Overland Passenger (eBook)

Chapter I

Men are holding on to their hat brims, leaning against the February weather. Small groups of sailors gather at the shop windows. As usual, Market Street is gray; four tracks of dirty streetcars and a maze of trolley wires. The war hasn’t really started yet. Just grim headlines: Roosevelt on the radio again last night. We all came down from our rooms to listen in the lobby. A big, stand-up Philco that plays Dorsey and Goodman during the day. The president’s voice was strong, and he spoke about courage, but I could see the fear on their faces. Two rows of chairs—the bodies all turned stiffly toward the radio, eyes fixed, trying to catch some picture of the future.

And I was the only one who could tell them. I sat there knowing that Roosevelt would not survive the war, and the date of the Japanese unconditional surrender on the Mighty Mo. I sat there knowing about the Enola Gay, about Auschwitz and Treblinka, and of course Korea and Vietnam. I said nothing, and after a while I went back to my room.

Right now I am waiting to get out of here. Out of the Powell Hotel. Away from 1942 and the frantic preparation for war. But I can’t leave; I’m stuck here. Maybe forever. I might have to live through my father’s history, things I’ve only heard about.

While I’m waiting, I’ve reached my tolerance for watching the granite face of Woolworths across the street. And the weekly trip to place a classified in the Examiner that I hope a friend will read on microfiche—fifty-eight years in the future. So I’m going to write what happened up till now. Mostly as a way to pass time. And because the novelty of hearing a living Roosevelt, a living Hitler, even Jack Benny and Rochester, has begun, quite frankly, to wear off.

This story begins at Napa State Hospital in 1985. My name is Dr. John Madrone. I’m a psychologist, and I was doing an internship on Wards Q5 and 6 that year. Those were the admitting wards from San Francisco, primarily for psychotic folks who hadn’t pasted back together after a few weeks of meds. They needed longer-term treatment than the local hospitals could provide.

The wards had the usual long rows of beds, with beige spreads in one wing, blue in the other. A small, brown locker stood between each bed. The floors were mottled gray, the walls pale green, and the overhead lighting a merciless florescent. Patients slept or milled in the halls waiting for meals. This was known as milieu therapy—the idea being that hanging around shuffling, mumbling, hallucinating people might somehow be good for you. Curative.

I never got how it worked. I convened the morning therapy group with eight or ten men, and the conversation would go like this:

“They smuggle Satan in with the pillow cases.”

“No, they don’t. That’s stupid. This hospital is run by the FBI, and they don’t allow no religion here.”

“I have to pee—can I get up? The meds do it. I’m a waterworks.”

“Can’t you see Satan? They brought him in here and now he’ll start inhabiting people.”

“He can have me, I don’t care.”

“Satan can suck my dick.”

“Bill, that language isn’t allowed in group.”

“You can suck my dick, too. Why don’t you stop pretending? Everyone knows what you are.”

“What am I?”

“I told you, a pretender.”

“What am I pretending?”

“To know anything, man.”

That was the milieu. About as therapeutic as a mild stroke. But the real craziness, I thought, was in the nursing station. Surrounded by glass, with Dutch doors to keep the patients out. This was the spot where the seriously disturbed communications took place. Take, for example, the 350-pound gynecologist they had pressed into service as a shrink:

“What we have here is a well-nourished patient with pre-Oedipal injuries, developmentally frozen at the rapprochement stage. Separation-individuation issues are pronounced.”

“Medications?” the nurse asks.

“Thorazine.”

“I’ll put it in the rand, doctor.”

Whatever psychoanalytic horse manure they used to describe the case, treatment was always the same: Thorazine, Stellazine, or Navane, and the old standby, milieu therapy.

I was comfortable at Napa because it was so predictable. You could tell who the patients were because they usually got better. As opposed to the staff, who stayed locked in the nursing station trying to explain deficiencies in brain chemistry with some truly delusional thinking. And no matter how ineffectual, how irrelevant their theories, the staff never learned anything.

It was in this environment that I first encountered Roland Carroll. He had been admitted wearing tails and a top hat, insisting that he was on his way to Mayor Rolph’s St. Patrick’s party. One problem was that “Sunny Jim” Rolph had last presided at City Hall in 1931. There was also the small matter of the patient trying to run across eight lanes of the Bayshore Freeway during rush hour.

Roland was a short, potbellied man with a fringe of white hair; white, tufted eyebrows; and a white, pencil mustache. His face was a map of wrinkles, pale with broken blood vessels on the upper cheeks. By the time of our interview, he appeared thoroughly confused. Every few minutes he rose to look out the window as if expecting the view to change. In a nasal, Brooklyn accent he explained that he was a financier staying at the Huntington Hotel. He had arrived the week before on the Southern Pacific’s Overland Limited. Roland had been visiting a friend on Potrero Hill and realized he might be late for Rolph’s party. He had just set out to look for a taxi on 22nd Street when “a most peculiar feeling had come over him.”

I stopped Roland at this point to remind him that neither the Huntington Hotel nor the SP’s Overland still existed. And that nobody used the term financier anymore—these days they were venture capitalists, corporate raiders, or perhaps junk bond kings.

He looked sad, and got up again to view the scene outside. I joined him. We looked out at the lawns and rolling pasture beyond. We watched the patients with grounds privileges shuffle to and from the canteen. The window was open. Several birds squawked and chased each other through a nearby tree. Then he turned to me:

“I am a man caught out of my time. You know that, don’t you?”

He said it with a simple dignity that affected me. I decided to use his statement as a metaphor and see if it led somewhere therapeutically.

“That’s very lonely,” I said.

“Exactly. My wife is at 595 East 30th Street in Manhattan. My son, Arthur”—he looked at his watch—”right now is at his chemistry class at City College. They’re wondering what has happened to me, why no telegram. But I have a problem. When I last saw them, it was a cold, late-winter day in 1920. I was getting in a taxi for Penn Station. They were fine; they are still there waiting. But I am here sixty-five years later. Now they are long dead and no telegram can reach them.”

He began to cry. No sound. Just tears spilling down the creases of his face. “I am here; and here they are dead,” he repeated.

“Mr. Carroll, you’ve suffered a great loss.” I was trying to connect to his pain. Maybe his wife had died and he was having a psychotic break. “Is there someone I can call, someone who can help you?”

“Sure, call my office. My partner’s Jim Mallet. We’re in the Flatiron building (number 8444).” He turned to me, anger tightening in his voice. “Call him, but you’ll need one helluva phone.”

“I need a ten-digit number, Mr. Carroll.”

He looked puzzled for a moment. “Oh, that’s changed, too.” He leaned against the safety mesh that keeps patients from jumping. “Nice grounds. Peaceful to look at. In Manhattan we’re building all the time. Girders and scaffolds. The sound of riveting.” He closed his eyes. “You can’t help me, doctor. You are earnest. I see that. But I am beyond the reach of your services.”

“Mr. Carroll, let me ask you what happened on 22nd Street, when that strange feeling hit you.” I wanted to rule out trauma. Perhaps he had gone out in costume for some reason, then gotten mugged.

“I’d gone to visit Richard Church. Old friend from school. Moved here in ought-three to marry someone. A late love. Didn’t take. He stayed anyway; works for the Bank of Italy.”

“It’s called the Bank of America now,” I said. “One of the biggest banks in the world.” I was getting into it.

“Really?” The birds were fighting again. Roland’s pants, I noticed, were a very fine wool. Nicely tailored, and unfashionably high waisted. “Richard always did have a nose for money.” He looked at his watch and shuddered. “Almost time for lunch.”

“The food’s bad, isn’t it?” I said.

“If you have suicidal patients here, they will yearn all the more fervently for death.” We both laughed then, and I was surprised at how comfortable I felt in his presence. Somehow I had dropped the vigilance I always held with delusional patients.

“Richard is a good cook, for a man,” he continued. “I was there for lunch. Lovely baked salmon on a bed of rice. I lingered talking about the old days. The Crash of ‘84. 1884.” A thin smile. “It was a bad one, but we rode it out. Anyway, I didn’t really want to go to Rolph’s party. I’d been invited by some local associates—people I don’t...