The Hotel Eden: Stories by Ron Carlson Page B

enter the Institute as patients only to be returned to the community after treatment in better shape than before, and even though most everybody has visited the grounds—if not for personal reasons, then certainly at our annual Community Picnic on the South Lawn—there still persists this incurable sense that once you pass under the Spinard stone arch you are entering the twilight zone. Yes, we do have a big iron fence, because some of our patients get confused and could possibly wander away, and yes, the buildings, some of them, have bars over the windows for the safety of our patients, and some of our patients wear restraints when out-of-doors, but they are dangerous to no one but themselves. I cannot say how weary I am of setting the record straight. It is not a nuthouse, and I am not a mad scientist. We don’t have any mad scientists, mad professors, or mad doctors. No one’s mad. We don’t use that term. We do have some disturbed patients, but we’re treating them, and there is a chance—with rest counseling, and medication—that they will get better. We do not perform operations except as they become medically necessary. We had an appendectomy last fall. We do not operate on the brain. We do not—as the high school paper suggests regularly—do brain transplants, dissections, or enlargements. Most recently I had to speak with Wild Johnny Hateras at KGRG, the radio station in Griggs, about the prank news bulletin on Halloween, which is just the kind of thing that keeps any understanding between the Institute and the town in tatters and is responsible, I think, for the harm resulting from last Saturday’s incident, about which we’ve heard so much.
    MR. HOWARD LUGDRUM
    I T HURT . D ON ’ T you think that hurt? Everybody talks about the kids: oh, they were scared, they were frightened and nervous, oh, they were terrified. Well, think about it—had two trespassers yanked off their prosthesis? In the course of doing their job, were either of them pulled from their feet and dragged till an arm came off, and left there tumbling in the dirt? As it turns out, I was lucky I was wearing my simple hook and the straps broke; if I’d been wearing my regular armature, those two little criminals would have dragged me to death, and we’d have murder here instead of reckless endangerment.
    ROD BUDDAROCK
    I F ANYBODY, ONE person, says anything, one thing, about my buddy Jack Cramble being up there at Passion Point to do anything, one thing, besides help little Jill Royaltuber with family problems, such as they are, I’ll find that person and use his lying butt to wipe up Main Street. I’m not joking here. I know Jack from being co-captain of football, and I know what I’m saying. Of course, he could have come to the team party out at the Landing, but here was a girl who had some troubles and he was there to help. There’s been a lot of talk about what they were really doing. Jack made that crack about debate, which was too bad, because he couldn’t get within two miles of the debate team—I’m a better debater than Jack and Jill put together—but he only said that to protect Jill’s reputation, such as it is. She’s a nice girl, but a little confused. It was only last year that her mom went bonkers, and Jill herself went a little nuts about that time, but she is no slut. If anybody, one person, says anything about Jill Royaltuber being a wide-mouthed, round-heeled slut, I’ll find that person and trouble will certainly rain down upon his or her head like hot shit from Mars.
    MR. HOWARD LUGDRUM
    I’ D SEEN THE car before. It’s a two-door Ford, blue-and-white. There are five or six cars I see there by our north fence in the pine grove. They bring their girlfriends up from town in the good weather, and we find the empty beer bottles and condoms. The kids call it Passion Point. We had a timed light system there until a few years ago, but the Environmental Protection Agency asked us to dismantle it because of the