The Dead Caller from Chicago

Thirty

The clinic was at the Illinois-Wisconsin line, set unmarked and secluded well back from the road. If the Bohemian’s instructions hadn’t been precise, I never would have found the driveway through the trees.

The reception area was designed to receive no one comfortably. It consisted of two hard plastic chairs and a stern-faced woman tucked behind a high counter. I was made to wait for only a moment before a woman in a cardigan sweater came through doors that opened with a faint electric snick. She smiled in spite of the surroundings.

“I’m Dr. Feldott,” she said, extending her hand. She was about forty, prematurely gray, and wore bright red glasses that would surely please Leo if he were feeling well. “Mr. Smith is doing quite well, considering,” she went on as she led me back, through the electronically locked doors.

“Considering?”

“He’s begun acting in a most determined manner. We believe he’s trying to tell us something.”

“He’s not speaking?”

“Occasionally, but he’s not communicating with words. You’ll see.”

We walked down a hall that looked more residential than institutional. Paintings hung on the walls, glass vases filled with fresh flowers sat on narrow tables. The only tip off that we were in a healthcare facility was the doors. They were wider than residential doors. They had keypad locks, and they were all closed.

“His blood is good; everything physically seems to be fine,” she said as we turned a corner. “His issue stems from a shock. You know about his shock?”

I nodded.

“It would help if we could discuss the details of that.”

“I cannot.”

“He’s been eating and sleeping well, and smiling almost all the time, until this morning, when he went into a sort of frenzy. He grabbed a pen from one of our nurses and began motioning for paper. I was called. We took it for an encouraging sign, this new desire to share. But almost immediately, he threw the pen down. He wanted another writing instrument. It was only after some time that we realized he wanted crayons-” She stopped abruptly, seeing the smile on my face. “Something is funny about this?”

“He likes colors. Like no one you’ve ever met. Did you get him the sixty-four-piece set?”

“Not at first,” she said. “We brought him one of the small packs we keep here for children. He got furious, shook his head back and forth. I went out to Walgreens, brought back the largest set, though we removed the little sharpener. He’s been drawing on typing paper ever since, not happy, not unhappy, just… purposeful; driven. He hasn’t eaten at all today, so fixated has he been on drawing. As you’ll see, he draws only one picture, over and over, and presses one upon everyone he sees. At first, we thought he was offering his artwork as gifts, but as he kept drawing the same thing over and over, we realized he’s trying to tell us something with the pictures. We’re hoping they’ll mean something to you.” She stopped at a door, entered a code on the keypad, and pushed it open. She motioned for me to go in first.

Leo sat at a small table, stabbing a white sheet of typing paper with the stub of a red crayon. He wore khakis and a light blue knit shirt. The Leo I knew would never have sported such a boring ensemble. The tip of his tongue was sticking out of the corner of his mouth as it sometimes did when he concentrated. He looked up as I came closer.

His face was even more pale than usual, and haggard. Too haggard.

“About time,” he said.

It was the beginning of relief. “You know me?”

“Of course.”

“Who is he?” Dr. Feldott asked, coming up to stand beside me.

“The gun man.” Not gunman; gun man. Two syllables.

Dr. Feldott inhaled sharply.

Leo was beginning to remember, linking me with the gun he’d used on Wozanga, the gun he’d been about to use on me.

“Relax,” I told the doctor. “I haven’t killed for a month, maybe more.”

She smiled, sort of, but took a couple of steps back anyway.

I looked down at the picture Leo was drawing. It wasn’t much, just a hundred red dots in several clusters.

“What are you drawing?” I asked.

He began attacking the paper in front of him with more red dots.

I looked over at Dr. Feldott and shook my head. I had no idea what he was trying to draw.

“Are you going to give this nice man your drawing?” Dr. Feldott asked him. She hadn’t asked my name because she expected I’d give her something phony.

“Not nice man; gun man,” he said.

Apparently satisfied with the hundreds of dots he’d put on the paper, he put the stub of the red crayon back into the flip-up box and studied the other colors. Like the red crayon, many of the others had been worn down to stubs. His fingers dug deep into the box, pulling out a lavender crayon even shorter than the red one.

“That’s one of your favorites, isn’t it?” Dr. Feldott asked.

“No time.” He drew a rectangle on the sheet of paper and began filling it with broad strokes of lavender.

I knew then, as surely as I’d ever known anything.

“You’re going to give your friend this drawing?” I heard Dr. Feldott ask again.

“The gun man,” Leo corrected, running the lavender crayon back and forth.

I turned to the doctor. “You said there are other pictures?”

“All the same,” she said. “Can the gun man see some of the others?” she asked Leo.

His coloring hand stopped in the middle of a stroke. “Excellent!” he shouted. He opened the table drawer and pulled out a sheaf of papers. Thrusting them at me, he yelled, “Gun man.”

“Gun man?” Dr. Feldott persisted, but it was so unnecessary.

He’d handed me the sheaf upside down. I turned them over. As Dr. Feldott had said, the picture on top was the same as the one he was now drawing. It had hundreds of the same red dots, meant to show leaves. The lavender was there, too; broad swipes of plenty of it, all over a barn; along with pink, green-spotted cows against a background of orange rolling hills. The only thing missing was the “Leo B.” in the lower right corner, and that was only because he couldn’t yet recall his own name.

“I understand,” I said quickly, though I didn’t, at least not all of it.

Dr. Feldott looked alarmed. Leo looked up from his coloring and smiled.

I jabbed the sheaf of pictures back at the doctor and ran out of the room and down the hall. Dr. Feldott came running after me. She knew the electronic locks on the door would stop me.

She demanded to know nothing as she punched in the code to make the doors swing free.

“You’ll call me?” she shouted, as I sprinted into the reception area.

“I’m the gun man,” I yelled back, running for the Jeep.