by Eric Bernt
Upon taking exit 24A off the 295 into Woodbury, Victor glanced at his son. “They will even help you with your experiments, which you know I never could.” At least this statement was true. Why they would help Eddie was something else entirely.
Eddie looked out the window of his father’s Volkswagen Bug as they rode up a long driveway. An eight-foot-high barbed-wire fence lined the perimeter, but most of it was hidden by lush greenery. Rolling lawns and beautiful gardens surrounded the facility. There was a single guard at the driveway gate who already knew Victor’s and Eddie’s names. They were expected. Victor was surprised by how poorly marked the place was, almost like they didn’t want anyone knowing about it who didn’t already know. That was, of course, exactly the idea.
“Do they have yellow Jell-O?” Eddie grinned mischievously. He could never mention his favorite food without cracking an awkward smile, which was the only kind he knew how to make. Purple Jell-O, or any other purple food, had the exact opposite effect on Eddie. But yellow Jell-O was the one food that was as fun to say as it was to eat. Eddie’s question was also an invitation to play the one game he and his father could enjoy together. The Rhyming Game.
“I bet so, don’t you know. But if they do not, uh, make another pot.”
“Am I to believe that I can just leave?”
Victor struggled to rhyme his reply. “Uh, no, I don’t think so. I doubt you can just go.”
“So this is my jail where I will receive no bail?”
“Look, Eddie, you can’t think of it like that.”
Eddie raised his hands in triumph because Victor’s response didn’t rhyme. “The winner and still champion.” He had memorized the response watching professional wrestling. Eddie liked games. He wished his father would have played more with him, but his father just didn’t seem to like them, so Eddie settled for the Rhyming Game.
“Yellow Jell-O.” Eddie’s smile slowly faded as he stepped out of the car and onto the grounds of Harmony House for the very first time. He closed his eyes and stood completely still, slowly rotating his head from side to side. Victor knew enough not to get out of the car, or ask Eddie a question, until his son spoke first.
Eddie liked what he heard, which was next to nothing. No passing trains. No interstate rumble. Only leaves RUSTLING in the wind. A dog BARKING somewhere in the distance. It was a Rottweiler. An old one. Eddie recognized the sound from the dog his grandparents kept on their modest farm in Saylan Hills.
Eggplant was among the crops his grandparents grew, and Eddie never failed to mention how he felt about purple food every time he visited. They didn’t seem to appreciate it much, which might explain why they had answered no when Victor had asked if Eddie could live with them, a few years back.
Eddie finally opened his eyes and turned to his father. “Okay.”
“Okay what?”
“Okay, I can stay here.”
Dr. Marcus Fenton approached them with an inviting smile. “Welcome to Harmony House, Edward. I’m Dr. Marcus Fenton.”
Eddie stared at the ground. “I don’t like being called Edward.”
“What would you prefer that I call you?”
“Eddie.”
“Well, Eddie, then that is what I will call you.”
His tone disarmed Eddie, who not only smiled as best he could, but even glanced briefly at Fenton’s eyes. They didn’t make him feel uncomfortable the way most people’s did. He made a mental note to ask why later.
“I would like to be the first to welcome you to your new home.”
“Why would you like to be the first?”
“Because I have been looking forward to meeting you for quite a while now.”
“How long is that?”
“Since Dr. Tuffli first wrote me about you, several months ago.”
“What did he write about me?”
“That you were a truly extraordinary young man.”
“Is that why you invited me to live here?”
“We invited you to live here because we think it is the very best place for you.” Fenton never looked away from his newest patient. “Eddie, would you like a tour of your new home?”
Eddie nodded. “My dad can come, too.”
Fenton showed them his office, the play yard, the cafeteria, the recreation room, the infirmary, and every other common room patients used in the facility. In each space, Eddie closed his eyes and stood completely still, slowly rotating his head from side to side. Victor grew increasingly impatient with each room, but Fenton acted like he had all the time in the world. He understood better than the boy’s own father that Eddie needed time to process each space in his unique way.
When they finally arrived at patient room 237, which already had the name Edward Parks written in the name slot, Victor looked relieved. Only now did he truly believe the invitation was real. They walked into the cement-block room. After rotating his head from side to side, Eddie turned to Dr. Fenton. “There is no way I can live here.”
Victor immediately blurted out nervously, “Shut up, Eddie.”
“Why not?”
“Too hard. The surfaces. The surfaces are too hard.”
“I understand.” Fenton glanced around at the cinder-block walls, realizing he should have anticipated this.
Eddie quickly became upset. “Hard surfaces produce echoes. Can’t you hear them?” He rotated his head, listening to the echoes that only he could hear. “It’s making my head hurt.”
Dr. Fenton attempted to allay Eddie’s concerns. “No, Eddie, I can’t hear any echoes,” the doctor said.
“I would be too uncomfortable to live in this room.”
Victor’s blood pressure skyrocketed. “Eddie, goddammit—”
The doctor cut him off quickly. “Curtains might help.”
Eddie thought for a moment. “Yes, I agree. Curtains might help.”
“I’ll have someone on the staff put some up right away.”
“Really?” Victor could hardly believe his ears.
“Really. Eddie, do you have a preference of colors?”
“Red, yellow, blue, green, and orange. In that order, with red being first choice. But no purple. Definitely no purple.”
“Red, yellow, blue, green, orange, and no purple. Got it.”
“I won’t have to eat purple food, will I?”
“No, Eddie. You won’t have to eat any food you don’t want to.”
“I don’t like purple food. I don’t like plums, I don’t like eggplant, I don’t like purple berries, and I don’t like purple grapes. Green ones are okay, but not purple ones. They look like bruises, and bruises hurt. Purple food reminds me of bruises.”
“I promise that no one here will ever force you to eat any purple food.” And it was the truth. The human lie detector confirmed it. The most senior doctor on the grounds of Harmony House then excused himself to find someone to put up the nonpurple curtains that would later become the inspiration for Eddie’s acoustic tiles.
Victor Parks’s last words to his son before leaving were, “Never forget I love you, and I always will.” Eddie nodded, mechanically repeating the sentence. The intonation and emotional resonance were poor replicas of what he’d just heard.
Eddie could hear his father starting to cry as he turned and walked away on the cold linoleum tiles Eddie would soon become so familiar with. It was the last time he would ever see his father. Victor put his face in his hands all the way to his car.
The sight no longer surprised Michael Barnes, who was then only a part-time independent contractor for Harmony House. He watched emotionlessly as Victor Parks drove away from his one and only child. Barnes had already witnessed this scene a dozen times.
What did surprise him was that none of the parents had a clue what was really going on here. These kids were brought here to save the government money while protecting our national interests. It was more cost effective to house potential security threats like Eddie in facilities like Harmony House than it was to monitor them out in the real
world, where they were so ill-equipped to survive, much less protect themselves.
The brain drain from Nazi Germany and the rest of Europe had been what gave the United States the bomb and killed any chance of the Aryan Dream. Well, that and the kidnapping of several high-ranking German rocket scientists who were forced to complete their work for the mongrels and not the Master Race. Robert Oppenheimer once said during the Manhattan Project that the greatest threat to national security was the secrets kept inside the brains of his employees when they went home at night.
If that was the case, Dr. Marcus Fenton had told Ronald Reagan one fateful Sunday afternoon in the Oval Office, the brains of the little professors were the greatest threat in the modern world. While most were too far gone to be useful to anyone, the needle in the haystack was out there somewhere, and the nation couldn’t risk any other entity ever acquiring it. On that spring day in 1987, Reagan committed to a decade of funding in a matter of thirteen minutes.
CHAPTER 15
Eddie’s Room, Harmony House, May 22, 11:47 a.m.
Eddie clutched the weathered brochure in his hands as he sat on his bed. His cheek was still red where he had slapped himself earlier in the recreation room. Listening to the footsteps approaching, he knew it was Skylar before she KNOCKED, which she did three times. She opened the door slowly and sat down next to him on his Batman sheets, which reminded her of the sheets her brother used to sleep on, except that Christopher’s had featured rocket ships. Skylar didn’t say a word for over a minute, something she had learned to do when her brother was very young. She would sit with him for hours, not saying anything. She was the only one in the world who just wanted to be with him. Eventually, he seemed to understand that, and he opened up to her. She could only hope the same would be true with Eddie.
It worked in surprisingly short order, because it made Eddie curious. Usually, the doctors who came into his room started talking right away, asking him all kinds of questions. Eddie didn’t like this, particularly the ones whose voices were not very pleasant to listen to. But Skylar wasn’t in this category. She was different. “Dr. Drummond, why are you just sitting there?”
She did not attempt to look at him. She simply stared at the floor, much like he was. Her hands were clasped in her lap. “I’m actually doing far more than just sitting here.”
“What else are you doing?” He turned to look at her, which Skylar knew was a victory in and of itself. Eddie studied her from head to toe. As far as he could tell, she wasn’t doing anything else, which was why he looked puzzled.
“For one thing, I am nonverbally communicating with you.”
“What are you communicating nonverbally?”
“That I care about you and want you to know I’m here for you.”
“How are you communicating that?”
“By not saying anything.” She smiled ever so slightly, like when a cat owner first holds a ball of yarn just out of a new pet’s reach.
Eddie looked confused. “I don’t understand.”
“I’m trying to reassure you without using words. Have you ever heard the expression, ‘Actions speak louder than—’”
He interrupted her. “Does everyone who sits down next to me want to reassure me?”
“Most definitely not.”
“Then how do I know what someone is communicating nonverbally when they sit down next to me?”
“That is something I’m going to teach you.”
Eddie blinked several times, trying to process the information. “Dr. Drummond, why didn’t you just use words to say that you wanted to reassure me? That would have been simpler.”
“It also would have been less memorable. Tell me, how many people have told you that they wanted to reassure you?”
“I don’t know the exact number, but I would have to say at least twenty-seven.”
“I didn’t want to be just the twenty-eighth person. I wanted to be different. To stand out from everyone else.”
Eddie digested this for a moment. “So you wanted to reassure me, and you wanted me to know that you were different from everyone else.”
“Yes.”
“You are right. That is a lot more than just sitting next to me.”
Skylar smiled again, enjoying the incredible silence in room 237. “It sure is quiet in here.”
“I don’t like noise.” He stared out the windows, looking at the empty tree branches. There wasn’t a bird in sight.
“Are you okay, Eddie?”
He continued looking out the window. He wasn’t sure how to properly answer the question, so he didn’t.
“I mean, about what happened earlier, during your lecture.”
He nodded, now pretending to understand what she was asking. He showed no emotion as he tried to decide which of his memorized responses to give. “Yes, I’m fine.” He scribbled something in his Book of Questions.
She mimicked his BUZZER sound, which immediately made him stop writing and look up with surprise.
“Why did you do that?”
“It’s the sound you make when you don’t think someone is telling the truth, isn’t it?”
“Yes, but I’m not supposed to. Dr. Fenton said so.”
She paused for effect. “I think it’s okay.”
He seemed genuinely surprised. “You do?”
“Each of us has some unique way of communicating that is part of who we are. Me, sometimes I just like to sit next to someone and not say a word. You, sometimes you buzz when you think someone isn’t telling the truth.”
Eddie nodded, glad that he had something in common with his new doctor. At least, she said he did. “Why did you think I wasn’t telling the truth?”
“It’s not that I thought you were being dishonest. What I think is that you gave me the answer you thought would make me stop asking you questions about what happened.”
He finished making his notation in the notebook, and immediately felt uncomfortable.
Studying him closely, she decided she had pushed him far enough for an initial foray. “If you don’t want to talk about it, Eddie, that’s okay. But whenever you’re ready to talk, I’m ready to listen. I like listening to you.”
He watched her as she moved toward the door. “Skylar, you are different from everyone else.” His voice was monotone. Without emotion. But then he smiled ever so briefly. It was more of a flicker, really, but, just for a moment, it was there. And it told Skylar everything she needed to know.
“So are you, Eddie.” And with that, she left. If there was a breakthrough lurking somewhere within Eddie, she was now certain she would be able to bring it out of him.
CHAPTER 16
Russell Senate Building, Washington, DC, May 22, 3:53 p.m.
Dr. Fenton was reminded of Eddie’s influence on him every time he went to Washington, DC, because the first thing he would notice walking the hallways of any government building was their echoes. They were louder than those in Harmony House, and this was for two reasons. One was sheer size. These corridors were practically canyons. The second reason was the hardness of the surfaces. The glistening floors were polished every night as if our democracy depended on it.
The old man still had a few fans left within the exclusive club of intelligence research, but most had left public service during previous administrations. Bush Sr. had been a fan because he was not about to mess with a Reagan legacy, and Clinton loved people he considered almost as smart as he was. George W. knew that Fenton still had his father’s ear, so the doctor’s position was secure during his terms, and Obama’s wife, Michelle, had a cousin on the high-functioning end of the spectrum, so given the failures of the Affordable Care Act for families raising autistic children, continuing to fund Harmony House was the least he could do. But now was a different deal. The new president was too much of a wild card. Non-Defense budgets were being obliterated. Members of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence had been instructed to take hard looks at every program, particularly fringe projects like Harmony Hous
e.
Waiting to be ushered in, Dr. Fenton sat on a black bench, the same bench he sat on every time he made this godforsaken trek. He even sat in exactly the same spot on the bench, because when you come down to it, every human being is a creature of habit, not just those with autism. And therein lay one of the good doctor’s ultimate fascinations with the condition: people who had it weren’t so different from the rest of the world. They were merely an extension of what all humans were, and were capable of. It was the same reason people had always been fascinated by spoon benders, mind readers, seers, and others with unusual abilities. The same potential lay within all of us.
Researchers, Fenton reflected, had spent years studying every aspect of the exceptionally gifted to learn what triggered universal potential, awakening it from something dormant to an active ability that could be revealed, heightened, honed, and put into useful practice. How did such gifts get unleashed? Answering this question was Fenton’s mission. Ultimately, the key to releasing the genius in all humanity was the Holy Grail of Harmony House. Something about autism allowed some people to think in ways that others could not. While no one might want the limitations, every human being on the planet could benefit from the discovery of that genius mechanism.
Dr. Marcus Fenton was ushered into the mahogany-paneled room where the fifteen-member committee was already seated around a large conference table. Fenton made sure to glance at each of them before taking a seat. It was as if he was lining them up in his sights, should this not go as planned.
The committee was chaired by Senator Corbin Davis, who was twenty years younger than Fenton. Marcus had disliked him on the spot when they first met, eight years ago. How this pretty boy had maneuvered himself into chairing the committee was beyond Fenton, but at least he wasn’t president. Not yet, anyway.
“I have a great deal of respect and admiration for you, Dr. Fenton,” the Indiana senator lied. “The same can be said for most everyone in this room.” He glanced around the committee, confirming his majority support. There were only three dissenters. His new benefactors at the American Heritage Foundation had asked him to give Fenton a pass on the budget cuts, and Corbin Davis had secured one, but not without much heated discussion. The camera-ready senator certainly wasn’t about to fail this first little test of theirs. “While funds are increasingly tight these days, you can rest assured that our faith in your mission has not wavered. Your funding has been approved.”
