Starve the Vulture

by Jason Carney

  Fear of the unknown makes me rigid.

  The cotton blanket becomes an irritant, steamy and rough. My fingers feel worn threads balled up at the frayed corners. I imagine how the clumps of cotton lengthened and tightened over the strange bodies underneath them through the years. I imagine the door revolving like the inside of a jet engine, ejecting the cured while injecting the insane.

  There is a youth unit connected to this one by a long hallway and four sets of metal and glass doors. Two L-shapes square the enclosed garden. At least there will be people my own age.

  Why did they not place me on that one?

  Over the years, my mom’s shrink, Dr. Judy, became like a family friend. She let me ride in her Jag the day Steve and my mom married. She has big blue eyes and blond hair, kind of a mean broad. She never fell for my bullshit. I used to sit on her couch with large pillows over my lap and shoot my mom and Dr. Judy the bird behind a pleasant smile. At age eight, ten, and twelve, I did not want to go to therapy. I did not care to hear about the feelings of my unstable mom. Dr. Judy informed me that if I did not quit flipping her off she was going to come over and break my fingers. Dr. Judy is coming first thing Monday morning. I feel like she fucked me over and I do not want to see her.

  “I shouldn’t be here,” I say aloud, lifting myself off the bed. “Fucking crazy-ass mother and her selfish bullshit.” A resentful loneliness flows over me. “Why did she do this to me? What the fuck is her problem? Crazy-ass bitch.” My voice escalates. “This ain’t fair, fucking bullshit assholes!” I can hear my words out beyond my door, bouncing off the large round columns of the community space.

  I grow irritated by the lack of activity. I grab my smokes from my bag and make a decision to keep my mouth shut. If you open your mouth, lie. My life is my business. I saw what probing minds did to my mother, wrecking her confidence and wholeness. No matter how many friends in their twenties she had in Florida, no matter how blond her hair turned under the heavy radiance of the sun, no matter how big of a smile medication put on her face, I knew the unhappy truth about her. No one is going to know that about me.

  I approach the nurses’ station. A black man in a polo shirt doing paperwork doesn’t notice me. On the left of the station, next to the door, hangs a large board. Names written in blue and red are aligned along the left. The right side is lined with columns indicating patient statuses, their level on the unit, if they are actually on the unit or not, and any special instructions. My name, freshly written in blue marker, does not have a number and a letter rank. My status listed as New, it states that I am on the unit, and the special instructions read, Suicide watch.

  “I need a light,” I demand. “Not to kill myself with.” I chuckle, now understanding why they took my belt, shoelaces, razors, and lighter.

  “No, you need to ask politely if you want to smoke,” the man responds, not looking up from his paperwork. “And life ain’t fair.”

  “Life is as fair as you make it. Can I smoke?”

  “You don’t believe that now, do you? If you did, you would not be yelling at yourself, alone in your room. And the proper question is, Please, can I smoke, sir?” He glances up at the board reading my name. “Mr., ah, Mr. Carney.” He looks directly into my eyes. “We learn to do things the correct way on this unit. Would you like to try again?” Somewhere in his mind, he knows exactly what I am thinking.

  Fuck you, asshole.

  “May I please have a light so that I may please smoke a cigarette?”

  “Sir,” he states.

  I huff, “Pretty please, sir.”

  “Sure, here’s a lighter. Return it after you light your cigarette, sir,” he responds. I am unsure of what he does around here. He is dressed differently than the nurses. His smile is full of concern. “You may smoke over at that table, sir.”

  “Thanks,” I say.

  “Thank you, sir.”

  “Thank you, sir.”

  The smokers’ table is a long, rectangular folding table. Smudges of ash and rings of coffee cups adorn its surface. Every bit of edge is crowded awkwardly with folding chairs. They look mangled, as some of the cushions are torn and picked at like scabs. There is a deck of cards, most of which are worn and creased. A score pad and pencil indicate Spades is the game of choice.

  The way the nurse called me sir intrigued me. No one has ever addressed me in that way. Never been anyone folks would want to call sir. I only call my papaw and my grandfather sir. The word seems appropriate for men of their ages, not for a young guy like me.

  “Sir, you did not return my lighter,” he states, sitting down directly across from me. “My name is Eric, I am one of the weekend counselors.” I hand him the lighter and he pulls a Kool from his pocket. “Going to take some time, but you’ll figure it out.”

  “Figure what out?”

  “The routine, takes a little time. Most folks are shell-shocked upon admittance. After three days, they let you go to the cafeteria, if you are not a behavioral issue. Then you receive a rank on the board and they assign various therapies to fill your day. The process just takes some time.”

  “Where is everyone else at?”

  “Either on day pass or on the field trip,” he says. “You learn the routine, and after a couple of months they might let you go on one.”

  “I don’t plan on being here that long, a few days tops. No need to learn the routine.”

  “Huh,” he says, as he inhales a long slow drag of the menthol.

  “Once they see I ain’t crazy I am gone,” I boast, taking my own deep drag. “I start college in the fall. Got to be in Florida by the end of August.”

  His eyes study me in a peculiar way. Almost as if he is just watching me watch him, learning my reactions to his movements and inflections. “What school?”

  “Florida State University in Gainesville.”

  “Good school.” He smirks. “I thought you had to finish high school before you got into college.” He looks down at his hands, then up at my face. He knows he has caught me. A slow drag, a slight hint of satisfaction expands in his cheeks. “FSU is in Tallahassee, Florida, not Gainesville,” he adds.

  “I’m not stupid. I just finished summer school. I’ll have a diploma in my hand soon.” My knuckles tighten and pale, a harsh pink blotched with white.

  “Looks like you and I will be spending time together.” Smoke escapes his mouth as he crushes the cigarette in the crowded ashtray.

  “I doubt it, probably be gone by next weekend. I am not crazy.”

  “You like playing games?” he asks, walking toward the exit to the adjoining adult unit. “I like playing games. We are gonna have plenty of time to play some games together, Mr. Carney.”

  “You think?” I say, folding my arms.

  “Don’t play games with yourself. All your thinking brought you to me.” He again focuses directly into my sight. “Three days will go quick. The board games are in the cabinets under the television. Pick out your favorite and we will play on Sunday morning. I hope you’re a better cheat than you are a liar.”

  8:46 A.M.—18:24

  MY CAR IS A TORTOISE AS I TURN ONTO ABSHIRE STREET. A paper towel from the convenience store is pressed against my bad eye, sunglasses holding the towel in place. The sun parades across the concrete. My eye is killing me. C sits on his front steps, impatience on his face. As I pull up to the curb, he swaggers over to the passenger door.

  “Can you take me to Jack in the Box, J?” he asks, already buckling his seat belt.

  He looks fresh. Clean clothes, a shower, a crisp new hat sits on his head sideways. I look like Night of the Living Dead. We have both had the same amount of sleep.

  “Damn, J, you look like shit. What’s up with the paper towel on your eye?”

  I remove my sunglasses and carefully peel the wet towel off my face. Irritated and red, the eye stings as it catches the light. My face clenches as if a long needle goes through my eye and into my brain.

  “Damn, your eye is fucked up, J. That shit
must hurt. Let’s go to the Box.”

  “Sure. Not a problem.”

  This will not take long.

  “Get some Visine for that shit. See a doctor. Get some sleep. Something.” He laughs.

  My breakfast decision made for me, I pull away from his house. I hate these little errands, side trips that distract me from entering and leaving this neighborhood as quickly as possible. Most of the times I roll through here, my mind is on a glass ship orbiting some distant rock in the blackness of his pocket. There is a panic to the journeys. I am always tweaking for more.

  “You need to quit smoking this shit. Crack is fucking you up,” he says.

  “Why don’t you quit selling it to me?”

  “J, you know that you are gonna buy it. I know you are gonna buy it. You know I know you’re gonna buy it. Why would I let someone else make money? I need it.”

  He looks at me as if deliberating over something deep and spiritual. I am too high and exhausted to know. He is correct. If I did not come here, he would not sell to me.

  “I only have a few fifties this morning. Have to go re-up,” he says.

  He throws four on the middle console. My right arm jumps to grab the packages while I peer in the rearview, paranoid the cops are behind me. Watching. There are no cops. The street is quiet. I stuff the bags into my pocket.

  “Heard you got pulled over by the po-po last night,” C says.

  “Asked me what I was doing out here. Gave me a warning.”

  “Glad I wasn’t in the car.”

  “You’re not kidding.”

  “What did you tell them?”

  “Told them my cousin Viv is a street walker over here, that I was looking for her. She really is. That’s the funny part.”

  We pull into the Box, a long line of cars waits for the drive-through. I look out at Buckner in the rearview mirror. The street bustles with commuters heading toward the highway, throngs of buses crowd at the bus stop across the street. The line inches forward. We don’t say a word.

  My leg bounces, I’m anxious to smoke the rocks in my pocket. I am anxious about having the dope in the car, having him in my car, the fact I can barely lift my head to look where I am going. I am anxious about the sun and the piercing pain I cannot escape, about my unknown destination today. I grab the water bottle from the cup holder. I hang a fresh towel and the bottle out the window and soak down the brown paper until water runs from the edges. I slap the towel to my eye.

  The moistness eases the dry skin of my eyelid. Slowly, the irritation fades, leaving a calm sensation on my face for a minute. Then the dryness returns. We pull forward in line.

  “Four tacos and a Jumbo Jack,” I order.

  I hand C the bag, he pulls out his burger and tacos. Leaves mine in the bag. Déjà vu. I pull out onto Buckner, signal flashing against the heat of the morning. He hands me the bag, I fish out a taco.

  “Can’t believe that shit. They let you go with that dumb-ass story without searching you?”

  “I know. Crazy, huh?”

  I make the right onto C’s street. He laughs as I pull up to the curb in front of his house.

  “That is some white-boy shit right there,” he says. “That shit would never happen for a nigga like me.”

  “You’re probably right, I got real lucky.”

  “Shit. Luck ain’t got nothing to do with it.” He smiles. “All right, J, hit me up later, I will have more. Take care of that eye.”

  “All right.”

  “Be expecting your call around one, one thirty,” he says, shutting the door.

  “We’ll see.”

  “Yeah, you need to get some sleep. That eye is fucked up.”

  I pull away from the curb, simultaneously unwrapping the taco. The stale shell is almost too hot to hold. I bite down. The tops of my gums sink into the cheesy grease. I do not notice the taste.

  NORMAL

  1988

  “ALL IN,” THE ATTENDANT SAYS, reading the sign-in board. “Everyone’s back in from breakfast.

  “Group’s in thirty minutes!” the attendant yells over the squawk box.

  “Mr. Carney,” the other attendant at the nurses’ station addresses me quietly, “there are some new patients on the unit this morning. You have a roommate. He requires privacy this morning. Don’t enter your room. Give him some space until dinner.”

  I have to stay out of my own room?

  All the others head to their rooms to get ready for the day. I do not.

  Fuck the new dude.

  I turn to walk away, unhappy.

  “Thank you, sir, for understanding,” he says.

  “Whatever,” I mutter.

  I walk to the card table. As I pass my room, the door is closed. I stop. The suspense of not knowing kills me. Ten inches of space separates my hand and the knob. I pause. I focus my energy on the door. I strain my ears. I can’t hear anything, except the voice of my own fear.

  Why is that fool crowding my shit? What is his problem? Hope he is not a suicidal freak. Cross-dressing sadist. Schizophrenic babbler. Alcoholic dad who beats on his wife. Fucking loser.

  “Mr. Carney,” the attendant reminds me.

  I head to the card table, pissed I’m barred from my room, my bath.

  Motherfucker better not have taken my bed or looked through my shit.

  As an only child, I have never been good at sharing. My things were always mine. Assuring a safe place for my belongings became a ritual because nothing was ever permanent. They never stayed long. Boxed and shuffled again, my possessions, like friendships, shed every year or two.

  My time here has been bearable because I can escape to the privacy of my room. Alone, I write my poems and read my thesaurus. Since last fall, I carry that reference book everywhere. One of my teachers, Mrs. Edwards, stapled together a manila folder to organize my poems. That folder and the thesaurus are all I ever take to my classes.

  No poems today.

  Now some unknown dude occupies my sanctuary.

  He is a cutter. A bed wetter.

  The unit has a few of those already. In my mind, they are the dumbest and weakest on the unit. I remove a square from the pack as I approach the table, cursing under my breath. There is a new man at the table. I act as if I do not notice.

  I take a chair across from Terri, a cutter. She is a very good-looking girl with short brown hair, highlights, and blue eyes. In her midtwenties, she looks like a teenager. She is tall and thin; soft shoulders lead to the full roundness of her breasts. They brush against the length of her arms, as she raises and lowers her smoke. She normally wears long-sleeved shirts and complains that it is cold. We all know she is hiding the scars. Today, she is wearing a muscle shirt and Calvin Klein pajama pants. From the bend of the arm where junkies find Jesus to the end of her wrist, she started her own kind of search.

  Long scars running various directions and sizes mark her flesh. Abrasions flicker in the light of the room, revealing the acts of a frustrated girl lost somewhere in transparent rage. There is a distance behind her, as if conversation requires too much effort or is not as entertaining as what goes on in her mind.

  She is fucked up more than most of us.

  She avoids my eye contact. I spend my time admiring almost everything but her face.

  “What’s going on, Terri?” I ask. I like her.

  “This is Flat Top, he’s new,” Debbie says from the table. One of two women with the same name on the unit, we call her Debbie. The other we call Deborah. They both annoy me like my mother. Debbie is overweight with every known affliction. Her nose turns up at the end like a pig; when she eats, it grosses me out.

  Why do I have to stay out of my room if he is at the smokers’ table?

  I run my gaze over him nonchalantly, while my mind picks him apart. A sense of excitement flows inside me. This dude appears to be sane and respectable.

  “I can tell that he’s new,” I respond. “My name is Jason, welcome to paradise.”

  “Thanks,” he says in a
cordial, nonapprehensive tone.

  Early twenties, twenty-two, twenty-three, maybe.

  He seems well put together—a short buzz haircut, tan, lean, not muscular but rather defined and toned. You can tell he exercises.

  I think I made a big deal out of nothing.

  Silently, I study him for a minute, listening to the conversation I interrupted. His eyes connect coherently with the person who is talking. He does not twitch like some of the patients, doped up beyond measure.

  He is normal. I lucked out.

  “Where you from?” I ask him.

  “Bedford.”

  “Where are you from?” Flat Top asks.

  “Mesquite, mainly. I moved around a lot. Go to college?”

  “I finished a couple of years ago; I’m an accountant.” He smiles.

  “What kind of music you into?”

  “I don’t know, all kinds, I guess.” He makes eye contact, winks, and looks at Debbie. “So Debbie, you were saying . . . ?”

  That was kind of weird, but friendly.

  “Friday is movie night. After dinner, we pop popcorn and pile around the television. Saturday nights tend to be quiet, depending on how many weekend passes are given out—”

  “Saturday night sucks,” I interject. “Flat Top, you’re close to my age. We should hang out; play ping-pong or a board game.”

  “Not really, I’m twenty-seven. But maybe we can play sometime,” he says.

  He doesn’t appear to be that old. He wears a nice button-down shirt and Levi’s. The scruff on his face is barely visible.

  I bet he’s a Republican and a Baptist.

  His body language suggests manners and comfort in social situations.

  This guy probably never been in a fight but I bet his word is very solid.

  There is no wedding ring on his hand.

  Probably got a hot girlfriend, having a college degree and a good job.

  He appears mentally stable.

  What the fuck is wrong with him?

  “Oh, that isn’t much older,” I say, looking for a friendship starter.

  I want a roommate I can trust, smart and witty, a new best friend. The smokers’ table ours to rule over, our jokes playing off one another, forcing everyone to keep up. Unlike now, where Phil, the dickhead that he is, sits in roost.