Monkey Island

by Paula Fox

  Something pecked the skin of his right hand. He lifted it up, then let it fall back to the bed when he saw it was taped to a thin board and that there was a needle stuck into it. From the needle, a thin transparent tube led up to a bottle that hung by a hook from the top of a metal pole. If he got up and tried to run, the pole and bottle would tag along after him. The picture of it struck him as comical, and he startled himself with a small hoarse laugh.

  “You’re feeling better,” said someone in a low voice. A young woman in a white uniform was standing beside the crib. She smiled down at him. On the top of her head sat a small, pleated round cap like a mushroom.

  With his free hand, Clay pointed to the needle, his question asked without words.

  “It’s full of medicine for what ails you,” the nurse said. “What ails you is pneumonia. Your lungs were all filled up, so at first you couldn’t breathe well. We gave you oxygen through that thing there by the bed that fits into your nose and makes it easier to breathe. But you don’t need it the way you did yesterday when you were brought in.” She held up a stethoscope for him to see. “Right now, I want to listen to your lungs.”

  “What for?” he asked. His voice was thick and blurred.

  “Rales,” replied the nurse. “To see what those rales are doing.”

  He didn’t have the energy to ask what rales were. Even though he was lying flat on his back, he was very tired. He had been in a hospital once before, when he broke his little finger catching a baseball. His father had taken him to the emergency room. But this time, he was really inside a hospital—maybe the same one where the ambulance had taken Calvin. He didn’t actually want to see Calvin now, but thinking about him, especially thinking about Buddy, made Clay feel so sorrowful, his throat ached.

  “Don’t cry,” the nurse said gently, touching his arm above his taped hand. He hadn’t known he was crying.

  “You’re going to be fine. You haven’t got tuberculosis, or anything hair-raising like that. We’re getting rid of all those critters on your head. Your fever has gone down. I’m telling you all this because you must be scared, not sure what happened, and—” She hesitated, smiled, and patted his brow very lightly as though he might break.

  He knew what she’d been about to say. Of course he knew. He was alone. A woman had just walked into the room and gone to one of the other cribs. He saw her lean over it. He couldn’t see whether the child she was gazing down at so intently was a boy or a girl. It was only a shape under a white coverlet.

  He had been brought in by Gerald, a person who hardly knew him.

  The nurse would know that. The fact of it would be written down somewhere. Everything was written down, even senseless things.

  The nurse said, “In a few days, if you keep improving, a very nice lady from the Child Welfare Association, Mrs. Greg, will come to visit you.”

  He didn’t want to see any Mrs. Greg. Fee, fie, fo, fum, he thought to himself. He smelled Social Services—chalky smiles and chalky, dusty words, and people talking importantly over your head.

  “Good! No more tears,” the nurse noted.

  Clay only wanted to see Buddy. He looked directly at the nurse for a moment, at her mushroom hat, her light-colored eyes. She was looking straight at him too. “Can I touch your cap?” he asked.

  She bent over the crib railing until the cap was within reach of his left hand. He ran his fingers along the starched pleats. “Thanks,” he said.

  “I’m going to put some salve on the sores on your legs,” she said, raising her head. “You’ll have a lovely deep sleep, and tomorrow you’ll feel much better. I promise.”

  It seemed a long time—after the nurse had gone, after the woman, who had been leaning over the child in the other crib, had clasped shut her big pocketbook and tiptoed out of the room—before Clay felt sleep coming toward him like a warm slow tide that he could draw up over his head like the lightest of blankets.

  In the morning, the dusty surface of the window was speckled with flakes of snow that almost at once became watery blotches. A hospital attendant had lowered the railing on Clay’s crib, slid a movable table nearly up to his chin, and placed before him a tray holding a bowl of oatmeal, buttered toast, and a small carton of milk.

  When he looked at the tray, Clay imagined he’d eat everything up at once. But after a spoonful of oatmeal and a sip of milk, he lay back against the pillow, feeling as though he’d swallowed six boiled potatoes in a hurry.

  He did feel better. His right hand was a bit sore where the needle went in, and around it the skin was purplish. He remembered how, when he was little, he used to run away from the doctor when he saw a hypodermic needle in the doctor’s hand, and his mother or father would have to bring him back for the shot. Now he had a needle in his hand all the time, and except for the occasional bird-peck pinch, he hardly felt it.

  Clay looked across at the only other child in the room, the one whose mother had visited him last night. The railings had been let down on his crib too. Clay realized it was an ordinary bed with railings to keep you from falling off. The boy was sitting up, reading a comic book.

  He looked suddenly at Clay and spoke. “I’m going home today,” he said. “When are you going home?”

  “I’ve got pneumonia,” Clay replied.

  The boy nodded and looked wise. “Viral or bacterial?” he asked.

  “Just pneumonia,” Clay said.

  The boy seemed to lose interest in Clay and went back to his comic book, but Clay had a question to ask.

  “Is it Christmas?”

  “It’s only the seventeenth of December,” the boy answered. “You must be really out of it. They stuck that plastic Santa Claus on the wall to cheer us up. You know how they are. I’ve got hemophilia. That means my blood doesn’t clot, in case it’s a mystery to you. So I have to get transfusions if I cut myself or have an accident. It’s a dangerous life, my father is always saying.”

  Clay was startled, hearing an actual date, and he said it over to himself several times, December seventeenth. But at the boy’s subsequent words, he looked at him more closely. He was plumpish with fair smooth skin, and his hair looked newly cut, thick but trimmed around his neck. He was wearing a wristwatch.

  “Are you getting better?” Clay asked.

  The boy held up his wrist and stared at his watch. Then, as if he had found the answer there, he said matter-of-factly, “I won’t get better. It’s my hazard.”

  A nurse carrying a bedpan entered the room and walked toward Clay.

  “I can see by your alert expression that you’ve guessed what this object is,” she said. “After you use it, press the button on the cord next to your pillow, and I’ll come get it.”

  She was much older than the night nurse. Clay found her ugly but in a pleasant way, especially when, as now, she grinned at him, showing her big uneven teeth.

  The boy was watching. Clay felt embarrassed, much the way he had when he emerged from an alley to find someone smirking at the entrance as though that person knew what he’d been doing. Calvin said it was natural to want to pee in privacy; all animals, human ones too, wanted to except dogs. Some dogs, Calvin claimed, were too jolly and foolish, and too demoralized by their efforts to please everyone, to care about privacy.

  The boy spoke. “That’s nothing. Everybody has to use one until they can get up on their own and go to the bathroom.”

  “Thank you, doctor!” the nurse said, bowing to him as she backed out of the room.

  Things were taken away, the bedpan, the breakfast tray, a metal wastebasket. Someone came to remake Clay’s bed while he lay in a drowse, first on his right side, then on his left as the sheet was snapped and tucked under the mattress. The bottle on the pole was changed. A very tired-looking young woman listened to his chest through her stethoscope. Someone else put salve on his legs. Clay’s whole body was warm, even the soles of his feet, a fact that would have astonished him if he hadn’t been so sleepy.

  He had no idea how much time had passe
d when he awoke to find the boy in the other bed gone, and to feel his hand clasped by someone else’s hand. He turned his head.

  “Buddy,” he said.

  “It’s me,” Buddy whispered, although there were no other patients in the room.

  “You don’t have to whisper,” Clay said.

  Buddy nodded and took a doughnut from the pocket of his jacket, leaving a little trail of powdered sugar across his blue jeans. “Gerald sent you this,” he said.

  “I’m not so hungry. Could you eat it?” Clay asked.

  “It’ll help you get strong again,” said Buddy.

  “I can’t,” Clay said. “Not yet.”

  Buddy took a bite from the doughnut. It left a faint trace of white mustache on his upper lip. When Clay smiled, so did Buddy. The snow had stopped. Sunshine lay upon the surface of the window like a pale yellow dust. The room was warm. Clay put his hand on Buddy’s arm.

  “I’ve got pneumonia,” he said.

  “The nurse told me.”

  “I’ll probably have to stay in the hospital ten days. Then the rales will be gone.”

  “Rales,” repeated Buddy.

  “They show there’s still stuff in your lungs,” said Clay.

  They looked at each other. Each knew what the other was thinking. What would happen after the ten days? Clay took his hand from Buddy’s arm.

  “You can’t go back on the street,” Buddy said. “January is when everything is out to get you. January kills people.”

  Clay was silent. He couldn’t imagine a place beyond the walls of the room. At the moment, even the floor looked faraway.

  “Maybe you’ll find your mama now,” Buddy said.

  Clay couldn’t imagine that either.

  “I’ll never find her,” he murmured.

  “You can’t tell,” Buddy said. “In this city, one time, I met a cousin of mine from South Carolina. He’s in the navy, and he was walking along West Street. I’d gone down there to look for wood. We met. We couldn’t believe it. In a place like this … millions of people. You never know.”

  “What about Calvin?” Clay asked. He couldn’t speak of his mother. She had never seemed so absent as at this moment. Soon, Buddy would go. The room felt too warm. His right hand began to ache.

  Buddy was looking at him. At least he was still here. Clay noticed how his cheeks gleamed. He must have shaved recently.

  “Were you in a shelter?” Clay asked.

  Buddy nodded. “I had to find one. It got so cold I didn’t think I could make it through the night.”

  “Calvin?” Clay asked again.

  “He’s really sick,” Buddy said. “All the drinking, all the years. Losing everything. Being lonely.”

  “Did you get to see him?” Clay asked. “Is he in this hospital?”

  “He’s in one way downtown. I saw him, but he didn’t see me.” He took Clay’s hand in his own for a moment. “I don’t think Calvin’s going to make it,” he said. “He’s too tired.”

  Clay lay back on the pillow. He and Buddy were silent a few moments. Maybe Calvin was already dead. The strange thing was that, though Clay didn’t much like him, he’d cared about him. He’d been interested in the hard, clear way Calvin came out with his thoughts. They weren’t like anyone else’s. They weren’t borrowed thoughts. He wondered if Buddy felt the same way. Buddy had pitied the old man. He must have to have rescued him and taken care of him.

  “Are you going to work after you leave me?” Clay asked shyly.

  “Oh, yeah,” Buddy answered. “Got to have money to do my Christmas shopping.” He smiled as though he’d made a good joke. “People don’t drink so much soda in the cold weather,” he went on. He ate the last bite of doughnut. “I’m thinking about other work, real work,” he said. His smile had faded. He just looked worried.

  “How’s Gerald?” Clay asked.

  “He’s found a new place down by the river, near where the elevated highway used to be. Lots of homeless down there. Gerald brings them what he can. That’s where I saw him this morning.”

  Clay sat up straight. The needle gave a slight tug at his hand.

  “When I’m better, can’t we find a place together?” he asked urgently.

  “Clay, you are a kid. You’ve got to have a roof over your head and three meals a day and a school to go to.”

  “So do you have to have all those things,” Clay said.

  “It’s different for me,” Buddy said quickly.

  It wasn’t different, Clay thought. He closed his eyes. That thick, breathy sleepiness was coming back.

  “I think you need to rest now,” Buddy said softly. “I’m going to go.”

  “Will you come back?” asked Clay, opening his eyes with effort.

  “If I can,” replied Buddy.

  On Christmas morning, Buddy came for a brief visit.

  “I see they untied you from that tube,” he said. “You must be able to walk all over the place.” He held out a paper bag. “Here’s a present for you.”

  Inside the bag, Clay found a paperback edition of Robinson Crusoe. How many cans had Buddy had to find to lug to a store to get money to buy the book? He could see Buddy was restless, his thoughts elsewhere. When Clay thanked him, he began to pace about the room like the tiger Clay had seen with his father, pacing in his cage.

  “I’m getting Christmas dinner at the church,” he told Clay. “Remember? Where we had Thanksgiving? I’ll be glad when this day is over. I’ve got things to do.”

  “Are you still at the shelter?” Clay asked.

  Buddy frowned. “Yeah. Nowhere else to be unless I want to freeze.”

  “What are the things you have to do?”

  “I’ll tell you when I’ve done them,” Buddy said.

  “How’s Calvin?”

  “He’s in a coma. But, you know”—Buddy paused by the bed and shook his head slightly—“they trimmed his beard. I was surprised how young he looks.” He clenched his hands a moment. “Clay, I got to go.”

  Without having to think about it, Clay knew it wasn’t a time to plead with Buddy to stay longer, to tell him he’d be glad for his company on Christmas Day. Buddy probably already knew that. He was standing by the door, staring at Clay.

  “Okay. See you,” Clay said, not quite looking at Buddy’s face.

  He was gone in an instant.

  The ugly, agreeable nurse, Alicia, gave Clay a present too, a small model of a red English double-decker bus. Everything about it was perfect, the tiny spiral stairs, the steering wheel, the rows of seats inside. There were no passengers, no driver.

  He held the bus in his hands. Against the thin white coverlet, in the colorless room, the bus was brilliant like a small red comet. One by one, he filled the seats with people—Buddy; Calvin; Mrs. Crary; Dimp Laughlin and his dog; Tony, the boy from the hotel; Gerald; the lady with the turban and the pie; the young man with earrings; Abdul, the news store owner; Mrs. Larkin and Jacob.

  After lunch, which was turkey and mashed potatoes and cranberry sauce, he allowed his mother to go up the spiral stairs to the top deck of the bus.

  He looked out the window for a while at the gray sky. He took Robinson Crusoe from the bedside table and began to read where it fell open in his hands. Then he dropped the book and picked up the bus.

  In the front seat on the top deck, he imagined a figure whose coat collar stood up and hid his face. He imagined his mother beginning to hurry toward the figure, thinking it must be his father. Then he shook the bus and everyone fell out of it. Clay picked up the book and began to read at the beginning.

  Two days after Christmas, Alicia said to Clay, “Mrs. Greg is coming to see you. You’ll like her.”

  Clay was standing with his back against the window. He wouldn’t like Mrs. Greg. He didn’t have to.

  “And why are you not wearing your slippers?” Alicia asked, pointing to the paper slip-ons beneath the bed.

  “They are slippers,” Clay replied. “They slip right off when I put them on.” />
  “Good point,” said Alicia. She pushed a small chair close to the bed and patted the coverlet. “Come on. You’re going to be interviewed. It only hurts for a minute.” She rolled her eyes. Clay didn’t laugh. He was afraid.

  Mrs. Greg arrived a few minutes later. She carried a briefcase under one arm and was wearing a thick padded coat that made her look somewhat like a fire hydrant, especially because she was short and, Clay saw when she removed the coat, quite plump. Her eyebrows were two thick pencil strokes, and over her small lips was painted a big bright red mouth.

  “Hello, Clay Garrity,” she said as she sat down in the chair.

  “You’re from Social Services,” he said.

  “Well. So you know all about Social Services. I suppose you can spot one of us a mile away.”

  “I know you have to sit in Social Services for a hundred years and a day, and then you get papers you fill out so you can come back and sit some more.”

  Mrs. Greg looked serious. “You’re right, Clay. But not entirely. There are so many people in trouble, and not enough money, and not enough really good ideas to make things better. We try to make a very tight net so people won’t fall through the way you did. But now we’ve caught up with you, and you’ll be all right.”

  “What’s all right?” he asked angrily, and wished he hadn’t. But Mrs. Greg was busy with a notebook and a pencil and seemed not to have noticed his tone of voice. “I have to write things down,” she said with a smile. “I forget so easily.”

  Was she trying to fool him? To show how nice and easy she was? This won’t hurt, the doctor would say, or this will be a bit uncomfortable for a second. And then it would hurt like the devil.

  “I’d like you to tell me about your life,” Mrs. Greg said, her pencil poised above the notebook. “That will help mend that net I was talking about.”

  He hesitated. He had a superstitious feeling—he told himself it was superstitious—that the more he told her, the greater the distance would grow between himself and Buddy.