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Pelican Bay

Carl Crothers

Ref. No. 606025ms
Length 86,622 words

Summary

The condemned farmhouse on Florida’s Gulf coast is the last stop for the desperate Cauer family in the summer of 1963. When the county evicts them, things turn deadly. Maxwell Cauer is charged with killing his wife, Faith. Jonathan is sent to a corrupt boys’ home in the Everglades. His sister, Zara, who holds the secret of their father's innocence, is committed to a mental hospital. Jonathan’s journey back to Pelican Bay is fraught with obstacles, including his own guilt and fear. That is, until he meets a woman with her own demons and a young clairvoyant son.

From The Book

PELICAN BAY, Chapters 1-4

Part I

One

“By morning?” Maxwell Cauer asked, his voice a gravel-throated shout. He glared at the inspector. “Are you out of your blessed mind?”

“Yessir,” the inspector said. “I mean—”

“You see how I am here?” Sweat glistened on his forehead and on his muscled arms.

Jonathan watched his father from the top step of the wide porch. The wind in the saw palmetto that surrounded the old house made a raspy, rattling sound, hollow and dead, like dry leaves blowing across a deserted road. A gust touched his father’s face and ruffled his thin hair.

“Yessir, I’m sorry,” the inspector said.

Maxwell Cauer stared at the inspector from the tops of his eyes, then made a retching sound and spat next to the man’s shoes.

“That’s for your sympathy,” he said. He gripped the arms of his wheelchair and shouted over his shoulder. “Faith!”

The inspector sighed and pulled a long flashlight from a hook on his belt and pointed it up at the crumbling ceiling and then down at the floor. Jonathan stood, leaned against the post and watched him move the light along the edge of the deep porch and across the graceful cornices and balustrades that were chipped and termite-eaten. He wanted to lie and tell the man that he could fix the house, would promise to, if he would leave them alone.

“What about furniture and such?” the inspector began again. He wrote on his clipboard and then tucked it under his arm, pulled a stick of gum from his shirt pocket, stripped off its wrapper and pushed it in his mouth in one motion.

“Come again,” Jonathan’s father said.

“I said ya’ll got much to haul out of here?” He peered in the front room and then looked down the hall toward the kitchen.

His father lifted a soiled hand towel from his lap, wiped under his chin and motioned the man closer. “If I could get out of this chair,” he said in a low deliberate voice, looking dead in the man’s eyes, their faces barely a foot apart, “I’d shove that flashlight up your government ass, large end first.”

<

The man stepped back and stopped chewing his gum.

Jonathan’s mother appeared in the entrance hall behind her husband and placed a hand on his shoulder. “Maxwell, please.” She looked at the inspector. “I’m sorry. Would you like to come in and have some tea?” She tucked a loose strand of her black hair behind one ear and smiled nervously. She was taller than the inspector, and very thin. Jonathan had watched his mother deal with bill collectors, charm them, but not in an obvious way, with genuine honesty in her voice, until they wanted to give her money. Talk to him, talk him away.

“The government don’t pay social visits,” his father growled.

“Thank you ma’am, no,” the inspector said. “As I was telling Mr. Cauer here, we’ve been authorized to burn the house tomorrow, at 10 a.m. The Fire Department, that is, for training.” He glanced down at Jonathan’s father and held the clipboard in front of himself in a protective way.

“I don’t understand,” she said.

“This house was condemned, ma’am. We can’t allow you to live here.”

“We can’t possibly leave tonight,” she said. “We have no place to go.” She glanced at Jonathan on the porch steps. The fear in her eyes cut him, and he looked down.

“The owner was given notice three times, ma’am. Surely he told you. And frankly, we didn’t know anyone was living here.” He unfolded a letter and held it out.

She put both hands to her mouth. “Oh God,” she whispered.

Jonathan’s father took the letter, scanned it and then dropped it in his lap. He pushed his chair backwards, gripped the door by its edge and slammed it in the man’s face. The impact rattled the front windows.

The silence that followed was broken only by the steady pounding of the rain and the gusting wind. The inspector stared at the closed door, then walked over and stood at the steps. Jonathan slid down, his back against the post, pulled his schoolbooks close and looked up. The inspector watched the rain for a moment and then without saying a word hurried down the steps toward his car with his clipboard over his head and shells popping beneath his black government shoes. The white sedan with the lettering on the trunk--Ponce County, Florida, No. 2--faded from view in the gray rain. Jonathan watched the car until it reached the end of Shell Point Road, turned onto the state highway and disappeared.

The rain stopped as suddenly as it began, and the sun broke through. It heated the moist air and turned the wild yard into a steaming landscape. Jonathan could hear his father’s voice inside, loud and angry. He walked down the steps to the road and turned and looked back at the house. It leaned toward the lee and the porch roof sagged on each side like the pockets of an old woman’s housecoat. The palmetto had overtaken the flat sandy fields that stretched from the highway to the shoreline and surrounded the house in a pale green sea. He wondered what the house would look like all afire, imagined it as a burning ship in the ocean with no way for the screaming passengers to escape.

The last gasp of the storm’s winds dropped from the stillness and delivered the after-scent of raging rain. Jonathan turned and walked a path through the steaming palmetto to a line of mangrove trees hugging the bay. The trees held the shoreline in layers of exposed gray roots that looked like the devil’s fingers, long and sinewy. He sat down on the strip of sand that looked on the bay and the small dredge island just offshore. It was thick too with mangrove that leaned heavily to the water. Brown pelicans nested in the brush. Sometimes at dusk he would come to watch the pelicans fly along the shoreline in their perfect columns, silhouettes against the dimming light, silently pressing their powerful wings against the air.

A breeze touched his back. The air carried the smell of the salt and fish of the inlet and the small Shell Point Marina where his father worked selling bait and ice when he wasn’t drinking. He started back. At the road, a sound, a muffled pop, came from inside the house. A feeling of dread formed in his stomach and then climbed up into his throat until he could barely breathe. He begged out loud, don’t let it be. In a rush he was at the porch bounding up the steps, smashing into the front door and banging it against the inside wall. At the kitchen, he caught himself against the doorframe and leaned in.

His mother sat slumped on the worn linoleum floor, her back against the stove, legs spread out wide and flat, her cotton dress just above her knees. Her chin rested on her chest, and her arms were at her sides. The back of her left hand rested awkwardly on the hard floor, fingers curled in slightly and pointing up.

Jonathan’s father lay sprawled near the screen door, raised up on one elbow. His wheelchair sat sideways against the pantry door. His face was the color of gray paste with deep lines and folds and uneven stubble, and he was breathing like a dog straining against a taut chain. He seemed unable to speak, but his blood-red eyes screamed.

Jonathan dropped to his knees at his mother’s side and picked up her left hand. It was warm and moist. He cupped his hand under her chin, lifted her head to look at her eyes. They were closed. Then he saw it¾a small hole in the right side of her neck. A narrow line of blood snaked out of it, ran down under the front of her thin dress and formed a puddle in her lap. The blood had begun to soak through and spread as he knelt beside her. It was on the floor, soaking the knees of his pants. “Breathe,” he cried, softly at first. “Breathe. Please breathe.”

“The marina, Jonathan,” his father said. His voice was short and coarse. “Go!” he shouted.

Jonathan stood, backed away and then turned and ran into the dining room and directly into his sister Zara, who was standing in the darkness. Terror filled her eyes. He touched her thin arms, tried to speak but could not, and then bolted around her and out the front door.

Two

The light from the hall fell across a row of military-style bunks. Jonathan stared into the vastness of the room’s high ceiling, unable to sleep amidst the din of creaking bedsprings, coughing and the snoring of some of the older boys, particularly a giant named Luther Mabe, who was known around Smith Hall as Bug.

He sat up on his elbows and squinted at the glare from the open door. Frederic Stubbe was standing in the doorway. He motioned to Jonathan, who looked away from the light and surveyed the landscape of lumps under gray blankets. He stood and pulled on his trousers and walked lightly in his bare feet down the center of the room.

“You out of your mind?” he asked in a loud whisper. Frederic pulled him by the arm into the hallway and took a cigarette from his shirt pocket.

“Check it out,” he said, grinning.

“You got me up for this?” Jonathan asked. Frederic put the cigarette between his lips and let it dangle, and patted his pockets.

“Here.” Jonathan pulled a chrome lighter from his front pocket, popped its hinged top and struck its flint wheel with his thumb. A large flame frolicked around the head of the lighter. Frederic sucked it into the tip of the cigarette and then blew a cloud of blue smoke toward the ceiling.

“Hey, where’d you get that?” Frederic asked. He handed the cigarette to Jonathan, who took a deep drag, but left the smoke suspended in his open mouth before sucking it down his throat. Jonathan exhaled toward the floor. The smoke drifted up and hung in the air, blending with the sharp acid-sweet aroma of Old Spice.

“My old man,” he answered. “Why do you put that shit on at night? You smell like a barbershop.” Frederic took the cigarette from Jonathan’s fingers, puffed on it and gulped, coughing.

“You don’t swallow it, you inhale it. You know, breathe it in.”

Frederic took another small puff but did not try to inhale. “So where’s your father now?” he asked.

Jonathan took the cigarette back and took a long drag. “Prison,” he said.

“What for?”

Jonathan did not respond.

“My father’s coming to get me soon,” Frederic said. “He’s had lots of cases. He’s an attorney, and he’s busy but he’s coming soon. We’re going fishing.”

“You’re full of shit, Stubbe.” The voice startled them. Bobby Johnson was leaning against the door jamb. At 16, he was the oldest boy in the dormitory and tall for his age. “Your old man is a drunk and a crook,” Bobby continued. “All lawyers are crooks, crooks in nice clothes.” He chuckled. Frederic looked at the floor and kept the cigarette in his right hand at his side. A thin line of smoke drifted up his arm and swirled lightly around his head, but he didn’t move.

“He ain’t coming for you, Freddy. When you gonna get that through that pimple you call a head?” Bobby walked toward them. “And the only way you’re going fishin’ is if I put your skinny ass on a hook myself and throw you into Miller’s pond.” Bobby looked at Jonathan. “What are you looking at, Coward?”

“Cauer,” Jonathan said.

Bobby stepped closer. Both were shirtless. Bobby was more muscular and was starting to grow some whiskers on his chin and under his lip. Jonathan stiffened the muscles in his arms and clenched his jaw.

Bobby stood breathing in his face. “I guess we ain’t formally met,” he said. He was half a head taller, and his breath smelled like stale cigarettes. “This is my hall,” he said after a silent moment.

“Why’s it named Smith Hall?” Jonathan asked.

Bobby smiled. “A wise ass and a coward.” He turned to Frederic, still looking down. “Let’s go Freddy.” Frederic handed Jonathan his cigarette and followed Bobby through the door into the darkened room.

Jonathan watched them walk between the bunks in the half darkness. He put the cigarette out with his spit, slipped the butt in his pocket and squinted toward the far end of the room. Frederic was kneeling beside Bobby.

Jonathan pulled the door closed and walked back to his bunk. He lay on his back and stared at the labyrinth of water pipes high above him. A faint groan drifted from the end of the room. Images rushed him¾his mother’s body on the kitchen floor, his father’s torment, the look in Zara’s eyes. He tried to blink them away, but they hung in his head like a cold fog and made him desperate for the bright light of morning. It had been one month since his mother’s death. He felt locked inside a bad dream. Each day a routine of study and work filled time, but the nights were long and hopelessly dark. The food was plentiful, and hot water was available most of the time. He had all he needed, and in some ways, more than he had ever had. But on the brightest days, the Wilmar Home for Boys was a dark and distant place, just as he had always imagined it would be.

The next day Jonathan was summoned to the office of the headmistress, Bernice Benson. The boys in Smith Hall called her Big Ben. Jonathan had met her in court when the judge ordered him enrolled at Wilmar after his father was jailed and his sister Zara was sent to live with an aunt, their father’s sister, in Tampa. Jonathan had not been to Miss Benson’s office. Frederic said some boys who went in never came out. Jonathan had laughed at him, but the comment stayed with him.

He went along the walk that connected the two clapboard dormitories and the administration building. Wilmar had been an Army outpost in the 1940s. It was near the western edge of the Everglades, about a two-day walk from Fort Myers, a prison without walls surrounded by a cypress swamp teeming with alligators. The story was that Smith Hall had been a barracks where a large number of soldiers had died of some disease, after which the government abandoned the post.

He entered Miss Benson’s office and gave a woman seated at a small desk his name. She pressed a button on the intercom box and spoke into it. She looked up and smiled. The box squawked with a low nasal voice, and the secretary’s smile vanished as though someone had slapped it off her face. She stood quickly, opened the door and led Jonathan into a large office.

“Two errors in this letter, Miss Priddy,” Miss Benson said, not looking up from the papers on her desk.

“I’m sorry——”

“That’s all.” She waved the back of her hand at the secretary, who stepped away, and then continued reading.

Jonathan scanned the office. His entire family had lived in rooms half its size. Miss Benson sat stiff-backed at her desk looking down. Behind her two narrow windows reached from the floor to the ceiling and framed a view down the shaded walk toward Smith Hall. The light cast her head in a soft shadow. She was a large woman, but not fat, solid. Her small eyes were set close together, which made her face appear swollen. She leaned over the folder that lay on the desk.

“I’ve been reviewing your file, Mr. Cauer.” She looked up slowly as she spoke. “You are now 14?”

“Yes ma’am.”

“You’ve been here one month.” She motioned him to pull up a chair. He rubbed his palms on his pants and sat down. He could see her eyes clearly, cold blue marbles, and he smelled a hint of ammonia.

“Let’s summarize,” she said, forcing a smile. “Your mother is dead, your father’s in jail and you’re here.” She looked up and raised her eyebrows.

“Yes ma’am, that’s right.”

“I don’t mean to sound uncaring,” she continued, her tone softening, “but we have found that healing occurs more quickly when personal tragedy is dealt with directly.” She straightened in her chair. “I’m required in cases like this to bring in the state psychiatrist to talk with you. Her name is Dr. Mary Belnap and she’ll be here tomorrow.”

Jonathan sat forward. “I have a sister.” He waited for Miss Benson to raise her eyes. “She’s living with our Aunt Evelyn in Tampa.”

“Was living with your Aunt Evelyn,” she said. “Zara’s been moved.”

“Moved? Where?” Jonathan placed his hands on the desk. She stared at his hands in silence until he removed them and sat back. “Where is she?”

“She’s fine. She’s been sent to Margaret Mason, the state hospital at Mocalee.”

“The nuthouse?”

“We don’t call it that, Mr. Cauer. It is a state mental institution and a fine one. Your aunt felt Zara needed some help getting over your mother’s death.” Her voice had that tinny shadow of feigned optimism.

“She’s only 12 years old!”

Miss Benson stared at him with an annoyed look. “Your aunt asked that you stop mailing letters to Zara at her home,” she said. “I have the address of the hospital. They don’t give patients sharp objects like pencils so you may not get a letter back.” She wrote the address on a piece of paper and handed it to Jonathan.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “It’s for the best.”

“Nothing’s for the best,” he said under his breath.

“Pardon me?” She pressed a button on the gray box. The door opened, and Miss Priddy appeared. “We don’t back-talk adults at Wilmar, Mr. Cauer. You’ll be wise to remember that.”

Jonathan stood and walked past Miss Priddy, who smiled sympathetically.

In the hall, bent over a mop and bucket, was the custodian Mr. Willow. He glanced up at Jonathan with his head at a tilt and a single eye cocked open. Jonathan walked around the wet floor toward the door. Mr. Willow dropped the mop into bucket, lifted it into the wringer and leaned on the handle. The sound of rushing water and clanking metal echoed down the empty corridor.

Jonathan stopped and turned around. “Did you say something?”

Mr. Willow leaned on the wringer handle again, glanced at the office door and then looked at Jonathan. His eyes were coal black and edged in yellow.

“Watch yourself, is all I said.” He lifted the mop from the wringer, plopped it on the floor and pulled it into a sweeping figure-eight pattern. “Things, they ain’t right here.” He looked down and began humming what sounded like a hymn and swaying to the rhythm.

“What do you mean?” Jonathan asked. Mr. Willow shook his head but did not look up.

Jonathan pushed through the doors. On the street, Mr. Willow’s rusted pickup truck sat parked at the curb. He walked up to the passenger window and looked in. The keys dangled from the ignition. He gripped the door handle but felt someone watching him. When he turned his head, he saw Mr. Willow standing inside the double doors, staring at him. He let go and glanced again at the door. No one was there.

He pushed his hands deep into the pockets of his jeans and started back to Smith Hall. The sky had turned a marbled gray, a depressing autumn sky, cold and unmoving. The wind whistled in the tops of the tall pines. He thought about Zara, stopped and looked up to keep the tears from running from his eyes.

The dormitory was quiet. Luther walked toward him, his hulking frame making the floor shudder with each step. He had an odd expression on his face, serious.

“Somebody shot the president. It’s on the TV.” Bug’s big round face was still. He searched Jonathan’s eyes. “Why’d they do that?”

“What do you mean?” Jonathan asked. He thought Bug was kidding.

“President Kennedy. He’s dead, somebody shot him dead.”

Jonathan stared at Bug, puzzled and unsure what to think or say. They walked together into the recreation room where most of the other boys huddled around the small television and listened to the news bulletins from Dallas, one after another. Miss Priddy’s voice came over the loud speaker, canceling classes for the rest of the afternoon. Together they watched people in tears in the streets of cities. They were riveted to the faces and voices of grief, more curious than sad. Jonathan watched in silence and stayed until the others moved away one by one and he was alone.

That night Jonathan wrote Zara a letter.

Dear Zara, Nov. 23, 1963

I hope you get this letter. They said you are living in the hospital now. I hope it is OK. Please write to me and let me know what you need if you don’t have something because I can probably get it here maybe. Do they let you write letters? I hope so. If not don’t worry about it. You can read mine and pretend that you are writing a letter back and you can make up what to say. I will try to think of what you might say and when I do I can look at your picture. I have a picture from when we went to the state fair two years ago. It’s the only picture I have. Do you have a picture of me? I am going to come back and get you out of there as soon as I can figure things out. Then we can go somewhere else and live and take care of each other. We don’t need nobody else when you think about it.

Love, your brother,

Jonathan

P.S. Do you have a TV?

Three

At 10 o’clock the next morning Jonathan was called out of class to see Dr. Mary Belnap. He walked between the desks from the back of the classroom. Frederic reached out and grabbed the sleeve of his shirt.

“Don’t tell ‘em you hate anybody,” he whispered. “They’ll put you in the nuthouse.” Jonathan nodded so Frederic would let go of his shirt, then proceeded to the front of the room where the English teacher, Mr. Lawrence Coggeshall, waited to see him out.

Coggeshall had a narrow body and face and wore the same brown sweater vest every day over a different shirt and a large bow tie. He glared down through his wire-rimmed glasses. Jonathan slipped past him and out the door.

At the administration building, Miss Priddy escorted him into a small room near Miss Benson’s office. A woman stood and walked toward him, her right hand extended. She took his hand in hers and held it lightly. Her fingers were thin and delicate.

“Hello, Jonathan. I’m Mary Belnap.”

She drew him to her eyes. They were dark and beautiful and her face flawless. She smiled.

“I hate my father,” he said without hesitating.

“Oh, I see. Well, would you like to sit down and talk about it?” She gestured toward a couch near one side of the room. He walked over and sat down. He could feel a warmth rise in his face. Dr. Belnap moved to a winged chair covered in a cream-colored fabric with a delicate flower design that made Jonathan think of his mother. She sat down and crossed her legs. Her skirt was long and tight but her leg was visible from her ankle to her knee, smooth in its silky stocking. Hanging from her neck was a small gold cross on a thin necklace. She touched it with the tips of her fingers and smiled.

“So, tell me how you’re doing, Jonathan? Are you adjusting to Wilmar?”

“OK, I guess.”

“Have you made friends since you arrived?”

“Yeah, I guess.”

“What are their names? I know most of the boys.”

“Frederic.”

“Frederic Stubbe?”

“And Albert and Luther Mabe.”

“Albert Dickinson is a fine boy.” Jonathan expected her to say more but she only smiled and stared.

“I want you to tell me what happened the day your mother died, Jonathan.” She tried to catch his eyes, but he looked down at the floor.

“I want to help you,” she said, “but I need to understand everything that happened.” She sat forward in her chair, reached over and picked up Jonathan’s right hand.

“I want you to tell me about that day as if you were telling the story to a friend.” She squeezed his hand.

“It’s perfectly OK to cry, Jonathan.”

“I’m not crying,” he said. He brushed across his eyes with the back of his hand. She touched his shoulder, but he moved back and looked away. She lit a cigarette and picked up a notepad.

“OK, well let’s start at the beginning, then. Tell me¾“

“Can I have one of those?” he asked.

She frowned slightly but handed him the case and lighter. He lit the cigarette and inhaled deeply.

“Describe it for me,” she continued. He watched her as she exhaled a thin stream of smoke. He dragged on the cigarette again and felt dizzy.

“You’re too young to be smoking like that,” she said. He didn’t know what kind of doctor gave a 14-year-old a cigarette, but he was grateful. He relaxed and started talking, but stopped suddenly.

“Are you all right?” Dr. Belnap asked.

“My mother,” he said. “I can’t see her face anymore.”

Dr. Belnap moved to the couch and put her arm over his shoulder. “That’s a natural thing. Her image may come and go in your mind, but her spirit will never leave you. You belong to each other. And although you cannot see her, she is there in your memory, in your heart, to give you guidance, helping you make your way.”

“How do I know she’s there?”

“How do we know the wind? We can’t see it but you know when it comes because you can feel it. If you are quiet and concentrate, you will feel your mother’s presence.”

Jonathan closed his eyes. Dr. Belnap walked to her desk, picked up a file folder that was fat with papers and returned to her chair.

“Let’s talk about your father, Jonathan. Tell me, what he’s like?”

“He’s a drunk,” he said and dropped his chin.

“Was he injured in Korea?”

“No, he came back OK, except my mother said it affected his brain. He got hurt building houses. That’s what he did.”

“How did he get hurt?”

“Fell off a roof into a wood pile. Some man tried to help him but he didn’t know my father’s back was broken.” He sighed. “He was in a wheelchair after that.”

“How old were you then?”

“Six.” He looked straight ahead at nothing in particular. Dr. Belnap wrote something on her notepad. “He wouldn’t take any money from my grandfather, who’s dead now. Not from anyone else, either. That made my mother mad. We moved around, sometimes staying in crummy hotels or apartments or¾” He paused. “Or run-down old houses nobody else would live in.”

“Like the house at Pelican Bay?” Dr. Belnap asked.

He nodded.

“My mother ironed people’s clothes, but she didn’t like to leave me and my sister Zara with my father when he was drinking. That’s what he did most of the time.”

“It sounds as though your mother was a very nice person.” Dr. Belnap said. “What happened the day she died?”

Jonathan sighed at the question. He didn’t want to talk about it again.

“Jonathan.”

“He was angry.”

“Who was angry?”

“My father. A man came and said the house was condemned and we had to leave because they were going to burn it down. The man who owned the house, he didn’t tell us nothing. My mother didn’t want to move again. She liked it there.”

He looked at Dr. Belnap and felt himself begin to cry inside. “I could hear blood gurgling in her throat, but she wouldn’t move.” He looked down and wiped his eyes. “I tried to talk to her, but she just stared at the wall. She sat right there and died on the kitchen floor.”

Jonathan could feel Dr. Belnap stiffen in her chair. She sat silently for a moment.

“Where was Zara?” she asked softly.

“The sheriff took us to my Aunt Evelyn’s house, in Tampa.”

“No, I mean where was Zara the moment it happened?”

“I didn’t see her until I went for help. She was in the next room, standing there.”

“Are you sure?” Dr. Belnap asked.

Jonathan looked at her. “Have you seen my sister?”

“I am not supposed to tell you,” she said. “They thought it would upset you to discuss your sister’s situation, but I think you should know.”

“What situation?”

“Zara is unresponsive, Jonathan.”

“What does that mean?”

“She won’t talk to anyone, won’t answer questions. And she does not respond to stimuli around her, sounds, bright light.”

“I can talk to her,” Jonathan said. “Let me see her.”

“I’m not sure that would be wise at this point. Zara’s dealing with something quite severe. Your presence might aggravate her condition. Do you understand? Her condition results when someone has experienced a severe traumatic event.” Dr. Belnap closed her notebook and placed it on the coffee table. “Did Zara see your mother dying?”

Jonathan looked at Dr. Belnap’s hand on his arm and then pulled away. “She didn’t see nothing.”

“I’m sorry, Jonathan.”

“I’d like to go now,” he said. He stood and walked to the door and then turned around. Dr. Belnap was standing, holding her notebook in both hands, a deeply sad look on her face. He wanted to run to her and put his arms around her and let her hold him and run her fingers through his hair.

“Will you tell Zara that I love her?” he asked.

“I will, Jonathan.”

Four

Beyond the steel door, someone was screaming. Zara got up from the bed and tiptoed across the cold tile. She placed her palms flat against the door and stretched to look out the small glass window with chicken wire sealed in its thick glass.

The commotion had moved away. A white bed sheet lay crumpled on the gray tile. She pressed the left side of her face flat against the door so she could see down the wide corridor. The metal was cold. It chilled her in her thin cotton gown. She gathered a handful of the cloth in her right fist and pulled her arm against the front of her body.

She could just see the backs of two white-coated attendants on each side of a boy her age as they moved down the corridor. Each held a thin arm and were lifting and dragging the boy as he struggled. He was naked from the waist down and Zara could see dark bruises on his butt. She watched them until they disappeared from the angle of her view. She stayed at the door and listened to the screaming that trailed behind them and echoed off the painted concrete-block and tile walls of Ward D.

Then, she leaned her back and head against the door and looked up at the ceiling. The thick silence returned and settled about her. She began to feel light-headed and the sound of the young boy’s screams returned, ringing in her head.

A chill inched up her back. She tiptoed across the floor to the bed, curled up under the blanket and fell asleep. She awakened to someone holding her down and working fat, stubby fingers against her lips. She relaxed and accepted the pill. Nurse Bowery mumbled something under her breath and then handed Zara a paper cup of water from the inventory on her round metal tray. She drank.

Nurse Bowery didn’t look like any nurse Zara had ever seen. She had a bulldog face and a mouth full of tiny bad teeth. Her back and neck were thick, and her hands too big for her body. Her skinny legs stuck out from her white uniform so that she resembled a large Arctic bird.

“You heard the ruckus last night, did you?” she said. “That new boy, you’re not to be associating with that one, you understand?”

Her lilting accent had a song-like quality. Zara watched her carefully and then rocked her head from side to side as if in sync with some melody only she could hear. The nurse stopped fidgeting with the cups on her tray and stood back, one eyebrow raised.

“I surely wish you’d talk to me,” she said.

The sound of metal clanging came from the somewhere down the corridor. Nurse Bowery sighed and moved to the door. She pulled it open and stood holding it, looking out into the now quiet corridor.

“His name is Phillip,” she said, turning to look at Zara briefly before stepping through the door. Zara smiled to herself and pulled her legs up close to her body and rested her chin on her knees. She rocked gently forwards and back.

She awoke in a pleasant mood. The day held the possibility that she might see Phillip again, outside where a week earlier they sat together on the concrete bench near the butterfly garden in the afternoon sun and watched a show of flittering beauty and grace. Zara loved to watch the butterflies but sharing the experience, even in silence, now filled her with pleasure and she longed for it.

“Good morning, Zara.” The voice in the room shook her alert. She sat up on the bed and backed herself against the wall.

“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to startle you.” Dr. Belnap was sitting in a metal chair near the bed. Her legs were crossed and she held a spiral notebook and a gold writing pen.

“How are you?” Dr. Belnap said, smiling. Zara looked at her cautiously.

“I thought since you tire so easily when we talk I would come first thing in the morning.”

Zara pulled her legs in under her and sat cross-legged in the middle of the bed and stared at Dr. Belnap, forcing any expression from her face.

“I heard some interesting news from one of the orderlies, Zara.” Dr. Belnap glanced up from notebook. “He said he heard you, or he thought he heard you, talking to Phillip.” Dr. Belnap paused again. Zara sat staring at her hands.

“Is that true? Were you speaking?”

“Look at me, Zara.” Her voice was gentle, as always. Zara raised her head. “Just nod your head. If you’re speaking, that’s wonderful.”

Zara looked down. She didn’t want to hear the questions about her mother again.

“OK,” Dr. Belnap said. “I want you to think about it and I’ll see you next week?”

Zara nodded but did not look up.

Dr. Belnap walked to the door, then turned around. “Oh, I talked with Jonathan,” she said.

Zara snapped her head up.

“He’s fine. He wanted me to tell you that he loves you.” She smiled and left.

Zara waited until the door latch sounded, and then slid off the bed onto her knees on the floor and reached in between the mattress and springs, felt around and brought out a handful of envelopes. She kept one letter and pushed the others back into their hiding place. She sat on the edge of the bed and removed the lined pages from its envelope. She had read them many times. She promised Phillip she would read a letter from her brother to him today, but that now seemed a bad idea.

She put the letter down, walked over to the door and peered into the corridor through the small window. Two attendants were standing and talking a short distance away. She moved back to her bed and picked up the letter and read its first sentence, then read it again. She sat down on the edge of the bed, folded the letter in her lap, looked up and recited the sentence.

The following day she met Phillip outside on the grounds and with her back to the attendants recited the entire letter to him from memory. When she had finished, Phillip hugged her and then took her hands in his and swung them back and forth until one of the attendants whistled at them from some distance away. The attendant ran a finger across his neck. Phillip gave him the bird high in the air. Zara laughed but pulled his arm down.

The months passed, and they continued their conversations in the garden and around the well-tended, tree-lined grounds of the hospital, always careful to talk only when their backs were turned to the attendants. It became a game. Jonathan’s letters took on special meaning. Zara and Phillip got to know Albert and Dickey Dunn and Bug and Bobby and, of course, Big Ben. And Frederic. But over time the letters slowed and then they stopped.

On a hot afternoon in July, Zara saw Dr. Belnap talking with two attendants some distance away. She and Phillip sat on a bench near the hedgerow. They looked in their direction several times as they talked. Even across the distance, Zara could feel Dr. Belnap’s stare. She turned to Phillip, who was looking off in the distance at the high green wall of large Australian pine trees that lined one side of the hospital grounds. She admired his face. It was thin and smooth, and his reddish brown hair curled around his small ears and sat up on the top of his forehead. His smile was warm, and his eyes sympathetic. They held hands like brother and sister, to comfort each other. Zara could feel the fleshy stubble of the scars she had seen on Phillip wrists as they touched. She squeezed his hand and held it firmly as she watched two attendants move toward them while Dr. Belnap turned and walked in the direction of the hospital.

Soon they stood over them. John, the one she knew, spoke. He was as big as a tree, and his voice was strong.

“Zara,” he said.

She looked up. His face was gentle, and he stood casually with his hands clasped in front and hanging down as he did when he was making an unpleasant request.

“Dr. Belnap would like to see you.”

Zara could feel Phillip trembling. She tightened her grip on his hand and pulled it against her leg and held it there.

“Come on, Phillip,” the other man said. “You come with me.” Phillip gave Zara a scared look but forced it into a pitiful smile. She smiled, and they stood together and followed the attendants down the tree-shaded walk, holding hands. Phillip stared at the ground as they walked until they reached the south entrance.

When they entered the corridor a symphony of clanging metal and a wave of sodden odors greeted them. The noise made Phillip flinch as they passed the open kitchen door. An old woman sat in a wheelchair against the wall mumbling and batting her arms in front of her face rapidly as if shooing away a large flying insect. No one paid her any attention. A middle-aged man in faded pajamas walked toward them, bobbing along close to the wall and chattering to himself.

The new attendant led Phillip away toward Ward D, and John directed Zara into a large room at the end of the corridor furnished with several finely upholstered couches and chairs. The walls were papered with a delicate, muted pattern of flowers and vines. Zara sat on a large couch near the tall windows and waited.

The door opened, and Dr. Belnap entered wearing her best institutional smile. She did not speak as if they had been talking and she was returning from a break. Zara searched Dr. Belnap’s face as she approached.

“And how are we?”

Zara’s rolled her eyes in reply--we are fine.

“I’m sorry to pull you in from outside on such a beautiful day, but I must talk with you about something.” She sat down close to Zara and looked in her eyes. “You’re 13, and you’re blossoming into a beautiful young lady and--” Dr. Belnap stared into Zara’s face as if she had forgotten the words she wanted to say. “They’re concerned about your relationship with Phillip. They want to make sure--” She paused again long enough for her shoulders and her proper manner to slump and her voice to turn into a plea. “Zara, please speak to me.” Tears filled her eyes. Dr. Belnap stood quickly. Her voice had lost its attachment to the moment. She turned and looked out the tall windows that framed the sterile setting of the hospital grounds: shrubs neatly trimmed into unnatural square shapes bordered by flawlessly clean flower beds and manicured grass. She continued to stare out the window though there was nothing new to see, and then turned and looked down into Zara’s face before picking up her purse and walking to the door. She stopped and turned and raised her voice slightly to bridge the distance.

“The nurse will explain things to you,” she said.

About The Author

Carl Crothers is executive editor of the Winston-Salem (NC) Journal. He has worked as a reporter and editor at four newspapers. He is a Navy veteran and a graduate of Virginia Commonwealth University (‘79). He and his wife, Donna, a former journalist, have two college-age daughters.

Copyright 2006-2007, Carl Crothers (Expires July 18, 2009)

To request information on this author or a manuscript contact the listed agent or e-mail: dbooth@authorlink.com

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