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Neddie had told Mikey the story of his life maybe a hundred times. His bunky thought it was a scary fairy tale, because Neddie told it that way.
“Once back in the day, I had a sister,” said Neddie.
Mike said, “Uh-huh, uh-huh. Victoria.” He sighed deeply and rolled onto his side, facing Neddie.
Neddie remembered his baby sister very well. He had been seven and Vicky four when they were living with their widowed mom on a quiet block in Glen Park. Vicky was very cute and funny, with perfect features and softly dimpled hands.
Their mother called Vicky her “perfect little girl,” and that stung Neddie bad because he knew how relieved Mommy was to have a pretty child, with a normal brain, who wasn’t doomed to a stunted life that was “too much for any parent to bear.”
Neddie said to Mike, “Vicky was twenty kinds of trouble.”
“Tell me the kinds.”
Neddie listed three, “Noisy, nosy, bossy,” and, wanting to move past this part of the story quickly, he said, “She didn’t suffer. After she stopped breathing, I had to mess her up a little so that everyone could see that it was her fault for making me so mad.”
“Uh-huh,” said Mikey. “You cut off her hair. And her fingers. And you stuffed her fingers into all of her bodily cabbities.”
Neddie’s lawyer, Mr. Paul, had asked Neddie questions in such a way that Neddie knew how to tell the judge that he hadn’t known what he’d done to Vicky was wrong. That meant he wasn’t mentally competent to stand trial.
“Your Honor. He’s only seven,” the lawyer had said.
Neddie hadn’t gone to jail. This had been his first real-life lesson on the value of being a dummy.
Mikey loved to hear about Neddie’s Next Stop, Johnston Youth Correctional for the Criminally Insane, which, even at seven years old, Neddie knew was completely hellish and totally wrong.
Mikey said, “Now tell me about the Castle, Neddie.”
The prison was an old redbrick building, each floor successively smaller than the lower floor.
“It was big, Mikey. Like a giant red chocolate cake with candles and flags and a dungeon, of course. Mmmmmwah-hah-hah.”
Mikey said, “Mmmmwah-hah-hah,” then begged for more.
Neddie described the rambling facility in morbidly fleshed-out detail, returning repeatedly to the dark, tiny cells just big enough for a collie. The inmates received random and often experimental medical care, and every once in a while they were hosed down with a power washer. The food was blended mush baked into a “nutrition loaf.” The windows were small, high up, and barred. The toilets were execrable. The all-day, all-night screaming was intolerable, and when the two hundred prisoners weren’t caged, chained, or isolated in the dungeon, there were bloody fights and suicides. For Neddie, Johnston Correctional was a crash course in survival.
That didn’t mean he had to be passive.
Neddie told Mikey, again, that after “someone” had broken a nurse’s neck because “she refused to give him a glass of milk,” Johnston Youth Correctional for the Criminally Insane had been shut down.
He had no regrets. Nursey had reminded him of his mother, who had been both afraid of and revolted by her son, and as soon as he had been locked up at Johnston, she had moved far away, leaving no forwarding address.
Neddie had never heard from her again.
When Johnston was closed, the “youthful offenders” were parceled out to other facilities around the state, and Neddie was bused to Hyde Street Psychiatric. He was twelve by then, and the Hyde and Seek Loony Bin seemed like some kind of heaven in comparison to Johnston.
The food groups were identifiable and often tasty. There were real shrinks and doctors, and they were interested in him, even though they never agreed on what exactly was wrong with Neddie.
Neddie knew. He was a genius. A rare type of genius.
And thirty years ago, when he turned eighteen, he’d gotten privileges.
Neddie told Mikey, “Whoever killed Nursey was an unsung hero. You know what that means, Mike? He never got credit. No one ever knew who killed that horrible old woman.”
Silence from the next bed.
Neddie tucked sleeping Mikey’s blankets around him and settled himself down. Old show tunes came from the computer in the nurses’ station just outside the door. Within this cocoon of safety and comfort, Neddie thought fondly about his life at the Bin.
He was loved and trusted here. Maybe someday Neddie Lambo would get the respect he deserved. Not maybe. He was certain of it.
