The Devil in Silver

by Victor LaValle

But the more Pepper told them the less he seemed to matter. He might’ve been relating the inventory of the truck from yesterday’s job. Dr. Anand and his staff weren’t listening, only gathering the necessary information to refine his classification. After forty-five minutes he was a case history; a new admit awaiting diagnosis; a subject. After an hour Pepper was, officially at least, a mental patient.

And just like that, the doctor returned to the conference room and shut the door. Pepper felt like a fridge left out on the sidewalk.

“What about Four?” Dorry stopped moving. Almost seemed to stop breathing. “Forget about Northwest Four, you understand me? You don’t go near Northwest Four.” “You going to tell me what’s over there, or can I guess?” He couldn’t take her seriously. “That’s where the buffalo roam,” she said absently. Dorry’s eyes lost focus, a thousand-yard stare.

He’d fucked up tonight. The cops had brought him here without warning. He hadn’t expected that, nor being reduced to this. Two hours in New Hyde Hospital, 120 minutes inside Northwest, and he’d become a guy who prays on the floor, in the dark. As close to panicking as he’d come as a grown man. Two hours was all it took to capsize him. But that was okay. Happened to nearly everyone sometimes. The fear just gets you. And in a place like this? A mental hospital? Anyone would feel thrown upside down. Even someone who belonged here.

Well that was depressing. But also just confusing. How could she and Pepper see the same actions so differently? It made him wonder if the cops, or that dick-head Griff, had spoken to Mari and explained the fight in a way that made him seem as terrible as possible. Speaking to her about it forced him to see the same afternoon from a new angle.

Being stuck inside and doped up to the gills can make the place feel like a time machine, as Loochie knew, even by age nineteen. The distinction between the days, the weeks, the months, the years fade. It all seems like one long day. You just lose track. It’s shocking how quickly that can happen.

Pepper’s seventy-two-hour observation period came and went, and he hardly realized its passing. Not that he forgot, he was just so busy swimming. Who petitions for his legal rights while trying desperately not to drown? When he came to New Hyde, it was the third week of February. When he finally shook off his medical haze, it was the middle of March.

Pepper felt his rage just then like a series of small explosions. In his gut. His chest. His throat. His hands. The rational part of him was howling, Don’t do anything! Don’t do anything! Calm down! But it was like holding a conversation right below a rumbling jet engine. Whatever Pepper did next was going to fuck him, long term. But he felt incapable of stopping himself.

Dr. Barger couldn’t pretend to miss the problem. But he could refuse to admit the fault was his. He looked up at the nurse and said, “I told you to bring all the books from the trunk of my car.”

Something in Josephine wanted to argue the point—Say my name, say my name!—but realized Dr. Barger was one of a dwindling population: old mutts who were never trained to find others terribly worthwhile. Have an hour’s conversation and these men might be charming, funny, captivating, and kind. But they wouldn’t ask you a single question about yourself. Not one. They simply wouldn’t be interested. They were never trained to be curious about others, and they sure weren’t going to start now. At twenty-four, Josephine already knew she could spend the next minute trying and failing to make Dr. Barger hear her, or she could do something to help these patients. Only one choice was worth it. She left the room to fetch the man his pad and pen and tape.

“How about Ken Kesey?” Josephine suggested. “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest? That book meant a lot to me in high school. I think you all might really like it.” Sammy frowned. “Well, why don’t you read Slaughterhouse Five to a roomful of cattle.” Sam shook her head. “You’ll have to excuse my best friend. She only reads the covers of great books.”

An old man’s frail body, but its head was massive, covered in matted fur that hung down to those small shoulders. In the moonlight its fur looked as gray as shale. It had a bison’s head. Pepper saw this and couldn’t deny it. But its body, from the shoulders down, remained gangly and feeble. Hairless. Human. Somebody else’s myth, somebody else’s nightmare, had plunged into Pepper’s room.

And Josephine had welcomed her mother. Because, even though she was young, Josephine had spent the last few years cultivating little more than her own loneliness.

At that moment, Josephine should’ve called the cops. She’d done all she could to protect New Hyde Hospital. She’d tried to follow protocol, but the protocol was ass.

Maybe she could see something in him that even he couldn’t right now. She believed in him. Who doesn’t hope for something like that, at least once?

Most systems barely work, but those same systems cover their asses much more successfully.

How could Scotch Tape talk about the Devil like that? Pepper wondered. As if it was just another patient and not the thing they’d seen. Could anyone work so hard to deny reality that he’d mistake the Devil for a man?

Look at that, he thought. His fuzzy reflection couldn’t stop smiling, which meant he must’ve been smiling.

Nobody found this moment unfathomable. If you haven’t caused a scene in a psych unit, it’s just because you haven’t been inside long enough.

It began to seem like these people thought that by dipping their heads they were actually making themselves invisible. As if you couldn’t see them if they didn’t look directly at you. Talk about insane!

Pepper remembered a quote he’d read once, it was attributed to James Hetfield, the lead singer of Metallica. Hetfield was asked the difference between himself and Sting. (Why that comparison? Who can say?) Hetfield said the difference between him and Sting was that he read a lot of books, too, but he didn’t need you to know that.

So I told you that story because there’s something I want you to always remember. You took those tapes, but you put them back.” “Come on,” Pepper said. “What does that prove?” “It told me something about your character, Peter. It might sound silly to you, but even those small indiscretions reveal so much.”

(The Lion, the Witch, and the Psych Unit.)

“I gotta go help,” he said. Loochie looked past Pepper, down the long hallway.