“We’ve gone to finger-food heaven,” Catherine said.
“Anyone works here gets fed free. Gator tails,” pointing. “Catfish. Meatballs in my own marinara. Pickles-I make them, too. Slices of chicken breast marinated in barbeque sauce and grilled.”
“Good, Jessie,” I said. “This makes an awful lot of sense. I put in six minutes, tops, helping out, and that mainly because we need coffee, so you spend twice that putting this platter together.”
He shrugged and went back to his kitchen, only place he ever felt right.
“Have to admit it’s one hell of a coincidence,” Garces went on. “Dickensian. But life’s never story-shaped. I kept thinking: Whatever’s being said here, it’s not what’s being said.”
There were, along with gator tails, catfish, meatballs, chicken and sliced vegetables, small pots of ranch dressing, mustard with hot peppers chopped into it, a dish of fresh cilantro and mint. We all tucked in. Don went off towards the kitchen to confer with Jessie, then to the bar, and brought back beers.
“Now you work here,” I said, “and he’s gonna bring more.”
“No end to it.”
“We’ll never get out of here.”
“I go home and start poking about, using this loose network that’s developed over the years.”
“One you used to find Alouette.”
“The same. Social workers like myself, psychiatric nurses, aides, people from support groups, family members, expatients. Not too many of those at first. Lots more these past few years. Whole thing’s fishing, drop in tackle and flies, hope for strikes. Nothing jumps right out, maybe for a while, maybe never. But that’s what I do.
“Then one night I can’t get to sleep, finally give up on fighting the bedclothes-it’s so bad that ditties from Carmen and old Randy Newman songs are running loose in my head, rattling around in there like marbles. And the bedclothes are definitely winning, they’ve pinned me eight times out of ten. So after an hour of watching bad movies on TV, women warriors whose acting consists of contorting their mouths, male leads so stupid you wonder how they ever managed to find the dryer and hair spray, I settled down in front of the computer and tossed out a few new lines. Most of them just went spinning on out and didn’t catch anywhere, as usual. But one or two snagged, got responses that brought up new queries, suggested some direction or flight path I hadn’t thought of before. I started feeling my way carefully, like crossing a muddy field on stepping-stones. Around four that morning I found myself talking to a bus driver who’d spent nineteen months in a clinic up near Fort Worth. Bus driver now, but back before the breakdown he’d been a pilot. Not only was his insurance good but his family had money, so he wound up there, one of those got-it-covered private asylums, instead of across the river at Mandeville.
“His name’s Tony Sinclair. Once he started getting better, he asked if there was anything he could do to help out. Always been a hard worker and couldn’t stand the inactivity anymore, feeling so useless, he told me. So he started out doing this and that, not much of anything at all at first, really. Reading to other patients, walking with them out on the grounds, helping them get dressed or write letters home, that kind of thing. But gradually he took on more and more. Before long he’d worked his way into the back wards and was helping take care of the really sick ones. Got to know some of them pretty well, that last year.”
A face appeared in the window beside us, in the scant space left at one edge of the ancient lettering, J E S S E ’S, above placards pitching gospel shows and revivals. The man’s breath fogged the glass, which partially cleared then fogged again with another breath and another, so that, frost building by increments, bit by bit his face disappeared. He wore three or four shirts, a hunter’s cap with earflaps, shiny wool trousers held up by suspenders, one side of which had been replaced by hemp twine.
“Sinclair’s the kind of guy you instinctively trust and want to talk to. He wasn’t, no way I’d be up hitting keys back and forth to him at four or five in the morning.”
“People like that make good investigators,” Don said.
“They make great social workers and therapists, too. Only problem is, they tend to burn out…. Anyhow, some of these guys on back wards started talking to him, guys who hadn’t said anything to anyone, some of them, for years. Not that there’s any kind of dialogue or conversation going on, understand. But things would just jump out there from time to time.
“Early one morning Sinclair’s attending this young man, he’s in his thirties, name given as Danny Eskew. White skin, straight dark hair, negroid features. According to records he’s not only mentally ill-schizophrenia-but also severely retarded. Anoxic insult, they figured. Sinclair’s not so sure. He’s noticed Eskew’s eyes following him around the room, wondering who he is maybe, what he’s doing here. Blinds are open, Sinclair’s shaving him, and just as he lifts the razor, a shaft of sunlight catches on it, gets thrown, blindingly, up onto the wall.
“‘Sharp,’ Eskew blurts out as his eyes find it.
“‘Razor’s too sharp?’ Maybe he was hurting him.
“‘Light.’
“He waited, but that was it. Week or so later, he was reading to this guy, The Count of Monte Cristo, only thing he could find in the hospital library that looked interesting, when Eskew spoke up again.
“‘No … story,’ he said.
“‘What do you mean?’ Then: ‘Danny?’
“A long time went by, Sinclair said, before Eskew said anymore. Then he said: ‘Me.’
“Hackles rose when I heard that. Hair standing up on my neck, what the Russians call chicken skin. Sinclair’d had much the same response, which is why he passed it along to me. That was it, though: the last thing he ever heard from Danny Eskew. ‘Maybe I’m reading too much into it. Maybe I’ve been doing that all along,’ he said.
“I didn’t think so. But it was definitely time for me to surface, flip things over to official sites. So I logged on and started raking records for psychiatric facilities and private clinics in or around Fort Worth. Dredged up lots of nothing at first-not that I expected much else. I called in to work to let them know I’d be late, might not even make it at all, and kept going.”
“But you knew where he, this Sinclair, was.”
“Which helped not much at all. Records from facilities like that are locked down tight. They call themselves private and they damn well mean to stay that way. That’s a large part of their appeal, and what clients pay for.
“So what I’m doing is backtracking. Looking for ghosts, echoes, footprints on the beach. Records from local hospitals, say, from years back. Parkland, John Peter Smith. Those are public records and accessible-at least partially. Same with social services like Child Welfare, MHMR. Or schools, whose counselors and nurses often note what others fail to.
“Sometimes you only have to snag one loose end, a single thread. I found my strand a little after ten this morning and started worrying at it, hopscotching off a couple of Dallas-area hospital admissions. The second admission carried a court date-court’s held right there in MDC, just up Harry Hines from Parkland-but it got canceled for no apparent reason, and at the last moment. We’re talking pro forma here, cookiecutter. Cancellations like that just do not happen.
“But at that point, whatever weirdness is going on, I’ve got a fix on him. He’s in the system. Lawyers and conservators can tuck him away, but they can’t hide him. Another hour or so on the phone, I’ve got a rough history.”
“Lawyers and conservators,” I said.
“Mm-hm.”
Our Gentleman of the Half Suspenders was back at the window. Holding up a burger proudly, he proceeded to eat it for us. Grease worked its way along his whiskery chin; catsup, mustard and saliva splattered onto the glass. Finished, he wiped hands on wool pants and blew us a kiss.