The War Whisperer: Book 1: Geronimo Page 7

  I did as instructed, glad to get out.

  At breakfast I was seated by one of the male vocational teachers, Mister Murphy, at a table just the two of us, no one else allowed to sit with us. Dylan, at another table, held out his hands and raised his eyebrows. I shrugged and shook my head.

  Mister Murphy taught automotive mechanics, and had grease that had worked into his hands so long ago there was no getting it off now no matter how he washed, or at least that’s what he told me. He asked me what happened with Coach Dover. I told him I guess I just lost it.

  Mister Makin was waiting for me at the school office. “Come with me,” he said, got up from his desk and went into the hall. We went outside, got into the UCH van, and he drove the van downtown. Purpose of the trip, he explained, was for me to see a psychologist. If I was insane, I’d need to be sent somewhere else for treatment. Maybe all I’d need was an attitude adjustment.

  I hoped all I’d need was the attitude adjustment. I didn’t want to be locked away—to be separated from Dylan. That I didn’t know if I could withstand.

  The shrink’s office was upstairs in a horribly faded pink-painted brick building on West and Main Streets. Across West Street was the back of the Post Office, loading docks unoccupied. Across Main Street was a small park with several large trees. On the East side of the park I could make out a few men and women carrying signs I couldn’t make out.

  Mister Makin told me to go around the corner to the double window doors, go in there and up the stairs to the psychologist’s office by myself. It was what the doctor wanted.

  On the corner was the entrance to an empty store, the “For Lease” sign dusty and faded. Down Main Street, walking toward the doors at the other end of the pink building, I looked down the street, single-story storefronts, vacant lots, and empty signs as far as I could see.

  It beckoned to me. Mister Makin was out of sight. I could run for it. I looked up at the thinly overcast sky, remembering Thiago’s warning about the police drones and going over the wire.

  I stopped in front of the weathered double doors near the end of the building as I almost convinced myself to run. But I had a question to which I wanted an answer. Perhaps I wanted that answer more, at that point, than I wanted to be free. It was very likely the same question Mister Makin wanted answered. I pulled open the door on the right, climbed well-worn stairs, found Doctor Guzman’s door, knocked on it, and heard a voice call out, “Come in, Jerry.”

  I opened the door and stepped in. The office inside was all pink stucco, almost black varnished wood trim and wooden floor, and an ancient ceiling fan buzzing as it pushed around the flies and hot air. The one spot of green was a framed print of a painting depicting a green arched bridge over what looked like a lily pond.

  “I’m Jerry Track,” I said as I continued looking around at the decor.

  “I am Doctor Facundo Guzman.”

  “Facundo,” I repeated, facing him. “Sounds like something squeezed out of a dark and smelly place.”

  “My friends call me ‘Goose’.”

  “Maybe you need new friends,” I said. “Did making it up here by myself pass or fail your test?”

  He grinned. “It showed you can both follow instructions and read a name on a door, so you passed.”

  I was being a smartass and didn’t want to be. I was looking upon everything as a possible threat that needed to be swatted down before it came within range of hurting me.

  Goose was very plump, wore a pale blue seersucker suit and pink necktie. His face was very round, his eyes dark as obsidian. “You should grow a beard,” I said.

  “It would be much easier for me to lose weight, another goal achievement that has eluded me.” He held his hand out toward a well-worn wooden captain’s chair. “Please sit down,” he said.”

  I sat in the chair, which faced his. After going over my name, what happened to Mister Dover, a little on my life history, which I characterized as “from one trash bin to another,” the questioning began.

  “In your heart, Jerry, why do you think you attacked Mister Dover?”

  I thought on it. Supposedly I was to give truthful answers to his questions and without drawing punishments.

  Truth. “Self defense.”

  “Self defense?” he repeated.

  “I don’t have much, Doctor Guzman—Goose. No parents, no birthplace, no home, no people, not much point in doing anything. I’m locked up in a facility that is more prison than school which is working hard to make sure I don’t have any kind of a thinking future. What I do have is my life, one friend I call brother, and my name. Mister Dover made fun of my name by calling me Geronimo. My name is Jerome. My nickname is Jerry. If I want my own name respected I have to fight for it.”

  “Perhaps he was using the Spanish, Jerónimo,” the doctor suggested.

  I gave a little shrug. “That would be cool if my name was Jerónimo. It would be cool if he called me Montezuma, if my name was Montezuma, but it isn’t. And my hearing is excellent, Goose. I can tell the difference between Jerónimo and Geronimo.”

  “Were you in control when you attacked Mister Dover?”

  I shrugged and averted my gaze.

  “Was that a ‘yes,’ a ‘no,’ or a ‘go fuck yourself’?”

  I leaned forward and rested my elbows on the chair’s armrests. “It was mostly an ‘I don’t know’,” I said. “Are you the one UCH hires to fix our brains?”

  He smiled. “The ones that can be fixed.”

  “What about me?” I asked. I sighed in desperation. “No. I wasn’t in control. Fifty cops with guns pointed at me couldn’t have stopped me.” I looked up at him and leaned back in the chair. “Am I crazy?”

  “Not right now.”

  “I know I . . I wasn’t in control. I don’t like not being in control. Can you fix me?”

  “Nothing to fix in you, Jerry. The guy shouldn’t have made fun of your name. Let me ask you another question.”

  “Okay,” I said warily.

  “Do you want to end your days locked up in the back of a violent ward, all shot up with drugs to keep you calm, and tied up in a canvas jacket so you don’t hurt yourself or any one else?”

  I shook my head. “No. I don’t want that.”

  “That’s what happens to people who cannot control their rage—those who live long enough.”

  “I have a good many reasons for being angry.”

  “I believe you. But it’s the same for you as it is for most of the people on this planet. Most people, however, don’t wind up strapped down in a psycho ward. That’s where you’re headed if you don’t learn to channel your anger into something else —art, music, sports, schoolwork — something. You do any of that?”

  “Some,” I answered. “Running. They have a half-assed little track program at the Crotch, and I run there,” I said.

  “Then run better. Run faster, stronger, and longer than you ever thought you could. Put your anger into excellence, and learn how to pick your battles.”

  “What do you mean?” I asked. “Battles usually pick me.”

  “Losers get picked by battles; Winners pick which battles they fight. Here’s how you take control, Jerry. Someone makes fun of your name, you make fun of his or her name. He calls you Geronimo, you call him ‘Standing Bear Fucking Chipmunk on a High Wire’.”

  I burst out laughing.

  He smiled back. “Three things, Jerry. First, what others think of you is not important. Second, what you think of yourself is important.”

  I frowned at both propositions. I didn’t know enough to argue with him, and I knew it then. What he said seemed right, though.

  He leaned back in his chair. “Third, Jerry, and probably most important: there are over five million kids under the age of eighteen in the federal child protection system right now: Illegal Mexicans, Central and South Americans, Chinese, Thais, Iraqis, Afghanis, Syrians, Egyptians, disowned Native Americans, and abandoned children born on this side of the border by non-citizen parents. In
a few months all this is going to change.”

  “Change?” I said

  “Jerry, all the federal, state, and municipal orphanages, juvenile detention facilities, and reform schools are going to be federalized and controlled by a single office out of the Department of Human Services in Washington. The current numbers suggest that it will triple the number of kids in the system. In addition you’ll get the kids of junkies, alkies, incarcerated criminals, child molesters, and parents who either can’t parent or choose not to because they are simply sick and tired of their kids.”

  “How many is that?”

  He shrugged. “I don’t know for certain. The Office of Management and Budget projects from fourteen to twenty million kids in the system and growing every year. Another big influx of the parentless, which is the currently non-judgmental term, will be coming from the homes of some men and women in the armed forces killed or disabled in combat. In addition are all the new refugee children coming in from Egypt, Libya, Sudan, Saudi Arabia, Gaza, and Jordan because of the wars.”

  I shrugged back at him. “What’s that got to do with me?”

  “Think,” he said. “Right now you are a cipher—a number in a digital file that says you are a troublemaker. With the proposed expansion of the federal government in this area—that’s you in the midst of three to four times the system’s current numbers—you will become less than a cipher: more trouble than you’re worth.” He paused to let that last sink in. “If you cannot control your anger, it will soon be the easiest thing in the world for someone in UCH to label you as incorrigible and put you on the next bus for Gatesville or some violent ward for the greater good.”

  “Are they bad?” I asked. “Reformatories?”

  “Jerry, what they do with their anger cases in reformatories is punish the hell out of them and when that doesn’t work they fill them up with drugs so that all they can do is stare at walls and drool. When such inmates get too old and maintaining them too expensive, they often get operated on to short circuit their violent tendencies then get turned out on the street to fend for themselves where they usually die.”

  “So, what are you saying, doctor?” I asked, dropping the nickname as something cold and desperate clutched at my heart.

  “I’m saying, keep the future in mind and watch your ass, kid. I know it’s tough where you are now, but you can make it much harder on yourself by continuing to rage down your current path. What I’m trying to get through to you is that your one-Indian warrior charge against the system is about to be overwhelmed by what’s coming at you from the opposite direction.”

  I thought on that for a good minute, my gaze fixed on some indeterminable point in space. Finally, I looked back at the roly-poly psychologist who, up until then, was the only adult who ever spoke to me without, as they say, forked tongue.

  “So what do I do?” I asked.

  “Play it smart. What they have on their side is size, numbers, weapons, the law, and backup from federal, state, and local police agencies. The National Guard and Army, too, if they need it.”

  “And on my side?”

  “You have youth and you have time. They have to let you go by your eighteenth birthday, unless they have you in custody and under charges or already sentenced in a mental institution, reformatory, or prison.”

  “Prison?” I said.

  “Federal detainees from the age of fifteen on up generally get tried as adults. Sometimes they rule kids as young as twelve and thirteen to be adults. “

  “You said I have time on my side.”

  He nodded. “Do good in school. Where you have to feed teachers bullshit, make it the richest, finest, best-smelling steaming pile of bullshit anyone ever saw. Take your anger to the running track, never complain, never whine, never argue, never talk back, never cry, and don’t allow yourself to get provoked into anything no matter how awful the reason. You want your file to say, ‘Jerome had anger issues in the past, but he seems to have channeled his anger into more productive paths. We recommend graduation from high school with full honors.’ Then you get the fuck out and do what you have to do.”

  I stared at Goose Guzman for a moment, profoundly astonished. “Where did you go to school?” I asked.

  “Do I know about UCH from the inside, you want to know?”

  I nodded.

  “I did elementary and high school at the Uvalde Children’s Home.”

  I was confused. “Aren’t you Mexican? Back when you were a kid, it was just an Indian school.”

  He nodded. “Same as you. My ancestors were Lipan Apache,” he said. “The tribe said I looked too Mexican to be Lipan. I might have a drop of Lipan blood in me somewhere, but they couldn’t enroll me without proof that my parents were Lipans. Since my parents were both dead, that was that, and I was on my way to UCH. My DNA test showed me to be full-blooded Lipan, and the tribe told the authorities that when I became an adult I would be able to enroll myself into the tribe.”

  That surprised me. “They told the Uvalde CPS my parents didn’t enroll me in the tribe before throwing me into that Dumpster, so the tribe wouldn’t take me until I could choose for myself.”

  He nodded, his face somber. “Thereby relieving the tribe of any of the growing up expenses.” His eyebrows went up. “There just might be a place or three that deserves burning more than UCH,” he said. “I’ll have to think about that my own self. It seems that many of the tribal leaderships have become just more bosses gaming the system for what they can put in their pockets.” He grinned. “Wouldn’t it be just grand to have a real home? A real family?”

  “Maybe,” I said. “Back at UCH, though, I talked to some kids from really sucky homes.” I frowned as I looked at him. “I didn’t think you would talk to me like this.”

  “Like what?”

  “Like saying stuff I can actually use,” I said. “That and talking like a nut.”

  He laughed and rubbed his eyes, then laughed again. “Twelve years ago, Jerry, I graduated from UCH. They had me all lined up to become a gardener. You know, one of those people with a broken down mini-pickup with a broom and a rake sticking up out of the bed and a brain-damaged assistant to do the grunt work? I was the brain-damaged assistant.” He made a face.

  I laughed. “Yeah,” I said. “So how did you become a psychologist?”

  “Pete Yamaguchi, the guy I worked for in Austin, one of his clients was a psychologist. One day when we broke for lunch, Doctor Harriman was out in his garden admiring our handiwork. His garden was small, but really well done. He invited Pete and me in for coffee. Pete had tea, I had a root beer, and the doctor had bottled water. He had us bring our drinks into his den.”

  “What happened?” I asked.

  “When I finished my root beer, Pete and the doctor were still talking flowers, compost, and such. I asked Doctor Harriman if I could look at his library. He must have had at least a thousand books in that room alone. To me it was like taking a tour through a maharaja’s treasure room. I asked him how many books he owned.

  “‘Print,’ he said, ‘around nine thousand. Digital?’ He frowned, thought a moment, pulled a mobile from his pocket, and poked around in it. His eyebrows went up and he looked at me. ‘Add the digital,’ he said, ‘and the number is close to twenty-six thousand.’“

  “That’s bigger than the whole UCH school library,” I said.

  “Doesn’t it have access to the Digital Library of Congress?” Doctor Guzman asked.

  “Not any longer,” I answered. “Something about pearls before swine, said Ms. Chandler.”

  “God, is she still there?”

  “She is,” I said, “and just as salty. But what did the psychologist do?”

  Facundo shrugged. “He must’ve seen something in me. I don’t know what. He wanted to know what my plans were. I didn’t have much in the way of plans except survival short term and destroying UCH long term, so I told him I didn’t know. He asked me if I’d like to go to college, make something of my life. To make a long story s
hort, he financed my way through the University of Texas at Austin; Go Longhorns,” he said making a weird sign with his left hand.

  “That was the university Doctor Harriman went to, and he got me a deal. I did paid gardening there, Doctor Harriman made up the difference, I went to classes, got my degree, got a scholarship to Harvard and took my masters and doctorate there, then returned to Austin to work with Doctor Harriman for a couple of years.”

  “Why’d he do all that? For a UCH kid? For an Indian who looks like a Mexican?”

  The man sat silently for a long time. “I’ve asked myself that at least a thousand times over the past twelve years, and all I’ve come up with is James Harriman was a very generous man.”

  “He help a lot of kids?” I asked.

  “Don’t know.” He frowned as he chose his words. “Jerry, has anyone ever done a crappy thing to you seemingly out of the blue? You don’t know why the person did that, but it happened all the same?”

  “Yes,” I answered, the sore of pretty Diana still tender.

  “Well, maybe good things can happen like that, too. Suddenly you make a friend, somebody gives you a gift, helps you out, gives you a break. Anything like that ever happen to you?”

  I nodded. “Friends. Two friends. First friend got killed. Second one is still alive, though.” I grinned. “He calls me ‘hermano’.”

  “Muy bueno,” replied Doctor Guzman.

  “Okay, Goose, I have a question,” I said, leaning forward.

  “Ask.”

  “All right,” I said, “You graduated from Harvard? Yet you come back to Uvalde, the asshole of America?”

  “I did, didn’t I?” He thought for a moment, then leveled his gaze on me. “Well, I always had a fantasy about coming back and burning down the Uvalde Children’s Home.” His eyebrows went up. “Don’t you burn down the place.”

  I laughed. “No way, man. Goose Guzman called dibs on burning down the school. I got to think of something else.” When the laughter quieted down, I asked again, “So, why are you here?”