as day so nurses could check wounds and find veins for injections. In all other respects, the ward was on its last legs, as were the only two inmates occupying beds.
         One was Eddie Dooley, flat on his back in the middle bed of the right row with his eyes open wide and fixed on the ceiling. The other was Dewey Cronk in the last bed of the opposite row, which was as far away from Eddie as one could get.
         Dewey was a small man, made even smaller by the shrinkage of age. Recovering from his second heart attack, he had developed a hacking cough. His low-grade temperature made the oppressive heat insufferable. Which is why at this moment he was seated on the edge of his bed, palm-swabbing sweat from his wrinkled face, his neck stretched to catch the weak current of air drifting from the ward’s derelict standing fan.
         Suddenly, the fan clattered and died.
         Eddie blinked, the first in an hour. He angled his head and watched Dewey shamble to the fan and shake its electric cord. The fan remained dead. Dewey kept shaking the cord, at a loss what else to do.
         “Give it a swat, Cronk.”
         Dewey delivered an anemic slap to the fan’s motor. The engine churned briefly and then fell silent.
         Eddie nodded at Dewey to try again.
         This time Dewey rapped the motor with all of his strength. The fan hummed to life. Dewey remained stooped over the motor, his arm raised for another slap, just in case. The backwash of air over his bald head was like creek water over a child’s bare feet. Dewey sighed his pleasure and stood directly in front of the fan, unbuttoned his shirt and held it open. Head lazed back, mouth lolled, he exhaled a joyful “Ah.”
         “Don’t go hogging air, Cronk!”
         Dewey scurried to the safe harbor of his bed. In six months he would turn seventy. He’d spent forty-seven of those years behind bars and survived because he did not take chances. Eddie Dooley was a crazy and Dewey did not mess with crazies.
         Though, at the moment, Eddie did not look very menacing. Word was he was dying. He had been sent to two hospitals for special tests and returned forty pounds lighter with a cast that encased his left arm from elbow to fingertips. Dewey had wanted to ask Eddie how he hurt his arm but couldn’t work up the nerve. He saw Eddie was again staring blankly at the ceiling. Best let sleeping dogs lie.
         There was the sound of footfalls in the hall. Two guards entered the ward. Floyd, the younger one, was as large as an NFL tackle. Elroy, the other guard, was a toy version of Floyd and in the lead because of seniority. They approached Eddie and halted a safe distance from his bed.
         “Time to see the new shrink,” Elroy announced, more a suggestion than a command.
         Still staring at the ceiling, Eddie seemed not to hear.
         Elroy gave Floyd a nod.
         The big guard walked to the head of Eddie’s bed. “Eddie?”
         Eddie was not at home.
         Floyd cautiously placed a hand on Eddie’s bony shoulder and gave it a gentle squeeze.
         Eddie’s eyes came alive, shifting quick and precise, like a machine part without the click, and homed in on Floyd’s throat. The fingers of Eddie’s good hand twitched.
         Floyd’s Adams apple bobbed. He stepped back sharply and continued to backpedal until he was again behind Elroy.
         “Eddie will come along,” Elroy said. “ Cause he knows if he don’t, we’re going for some iron. Come back with help. And, Eddie, I know how you hate being ‘slammed down’. ”
         “That’s the truth.” Eddie sat up, swung his legs over the edge of the bed and stood. Though instead of facing the guards he attended to the bed’s rumpled sheets, pulling them up tight and tucking them in military-style.
         Elroy noticed Eddie’s gaunt buttocks showing through the gap in his hospital gown. “Floyd, get Eddie his pants. Can’t have him walking bare-assed through C Block. Some of them queens would have a heart attack in this heat.”






FIRST SESSION







Patient Conference Room


         Dr. Melon sat at the conference table, staring at the empty patient chair. Though young, the psychiatrist had a bookish look suggesting the promise of wisdom. He jerked alert and checked his watch. In a few minutes, Eddie Dooley would arrive. Dr. Melon fussed with his ballpoint, clicking it again and again. Yes, he was anxious. Dooley was to be his paean to medical science, his answer to Warden McCreary. He looked his watch again. It was time. As if on cue, there was a rap on the door.
         Elroy peeked inside. “We’ve brought you Dooley.”
         Dr. Melon waved Elroy forward. “Please bring him in.”
         Elroy went back into the hall. A moment later, Eddie entered with the guards several steps behind, herding like sheepdogs. Floyd paused to close the door, then quickstepped to catch up and fall in line behind Elroy.
         Eddie teetered more than walked, sliding his steps, the strain etched in his face. It struck the psychiatrist as odd that the guards seemed unconcerned Dooley might fall. Instead, they appeared determined to keep their distance. The same guards had delivered another patient earlier in the week, yet had walked with him side-by-side. It was as though Eddie were contaminated … or dangerous.
         Dr. Melon got up to lend Dooley a hand, but Eddie had already flumped into the chair. Eddie’s face was ashen and the veins in his neck almost black from lack of oxygen.
         The guards walked back to the door and stood, shifting into neutral: arms crossed and heads lowered, as though dozing.
         “Do you have to stay?”
         It took Elroy a moment to realize the psychiatrist was talking to him. “You want us to go?”
         “Sessions are private.”
         “Ankenny had us stay.”
         “I’m not Ankenny.”
         “Your skin, Doc. Want us to wait outside?”
         Dr. Melon looked at Eddie hunched in the chair, the swollen veins on his neck still throbbing. How could he start something? He could barely walk. Still … Dr. Melon thought of the inmates’ homemade bomb. “Outside will be fine. I’ll call, if I need assistance.”
         The guards left, Elroy closing the door harder than needed.
         Dr. Melon checked Eddie’s pulse. It was fast but not racing. Nor was it irregular. “You all right?”
         “It’s the hospital food.”
         “Uh huh,” Dr. Melon replied, categorizing the suggestion as utter nonsense. “Do you feel well enough for a talk?”
         Eddie took a deep breath. “Sure.”
         It was good practice to establish rapport from the start. “Would you mind if I address you as Eddie?”
         “Eddie is fine. What should I call you?”
         “Dr. Melon.”
         “Cozy.”
         Dr. Melon ignored the sarcasm. “I’m a psychiatrist, and I believe I can help you.” He walked back to his chair, found a manila folder and held it up. Across the folder in block letters written in Ankenny’s hand was the word MEDICAL. “Did Dr. Ankenny talk to you about this?”
         “What is it?”
         “Lab results and physicians’ reports.”
         “All I know is I had lumps on my wrist. They cut them out and grafted bone from my hip to my wrist. Why I have the cast.”
         “There are other lumps,” Dr. Melon said. “In your chest and along your ribs. There is another cluster on your spine.”
         Eddie twisted in the chair and showed his back. With the flexibility of a woman he stretched his right arm behind him and touched between his shoulder blades. “There?”
         “Yes. Along the thoracic vertebrae. Not on the surface. They are underneath the spine. There are also lumps in your lungs and near your heart.”
         “Is it cancer?”
         “Not yet. They’re anomalous tumors. The result of long exposure to Agent Orange. During your service in Vietnam. You must have spent a lot of time in the jungle.”
         “Can’t talk about that.”
         “Well, I’ll assume it is true. One of the physicians at French Hospital is doing research on the condition. I called him.”
         “What did he say?”
         “It is almost certain the lumps will become Burkitt’s lymphomas. Even with aggressive treatment – a combination of radiation, chemotherapy and surgery — the prognosis is poor.”
         “How poor?”
         Dr. Melon was not good at delivering bad news. He avoided Eddie’s eyes by fiddling with his pen. Finally, he cleared his throat and looked up. “You are going to die.”
         For an instant, no longer than the snap of a finger, Eddie’s body went slack, as though a great burden had been lifted from his shoulders. He quickly caught himself, straightened, and casually scratched his chin. “Anything else?”
         Dr. Melon saw only the chin scratch. He had expected more and then realized he should not have been surprised. He had treated several soldiers at Bethesda Naval Hospital in D.C. Conditioned to suppress emotion, they had responded in much the same way to a bad prognosis. Regardless, Dr. Melon was certain Eddie would jump at the proposal he was about offer.
         “I need you to understand your medical condition,” Dr. Melon said. “It’s part of the reason that I wanted you as a patient.”
         “You can cure me?”
         “Not the tumors. I can help with other problems.”
         “Like what?”
         “Psychiatric problems.”
         “Could you narrow that?”
         “Anti-social tendencies. If you show progress, I can get you paroled.”
         “Let me get this straight,” Eddie snapped. “You want to fix my head. Get everything in order and then kick my ass out so I can die in the WORLD.”
         Dr. Melon fumbled for the right words to tap into Eddie’s longings. “Well, … uh … a medical parole would give you a chance to settle your affairs. You could see your family, be with people you love.”
         “Be a short list.”
         “Still, you would be out. And what’s wrong with fixing your head?”
         “Had an aunt like you. Aunt Rose. Cousin Caroline lived on the same block, almost next-door. Aunt Rose didn’t like Caroline because she got divorced and wouldn’t go to mass or confession and had a string of boyfriends until she lost her looks and took up with this low-life Sicilian who couldn’t hold a job and lived off Caroline like a bum. When Caroline got sick, Aunt Rose wouldn’t go to see her in the hospital or help with medical bills. She could have helped. Uncle Umberto was rolling in dough. You know what? The day Caroline died, Aunt Rose was in Caroline’s apartment arranging things for the funeral. She even bought Caroline a fancy dress to wear in the casket. At the funeral, Aunt Rose kept saying how great Caroline looked. Real respectable. Man, that’s all you want to do. Fix my head so I’ll be like all the other straights when they bury me.”
         “You can look at it that way,” Dr. Melon replied. “But consider this. You may not die. You want out, don’t you? I can help. Besides, what’s wrong with fixing your head?”
         “You and Ankenny must have had a talk.”
         “Never met him. I believe he’s moved on to California. Some VA Hospital. I have only read his notes.”
         “What did he say?”
         “His diagnosis?”
         “Yeah, that.”
         “Psychotic and homicidal.”
         “He got it wrong.”
         “Enlighten me.”
         “I’m only homicidal.”
         Dr. Melon had to remind himself there were two guards within earshot. He considered inviting them back into the room. Bad idea. It would give Eddie the upper hand. Not the way to start. Eddie would never stop trying to manipulate him. “So you think you can be one without the other?”
         “I know it for a fact.”
         Dr. Melon located the folder containing Ankenny’s notes, opened it and thumbed pages, dog-eared from many reviews. He found what he was looking for on the twenty-ninth page. “Ankenny says you hate blacks.”
         “Not anymore. Don’t like them much. But I don’t hate them.”
         A new legal pad wrapped in cellophane lay on the table. Dr. Melon striped wrap away. At the top of the first page he wrote: First Session, Edward Dooley, June 9, 1981. “Have you ever wanted to hurt or kill a black man?”
         “Not lately.”
         “In the past?”
         “How far back you want to go?”
         “As far back as you want.”
         “I killed a few when I was a kid.” Eddie said this as though reporting the weather.
         Dr. Melon gave his chin a rub. “Sure you did.”
         “Three I know of,” Eddie continued. “Maybe one more. Don’t know for sure. I was only nine.”
         Dr. Melon did not believe a word. A nine-year-old would not, could not, do such a thing. It was clearly a delusion. Still, fantasy sometimes revealed important clues about etiology. “Tell me about it.”







Flatbush (1956)


         Eddie was on the sidewalk in front of his home, arguing with his brother in the twilight. Peter was three years older than Eddie and a head taller. Eddie wasn’t intimidated by size. If a larger boy crossed him, he would fight. If he lost, he waited for his chance with a rock to the back of the head or a push down stairs.
         “Only need some clothesline and lighter fluid,” Eddie said. “I’ll do the hard stuff.”
         Peter rocked on his ankles. “I don’t know.”
         Eddie flicked a hand. “Whattaya mean? All you gotta do is stop the bus.”
         “Someone could get killed.”
         “Just coons.”
         “It’s not dark yet,” Peter said. “Someone will snitch to the cops.”
         Eddie rolled his eyes. “I told you. It’ll be dark when we’re ready.”
         Peter sagged. “Okay.”


         “You sure they’re on vacation?” Peter asked, scanning the windows for lights still on.
         “Left yesterday. No one home.”
         Peter followed Eddie over the backyard fence and used his Boy Scout knife to cut the cord from Mrs. Delmonico’s clothesline. Eddie coiled the cord neatly and carried it while they hit the streets, searching for a victim. Twelve blocks later the streetlights flickered on. There was no moon.
         Eddie nudged Peter. “Told you it would be dark.”
         They walked another three blocks. Eddie stopped and stared intently until he was sure. “There!” He pointed at a wino lying beside a stoop, sleeping off a binge. The two moved closer.
         Peter could now see the man was black and so old and thin his body seemed lost inside his ragged suit. From newspaper clippings Peter would later learn the man’s name was Nathaniel Tucker, an octogenarian who wriggled free of the coils of Alabama and worked on the docks until crippled by an injury.
         Eddie tied the clothesline to Nathaniel’s ankles. He stood and pinched his nose. “Phew! He stinks. All jigs stink.”
         Peter didn’t like blacks but he knew they didn’t all stink. Mr. Johnson who sold newspapers on Church Street didn’t have a bad smell. Nor did the Johnson brothers who attended Holy Cross and arrived each morning squeaky clean. “Not all of them.”
         Eddie gave him a hard look. “Most.”
         “Okay, most.”
         “I think this one pooped his pants. They’re all bums like Dad says.”
         Peter walked to the curb and looked down the street. After five minutes he began to pace. “Maybe we missed it.”
         “There’s always another bus. Keep looking.”
         His eyes down to a squint, Peter searched for a bus. Suddenly, he whirled toward Eddie. “I see one.”
         “It’s dark. Make sure he sees you. Start waving.”
         Peter jumped up and down and waved his arms wildly. Six years of gym class kicked in and he was soon doing jumping jacks.
         The bus slowed and pulled over. Its door whooshed open.
         While Peter asked the driver about the route, Eddie sneaked behind the bus and tied the cord to the bumper. Eddie sprinted back to Nathaniel, took a can of lighter fluid from his pocket and sprayed Nathaniel from ankles to crouch, over and over until the can was empty, shaking it to make sure. Nathaniel never stirred. Eddie heard the hiss of the bus door closing. He struck a match and lit Nathaniel’s ankles. A flame flickered and then flared. Eddie stared trance-like as the fire surged up Nathaniel’s legs and puddled in a little bonfire at his crotch.
         Nathaniel’s eyes popped open. “Oh Lordy.” He slapped at the flames and tried to stand, realized he was hobbled and stretched out a hand to Eddie. “Help me, boy.”
         Eddie stood rigid and crossed his arms. “No.”
         The cord tied to Nathaniel’s ankles lost slack. He shot across the sidewalk into the street and skidded straight as a plum line behind the bus. The bus accelerated and Nathaniel zigzagged over the pavement. There was such a sadness in his wails. This was an Alabama death, yet somehow a dark karma had tracked him like a bloodhound all the way to a Flatbush stoop.
         The driver shifted gears and the bus paused and then lurched. The jolt caused Nathaniel’s head to bounce and slam onto the street, leaving him mercifully unconscious as asphalt ground through his clothes and peeled flesh from his buttocks and back.
         Peter dashed into an alley and crouched behind a dumpster, trembling.
         Eddie ran after the bus, arms raised, whooping.







Patient Conference Room


         Dr. Melon tugged an earlobe. “You expect me to believe this?”
         “He was the first,” Eddie said. “The second time the bus stopped right away. The driver couldn’t put out the fire. The guy died in the hospital. I know because Peter checked the newspaper. The third time … we used an old cord and it broke. He was only burned a little. Cops were on every block. We had to walk a mile outside Flatbush for the next one. Bus dragged him face down. Held his chin up to keep his face off the street. When the bus stopped he rolled onto his back and sat up. I guess he figured he’d made it. Didn’t see he was in the middle of an intersection. Taxi ran over him.
         “We did one more. Bus stopped right away. Paper said he had only a few burns. Peter wouldn’t go with me any more. Said I could kill him. He was done. I was getting tired of it myself. But, hey, it was my idea. I wanted to be the one to say enough.”
         Dr. Melon studied Eddie’s face. There was no looking away. No licking of lips. Could he be telling the truth? A nine-year-old wouldn’t do what Eddie claimed. He had to be lying. Eddie was smart. He was amusing himself by weaving a tale. “That’s quite a story. When did it happen?”
         “Summer of 56.”
         Dr. Melon wrote it down.
         There was a knock. The door opened a crack to accommodate Elroy’s nose and mouth. “Time, doc.”







Dr. Melon’s Office


         Dr. Melon was in his office at his desk, reviewing the notes of Eddie’s first session, debating whether to make the call. “Oh, what the hell.” He dialed the number.
         “New York Times,” a woman’s voice chirped.
         “Fred Zabarski, please.”
         “Just a moment,” the receptionist said, routing the call.
         A tick and then, “This is Zabarski.”
         “Fred. It’s Bill. Yeah, a long time. No, I’m not there anymore. In Washington state. It’s a long story. The Yale reunion? Don’t think I’ll be making it this year. Listen, Fred, maybe we can catch up later. This is sort of urgent. Can you check if some people were dragged behind buses? May have been several deaths. The date? Summer of 1956. In Flatbush. No, wait. You better widen it to Brooklyn. What? Let me look.”
         Dr. Melon had yet to use the fax machine. It was a hulking older model. He found the fax’s number hand-written on a piece of masking tape on the side of the machine and hurried back to his desk. “Fred, got it.” He gave him the number. “How long should it take? That fast? Thanks.”
         Dr. Melon returned to the fax and pushed the ON button. He sat at his desk and waited. An hour later, the light on the fax machine began to flash. He rushed to the machine and pressed the PRINT button. The fax’s dot-matrix printer clattered, tapping dots into letters, unwinding paper from a roll.
         The printer stopped. Dr. Melon tore off the sheet. It was a cover page listing fifteen articles to follow. The light flashed again. He pushed PRINT and the printer resumed its pointillist march across the page. Eventually, two feet of paper unrolled from the fax. Dr. Melon tore off the sheet, went to his desk, and read the article.
         It took forty minutes for all of the articles to arrive. By then, Dr. Melon had re-read many of them several times. Buses had dragged five people. Three died. One was run over by a taxi. All the victims were black. After an extensive investigation, the police had no suspects.
         “Jesus!”







SECOND SESSION







Patient Conference Room


         The guards left Eddie sagging in the patient chair. Following their new routine they waited in the hallway; Floyd with his back against the wall, eyes drooping; Elroy at the door with an ear pressed against the metal in case Eddie turned violent, but mostly to eavesdrop. A nasty fellow, Elroy had few friends and tried to earn points with other guards by sharing personal secrets disclosed by inmates during sessions.
         Dr. Melon was alarmed by Eddie’s condition. His shirt, dark with sweat, hung on him in bunched rings. The veins in his neck pulsed like snakes catching their breath. He had lost more weight.
         Dr. Melon searched the medical cabinet drawers for a stethoscope and sphygmomanometer. He checked Eddie’s blood pressure. It was 170 over 120. He listened to Eddie’s heart. No arrhythmia. In fact, the beat was slowing rapidly. An athletic heart, he guessed. Eddie must have once been in incredible physical shape.
         Dr. Melon waited a few minutes and gave Eddie’s blood pressure another check. The pressure had dropped to 128 over 73. No problem there. Why the fatigue? Had the cancer already begun? Or was it something else?
         “What’s your diagnosis?” Eddie asked.
         “Are you eating?”
         “Not much. It’s the food. Has no taste.”
         “You feel sick?”
         “Tired.”
         Dr. Melon opened his appointment book and wrote a note to order a complete metabolic panel and CBC. He hadn’t told Eddie about the tumors near his prostate. On a hunch they might have turned malignant he had also ordered a PSA, a new blood test for prostate cancer from Roswell Park Cancer Institute. He wondered how much time Eddie had left.
         “I’m going to schedule some blood tests.”
         “Had plenty already.”
         “They weren’t for your loss of appetite. Oh, and there is something else.”
         “More tests?”
         “No … I checked about the buses.”
         “Figured you would.”
         “Anyone beside your brother know?”
         “Peter wouldn’t tell. Knew I’d kill him if he did.”
         “So you were never punished?”
         “Not for that.”
         “What do you mean?”







Holy Cross Parish School (1956)


         The Brothers at Holy Cross Parish School were not only in the business of teaching. They also saved souls. Seeing the boys as cattle, the trick was to herd them in the right direction.
         Brother Ravinas was of a different mind. The boys were not cattle. They were wild horses. A bronc was useless until you broke it.
         “Are you chewing gum, Edward?”
         Eddie sat slouched in his chair at the back of the class, jaws working. He continued to chew but now open-mouthed, smacking the gum.
         “This is your third offense, Edward. I warned you.”
         The gum was not the real issue. Eddie had committed many other small sins in school, the number growing in frequency. Brother Ravinas believed there in a geometry of the soul and imagined he possessed a moral protractor enabling him to pinpoint the degrees to which a boy’s soul had veered off-center. Eddie’s evil was growing exponentially. If something were not done now, it would soon be too late to save him.
         Brother Ravinas reached into a drawer and yanked out a ruler. He held it high. Jowls quivering, he thundered: “Now you must pay.”
         Eddie sauntered to the front of the class and stood defiant before Brother Ravinas. He stretched out his right hand, palm up.
         The other boys sat on the edges of their seats, watching with wildebeest eyes drawn to lions when they feed.
         Brother Ravinas took a deep breath, an engine gathering steam, and struck with such force the rosary beads in his robe jumped and clattered.
         The ruler’s metal edge cut Eddie’s palm, yet he hadn’t flinched.
         Experienced eyes confirmed another whack would make no difference. Eddie’s wickedness demanded something special. A taste of hell! Brother Ravinas told the students to open their text to the third chapter and read. He turned to Eddie, “Think you’re tough. Well, I broke your brother.”
         “Peter?”
         Brother Ravinas chuckled. “That namby-pamby. No, the older one, Arthur.”
         “But Arthur is …”
         “And I’ll break you.”
         Brother Ravinas marched Eddie to the basement past the boiler and unlocked a door. He pushed it open and flicked on the light. The twenty-five watt bulb did little to lighten the gloom. The room was thick with dust and shrouded with cobwebs. In the center was something very large covered with canvass.
         Eddie did not want to go in.
         Brother Ravinas yanked Eddie off his feet and dragged him inside.
         Eddie heard the door close behind him and the metallic click of a lock. Brother Ravinas had abandoned him. Eddie stared at the canvas and thought he saw a jiggle. Was this the lair of some slumbering beast?
         Brother Ravinas was still in the room, his back against the door. He stepped past Eddie and walked to the sleeping monster and removed the tarpaulin.
         Eddie stared at the machine and its innards of countless gears. There was a seat attached to the front of the machine, trussed up with thick leather straps. Eddie’s heart raced.
         “Come here!”
         Eddie’s feet refused to move.
         Brother Ravinas dragged him to the contraption.
         A miscegenation of foul odors assaulted Eddie’s nose. The locker room reek of dried sweat. The stench of a diaper bloated with urine and runny stools. And the tear watering tang of the gallons of bleach used unsuccessfully to mask the stink.
         Brother Ravinas went to a shelf lined with statuettes of saints and plucked away cobwebs. Beside the wizard-looking miniature of Saint Alypius (the protector of children) was a can of oil with a squirt top. Brother Ravinas carried the can to the machine and lubricated gears. He turned a crank. Somewhere inside the machine there was a squeak. Brother Ravinas cranked again, his head cocked, listening. Having located the dry gear, he squirted more oil and cranked again. The only sound was the warble of the spanking machine’s stiff leather paddles.
         Brother Ravinas stared dead at Eddie. “I made Arthur a good boy. He never sassed again. It’s why I took his side when he played hooky. Brother Andrews expelled him anyway. I tried to get Arthur into Boys Town. Ask your mother. She’ll tell you. Wasn’t my fault he ran away and got killed.”
         Eddie was only four when Arthur died. His parents wouldn’t tell him the details of Arthur’s death. Even when Eddie was older, they still wouldn’t talk about it. Peter gave into Eddie’s pestering and told the story in hushed words, eyes darting as if the grim reaper might be near, flourishing his scythe.
         Arthur was killed in an alley lugging a stolen TV. He had aimed his cheap .22 pistol at the policeman and missed. The return shot exploded through the television’s picture tube and tore into Arthur’s intestines. He squirmed on the ground for the three minutes it took him to bleed out.
         Brother Ravinas fastened Eddie into the heavy leather harness. The straps kept Eddie bent over, butt high. Brother Ravinas carefully adjusted the paddle wheel, inching it forward until the paddles just kissed Eddie’s pants. He locked the wheel in place.
         “The wages of sin, Eddie,” Brother Ravinas intoned. He stooped and worked the crank.
         Eddie twitched with each hot sting of the paddles. His pants were on fire, he wanted to moan, to howl, to cry, but that would mean Brother Ravinas had won. Eddie gritted his teeth so hard he thought his molars might crack. He held his breath for what seemed forever. Just when he thought his lungs would burst, the paddle wheel stopped turning. He’d done it! He’d beat the spanking machine.
         Brother Ravinas left the crank and grasped Eddie’s head with both hands. Looking into his eyes he said, “Only a taste, my son.” He moved the paddle wheel closer.
         This time Brother Ravinas put his full weight into the cranking. The whaps of the thick leather paddles echoed off the walls like the cracks of a small-bore rifle.
         Sparks flickered in Eddie’s eyes. Each whap was a jolt of agony followed by searing pain. Lightening bolts shot up his spine. Eddie’s back arched. His head flung back and then down so hard his chin plowed into his chest and he bit his tongue. He hopped from one foot to the other as though dancing a jig, sloshing in a puddle of his own urine. He moaned. He whined. He bawled. Tears gushed as though wrung from a washcloth. Snot and bloody drool spilled over his chin and splattered craters in the thick dust on the floor.
         “I give! I give!”
         Brother Ravinas let go of the crank.






Patient Conference Room


         Eddie’s hands shook so violently his cast had begun to rattle on the table. He moved his hands out of sight on his lap. “I could use a cigarette.”
         Dr. Melon wrinkled his nose. “I don’t smoke.”
         “The guards do.”
         Dr. Melon went into the hall and returned with a pack. “The guard, the smaller one …”
         “That’s Elroy.”
         “Yes, Elroy. He asked me to tell you he wants the pack returned.”
         “Only fair.” Eddie lipped a cigarette from the pack. “I need a light.”
         Dr. Melon raised his eyes to the ceiling and sighed. After another round trip to the hall, he handed Eddie a lighter.
         “I know,” Eddie said. “Elroy wants it back.”
         “It’s Floyd’s.”
         “He volunteer it?”
         “Yes.”
         “That’s Floyd. Not a bad screw.”
         “If you say so.”
         Eddie lit up and took a deep drag.
         “Don’t blow smoke in my direction!”
         Eddie nodded a promise and puffed smoke rings toward the ceiling. The rings were perfectly round and evenly spaced like the smokestack puffs of a cartoon locomotive. Eddie’s hands stopped shaking.
         “Were there more spankings?” Dr. Melon asked. “I mean with the machine.”
         “Once was enough. At the time, I hated Brother Ravinas. But now I understand. He believed he had to break me before I could be good.”
         “You’re saying he tortured you because he loved you?”
         Eddie nodded.
         Dr. Melon scribbled: Brother Ravinas a proxy for an abusive mother or father. He needed to get Eddie to talk about his parents.
{/indent}“I still got in trouble,” Eddie continued. “Carved my name in big letters on a chapel pew and lifted a crucifix from Brother Wittenauer when he dozed off at lunch. I got the boot. Brother Ravinas didn’t give up. He told my mother she should put me in Children’s Village up at Dobbs Ferry. He had the papers ready. She wouldn’t sign. I thought she’d be happy to get rid of me.”
         Eddie was going right where Dr. Melon wanted. “Why do you say that?”
         “Need more than one session to explain.”
         “Well, give me an example.”
         “How about my seventh birthday?”
         “Fine.”







Dooley Home (1954)


         Brian Dooley was not generous with gifts. It was therefore a surprise when he gave Eddie a magnificent present on his seventh birthday, a shiny red scooter painted with the same red as Coney Island’s Ferris wheel.
         Eddie’s mother, Juliana, didn’t share Eddie’s joy. Brian had not given her a present on her birthday. Not even a card.
         Eddie found an old tattered towel in the rag drawer and lovingly shined his scooter until dinner. An arm around its sleek neck, he happily cleaned his plate, even the broccoli. Then he was cruising the sidewalk, pumping the scooter to ever-greater speeds, ready to challenge the older boys on bikes. On Juliana’s orders, Eddie never strayed beyond the block, only racing up and down the street in front of the house. Drivers honked their annoyance, the older boys giving them the finger as neighbors watched with sour faces.
         Juliana ordered Eddie to come inside and ride the scooter in the house, warning him with a glare not to bump into furniture. After whizzing around the living room for an hour, Eddie clipped a chair. Juliana stamped a foot. “That’s enough. You’ve been running into things all day. When your father gets home you’ll never ride that scooter again. I’ll throw the damn thing out.”
         Eddie held the neck of his scooter in a bear hug, dragging it with him as he backed away. “Its mine. You can’t take it.”
         “I will!”
         “Fuck you!”
         Juliana showed a monkey face of surprise. Eddie had never sworn at her before. “You little bastard!”
         Eddie knew that look. He ran to his room and hid under his bed. Soon he was scurrying like a ferret from headboard to footboard as Juliana poked at him with the handle of a broom. Juliana cursed her misses, then howled a jubilant “Got ya!” when a lucky jab caught Eddie in the neck.
         Eddie crawled from under the bed clutching his throat, gagging.
         Juliana vanished but returned in a wink with a barber’s strap. It was a special strap split into nine strips by a straight razor — an instrument of torture that Brian kept hidden in his closet.
         Eddie’s eyes widened to the edges of their sockets. His scrotum shriveled. His bunghole made a fist.
         
         Juliana had first used the barber’s strap on Eddie when she bought him a new winter hat. It had earflaps like the one Johnny Carson wore for his ‘stupid hunter’ skits. Eddie called it a ‘dopey hat’ and refused to wear it. After a single swat of the barber’s strap, the hat was on his head, shoved down to his eyebrows.
         Juliana used the strap again the summer Eddie robbed their landlady, the widow Romano. The Dooley family occupied the top floor of her two-story house, with Mrs. Romano directly below. Rent was due the first Tuesday of the month.
         One rent day, Peter and Eddie stood in the narrow alley next to the apartment house, peering through Mrs. Romano’s bedroom window. The two tingled with excitement when stout Mrs. Romano entered her bedroom and waddled like a fat goose to the bookcase. She pulled down her Bible and stuffed the rent between pages.
         “You got that, Eddie,” Peter whispered. “In the Bible.”
         “I got eyes. You don’t have to tell me.”
         Mrs. Romano returned the Bible to its place beside her Pieta Prayer Book, and left.
         Peter and Eddie strained to open the window but it was firmly locked.
         Eddie felt like a leaky tire gone flat.
         Peter gave Eddie a nudge. “Hey, we ain’t cooked yet. Window ain’t the only way.”
         The next morning the brothers waited for Mrs. Romano to leave for early mass. The two snuck into the basement and crawled inside the defunct coal bin. The coal chute went straight up.
         Peter helped Eddie onto his shoulders.
         “Find anything?” Peter asked.
         “No.”
         “You need to go higher!”
         “How?”
         “Anything sticking out you can stand on?”
         “It’s dark. Can’t see a thing.”
         “Feel around.”
         Eddie braced his left palm on the wall and used his free hand to drag fingers over the right side of the wall. Nothing! He switched hands and searched the other side. “There’s a ladder. Real tiny.”
         “Can you get on it?”
         “Move me closer.”
         “Right or left?”
         “Left.”
         Peter sidestepped left, using small steps so Eddie could adjust his balance.
         “I’m there,” Eddie said.
         Peter felt the push of Eddie’s left foot on his shoulder. He could hear Eddie climbing the ladder.
         Eddie called down. “There’s a hatch.”
         Peter heard a metallic twang.
         “I’ve pushed it open.”
         “See anything?”
         “The bedroom.”
         “Go to the Bible and get some of the money.”
         Eddie took five dollars. The theft was exciting. He never felt so good in his life.
         The next time they robbed Mrs. Romano, Eddie took the entire rent — a Midas sum of $125. In his excitement Eddie had returned the Bible to the wrong spot on the shelf. Mrs. Romano noticed, discovered the theft and called the police.
         The two policemen were thorough. They checked the basement and found children’s handprints on the coal bin door. While questioning Juliana they noticed coal dust on Peter and Eddie’s hands and face. Crime solved.
         Peter returned the money and apologized.
         Juliana ordered Eddie to say he was sorry, too.
         Eddie wasn’t sorry. He wouldn’t apologize.
         Juliana waited for the police to leave and gave Eddie two hard swats with the barber’s strap.


         Two swats? Nothing! Eddie’s birthday whipping was a flesh-ripping medieval scourge. Juliana swung the strap in a craze, oblivious to the carnage, the cleaved straps working like pliers, pinching off bits of shirt and skin. Straddling Eddie, Juliana shook the barber’s strap in his face. “What you get for cursing your mother.”
         She coldly took inventory: Eddie’s bloody T-shirt, the welts on his arms, the raw wale high up on his neck. Juliana felt no remorse. Her swollen rage had become a fat nestling, nudging its scrawny siblings over the edge, eliminating every competing emotion. She yanked off Eddie’s shirt and stared at the oozing stripes on his back.
         Juliana took Eddie to the bathroom and used mercurochrome to stop the bleeding.
         His back on fire, Eddie squirmed like a worm on a hook. “Please, Mom, stop.”
         “Hold still!”
         “Please … please … please.”
         Juliana blew on the mercurochrome, not out of kindness but to speed its evaporation. She left Eddie whimpering, went to his room, and returned with a long-sleeved shirt to hide the lashes on his forearms. “Put this on.” She helped him with the buttons and turned up the collar to hide the welt on his neck.
         Juliana looked at the makeover with satisfaction. Was she done? Wait! She had an idea. Racing to the kitchen, she found Brian’s favorite coffee mug and smashed it against the counter.
         Back in the bathroom, Juliana stood before Eddie, a hand on a hip and her head cocked. “If you say a word to your father.” She knew immediately she’d used the wrong words, a knife at a gunfight. She grabbed the barber’s strap and delivered a ferocious whack to the toilet seat. “Not a word!”
         The rest of that afternoon Eddie sat on the edge of his bed, brooding.
         When Brian returned from work, Eddie hurried to the living room and found Juliana already at his father’s side.
         “Eddie,” Brian said. “I expected you outside on your scooter.”
         “Mom made me stop.” Eddie rolled up his right shirtsleeve to the elbow. “She beat me up.”
         Brian knew the marks. The capo bastones (under bosses) chose him for the job because he lashed backs with the gusto of an overseer. He grabbed Juliana by the shoulders and shook her hard. “You use that strap on my boy?”
         “It’s that damn scooter. I told him to stop bumping into furniture. He never listens.” Juliana raised her clasped hands to eye-level and opened her palms like a book, revealing shards of Brian’s broken cup. “When he broke your mug, I whipped him good.”
         “I didn’t break it, Dad. She’s lying.”
         “Don’t call your mother a liar.”
         “She is.”
         “See how he talks back,” Juliana said. “Even to you!”
         “Where’s that scooter?” Brian snapped.
         “Coat closet,” Juliana said.
         Eddie watched his father lug his beautiful red scooter out of the house. It was the marvelous unexpected gift that had somehow set his world right. Now it was gone. Everything was back to where it was. Out of kilter. Eddie hiccuped sobs like a toddler.
         Eddie’s older sister, Karen, had joined them in time to witness it all. She could not hide her pleasure at Eddie’s comeuppance. He seemed to get away with so much while she was always caught and punished for the slightest peccadillo. How fine, how right it felt to see Eddie at last pay for his sins. “Got what you deserve,” she gloated and saluted justice with a hard nod, dropping her chin like a sledgehammer driving a spike.
         Eddie fixed on Karen with such hatred she ran to her room.
         Late that night, Eddie was still wide-awake, listening to Brian snoring down the hall. He thought about the butcher knife in the kitchen and rehearsed in his imagination his parents’ death. He would get the knife and stab Juliana in her sleep, doing it quickly before his father woke so he could stab him too. Eddie would take his time watching Juliana die. He froze the picture of her death throes in his head, sucking on the fantasy like a piece of hard candy until he drifted off.
         Eddie waited two days to deal with Karen. Drawn by the twang of bed springs, he found her barefoot and bouncing on her bed.
         “Didn’t you hear it?” Eddie said, making his eyes wide.
         “What?”
         “Car accident. Right in front of the house.” Karen’s window looked onto Snyder Street. Eddie opened the window and jabbed a finger at the street. “Down there! Ooh, looks bad. Bet someone got killed.”
         Karen rushed to the window and poked her head through. She searched right and left. “I can’t see anything.”
         “Look harder!”
         Karen leaned farther and craned her neck.
         Eddie shoved with all of his might.
         Karen yelped like a startled puppy and tumbled onto the first floor gable. The sound of the impact was like the thump and squish of a dropped melon. She lay limp for a moment and then raised her head. She tried to rise to a seated position but only rocked, which started a roll. She trundled off the gable and plopped into a hedge. A few more feet and she would have struck the sidewalk. The fall broke three of Karen’s ribs, bruised her liver, and ruptured her spleen.
         Brian beat Eddie every night for the three weeks Karen was in the hospital.
         At her homecoming, Karen wore a chest brace and limped. She stayed clear of Eddie. She would never speak to him again.
         Eddie no longer ate meals with the others. Like a monkey stealing food from a safari spread, he snatched his dinner from the table and ate alone in a corner out of sight.
         Brian told the others to ignore him. Eddie was only seeking attention.
         Juliana fussed for a time but soon discovered she enjoyed Eddie’s absence. How nice if it could be permanent.







Patient Conference Room


         “I never ate another meal with my family.”
         “Did your mother use the strap again?”
         “No.”
         “Why do you suppose? I’d like an honest answer, if you can manage it.”
         “She probably felt guilty. Is that what you want to hear?”
         “Yes.”
         “Doesn’t mean I’m going to forgive her.”
         “A child wouldn’t. You’re not a little boy anymore. Tell me, Eddie, if you had a chance to be with your family, would you share a meal?”
         “My father is dead.”
         “Your mother?”
         “Still around. But I wouldn’t eat with her or my sisters.”
         “You have another sister?”
         “A younger one, Rose. I liked her. Still do. I like Peter, too. And Tommy.”
         “Tommy? Is that another brother?”
         “He’s the oldest. I didn’t care much for Tommy when we were kids. But he turned out okay.” Eddie thought a moment. “I guess I did share a meal with Tommy. But only once and that was a lot later.”
         Dr. Melon wrote: There has to be a story about this. Ask when appropriate.
         “As for the others,” Eddie continued. “I still wouldn’t eat with any of them. In Nam, when I had a chance, I ate alone. Even in the field. The others sat around a fire like Boy Scouts, heating MREs in their helmets. I ate mine cold so I could be alone.” Eddie paused, reflecting. “Maybe that’s why I liked solo missions.”
         “Missions?”
         “Can’t talk about it.”
         Eddie’s tight jaw told Dr. Melon not to push it. “You said stealing the rent made you feel good.”
         “It was my first heist. I’d taken someone else’s money. The real rush was being in old lady Romano’s room. Sure, I was only five. But I was like a pirate. You know, storming a ship, taking over. I felt like … a grown man.”
         Dr. Melon wrote: A career criminal’s standard reaction to his first real crime. Says nothing about homicidal tendencies. His five-year-old reverie about killing his parents not unusual, even if graphic. Pushing his sister out the window was different. “Did you feel bad about hurting your sister?”
         “She had it coming.”
         “What if she hadn’t made fun of you?”
         “Still wouldn’t like her. But I wouldn’t shove her out a window.”
         “Then you would only hurt someone if they deserved it.”
         “Maybe.”
         “There are exceptions?”
         “Perhaps.”
         “What are they?”
         “I’d have to talk about Nam.”
         “I’d like to hear about it.”
         “Told you Nam is off limits.”
         There was a rap on the door. Elroy peeked in.
         “Time Doc.”







Hospital Ward


         While Eddie was in session, a guard delivered a new patient to the ward. Jerome was young, black, and a mess, his face grotesque from bloat with an eye swollen shut.
         Dewey didn’t recognize him. Figured he was a fish.
         “What you staring at old man?” Jerome said.
         Dewey lowered his eyes. “Just doing my time. Don’t want no trouble.”
         “I ain’t the only one fucked up,” Jerome said. “Got in my licks.” He dropped into a boxer’s crouch and jabbed air.
         It was amusing until Dewey had an image of Jerome bobbing and weaving to impress Eddie, tossing in a few jabs for effect, and Eddie on automatic moving like a blur and Jerome in a heap on the floor, maybe dead. Guards would shackle both Eddie and himself before dragging them to the midnight darkness of the tiny windowless cells in solitary. There they would stay while the warden questioned the C block guards, piecing together their stories to get at the truth.
         “You eyeballin’ me again, old man?”
         “Listen, Eddie’s going to be back soon. Don’t give him no trouble. He’s a bad-ass ding.”
         “Who Eddie?”
         “You wouldn’t know him. He’s been away. Lives in the ward now.”
         “So the dude is nuts, so what?”
         “No, I mean really crazy. You need to know something. Saw it with my own eyes. ’Bout a year ago. Eddie was in the yard, sitting as he does in a corner by himself. You know Trayton?”
         “Sells dope? Has that glass eye?”
         Dewey nodded.
         “That big ol’ marble gives me the creeps. Always looking one way, the real eye looking somewhere else. He talk to you. Like he talken’ to some other dude. I be lookin’ around see who it is.”
         “That pisses him off,” Dewey warned.
         “Don’t I know. Makes myself some business elsewhere when he’s around.”
         “Trayton got that glass eye from Eddie,” Dewey said.
         “He sell them things?”
         “No. Trayton has that glass eye because of Eddie.”
         “Oh.”
         “Like I said, Eddie was sitting in a corner. Trayton and two of his mules walk over and, next thing, they’re stompin’ Eddie. Weird thing is, Eddie was real calm. Like he don’t feel nothin’. What he does is jab fingers into the stomach of one of the mules, digs so deep I can’t see the hand no more. Mule drops and just lays there, shaking. Then Eddie is up and sort of hops and somehow is behind the other mule, Riggs.”
         “What this Riggs look like. I think I know him.”
         “You don’t.”
         “Why you so sure?”
         “ ‘Cause Eddie whomped him in the back of his head.” Dewey showed the heel of his right hand and thrust it upward. “Riggs goes down, too, moaning and jerking. Then he goes noodle, except his eyes are wide open.”
         “Fish eyes?”
         “Yeah.”
         “You sayin’ he dead?”
         “Yep. Next thing, Eddie’s on Trayton.”
         “What Eddie do?”
         “Scoops out Trayton’s eye with a finger, the eye rollin’ on the ground all stringy and gooey. Then he wallops Trayton in the ear. Ain’t never seen no ear squirt blood like that. Trayton is on his knees holding one hand over the hole where his eye used to be and the other on his ear, blood squirting ‘tween his fingers. Howled like a shot dog.”
         “No shit?”
         Dewey raised the heel of his hand again. “Eddie’s aimin’ at Trayton’s nose. Goin’ to snuff him like he did Riggs. Would a done it too ‘cept bulls are all over him. Seven … nah, it was eight. They slap on handcuffs. Not just his hands. Ankles too. Eddie don’t even pay them no mind. Whole time he’s starin’ at Trayton, real calm. Like Trayton is unfinished business. Those eyes were crazy. Telling you Jerome, don’t never cross him.”
         “How come Trayton still around?”
         “I guess ’cause Eddie never been in the yard since. In solitary for three months. Two more in isolation. After that, he’s gone at some hospital. Now he’s back. Real sick.”
         There was the sound of footfalls in the hallway. Like an old owl, Dewey jerked his head toward the ward entry, its double doors permanently swung open. “He’s back.” Dewey held a finger to his lips. “Best not say nothin’ to him, less he asks.”
         Eddie entered, followed by Elroy and Floyd. The two guards stood near the doorway and watched Eddie plod to his bed and flop down and stare trance-like at the ceiling.
         The guards left.
         Jerome sidled up to Dewey. “He sure tuckered.” It was a puzzle to Jerome how someone so weak could be a threat.
         “He’s dying,” Dewey said.
         “And you still afraid?”
         “Best you be scared, too!”


         An hour later Eddie blinked and sat up. “That’s got to be it,” he murmured. A small metal stand stood next to his bed. He opened the single drawer. Inside was a thick composition notebook and a volume from the prison library. Eddie took out the notebook and flipped pages to his last entry, two-thirds in. He worked on equations for twenty minutes and then reviewed what he had written. “Almost there.”
         Jerome and Dewey stood side-by-side next to the fan, watching Eddie.
         “Hey, old man,” Jerome asked. “What Dooley doing? He got a diary?”
         “Nah. He’s doing arithmetic.”
         “Practicing his sums?”
         “Not that kind. He showed me once. Hardly no numbers at all. Lots of funny shaped circles and swirly things he says is calculus. Told me he’s going to prove the universe ain’t a donut.”
         “A what? Sheee…it. Everyone knows the world ain’t no donut. You weren’t shining me old man. Dude really is nuts.”
         Eddie closed his notebook and returned it to the drawer and took out the library book.
         Jerome strained to make out the book’s title but was too far away. He moved closer.
         “Don’t,” Dewey warned.
         “Leave me be old man.” Jerome angled his head as he drew closer, trying to make out the title and author’s name on the book’s spine. At last they were legible: Confessions by Augustine.
         “Hey, Dooley.” Jerome’s smile was all teeth and gums. “Who’s this Augustine dude?” Jerome pronounced the name like the Florida city.
         Eddie looked up. At first nothing … and then the embryo of a smile. Something about Jerome reminded Eddie of his childhood buddy, Willie Clark. “Augustine is a Catholic bishop.”
         “From around here?”
         “Algeria.”
         “In Africa?”
         “Yes.”
         “A Brother!”
         “Could be. I’ve read he had dark skin.”
         “Dude must know Desmond Tutu.”
         “Augustine lived in the fourth century.”
         “Oh.” Jerome knew that was very long ago, perhaps when people lived in caves. “Folks have books back then?”
         “Even more than in the prison library. They were in scrolls.”
         “What?”
         “It’s like a rolled up map. But instead of a map, there is only writing. Later they were copied into books like we have today.”
         “No shit. Where did you get it?”
         “Prison library.”
         “What’s this Augustine guy write about?”
         “How much he sinned.”
         “I bet Pastor Wilson asked you to read it. Always trying to get me to read the Bible.”
         “I picked it myself. Read it before.”
         “Must be real interestin’, huh?”
         “Especially when Augustine was a kid. He felt guilty for all the bad things he did.”
         “What he do, burn down a house, kill a few cats?”
         “He pinched some pears.”
         “That’s it?” Jerome wondered if Eddie was shining him on. “Swiping pears a big deal in them olden days?”
         “Not really.”
         “Kids do that kind of stuff. Why he feel so bad?”
         “Augustine didn’t look at it as kid stuff. He didn’t think children are innocent. Not even little babies. They’re all evil.”
         “Baby ain’t evil,” Jerome said, fairly certain he was right.
         “Are you sure? Ever see a baby scream when it can’t get what it wants, throw a fit and shake its arms and legs?”
         “My sister had a baby girl like that,” Jerome said. “Cried all night.”
         “What if your sister had a magic pill that turned her baby into a giant?”
         “Ain’t no pill like that.”
         “It’s a hypothesis. A what-if thing.”
         “Oh.”
         “What do you think would happen?”
         Jerome cocked his head, right then left, like a magpie inspecting a shiny object discarded by campers.
         “Suppose the baby cried and your sister ignored it?” Eddie said, posting a road sign in the sparse landscape of Jerome’s mind.
         There was a light in Jerome’s eyes. “Guess that giant baby would get up and beat the shit out of her.”
         “That’s right, Jerome!”
         Jerome did not get many compliments. Maybe Dewey was wrong about Eddie. He didn’t seem crazy, except maybe for that donut stuff.
         Eddie said, “Augustine believed even a baby is evil. If it had the power, it might kill people. Baby wants fed. Wants to be held. Wants its diaper changed. Now! Know what a baby is saying when it screams?”
         “What?”
         “I want to kill you.”
         “Do tell. That deep. Can I read it when you’re finished?”
         “Here.” Eddie gave Jerome the book. “Like I said, I’ve read it before.”







Tapioca


         The next afternoon the guards were back to collect Eddie. “You got to see the doc,” Elroy said.
         “I already had a session,” Eddie replied. “Hell, Elroy, you were there.”
         “Not that doc. The real one.”
         It was a short walk to Dr. Lansing’s office in the infirmary down the hall. While Floyd and Elroy flirted with a nurse, Dr. Lansing had Eddie step onto the scales. The physician fiddled with the balance weights and frowned. “I need to take some blood.”
         “Why?”
         “You’ve lost four more pounds. Dr. Melon wants to know why.”
         “It’s the tapioca. Seeing it on the tray, I lose my appetite.”
         “You eat a lot of tapioca when you were a kid?”
         “You might say that.”
         When Eddie was toddler, Juliana did not feed Eddie breakfast with the others. His breakfast was special, served after his siblings left for school and his father was at work. Alone in the house, it was Baby Eddie and Juliana’s special time. She plunked Eddie into a highchair and tethered his hands with the tie of her robe. “Yum, yum,” she would coo, scooping up a heaping spoonful of tapioca while little Eddie shook his head in protest.
         Juliana smiled and crammed tapioca into Eddie’s mouth, spoonful after spoonful, as though he was a foie gras goose. When Eddie clamped his mouth shut, Juliana pried it open with a thumb, chastising his rebellion by shoveling faster with never a stoppage in her assembly-line meal — even if little Eddie choked.
         Juliana’s gitmo regimen came to an end only after Eddie sprouted baby teeth. Eddie’s eyes shined with a fierce gleam that morning he first clamped onto Juliana’s thumb like a pit bull. He worked his little jaws with a puppy growl, shaking the hold and grinding his teeth until they struck knuckle.







Maggie


         Dr. Melon stood in the prison parking lot, trying to recall where he’d parked his car. He spotted it in the far right corner next to a new Buick, a tarnished penny beside a silver dollar. He walked briskly toward his clunker and heard footsteps behind him. A young woman with long strides caught up. She was tall with tomboy freckles and wore her lush blond hair tied up in a bun.
         “Hi, I’m Maggie. Guard on D block.” She glanced at his battered briefcase and giggled. “Special shrink model?”
         “A gift.”
         “Your wife?”
         “Mother. When I was a freshman at Yale.” The shabby briefcase had been a standing joke with colleagues. A mother thing. Very Freudian.
         Dr. Melon realized Maggie wore no makeup. The pink glow of her lips and strawberry cheeks were gifts of nature. He imagined her golden hair undone, falling to her waist. “I’m divorced.”
         “I majored in psychology. I read Freud.”
         “I’m not a Freudian.”
         “Oh. Well I studied other theories, too,” Maggie said, not losing a beat. She pointed to a shiny Chevrolet. “That’s my car. Where’s yours?”
         He gestured toward his beat-up Volkswagen Bug, the mottled blue paint fading to its white undercoat.
         “Didn’t know people still drove those things. You a hippy?”
         Dr. Melon blushed.
         Maggie laughed, light and liquid, like water rolling over stones. She touched his shoulder, her glacier blue eyes pleading to lock with his. “Just kidding.”
         He heard more laughter, a child’s giggle, spontaneous as a puppy’s gambol. The laugh belonged to him. Dr. Melon hadn’t laughed in months. Not like this since high school.
         Maggie waited for him to speak.
         Dr. Melon tried to think of something witty to say. He was no good at flirting.
         Maggie took over. “You like Italian food? There’s a pretty good Italian restaurant in town.” She looked over at his Bug. “Dutch treat.”
         Dr. Melon used to drive a Porsche. For the first time he felt the full force of the downside of his self-enforced poverty.
         Maggie wouldn’t let him fret. “Never been in a Bug. Bet it’s fun.” She searched her purse for something to write on, found a credit card receipt and wrote her address and telephone number. “I’m trusting you with my credit card information. Now you positively have to show up to return it. Seven okay?”
         “Seven is fine.” He tucked the receipt in his coat pocket, as happy as a Labrador retriever promised a walk.


         The Chicken Cacciatore was awful and the Chianti d’Annata so bad he could manage only a sip. It didn’t matter. Dr. Melon was tipsy from Maggie’s glow. “Tell me about yourself, Maggie.”
         “Really? Okay.”
         Maggie had graduated from Whitman College, an Ivy League replica in the Palouse only a few miles from the prison. She was proud that Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas was a graduate. Maggie had met him at an alumni function. At the mention of Douglas, worry rimples creased her creamy forehead. “He didn’t look well. So frail. He had a problem with his speech. It wasn’t slurred. I think it was his memory. He would try to say something and freeze, searching for the word he wanted. It wouldn’t come. I felt so sorry for him.”
         Maggie moved on to happier memories. She had been an elite athlete in high school, a mid-distance runner. Second place in the state championships.
         This explained Maggie’s trimness, Dr. Melon deduced, glancing at the firm thighs outlined in her gray slacks.
         Maggie told him she was working as a prison guard to earn money for graduate school. She wanted to be a child therapist.
         “I was raised in a good home,” she explained. “Today, so many children are abused. It makes me want to cry. Whitman has a great internship program. I worked at the Turner Clinic in Richland. The girls, most of them were between eight and ten, wanted to bite me and then hug me.
         “There was this girl who kept pulling out her hair. Another one broke cups and cut her arms with the pieces. One of the psychologists taught me ‘sand play’. You have blocks and miniature figures and ask the kids to put them together any way they want. There’s a story to the way they arrange them and you try to get the child to tell it. Always they’re sad stories but you can’t show that. They need to get it all out without being judged. I felt so helpless. I wanted so much to help.” She sipped her wine. “I imagine it was the same for you.”
         “Pretty much.”
         The truth was Dr. Melon had not gone into psychiatry to help people. He wanted to do research. Medicine had made great strides in curing physical disease. The new frontier was brain neurology and biochemistry. The key was to find links between mental illness and chemical abnormalities in the brain. He was certain that one day there would be a pill or an injection to cure schizophrenia, paranoia, bipolar disorders, and multiple personalities. A biomedical cure for compulsives. A cure for autism. An effective drug for every mental disorder.
         While at Bethesda and the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH), he had treated patients to collect data on the effect of different drugs on various symptoms. He wasn’t heartless. He tried to cure those he treated and was proud when he did. What really interested him, though, was the discovery of new compounds that inhibited dopamine and serotonin receptors.
         Before his divorce, he had worked with two biochemists adding and subtracting carbon bonds to existing compounds and developed new inhibitors. In time, he might have discovered a universal chemical cure for schizophrenia. The illness took up a fourth of the nation’s hospital beds and consumed twenty percent of Social Security disability funds. He would not only cure the sick but save society a great deal of money. His papers would be cited in journals and books. Perhaps he’d receive a medical prize, even the Nobel. His mother would be proud. His ex-wife would gnash her teeth.
         He told Maggie about working at Bethesda and NIMH.
         She leaned forward, hanging on his words. “You must have seen everything.”
         “Yes.”
         “I’ve heard you’re treating a dangerous inmate.”
         “Who told you that?”
         “Elroy. Elroy Whitlow. He said the man’s name is Dooley.”
         “I’m not free to talk about my patients.”
         “Oh, I know. I only wondered if you were afraid. Elroy says Dooley killed a prisoner and blinded another.” She shuddered slightly. “Gouged out his eye.”
         “That happened here?”
         “You didn’t know?”
         Dr. Melon took a long sip of the awful wine, stalling to compose an answer. “About Dooley. Yes. But Elroy and Floyd are always there. Well, not in the room. They’re outside by the door.”
         “I’d want them in the room.”
         “A patient needs privacy.”
         “Elroy told me Dooley is dying.”
         He gazed into Maggie’s blue eyes, imagined he might tumble into them. “He is too dangerous to be paroled, unless I cure his mental illness. That’s what I’m trying to do. Cure him so he can die on the outside with family. He had a horrible childhood. There were vicious beatings, both at home and school. With all of that against him he still became a highly decorated soldier.” Dr. Melon put on an earnest face. “There must be something in him that is redeeming. I want to bring it out.”
         There was a mist in Maggie’s eyes. “Oh Bill,” she said. “You are wonderful.” Her eyes were reverent but her mouth spoke a different message, wordless and magnetic. The tip of her tongue, as pink as a virgin’s nipples, cleaved her lips and slowly stroked her upper lip.
         Dr. Melon felt tension in his crotch. He began to squirm.
         Maggie sighed.
         He clumsily crossed his legs.
         She took his hand and squeezed.
         Like a puppy caught in misbehavior and forgiven with a pat and cuddle, Dr. Melon felt deliriously happy.