As I followed through the dilapidated wards, memories of those long-ago graveyard shifts were brought sharply back to me – by the sound of heavy keychains jangling, by the reek of Pine Sol over urine, especially by the faces. All those curious stares from doorways and corridors gave me a very curious feeling. It wasn't exactly a memory but there was something familiar about it. It was the kind of tugging sensation you get when you feel that something is needed from you but have no notion what it is, and neither does the thing needing it. I guessed that maybe it was just information. Over and over I was drawn from our parade by looks so starved to know what was going on that I felt obliged to stop and try to shed some light. The faces did brighten. The likelihood that their sorry situation might be exploited as the set for a Hollywood movie didn't seem to disturb them. If Superintendent Mortimer decided it was all right, then they had no objections.
I was touched by their trust and I was impressed with Mortimer. All his charges seemed to like him. In turn he admired my book and liked the changes it had wrought in the industry. The producers liked that we liked each other, and before the day was over everything was agreed: Dr. Mortimer would permit use of his hospital if the movie company would foot the bill for a much-needed sprucing up, the patients would be paid extras, I would write the screenplay, the hype of moguls would pull in a heap of Oscars. Everyone would be fulfilled and happy.
"This baby's got big box written all over her!" was the way one enthusiastic second assistant something-or-other expressed it.
But driving back to Eugene that evening I found it difficult to hold up my end of the enthusiasm. That tugging sensation continued to hook at me, reeling my mind back to that haunted countenance at the hospital like a fish to a phantom fisherman. I hadn't confronted that face in years. Or wanted to. Nobody wants to. We learn to turn away whenever we detect the barbed cast of it – in the sticky eyes of a wino, or behind a hustler's come-on, or out the side of a street dealer's mouth. It's the loser's profile, the side of society's face that the other side always tries to turn away from. Maybe that's why the screenplay I eventually hacked out never appealed to the moguls – they know a loser when they have to look away from one.
Weeks passed but I couldn't shake that nebulous nagging. It put a terrible drag on my adaptation efforts. Turning a novel into a screenplay is mainly a job of cutting, condensing; yet I felt compelled to try to say not only more but something else. My first attempt was way long and long overdue. I declined the producers' offer to rent me a place up near the hospital so I could browse around the wards and maybe recharge my muse. My muse was still overcharged from that first browse. I wasn't ready to take another. For one thing, whatever it was that had got me so good was still waiting with baited looks; if it got me any better I feared it was liable to have me for good.
For another, it seemed to be communicable, a virus that might be transmitted eye to eye. I was beginning to imagine I could detect traces of it in friends and family – in fretful glances, flickers of despair escaping from cracked lids, particularly in my father's face. It was as though something picked up from the hospital had passed on to him, the way the fear inside a fallen rider can become the horse's. It was hard to believe that a mean old mustang raised on the plains of west Texas would inexplicably develop a fear of emptiness. He had always been too tough. Hadn't he already outlasted all the experts' estimates by nearly five years, more from his own stiff-necked grit than from any help they had given? But suddenly all that grit seemed gone, and the sponge collar that he wore to keep his head up just wasn't doing the trick any more.
"What'd this Lou Gehrig accomplish that was so dadgum great?" was the sort of thing he had taken to asking. "No matter how many times you make it all the way around the bases, you're still right back where you started – in the dirt. That's no accomplishment."
He swept the sports page from his lap and across the lawn, exposing the withered remnant of his legs. I had dropped by and caught him out on the backyard lawn chair, reading the newspaper in his shorts.
"I'm sick of home plate is what it is! I feel like a potted plant."
"Well, you ain't no tumbleweed anymore," my mother said. She was bringing another pot of coffee out to us. "He's working up to buying that used motorhome down the street is what it really is – so I can drive him to the Pendleton Roundup."
"Maybe he wants to go to Mexico again," I said. Buddy and I had rented a Winnebago some years before and taken him on a hectic ride over the border. I had wanted him to come on at least one of those unchartered trips that he used to warn me against. He came back claiming that the only thing he'd got out of it was jumping beans and running shits. I winked at my mother. "Maybe he wants to go into the jungle and look for diamonds, like Willy Loman."
"Uh-huh," Daddy grunted. The sudden sweep of the papers had tilted his head; he was pushing it straight with his hand. "Maybe he don't, too."
"Another cup of mud?" my mother asked to change the subject.
I shook my head. "One cup of that stuff is plenty; I've got to work tonight."
"How you coming with it?" my dad wanted to know.
"Slow," I said. "It's tough to get the machine up to speed."
"Especially when you ain't run the thing in a dozen years." He had his head steady enough to get me with his old, stiff-thumb-in-the-ribs look. "If you expect to have that movie out in time to benefit from my opinions, you better crank 'er up to speed pretty damn quick!"
It was the look that flashed a second later, after the stiffening went out, that got me. I finished my coffee and stood up. "That's where I'm headed out to right now," I said. "To crank 'er up."
"Better not head too far out," he growled, reaching for another section of the paper. "I'm liable not to wait for you to get back."
Mom met me at my car. "They have him on tap for another one of those spinals Saturday," she said. "He hates the nasty things, and they scare the dickens out of me."
"Spinals aren't dangerous, Mom: I've seen dozens of them."
"Ever think that might be why he wants you to be around, you knothead!"
"Take it easy, Mom, I'll be around," I promised. "Thanks for the mud."
So when Dr. Mortimer called the following Thursday to invite me to join him at the annual convention of psychiatric superintendents, I told him I'd better stay home and keep at our project.
"But it's in Florida this year!" he explained through the phone. "At the Disney World Hotel! The movie people will pick up your tab."
Again I declined. I didn't mention my father. "I'm a little stuck with the script," I explained.
"They said they thought a trip like this might help unstick you. This year's entertainment is The Bellevue Revue. I saw them two years ago in Atlantic City. Positively hilarious. I bet you could pick up some fresh angles from those Looney Toons. Also, the keynote speaker? They've dug up the author of that beatnik bible, Now Be Thou. You've perhaps heard of him? Dr. Klaus Woofner?"
I said yes I had, and that I'd be interested to hear what he was talking about these days – "But not right now."
"They've got you a ticket waiting at the Portland airport: United to Orlando at three thirty." Mortimer sounded as excited as a kid. "A free trip to Disney World, you lucky dog – think of it!" I told him I would; I had a good twenty-four hours to make up my mind. "I'll phone you tomorrow morning and let you know what I decide."