She paused for a moment, then continued.
“Now if you take a deep breath and let it
go,
you’ll find
you’re
descending into the realm of relaxation . . . each muscle letting
go,
so that you feel limp like a rag doll.
Take
whatever number of deep breaths you need, letting them out
slowly. Feel
yourself descend, level by level, descend until you arrive at the place where you need to be for us to accomplish what
we’re
here to accomplish.”
It looked to me like he had already arrived at that place. His whole body had changed, relaxing in on itself
somehow,
and he was sitting like he might if he were alone, but not how he
would
had he been aware of our presence in the room.
His eyes were already closed. He was already under. If hypnotism was being used for destructive purposes, then inmates like this one were sheep to the slaughter.
“. . . off the merry-go-round,” Hahn was
saying.
She never stopped talking during this
process.
“This is the first time your mind
doesn’t have
to act like an executive in making all your decisions, in resolving all your concerns.
Now,
feel the sensation as if every cell, every organ, every system in your body is being rejuvenated. Reborn.”
I realized that Hahn and the inmate had become my fixed objects and I was about to
go
under. I shook my head and looked
away.
Being hypnotized came far more easy than I
would’ve
thought.
“. . . gather all the physical discomfort and tension, and imagine putting it on your shoulders and then having God lift it off.
Doesn’t
that feel wonderful?
Aren’t
you
lighter, more relaxed?
Now,
as I continue, it
isn’t
necessary for you to constantly pay attention to what I’m
saying.
You
can
go
to wherever you feel most comfortable, and you’ll hear me at an unconscious
level.”
Hahn glanced
over
at me and mouthed,
Watch
this
.
“Okay,
now,
I want you to
rub
your pants leg with your right arm.”
He moved his right
arm
down and began to
rub
his right pant
leg.
“As
you continue feeling your clothing with your fingers, your fingers and even your hand will get lighter. It will grow lighter and lighter. I
don’t
know which finger feels the lightest, but one of them will feel so light it will begin to float, then the others will
follow,
then your wrist will feel so light it will begin to float, then your whole hand.”
Within a minute, his right hand was floating out beside him, his
arm
dangling down as if an invisible cord was holding up his hand.
“Now
you’re
going to lose all feeling in your floating hand. Do you feel it going numb? From your fingertips to your wrist, you
have
no feeling in your right
hand.”
She then took out a small needle and began to poke it into the tips of his fingers, tiny droplets of blood oozing out onto the skin and point of the needle as she did, but he showed no response whatsoever.
W
hen I left
Hahn’s
office, I found the nearest phone and called Hank Sproul back about the
autopsy.
“It’s
John
Jordan. Got a quick question for
you.”
“Okay.”
“The pinpricks you mentioned, could they’ve been from testing the feeling in his hand?”
“Whatta you mean?” His voice rising, interested. “I guess
that’s
possible. There nothing to suggest
it’s
not. What in the
world
made you think of that?”
“Hypnotism,” I said.
“That’s
how hypnotists
check
to see if their patient is fully inducted.”
W
alking back to my office, I ran into Emile
Rollins.
“I just came from the
chapel,”
he said. “I was hoping to talk to
you.”
He turned and fell into step with me.
“Is somebody tryin’ to kill me—I mean the Kings?”
“I’m not
sure.”
“I feel like I’m in danger—more so than usual—and
I’s
wondering if
it’s
paranoia or . .
.”
A school bell rang, and inmates poured out of the classrooms to our right the same
way
they must
have
when they were children. Many of them still
were.
Big, spoiled, obnoxious kids, unwilling or unable to grow
up.
Several inmates passing by us were making fun of what they
would
be served that evening in the
chow
hall, and I was amazed again at their ingratitude and sense of entitlement.
He shook his head. “This place, man . . . Life is
cheap.
It’s
fuckin’ bleak.
Where’s
God?”
I
shrugged.
“Obscured
by
the bleakness maybe? I’m meant to be
God’s
representative. But as usual . . . falling down on my
job.”
“No.
I
didn’t
mean . . . I just meant . .
.”
“If God is
love, works
through
love,
then the bleakness
you’re
talking about is an absence of
love.”
Emile Rollins walked like a robot, his movements stiff and awkward, self-conscious—as if someone were watching him and it made him nervous or his joints
didn’t
bend as far as they should.
“I
wasn’t
really
asking,”
he said. “It was just sort of rhetorical. I
didn’t
want to be preached
at.”
Although Emile
worked
on an outside community
work
squad, his uniform was neatly pressed and spotless, and showed no sign of fading or
wear,
and I wondered if Brent Allen was taking care of his fellow Suicide
King.
“You
see
Dr.
Baldwin?” I asked. “That relevant to my safety?”
I nodded.
“Yeah.
She’s
good. Helped me more than anyone I’ve ever known.”
“She use hypnotherapy on you?”
“Yeah,”
he nodded. “I
don’t
know what it does, but it
works.
Works
better than anything I’ve ever tried.”
“You
remember what you
worked
on when
you
come out?”
“No.
I think
that’s
the point.”
“
Anyone
else ever hypnotize you?”
He
shrugged.
“She’s
taught a lot of us how to do
it.”
When we reached my office, my phone was ringing.
I unlocked the door and rushed in to pick it
up.
Emile Rollins followed.
“Chaplain
Jordan,”
I said into the
receiver.
I
hadn’t
been in my office
much
lately.
The air was still and stale, the large plants in need of
water.
A fine patina of dust covered their
leaves,
my
books,
frames, and the pile of papers on my desktop. My chapel orderlies could only come in and clean when I was here to supervise them.
“Yes,
Chaplain, this is Margaret Allen. An inmate incarcerated there, Brent Allen, is
my
son.”
“Yes
ma’am.”
“His grandfather, Charles Allen, has been put in the hospital and
I’d
like for him to be able to call and talk to him. They
don’t
expect him to make it through the night.
It’d
mean so much to him. My
husband’s
dead and Brent is the only grandchild, the only family
my
father-in-law
has.”
“Yes,
ma’am, I’m
sorry
to hear that,” I said. “Let me get some information from you and I’ll call Brent in and let him call the hospital as soon as
possible.”
“Thank
you.”
She gave me the information and we hung
up.
“Brent’s
granddaddy?” Rollins said when I hung up the phone.
I
didn’t
answer him.
“Well,”
he added, “guess I’ll
go
so you can deal with that.”
W
hen I told Brent his grandfather was in the hospital, he nodded as if
he’d
been expecting the
news,
then just sat there, uninterested, inattentive.
“You
okay?” I asked.
He nodded. “I’ve been expecting it, you know? I’m just glad it
wasn’t
my mom.
He’s
lived a long, prosperous life.
He’s
had it good and
easy.”
“Would
you like to call the hospital? I can get him on the line in here and you can talk to him in
private.”
“My mom still there?”
“I
would
think.”
“Sure,
let’s
do
it.”
His blank stare moved about my office as I punched in the number to the hospital. Nothing seemed to interest him. Not the plants, not the beautiful day beyond the
window,
not the colorful religious
iconography.
Nothing.
“Mom,” he said into the phone when I handed it to him. “How are you?
Yeah. Yeah.
I’m good.
No,
really.
I am. Mom, I’m not going to . . . I’m not even sad. I promise.
I’ve got more reasons to
live
now than ever
before.”
He paused a moment.
“I really
don’t
want
to.
He’s
not asleep or in a coma or something?”
He rolled his eyes while he listened.
“I
wouldn’t
know what to
say.
No.
Okay.
I will. But listen, I need you to send me some
money.
My
account’s
about
empty.
You
know I need
my
canteen.
It’s
all I’ve got.
It’s
the only
way
I can survive in here. Understand? There’ll be plenty
now.
Don’t
hold
back.”
He waited, making an unpleasant expression as he did.
Rarely did I grant an inmate a crisis phone call that he
didn’t
ask his distraught family to send
money.
No matter how severe the crisis, how difficult the circumstance, far too often it seemed their primary purpose for calling.
It seemed Brent, like many of the men in here,
was
detached and dissociated from any emotional connections in his life.
“Grandpa . . . How are you?”
His voice was soft and filled with a concern his facial expressions and body language
didn’t
confirm.
“Ah,
you’ll be
fine,”
he said.
“You’ll
see.
You’re
a tough old bastard.
You’ll
show them.
Well
. . .
okay,
then.
Take
care. Huh? Oh . . . yeah, me
too.”
He waited for another moment.
“Okay,
Mom.
Okay.
Don’t
forget to send me some. Do it tonight. What?
No.
I need it
now.
Okay.
Don’t
forget.
You
too.
Bye.”
A
fter Brent left, I walked to the kitchen in the back of the chapel for a cup of coffee. As I was about to walk back to my office, I heard what sounded like muffled screams coming from the inmate bathroom.
I dropped my cup on the counter and ran out of the kitchen, across the
hallway,
and into the bathroom.
Inside, I found Lance Phillips hanging from a thin rope that was tied to the top of the frame of the metal stall. His hands were bound at the wrists and he
was
struggling against the noose to no
avail.
As I rushed
over
to help him, I detected movement to my right, and turned just in time to see a huge inmate wearing a white hood made from a pillowcase with eyeholes in it coming at me with a brass candle holder from the altar in the chapel.
He swung it down on me, but I ducked under it, threw my
arms
up and blocked it
somehow.
The pain in my right
arm
hurt all the
way
down to the bone.
Lance shrieked and I turned toward him. He
was
losing consciousness. When I moved toward him, the big guy dropped the candle holder and dashed out of the restroom.
I ran
over
and grabbed
Lance’s
legs and lifted him
up.
I held him that
way
for a minute as he gasped and coughed, trying to breathe.
I looked up at him.
“You
okay?” He nodded.