by Jon Bassoff
And with that, Edgar stopped speaking and took a step back. A couple of the onlookers clapped, because the strange young man had been redeemed, and because Dr. Freeman had done the redeeming.
“Do you hear that, folks? A young man who was being destroyed by his own demons, a young man on his way to destruction, is now cured, healed by my treatment. Miracles do happen, ladies and gentlemen—I have been a witness to thousands!”
At this, a burly man with Popeye forearms and a tenderized face cupped his hands around his mouth and called out, “So what the hell’s the treatment? You ain’t told us a goddamn thing.”
“Yeah, get on with it,” somebody else echoed.
Freeman stopped speaking and smiled widely. He acknowledged the hecklers with a wave. “But I can see I’ve piqued your interest,” he said. “I can see you want to know how I transformed my friend Edgar Ruiz. I can see you want to know how I will transform you!”
Freeman removed his jacket and placed it on the edge of the stage. Then he grabbed his Upjohn bag and showed it to the crowd. “I will now show you,” he said, “the tools of my trade. Perhaps you will then understand my treatment.”
As Durango and the rest of the crowd watched, Freeman unzipped the bag. He took out a simple ice pick and a battered carpenter’s hammer. The monkey squealed, jumped up and down.
The crowd looked on in confusion, murmuring softly. A skinny woman with an enormous bouffant took a couple of steps forward. Her eyes brightened and her mouth opened wide. “I know who you are,” she said. “I thought I recognized you. You’re the fellow that cuts people’s brains!”
A few gasps and some laughter. The woman placed her hands on her hips, and with her skeletal frame and platinum blonde hair, she looked like a sickly Mamie Van Doren.
“Is it true?” a man shouted. “Is that how you fixed him? By slicing his brain?”
Freeman performed an elaborate bow before, once again, placing the megaphone to his lips. “Yes, indeed,” he said. “I am not ashamed to inform you that I perform what is known as the lobotomy. In fact, ladies and gentlemen, I have performed over three thousand of them. It started with frontal lobotomies, but more recently I have pioneered a method known as the transorbital lobotomy. I can assure you, ladies and gentlemen, this process is nearly entirely pain free, and other than a couple of black eyes (which heal in a manner of days), there are no further complications.”
“Yeah, yeah, I heard about you, too!” said another man with a wooden cross hanging over oversized overalls. “You turn ’em into vegetables is what you do. You take a perfectly good brain and mutilate it. Well, you ain’t gonna mutilate my brain, that’s for damn sure.”
A quick nod of the head. “Yes, sir, I certainly hope that’s the case. You seem to be in perfectly good mental health so I doubt I would ever have to…”
“What’s the monkey for?” somebody in the crowd shouted.
At this, Freeman smiled broadly. He turned toward Edgar and said, “Open the cage, my dear sir.” Edgar stared at Freeman for a few moments—with those dead eyes—and then bent down and unsnapped the latch. He reached into the cage and grabbed the monkey, which had been jumping up and down and screeching. Edgar held the creature close to his chest and seemed oblivious to the fact that it was twitching terribly, trying to bite his arm.
As Edgar moved toward the doctor with the monkey, Freeman raised the ice pick and hammer in one hand and shouted into the megaphone: “Ladies and gentlemen, I present to you the transorbital lobotomy!”
Chapter 12
Later, after he’d lobotomized the monkey, after the crowd had watched in amazement at the transformation (“Look at this little fellow! No longer agitated! No longer baring his teeth! Calm, cool, and collected! Fixed, I tell you, fixed!), after he’d answered a good thirty or more questions about the procedure, Freeman and Edgar packed up their stuff, monkey and all, and left the carnival grounds.
His old black Cadillac was parked beneath a blackjack oak. Over the past few years he’d put the car to good use. Indeed, since January alone he and Edgar had racked up more than eighteen thousand miles, zigzagging across the country, stopping in major cities and little farming towns, suburban neighborhoods and desert wastelands, providing lobotomies for all in need. And now Burnwood, a debauchery-filled meatpacking town with plenty of history but not much future.
They drove through the dirt roads, and there was plenty of poverty. See the little boy wearing overalls and no shirt, sitting on the rusted hood of a broken-down car, eating a can of beans with his fingers. See the old man with the white beard to his chest, digging through metal trash cans. See the drunken slaughterhouse worker staggering down Front Street, punching at the wind, shouting about the kind of killing he’s bound to do that evening. But Edgar didn’t notice a thing. He breathed and he blinked and he slept and he waked. This lack of awareness wasn’t a bad thing, far from it. Freeman had worked with enough mentally ill people to know that hyper-awareness led to misery. A terrible mistake in the evolutionary process.
Freeman parked the car in front of a Presbyterian church and turned off the engine. He stared into the windshield, rain now specking the glass, and then turned toward Edgar, mouth ajar with drool spreading on his chin, eyes sunken and blank.
“Have I told you about my son?” Freeman asked. “About how he died?”
The young man nodded his head slowly, deliberately.
“What about my mother? Another sad, sad story.”
“You’ve told me,” Edgar said. “I remember.”
Freeman stroked his gray goatee and pursed his lips. “Yes, yes. I suppose I must have. I’ve told you everything, isn’t that true?”
Again, a slow nod.
“It doesn’t matter. You’re a good listener, Edgar. And stories change every time we tell them because our memories change every time we remember. So would you humor me? Would you listen again?”
“Okay. I’ll listen.”
“Yes. Thank you. Well, then. My mother. A sad story, indeed. It started with the nightmares. Isn’t that right? Terrible nightmares that would cause her to moan and scream and slash all about, and my father would shake her awake and then hold her and stroke her hair and comfort her while I watched through the keyhole, terrified. But even after she woke, she would still be disoriented, sweat pouring down her forehead, eyes darting around her skull, mumbling words with no meaning.
“And then, after he’d gotten her to calm down, after her breathing and heartbeat had returned to normal, she’d tell him about the dream, and it was always the same one, with slight modifications, the terrible man in the attic who dressed in a white suit and a white hat, who held a lantern in one hand and miner’s pick axe in the other, who crept down the stairs slowly, slowly and grabbed me, her only son, and used the axe to gouge my eyes out, used the axe to rupture my torso, used the axe to tear my heart out. As I said, terrible dreams.
“But for a long while it was just the dreams, and during the day she functioned normally, taking care of the house, taking care of me, preparing meals. But then the man in the white suit began appearing to her during the day as well. She would see him sneaking around the house, blending into the walls, a bloodthirsty grin on his face. She tried ignoring him. ‘Just your imagination,’ my father had said. But the terrible man began appearing more and more often, from behind bookcases, peeking in windows, in the corners of fogged-up mirrors.
“And so she needed to stop him. She asked my father for a gun, so she could protect her family, but he refused. Instead, she took to walking around the house with a kitchen knife, always sharpened. Whenever she entered a room, she would start on her hands and knees. She would then investigate every inch of the floor, every inch of the walls looking for signs of the murderer. She looked inside cabinets and under tables until, satisfied, she began cleaning or cooking. Then, when she needed to move to another room, the routine began again.
“Some days the man stayed hidden, and those were happy days, relatively. But other
days he would haunt her, waiting for her to finish her inspection of the room before dropping down from the ceiling or appearing as a blurry reflection. And she would let out a terrible scream and swing her knife back and forth, and I would stand by myself, watching her, scared for her, scared for me.
“One night she went missing. In a panic, my father ran to every room of our house, shouting her name, causing me to wake and cry, but he couldn’t find her. He went outside, carrying me in his arms, and everything was dark but the light of the moon, and after hurrying across the grounds, we saw my mother, like a specter in her white nightgown, walking slowly toward a pond. My father shouted for her to stop, but she kept walking, as if in a trance.
“By the time he finally reached her, she was submerged in the lake. He dropped me to the ground and raced into the water, grabbed a hold of her. She fought him, but he managed to drag her out of the water and onto dry ground. The front of her nightgown was covered with blood, and when my father pulled it up, I saw several superficial wounds on her belly, on her chest. She’d been stabbing herself, although that wasn’t her story. ‘It was him,’ she said. ‘He sneaked into our room when we were sleeping. And he’s gonna get Walter next. We need to lock Walter up. Otherwise…’
“A physician paid a home visit the next day and treated my mother, gave her sleeping medicine. And for the next several days, there was indeed peace and quiet. My mother slept and slept, sometimes upward of twenty hours a day. When awake, she was calm and made no mention of the man in the white suit. My father stayed home from his work to take care of my mother and me. The doctor visited each day and was pleased the hallucinations had ceased since that horrible night.
“So when they started again, even worse than before, the doctor was convinced more aggressive solutions were necessary.
“It was a cold and bright morning in the middle of February when they took my mother away. I was sitting in my room, reading Jack London, when I saw that green Model T field ambulance pull up in front of our house. A man stepped out of the vehicle, wearing a black suit and black hat, followed by a man dressed in white. I dropped my book to the ground and rose to my feet. I thought of my mother’s fears, her hallucinations. With a strange sense of dread, I walked slowly toward the living room, as if in a dream. The men stood there, talking to my father. They spoke in inaudible whispers, but I understood every word. And when they moved toward my mother’s room, I started crying. I rushed toward the doctor and tried pushing him away. ‘Now, now,’ he said. ‘Listen to me, Walter. Your mother is very sick. It’s not her fault. It’s nobody’s fault. We’re here to help. We’re going to take your mother to a place where they can give her the proper treatment. Surely you understand.’ And they tied her to a stretcher and she was screaming and straining and biting. I didn’t get to say good-bye, Edgar. They took her from me, and I didn’t get to say good-bye. But here’s what haunts me, here’s what has always haunted me. They did nothing for her. For the rest of her days, she was left to rot in a castle of torment. I saw her a few times after that, and there was never any improvement. Each time I visited, her eyes were filled with more madness. Her soul was being whittled away.”
Freeman paused for a moment. He removed his glasses, steamed them with his breath, and wiped them with his shirt. He massaged the bridge of his nose, then placed the spectacles back on his face. He turned toward Edgar and put his strong hand on his leg.
“I think about my mother every time we come to a new town. How she was left to fend for herself. How she was subject to misguided and cruel therapies. But now…there is no need for this type of suffering. It can be eradicated, forever. Do you understand, Edgar? Do you understand that we are saving the world?”
Edgar blinked a few times. Then he spoke, each word an effort. “I’m hungry, Dr. Freeman. Awfully hungry.”
A long pause and then a tired smile. “Yes, Edgar. Let’s eat.”
They ate at a low-rent diner, Edgar a burger, fries, and pie, Freeman a cup of coffee and toast. The rest of the restaurant was empty. A skinny redheaded waitress kept refilling Freeman’s coffee but nobody said a word. A radio played Frank Sinatra. Edgar finished quickly and asked for more, so Freeman ordered another burger and more pie.
The doctor didn’t have much of an appetite. Just a few bites of toast and he pushed away his plate. He used his sleeve to wipe off some fog from the window. Outside the rain had started picking up, puddles forming on the asphalt. Flashes of lightning lit up the sky, and low rumblings of thunder followed. The wind blew and a single naked tree trembled. While Edgar kept eating and eating, Freeman stuck his elbow on the table and rested his head in his hand. He closed his eyes and listened to the radio and the rain and the silence.
When they were finished, they got back in the Cadillac and drove across town to the Lullaby Motel. Freeman limped across the damp asphalt while Edgar waited in the car. The bell on the door jingled as he entered the office. A drunk was passed out on a chair, and a whore was painting her face in a warped mirror. An obese woman sat behind the desk, reading an old copy of Life magazine. Freeman approached her and bowed curtly.
“How do you do, ma’am?” he said. “Quite a rainstorm, eh?”
The woman scowled. “This ain’t nothing,” she said. “Why just last week we got six inches. Flooded the cemetery nearly.”
“Yes. Well, I come from Palo Alto, so I am not used to the inclement weather. In any case, I would be much obliged if I could secure a room for me and my assistant.”
She glared at him from coin-slit eyes. “Assistant?”
“Yes, ma’am. My name is Dr. Walter Freeman. But perhaps you have heard of me?”
“’Fraid not. You be wanting two beds then. Or are you one of them queers?”
“Two beds would be splendid. And would it be possible to have room one? Farthest away from traffic, you know.”
At this, her expression darkened. “That room ain’t available. Had some problems in that room. Had some big problems. I’ll give you room two. You won’t hear a thing.”
“Splendid. And do you have a weekly rate? We may be staying here for some time.”
Edgar carried the bags, including Freeman’s leather medical satchel. Freeman carried the monkey, now sitting quietly and passively in its cage, its violent nature cured once and for all.
The room was small but tidy, with two single beds, a compact desk, and a dresser. The bathroom was similarly cramped with only enough room for a stand-up shower. Freeman set the cage in the corner of the room and rested on one of the beds. He grabbed a banana, unpeeled it, and tossed it in the cage. The monkey didn’t move for a long time and had to be coaxed to eat.
Meanwhile, without undressing, without using the bathroom, without saying a single word, Edgar lay down on the bed, crossed his arms over his chest, and closed his eyes. Within a minute, he was snoring, his mouth open wide, drool falling down his chin.
Freeman walked over to the bed and pulled the covers down and back over Edgar’s body. Edgar’s eyes opened momentarily, then closed. Freeman dropped his suitcase on the bed, unzipped it, and began placing his neatly folded clothes into the dresser drawers. He took his leather Upjohn bag and put it on top of the dresser. Next, he unsnapped a battered old briefcase and removed several framed diplomas and awards. He placed them in rows on the bed. Using a cleaner from his briefcase, he carefully sprayed down the glass of each frame. He then grabbed a hammer and a handful of nails from the side pocket. He strode to the bare wall and, after calculating the precise placement of the nails, began pounding them into the plaster, one by one. He hung up each and every diploma, each and every award, and if he had to pay for the plaster, so be it—this was his office for the time being.
He’d just finished and was about to pour some Scotch when there was a pounding on the door. Freeman strode across the room and opened it. A young man stood outside, getting soaked in the rain. His clothes were badly torn, his eyes sad as could be. And most unusual, on his head rested a strange crown of thorns
, like the one Jesus wore.
“Can I help you?” Freeman said.
“You’re the Amazing Dr. Freeman?” the boy rasped.
“Indeed I am.”
“I saw you…today.”
“At the carnival?”
“My father. He…he…”
“Please,” said Dr. Freeman. “Come in. Dry yourself off.”
But the young man only shook his head, turned and disappeared into the rain and fog.
Chapter 13
Scent stood on her special corner and she’d kill the whole world if she had to. She wore a white Marilyn Monroe dress with a string of fake pearls. Her face was colored with bright red lipstick, pink blush and blue eyeliner.
She caught a glimpse of today’s newspaper and saw an article about the fat man and his grisly death but didn’t bother reading it.
Pretty soon men from the refinery started filing down Main Street on their way to the bars, and she got plenty of stares, and a few inquiries, but she needed a man with real money, and none of these fellows would do.
Her heart palpitated when she saw Sheriff Barton, that masochistic son of a bitch, pull up in his cruiser and eye her through the window. Trying to play it cool, Scent reached into her purse and pulled out a canister of lipstick and smeared it on nice and thick. He stepped out of the car and leaned against the hood, his short gray hair plastered to the side, his lips curled into a mean grin. He had no right to look so self-satisfied, not after some of the things Scent had done for him…
He just stood there watching her for a long time, and then he started walking toward her. Her jaw tightened and her chest constricted. Maybe she shouldn’t have killed that scum bucket. Maybe she’d fry for this one.
“Evening, Scent,” he said with a phony drawl. “Just out for some fresh air?”
“Yes, Sheriff. Just love to whiff me some of that refinery stink.”
