The Morning and the Evening

by Joan Williams

  Home.

  They stopped at gas stations and he looked for Homer Brown, but he was never there. They took him inside into smaller rooms than he had ever been in in his life and told him to go to the bathroom and he did, behind their turned backs. Once they gave him a sandwich and a glass of milk and when he had eaten they said, “Cake?”

  He shook his head. He knew the word still: cake. Other voices and other faces, familiar to him, had said it and he had eaten it gladly. Now his stomach did not want even what he had already eaten. All he wanted was to cry.

  “I wish they were all good as him,” said the man driving; he jerked his head toward Jake.

  “Yeah, he’s a good one,” said his helper.

  The others, the three men, the woman, chattered like sparrows around him. One man, next to him, said quite comfortably, “You’d never think this was the last day of the world, would you?”

  Then they began to go to sleep, nodding their heads forward, leaning against the sides of the car. But sleep was something he could not remember. He did not know how long it was since he had slept, since he had been away from home. He only knew that the last time he had it had been in his own bed. In the new places he had lain with his eyes open, knowing first that it was morning and then that it was evening and that it was all the same: time made no difference to him.

  Only that first morning, in the first place, he had looked up to see Wilroy and Mary Margaret looking in at him. Wilroy had said, “But didn’t you even ask ’em their names? Don’t you know who they were? Just four men …”

  And Mary Margaret said, “Just like that. Is it that easy to commit somebody to the insane asylum?”

  The marshal said, “All I know is I got a call from Desoto to bring him there, and I ain’t doing otherwise. I can’t turn him loose.”

  They had gone away, with Mary Margaret crying; and then Jake had cried too, turning away so that no one could see him. Behind the closed door the dogs had gone on one by one, yelping in pain, and he had chewed his knuckles until they bled, listening. Afterward he had been put into a car and driven off to a place almost the same, bigger, without the dogs. And he had stayed until they took him into the room full of people. And now he was in a car again, going a long way.

  The man who helped the driver said restlessly, “Still a ways to go.”

  “You wanna drive?” the driver said. He pulled to the side of the road and the first man got into the driver’s seat. People woke up and yawned and said:

  “Are we here?”

  “What time is it?”

  “Where are we?”

  “How much further?”

  The car was a station wagon with two upright stiff seats behind the driver’s seat. Everyone shuffled about changing places; then everyone went back to sleep again. Only Jake did not move; only he did not sleep. The others had ceased talking to him; they thought he wanted to be alone.

  He thought about the wind that had come cold when he was outside. It was evening, and he thought about that. There was a piece of moon already in the sky and one faint star. He was very tired and would have lured sleep if he had known how.

  They arrived when evening deepened. The car followed a long driveway that swept toward a group of lighted buildings; they stopped beneath an archway, though the driveway went on and returned to the highway again. They had not seen anything for a long time but entanglements of weeds along the road and had heard only the insect sounds of night and nothing more. Now the driver said, “Here we are, folks.”

  Everyone sat up to look out and one of the men, named Charlie, said, “I’m sure glad to be back here with indoor toilets instead of at home.”

  “Charlie, you always do manage to get back, don’t you?” said the driver. “Reckon how long they’ll keep you this time?”

  “A long time, maybe,” Charlie said. “I’m a whole lots crazier than I was the last time.”

  They told Jake to get out of the car, and he did. He stood beneath the shelter of the archway to look about. As far as he could see there was the flat open lawn with many tall trees stretching away to the highway in the distance, which he could see only when cars, with their yellow lights, went by making a dulled sound of whoosh. There were round and square places in the ground where the earth had been worked and flowers grew out of them in neat clumps. Hedges were clipped round as balls and were taller than his head. It did not seem entirely, alien, but it was not the same. Almost while he watched, evening disappeared and night came; then it was dark and he could see nothing but lighted windows, the outlines of trees and a lighted doorway behind him. A man came out of the door and down the few steps, welcoming them. In the soft light from the crystal chandelier his steel-rimmed glasses glinted on his nose, his white hair shone as silvery as fish scales, luminous in the night.

  “Well, I see you got here all right,” he said. He shook hands with the driver and his helper.

  “Do they have television here?” the woman whispered to Charlie.

  “Oh, sure,” Charlie said. “They got everything. Especially if you get sent to the new building. You ought to hope to get sent to the new building.”

  The doctor turned and said, “Is that you, Charlie? You back again?” He laughed.

  “Yes, sir, Doctor,” Charlie said happily. “Right back where I started from. Reckon I might as well stay this time.”

  “Well, we’ll see,” the doctor said. “You got to make room for others, you know.”

  The drivers had taken all of the suitcases out of the car and lined them up along the steps. One of them put a shoe box into Jake’s arms, and Jake held it fast. “That’s all he’s got,” the man said to the doctor. “Fellow brought it to the court today.”

  “I see, that’s fine,” the doctor said. He patted Jake’s arm. “We’ll all get assigned to our rooms now, and then get cleaned up and have some supper.” He herded them toward the stairs. A tall good-looking blond boy came down to them at that moment and began picking up the luggage. “Well, you look like somebody I’ve seen before,” he said to Charlie. “How’re you doing? You owe me two dollars from way back on the Yankees.”

  “Boy, you wouldn’t take money from a old crazy man, would you?” Charlie said. He picked up his own suitcase and the two went up the stairs together. At the top Charlie opened the door, turned and said, “Come on in, everybody.”

  The driver shook his head and said, “Every time I see that blond kid I just can’t get over it. He looks and acts just like every kid his age I know hanging around the drugstore at home.”

  “He’s as disturbed as they come, though,” the doctor said. “Violent sometimes. But he’ll get better.”

  “I swear it beats all,” the man said. “You never can tell.” The two men got back into the car and one said, “Well, so long, Doc. See you in another few days.” They drove away.

  Jake watched the two little red lights disappear into the darkness and then the man next to him said kindly, “Come inside, sir.”

  A colored woman came down the steps past them. She picked up the rest of the luggage and carried it upstairs. “That’s Addie,” Charlie said, from the doorway. “She’s been here since nineteen and thirty-five.”

  “We couldn’t get along without Addie,” the doctor said. He turned to her. “Could we, Addie?” To the others he said, “She cleans our laboratory as clean as any hospital’s. It’s her special job, and she takes pride in it.”

  Addie smiled and put down the luggage and went away. A receptionist checked their names against some cards in her hand and pinned little tags on them with their names and room numbers. “Are you Mister Darby?” she said. Jake looked down into eyes as brown as any dog’s, with specks of yellow in them like sunlight.

  “He ain’t said a word the whole way,” one of the men said.

  “Well, it must be Mister Darby,” she said, and pinned the cardboard to him.

  Charlie came up close, squinted, and read. “Dad burn it,” he said. “You’re in the new building. I’m not.”r />
  “Am I, am I?” the woman said, jumping up and down with little hops, clapping her hands.

  Charlie came close and said, “Yep.” No one else was. Charlie said to himself aloud, “Oh, well. Better luck next time.”

  They took the others away. Charlie called back to the woman and Jake, “See you later.”

  The woman said, “Perry Como’s on tomorrow. Watch and see what he sings to me.”

  The receptionist smiled and said, “He’s very good-looking.”

  “Yes, he is,” the woman said.

  The doctor said, “Come along, Miss Turley, Mister Darby. We have to go outside and across the way to the new building.” As they went out the door he said, “You’re really the envy of the other patients. We just finished our new building this year. A one-million-dollar building. I bet there’s not another finer in any part of the country. I’m sure others think we southern backwoods folks are way behind the times. But we’re coming along, I’m here to tell you. We’re making progress. There is fine work going on here. You’ll see. You’ll be like Charlie. You’ll want to keep coming back to see us, everything is so nice.”

  “Oh, no,” Miss Turley said. “I have to go to New York next week to meet somebody very special.”

  “Oh, I see,” the doctor said. “What about you, Mister Darby? Do you think you’re going to like it here with us?”

  “He ain’t said a word this whole day,” Miss Turley said. She lowered her voice and whispered, “Personally, I don’t think he can talk.”

  “Oh,” the doctor said. “I see.”

  They took Miss Turley into a room full of glass where a nurse sat at a desk. Beyond the room of glass was another room of glass, with night at the windows. Great leafy plants in large white pots were set about on the floor. There was a television set, and comfortable wicker lounge chairs were drawn up before it. And there were several wheel chairs into which old women were tied by bedsheets about their waists.

  “Television!” Miss Turley said.

  “Mrs. Brown, this is Miss Turley,” the doctor said to the nurse.

  Mrs. Brown got up and walked over and smoothed back a wisp of hair from Miss Turley’s forehead. “We’re so glad to see you, Miss Turley,” she said. “We’ve got your room all ready. A nice pink one. Do you like pink?”

  “I love it,” Miss Turley said. “But I’m not staying long. I have to go to New York.”

  “I always have wanted to go to New York,” Mrs. Brown said. She took Miss Turley’s suitcase from the doctor and said, “Come along and I’ll show you your room. Almost everybody is at a magician’s show and they’ll go straight from there to supper.”

  The old women, from their chairs, darted sidelong secretive glances after them. Then they bent their noses to their work again—they were all doing some kind of handiwork: knitting, crocheting, darning. Occasionally they peeped out from beneath their eyebrows at the television program, as if it were a forbidden pleasure. Or perhaps as if they wished that it were: something covert; something of their own.

  One old woman began to claw after her long cotton stockings, which looked as if they had deflated; they had fallen below her knees. A young woman got up from a soft ottoman she had been sitting on, knelt before the woman and rolled the stockings back up. She smiled up at the old woman gently then, and returned to her seat. The old woman looked down at her work and crocheted viciously, smiling in a pleased way.

  “I don’t know what we’d do if the younger patients didn’t help out with the older ones, Mister Darby,” said the doctor, who was watching. “We’re so understaffed, that’s the whole problem, we’re so understaffed. Well, come along, we’ll go to the men’s ward.”

  They went out of the glass room and into the narrow hall that led between the oblong little rooms all painted pretty pastels: pink, blue, yellow, green. Each had a small bed, bedside table and chest of drawers; the rooms were bare but neat, livened by the colors; each had a small window too high to see out of. In one room Miss Turley was hanging up her dresses, talking excitedly to the nurse. The nurse waved as the doctor and Jake passed.

  They passed another room where a pretty young woman sat, her hair nicely waved, her mouth and cheeks nicely rouged. The doctor stood in the door and said, “Didn’t you want to see the magic show, Betty Ruth? Or TV?”

  “I’m too nervous,” the young woman said. “I’m just too nervous, and my eyes hurt me so. That’s when my husband knew something was happening to me again, when I got so nervous, and he brought me back here.”

  “Well, you’ll get better again,” the doctor said. “And maybe this time you can go home and stay.”

  “I hope so,” she said. “I have two little children, you know. It’s so hard to leave them.”

  “I know it is,” the doctor said. “I’ll talk to you about it tomorrow.”

  Outside their rooms two other young women sat slump-shouldered in straight little cane chairs, hands folded in their laps, eyes staring at nothing, not seeming to need to. The doctor stopped by the first, put his hand on her shoulder a moment, and said, “Don’t you want to see TV, Miss Davis?”

  She looked up at him in an apologetic sort of way and shook her head. “I’m just too nervous, Doc Rutledge,” she said. “I just can’t look at anything too long.”

  They passed on to the next girl and the doctor asked her the same question. She looked down into her lap and shook her head from side to side. “No,” she said quietly, “my eyes just hurt me too bad. They just jump all over. I can’t do anything.”

  Whenever the doctor had stopped, Jake had stopped, and when he went on, Jake did. Now they passed out between swinging doors into the pink-marble corridor that circled the entire building. On one side the corridor was entirely glass, broken at intervals by closed doors, and looked out onto a grassy patio. The corridor was bare except at intervals where there were recesses with a group of chairs; here patients might see their visitors. As they passed one closed door, the doctor indicated it and said, “That’s where you’ll have your haircut Monday, Mister Darby. We have a complete barber shop. Three chairs.”

  Jake looked after his finger and saw a door. Attached to it was something, swirling with color, going around and around.

  Outside the door to the men’s ward, the doctor suddenly stopped and said, “Mister Darby. Can you talk?”

  Talk, Jake heard. He brought his hand to his throat and held it there. He felt tears inside him, and then on his cheeks.

  “Never mind,” the doctor said. He patted Jake’s arm. “If you can’t talk, you don’t belong here and you won’t have to stay.”

  He pushed open swinging doors. They went into a room like the one they had left except that it was a young man who sat at the desk. He wore a starched white jacket, stiff as a board, and white pants. He stood up and said, “How you, Doc?”

  “Sam, this is Mister Darby,” the doctor said. “Another ringer, I believe, Sam.”

  “Is that right?” Sam said. He looked closely at Jake and shrugged his shoulders. “Hard to tell yet.”

  “Oh, we’ll have to keep him the month for observation,” the doctor said. “Did Smitty leave today?”

  “Yeah, thank God,” Sam said. “I can take anything else as long as no more alcoholics get slipped in. They’re the worst.”

  “Everybody go to the magic show?” the doctor said.

  “Just about,” Sam said. “A few wouldn’t go. I’ll take this one along and get him ready for supper. That all his things in that box?”

  “Yes,” the doctor said.

  “Jesus,” Sam said.

  He tried to take the box, but Jake held onto it. Sam let it go. He took Jake by the arm and led him down the hall. The doctor followed to the door of Jake’s room. Out of the doorway opposite came an old man, spry as a cricket, who said, “I’m going home today, Doc.”

  “Is that right?” the doctor said. He looked into the old man’s room at the neat piles of his clothes set out on the bed. A suit on a coat hanger was hooked o
nto a chair. The doctor glanced at Sam and Sam shook his head.

  “Well, that’s fine,” the doctor said. He turned back to Jake. “Have a good supper and a good night’s sleep, Mister Darby,” he said, “Sam, give him something if he doesn’t sleep. He looks tired.”

  Sam had opened the shoe box and he said, “Here’s a note in the box. Can he read?”

  “Oh, I doubt it,” the doctor said.

  “It says to tell him Wilroy and Mary Margaret will be up to see him first time they can,” Sam said. “That makes it a week from tomorrow. Visiting day’s the first Sunday of every month. It don’t seem to be making no big impression on him.”

  “I told you, I think they slipped one in on us,” the doctor said. “I don’t believe he can understand even as much as half of what’s said to him. We’ll see. Whew, I’m tired.” He turned away, back down the hall.

  “I got some reports up here I’d like you to see a minute if you got time,” Sam said.

  Then he was gone too. Jake sat down on the bed and looked at his other pair of socks in the shoe box. Gradually he took everything out: a shirt, a change of underwear, a toothbrush and paste, a razor and shaving cream. He took out a little package wrapped in waxed paper and opened it. There was a fried chicken leg, a stuffed egg, and a piece of marble cake. He ate them all. He was licking his fingers when Sam came back. “Uh-oh,” Sam said. “You can’t have that.” He took the razor.

  He took Jake into the bathroom and helped him to wash. When they came again into the hall, he called, “Supper, Mister O’Brien!”

  Mr. O’Brien popped out of his room on his little bowed cricket legs, rubbing a round place on his stomach, and said, “It’s about time.”

  They passed a room in which an old man lay sprawled on his bed, one leg trailing on the floor, as if he had lunged at sleep and caught it before he had meant to. Sam shook him hard and woke him, but he came awake reluctantly and grumbled all the way to the dining room.