Papa, on the day we phoned to read him the contents of the pale green envelope, was in Phoenix, Arizona, with the Portland Tugs. Phoenix was only an eight- or nine-hour drive from Mira Loma, but Papa was in the middle of a three-city Southwest road trip, and his baseball situation, after six amazingly stable seasons, had become tenuous again. What happened was that his friend and manager, Johnny Hultz, had jumped to the Seattle Pilots in 1969, then moved with the entire Seattle team to Milwaukee in ’70, where he became the expansion Brewers’ first hitting coach. The Tugs had been through three managers since. The third was a semifamous ex-Pirate infielder who as of this writing is still busy fucking up the mood of a major league team. We’ll call him Howie Bowen. The Tugs were off to a fast start anyhow, thanks partly to luck and partly to Bowen’s heavy but unacknowledged reliance on the advice of the team’s pitching coach, stupid-situation reliever and philosopher king, Papa Toe Chance. But the good start only seemed to intensify Bowen’s toxic personality. His response to Papa’s request for permission to leave the team long enough to visit Irwin, for instance, was to shout, “What are wives for, Chance? We need you here, dammit!”
Papa didn’t argue. He just quietly informed his manager that he’d rejoin the Tugs in Tucson the following night, and that if Bowen didn’t like it he could fine him. “I was kidding,” Bowen lied, slapping Papa on the shoulder. “Mellow out, Papa T.” He then proved his goodwill by autographing a baseball for Papa to take to Irwin. Papa was polite. He waited till he was outside Bowen’s office before he rifled it into a trash can.
Papa rented a car, drove straight through the night to Mira Loma, and reached Loffler Center on Thursday, May 24, just as a pair of military police were unlocking the chain-link front gates. And he was surprised, as he crossed the sterilized-looking grounds, by the rush of gratitude he felt: just knowing that Irwin was back on North American soil had him trembling with something close to joy.
But the instant he walked into the white cinder-block building he seemed to leave U.S. soil and enter some kind of Kafka plot. The faceless, bloodless, self-perpetuating malevolence of institutions was almost unknown to Papa. He hadn’t read Kafka, and lifelong poverty had spared him any intricate dealings with the IRS. So it was a disoriented amazement he felt, more than fear or anger, when he was forced to spend four solid hours sitting in a lobby before he was even able to meet with Major Keys. This disorientation deepened into a swooning sensation when he was informed—after an interminable Keys monologue that told him a lot about types of battle fatigue but nothing about Irwin’s actual condition—that visiting hours were over for the day, that a visit was “inadvisable in any case,” but that if he still insisted on seeing Irwin he could return at ten the next morning. The time had already come, Papa realized, to fight. Yet the swooning sensation was so strong that he felt himself smiling and couldn’t make himself stop, even as he explained his desperate need to rejoin his ballclub that night.
Major Keys said he sympathized but his hands were tied. Visiting hours were from 10 A.M. to noon, and exceptions were “strictly against regulations.”
“You’re telling me,” Papa said, still smiling, “that you actually have a regulation against exceptions to regulations?”
Major Keys, smiling back, said that this was correct.
“What’s your job then, Major?” Papa asked. “Sounds like the whole place is on automatic pilot to me.”
Keys’s laugh was like Morse code: one long, a few shorts. Then, without smiling, he said, “I enforce the regulations.”
“Who might I talk to,” Papa asked, “about a regulation that would allow me to make an exception to the no-exception regulation?”
“There is no such regulation,” said the Major.
“Well, who has the power to make up a new regulation?”
“The psychiatric staff of the United States Pentagon,” said Keys.
“Tell you what, Major,” Papa sighed. “Rather than bother those busy fellas, why don’t you and I just sign whatever needs signing and I’ll take my son off your hands here and now?”
Keys let out another long and a few shorts, then erased every trace of goodwill from his face. “You’ll see why in the morning, Mr. Chance. And now I’ve got work to do.” And with that he shot out of his chair, out of his office, and disappeared into the labyrinth of immaculate hallways.
So Papa had no choice but to deal with Howie Bowen again, asking if he could meet the team in Albuquerque tomorrow instead of Tucson today. “If a fine’s fine with you,” quoth Bowen, “that’s fine with me.” Papa just shook his head and hung up the phone. He then called us in Camas, gave us an irritable update, ate a fast-food dinner, checked into a motel, and spent another near-sleepless night.
But at ten the next morning Major Keys informed him that Irwin was “finally resting after a very rough episode” and that it would be hard on him if Papa disturbed that rest. Braced this time for the onslaught of institutional nonsense, Papa told the Major that he was going to have to inflict that hardship.
“As you wish,” said Keys. And he summoned a nurse, who led Papa through a series of steel doors and tube-lit hallways, then paused by a reinforced indoor window looking in on a large, glaringly white, sunlit room. Seeing, in bolted-down chairs, the slack or contorted forms of eight or nine of the most broken-looking men he’d ever laid eyes on, Papa was impatient when the nurse unlocked the door and stepped inside. He thought she was tending to some irrelevant duty en route to Irwin’s room, wasting more of his time. Even when she turned to him and nodded, he didn’t understand for a moment. Then he panicked. The young man nearest the window. The one slumped so far forward that only his chest strap kept him from falling out of his chair. The one whose shaved and battered skull he’d glanced at and then away from, thinking, Poor bastard, worst of the lot …
Irwin.
The scabs and fracture lines showing through the shaved hair—from the rifle butts of Dudek’s rescuers. The twisted, unrecognizable nose—smashed by Sergeant Felker’s “Army love.” Papa rushed into the room, knelt beside him, stroked his hands, half sobbed his name. Irwin’s expression didn’t change. His lips were slack. His lap was damp with drool. His eyes sometimes sloshed, sometimes jittered in their sockets. And he didn’t know Papa from the nurse, the other patients, the walls of the room.
All that kept Papa from weeping was his rage. He held Irwin a while, told him he’d be back as soon as could, hugged him goodbye, then told the nurse, “Take me, right now, to Major Keys.”
She seemed to attempt it: she took him straight to Keys’s office. But the Major wasn’t in it. So Papa ended up back out in the same empty lobby, where for two more hours his fury just kept making the rounds of his own bloodstream. He was then told, by one of the secretaries he kept unmercifully pestering, that Major Keys had gone home for the weekend.
Papa’s first stop after leaving the asylum was a 7-Eleven, where his first purchase was a quart of Colt 45 malt liquor and his second a carton of Lucky Strikes. Toss an old ballplayer into a Kafka nightmare and the least he’ll do is try to poison it back around into something recognizably American.
His second stop was the 7-Eleven’s phone booth, in which he lit a cigarette, opened the malt liquor, and attempted some one-man long-range recon by calling LA and Pasadena and San Fernando and Riverside and San Bernardino and San Diego directory assistance, trying to find the residence or phone number of a Major or Richard or Dick or Rich Keys. When that failed, he sat down in the car with his Colt 45 and took stock of the situation: if he stayed in Mira Loma till Monday he’d miss the Tugs and have to fly back to Portland at his own expense—and Bowen really would fine him, if he hadn’t already; he was almost out of cash, had never owned a credit card, and if he wrote checks for another day’s motel and car, they’d bounce; there was little chance, on Monday, that he’d learn anything from Keys; anything he did learn would probably be no help; he really had no choice but to rejoin the Tugs. Yet to leave Irwin limp and drooling like t
hat felt like leaving him to die.
5. Monosodium Glutamate
On Saturday, May 26, Everett was awakened early in his caretaker’s cottage by a banging at his door. When he opened it, Chief Yulie’s daughter, Corey, stood holding a Western Union telegram from Papa, sent care of the Muskrat. Everett thanked her, shut the door, tore the envelope open. The telegram said:
CALL ME COLLECT ASAP IN ALBUQUERQUE AT 505-787-6501 OR BACK IN CAMAS IF I LEFT STOP IRWIN’S LIFE IN TERRIBLE DANGER STOP LOVE PAPA
Everett jumped into his clothes, drove through dense morning fog to Shyashyakook’s one and only and unlucky phone booth, reached Papa at his Albuquerque motel just as the Tugs were climbing on the bus, and heard a terribly rushed version of what had happened to Irwin. Everett’s overwhelming first reaction was relief. “Even a loony bin,” he told Papa, “is a step up from ’Nam. He’s alive, and physically whole, and sooner or later the sons of bitches’ll have to let him go.” But in a voice ravaged by sleeplessness and smoke, Papa said, “What they let out of that asylum may be alive, but it won’t be Irwin.” And Everett grew frightened—so frightened that he reacted angrily, demanding that Papa explain.
“I’ve got no time,” Papa said. But the tone of his voice explained everything. “Listen, Everett. If you think of anything at all, legal or not, that might get Irwin out of that place, call us in Camas and we’ll discuss it. And please. Think hard. And think fast.”
With that, Papa signed off.
And Everett found he couldn’t think at all.
He drove back home, boiled his three morning eggs, made some sulfurous coffee, sat down to drink it—
and found himself staring at the buttercups. But in the bleak morning gray the sight of them was suddenly troubling. They were still a lovely color, still a clutch of blossoms blithely opening to daylight, still a reminder of his little epiphany on the headland the day before. But their very blitheness now disturbed him. They seemed to have no idea what had happened to them. They seemed to feel, thanks to the greasy water in their soup can and the gray light pouring through the window, that they still stood wild in their south-sloping meadow, and still had green bodies and hidden roots. His eyes lurched around for some more soothing morning cud. He tried the Campbell’s label. It said “OFFICIAL SOUP OF THE WINTER OLYMPICS.” It said. “INSPECTED FOR WHOLESOMENESS.” It said lots of things he’d never noticed. “EXPOSITION UNIVERSELLE INTERNATIONALE 1900,” for instance. Or “SIMPLE SUGARS (GRAMS) 1, COMPLEX CARBOHYDRATES (GRAMS) 7.” He noticed gold ink on the label as well as the obvious black, red and white. He noticed the way the O in the word SOUP listed off to one side, like the can drunk. Then, by accident, he glanced too high, and noticed that his buttercups had also begun to list. They were no longer standing the way he’d stood them, no longer engaged in the glorious basking that overwhelmed him on the headland. They were leaning toward the light now, craning toward it. He’d been dead wrong about the blitheness. The buttercups now seemed to know—to understand with that purely physical knowledge that all living things possess—that something was wrong. Their craning was like a cry: they were calling out with all the body language they possessed for a life or a place they had no minds with which to remember.
Confused by the intensity of his feelings, Everett tried to defy them: he gave the can a half twist, spinning the blossoms away from the window, then stepped outside and went about his morning chores. Hoping to clear his head and come up with a fabulous rescue plan for Irwin, he worked like a dog and left his thoughts to compost. But a few hours later, having moved a cord of wood, fixed a fence, and fitted a new handle in an ax that deer, or Booger, had gnawed for salt, he passed by the kitchen window, took a glance, and saw that the buttercups were again craning toward the light. Then he made an association he regretted at once: he realized they reminded him of Irwin.
Drifting back into the cottage, he sat down at the table, gave the flowers another half twist away from the window, and this time cupped his bare hands over them, blocking their “view” of the gray light. Bracing his elbows, ignoring the pain that gathered in his shoulders, he remained there, motionless, with his hands cupped low over the blossoms. It took time. It took a long, long time. But, ever so slowly, the buttercups swung round till their thin necks again craned and their blind faces followed the course of the sun.
So, he thought, unsure whether to hope or to weep with despair. Yearning can pierce a hand.
“MONOSODIUM GLUTAMATE,” said the soup can.
6. Imagination Time
The sedatives, Major Keys told both my parents over the phone on Monday morning, were being administered primarily because without them Irwin would “rave.” And if the Loffler staff tried to quell his raving, he would become violent.
Mama asked for a description of the raving. With the help of a file, Keys gave her a direct quote. “Jesus loves the little children,” he recited without a hint of modulation or emotion. “All the children of the world. Black and yellow, brown and white, they are precious in his sight, pouring out their blood so red, till they’re dead, they’re dead, they’re dead …”
Papa, wielding a pencil and paper, asked the Major what sedatives he was giving Irwin, and what dosages. His charts weren’t available, Keys said, because they were in use. “The electroshock, then,” Papa asked. “How much? How many times?”
Keys: “I’m afraid that’s on the charts.”
“Who recommends or prescribes it or whatever the word is? Who approves the electroshock?” Papa asked.
“I do,” said Keys.
“And you don’t know how many treatments you’ve given him?”
“Maybe three,” said the Major. “But I can’t swear to it. I have a great many patients, Mr. Chance.”
“Three in two weeks,” Mama said. “Is that normal? Isn’t that a lot?”
“It’s a little unusual,” Keys admitted. “And I could be wrong. But Vietnam vets are an unusual class of patient, Mr. and Mrs. Chance. And your son, I’m sorry to tell you, is an exceptionally stubborn case.”
“How so?” Mama asked.
“Part of the problem is his robustness, his great physical strength.”
“That’s a problem, as you see it,” Mama said.
“Coupled with his religious indoctrination, yes. Your son indulges in sociopathic behaviors, but believes them justified. His attack on Captain Dudek, for instance. He feels he did it for Jesus. Add physical strength to that kind of delusion and you have a very dangerous young man on your hands.”
Mama’s voice began to tremble. “Did you know, Major, that everything that boy has done in his life he has tried to do for Jesus?”
“Including acts of insubordination, psychotic attacks, attempted murder?”
“Our son Irwin,” Papa said, quietly but vehemently, “is the least violent human I have ever met. Bar none. That’s what got him into this.”
“You’re entitled to your opinion, Mr. Chance. But in view of the facts, and the accepted definition of the word ‘Violent,’ I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“What he’s talking about,” Mama said, “and what you Army people keep conveniently forgetting, is that young boy Captain Dudek ordered shot. Because that’s what set Irwin off. He couldn’t bear it. Because antiviolent—that’s what he really is. Loving, is what he is. And you can’t just shock and drug that out of him, you can’t kill the Christian in him and call that a cure!”
“Calm yourself, Mrs. Chance,” said the Major. “We’re trying to help your son. And we’re not killing anything. What we’re actually—”
“Matthew eighteen, six!” Mama shouted into the receiver. “Mark nine, forty-two! Luke seventeen, two! ‘But whoso shall offend one of these little ones which believe in me, it were better for him that a millstone were hanged about his neck, and that he were drowned in the depth of the sea!’ That, Major Keys, is what brought on our son’s attack!”
“Please,” said the Major. “Please calm yourself and try to listen, Mrs. C
hance. I’m very sorry to say this, I’m sorry if it shocks you both. But it is my belief—based on the testimony of every rational witness at your son’s hearing—that this ‘boy’ Irwin keeps referring to simply does not, and never did, exist.”
Linda and the twins were watching Mama when Keys said these words. They say that she turned gray instantly and sat down on the bed. And for the rest of the call she never spoke a word. I was in the kitchen with Papa, and had no idea what Keys was saying. All I knew was that one moment Papa was standing at the sink staring angrily out the window, and the next he had sunk down in a catcher’s squat. But he didn’t look like a catcher. He looked like a man who’d been kicked in the stomach. Very quietly, very cautiously, he said, “Let me ask this, Major. How would Irwin need to behave, what is it you’re waiting to see, in order for him to be released, or at least transferred to a facility closer to his home?”
“Well.” Keys gave it some thought. “We’d have to see a complete cessation of the singing episodes, the religious delusions and the violent mood swings. And of course the physical attacks on our staff—those must be months behind him.”
“Months!” Papa cried.
“We can’t release a man who attacks nurses and orderlies, Mr. Chance.”
“Attacks,” Papa said, shaking his head. “It’s so hard, for us who know him, to believe, Major. You’re saying that Irwin sometimes just stands up, undrugged and unprovoked, attacks people, and then sings, or somehow conveys, that he’s doing it all for Jesus?”
“We’re not careless enough to allow him to hurt people, Mr. Chance. But you’ve read what he did to Captain Dudek. And he still lashes out. You and your family, for your own safety, had better start to accept the fact that your son’s condition makes him dangerous.”
The Brothers K Page 58
