Disturbing the Peace

  Only after four or five signatures did he notice that the slips of paper he’d been writing on were pages of his checkbook, each one patiently turned and held for him by the maid.

  “He’ll be all right,” Dr. Chadwick said, snapping his bag shut. “Just stay with him for a few minutes; I’ll be right back.” And he was gone.

  “You want to sit down and take it easy, Mr. Wilder?” the maid said.

  “No.” He was still intently pacing the floor, and she took him by the arm to slow him down.

  “You want to get dressed? Put on a nice clean shirt?”

  “No.” They were standing by the open door. “Where did all the people go?” he said. “What happened to the crowd?”

  “What crowd is that, Mr. Wilder? Ain’t no crowds around this time of the morning.”

  “There was a big – there were a lot of – there were cameras and – oh my God!”

  “Now, you just relax, Mr. Wilder. I know about people like you.”

  “Oh my God!”

  “I know what’s good for you,” she said. “I know people like you.” She led him stumbling to the bathroom door, ducked inside and turned on both taps of the bathtub full blast. And he couldn’t account for it – did he take off his pants or did she? –but the next thing he knew he was sprawled in the tub, thrashing his limbs, sloshing warm water over the side.

  “Oh my God!” he said again and again, because it was clear now that he was guilty of some monstrous crime. Where had he been and what had he done last night? The night before? The night before that?

  “… The man who trifled with the faith of millions throughout the entire Judeo-Christian world earlier to day,” Walter Cronkite was saying, “may turn out to be not only an impostor but a criminal, possibly a murderer….”

  The maid would be of no help in finding out what he’d done: she might not even know, and if she did she would only jolly him along, waiting until Dr. Chadwick got back from calling the police. He struggled for purchase and climbed out of the tub.

  “Don’t get out; nice warm bath’ll make you feel better.”

  “Oh my God!”

  He pulled on his pants without drying himself and tried to make a run for the front door but she stood blocking his way, and when they collided she put her big arms around him. She was very soft and strong.

  “I’m not trying to escape,” he told her. “I want to turn myself in.”

  He wrestled free of her and got to the door, but she was right after him. She caught him and grabbed him just as he was stepping over the sill and they clung struggling together all the way down the short path to the sidewalk. Several people on the street had stopped to watch.

  “I killed – I killed Kennedy,” he said.

  “No you didn’t, Mr. Wilder; Oswald killed Kennedy.”

  “I killed Negroes. I killed Negroes all over Los Angeles …”

  “No you didn’t …”

  Still grappling with her, he thought of the worst thing he could possibly have done, and said it: “Oh my God; I killed my wife and baby.”

  Her face changed. “Yes you did, Mr. Wilder,” she said, “and that’s why we’re tryna help you.”

  He broke free of her at last and started to run down the sidewalk, and he ran straight into their waiting arms – not the police, but four young Negroes dressed in white.

  “… That’s right, Mr. Wilder,” one of them said, “you come along now.” Two of them had him by the arms and two by the legs, and the last thing he saw as they loaded him into the back of their ambulance was Dr. Chadwick, standing outside the building manager’s door and watching with a look of stern approval.

  “… In you go, Mr. Wilder.” They slammed the doors and the ambulance moved quickly away. He couldn’t see out; all he could see was the four attendants – two of them smiling at the success of their capture, two looking grim. Had he really murdered Janice and Tommy? How?

  It wasn’t a very long ride. Soon they had him out and stumbling down a swaying, tilting corridor; then a door opened into what looked like a hospital room and another Negro, tall and slim, was standing beside the half-raised bed. “Is this Mr. Wilder?” he said. “Bring him in. Welcome to El Dorado.” And in no time at all they had him in the bed, sitting up, wearing a white hospital gown and strapped down at the wrists and ankles by white restraining bands. He thought of the blind man at Bellevue, the man who had cried “Ah got lucidations!” but it was clear that this was no hospital: the men’s smiles were too sinister for that. He was a captive.

  “… wanted for questioning in the brutal slaying of his estranged wife Janice and their infant son Thomas,” Walter Cronkite was saying, “and has eluded police only to be kidnapped by members of an underground cell of the Black Nationalists, who are holding him for ransom….”

  “My name’s Randolph, Mr. Wilder,” the Negro said. “I’m in charge here.”

  “I’ve got to go home,” Wilder said. “I’ve got to see if I—”

  “You won’t be going anywhere, Mr. Wilder. You’ll be staying here with us. Have you noticed I speak Perfect English?”

  “Did I kill my wife and baby?”

  “Don’t ask me. That’s between you and your conscience. And it’s no use struggling against those bands; you’re tied down.”

  “How long – how long are you gonna keep me here?”

  “Until we get tired of you. Probably longer than that.”

  “What are you gonna do with me?”

  “Keep you tied down for the time being, until you start acting right. Then we’ll see. We could do any number of things. Care to watch a little television?”

  “No. Don’t turn it on. Please don’t turn it on.”

  But the big tube was right there, craftily suspended from the wall so that it faced the bed, and Randolph was busy with the dials. When the picture came in it showed the sole of an infant’s foot, marked with thin black lines in four or five places to show where it had been broken.

  “Turn it off! Turn it off!”

  “Mr. Wilder, if you don’t shut up I’ll have to shut you up.”

  “Oh, Jesus, let me die. Just let me die.”

  “I’m considering that, Mr. Wilder. I’m taking it under consideration.”

  The dead foot was still there, being slowly turned for the camera, but Walter Cronkite’s voice was mercifully silent.

  “I can’t get the sound,” Randolph said. “Damn. Does that mean I’ll have to listen to you all afternoon?” He turned off the set, and Tommy’s foot evaporated.

  Soon a stocky, frowning Negro came into the room and said “Okay.”

  “This is Henry, Mr. Wilder,” Randolph said. “He’s going to look after you for a little while. Henry, this is Mr. Wilder. He says he wants to die.”

  “That should be easy to arrange,” Henry said, and when Randolph was gone he sat down beside the bed. “You’ve heard of the electric chair, Mr. Wilder,” he said. “Well, this here is an electric bed. All I have to do is press this button.” He held up a small control panel that was connected to the bed by a thickly insulated wire. “But I don’t believe I’ll press it just yet. I’ve got a few questions first. You don’t have much use for black people, do you, Mr. Wilder?”

  “That’s not true; I’ve always—”

  “Oh, you’ve always voted Democratic, I know, and you believe in Civil Rights and good stuff like that, and you admire Dr. King and you thought it was Just Awful about Emmett Till, but that’s not what I mean. I mean deep down, where it counts. Deep down you wish we’d all go away. You think our lips are too thick and our noses are too flat and you shudder at the thought of our kinky hair. Isn’t that about right, Mr. Wilder?”

  “No … No …”

  “Oh, you don’t mind us too much when we speak Perfect English, like your old friend Charlie at Bellevue, isn’t that right? Well, I have a message for you from Charlie, and he said to tell you he’s sorry he can’t be here to deliver it in person. The message is this.” He held up the control pa
nel and pressed a button. There was a hum, and the raised part of the bed began to sink back. When it was halfway to the flat position he released the button and it stopped. “And now I have another message for you, Mr. Wilder,” he said. “This one is from Clay Braddock – remember him? The man you suckered into acting in your little art-house movie? Up at Marlowe College? Clay Braddock said to give you this – and he said it in Perfect English.” The hum came on and the bed reclined still farther; then it stopped again. Henry leaned over and brought his big face up close to Wilder’s. “Do you know what you are?” he said. “You’re the worst enemy a revolutionary can have. You’re a liberal. And now for your final message. This one’s going to take you all the way. Are you ready, Mr. Wilder? This is the big one. This is from all of us.”

  The hum began again and the bed slowly sank flat. He couldn’t feel the voltage coursing through him, any more than a man with the muzzle of a shotgun in his mouth can hear the blast when he squeezes the trigger. He felt nothing at all, and heard nothing, and saw nothing. It came as a bewildering surprise to find he was still breathing.

  “How’s our man?” Randolph inquired, coming back into the room.

  “Didn’t shut up the whole time you were gone until just now,” Henry said. “Talking about liberals and revolutionaries and Emmett Till and I don’t know what-all. He’s quiet now; maybe he’ll sleep.”

  “No,” Randolph said, “I don’t want him sleeping now or he won’t sleep tonight. Mr. Wilder?”

  “Please. Just let me die.”

  “Not a chance. You don’t deserve a break like that. We’ve got something worse in mind for you, Mr. Wilder.” The hum came on and the bed was slowly raised to a sitting position. “Something much, much worse. You’re going to live.”

  “… And Hollywood Presbyterian refused to take him back,” Dr. Chadwick was saying, “because they don’t treat alcoholics there – and that’s how they’d diagnosed him, you see – so I had to send him to El Dorado. I had no choice.”

  “What’s El Dorado?” Pamela asked.

  “Oh, it’s very nice, it’s just that they don’t have any facilities for dealing with something like this. It’s a private geriatric home – a nursing home. He’s been there nearly two weeks now. He’s getting twenty-four-hour nursing care there, but that’s all. And they tell me he’s become a discipline problem: he makes so much – well, noise, and so forth, that he’s disturbing the regular patients. So you see it’s imperative to get him out of there, from everyone’s point of view.”

  “I see,” Pamela said, and chewed her lip. They were sitting in the building manager’s office, and the building manager and his wife were hovering somewhere in the next room. Their television set was on but she suspected they weren’t watching it; they were listening to every word of this talk.

  “Now, Dr. Rose has given me this.” He laid a printed form on the table. “All he has to do is sign it, and he’ll be committed to UCLA on a voluntary basis. That’s certainly the best place for him. But I’ve brought him this paper three – no, wait – four times, and he’s refused to sign it. He seems to think it’s a check. I had him sign a couple of checks that morning, you see, for my own fee and for whatever the maid wanted to charge for looking after him, and now whenever he sees me he thinks I’m trying to get money from him. Anyway, that’s where I thought you could help. If you take it to him, it might make all the difference.”

  “All right,” she said, “but what if I can’t get him to sign it either?”

  “It’s worth a try. Shall we go, then?”

  “I have to make a phone call first,” she said, and after dialing a number she said “Chet? Listen, this has gotten sort of complicated. I have to go and – well, I’ll explain it when I see you; but the point is I may not see you for a while. I’ll be late….”

  She followed Chadwick’s car with her own, in which she carried a suitcase containing all of John Wilder’s belongings, and in a very few minutes they pulled up to the big three-story structure of El Dorado.

  Dr. Chadwick took the suitcase from her and led her down a richly carpeted corridor. They passed several young Negroes in white, all of whom looked busy, and through the open doors of rooms on either side she could see vases of flowers, the gleaming spokes of wheelchairs and occasionally the white head of a very old man or woman.

  “God,” she whispered. “Isn’t this very expensive?”

  “That’s still another disadvantage,” the doctor said. “It’s very expensive indeed. Here, he’s right around this next corner.”

  They could hear him from several doors away. He was singing, and his voice sounded terrible – not at all the light, funny Eddie Fisher or the heavier Fred Astaire she remembered, but hoarse and cracked and out of tune, like the singing of a street derelict.

  “… Buy me some peanuts and Crackerjack; I don’t care if I never get back …”

  He was sitting up with both wrists fastened to the bed; his song was addressed to the blank television set, and he sang so intently that he didn’t notice them come in.

  “Hello, Randolph. How is he today?”

  “Hard to tell when he’s like this, doctor.”

  “… For it’s one, two, three strikes you’re out at the old – ball – game.” With the song ended, he strained forward against the wrist bands and spoke as if into a microphone. “All right, Tommy boy; that’s enough songs for tonight. You go to sleep now, fella. Cut!” And he closed his eyes.

  “He thinks the TV is a camera, you see,” Randolph said, “and he’s singing to his son. But it’s worse when we turn the set on; every time that shoe commercial comes on he thinks his son’s dead. You know that children’s shoe commercial? Where they hold up the little kid’s foot? Hey, Mr. Wilder? Mr. Wilder. You’ve got visitors.”

  “Hello, John,” Pamela said.

  “So you’re working for Chadwick and his friends now, right? As well as for Munchin and Chester Pratt?”

  “Of course I’m not. You know better than that. I just came to see you.” And she turned to Randolph. “Is it really necessary to strap him down this way?”

  “Wouldn’t be if he behaved himself, miss. Last time we took the bands off he picked up a chair and broke the TV screen. Had to get a whole new set put in.”

  “Oh. Well, you can take them off now. He won’t break anything.” When Wilder’s hands were free she sat down beside him and gently massaged his pink-blotched wrists. She hoped it would make him feel better, but at the same time she couldn’t deny a faint revulsion in touching his flesh. She looked up into his face, but that was no help. He was clean and freshly shaved, but his shining, protruding eyes looked – well, crazy – and the effort of singing had left a trickle of saliva from one corner of his expressionless mouth. Was it possible that she had ever loved this man?

  “John,” she said, “would you like to get out of here?”

  “And go where?”

  “To a much better place where they’ll give you medicine – the kind of medicine you need, so you won’t have these terrible dreams any more. Doesn’t that sound like a good idea? And I’ve brought your clothes; we can leave right away if you want to.”

  He was silent for a long time. Then “Okay,” he said, and she could feel the happy smiles of Dr. Chadwick and Randolph on her back.

  “All you have to do,” she said, “is sign this. Here, I’ve even got a pen.”

  “No. Forget it. I’m not signing any more contracts with you and Carl Munchin and Chester Pratt. Make your own half-assed movies; I don’t want any part of ’em. Is that clear?”

  “Oh, John, you’re just fooling. I know you know better than that. This doesn’t have anything to do with movies. It’s just a piece of paper to make you well.”

  And it took twenty minutes or more, but at last there was a scrawl that looked something like “John C. Wilder” on the proper line of the printed form.

  “Wonderful,” she said. “Now we’ll get you dressed.”

  “I’ll go make
a phone call,” Dr. Chadwick said. “Tell them we’re on our way.”

  “He ought to have a bath,” Randolph said, “but the last time we tried that it took three men to hold him in the tub. He thought we were trying to drown him. I never heard such yelling and screaming; had complaints from all over the building.”

  When he was dressed and standing up he looked better; he looked almost normal, except that it was clear from the fit and hang of his clothes that someone else had put them on for him. Pamela took one arm and Randolph the other, and they guided him carefully out of the room. Chadwick was waiting in the hall.

  Randolph went along on the drive to UCLA: he rode in the back seat with Wilder, holding his arm. Chadwick sat in front with Pamela, who drove.

  “We going to the airport?” Wilder inquired.

  “No, John; I told you. We’re going to a place where you’ll get medicine to make you well.”

  “Why we taking Randolph?”

  “Because he cares about you. We all care about you, John.”

  “In a pig’s ass.”

  “That’s no way to talk to a lady,” Randolph said.

  She thought she would never find her way through Westwood to the university campus, and then she thought she would never find the building, but Dr. Chadwick was a steadying influence: he guided her into the right parking lot and put the right amount of change in the meter. Then they were all four in the elevator, and then they were in Neuropsychiatrie.

  “Rose,” Wilder said. “What the hell’s Rose doing here?”

  “If you’ll just come this way,” Dr. Rose said, “I’ll show him to his room.” But he looked nervous as he ushered them through the open part of the ward, where a woman wearing her hair in curlers played Chinese checkers with a young boy who must have weighed four hundred pounds. When they were all in the room that had been prepared for Wilder a nurse appeared with a hypodermic syringe.

  “All right, Mr. Wilder,” Rose said, “if you’ll just take off your coat and roll up your—”

  “Fuck you, Rose. Go eat your chocolate mints. You’re not big enough to shoot me out, and you’re not smart enough either. And fuck you, Chadwick, you simpering nigger bastard. Wipe that shit-eating grin off your face and tell your friend to get his black hands off my arm. Motherfuckers! Motherfuckers! And you know what you are?” He turned his wild eyes and wet mouth on Pamela. “You’re a cunt. You’re a cunt. You’re a cunt …”