SCREAMING BATFISH BLUES #33
BATFISH
ST. PETER SECURITY HOSPITAL
“All right, dude. Let’s lock and load.” Cedar had such a smile on his face that I could see the white of his teeth. Which is strange since most mental patients have zero dental hygiene concerns.
“What in the double fuck is going on?” In a panic I turned to see that smelly ass Bob had stepped into the cell. He had practically screamed that out and I was positive that a counselor must have heard him. He had plugged his catheter into his night bag and was holding it like he was on his way to the gym.
“I smelled smoke and thought you guys had some cigarettes in here.”
“Bob” I said. “We’ve decided to take a little vacation. I see you already have your bag packed. Would you like to join....”
While Bob’s attention had been drawn to me, Cedar had stepped up and thrown a roundhouse right which caught Bob right in the middle of the forehead.
Bastard really packed a wallop for such a skinny little guy. Bob stood there for a split second and then went down to the floor in sort of slow motion while making this noise like “uhhhhhhhhhhhhh.”
I quickly stepped up to my cell window and looked out. The unit seemed quiet and the two security counselors were still dozing in the bubble. I could see that the movie Fast Times At Ridgemont High was playing on the VCR.
“Let’s go.” I said to Cedar as I stepped over Bob’s prone and pungent body. Cedar slipped out the window like his body was lubricated. I had to get one shoulder and my head through then the other, and even then Cedar had to pull me by both my arms to get me all the way through.
I was down in the snow and then up and running for the side of the building. We had just reached the corner and I heard Bob.
“You motherfuckers. Wait for me, goddamn it.”
Crazy scumbag must have really been able to take a punch because he had gotten up and crawled out the hole in the window. He had run into a small problem though. His night bag had gotten caught on a rough edge of the hole and had not only ripped but pulled his catheter out. Piss was running down the side of the building.
The light was on in the last cell on the corner of the building. That was Wes's cell. Wes had been brought to the hospital after his family had gone bankrupt and lost the family farm. Literally. Wes had drilled holes in the road leading to the farmhouse and filled them with dynamite. The idea was to try to blow the bankers and auctioneers to hell when they drove over the TNT.
Something had gone wrong with the blasting caps and he had missed his intended victims. The charge didn’t go off until an old lady and her schnauzer drove over it in her vintage Rambler. The only body part they found was the old girl’s stainless steel hip replacement, laying a hundred feet out in a plowed field.
Now Wes was standing straight up with both of his feet in his toilet. He was completely naked and was reading a Playboy. He looked over at me, smiled, and waved. I waved back.
That was the last sight I saw at the Minnesota Security Hospital. We dropped down the side of the hill into the woods that surrounds the lower campus and came out through the cemetery where they bury all the unclaimed bodies of the assorted wing nuts that have died there.
Made me think about a conversation I had overheard between two staff members. Years ago, a young man had be brought to the hospital by his father. The old man, a religious fanatic, had caught him masturbating in the barn and wanted him to stop this evil behavior. The kid was terrified, of course, and became very aggressive to the other patients. He wound up having huge doses of shock therapy, Thorazine, and then a lobotomy.
In the end he would be spending his entire life in the hospital. Somewhere in this graveyard he was buried. Thinking about it made me pick up the pace, until Cedar complained. He wasn’t big on aerobic conditioning.
We picked our way around the back of the campus and crossed the main road leading to the facility, winding up in a residential neighborhood. Coming out on to a sidewalk, we began to walk in a seemingly normal fashion, only diving behind snow banks when a car would approach.
It was a gorgeous moonlit night with the temperatures probably only in the 30’s.
I knew where the meeting place was. I had seen it when Ray and I were first brought here. Within minutes we were there. The sign was lit up in orange and yellow and had a jaunty Mexican fellow with a sombrero on
it. He was holding a taco in his hand. Like he was beckoning to me to come enjoy a taco after my stay and then escape from a mental hospital. It was the second most beautiful sight I had ever seen.
The most beautiful was the old rag top Cadillac sitting idling in the parking lot. Cedar’s buddy’s word was good as gold. The only downfall was that the top wouldn’t go up and we drove all the way to Minneapolis that way. Those two were wearing snowmobile suits and face masks and drank schnapps the whole way to Minneapolis. Cedar and I had to lay on the floorboards and cover ourselves up with a couple of old army blankets that
smelled like old dogs and beer farts.
Two hours later I was dropped off in front of a music store in Minneapolis called “The Electric Fetus” with five bucks, a can of Pig’s Eye beer, and a quarter to call my sister.
Cedar got out of the car and gave me a big hug. “Take care, dude. Has this been a fucking adventure or what? He jumped back in the Caddy, gave me a wave, and raced off into the night.
“Hey man, keep the lipstick off the dipstick.”
I was back in Minneapolis. I could have danced around and thrown my fucking hat in the air like Mary Tyler Moore, but it was to damn cold and I did want to avoid being noticed.
The next day in the Minneapolis Star Tribune I read an article about a daring escape at the Minnesota Security Hospital. Three patients had escaped and two of them, who were still at large, were considered dangerous. The third patient had been captured several hours later just outside of Mankato. He had attempted to flee when authorities approached and was shot right in the ass by a Minnesota highway patrol officer.
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