A Question of Mercy (14 page)

So now, with Jess gone, Adam tried to see God in the air and sometimes he imagined he did. He wondered if Sam Rafferty might be like that—a fireman in the sky, like air, and nobody could see him. But he knew Jess could see Sam. Adam only wanted to see Jess. She was the one he believed in. Even when she was far off, he believed
.

The worst thing about Jess being gone was not finding her sleepy face in the mornings. Each day, Adam woke and went to her room. He wished he could smell her hair, wet from the shower. The black threads of her hair smelled like purple flowers or woods, sometimes, in the rain. When it rained at the river, they watched a huge wall of water—from sky to ground—come down the river, like a tall ghost. They raced it home
.

Adam began to start fires outside in the grass. He thought about firemen. He thought about Sam Rafferty. He took a box of matches from the kitchen drawer and lit pieces of grass to see it burn, turn from green to black. Stiff strings. He liked to touch the patch of burned ground, feel the gray ash on his fingers. He lit a match to the blades of grass and thrilled to see the fire blaze and die, though sometimes the blaze skipped out of the small circle he had drawn, and he had to crush down the flame with his shoe. Emily came to the fence to watch him burn the grass. But he would not speak to her
.

When his mother asked what happened to all those patches of burned grass, Adam didn't answer, but he could not find the matches after that. Still, he returned to the patches in the yard where, for a moment, flames had burned, where he had stomped out the fire with his shoe and Emily had watched him—where he, himself, had been the one to save the world from burning
.

— 17 —

W
hen she woke Jess believed she was deep in the woods, but as the sun rose she saw three hawks circling the roof of Possum's Grill and Bowling Alley. A low hill, with a surface of white stone looked glassy, even pink in the morning light. If anything, this day seemed promising. Jess had put many miles between herself and home and noticed how she no longer felt afraid of sirens. She went toward the grill and could smell bacon. As she opened the door, a woman greeted her. “You all right?” she said. “You look white as a sheet.”

The woman's name was Possum. She was not more than five feet tall with a stout body, strong arms, and a thin face. She took Jess's arm and led her to a table. “I'll make you a bite to eat. We got bacon, ham, grits. You're our first customer this morning.”

“I don't have much money,” Jess explained.”

“Well, let Burt make you something.” She pointed to a man standing at the grill. You can wash your hands at the sink there.” Jess moved more slowly than she knew. Burt dropped some bacon on the hot grill and it sizzled. He made two pieces of toast and had eggs scrambled by the time Jess sat down again.

“Now you eat something.” Possum sat across from her in a booth, but Jess had already started to eat, not realizing that her head was down close to the plate and that she was shoveling food into her mouth.

Possum, a plain-faced, middle-aged woman, put her hand on Jess's shoulder. “Not so fast, honey,” she said. “It'll still be there.” Her skin looked wrinkled and splotchy, her eyes light green with yellow flecks; Burt looked more dilapidated and saggy. He cooked whatever orders were called out to him.

Jess ate everything on her plate, drank coffee and a glass of orange juice, and ended with biscuits and jam. “Why you walking along by yourself?” Possum asked. “Somebody chasing you?”

The question made Jess recall the
ike Ike
bumper sticker, but she suppressed it. “I'm going to Lula, Alabama,” Jess said proudly. She liked having a destination and saying it.

“You look like you've been scared to death.”

“I'm okay.”

“You coulda fooled me.”

Jess took out two dollars to pay for the meal.

“Lord, I don't want your money. Let's say it's on-the-house. Right, Burt?

“Okay with me.” He kept cleaning the grill.

“You got a name, honey?”

Jess told them a made-up name, and Burt, without looking up, said, “Possum takes care of most everybody. Nobody much she's not willing to help.”

When Jess exited the grill, she moved back toward the woods through feather-weeds and purple love grass. She was right; this day had been promising.

— 18 —

J
ess came home for Thanksgiving to find Adam sedated, not himself at all; and Jess wondered if he was still angry at her for going away. They ate dinner and talked about Sam Rafferty's visit at Christmastime. Then Jess promised Adam that he could go with her tomorrow to see Buckhead; but Clementine said she had taken Adam out there yesterday. They had given Buckhead fresh hay and water. “Adam brushed him good,” she said. “Gave him some apples.” Edward bragged about how Clementine and Adam went regularly to the barn. They would take care of Buckhead until Jess came home for the summer. Adam was still picking at his food, and when Jess asked what was bothering him, he said he didn't want to go back to Cadwell.

Jess had heard talk about Cadwell, North Carolina's State Institution for the Mentally Ill. People called it an “asylum.” Clementine said a lady had once suggested, years ago, that she send Adam there, but she couldn't do it. In Jess's civics class they had studied institutions and the teacher described Cadwell as a place with crowded conditions, with people sleeping in hallways or cuffed to the bed so they couldn't wander off. The small staff, overwhelmed by the load given by the state, had few choices. Sometimes patients were locked in a broom closet for the night. The teacher spoke of operations that made patients easier to handle. The word “eugenics” was mentioned. Jess could not believe that Clementine, or her father, would take Adam to such a place.

“You're not going to Cadwell, Adam,” Jess said.

“Just for the day,” her father said. “He's getting some more tests.”

“What kind of tests?” Jess asked.

“They don't like for me to look at girls.” Adam coughed nervously. “They say they'll help me not to look at girls.”

“What's he talking about?” Jess asked.

Her father shook his head, indicating that he would explain later. So Jess said, “I'll go too,” and Adam's face brightened slightly.

“No, honey,” her father objected. “You stay here and see your friends. We'll be back in the afternoon.”

“I want to go with Adam,” she said. “I'll see my friends later.”

After Adam had gone to bed, Jess asked her father and Clementine for an explanation.

“The doctor said that a series of treatments might make him not so, you know, sexually inclined,” her father said. “We've been dealing with more than you know, Jess. Adam has caused trouble at the park and with a few of the neighbors' children.”

“What's he done?”

“They have operations they do on these people,” Clementine said, “but we wanted to try the treatments first.” When she spoke she looked above Jess's head, as if she could not quite bring herself to meet the girl's eyes.

“
These people
?” Jess said, with a twinge of panic.

“Jess,” her father said. “Adam's been bothering little girls at the park, and the grocery store too. We have to do something.”

“Like what? What did he do?”

“He tries to hug them. It's getting worse. More parents are calling to complain. The police have been called in again.”

“But he hasn't hurt anybody, has he?”

“No.” Edward paused. “Not yet.”

The next morning they rode to Cadwell, a two-hour drive. Adam squirmed in the back seat with Jess. He kept asking, “What'll they do?”

“They'll see how you've progressed. Ask some questions. Give you some tests.” Edward tried to reassure Adam. After a short while, Adam fell asleep. He seemed drugged, and Jess asked if they had given him something. Her father looked awkwardly at Clementine.

Edward had a fringe of gray hair around his ears and the back of his head, but otherwise he was bald, and he had grown fat under the roof of Clementine's cooking. He explained to Jess that the doctor had prescribed some drugs to help Adam sleep, and to lower his sex-drive.

“And they give him shock treatments,” Clementine said. “It's worked very well in many of the patients. They put electrical leads on his head, and Adam wears a kind of helmet so he can't pull off the leads.” Clementine's face bore a look of tired acceptance.

“It sounds horrible,” Jess said.

“Now honey, this is the treatment decided on by the doctors,” her father said. “They know more than we do about these things.”

As they drove onto the grounds of Cadwell, winter grass and shady trees made the place look like a campus. The buildings were gray stone, and most
stood around two or three stories high. She could see a variety of entrances into each building, but the patients all seemed to be using one main entrance. Some patients wandered the grounds alone; some had a nurse or attendant with them. A group of people sat beneath a tree in a circle talking,; others were in groups, but not speaking to each other. Those groups each had an attendant.

“Wake up, Adam. We're here.” Jess touched his arm gently to wake him.

The entrance to the main building had five columns. Vines of English ivy made spidery patterns over the gray stone, and the columns were a dirty white. The day was bright, and the buildings cast brownish shadows across the quadrangle, where cars were parked. Two men in white coats waited at the entrance, and one lifted his arm when he saw Mr. Booker's car.

Adam, still sleepy, saw the two men and began to yell. He looked to Jess.

“What?” she asked him.

Before they had come to a complete stop, Adam opened the car door and ran across the lawn, bumping into a few people, knocking one man down. He ran without knowing where to go, until finally two young attendants in white coats brought him back to the entrance. They led Adam away, his head down. One man leaned to whisper something to him.

“We can't do this,” Jess said.

Neither Clementine nor her father answered. They walked to a waiting room and each sat in a separate part of the room. Jess saw three people in housecoats roaming the halls. No one seemed to know where they were going.

After three hours, Adam was brought back to them. Jess and her father had gone to wait in the car and they both looked up when Adam came out into the crisp November light. He was holding his mother's arm and limped slightly on one leg. He seemed not to recognize anyone. Adam shook hands with Edward—a single quick pumping action, without looking at him.

Clementine said that the doctors had had a good session. “This was his second time,” she said, “and he might need another one.” Adam didn't speak all the way home, except to make small animal sounds, grunting whispers.

Jess kept trying to make him respond. Once or twice he tried to speak, said something about “going to the moon;” but his face, rising out of the collar of his new shirt, turned again toward the window.

“What are they doing to him?” Jess cried. “You shouldn't take him there.”

“You have to tell her, Clementine,” Edward said.

Clementine turned around to face Jess. “The doctor said he wanted to try a series of shock treatments, but usually they have to perform an operation. They wanted to try the treatments first.”

“An operation? To do what?” Jess turned to touch Adam's arm. He jumped.

Cadwell, under state law, could perform shock treatments, lobotomies, hysterectomies. They could induce comas using heavy doses of medication. The dorms often had twenty patients sleeping in one long room. Some patients were strapped to their beds. But she did not know what her father was about to tell her.

“Jess.” He looked straight ahead at the road. “We're probably looking at a kind of castrating procedure. For women they remove the ovaries; for men they remove the testicles.” He had said what he dreaded saying.

Jess grew quiet as she leaned back and closed her eyes. “Don't do anything until I've talked to him. Will you promise me that?”

“I'll let you talk to him, but this is our decision. The doctors have explained everything to us.”

“The doctors …” but she stopped, deciding not to argue. She only hoped she could prevent this future shadow-life for Adam. “What were those iron rings hooked to the wall?” she said. “I saw iron rings on the wall in one of the rooms.”

Her father looked at the road, without speaking, then said. “I didn't see those.”

They rode awhile in silence. “Is he able to talk?” Jess finally asked. “He hasn't said a word.”

“The doctor said he would be talking again by tomorrow.” Clementine looked like a statue. “We have to do it,” she said to no one.

That night Adam slept without waking once. Hap slept on his bed beside him. But Jess could hear Clementine crying downstairs. Jess found her in the kitchen, her head on the kitchen table. She was sobbing hard. When Clementine looked up, Jess was making cocoa for both of them. Neither said a word until Jess put two cups of steaming chocolate on the table.

“My biggest fear,” said Clementine, “is that Adam might be put in jail. I wouldn't be able to help him then. He wouldn't understand what had happened.”

“How will he understand
this
?” Jess said.

“Cadwell gives me a way to keep him out of jail. What other choices are there?” Her jaw was set hard, and she looked both angry and sad.

“Anything,” Jess said, but she couldn't think of another choice.

Clementine sipped her cocoa, but tears streamed down her face and fell into the cup.

“Don't do this,” said Jess. “We can talk to him about sex. Maybe he'll understand.”

“I wouldn't know where to start,” said Clementine. And it was true.