“His point was that there’re more efficient ways to clean up a mess, but it’s what we’re used to in this country, and consequently a lot of people swear by it. I don’t swear by our legal system, but I ‘m getting used to it.”
Andy wrinkles his nose slightly at my remark. He is too proper to appreciate it. The truth is that I am surprised he was willing to get his hands dirty enough even to get close enough to Pam to touch her, much less shock her. I ask, “Can you get away with giving me a tour?”
“I think so,” he says.
“It’ll have to be a quick one, but you need to see this place to get a feel for what’s going on.”
In the next twenty minutes I see more than I want to. With me trailing Andy, we cover four of the six buildings on the grounds. It is the locked wards that give me the creeps.
Somewhat surprisingly, Andy still has a set of keys, and though all eyes are on us from the time we enter a ward until we leave it, Andy acts as if I am about to make an offer to buy the place. As we stride briskly through a ward in which some of the men are tied to their beds, I get a feel for the first time what Pam must have been like. Though none of them are in a position to abuse themselves, it is possible for me to picture some of them ramming their heads against their beds. One hideously deformed man (his eyes look turned inside out, and he has scar tissue for skin) rhythmically rubs his head against his sheets.
On this same ward several men, none with intelligible speech, gather around us. They seem starved for human touch, but, like Homer, they are hideous to me, and there are too many of them. The level of noise is astonishingly high, but I can’t understand a word. All I want to do is get out of here. Two male aides, one black and one white, walk over to us and greet Andy warmly. Andy acknowledges that he is showing his lawyer around, and we leave them shooing the men back toward a group of chairs and tables in the corner by a TV. Reading my mind, Andy says, “Homer’s ward is higher-functioning. You’d get used to it and see them as distinctive individuals. It’s the aides who don’t see them as individuals that give us the problems.”
One of the men, wearing only a pair of jockey shorts, bends down like an animal searching for food, picks up a cigarette butt, and brings it toward his mouth. The black aide catches him by his wrist and forces the man, who is babbling angrily, to drop it into his hand.
“That’s called pica,” Andy says as I watch dumbfounded.
“Some of them will try to put anything in their mouths that’s not nailed down. Including their feces.”
Outside, I realize I have been holding my breath, and ex hale. As we walk toward a building on the western edge of the campus, Andy points to a similar structure directly across from us.
“Pam lived over in Pindley. I could take you in there, but some of the women, like the men, like to take off their clothes, and it would cause more of a ruckus. Since it’s about the same, we’ll go to the boys’ building.”
As we approach the brick building, I feel myself becoming claustrophobic again. “How do people keep working here?”
I ask, shaken by so much abnormality in one room.
“They don’t,” Andy says.
“As I’ve told you, the turnover among aides is ridiculous. They hardly get paid enough to live on, and yet, they are the people who provide the primary care.”
As we enter the boys’ ward, I realize mat Rogers Hall, the unit for the criminally insane that I used to visit as a public defender, was a piece of cake compared to what I’m seeing.
As blunted and spaced-out as the men at Rogers Hall were, at least they looked halfway normal. Too many of these people look as if they were drawn by the guy who comes up with “The Par Side.” I tell myself that I shouldn’t be so revolted by the way they look, but I can’t help the queasy feeling in my stomach. If there is a God, what divine purpose could be served by such genetic mistakes? Free will, the priests at Subiaco, the Catholic boarding school I attended, would say, I suppose. The boys’ ward is at the same time less and more depressing. It is smaller, but the sight of children obviously zombied out is hard to take. There must be no more than twenty boys in this room. We walk past showers and I see several boys (one of whom is old enough to have a sparse patch of pubic hair) being hosed down by a woman. A male aide is with her trying to help them wash themselves. It seems like a good way to give them a bath, but Andy whispers, “They sometimes wash the men and women the same way.
It can seem pretty degrading, but they don’t have the staff to make sure everyone has privacy.”
“Together?” I ask, titillated by the thought. One of the boys laughs with glee as the nurse sprays him in the face.
Andy gives me his professional frown.
“Of course not,” he says, holding out his arms as one of the boys gets away from the aide and comes running to us. The child is naked and wet, but Andy lets him jump into his arms as if this strange-looking child were his own son.
“Toddy,” Andy says, smiling, “you’re all wet!”
For a response. Toddy, who somewhat resembles a gremlin from a Steven Spielberg movie, burrows his head against Andy’s chest like a small animal. If we could have Andy’s trial out here on the grounds of the Blackwell County HDC, I think Andy would be acquitted in about five minutes. It is easy to paint a sinister picture of an institutional world in a courtroom, but not quite so simple if you’re out here.
The female aide puts down her hose and takes Toddy from Andy’s arms.
“Dr. Chapman,” she apologizes, “he just loves you to death.”
Andy pats the child’s back before returning him to the woman, who obviously is a friend. “There are worse crimes, I suppose,” he says, a deadpan expression his face.
Back in his office, we talk in detail about the upcoming trial, which is two months away, in September. I have waited a week to come to see him. I have wanted us both to digest the probable cause hearing and the publicity surrounding it.
In the interval, fortunately, we have gone from the worst judge possible in Blackwell County to the best-Harriet Tarnower, a female appointee whose intelligence and fairness is already becoming a model in Blackwell County. If we care anything about competence, we will elect her to a judicial slot.
Andy tells me he has run down the names of three possible experts who will at least be willing to talk to us. He tears a sheet of paper from a fat notebook and gives it to me. The names mean nothing to me only the states: Mississippi (we used to say, “Thank God for Mississippi,” until it pulled ahead of us in spending for education), Texas, and Pennsylvania My bias toward Southern-accented expert witnesses is generally appeased.
“I must have called ten who as soon as they heard the word, ‘litigation,” practically hung up on me,” Andy says ruefully.
Surely this shouldn’t surprise him. Who wants to say he’s an expert with a cattle prod? I take the paper and slip it into my briefcase, knowing this way I’ll get back to my office with it, I may not be able to find it because of all the other junk I’m carrying around, but at least I will have it there, and that’s getting to be a major accomplishment as I pick up clients. I’ve acquired five more in the past week, thanks to the publicity. Since we hardly put on a defense, I felt I must have looked pretty much like an idiot at the probable cause hearing, but I guess it hasn’t hurt me. I ask, “What’d they say?”
“Nothing much,” Andy sighs.
“I doubt if we’re going to be able to get anyone to testify who currently uses shock. As soon I mention that I am facing a criminal charge, they start sounding real busy.”
I play with the zipper on my briefcase and warn him, “Whoever we get won’t come cheap.”
As usual, the subject of money does not faze him.