Still, as soon as he was told not to paint the cows, he shamefacedly complied.
Michael Hrubek, who’d never in his life earned a penny of his own money, was suddenly making $3.80 an hour. He was having dinner in the hospital cafeteria with friends and washing dishes afterwards, he was writing a long poem about the Battle of Bull Run, and he was an integral part of Kohler’s delusion-therapy program, not to mention the cover boy of his proposal to the State Department of Mental Health.
And now, Kohler reflected sorrowfully, he was a dangerous escapee.
Oh, where are you, Michael, with your broken eyes?
One thing he was convinced of: Michael was en route to Ridgeton. The visit with Lis Atcheson had been doubly helpful. Partly for what it revealed about Michael’s delusion. But also for what it revealed about her. She’d lied to him, that was clear. He’d tried to deduce exactly where her story about Indian Leap deviated from the truth. But she seemed to be a woman used to living with secrets, with feelings unexpressed, passions hidden, and so he hadn’t been able to spot the lie. Yet Kohler felt that whatever she wasn’t telling him was significant-very likely significant enough to prod Michael out of the haze of his deluded but secure life and urge him to make this terrifying journey through the night.
Oh, yes, he was on his way to Ridgeton.
And here waiting for him, huddled in the driving rain, was Richard Kohler, a man willing to bribe bounty hunters with thousands of dollars he could scarcely afford, to troop through hostile wilderness, to track down and meet his edgy and dangerous patient all by himself and spirit him back to the hospital-for Michael’s sake and the sake of the thousands of other patients Kohler hoped to treat during his lifetime.
The doctor now gazed over the spacious parking lot and drew his black overcoat about him in a futile effort to ward off the heavy rain and gusts of wind. He opened his backpack and lifted out the sturdy metal syringe then filled the reservoir with a large dosage of anesthetic. He flicked the bubbles to the top and fired a small spurt into the air to expel them. Then he leaned back, his face pelted with rain, and he looked up once more at the perpetual motion of the sign above his head.
25
“Look at this!”
A mile down the road Michael rounded a curve and barked a sudden laugh. He calmly recalled which pedal was the brake and he pressed it gently, slowing to ten miles an hour.
“Look!” He leaned forward, his head almost to the windshield, and gazed into the sky, filled with rain that reflected red, white and blue lights in a million spatters.
“Oh, God, what could this mean?” His skin hummed with emotion and upon his face a vast grin was spreading. Michael pulled onto the shoulder and stopped the Subaru. He stepped out into the rain and, as if in a trance, began walking through the parking lot, his John Worker boots scraping on the asphalt. He paused at the base of the shrine and stood with his hands clasped before him, reverently, staring up into the sky. He dug into his backpack and observed that he had two skulls left. He selected the one in worse condition-it was cracked in several places-and set it at the base of the sign.
The voice came from nearby. “Hello, Michael.”
The young man wasn’t startled in the least. “Hello, Dr. Richard.”
The thin man sat on the hood of a white car, one of fifty, all in a row. Doesn’t he look small, doesn’t he look wet? Michael thought, reminded once again of the raccoon he’d killed earlier in the evening. Such little things, both of them.
Dr. Richard scooted off the Taurus. Michael glanced at him but his eyes were drawn irresistibly to the radiant sign revolving above their heads.
Michael ignored the middle portion of the sign, noting only that the word MERCURY was bloody red. What he stared at were the two words in blue, Union-soldier blue: On the top, FORD. On the bottom, LINCOLN.
“That’s where you killed him, isn’t it, Michael? The theater?”
This is surely a miracle. Oh, God in your infinite brilliance…
“Ford… Lincoln… Ford’s Theater… Yessir, I sure did. Make no mistake. I snuck into the presidential box at ten-thirty on April 14, the year of our Lord eighteen hundred and sixty-five. It was Good Friday. I came up behind him and put a bullet into his head. The President didn’t die right away but lingered until the next day. He linnnnngered.”
“You yelled, ‘Sic semper tyrannis.’ ”
“They’ve been after me ever since.” Michael looked at his doctor. No, he was no impostor. It was truly Dr. Richard. You look tired, Doctor, Michael thought. I’m awake and you’re asleep. What do you make of that? He gazed up at the sign again.
“I want to help you.”
Michael chuckled.
“I’d like you to come back with me to the hospital.”
“That’s nuts, Dr. Richard. I just left there. Why would I want to go back?”
“Because you’ll be safe. There are people looking for you, people who want to hurt you.”
Michael snapped, “I’ve been telling you that for months.”
“That’s true, you have.” The doctor laughed.
Michael took the pistol from his pocket. Dr. Richard’s eyes flicked down momentarily but returned immediately to his patient’s. “Michael, I’ve done a lot for you. I got you the job on the farm. You like that job, don’t you? You like to work with the cows, I know you do.”
The pistol was warm. It was comfortable in his hand. It was, he thought, quite fashionable. “I’ve been wondering if-wouldn’t this be strange-if this was the same gun I’d used.”
“To shoot Lincoln?”
“The very same gun. That would have a special meaning. That would make a lot of sense. Do you like the scent of blood, Dr. Richard? When do you think a soul makes the a-scent to heaven? Do you think souls linnnnger on earth awhile?”
Why is he stepping closer to me? Michael wondered. When he’s this close, it’s easier to read my mind.
“I wouldn’t know.”
Michael held the pistol close to his face, smelling the metal. “But how do you explain that it was just there for me? This gun. It was just there in the store. The store with the heads.”
A shudder ran through Michael Hrubek.
“What heads?”
“All the little heads. White and smooth. Beautiful little white heads.”
“Those skulls?” Dr. Richard nodded toward the sign pole.
Michael blinked but said nothing.
“So you shot Lincoln, did you, Michael?”
“Sure did. I was willing and abe-le.”
“Why didn’t you ever tell me about it? In any of our sessions?”