13 1/2

by Nevada Barr

  Clyde held open the door to the little toilet off the recovery room and Dylan brushed by him to step inside. Contact with the old man was alarming. The sensation of life that close was too much stimulus. Inside, Dylan had the burnt-out-hole feeling a bad trip left.

  Clyde had to steady him so he could hit the john. As they’d done when he was tripping, the walls wavered and leaned-the acid was still in his system-but now, added to it, was whatever they’d given him to bring him down, so the wavering and leaning was in slow motion. He kept jerking as if he were toppling over, only to find that he was still on the level; it was the walls that were sneaking out.

  “That was some bad shit,” Dylan said in hopes his own voice would make him seem more like himself to himself.

  “Bad as in baaaaad, meaning good, or bad as in bad, meaning bad?” Clyde asked seriously. The inmates ragged him because of his desire to keep abreast of the current slang.

  “Bad, as in shit,” Dylan said and dropped the skirt of his hospital gown.

  “Ah,” Clyde said.

  Through the skin on Clyde ’s bald head, Dylan could see the gears in his brain working that one over. An impulse close to kindness-a sensation pretty much alien to Dylan-hit, and he wanted to explain but couldn’t; he’d forgotten whatever the hell they were talking about.

  As Clyde helped him get back into the bed without toppling onto it face first, Dylan chanced the question he’d been avoiding since resuming this twisted brand of consciousness: “Did I kill anybody?”

  “Nobody that matters,” Clyde said.

  A stab of fear so visceral it caused him to clutch at his gut flashed through him. Clyde saw it. “No, kid, you didn’t kill anybody. You didn’t kill anybody at all.”

  Relieved, but still shaking, Dylan lay back on the pillows. “You have to cuff me again?”

  “I got to.”

  Dylan put his arms in the leather cuffs, palm up so Clyde could find the buckles more easily. “Is Dr. Kowalski okay?”

  The orderly chuckled, a whispery winter leaf sound. “Nope. The warden threw his scrawny ass out in the snow. Fired him. Warden Cole doesn’t hold with that kind of thing, not without the proper whatnot. Like he’s always saying.”

  Clyde didn’t have to voice it; Dylan had heard the warden on the subject a number of times. In juvie, it was surprising how many experts wanted to use the inmates-all in the name of helping them, of course.

  “These are not guinea pigs,” the warden was fond of saying. “They are boys. Real live boys.”

  If Pinocchio had known what it was like, he wouldn’t have been so hot to trot on the real-live-boy thing, Dylan thought as he drifted back into the black drug place that sufficed for sleep.

  When he woke again, he wasn’t alone. It was full dark outside, and a single lamp burned on the little table bolted to the floor by the hall door. Two hands held onto his right wrist. He opened his eyes the barest slit. Phil Maris, his algebra teacher, was holding his wrist; his head was bowed as if in prayer. Phil was slender and short, maybe five-eight. His long hair was tied back in a ponytail. The warden let him get by with it because, under the radical trappings, Phil was a good, solid, Midwestern boy and an excellent teacher. Dylan closed his eyes and let himself enjoy the comfort of the man’s touch. Phil was nearly thirty and still unmarried, but he wasn’t queer. You didn’t spend four years in Drummond without figuring out who wanted to jump your bones. Phil was as straight as they came.

  “I am so sorry, man.” Phil had sensed Dylan was awake.

  “He mind-fucked me bad,” Dylan said, and was shamed by the nearness of tears in his voice.

  “Hey, man, you know better than that.”

  Phil never let the kids use that kind of language in his presence. He said four-letter words only served to let others know you were too stupid to come up with something better suited to human discourse.

  “I’m sorry about the acid,” Phil went on. “I never should have dropped with you. I don’t do that stuff anymore. I’ve seen too many burnouts.”

  “If I hadn’t dropped with you, I would never have found my way back from this trip,” Dylan said truthfully. “Kowalski, Doctor Kowalski, was taking me some bad places. Real bad places.”

  “He said you flipped out and tried to kill him.”

  “I guess.” Kowalski would have told them what he thought would get him off the hook. Dylan didn’t bother to defend himself. Matricide, patricide, killer of little girls versus The Doctor; nobody would believe him.

  “Promise me you won’t do it again.”

  “Flip out?”

  “Drop acid.”

  Phil asked Dylan for the promise as if he thought Dylan would keep it. Dylan promised. He would keep it. Not only because he’d been offered the chance but because the acid had pushed him too close to the edge.

  “Jesus,” Phil said, and dropped his head as if talking to the man himself. “I’ve got to get you out of here.”

  Dylan said nothing. Nobody could get him out of Drummond. From here, he went to the state pen. Still, he appreciated the sentiment.

  For a long moment neither of them said anything. Dylan was watching the walls. For the most part they were staying upright. There were things at the rim of his consciousness, nasty acid things, but they were not coming forward at the moment.

  There’d be flashbacks from this one. He could feel them like storms building just over the mountains of his mind.

  “Dylan, you’re a good kid. A smart kid. In here, you’ll end up garbage. No kidding. Garbage. If you don’t fight like a panther the doctors will make you crazy, or the crazies will make you like them. These boys-most of these boys-never had a chance. They lie because they have no idea what the truth is. They steal because they can’t picture tomorrow, so what the heck, take what you want today. You could be different, but you’ve got to get out. You’ve got to have a place to go that’s sane.

  “A safe place,” Phil said. “Are you up to building?” Phil taught all the math sciences: algebra, trig, geometry, calculus. Trigonometry was his favorite, and he often set Dylan to building something in his mind. That skill had been the foundation of the walls he’d made to contain his evil.

  “I’ve got a safe place,” Dylan said. Phil was the only one he’d told about the fortress in his head where the beast was caged.

  “No, man, a beautiful place, a good place. A garden maybe. Yeah, a garden.”

  Dylan had never considered a place of peace, of beauty. The idea warmed him and, in Drummond, in January, the cold bones of winter broke brittle in the soul.

  “I don’t know how to… ” he began and faltered because the tears wanted to come back into his voice. When he’d frozen them, he went on. “I mean, shit, man, what do I know about gardens?” What did he know about beauty, was what he’d been going to say, but it sounded like such bullshit in his brain he didn’t.

  “We’ll do it from pictures. How hard is that? Come on, man. Do it. You got to do it or you’ll die here,” Phil pleaded. “We start with dirt. Jeez, man, you know dirt, don’t you?”

  “Dirt.” Dylan closed his eyes to please his friend and teacher. He and Phil picked a place with gentle rolling hills, like those that could be seen from the third-floor windows. They laid out a wandering path. That was enough; it was a start.

  The door opened, and a guard stuck his head in. “Got a visitor.” Dylan returned from the survey of his interior garden. Visitors were never allowed in any deeper than the reception area.

  Surprises in Drummond were not a good thing.

  This one was. Rich pushed in behind the guard. Time was screwed by acid, but it seemed to Dylan as if he stood too long staring at him and Phil. He felt the warmth of Phil’s hands leave his wrist and, in the drug residue, he saw the warmth flit away, gold and fragile.

  “You two look cozy,” Rich said with a smile.

  “Hey, brother,” Dylan said. “This is Phil, my math teacher. I’ve told you about him.”

  “Yeah.” Rich shook hands
with Phil Maris and took his place by Dylan’s bedside.

  The math teacher stood awkwardly for a second, then left with a “Later, Dylan.”

  “Phil’s a good guy,” Dylan said. “He’s about all that keeps this place from being hell.”

  “I’m glad you have somebody you can talk to,” Rich said, but he didn’t seem all that thrilled. “How you doing, brother? One of the guys bribed a guard and called me. I had to raise holy hell to get in. Sara pulled some serious strings. They manage to completely fry what little brain you’ve got?”

  “’Fraid so,” Dylan said. “Goddamn fucking weird. Kowalski’s crazier than the kids he works on.”

  “No shit. The warden said he’s history.”

  Acid residue was turning the stain patterns old leaks had left on the ceiling into ugly things. Dylan closed his eyes. The garden he and Phil had been planning appeared, rolling hills, the serpentine path they’d laid out, marked with stakes, each tied with orange surveyor’s tape. Dirt.

  “I love old Phil,” he said, the sedatives overlaying the LSD slurring his words.

  “Yeah?”

  Rich, the room, the cuffs slid away. Dylan held out his hand, a shovel came into it, and he began to dig. He’d plant butterfly bushes so they would come back.

  16

  “I love Phil.”

  Dylan passed out after that. Richard watched his eyes. He was dreaming, the eyeballs twitching under the lids. “Brother,” Richard said, then louder, “Dyl!” but got no response. Richard had never dropped acid, didn’t touch pot, and drank sparingly; drugs weren’t what got him high.

  “You got to clean up your act,” he said affectionately to his brother’s inert form. “What kind of creep gives a sixteen-year-old kid LSD? I should have gotten the bastard fired when he tried to electrocute you. Fuck.” Richard turned from where his brother lay in uneasy sleep and crossed to the window. It was dark out, the heavy wire mesh dulling even the searchlights around Drummond.

  “What kind of creeps give an eleven-year-old kid seventeen years in prison?” he whispered. Dylan could be locked up until he was twenty-eight. He looked back at his brother, pale and sweating under the room’s single light. What kind of a man would Dylan be by then?

  “You going to be a drug addict, brother? Go with the gangs when you get to the big house? You can’t do that to me.” If juvie had changed Dylan, Richard did not want to see what the state pen would do to him.

  Dylan’s hands were moving spasmodically in the padded cuffs and there was a slight smile on his face.

  Dreaming of old Phil?

  The thought soured Richard’s already dark mood.

  It was a hell of a long drive to Drummond from Rochester, and he’d had to cut school to do it. Not that he gave a damn about school. He’d surpassed those morons when he was in eighth grade. And that was just the teachers. He’d been born smarter than the pimply fools he sat in homeroom with. He maintained a 4.0 average just to let them know he could.

  “Brother,” he tried again, but Dylan was still in Never Never Land. “I drive four hours, and you pass out on me. What a deal.” Dylan’s hand, palm up where it threaded through the restraints, convulsed, the fingers grasping. Richard took it between his own. Flesh on flesh was not a sensation he usually enjoyed, but he did with Dylan. Maybe because he was family.

  His brother’s hand was rich with life. Richard felt it coursing under the skin, touching up against his own life with such force the two flowed together. He could feel the acid burn leaking into his blood, the dulling of the sedatives blanketing his thoughts. He didn’t remember being this close to his brother when they were kids. The whole power thing between parents and children worked against it. The night of the killings something had happened. Their blood had mixed on the blade of the axe and they’d become more than brothers-they’d become blood.

  Richard took back his hand. “Got to quit the drugs, brother. They’re killing me.” He laughed, then said, “I’m not kidding.” He leaned back and stretched his legs. He was six feet even in his stocking feet, taller than Dylan by two inches, though he doubted that would last. Dylan had a couple years to catch up.

  Richard had fought against sending Dylan to Drummond, but, fourteen and wounded, no way was he effective. In hindsight, Drummond was probably the right choice. He’d been too naïve to realize after the killings that Dylan would probably have been beaten to death by the good citizens of Rochester if he hadn’t been locked up. They paid lip service to the tragedy of his extreme youth, but they were scared to death of him. Scared their own little boys and girls would flip out some night and start butchering the family.

  Drummond was giving Dylan a better education than he would have gotten at the jail in Rochester -as good as he would have gotten in public school. The warden was a cutting-edge kind of guy. Until he’d let a berserk psychiatrist mess with Dylan’s brain a second time, Richard had been cool with him.

  The state penitentiary was going to be a different ballgame. Richard had heard stories of what happened to guys in the pen. Dylan said it wasn’t a problem in juvie, that there were “girls”-boys who were into it-and they took the pressure off. In the penitentiary, rape wasn’t about sex. Sex wasn’t about sex; it was about dominance. Richard knew that instinctually. The thought of anybody touching his brother made his skin clammy. For a miserable heartbeat he could feel the rape inside of himself.

  “Shit,” he said to banish the visceral image. “Dylan! Wake up, man. Talk to me!”

  Dreaming his dreams, Dylan slept on.

  Richard settled back into his slouch. Four and a half years had passed since his brother was locked up. Richard was old enough to get custody of him as a minor, if he was free and if Sara would vouch for him. Sara was a nurse. That was about as solid as a citizen could get. She wouldn’t like it; Dylan frightened her.

  I would be my brother’s keeper, he thought.

  The door behind him creaked open. “Hey, man, give us a few more… ” Richard stopped. It wasn’t the guard; it was the math teacher.

  Good old Phil.

  “Sorry,” Phil said. “I didn’t know you were still here.”

  “Where else would I be?”

  Phil didn’t answer that. He pulled up a second chair and sat too close, studying Dylan’s face. “Rest will do him good,” he said.

  “Yeah.”

  For a minute they sat in silence. Richard waited for the fool to go and got the feeling Phil was waiting for the same thing. It pissed him off. Good old Phil could wait until hell froze over.

  “Dylan ever talk to you about that night?” Phil asked.

  “He doesn’t remember it,” Richard said coldly. “I nearly bashed his brains out with an axe.”

  “So they tell me.”

  Richard didn’t like the math teacher’s tone.

  “I’ve seen your brother nearly every day for four years. Dylan’s a good kid.”

  “For a killer,” Richard said.

  Phil looked at him hard.

  Richard said nothing.

  Phil kept staring at him. “You don’t live with a kid for four years without getting to know him.”

  Phil, good old Phil, was heading toward something. Richard watched him warily.

  The hippy hair, the I’m-your-best-friend note he took with Dylan, what kind of teacher was that? “What are you getting at?” he asked.

  “Long drive isn’t it? Four hours or something?”

  “Something like that.”

  “Never miss a visit, do you?”

  “You have a problem with that?” This guy was getting on his nerves in a big way. “I’ve got a good barber I can recommend,” Richard said.

  Phil ignored the cheap shot. Rose above it, Richard thought acidly.

  “Eight hours round-trip twice a week. Lot of time and energy. Most kids your age wouldn’t do that.” Phil’s pupils widened slightly as if he wanted to look past Richard’s eye sockets and into his mind. “Why do you?”

  “Because he’s m
y brother,” he snapped. “What are you getting at?”

  “Nothing, man, just talking is all.” He stood up. “Take it easy,” he said. “We’ll look after your brother.”

  He left.

  Goddamn stupid fuck, who did he think he was talking to? “Fucking cunt,” Richard whispered. “Guard!”

  An old man in a gray uniform stuck his head in the door. “We’re counselors now, didn’t you know that boy?” The old guy grinned, but Richard wasn’t in the mood.

  “I have to see the warden.”

  “Warden’s gone home. Having his supper about now, I expect.”

  “I don’t care if he’s having his goddamn hair done, I need to see him. Now.”

  The guard looked uncertain, deciding whether Richard’s rage or tearing the warden away from his dinner would go hardest on him.

  “The warden will want to hear what I have to tell him,” Richard said. “Trust me on that. And trust me, if you’re the one makes him hear it later rather than sooner, you’re going to be out of a job.”

  The guard blinked then. “Okay, kid. You win. Come with me.”

  Richard left without saying good-bye to his brother.

  LOUISIANA, 2007

  James Ruppert. Kills eleven family members at Easter dinner. 1975. This guy was nuts. I guess we’re all nuts though, so I’ll do him. I don’t see myself killing family the way Ruppert did and, before you ask, no, I didn’t crave this sort of action back when I was at home. But you’ve got to admit his family was shitty to him. And here he is, forty-one and still living at Mommy’s house. That had to say “failure” in a big way, proving what his dad was always saying he was. Big brother’s over to dinner with his eight kids-Eight! You’d think the brother would have shot his own self-and his wife who used to be James’s girlfriend, and while she’s cooking up the Easter ham, he knows Mom’s thinking about throwing him out on his ear; and he hasn’t got a job, so he’s broke. Then you factor in that he stands to get a lot of dough from insurance. Shooting the family starts to look pretty good. Sane even. Until you get to the kids. Maybe he figures they aren’t quite people; with eight of them, they wouldn’t seem like an endangered species exactly, just a housecleaning issue. What I don’t get is why go to all that trouble then wait for the cops? Did he think he would get off on a thing like that? If he did, then he really was nuts. Hey, maybe he should have gotten off on the insanity plea. Catch 22. We’re all nuts, but if we tell you that, then we’re not. I feel sorry for James; he was fucked from the start.