therapy to offer. They have no other way to help this tortured human being than to let him play conductor on the same train that ran over his sister. He mumbles himself to sleep every night, and that sure beats having a ball bat slammed against his head.â
âI donât want to pretend Iâm a conductor on The Flying Crow, for Godâs sake,â Birdie said.
Josh would not quit. âThey allow Streamliner a special privilege. Every Thursday morning he gets to go down the hill right next to the Kansas City Southern track and watch the northbound Flying Crow go by. The train always slows down when it gets to him, and he waves and shouts and the engineer blows his whistleââ
âYou want to help
me,
get me a woman. I need women and they need me. All I need is to put my hands on a beautiful womanâs tits for a few seconds and Iâll be better. What about the women patients? Get me one of them.â
Now Josh laughed. âCanât do that. No fraternization of any kind allowed. There are no women available here at Somerset for men patients to do what you want to do, Mr. Birdie of Kansas City. The only form of sex available is throughâyou know, doing it to yourself.â
âThat makes your hair fall out.â
âIf that were true, there wouldnât be anything but bald men around here.â
They both laughed. It was the first time they had done that together.
âWhat happened to you, Birdie?â Josh asked quietly. âWhat did you see?â
âIâm not talking about it to anyone.â
Amos and the other two bushwhackers returned. They helped Birdie out of the tub and gave him a large white towel to dry himself off, but they wouldnât let him wrap it around himself when he was finished. Naked, Birdie went with them and Josh down the hallway and into the ward.
Birdie did not cover his genitals. Adjustment to life at the Sunset at Somerset sometimes came remarkably fast.
Once in the ward, the bushwhackers made Birdie, still naked, climb into bed and lie on his back, and they tied him down again.
âClose your eyes,â said Amos. âLetâs see if the hot water calmed you down.â
Birdie closed his eyes. His arms and legs immediately stiffened and he screamed, âNooooo! Donât shoot no more! The blood! No, no!â
Amos raised his slugger to whack Birdie in the head from the right and another bushwhacker got ready to do so from the left, but before either took a swing, Birdie opened his eyes and went absolutely and peacefully silent and still.
Lawrence of Sedaliaâs pleas and protests had become as much of
the show as Josh and, as always, his noise and screams for mercy
and deliverance were followed by other patients asking for the
same. Streamliner, as always, was going about his business as a conductor,
standing in an aisle and going through the silent motions of taking tickets and
helping passengers board his train.
The bushwhackers let the racket from Lawrence and the others go on a
few minutes, until it built to a small roar, and then stopped it short.
Amos the ass from St. Joseph came down to the front row and, with
everybody watching expectantly, bashed a padded Somerset Slugger down
across the top of Lawrenceâs head. That shut up Lawrence and the other
noisemakers.
The sound of the baseball bat landing on Lawrenceâs head was Joshâs cue.
Now the show was really on.
Josh turned around to face his audience. Like magic, the look in his eyes
and around his mouth was that of a little boy, a boy of about eleven or
twelve. It was uncanny. How was he able to change his face that way? Who
knows? From the face of a grown man to that of a little boyâjust like that.
Maybe it was the hair. His long dark-brown hair had disappeared under a
large flannel white-and-black-striped baseball cap. Or maybe it was magic.
Or maybe just acting.
In the high-pitched, squeaky unchanged voice of a boy, Josh