by Jon Bassoff
“I don’t know what’s true or what ain’t.”
Behind the philosopher, Eye Patch grinned crookedly and then spat a stream of brown juice on the ground. The grin faded slowly from the man’s face and then he reached into his back pocket and pulled out a Sharpfinger knife, patted it against the palm of his hand. His twin brother did the same.
Scent grabbed Durango’s hand, whispered, “I think we should get on out of here.” Not another word and they turned and raced into the forest, but they didn’t get far before Scent stumbled on a rock and the both of them came crashing to the forest floor. Durango stumbled to his feet and tried pulling Scent up, but the men were on them. One of them grabbed Durango, pulling his arm behind his back until he screamed in pain. The twin with an eye patch took care of Scent. He placed the blade to her throat and got nice and close to her ear.
Durango tried breaking away, but the man was too strong. He fell to his knees and then, after a boot to his groin, to his stomach.
The eldest stood over them, caressing his Kierkegaard book. Durango could see the pistol now peeking from the front of his pants. “C’mon, boys. Take it easy on her. She ain’t nothing but a worthless whore. And he’s the Son of God, for Christ sakes. Just calm down. We’re only here to talk.”
But the twins didn’t let up. More whispered prayers from Durango (to whom? to whom?). More tears from Scent.
“Why are you doing this?” she moaned. “I didn’t do nothing.”
The leader opened his Kierkegaard book and flipped through the pages. Then he began nodding his head for such a long time that Durango didn’t think he’d ever stop. “Grady Holland is my name,” he said. “And these are my brothers, Vlad and Kaz. But we’re missing one of our brothers. You know what happened to him?”
Scent shook her head, tears dribbling from the corners of her eyes. “No. I don’t know what happened to him.”
The twin with the eye patch, Vlad, took the knife and ran it along her cheek, drawing blood.
“He was shot-up in that cheap little motel called the Lullaby. You ever whore down at that motel?”
“No…”
Another cut, this time on the other cheek.
“C’mon, Scent. You fuck my brother in that motel?”
“I…I don’t know your brother. Please.”
Grady Holland took a few steps forward and bent down in front of her. He placed his thick fingers on her cheek and studied her eyes. “I want to believe you, Scent. I want to believe you’re a good girl.” Then he looked at Vlad still pressing a knife to her throat. “Cut her.”
At that, the man gave her another knife swipe across the face, only this one was deeper, and Scent dropped to her knees and moaned mournfully, her beauty oozing out scarlet and thick.
Grady rose to his feet and blew his nose into a white handkerchief. Then he gazed at Durango, who was still held back by the other twin. Grady said, “‘The world is not comprehensible, but it is embraceable: through the embracing of one of its beings.’ That’s from Buber, not Kierkegaard.”
And now Grady joined his brother and they took turns kicking Durango’s stomach and his side and his back, and all the while he decided that he wouldn’t be willing to die for the world, but he might be willing to die for Scent.
Chapter 20
“Look in my eyes, Edgar, and believe what I say.”
And Edgar did look into the doctor’s eyes, though whether he believed is up to interpretation.
“We’re saving this whole town if not the whole world, my boy. Do you remember the way the town was when we first arrived? A purgatory at best. But now there has been a shift. Salvation is within sight. With these hands. With these knives. We cure. We cure.”
Edgar nodded his head but he didn’t smile—he hadn’t smiled in all the days since the surgery. “Yes, Doctor. Saving the world.”
“But you don’t believe me! Look! Look!”
Dr. Freeman was panicked, and he pulled out his briefcase and dropped it on the bed while Edgar looked on with great disinterest. “The pictures!” Freeman said. “The letters! Every single patient I’ve followed up with. They’re all inside this briefcase. Can you imagine? This is something no other doctor, to my knowledge, has done. Most doctors treat their patients as mere medical subjects. But not me. No, never. I always saw them as human beings. I always knew they would need to continue living, breathing, once they left my office. So I called them. Visited them. Wrote them. Relationships, Edgar. Do you know, my dear sir, that I once drove over three hundred miles in the middle of the night, while the rain fell and the wind howled, to pay a visit to a former patient? Because she asked, Edgar! Because she asked. And I know her name, still. Donna Bordon. Donna, Donna. Do you understand how sick she was before the operation? Well, Edgar, do you? You think you were sick? You think you were ill? Ha! Donna Bordon lived with an ailing body, a diseased mind, and a collapsed soul. She used to yank out her hair, light a match to it. She used to peel off her skin, feed it to the birds. She used to pee in the kitchen, crap in the parlor. And crying! Terrible fits that would last for hours and hours until, like a light switch, she would suddenly calm, her face losing all affect. Then she might take to laughing hysterically for just as long. Mania! And nobody could help her, not a one. ‘Take her to a head shrinker,’ they said. ‘Let them analyze her problems.’ But what could she say? A sick mind knows not that it’s sick. This was before the transorbital lobotomy, my boy, this was in the wild old days of the frontal lobotomy. Much cruder, much more dangerous. Still, I have not a bad word to say about the frontal lobotomy—indeed I performed many myself. Because until I was able to perfect the operation with my ice pick, this is what we knew. And while the procedure wasn’t perfect—oh, how I hated watching diseased people bleeding out on the floor—it was certainly superior to watching them rot in those god-awful loony bins. Yes, you remember, Edgar!
“So I visited her at her house. This was many years after the operation, and certainly I felt anxious. What if she were a vegetable? What if she were still agitated? But when I walked through that front door, my fears vanished. Her father greeted me with a wide smile and a bear hug, as if we were long-lost brothers. He sat me down, fed me a snack, and told me the truth, how he had not thought it possible but her disease was cured. Mood swings: gone. Agitation: gone. She was happier. He was happier. The world was happier. And when I saw her! Lord, lord, it was like seeing my own daughter after years gone by. Because each patient is my child in a way, or at least I their creator. She didn’t recognize me, but that didn’t bother me. What I saw filled me with gladness. A woman who was relaxed. A woman who could do chores—see her take out the garbage, see her clean the dishes, see her vacuum the floor. Her father called me a savior—but I would not be so grandiose in my thinking to agree with him. But still. How many were saved? Well, look for yourself. They’re all here in this briefcase. Every one of them.” And Freeman dumped the letters and photos, so many letters and photos, all over the bed, a massive pile.
When Freeman looked up, however, he saw that Edgar was asleep on his feet, his head cocked to one side, eyes rolled back in his skull, mouth ajar, revealing teeth scarred with plaque.
“My dear boy,” Freeman said and walked his patient, his prodigal son, to a bed. And as he had once done with his own son, he pulled the blanket over Edgar’s body and watched him sleep before placing a paternal kiss on his forehead.
“Now then,” he said, “where was I?”
Freeman returned to the other bed, pulling his diseased leg over the edge. Adjusting his glasses, he took to reading. Thank you, Dr. Freeman…life isn’t so hard anymore…now I can finally breathe…I’m not angry anymore…perhaps we can have you over to the house…thank you…thank you…thank you
A savior, he thought, and maybe he said it out loud, maybe.
Eventually Freeman slept, and he slept and slept, while the sun blasted heavy through the curtains. He dreamt of different times, dreamt of his son and his wife, and he felt content, thou
gh somehow he was entirely aware he was dreaming. But soon the lovely dreams took a turn for the worse and the images became horrific: his son’s mangled corpse, his wife’s mangled soul, an army of lobotomized patients skulking through darkened forests.
The dreams lived and disintegrated, causing Freeman to twist and turn, moan and holler. He was drenched in dread’s sweat, hands scratching at diseased skin.
And now he heard terrible screeching, and thoughts began forming—though they were fragmented and disjointed. It’s them. They’re outside my window, shrieking. They’re alive, but hardly so, eyes missing, eyes missing. Answer the question. Would I ever dare? To hammer the ice pick in my own brain? Well, would I?
Freeman’s eyes jutted open. The motel room glowed in a nuclear sunrise. The screeching continued. Freeman fumbled for his glasses on the nightstand and pressed them onto his face. Edgar was sitting on the edge of his bed. His knees were bouncing up and down and his thick hands were covering his ears. He was staring blankly at the monkey.
And now Freeman understood the screeching from his dream was the screeching from the monkey. What the hell was going on? Since the demonstration lobotomy the little beast had sat in its cage placidly, making no sound, no movement. But now it was jumping all over the cage, screaming and crying.
Freeman stumbled off the bed and to his feet. Edgar removed his hands from his ears and pointed at the monkey. “Bad monkey,” he said. “Bad, bad monkey.”
“Just hungry,” Freeman said. “The poor thing hasn’t been eating.”
He grabbed a browned banana from the sink counter and peeled it back. Then he shuffled toward the animal and stuffed a chunk in the cage. Sure enough, the monkey darted toward the banana, but instead of eating the food, it threw it on the ground and stepped on it. Then it got really mad, darting back and forth across the cage, scratching at its skin, hissing at Freeman. The doctor backed up and observed, but he knew nothing of monkeys, nothing at all. Perhaps another lobotomy would be in order…
“It’s a shame,” Freeman said. “But it’s fortunate this has happened now, not when we were preaching. Not when other people saw. We must take solace where we find it.”
Another twenty or so minutes of jumping and biting and scratching, and the monkey was finally worn out and collapsed asleep on the floor of the cage.
Edgar clapped his hands. “Better,” he said. “Better.”
“Yes,” Freeman said. “For a while.” And then, as if by imitation, Edgar fell back on his mattress, closed his eyes, and fell asleep once again. The poor boy would sleep twenty hours a day if Freeman let him.
Cane in hand, Freeman limped over to the bathroom where he showered and shaved. And as he stared at his face in the mirror, he tried figuring out when he had gotten so old.
Freeman needed some time on his own, away from Edgar, away from Burnwood. And so he did what he often did when he needed to clear his head. He got into his car and drove.
Down Highway 13 the Caddy barreled, and in every direction just dirt and sky. For an hour or more he drove, passing by dozens of small towns that all looked the same. And he couldn’t help but thinking that within each of these towns lived hundreds of diseased people, people without hope, souls turning to dust. Who else could save them but him? Such a burden! Feeling suddenly overwhelmed, he pulled off to the side of the road and sat there gripping the steering wheel and staring through the windshield coated with dust. Looking to silence his own thoughts, he turned on the radio, but it was awful static, screams buried beneath white noise.
He rubbed his temples, trying to remember, trying to forget. And then a shadow in his rearview mirror. Hesitantly, he turned around and saw a hunched figure limping toward the car. At first he thought it was a heat mirage and so he removed his glasses and wiped his eyes. But when he looked back, the figure remained. Moments later a rapping on the side window. An old man leaned on a wooden stick, his right leg cut off below the knee. He was wrinkled and filthy and was holding an old whiskey jug and shaking it.
Freeman unrolled the window. The old man grinned a toothless grin and said, “Money for the destitute, brother? Starvation ain’t a thing of the past.”
Freeman looked at the strange man, squinted. He reached into his pocket and located his wallet. He crumpled up a pair of twenties and shoved them into the whiskey jug.
“Praise Jesus,” he said. “Thank you, brother. You’ve given an old preacher hope for another week at least. Your kindness will be rewarded, you hear me?”
The old man then reached into his overalls and pulled out a dusty canteen and took a few long gulps before wiping his mouth with the back of his hand.
“I’m a doctor,” Freeman said, and he didn’t know why he said so.
“That right? I’m a veteran.”
Freeman blinked rapidly and said, “Which war?”
“All of ’em.”
Then that toothless smile again.
“I thank you,” Freeman said, “for your service.”
“And for yours, Doctor.”
By the time he made it back to the motel, the sun had been swallowed up by gunmetal clouds, and lightning flashed dry and distant. When Freeman opened the door, the first thing he saw was the monkey lying flat on its stomach surrounded by a puddle of blood. Jesus. He closed the door behind him and stood there, mind trying to catch up to sight. From the bathroom he could hear the sound of running water. A few moments later and Edgar appeared from the bathroom, drying his hands on a towel. His white T-shirt was splattered with blood.
“Oh, Edgar, Edgar. What have you done, my boy?”
Edgar stopped and looked at the monkey, pointed his finger. “It woke up,” he said. “It was being bad.”
Chapter 21
And now, suddenly, it seemed as if the whole earth was dying a terrible death, and Freeman would be swallowed up soon.
“Edgar! How could you do this? You’re not a violent person. No, no. Not anymore.”
But Edgar just shook his head, repeated, “It was being bad.”
Freeman grabbed a handful of towels from the bathroom and soaked them with soap and water. He returned to the room and went to work scouring first the carpet, then the wall. At first the splatters of blood on the wall spread and turned Pepto-Bismol pink, but after twenty or so more minutes of heavy scrubbing, the pink faded away, no sign of death.
Next, he tore the shower curtain off the rod and spread it out on the carpet. He got down onto his knees and rolled the monkey onto the curtain. He kept waiting for the animal to wake and lash out at him, but it never did.
Behind the motel there was an empty dumpster. Freeman tossed the wrapped monkey inside it, then stared at his own hands stained with blood…
Later, after washing Edgar in the bathtub and scrubbing his own hands clean, Freeman decided he needed some medicine, and a heavy dose of gin would be the best prescription. Once again, he left Edgar at the motel, made him promise not to leave the premises, and drove back down to Front Street.
In between a church and a bank, he located a rough-looking business called Discount Liquors. The windows and the door were covered with bars. An old Ford truck was parked out front. A pretty black woman sat in the passenger seat with a young boy on her lap. Freeman tipped his hat at her, but she didn’t smile. Moments later, her boyfriend exited from the store carrying a case of Budweiser. She whispered something behind her hand (“that’s the fellow who cuts brains!”) and he eyed Freeman before getting into his truck.
A man with a military buzz but a thick blond beard stood outside the store, having a conversation with himself. When Freeman passed him, the man said something he didn’t understand, and then laughed. Patients, past and future, everywhere he looked! Once in the liquor store, Freeman found a bottle of cheap gin and a package of cigars. He paid the cashier, a skinny woman with buckteeth, and then headed back outside. This time, the homeless man pointed his finger right at Freeman, said, “You ain’t shit, brother. You ain’t nobody.” Then he shook his head, laughe
d, and walked in the other direction.
Gin safely tucked in a paper bag, Walter Freeman leaned against a lamppost and drank a harsh swallow and then another. Not proper etiquette for a doctor of his stature, but he was tired of formalities. The wind blew and the sky was angry-like.
He kept swigging because suddenly he was tired of everything and nothing much mattered. Fifteen minutes and six drinks and that was about all he could handle. The lamp flickered above. Tossing the half-empty bottle in a trash can, he staggered down the street toward his car, but his equilibrium was lacking. He wobbled back and forth, tried steadying himself against his cane, but it was no good. He slammed to the ground, head slapping against the cement, sleep instantaneous.
“Some doctor, you are! Don’t you even own a bed?”
Freeman blinked his eyes open. How long had he been passed out beneath the streetlight? Standing above him, blurred by the rain, was a girl. She couldn’t have been older than seventeen or eighteen. She was beanpole skinny with brown hair and bright red lipstick. Her face was sad and pretty, marred by a long scar, angry red.
Freeman grabbed for his walking cane, but remained on the ground, a man defeated. “Indeed,” Freeman said. “Just resting for a few minutes. Taking a load off, if you will.”
“I know a thing or two about you,” she said.
“Yes, well—”
“I heard ’em from my boyfriend. He’s a sweet boy. His name is Durango. Ain’t that a funny name? You know a boy named Durango?”
A quick shake of the head. “No. I don’t believe so.”
“I bet you met him. His old man thinks he’s the Messiah. Can you beat that? Not me, though. I just think he’s a nice boy.”
