John Katzenbach - The Madman

Peter hesitated. "I don't know that he's ever killed a man. Probably pretty strictly the women we know about." He let his voice trail off.

Big Black and Nurse Wrong set up a painting exercise in the dayroom that afternoon for Mister Evil's regular group session. There was no explanation as to where Evans had disappeared to, and Lucy was out of the Amherst Building as well. The dozen members of the group were all issued large white sheets of thick cotton paper that felt rough to the touch. They were then placed in a loose circle, and given a choice between watercolors and crayons.

Peter looked askance at the whole endeavor, but Francis thought it was a welcome change from sitting in a meeting designed to underscore their madness and contrast it with Mister Evans's sanity, which he had come to think was the sole agenda of the group gatherings. Cleo had an eager look in her face, as if she'd already anticipated what she intended to sketch and Napoleon hummed a little martial music to himself, as he contemplated the blank sheet on his lap, rubbing his fingers along the edge.

Nurse Wrong stepped into the center of the group. She treated all the patients as if they were children, which Francis hated. "Mister Evans would like all of you to use this time to do a self-portrait," she said briskly. "Something that says something, anything, about how you see yourself."

"I can't do a picture of a tree?" Cleo questioned. She gestured toward the bank of dayroom windows that were filled with refracted light, glistening with the afternoon. Beyond the glass and wire mesh, Francis could see one of the quadrangle trees on the grounds swaying in a light breeze, the springtime weather just ruffling the new green leaves.

"Unless you think of yourself as a tree," Nurse Wrong replied, stating something so obvious that it was nearly overwhelming.

"A Cleo tree?" Cleo asked. She raised her chunky arm and flexed it like a bodybuilder. "A very strong tree."

Francis chose a small tray of watercolors. Blue. Red. Black. Green. Orange. Brown. He had a small paper cup of water that he placed on the floor next to his feet. After a final glance toward Peter, who had suddenly bent over his sheet of paper, and was busily at work, Francis turned to his own blank canvas. He dipped his small brush into the liquid to wet the tip, then into the black paint. He made a long, oval shape on the page and then turned to the task of filling in the features.

In the back of the dayroom, a man faced up against the wall, mumbling steadily, like a person at prayer, interrupting himself only every few minutes to steal a glance in the group's direction, before returning to his conversation. Francis noticed the same retarded man who'd threatened them earlier; he lurched through the room, grunting, occasionally staring in their direction, slapping his fist into his palm repeatedly. Francis turned back to his drawing, and continued to slide the paintbrush gently over the sheet of paper, watching with some satisfaction as a figure grew in the center of the page.

Francis worked intently. He tried to give himself a smile, but it came out crookedly, so that it seemed that half his face was enjoying something, while the other half filled with regret. The eyes stared out at him intently, and he thought he could see beyond them. Francis thought the painted Francis had shoulders perhaps a little too slumped, and a posture that was perhaps too resigned. But this was less important than trying to show that the Francis on the sheet of paper had feelings, had dreams, had desires, had all the emotions that he associated with the outside world.

He did not look up until Nurse Wrong announced there were only a few minutes left in the session. He glanced to his side and saw that Peter was intently putting the finishing touches on his own picture. It was a pair of hands, gripping bars that stretched from the top of the sheet to the bottom. There was no face, no body, no sense of person whatsoever. Just the fingers wrapped around thick shafts of black that dominated the page.

Nurse Wrong took Francis's painting from his hands and paused to examine it.

Big Black came over and stared over her shoulder at the painting. He broke into a smile. "Damn, C-Bird," he said. "This is some fine work. Boy's got some talent he didn't tell no one about."

The nurse and the huge attendant moved off, collecting the other patients' work, and Francis found himself standing next to Napoleon. "Nappy," he said, quietly, "how long have you been here?"

"In the hospital?"

"Yes. And in here, in Amherst." He gestured at the dayroom. Napoleon seemed to think for a moment before responding.

"Two years now, C-Bird, except it could be three, I'm not sure. A long time," he added sadly. "A real long time. You lose track. Or maybe it's that they want you to lose track. I'm not sure."

"You're pretty experienced in how things work around here, aren't you?"

Napoleon bowed slightly, almost gracefully. "An expertise, alas C-Bird, that I would prefer not to own. But true enough."

"If I wanted to get from here to one of the other buildings, how would I do it?"

Napoleon looked slightly frightened by the question, he took a single step back, and shook his head. His mouth opened, flustered, and he stammered his reply: "You don't like it here with us?"

Now it was Francis's turn to shake his head negatively. "No. I mean late at night. After medication, after lights-out. Suppose I wanted to get to one of the other buildings without being seen, could I do it?"

Napoleon considered the question. "I don't think so," he said slowly. "We're always locked in."

"But suppose I wasn't locked in…"

"We're always locked in."

"But suppose…," Francis said again, slightly exasperated by the round man's response.

"This has something to do with Short Blond, doesn't it? And Lanky, too. But Lanky couldn't get out of the dormitory. Except the night Short Blond died, when it was unlocked. I've never heard of the door being left unlocked before. No, you can't get out. No one can. I don't know that I've ever heard someone wanting to."

"Somebody could. Somebody did. And somebody wanted to. Somebody's got a set of keys."

Napoleon looked terrified. "A patient has a set of keys," he whispered. "I've never heard of that."

"I think so," Francis said.

"That would be wrong, C-Bird. We're not supposed to have keys." Napoleon shifted his weight from foot to foot, as if the ground beneath the soles of his tattered slippers had grown hot to the touch. "I think, if you got outside, I mean out of the building, avoiding the security patrol would be pretty easy. I mean, they don't seem like the brightest guys on the planet, do they? And I think they have to clock in at the same locations, at the same time every night, so avoiding them well, even somebody as crazy as one of us probably could manage it with a little bit of planning…" He giggled slightly, almost losing control, grinning at the radical opinion that the security guards were incompetent. But then his brow knit together closely. "But that wouldn't be the problem, would it, C-Bird?"

"What do you think the problem would be?" Francis asked.

"Getting back in. The main door, even if you had a key, is right across from the nurses' station. It's the same in every building, isn't it? And even if the nurse or the attendant on duty were asleep at the time, the sound of the door opening would likely awaken them."

"What about the emergency exits on the side of the building?"

"I think those are barred and nailed shut."

He shook his head. "Probably a fire code violation," he added. "We ought to ask Peter. I'll bet he knows."

"Probably. But still, even if you wanted to, you don't think it could be done?"

"There might be some other way. I've just never heard of one in all the time I've been here. And I've never heard of anyone who wanted to get from one place to another, C-Bird. Never. Not once. Why would anyone, when all we want and all we need and all that we could possibly use is right here in this building?"