The Cold Smell Of Sacred Stone m-6

by George C. Chesbro

  "Dane, my good man," I said with a sigh, "let me tell you a little about myself-if you'll pardon the pun. I used to be a star performer-a tumbler of sorts-with the circus. I also happen to hold a black belt in karate. Not bad for a dwarf, huh?"

  "You're full of shit, shorty."

  I'd never been much into breaking bricks or boards, since the force I could generate was limited by my stature; the skills I'd parlayed into a black belt were based on quickness of movement and surprise; my moves were designed for self-defense, not showboating. Still, I understood the mechanics of force breaking, and what I wanted to do seemed worth a try.

  "Let me show you some of my shit, Dane," I said, then abruptly turned around and did a back handspring in the narrow aisle between the desks and the blackboard. My second back handspring gave me additional height and momentum, and on the third I did a half twist in the air and came down with both feet precisely in the center of the top of the desk at which Dane Potter was sitting.

  I was perfectly happy with my performance, which I hoped would impress Potter and calm him down, but as luck would have it I landed perfectly, with maximum force at a critical point; there was a sharp crack, and the desk split very nicely down the center, with me landing on my feet between the halves, inches away from the boy's ashen, open-mouthed face.

  "Damn, I missed that last flip," I said as I stepped back to the blackboard. "Sorry about your desk, Dane. I must be out of practice."

  Dane Potter's eyes went even wider, and he jumped sideways, virtually into the arms of the big cottage worker. The other students stared at me in shock for a few moments, then began to whoop and applaud. Even the cottage worker began to laugh as he slapped-none too gently-his charge on the back.

  "What do you say, Dane?" I continued, stepping up to him and holding out my hand. "How about letting me try to teach you guys something in the twenty minutes we've got left?"

  Potter didn't shake my hand-but he remained silent and still, which was fine with me. I spent the rest of the period talking about my years with the Statler Brothers Circus, and the time I had talked a hairy friend of mine-a three-hundred-pound Bengal tiger-back into his cage after he'd escaped.

  Word that there was indeed a crazy dwarf in the building who could do super back handsprings and break desks spread almost instantly through the small student population, and my next class-suicidal elementary age children-entered the room, accompanied by a teacher aide, very tentatively, eyes wide. By special request, I did one back handspring, performed a few simple coin tricks I'd picked up from a stockbroker friend of mine whose hobby was performing as a mime in Washington Square Park on weekends, then settled the four children down to what I thought was a pretty fair lesson on American Indians of the northeast. I rewarded them for their good behavior and attentiveness with another back handspring, this one with a half twist. Afterward, the teacher aide told me she'd never seen them quieter or more attentive.

  Veil was right, I thought; teaching at RCPC certainly wasn't like lecturing or giving seminars at the university. In many ways, this was more rewarding. A reasonably bright, motivated university student will learn what he or she has to learn, and most good students will learn despite what bad teachers may do to them. Not these kids. Working with emotionally disturbed kids-or any handicapped kids, for that matter-an individual teacher could have an enormous impact. The singer, not the song; that was what I was learning on my first day at RCPC. I was having a good time, and it helped to keep my mind off Garth and my troubles with Slycke.

  Four more classes, eight back handsprings, one lunch and one work period later I was finished for the day. By that time I figured I had met-or at least glimpsed-just about every one of the sixty-five students in the school; those who weren't in any of my classes had popped their heads in the doorway to check me out. As I walked through the halls at the end of the day, kids on their way back to their cottages in the opposite end of the building called out to me, and a couple of the little ones jumped into my arms.

  It seemed I wasn't to be fired because of my rather unorthodox teaching technique, or even billed for the desk I had broken. A number of the teachers insisted I stick around for coffee and talk, and on the way out Gladys Jacubowicz asked if I would come back the next day to substitute for the science teacher, who wasn't feeling well and would undoubtedly be out. I said I'd be there.

  From the children's hospital I went back across the field and up the hill to the main complex, and Building 26. I went directly to Slycke's office to let him know I was there, then went to Garth's room.

  Garth was the same-except that he had been rolled onto his other side, and the smell of lotion told me that Tommy Carling had been in recently to rub him down and massage his muscles again. Garth's eyes were still open, but glassy and unseeing. I'd asked Slycke if any decision had been made about medicating Garth, and the man had replied curtly that they were still in the process of observation and evaluation. I'd bitten off a sharp retort, realizing that I was being impatient.

  I spent the next two hours pacing around Garth's bed and talking to him, chatting about anything and everything that came into my head. I told my brother all about my first day teaching at the children's hospital, and how exhilarating it had been for me.

  Through it all, Garth, with the tubes up his nose and the needles in his arms, lay as still as a corpse, totally unresponsive. When I had talked myself out, I simply sat on the side of the bed and held his hand.

  Tommy Carling came in around six o'clock, bringing me a tray of food and a small thermos filled with hot coffee. He was off duty and on his way home, but Slycke had authorized him to tell me that in two or three days Garth might be put on small doses of Halidol, an antipsychotic drug of choice for catatonics, along with other drugs he would be given to counteract some of the nastier side effects of Halidol. The chemotherapy was fine with me; as far as I was concerned, nothing could be worse than Garth's present vegetative state.

  Thoroughly depressed by now, the exhilaration I had experienced during the day completely drained from me, I sat with Garth until a little after ten, then went back to my apartment in Building 18. I downed two stiff drinks, then went to bed and slept fitfully.

  6.

  I got up early to clean my wound, which was healing nicely, and put on a fresh bandage. Once again I arrived at the children's hospital ninety minutes early in order to check my class lists against patient records, and review the teacher's lesson plans.

  The cottage sheets were interesting. Two older adolescent boys had been up most of the night arguing-and finally exchanging blows-over the question of which one was really Jesus. A cottage worker had found a young girl sitting on the edge of her bed and talking in the darkness to Satan and two lesser demons. The worker reported that the girl had gone back to bed and slept peacefully after being given some crackers and a glass of milk; the report didn't say whether the girl had shared.

  The files indicated that one of the older adolescent girls in my third period class, Kim Trainor, was extremely bright and gregarious, but suicidal. As a baby, Kim had been in her grandmother's arms when the lady died; three years later, both Kim's parents had died; four years later, her aunt and uncle, who had taken Kim in, had been killed in an automobile accident. Kim had grown up with the people she loved all dying around her, dropping like flies, and she blamed herself. On an intellectual level, Kim claimed to understand that the deaths were not her fault, but on a much deeper emotional level she considered herself a pariah, a bringer of death, who did not deserve to live. The staff psychiatrists considered her prognosis good.

  During the day I had a talk with Chris Yardley, a schizophrenic whose prognosis was not so good, one of the boys who'd been arguing over who was Jesus. I suggested to Chris that it was all right to think he was Jesus, and positively commendable to behave like Jesus, but that he had to learn to function on the outside, to work at a steady job and support himself; I suggested to Chris that if he wanted to get out of the mental hospital he had to stop
telling people he was Jesus. Then he would be left alone, and he could go about normal business. Chris indicated that he could see my point, but that God had commanded him to tell people he was Jesus.

  So much for the sly intellectual approach with psychotics.

  My classes all went well. I'd apparently made a lasting impression the day before, and the kids were eager to come to my class. I kept them entertained with jokes, and I was presumptuous enough to think I might even have taught something to a few of them.

  Dane Potter wasn't in any of my classes, but I saw him in the hall and he waved. He was walking alone, which meant he had been taken off his level. I was pleased.

  I got through to the end of my second day in the school at the children's hospital without having to do a single back handspring.

  After school I took a bus to a large shopping mall in the nearby town of Nanuet, where there was a Music World outlet which I hoped would have what I wanted. They did. I purchased the boxed set of tapes, a hefty supply of A A batteries, and a Sony Walkman. I also picked up a roomy shoulder bag from a leather goods store, then headed back to the hospital.

  In a day or two, Garth would be put on psychotropic drugs; before that happened, before whatever perceptions he might still enjoy in his silent world were altered, there was something I wanted to try. I had a few therapeutic notions of my own.

  Toward the end of the insane nightmare that had been the Valhalla Project, Garth and I had been captured by Siegmund Loge and imprisoned in a vast underground complex in Greenland. There, for his own twisted reasons, Loge had attempted to explain and justify to us why he'd done what he had done-acts that had caused the deaths of many innocent people, the murders of my teenage nephew and a friend of his. The vehicle for this "explanation" had been a kind of bizarre sound and light show which he had spent most of his life putting together, an epic, sixteen-hour-long film comprised of cascading images-photographs, paintings, movie stills, sketches-depicting humankind's apparently intractable stupidity and cruelty unto itself, from prehistoric times to the present. These horrifying images, hundreds of thousands of them, had been masterfully edited to correspond to the rhythms and melodies of Richard Wagner's titanic masterpiece, Der Ring des Nibelungen: Das Rheingold, Die Walkure, Siegfried, and Gotterdammerung. The images had been carried to the depths of our souls and branded there by the music; it was an experience neither of us would ever forget, as much as we might want to.

  It was hard for me to imagine how Garth's mind could be damaged more than it already was, and Tommy Carling had said there was no way of knowing what Garth heard or didn't hear. If there was a sound he would respond to, anything at all that could reach into the dark silence in his mind and touch some part of him that was undamaged and could fight back, it was Der Ring des Nibelungen.

  The four operas making up Wagner's Ring cycle comprised a pretty bulky package of tapes, which was why I had purchased the shoulder bag; I didn't care to get into explanations of my idea of music therapy. I put the tapes, the Walkman, and the batteries into the bag, covered them with books and magazines in case anyone was inquisitive, then went over to the D.I.A. clinic. Slycke was off duty, but I reported my presence to the indifferent psychiatrist in charge before going to Garth's room. Tommy Carling was there, checking Garth's pulse and other vital signs. I chatted with the ponytailed male nurse until he had finished.

  Five minutes after Carling had left I glanced out into the corridor, saw no one. I took the Walkman out of the bag, put the player next to Garth's shoulder, under the sheet. I placed the earphones on his head, the connecting metal band behind his neck so that only the tiny earplugs showed. I snapped Act I of Das Rheingold into the cassette player, reached over to turn it on-and hesitated as I felt a chill, a distinct sense of foreboding, run through me. I took the phones out of his ears and took a few minutes to talk at his vacant face, explaining what it was I was going to do, and why. Then I replaced the earplugs, took a deep breath, and turned on the player. Very faintly, I could hear the long, E-flat passage that opened the epic cycle flowing through the plugs into Garth's ears, perhaps his mind and soul.

  "He looks different."

  I had been so intent on peering into Garth's face, looking for some response, that I hadn't heard Tommy Carling come into the room. Startled, I jumped, then turned to my left to find the male nurse standing at the foot of the bed. I wondered how long he had been there.

  "Uh. . hi, Tommy."

  "Hi, Mongo," Carling replied somewhat absently. He had crossed his arms over his chest and seemed to be studying Garth intently.

  "What did you say?"

  "I said that Garth looks a bit different to me. I actually think there's more expressiveness in his face."

  Garth didn't look any different to me, and I said so.

  The male nurse absently tugged at his earring, said: "Maybe it's my imagination, but his eyes don't seem quite so vacant." He paused, shrugged his broad shoulders. "Then again, maybe I'm just seeing what I want to see. Well, it's time to change his colostomy and urine bag."

  "Tommy. .?"

  Carling paused on his way to the other side of the bed, looked at me quizzically. "What is it, Mongo?"

  "Nothing," I said, and shook my head.

  Carling pulled back the sheet, immediately saw the Walkman and the earphones on Garth's head. He looked at me again, raised his eyebrows slightly. "What are you playing for him?"

  "I've got Das Rheingold in now. You might say Garth has a thing for the Ring."

  "Really?" Carling said, and pursed his lips slightly. "Pretty heavy stuff."

  "Oh, yeah. I remembered that you turned the radio on for him, and I figured. . well, I thought it couldn't hurt to play something for him that I know he, uh. . likes. The music has a lot of personal associations for him."

  "Does it really?" Carling said in a curiously flat, distant voice. He studied me for a few moments, then looked back into Garth's face. The man seemed momentarily lost in thought.

  "Here," I said, reaching for the earphones, "let me get those out of your way."

  "No," Carling said quickly, blocking my outstretched hand. "It's all right; nothing's in my way."

  Carling removed and emptied Garth's colostomy and urine bags, replaced them with new ones. He again checked my brother's pulse, recorded liquid intake and outtake levels on a chart hanging from a cord attached to the foot of Garth's bed. He continued to appear deep in thought, and he frequently looked back into Garth's face. I still couldn't see any change in Garth's eyes or expression-but the trained eyes of Tommy Carling apparently did. My heart began to beat a little faster, and I could feel the muscles in my stomach tighten.

  "So," Carling said at last as he let the chart drop on its cord and replaced his pen in the pocket of his white coat, "how are all the little LITs down at the children's hospital?"

  "LITs?"

  '' Loonies-in-training.''

  "Oh," I said, and smiled. "They're loony, all right, and some of them aren't so little. How did you know I'd been down there?"

  "I'm friendly with a couple of the cottage workers there. We were having a beer last night, and they mentioned this superdwarf who had come in to substitute. How many superdwarfs can there be wandering around here? You made quite an impression-on kids and staff."

  "It's the natural ham in me," I said, and suddenly felt sad. It was the kind of thing my brother would say.

  "You've got some very dangerous kids over there, Mongo," Carling said seriously.

  "Yeah, but you've also got some very pleasant and bright ones-a lot of the suicidals are like that. I really enjoy working there, Tommy."

  "A little different from college teaching, huh?"

  "To say the least."

  Being careful not to disturb the tape player or the earphones on my brother's head, Tommy Carling rolled Garth over on his right side, facing away from me. "Are you hungry, Mongo? I can bring you something to eat."

  "No, thanks," I replied. The male nurse headed for the door. I cl
eared my throat, said, "Tommy?"

  Carling paused in the doorway, turned back. "Yes, Mongo?"

  "The music. Do you think I could be harming Garth in any way by playing it for him?"

  Carling laughed good-naturedly. "There are some people who'd claim that listening to Richard Wagner would damage anybody's brain." He paused, continued seriously: "No. On the contrary; if I'm right about there being a bit more life in his eyes, it's probably good for him. What harm could music do?"

  "In that case … I didn't ask anybody about this, and maybe I should have. If there's any possibility that Garth really is getting something out of the music, I'd hate to see it taken away from him just because I didn't ask permission and somebody's nose got out of joint."

  Tommy Carling smiled easily. "I won't mention it to Slycke, Mongo. Don't worry about it." He gave me a thumbs-up sign and walked from the room.

  I wanted to play the entire Ring cycle through, opera by opera, with as few interruptions during the course of each opera as possible, and nights seemed the best time to do this. The next day I stopped by the clinic early in the morning, before my third straight day of substituting, and sat and talked with Tommy Carling while he shaved and bathed my brother. I stopped by again after school, then left just before six.

  I ate dinner in a pleasant Italian restaurant in nearby Orangeburg, then went back to the apartment, set my alarm clock to wake me at midnight, and went to bed. At midnight I rose, made myself some coffee and shaved, then packed the Walkman and tapes of Die Walkure into my leather shoulder bag, headed over to Building 26.

  It seemed there was no guard in the kiosk outside the building at night, and I used my own keys to gain entry to the building, took the elevator up to the fourteenth floor. Three male nurses I hadn't seen before were standing and talking in the vestibule in front of the elevator, and they seemed startled when the elevator door sighed open and I stepped out. However, after one glance at the ID badge clipped to my shirt pocket, they resumed their conversation.