I
Seán Tyler knew what had happened. He had been inside waiting for Joe Kilmer, surrounded by the odors from men allowed to shower twice a week. Those smells merged with their adrenaline and suppressed testosterone found nowhere to vent until the guards opened the outside metal doors.
The men rushed past the open door, down metal steps toward the Mess Hall – food plentiful, repetitious, bland; the drinking water speckled with floating rust; and whatever you do, don’t eat the bread. They trod over cement walkways threaded between spans of asphalt – a world of grays, blacks, browns, lacquered with splotches of industrial white. They lived in an atmosphere of perpetual dusk, surrounded by nineteenth century limestone walls seven feet thick and twenty feet high.
As if reflected in a mirror, Seán glimpsed a man in a bloodied white T-shirt leaning against the Mess Hall door. Head down, he clutched a stained, brown paper bag. His eyes watered. “Why? Why do they keep talking? The voices.” Paper bag in hand, right shoulder pressed against the wall, he paced. He reached the next door and turned, pressed his left shoulder to the wall, switched the bag to his right hand and continued to the next door, then turned, switched hands, repeated. Within minutes, three uniformed men hauled him away. When the sun caught the man’s face, Seán thought he saw himself. For years, he was haunted by that memory, and for years kept seeing the bruises from the guards.
“He’s on an anti-psychotic, but this damn place won’t approve it,” someone said. Referring to the prescription formulary for approved medication. “Be careful of him, he hears things and has imaginary friends. He’ll be buried in the hole.”
The hole. An octagonal two-story limestone structure segregated from the other buildings. Inside, the tiled floors glistened under fluorescent lights. Monitors that transmitted the movements of men adjudged to be an immediate threat to themselves surrounded a circular stainless steel desk positioned in the center of the first floor.
Repeated screams, “Why? Why?”
“Help me,”
“Look at this blood. It’s been here for days,” echoed from men inside cells with drainage holes near their doors. Clanging, reverberations, perseverations – never ending, deafening. And always, the smells prevailed – sweat, adrenaline, testosterone, feces and urine – sanitation not a top priority. Lights never dimmed. No visitors allowed. Men on the second floor allowed out only to eat and one hour in the yard. Men on the first floor – never saw the sun. Only five armed guards per shift. No psychiatric services available.
