His face tightened some more as he watched the urinating man shake himself off, then duck-walk across the yard, pants still puddled around his ankles.
“Wet.”
“We’ll handle it, Chet,” soothed Dollard.
The black tech said, “I’ll go get those trousers up.”
He sauntered toward Sharbno. The white tech stayed with Chet. Dollard gave Chet another pat and we moved on.
Ten yards later, I looked back. Both techs were flanking Chet. The giant’s posture had changed-shoulders higher, head craning as he continued to stare at the space vacated by Sharbno.
Milo said, “Guy that size, how can you control him?”
“We don’t control him,” said Dollard. “Clozapine does. Last month his dosage got
upped after he beat the crap out of another patient. Broke about a dozen bones.”
“Maybe he needs even more,” said Milo.
“Why?”
“He doesn’t exactly sound coherent.”
Dollard chuckled. “Coherent.” He glanced at me. “Know what his daily dosage is,
Doctor? Fourteen hundred milligrams. Even with his body weight, that’s pretty thorough, wouldn’t you say?”
“Maximum’s usually around nine hundred,” I told Milo. “Lots of people do well on a third of that.”
Dollard said, “He was on eleven migs when he broke the other inmate’s face.”
Dollard’s chest puffed a bit. “We exceed maximum recommendations all the time; the psychiatrists tell us it’s no problem.” He shrugged. “Maybe Chet’ll get even more.
If he does something else bad.”
We covered more ground, passing more inmates. Un-trimmed hair, slack mouths, empty eyes, stained uniforms. None of the iron-pumper bulk you see in prisons. These torsos were soft, warped, deflated. I felt eyes on the back of my head, glanced to the side, and saw a man with haunted-prophet eyes and a chestful of black beard staring at me. Above the facial pelt, his cheeks were sunken and sooty. Our eyes engaged. He came toward me, arms rigid, neck bobbing. He opened his mouth. No teeth.
He didn’t know me but his eyes were rich with hatred. My hands fisted. I walked faster. Dollard noticed and cocked his head. The bearded man stopped abruptly, stood there hi the full sun, planted like a shrub. The red exit sign on the far gate was five hundred feet away. Dollard’s key ring jangled. No other techs in sight. We kept walking. Beautiful sky, but no birds. A machine began grinding something.
I said, “Chefs ramblings. There seems to be some intelligence there.”
“What, ’cause he talks about books?” said Dollard. “I think before he went nuts he was in college somewhere. I think his family was educated.”
“What got him in here?” said Milo, glancing back. “Same as all of them.” Dollard scratched his mustache and kept his pace steady. The yard was vast. We were halfway across now, passing more dead eyes, frozen faces, wild looks that set up the small hairs on the back of my neck.
“Don’t wear khaki or brown,” Milo had said. “The inmates wear that, we don’t want you stuck in there-though that would be interesting, wouldn’t it? Shrink trying to convince them he’s not crazy?”
“Same as all of them?” I said.
“Incompetent to stand trial,” said Dollard. “Your basic 1026.”
“How many do you have here?” said Milo.
“Twelve hundred or so. Old Chet’s case is kinda sad. He was living on top of a mountain down near the Mexican border-some kind of hermit deal, sleeping in caves, eating weeds, all that good stuff. Couple of hikers just happened to be unlucky enough to find the wrong cave, wrong time, woke him up. He tore ’em up-really went at ’em with his bare hands. He actually managed to rip both the girl’s arms off and was working on one of her legs when they found him. Some park ranger or sheriff shotgunned Chet’s leg charging in, that’s why it looks like that. He wasn’t resisting arrest, just sitting there next to the body pieces, looking scared someone was gonna hit him. No big challenge getting a 1026 on something like that. He’s been here three years. First six months he did nothing but stay curled up, crying, sucking his thumb. We hadtoIV-feedhim.”
“Now he beats people up,” said Milo. “Progress.”
Dollard flexed his fingers. He was in his late fifties, husky and sunburnt, no visible body fat. The lips beneath the mustache were thin, parched, amused. “What do you want we should do, haul him out and shoot him?”