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Cibola General Hospital
1016 Roosevelt Ave.
Grants, NM 87020
Prepared by: Rhonda Popplewell, HR Liaison
Date of Incident: October 23, 1966. Approx. 2:15 a.m.
Location: Hospital pharmacy, basement level
Nature of Incident: Assault/forcible imprisonment
Description of Incident
At approx. 2:15 a.m. on October 23rd, George Lennox, 55 y/o, night-shift pharmacist, was violently assaulted by an unknown man. According to Lennox, his assailant approached in a wheelchair. Quoting Lennox: “Black fellow. He was wet and filthy and covered in blood, wheeling himself down the hall.” When Lennox informed said assailant that he would need to go upstairs to the emergency ward, his assailant replied, quote: “Can’t do that, old chum. I’m behind in my insurance payments.” When Lennox insisted sharply that the man comply, going so far as to grip his wheelchair, the man sprang upon Lennox and beat him roundly about the face. Subdued and now fearful for his life, Lennox allowed himself to be led into the pill lockup. The man directed Lennox to fill a bag with various pharmaceuticals, plus items liberated from the general dispensary. A comprehensive itemization is attached. Lennox noted that his assailant had a bullet wound near his left knee; the items taken would seem to address the treatment of such a wound.
The assailant was roughly six feet tall and a hundred and eighty pounds. Black, with long unkempt black hair. Brown eyes. In his mid- to late thirties. He spoke with an English accent. He did not evidence signs of drug addiction. Lennox describes the man as being cordial, with a sunny disposition despite his injuries; still, there was never a moment where Lennox did not actively fear for his life.
The man carried on a spirited conversation while Lennox collected his items. He seemed especially focused on the negative behavior of a certain woman; Lennox suggested to me that this woman could have been the man’s wife or girlfriend, and that she may have been the one who shot him. I have shared this information with the sheriff’s department.
After Lennox had put the items into a sack, the man tied him to the lockup cage with Tensor bandages. The knot work was quite good; it took Lennox thirty minutes to twist free, by which point his assailant was gone. The wheelchair was found by the laundry exit.
Report submitted to: Donald Grubman, Chief Executive Officer
Letter postmarked December 15, 1968. Old Ditch, Arizona:
Dear Minerva,
How goes the war, milady? Are you sleeping well?
Hah.
I survived. But I suppose you must know that. You can feel it, as I can feel you. And Micah, too, when the wind blows a certain way. It’s blowing that way now. Cold, yes? Winter, though not anything like the winters of my youth. Winter in Arizona means you might want to stop taking ice in your tea. But it’s the Yuletide season and I suppose I’m maudlin. Or wistful. Such a fine thread between the two. They don’t celebrate Christmas with much gusto in these parts. It’s an old folks’ town and Christmas is for the young, isn’t it? But there are lights, garlands, the odd tree. Another year gone past. Ah, well. God can take all the years I’ve got left. I cannot see much use for them.
I wish to say I’m sorry. I know that will mean nothing to you. I know that it fixes not a goddamn thing. I wish I had that capacity to go back in time, back to when I was a churlish child, a WISEASS, as you Yanks would say, and just… be better. Set myself down a proper path, one that didn’t lead to so much bloodshed and regret. I had people in my life who tried to put me on that good path. Shame I didn’t listen to them nearly enough.
George Orwell wrote that at fifty, everyone has the face they deserve. But some of us get our just deserts earlier than that.
I killed your father. He was a gambler. A common enough vice. Nothing a man ought to be killed over. But I did. I shot him. I could tell you that I did it as a function of my work, that I was no more than an automaton fulfilling its purpose, but every man has his own agency. I didn’t have to kill him. But I had the ability to and he had sinned in a very small way and I felt it fair at the time to take his life for that.
I do not know how my killing your father caused your brother to die. We did not have much time to discuss it, me with your bullet in my leg and you with those children to drive to safety—-which you did, as I was heartened to read about. They all lived. I hope they have grandparents and aunts and uncles to take them in. I hope they forget everything they saw. Children’s minds are supple, isn’t that what the headshrinks say? A child’s mind can be erased and rewritten, fresh. Little Etch A Sketch brains. I hope so.
The fire almost got me. It was a near thing. I dragged myself down to the river. It was running four feet deep. I submersed myself and breathed through a reed—-a REED, my dear, like some cartoon character! Ash fell on the river’s surface; it ran so thick and black that I couldn’t see up, like being sunken in a river of ink. But the fire raged past quite quickly and when it was over I managed to drag myself down to Grinder’s Switch. My knee—-ha! A flesh wound. I’ve had worse. Sometimes I wonder if you shot me in the perfect manner, Minerva my dear. Enough to hurt me and leave me with a constant reminder, but not quite kill me. Were you merciful in the cut? Or was it just luck? I like to think it was the former. If not, don’t wake the dreamer from his dream.
In the commotion, nobody made much note of me. Just another wide-eyed survivor. It was an easy enough matter to steal a car. And later, some medical supplies to patch me up until I could visit Shughrue’s veterinarian friend. I passed out a few times from the pain, but I survived. I don’t know what business I had doing so, but I did.
I think about those days, my darling. What we saw. What we did. What was done to us. I think about evil. Our own and the evil of things ineffably larger than us. Incomprehensible evil, yes? It cannot fit inside my mind. I cannot find the space for it, so it finds its way out in my nightmares. I wake up screaming night after night. But I live alone far from any neighbor, so I doubt I am much bother to anyone. Hah.
We did the right thing, didn’t we? We acted rightly when the chips were down, to use the old cliche’… didn’t we?
I wonder. I suppose all my life I will wonder.
In any event. Now you know for a fact. I EXIST. I am still sucking breath.
So if you are still feeling raw about… all that. Well. You know where to find me.
From “Little Heaven’s Prisoners” (as published in Esquire magazine, January 1970) by Chris Packer:
“He was a devious worm.”
Sister Muriel Hanratty remembers Amos Flesher all too well. His birdlike eyes. His fleshy lower lip. The pale strip of flab that ballooned between his waistband and the bottom of his shirts, which were always a size too small.
His nasty habits.
“He was a fiddler,” she tells me in the atrium of the Wooded Nook Rest Home outside of San Francisco. “Not a violinist,” she clarifies archly. “He touched himself. All the boys did, of course. No stopping that. You could cut their dirty sticks off and they’d still play with them, surely to Christmas. But there’s your garden-variety pawing and then there’s fiddling. It’s a wonder he didn’t whittle the thing away like a bar of soap in the shower, that’s how much he twiddled with it.”