Chapter Fourteen
So, mere days before I shed my Levis for a straight jacket and began marching to an unmelodic tune, I found myself reclining in an overstuffed chair in a room that didn’t belong in a hospital. I was drinking old coffee from an urn I’d discovered while waiting for the doctor. I thought that I heard soft music, soothing, angelic, not of this world. I wondered if I should chance lighting up a cigarette and answered myself by hunting for an ashtray. I was caught in the act a few scant seconds later, right in the middle of exhaling a huge, pungent plume of smog.
“Here, let me get you an ashtray,” the funny looking man said, and then added, “I’m Dr. Smith.”
“Pleased to meet you, sir,” I responded, emphasizing the ‘sir’.
My attempt at being respectful wound up sounding false to me. I was trying to hide a certain lack of respect I felt for Dr. Smith. When I first looked at him I had wanted to laugh. He didn’t look much like a doctor, nor, I would discover did he act like one. He took his sunglasses off and brushed the hair out of his eyes. I could see the intelligence. Yes, I thought, he’s a doctor all right; he has the look of one.
I knew that he had been briefed by the nurses when he summed up their slanted observations to me. “The ladies at the front desk assured me that you could use a look see,” he informed me. “We usually have a regular doctor check you out before they call me in, but we’re a little understaffed at the moment.”
I‘d had a little run in with the nurses. They had insisted that I fill out forms that I believed to be nonsense. When the nurse at the front desk discovered from the same paperwork that I had been diagnosed as having schizophrenia she kicked the word around loudly enough that I was overcome with the shame of the mentally ill. I ended up in a chair in the waiting room that afforded me the most privacy possible. I wouldn’t have been surprised if steam was coming out of my ears or a wisp of smoke was laughingly perched atop my head.
“So, you’re the psychiatrist, right?” I asked, while at the same time wondering what the nurse’s true assessment of me had been, the one for the shrink’s eyes only.
“Yes,’ he said, “mmm hmmm.’ And you’re the schizophrenic, if I’m not mistaken.”
I smiled.
“You know, my mother wanted me to be a lawyer, a regular doctor, a baby doctor, anything but a psychiatrist. She said – it’s so dangerous. You’re not dangerous are you, Carmen?”
“Not in the least, no, but – ah, no offence, but, would you not consider people with your mother’s views to be a little dangerous, in their own way, that is?”
“That’s a thought provoking observation, Mr. Playford, you’re an intriguing man,” he said after a moment, and I wondered how he knew that I was intriguing.
“I’ve never thought of her that way before, but I do consider that type of thinking to be, well, yes, a little dangerous, though in my mother’s defense she is quite behind the times.” He laughed and continued, “You see, Carmen, even a psychiatrist can’t help but make excuses for his mother’s flaws, whether she’s in the wrong or not. Do you love your mother?”
I assured him that I did.
So we had a few laughs and talked for a while. He gave me a prescription for thioridazine, a drug that would control the symptoms of my schizophrenia. I was supposed to see him the following week at his office. I would never make it. Our schedules would conflict – while he was waiting for me, absurdity would be doing its best to woo me, while hiding itself behind a mask that replicated the countenance of wisdom.
“It’s funny but it’s true – you have a mission of considerable religious significance,” the voices would say in many different ways, all of them disconcerting and all of them completely and oddly reasonable.
There were ways of being that I’d never dreamed possible, a descent into a type destitution where scarcity of reason was the order of the day, the soup de jour served up cold and greasy. I would have been alarmed had I not forgotten what common sense was. Ugly times had come to roost.
The signs had pointed towards mental sickness for years. I should have heeded those signs and applied fitting measures. I was a skinny bear in a late autumn snowstorm, searching for a den. In my time of need I was alone. In a manner of speaking, it was too late to stick my finger in the dyke; I’d only wind up getting soaked.
I had managed to pry a welfare cheque from the tight fist of Social Services and was walking and toying with the smallish wad of cash in my pocket when it hit me and I cracked just a little more. I would surely break soon. I flagged down a taxi and went straight to the bus depot.
I had suddenly understood that dangerous times were ahead and that I had been preparing for them all of my life. The world would never be the same if I didn’t step in and take control of its spiritual situation. I wondered how I should use the powers that had been bestowed on me by God and told myself that the answer to that would become clearer with time. All I knew for sure was that I had to get to Edmonton as quickly as possible. The world was in peril. The brave attempts at smiling and the teary eyes of those around me as they watched me leave Vancouver later that day left no doubt – the time for action had arrived.
I boarded the bus and looked around. I wanted a seat near someone who could make clear what awaited me. Eventually I sat beside a man with a white beard. It occurred to me that he was more than likely one of the wise men of the Bible. I decided to feel him out.
“Where are your friends?” I asked, in a furtive way, taking care to be as friendly as I could be given the question. I waited on his answer - to me we were about to share secret knowledge.
“What the hell do you want?” he asked back.
“C’mon,” I said with a wink, “the other ones, where are they?”
He got up, grabbed his bag and found a seat elsewhere. He obviously doesn’t know how important I am, I thought, and nestled down in my seat, not giving the incident a second thought.
Edmonton found me spent, living in a time and space that was inexplicable. I had finally snapped and entered a state of psychosis. I hadn’t taken the medicine that Dr. Smith had prescribed and was so delusional that I hadn’t the slightest clue that I was ill.
I had tried to socialize on the trip from Vancouver but had been rebuffed at every turn. At one point I found a seat across the aisle from a young couple slightly older than me.
“Where you goin’,” I asked as I sat down, already knowing the answer – Edmonton?”
“Well let’s see,” the young man said, stroking his chin, “we were going to the next major city west of Vancouver, but since we would have had to swim most of the way… who the hell are you anyways, why do you want to know anything about us? Tell you what, I’ll look you up in Edmonton and punch your bugle so hard you’ll sneeze out of your arse for the rest of your life, okay, Mr. Friendly?”
I lurched away, confused.
Someone complained to the driver. He pulled off the road and strode to the back of the bus quickly, for all appearances very charged up. Perhaps for the sake of a ragtag group of weary travelers who made up his audience, he warned me sternly and in an unnecessarily loud voice to stay in my seat or he would put me off the bus. It was around that time, I figure, that the tenuous threads tying me to reality went from frayed to severed. I was adrift.
I looked around meekly at the other passengers. Why are they doing this to me, I wondered, why do they exclude me, why do they threaten me? Are they evil? Are they trying to keep me from entering spiritual warfare in the city of Edmonton? I decided that my mission was something they knew nothing about - that I was saddled to truths of the gravest import that went beyond their scope of understanding. I was horrifyingly alone.
The fate of the entire human race, yes, that was every human soul still breathing on God’s green earth, demanded that I stay in my seat while I rode that Greyhound bus from one city to another. I had to complete my journey without inciting the old heave ho. I was to play an integral role in keeping mankind alive and well and for that reason and that reason only, I remained in my seat.
Eventually I departed the bus, a tube filled with ill will, and walked away from the terminus in Edmonton. A few sneering goodbyes followed me. As a sort of answer I started to sprint up and down the street. I was trying to gauge the extent of the damage that had been wrought upon Edmonton and, though my methods were unusual, I knew that I’d succeed.
Eventually, winded and confused, I sat on a patch of grass bordering the sidewalk. I had to admit that I didn’t know exactly what it was that I was looking for. I recognized the stench of evil though.
I felt the grass under me. It felt like none other I had ever touched, it was sharp and rigid and it stung me in an odd way. The buildings, in fact the entire cityscape seemed sharp, jagged, as though everything had been constructed of broken pottery and glass. I thought of my brother.
My brother was in danger. I realized that saving him and his friends was the most important part of my mission, perhaps, I thought, protecting them was all I was supposed to do.
“This city’s going to hell,” I observed in an astonished, terrified whisper. I looked skyward in time to see what seemed to be a group of witches flying in a loose formation.
“God, no!” I hollered.
“Shut up, you stupid fool!” someone bellowed back.
I acquainted myself with one of downtown Edmonton’s parks that night. I fell asleep quickly, hidden by a tree with my bag serving as a lumpy pillow. There was no room service and there was no wakeup call but that didn’t matter. With dawn, the birds that knew the park as home could rival a call from any front desk.
I had slept for five hours or so when my they woke me with their clatter. After opening my eyes briefly I rolled over and slept further into the morning. Once I finally woke I shouldered my bag, hitched up my pants and started wandering, with my brother’s place as an eventual destination.
I spent some time navigating the downtown streets, bewildered and uncertain as to where I was going. Though pedestrian traffic was mild I seemed to bump into others often. Eventually I decided to try bumming change.
“Got any spare change?”
“There’s no such thing.”
“Spare some change?”
“No, man – can you?”
And so it goes, you suffer the wisecracks and the hostility and you end up with a nice pocketful of quarters, dimes and nickels, with a few pennies thrown in like afterthoughts.
The money shines and makes a musical sound and I don’t want to spend it. The weight of it is pleasant; it makes my pocket heavy with possibilities. Eventually on some level I realized that money is only special when you’re buying something with it. After arriving at this conclusion I decided it was time to eat. That’s how it happened that, while waiting for the arrival of my food, I thought I’d had the good fortune of locating my brother.
I had panhandled enough to afford a burger, ale, and some smokes with a bit left over. I sat at a table looking out onto the street, my preferred vantage point. I liked to watch people go by and speculate as to where they were going and why they were going there. I fancied that some of the women were people I knew and tried to engage them in eye contact.
From another table I heard the distinctive laughter of my older sibling. I got to my feet almost immediately and went to investigate. I peeked around a corner at the only other table in the restaurant that was occupied. He wasn’t there. I performed a hasty but thorough walk about and realized that he wasn’t even in the building. Anyone can make a mistake, I thought. Sitting down I started in on my hamburger, which had arrived during my stroll throughout the premises and eyeballing of the guests at the other table.
I didn’t enjoy my meal much that day. The beer was flat, the burger was cold its bun soaked with grease, the tomato was half frozen, the onions too biting and there was a big black object in the ketchup that strongly resembled a fly. Well, it seemed that way.
An hour later I used what money I had left to board the bus to Bob’s place. As I paid I wondered briefly what had become of the money I got from Social Services in Vancouver. Drawing a blank I shrugged my shoulders and put it from my mind. As the bus made its way I felt better and better. With each passing block I was closer to bringing the whole trip to an end. My main purpose for being in Edmonton had become the liberation of my brother from the evil that lurked everywhere. I sensed that my mission would soon be accomplished. I thought about what I would do when I walked through his door and I realized that I had no idea. You’ll know what to do when you get there, I told myself. The important thing was to get there.
I pounded on the door, but no one answered. As my heart raced, my head throbbed, my face turned hot, my mouth went dry and my pupils quite likely dilated, my imagination had a field day. Decomposing bodies, messages written on the walls in blood, headless corpses wandering around, strangled cats underfoot…
I let myself in through the basement window and quickly proceeded to check the house for signs of wickedness. All was quiet upstairs and down. That was very good. It meant that any planned wrongdoing had yet to take place. Momentarily I thought everything was just too peaceful, like the calm before the storm and then quickly I discarded this thought. I didn’t want to think that way. I sucked in the atmosphere and fell under its spell. My rage was overwhelmed. I slowed down and felt sleepy. I lit a smoke.
My back against the living room wall I smoked and thought of nothing in particular. My guard was down. I was feeling pleasant sensations about nothing and everything at the same time when I began to hear noises coming from Katy’s room. It seemed that someone was trying to speak and I struggled to decipher the garble.
I thought whoever was on the other side the bedroom door was saying my name over and over, though I couldn’t tell for sure. I grew embarrassed, thinking that whoever was inside the room might have impure reasons for calling out to me, to one who had recently become a holy man.
After listening to the murmuring for a time, I went and opened the door. Quickly, with drawn breath I opened the entrance to another world and waited for the worst it had to offer. What I saw were specks of dust playing in a shaft of light. I laughed, looked around, looked at the dust once more and then left my brother’s peaceful home, much the way I had found it. As I walked down the street I couldn’t help remembering and wondering: sure, everything seemed peaceful but just who did that damned disembodied voice belong to?