Thomas Harris - The Silence of the Lambs

"The sheriff was a policeman, like your father."

"That didn't keep me from being scared of him, at first. He had a big red face. The sheriff finally put up twenty dollars for a week's board while he 'straightened things out.' He said there was no use going for the stall in warm weather. The papers picked it up. There was a flap. My mother's cousin agreed to let me go. I wound up going to the Lutheran Home in Bozeman."

"It's an orphanage?"

"Yes."

"And Hannah?"

"She went too. A big Lutheran rancher put up the hay. They already had a barn at the orphanage. We plowed the garden with her. You had to watch where she was going, though. She'd walk through the butter-bean trellises and step on any kind of plant that was too short for her to feel it against her legs. And we led her around pulling kids in a cart."

"She died though."

"Well, yes."

"Tell me about that."

"It was last year, they wrote me at school. They think she was about twenty-two. Pulled a cart full of kids the last day she lived, and died in her sleep."

Dr. Lecter seemed disappointed. "How heartwarming," he said. "Did your foster father in Montana fuck you, Clarice?"

"No."

"Did he try?"

"No."

"What made you run away with the horse?"'

"They were going to kill her."

"Did you know when?"

"Not exactly. I worried about it all the time. She was getting pretty fat."

"What triggered you then? What set you off on that particular day?"

"I don't know."

"I think you do."

"I had worried about it all the time."

"What set you off, Clarice? You started what time?"

"Early. Still dark."

"Then something woke you. What woke you up? Did you dream? What was it?"

"I woke up and heard the lambs screaming. I woke up in the dark and the lambs were screaming."

"'They were slaughtering the spring lambs?"

"Yes."

"What did you do?"

"I couldn't do anything for them. I was just a--"

"What did you do with the horse?"

"I got dressed without turning on the light and went outside. She was scared. All the horses in the pen were scared and milling around. I blew in her nose and she knew it was me. Finally she'd put her nose in my hand. The lights were on in the barn and in the shed by the sheep pen. Bare bulbs, big shadows. The refrigefator truck had come and it was idling, roaring. I led her away."

"Did you saddle her?"

"No. I didn't take their saddle. Just a rope hackamore was all."

"As you went off in the dark, could you hear the lambs back where the lights were?"

"Not long. There weren't but twelve."

"You still wake up sometimes, don't you? Wake up in the iron dark with the lambs screaming?"

"Sometimes."

"Do you think if you caught Buffalo Bill yourself and if you made Catherine all right, you could make the lambs stop screaming, do you think they'd be all right too and you wouldn't wake up again in the dark and hear the lambs screaming? Clarice?"

"Yes. I don't know. Maybe."

"Thank you, Clarice." Dr. Lecter seemed oddly at peace.

"Tell me his name, Dr. Lecter, " Starling said.

"Dr. Chilton," Lecter said, "I believe you know each other."

For an instant, Starling didn't realize Chilton was behind her. Then he took her elbow.

She took it back, Officer Pembry and his big partner were with Chilton.

"In the elevator," Chilton said. His face was mottled red.

"Did you know Dr. Chilton has no medical degree?" Dr. Lecter said. "Please bear that in mind later on."

"Let's go," Chilton said.

"You're not in charge here, Dr. Chilton," Starling said.

Officer Pembry came around Chilton. "No, ma'am, but I am. He called my boss and your boss both. I'm sorry, but I've got orders to see you out. Come on with me, now."

"Good-bye, Clarice. Will you let me know if ever the lambs stop screaming?"

"Yes."

Pembry was taking her arm. It was go or fight him.

"Yes," she said. "I'll tell you."

"Do you promise?"

"Yes."

"Then why not finish the arch? Take your case file with you, Clarice, I won't need it anymore." He held it at arm's length. through the bars, his forefinger along the spine. She reached across the barrier and took it. For an instant the tip of her forefinger touched Dr. Lecter's. The touch crackled in his eyes.

"Thank you, Clarice."

"Thank you, Dr. Lecter."

And that is how he remained in Starling's mind. Caught in the instant when he did not mock. Standing in his white cell, arched like a dancer, his hands clasped in front of him and his head slightly to the side.

She went over a speed bump at the airport fast enough to bang her head on the roof of the car, and had to run for the airplane Krendler had ordered her to catch.

Officers Pembry and Boyle were experienced men brought especially from Brushy Mountain State Prison to be Dr. Lecter's warders. They were calm and careful and did not feel they needed their job explained to them by Dr. Chilton.

They had arrived in Memphis ahead of Lecter and examined the cell minutely. When Dr. Lecter was brought to the old courthouse, they examined him as well. He was subjected to an internal body search by a male nurse while, he was still in restraints. His clothing was searched thoroughly and a metal detector run over the seams.

Boyle and Pembry came to an understanding with him, speaking in low, civil tones close to his ears as he was examined.

"Dr. Lecter, we can get along just fine. We'll treat you just as good as you treat us. Act like a gentleman and you get the Eskimo Pie. But we're not pussyfooting around with you, buddy. Try to bite, and we'll leave you smooth-mouthed. Looks like you got something good going here. You don't want to fuck it up, do you?"

Dr. Lecter crinkled his eyes at them in a friendly fashion. If he had been inclined to reply he would have been prevented by the wooden peg between his molars as the nurse shined a flashlight in his mouth and ran a gloved finger into his cheeks.

The metal detector beeped at his cheeks.

"What's that?" the nurse asked.

"Fillings," Pembry said. "Pull his lip back there. You've put some miles on them back ones, haven't you, Doc?"

"Strikes me he's pretty much of a broke-dick," Boyle confided to Pembry after they had Dr. Lecter secure in his cell. "He won't be no trouble if he don't flip out."

The cell, while secure and strong, lacked a rolling food carrier. At lunchtime, in the unpleasant atmosphere that followed Starling's visit, Dr. Chilton inconvenienced everyone, making Boyle and Pembry go through the long process of securing the compliant Dr. Lecter in the straitjacket and leg restraints as he stood with his back to the bars, Chilton poised with the Mace, before they opened the door to carry in his tray.

Chilton refused to use Boyle's and Pembry's names, though they wore nameplates, and addressed them indiscriminately as "you, there."

For their part, after the warders heard Chilton was not a real M.D., Boyle observed to Pembry that he was just "some kind of a God damned schoolteacher."

Pembry tried once to explain to Chilton that Starling's visit had been approved not by them but by the desk downstairs, and saw that in Chilton's anger it didn't matter.

Dr. Chilton was absent at supper and, with Dr. Lecter's bemused cooperation, Boyle and Pembry used their own method to take in his tray. It worked very well.

"Dr. Lecter, you not gonna be needing your dinner jacket tonight," Peinbry said. "I'll ask you to sit on the floor and scoot backwards till you can just stick your hands out through the bars, arms extended backward. There you go. Scoot up a little and straighten 'em out more behind you, elbows straight." Pembry handcuffed Dr. Lecter tightly outside the bars, with a bar between his arms, and a low crossbar above them. "That hurts just a little bit, don't it? I know it does and they won't be on there but a minute, save us both a lot of trouble."