Butler Hospital
Gordon, down on his knees in the dirt and muck, wind shrieking at his neck, the pose of disgrace. His father would definitely approve—his only child ordered to the Siberian task of clearing the slope of its brambles. There was zero point to it; no one ever stepped foot here. Behind him, past the leafless trees where men cruised men in the camouflaged months, was the Seekonk River, a smudgy gray this November afternoon, and the jaws of the railroad bridge frozen in a wide gape. In front of him, on the far side of the parking lot, was the psychiatric hospital. That was what he was supposed to call it, but to him it would always be the loony bin. He looked to the upper floors but saw no one behind the dark, captive panes.
Maybe none of the windows actually opened, not a terrible thing since it meant that his sketches on the cafeteria panes with a black marker would stick around for a while. Two weeks ago he’d drawn a man with a noose around his neck, a girl jamming her fingers down her throat, another guy screwing a sheep that ended up looking more like a poodle. Late at night, the cafeteria had been closed and black inside until the flashlight of a security guard had pinned him to the glass and made shadows shiver and dart inside. Gordon’s friends, who’d come to watch him, had gone for their bikes and sped away, while he couldn’t figure out why he wasn’t fleeing too. The guard, a young Dominican guy, recognized his last name.
“Yeah, my father’s a shrink here,” Gordon had admitted. He was vaguely insulted that the guard didn’t find him threatening, worth calling for backup. He would always be too small, too delicate looking, like his father.
The guard swept his flashlight over the drawings. The ink had a phosphorescent quality; the figures throbbed. “Shit. Really? Doing this where your old man works? That’s harsh.”
“He’s an asshole,” Gordon had said.
The guard laughed and put up his hands. “Hey, that’s between you and him. Not my business.”
Gordon’s punishment had been worked out privately between his father and Mr. Baranek—Fat John, head of facilities management. No police, no charges, just forty hours of outdoor clearing, cleaning, the worst shit work, penance in the cold dreamed up by the two colluding men. Only sixteen more hours to go. They could make him do it, but they couldn’t make him feel guilty or even regretful, and he held on to his crime like it was his last supper.
He gathered a fistful of hard red berries from the bramble. If they happened to be poisonous, he could coat them with chocolate and serve them to his father, one each day, a gradual sickening, a drawn-out misery. When he threw them over his shoulder instead, he lost his footing, slid backward down the slope, grabbing for anything that would stop him. His tailbone skimmed a rock and nausea ticked through his body. He was almost at the bottom by then and the river’s edge; he stood uncertainly to watch the rowers and listen to the lonely slurp of their lifting oars. Maybe, if he was very lucky, he’d see Ellen, his father’s last girlfriend, out rowing on the water again—but he also knew that was impossible. She’d left Providence three months ago, though he didn’t know where she’d gone or why; today she’d be only a mirage of his missing her.