Crack-Up (19 page)

Me, I wasn’t sure whether I’d set my own standards aside or raised them to new heights, but I did know that I’d developed a vested interest in seeing a human dimension to Reverend Sam.

“What’s truly hard for me to admit,” I said, “is that I’ve been guilty all these years of underestimating my own disease.
 
Because that changes everything.”

“How so?”

“I may have to conclude that I never should’ve married, never should’ve had any children, never should’ve gone into the Secret Service, or started up my own security firm.
 
In short, I may have no right being me.”

“But that’s not all, is it?
 
If you’d faced up to your disease, Argus, then John Helms would still be alive.”

“Possibly,” I said.
 
“If I’d been in therapy, I might never have slipped so badly that I ended up in John’s home with all those crazy notions.
 
But I’m not the only one to blame—if indeed I share any of the blame—for his death.
 
Because, you see, someone replaced my anti-psychotic medication with dummy pills, placebos.
 
Someone deliberately drove me insane.”

Reverend Sam’s fork slipped from his hand, ending up buried in his instant mashed potatoes.
 
“That sounds mighty farfetched.”

“I know,” I said.
 
“But it’s the only explanation.”

“Then prove it.
 
Have the pills tested.”

“I am.
 
My lawyer shipped them to a lab in
Rockville
.
 
No results yet, but I’m not holding my breath.
 
Whoever was clever enough to switch the pills in the first place would be clever enough to switch them back.”

“Who would want to drive you insane, Argus?”

“I don’t know.”

“Perhaps the answer is you’re still not well yet.”

“Not you too.
 
I’m fine.
 
I’m perfectly—”

A moment later I was staring bug-eyed at my inner left forearm and screaming at the very top of my lungs and flopping off the end of the cafeteria bench on my way to the floor.

“
Worms
!” I shouted.
 
“Under my skin!
 
Worms
!
 
Help!
 
Somebody get them out of me!
 
Quick!
 
Worms
!
 
Under my skin!”

Above my own yelling and the yelling of others all around me, I could hear Reverend Sam’s voice calling my name.
 
I kicked the legs of the inmates who surrounded me as I rolled and thrashed on the floor.
 
“Help me!
 
Worms
!
 
They’re eating me!”

I heard the jangle of jogging deputies approaching.
 
“Stand back!” shouted one of them.

“Stand back!” shouted another.

I studied a fleshy spot of forearm where there were no tendons beneath, much less worms.
 
I planned to bite there, deep and hard, but with only a desperate plan to drive me, not true terror, I couldn’t quite bring myself to do it.

“Get them out!” I said.
 
“Get the worms out!”

It was only when I tapped into my store of self-loathing that my teeth clamped down, and my skin ripped open, and a warm, coppery wetness filled my mouth.

Chapter 20

Doctor Woods held a cork-bottomed circular tray with a glass of water in the center and a colorful array of pills lined up neatly for me.
 
I took the glass and, one by one, began swallowing the pills, taking small sips of water.
 
If she identified me as a faker, I knew, I’d be on the very next bus back to jail.
 
My best chance, I decided on the spot, was to keep her off balance.

“I never saw any worms,” I said between pills.
 
“Not under my skin, not anywhere.”
 
My reward was that inter-species sign of mild surprise and curiosity.
 
Her head went tilt.

“Then why did you bite yourself?”

“What’s this?”
 
I held up the last pill, sulphur yellow.

“Codeine,” she said, “for the pain.”

“Thought so.”
 
This time I hid the pill, clamping it beneath my tongue before swallowing water.
 
I made sure I gulped.

“Mister Ward,” Doctor Woods said, ”that’s a savage bite on your arm.
 
Eighteen stitches, I hear.
 
Why did you do it?”

Rolling the pill to the tip of my tongue, I sauntered over to the doctor’s office window.
 
With my back to her, I stuck out my tongue, dropped the pill into my cupped left hand and, with my right, quickly jammed it into the webbing between two fingers.

“Tell me why,” said Doctor Woods.

The window overlooked the recreation yard and the employee parking lot.
 
Beyond the recreation yard, a new inmate housing facility was under construction.
 
I could hear hammering.
 
In the distance a smokestack puffed and a warehouse sagged and leaned.
 
Off to the left stood some of the broken down row houses found all over broken down southeast
Washington
,
DC
.

“Why?” I said.
 
“I like the accommodations here better than the jail.
 
But you don’t accept cash or credit cards—only crazy.”

“What’s the attraction?”

“The truth is I came to see you.”
 
I turned from the window.
 
“I had to see you again, to convince you I’m not responsible for what happened to John Helms.
 
You’re the only one smart enough to believe me, if you’ll only just listen to me, really listen.”

“You might’ve telephoned me.”

“I had to see you face to face.
 
Make you listen.”

She sighed, dropped into her chair, and motioned toward the one in front of her desk.
 
“Sit, Argus, I’m listening.”

“Point one, Doc,” I said, taking my seat, “you have to admit that most of the time, I’m perfectly sane.
 
So I know what it’s like.
 
I’m sane right now, in fact—I’m certain of it!—just as I’m certain I was taking my anti-psychotic medication—at least what I thought was my medication—during the weeks when your lab tests say I’d stopped cold turkey.
 
Because I was sane then too.”

“You may believe so.”

“No, I know so, because I checked.
 
On the very day my hallucinations began, I went to the medicine cupboard and—”

“Please,” Doctor Woods said, rubbing her temples, “don’t take me through the counting of the pills again.”

“But I—”

“Because it’s simply a delusion.
 
Much of what you remember never really happened.”

“But it did!”

“I once had a patient who thought he was a space alien.
 
He described to me in vivid terms having sexual intercourse with himself.
 
And giving birth to twin clones.
 
Now what do you think are the chances that his beliefs and memories were accurate?”

I stood.
 
“How should I know?
 
I’ve never met him.”
 
I strolled back to the window.

“Are you implying he could be right?” she said.

I left her to wonder.
 
Meanwhile, I canvassed the grounds.
 
Less than two days later, I made my move.

The codeine pills that I’d been storing up in secret I took all at once—all seven of them—during lunch, shortly before my assigned hour in the recreation yard.
 
The time came.

The
midday
sun was bright and hot, the sky cloudless, the air sticky.
 
I felt as wet as a newborn foal.
 
The wind, when there was any, was blocked by the brick walls enclosing the yard.

The walls were ten feet high, topped by chain link fencing trimmed with thick strands of barbed wire and razor wire.
 
Watch towers—one of them manned—stood at two of the corners.

About two dozen inmates, including myself, wandered the yard in light blue hospital pajamas.
 
I knew the codeine was kicking in when I began feeling light-headed and a little dizzy.

I spied the wiry inmate who had propositioned me in the yard the day before, a thin-haired blond man with a booze hound’s ruddy face and the permanently pinched look of a man being cursed and damned by a crowd.
 
I approached him.

“Changed my mind,” I said.
 
“I’ll take that blowjob now.”

“Wait five minutes,” he said, “then meet me in the toilet.”
 
With a peek up at the watch tower, and then another at an armed guard stationed inside the yard, my would-be sex partner headed straight for the john.

It was a plastic green portable pottie near the rear wall of the yard.
 
With all the construction going on, it was a good bet the psychiatric facility was overcrowded, and with rules and regulations for things like toilets per capita, I hadn’t been surprised to find portable potties on the grounds.

I killed the allotted time by stretching my major muscle groups.
 
When it was time, I walked casually over to the toilet and swung the door open.
 
It struck the blond man waiting inside.
 
I squeezed in next to him and closed the door.

It was a tight fit, two full-grown men inside there.
 
The toilet was clogged with human waste.
 
The stench reminded me of the back streets of
Beijing
.

“Whip it out,” whispered the blond man.

What I whipped out was not my genitalia, but my right hand.
 
I jammed two tensed fingers into the man’s windpipe.
 
The man gagged, bowing his head reflexively.
 
I drove my elbow into my victim’s left temple.
 
The man dropped.

I picked him up and draped his torso across the toilet seat.
 
The man wasn’t moving, yet I found it awkward stripping him of his light blue pajamas.
 
The job was only half complete when another inmate opened the door from outside.

“Busy!” I said.

“Fuckin’ faggots,” said the intruder, closing the door.

When I’d at last pulled the pajamas completely off him, I removed his paper shoes too, leaving the man in only his skivvies.
 
I tied the legs of his pajamas around my waist, leaving the rest of the garment draped at my back.
 
I tucked his paper shoes into my waistband.
 
I took a deep, unpleasant breath.
 
Then I exited the stall, closing the door.

I braced my hands on a ridge above the door to the portable pottie and then pushed with all my might.
 
Grunting and sweating, I got nowhere, absolutely nowhere.
 
An icy spike of fear-driven adrenalin stabbed me in the center of my chest and spread like a paper fire.
 
At last I managed to lift the front of the portable pottie off the ground, about an inch.