I Can Hear the Mourning Dove

by James Bennett

  “But wasn’t the door locked?”

  “Of course. You’ve heard of the old credit card trick, haven’t you?”

  “Yes, but do you have a credit card?”

  “No. I have a library card. It’s made of plastic, like a credit card.”

  “If you have a library card, it must mean that you read books.”

  “Yeah, from time to time I do. Hey look, Red, is this gonna be ‘Twenty Questions’ or what?”

  “I’m sorry, I meant no harm.”

  “Yeah, well, don’t wet your pants. I’ve never kissed ass in my life, and I’m not gonna do it in this hospital.”

  My pulse has quickened again and there are tears stinging my eyes. I blink them back. “I’m sorry, really I am. I am only trying to make conversation to the best of my ability, but I’m not very good at it.”

  “Yeah, okay, like I’m sorry I got stiff with you. I’ll get twenty questions when I go to court, I don’t need it now.”

  “I forgot that you have to go to trial. Please forgive me. I only meant about the books that we may have something in common. I read books all the time. Dr. Rowe and my mother think I read too much because it is a solitary activity which I use as a means of withdrawal. When I’m flat out I don’t read at all, I lose interest in just about everything.”

  “I wouldn’t know about that,” says Luke. “Most of this shit about psychopaths and stuff goes right over my head. Most of what I read is stuff out of the sixties. That was a time when people took no shit. They stood up to just about every bullshitter there was, and told them to kiss ass.”

  “My father was active in the Vietnam protest movement,” I say. “He was even in the march on Washington in ’sixty-nine.”

  “Your old man sounds like a cool dude.”

  “He’s dead now. He was very dear to me, we were like best friends. My Uncle Larry died in Vietnam. His name is inscribed on the Vietnam monument in Washington, D.C. Sometime I would like to go there and run my fingers over his chiseled name; it would be comforting because it would prove he wasn’t overlooked.”

  “That’s a bummer about your old man and your uncle, Red; some of your phraseology is pretty weird though.”

  “My father and I used to go for walks at Allerton. We went several times a week in nice weather. Our house was on the Allerton estate, near the park.”

  “I know the place you’re talkin’ about,” he says. He is grinding out his cigarette butt on the floor. “It’s downstate; I’ve been there.”

  “You’ve been to Allerton Park?” This information makes me uneasy.

  “A couple of times for drug seminars. We got this new supervisor at Clark House last year named Spellmyer. About the first thing he did was load us all up and take us there for drug seminars.”

  “They use the mansion for conferences and seminars,” I say. “But are you a drug user?”

  He waves his hand. “Hell no. I’ve smoked a little pot from time to time, that’s about it. You tell that to a bullshitter, though, and he figures you’re a junkie or a dealer. Or both.”

  It still stuns me that he’s been to Allerton. “Did you like the park?” I ask him.

  He shrugs and says, “It was okay. There wasn’t much action there. You got to remember, we were listenin’ to bullshitters day and night. There was this huge statue of a naked guy with his arms out; we climbed up and put a rubber on his pecker.” He laughs harshly at the memory.

  He’s talking about the Sunsinger. “A rubber?”

  “Yeah, you know; a condom.” He laughs hard again.

  He’s talking about the Sunsinger. The Sunsinger greets the morning sun every day; he greets the eye. You must remember what Dr. Rowe says: the eye is a delusion just as surely as the voice is. But Luke defiled the statue; he is Surly, why have I chosen to be here with him?

  He’s not aware that I am embarrassed or offended. He says, “Anyway, gettin’ back to the subject, I figure I was born into the wrong time in history. I’ve got a few paperbacks back in my room at home—Slaughterhouse Five and one called Soul on Ice, and a real good book on the Hell’s Angels.” He takes off his headband, wipes some sweat from his forehead onto the back of his wrist, and then puts the headband back on.

  Without a warning, he wants to change the subject. He asks me what I’m in for.

  “I thought I already told you,” I say quickly. “I’m crazy wild and I don’t fit in.”

  “Yeah, but there has to be something. With me, it was pullin’ Johnny’s plug; that’s what I’m in for.”

  “I was molested and it was too traumatic. It precipitated my current psychotic state. Once I tried suicide but it didn’t work. They put me in for the longest time and gave me shock treatments.” I need to be very careful—the sky could return at any moment if I reveal too much. He defiled the statue.

  “You tried to snuff? You shouldn’t do a thing like that.”

  “Please, I was so desperate, I don’t think I could explain it. Besides, didn’t we agree that there are worse things than death?”

  “Yeah, that’s true, but not for a person like you, with a good mind. I have a lot of respect for a good mind.”

  Is he trying to encourage me? What kind of conversation this is I know not. “I don’t mean to be quarrelsome, but I think it would be better to be stupid and in control.”

  “When you tried to snuff, how did you do it?”

  “I cut my wrists in the bathtub. Please, there is static; I don’t want to talk about it anymore.”

  He shrugs and says, “That’s cool. It’s up to you.” He begins putting lumber away in the lower cabinets.

  I say, “I would rather talk about your foster homes.”

  He shrugs again. “What’s to say?”

  “Please, I would never be impertinent. I’ve always been so close to my mother and father, I can’t imagine what it would be like to grow up without a family. Did you ever know your parents at all?”

  “No. And I only lived in a foster home once. Mostly, it was group homes. Right now I’m livin’ at Clark House; they moved me there from Haig House.”

  “Why did they move you?”

  “I got expelled from East High for gettin’ in too many fights. That’s why they put me in Clark House. Clark House is for bad asses. I guess somebody thinks I’m a bad ass.”

  He fights. He is brutal. But the static has diminished and I feel I will not get scrambled. I would like to ask him about the fighting, but I am afraid.

  He says, “When I was goin’ to East High, these guys were squeezin’ me. They wanted me to join this gang called the Silkworms. I told ’em to shove it; I never join gangs. If you’re a member of a gang, it means you don’t go your own way. They couldn’t handle it, so they put me on their list.”

  “It seems so unfair. All you wanted was to be left alone. If you don’t have to go to prison will they let you return to Clark House?”

  “Who knows? Some bullshitter will decide that. Eight months from now I’ll be eighteen; I’ll have the system off my back and I’ll go my own way.” He has finished putting the lumber away. He closes the cabinet doors and stands up.

  “You are vulnerable,” I say suddenly, without thinking. “A remarkable thought has occurred to me.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “The system makes you vulnerable because it holds you in its grip. I am vulnerable because everything threatens and frightens me, but I have my mother. No one can put my mother and me apart.”

  He says, “If you’re vulnerable, that means you’re somebody’s victim. Somebody has a hold over you. Take my word, I am nobody’s victim.”

  “Please don’t feel insulted. It was just a thought which occurred to me.”

  “Okay, so here’s the thought that occurs to me: I don’t want your pity or anybody’s pity. When it comes to pity, I piss on it. A bullshitter can put me in jail, but he can’t get inside my head. He can’t control my thoughts. Bullshitters are never happy if they can’t control your mind.
”

  He has minor static again. “I meant no harm, really.”

  “That’s another thing. You can’t go around comin’ unglued every time a person says something. Let’s get the hell out of here. You get the lights while I fix this lock.”

  It is only two days later that he sits by me at lunch in the cafeteria. There are many available chairs, but he chooses the one next to mine. His presence makes me tense, but I am not frightened.

  There is meat loaf with gravy on my tray; I couldn’t warn the staff in time to leave it off. I pick at my gravyless mashed potatoes and my applesauce. Luke shovels his food in aggressively.

  For a few minutes we don’t speak, and then I say, “I would like to tell you something, if you don’t mind.”

  “It’s a free country.”

  “Miss Ivey is gone. They have moved her to another facility. It was only a matter of time.”

  He talks with his mouth full: “You mean the old chick that watches TV all the time?”

  “Yes.”

  He shrugs, then I tell him, “They sent her to another institution. Mrs. Grant told me how the procedure works. If you’re catatonic, and they think you’re not going to get any better, they send you to a long-term facility; this hospital is not a long-term facility.”

  His mouth is still full, but he speaks anyway: “That’s how it was gonna be for Johnny, except he still had his mind. Miss Ivey was more or less brain-dead, so she won’t know the difference. What’s the big deal anyway, was she a friend of yours or something?”

  “Not exactly. It’s just the loss of hope. It’s one of my greatest fears. I’m afraid that some day I will be just like her, and they will have to find a long-term facility for me.” I don’t know why I am telling him about my fears; if he is laying the trap which the sky has predicted, I am walking into it.

  “I doubt if that’ll happen,” he says.

  “I’m sure you’re trying to offer encouragement, but don’t forget I’ve done research on the pathological mind. It’s the only prognosis for my life which makes sense.”

  He shrugs again. I decide it will be less threatening if he talks about himself. “Your friend John sounds like a very curious person. How did the two of you become friends?”

  “I was workin’ at the dodo house, and he made deliveries for this provision company. After we unloaded his truck, the two of us would sit around and shoot the shit.”

  “Excuse me, but do retarded people have a house of their own?”

  “Yeah. The same agency runs it that runs Clark House. If you live at Clark House, and you keep your nose clean, they’ll give you a little work at the. dodo house. You can earn a few bucks that way. The truth is, I always liked the dodos; they were just who they were and they never gave any shit. Anyway, John was just out of the navy. They kicked him out on a section eight.”

  “What is a section eight?”

  “A medical discharge. Unfit for military service. He went AWOL for a few days but caught pneumonia. The MPs brought him back. He kept getting shrink interviews and telling officers to get bent. It was probably less hassle to just give him the section eight and get rid of him. I could tell he was a guy who would do his own thing and take no grief from anybody.”

  I nibble at my green beans. His friend John scares me but I don’t want to tell him that. He goes on, “I never talk about this stuff. My social worker wants to know all this shit, but she’s just another bullshitter so I usually tell her zilch. It must be that I like you.”

  “It would be very odd for you to like me,” I say quickly. “We are so different. My friend DeeDee likes me and I think Dr. Rowe does too. Apparently I have redeeming qualities, but they’re not usually at the surface.”

  “You sure have a way with words, Red. Anyway, to get on with it, John told me he was blowin’ off the delivery job and gettin’ ready to go on the road, takin’ his Harley; he asked me if I wanted to go with him. He didn’t have to ask me twice, I was already on pro at Clark House, and if it meant gettin’ free and clear of social workers and other bullshitters, I was ready. What John had in mind was followin’ the crops. Migrant work, in other words.”

  “But I don’t understand how a person can find migrant work. Can you just drop everything and go?”

  “This was back in June. There’s guys that know the system of followin’ the crops, like this one guy we got to know named Ruiz. The first job we got was pickin’ strawberries on a couple farms close to Benton Harbor, Michigan. The work was hard and you couldn’t make much money because you got paid by the quart. For sleeping, we had these sort of dormitories. I didn’t care too much about the money, I was just glad to be on my own.”

  It does feel safer when he talks about himself. I say to him, “I can’t imagine the courage it would take to go out on the road like that and fend for yourself, on your own resources.”

  “You could imagine it if you’d spent your life in places like Clark House. A girl on the road, though, that might be somethin’ else, I’m not sure. Anyway, the strawberries were finished in a couple weeks, then we went up and picked blueberries for a while close to a place called Muskegon.”

  His bold story fascinates me. He pauses to finish his milk, then goes on. “We went for some R and R one weekend in Benton Harbor. We ended up spendin’ a few nights at a stripper’s house named Tina. I had my own bedroom and John was sleepin’ with Tina. In the daytime he was drinking wine most of the time and doin’ grass with Tina.”

  He is telling me his adventures with some whore. I’ve never had a talk like this in my life.

  “Anyway, bein’ at Tina’s house was pretty boring. For me, that is. John wasn’t bored at all. I finally told him I thought we ought to get back on the road and make some cash. He said he was mellowed out with Tina, why didn’t I just go on ahead and he would catch up with me later on. I was a little funked, but what could I say? It was his business and besides, there’s no guarantees on the road.”

  He wants to get close. The voice is warning me. But he doesn’t really like you. Can’t you see how clever it is?

  “I went out and picked some more blueberries and then some cherries for a few days. Then I went about a week with no work. It was harder to find work because I had to hitch; John had the bike. I got bummed out. It just wasn’t the same without him and I never did run into Ruiz again. I said the hell with it and hitched my way back home. The shit hit the fan at Clark House. I went from pro to strict pro.”

  “I’m so sorry, it seems so sad. You had high expectations. When did you find him in the hospital?”

  “That was later.” He looks at my plate. “You must not be hungry.”

  “My appetite is usually poor. Today is no exception.”

  “You haven’t even touched your meat loaf.”

  “Please, I’m vegetarian. I couldn’t eat it even if I wanted to. Would you like to have it?”

  “You sure?”

  “Oh yes, I’m quite sure. I’d like you to have it.”

  “What the hell, if it’s just goin’ in the garbage.” He takes my tray and scrapes the meat loaf onto his own. He begins devouring it.

  Then he touches my arm, without speaking. I look quickly into his eyes and he nods his head in the direction of the far end of the table. In a very low voice which is hardly more than a whisper, he says: “That’s my roommate. That’s the dodo I was talkin’ about.”

  I turn my head and look. A thin boy with black hair, who looks about eighteen, is sitting across the table from Mrs. Youngblood and Miss Sloan, another therapist.

  I turn back to Luke and whisper: “What’s his name?”

  “His name is Chris; they’re goofin’ on him. Check it out.”

  I look again. Mrs. Youngblood is telling Chris that he needs to eat slowly and take little bites. Chris takes a bite of meat loaf, then Mrs. Youngblood pulls his tray away from him. She tells him, “You chew that bite properly and swallow it, and then you may have your tray again.” She smiles at Miss Sloan.

 
He takes another bite and she pulls the tray away again. With no warning, Chris snaps his head forward violently three or four times and turns red in the face. Mrs. Youngblood smiles and arches her eyebrows. She says to Miss Sloan, “We don’t like this one little bit, do we?”

  They are taunting him. It’s hard for me to believe what I’m seeing.

  They repeat the procedure, only this time Chris whips his head more violently and barks like a dog. Mrs. Youngblood and Miss Sloan giggle at each other and Mrs. Youngblood repeats her words: “No sir, we don’t like this one little bit.”

  Why are they doing this? I feel so sorry for him, it’s cruel and unfair. I see for the briefest moment in my mind’s eye the cruelty of the Surly People when they taunted me with firecrackers and relished my suffering.

  I turn back to Luke, but his eyes have gone hard and glittery like gemstones.

  “There must be something we can do,” I say. “It’s not right for them to treat him this way. But there’s nothing we can do.”

  “Keep your voice down,” he says, without looking at me. His brittle eyes are locked on the far end of the table. I know immediately that something terrible is about to happen; my breathing tightens and my scalp begins to prickle.

  I look once more, and it is so pathetic. Chris is head-whipping and barking like a dog. The two women are giggling like adolescents.

  Suddenly, with the back of his hand, Luke knocks his tray to the floor, where it lands with a loud clatter. Then with his other hand, he knocks my tray to the floor.

  He stands up, facing Mrs. Youngblood. He says to her, “You prime bullshitter, leave him the hell alone.”

  The whole cafeteria has gone silent. Mrs. Youngblood has gone white with fear—the panicky fear of being discovered.

  Mrs. Youngblood orders Luke to sit down, and she tells Miss Sloan to call security.

  Luke grabs the table and flips it over; its edge smashes on the floor so hard it seems to shake the building. Chris has stopped barking and started to cry. Everything is charged with static and I am shaking like a leaf; I wonder how much more of this I will see before I get scrambled.