This time Dylan purposely scrambled the words. He didn’t want to think about what the driver was saying. He didn’t want to think about anything.
They arrived late at night. Snow was falling fitfully, tiny ice flakes with no substance but only sting to them. The van drove through big gates with a booth just inside. The driver stopped and rolled down the window. Dylan was aware of voices, people deciding what to do with him. Another short drive down a tree-lined road, branches bare and scratchy against floodlights, and the van pulled in front of a stone building that looked like a medieval castle. The front doors had glass windows, which Dylan thought was odd; in movies, prisons never had any glass, only bars. Two men in dark green uniforms-guards, he guessed-came out of the doors and took him from the van. The guards didn’t have guns, but they had sticks and handcuffs on their belts.
For a long time he waited in a room with plastic chairs and green walls. The guards stayed with him. Finally Dylan was taken to a room where there was nothing on the walls but a mirror of wavy metal. The one chair was bolted to the floor, and the window had heavy wire mesh over it. There was a tiny eyeball window in the door that led into the hall so people could peek in at him anytime they wanted. Already faces had come and gone.
A zoo, he thought, and I’m the wild animal.
A while later a lady, maybe forty-older than his mom-came to the room. He guessed she was a doctor by the way she moved and smiled, like she was so powerful everybody would do what she wanted so she could just relax and enjoy it.
Dylan was sitting on one of two hospital beds with white covers and metal roll bars. His back was flat against the wall, and his legs stuck out over the edge into the narrow aisle between the beds.
He would have stood when she came into the room so she wouldn’t think he hadn’t been brought up right, but he was cuffed to the frame.
The doctor sat on the other bed. She crossed her legs and absently pulled the crease of her trousers straight. Most ladies didn’t wear pants, not at work anyway. Maybe lady doctors were different.
Her fingernails were short like a man’s. They looked strong. She looked strong all over: iron gray hair and wire-rim glasses, a square face and a chunky body. She wasn’t ugly, just solid.
“I’m Doctor Olson,” she said. “I work with the boys two days a week. I’m sure you are aware of the difficulties of finding a place for a boy your age. Most of our juvenile offenders are at least fourteen or fifteen. Some of the bigger boys are… Oh, Lord.”
When she said “Lord,” she took off her glasses and put her thumb on one temple and her fingertips on the other and looked into her hand as if God might be there and she wanted to shut out the light to get a better look at his tiny self.
After she had communed she went on: “I’m one of the on-call psychiatrists. The other, the one you will probably work with, is Dr. Kowalski. You will be housed here for the time being. When you’re ready we’ll move you in with the other boys. Are there any questions you’d like to ask me?”
Dylan meant to answer, to say no or ask something to be polite, but he didn’t.
She waited a moment or two then said, “Okay, then. I guess I’ll say goodnight. An orderly will be in to get those cuffs off of you. He’ll bring you a pair of pajamas and so forth. The kitchen is closed but, if you’re hungry, I’ve arranged for you to have a snack.” Again she waited. Dylan chased after sentence fragments, wanting to say something because she wanted him to, but it was as if he’d forgotten how to speak, how to catch a thought and make it into a sound.
Doctor Olson turned and left. A snick-clunk sound followed-the lock on the door being put into place.
Dylan was home.
5
For three days, Dylan stayed in the room with the observation window. Nobody told him but after a while he figured out he was in Drummond’s infirmary. A lot of the time they left the little hatch door on the peep hole open and he could look out. There was a desk with a nurse at it and twice he saw a guard bring a boy there to get bandages or aspirin or something. From what he could see there wasn’t any other room for sick people but the one he was in, and since he wasn’t sick he didn’t know why they were keeping him there. Since he didn’t care why, he never asked.
A guard took his clothes. That bothered him. Sitting with the covers over his legs felt weird, like he was sick and should be throwing up. He was afraid he’d have to stay like that and when he got up to pee, people could look in and see him running around in his underpants, but in an hour or so the same guard brought him blue jeans and a denim shirt. They were too big but not as bad as the jockey shorts. Plain, white cotton, they reached to his knees. The slot in the front he was supposed to use was so low it was easier to go over the top. He also got a pair of stiff leather shoes. This last offering was left by an “orderly.”
Even in his self-imposed hermitage of the mind, Dylan knew he wasn’t a proper orderly like on Dr. Kildare. For one thing he was fourteen or fifteen and they didn’t make kids orderlies in regular hospitals. For another thing he whispered, “Hey, blood brother,” and “How ya doin’, axe man,” and occasionally mimed chopping when none of the real people were around. That was a major tip-off. He also had a tattoo on his arm. A stupid one, just numbers, that looked like a spaz had done it with a ballpoint pen. Dylan guessed he was what in old movies was called a “trustee,” another prisoner who has earned certain privileges.
Dylan knew the taunts should bother him but by the time they permeated the blanket of fog he’d swaddled himself in they’d lost any power they might have had when they were still warm. The trustee told Dylan his name was Draco but the staff called him James. Dylan didn’t call him anything. Before he’d ended up in Drummond he would have liked to talk to Draco. Not that his mother would have let them be friends. Draco was what his parents called “a bad crowd” all by himself.
Draco kept up the chopping and saying stuff. Dylan watched without a lot of interest. Even when Draco pinched him once and, one time, held a plastic fork to his throat, Dylan couldn’t generate enough energy to speak.
Two days and six meals later, when Dr. Olson came and asked him how he was doing, he found himself answering. Dylan was as surprised as she was.
“Fine,” he said, and then laughed because there was no “fine” left in his universe. Dr. Olson looked worried, said some more things and left.
That night when Draco’d come with the supper tray and reached for the pudding cup to eat Dylan’s desert like he always did, smacking his lips and saying how good it was and too bad he didn’t get any, Dylan said, “Don’t.”
The voice that came out wasn’t his old voice, his boy’s voice; this one was flat and dull and cold, like a knife left out in winter. Draco squeaked like a big fat mouse and jumped a foot in the air. It was funny but Dylan didn’t laugh. For some reason he only laughed at sad things now. Then Draco put both hands in the air as if he was a bad guy and Dylan was Marshall Dillon. “Hey, man, no problem,” he said. “I’ve just been kidding around. No hard feelings.” He backed out of the room without taking his eyes off Dylan. Dylan was tempted to look in the mirror to see if he had changed into Butcher Boy so completely it showed on his face but he wasn’t up to looking in mirrors yet.
When Dr. Olson came again she said, “James says you’re taking more of an interest in things than you have been. That’s a good sign. That means you’re getting stronger.” She smiled and fiddled with one of her earrings. It was the kind Dylan’s mother used to wear, clipping on tight and leaving a red mark when it was taken off. “If it were a perfect world you would be going to a hospital to live, a place where you could be taken care of better.”