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CZ Studio and Radio Verte presents The Wild Wind by Corey Zimmerman.

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Chapter 4

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The Bronson Building Dayroom was where the patients could relax by one of the colossal windows,

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providing a magnificent view of the river valley below. They could listen to the phonograph,

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or read a book from the library, or eat its pages, play the piano, pound the keys,

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or if one chose, play chess, checkers, chew on the checkers, or an everlasting staring contest

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with the wall. The dayroom was full of a spectrum of characters, such as Jesse, a young man in a

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wheeled chair, who would grow frustrated watching the flies bump into the window, trying to escape

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the invisible wall preventing them from moving toward sunlight. The flies would grow somewhat

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disoriented as their confused visual signals miscalculated what they were seeing. The glass's

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smooth surface allowed the flies to hold on using the hairs on their sticky pads. However,

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as the glass prevents them from succeeding in escape, a sustained effort over time had finished

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off any reserved body fat, leaving them to lie dying of exhaustion. Jesse had watched the flies

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continually bouncing and buzzing against the glass for so long he was aware of their impending fate.

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This made him nervous, which caused him to squirm about anxiously in his wheeled chair,

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until it made the other patients nervous, who would call again and again on a nurse

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to open the window for the fly to escape. Another character, Big Ben, was a giant of a man

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trapped inside a child's mind, or vice versa perhaps, a child trapped within a giant of a man.

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Despite his girth, Big Ben was a gentle soul, only one thing on his mind, and that was pie.

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He spent most of his days waiting for the pie to be served after dinner.

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And on one Thanksgiving, Ben dragged six male attendants across the dining room floor upon

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his belly with nothing but the tips of his fingers, trying to gain access to the table of pies.

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He succeeded.

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Heartbeat

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There was Mabel, who suffered from the rare phobia of her own heartbeat,

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and frankly, that of her own existence. Her anxiety and clenched jaw had caused most of

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her molars to shatter. She spoke all of her thoughts aloud, pacing back and forth, muttering,

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My heart, my heart, it's going to stop. Someone please help me, my heart. Sir William, as he

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preferred to be called, was a young man in his early thirties, who spoke with a feigned British

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accent and elected himself the caretaker of the grandfather clock, always making sure to keep it

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wound daily. In fact, he rarely left its side. Sir William would count the ticks and talks second

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after second, minute after minute, hour after hour, from sunrise until sunset, until he noticed its

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pace slowing even the slightest, a thirty second of a second. He then used the key he kept on the

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string around his neck to give the old clock a good old crank, counting the seconds to ensure the time

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was just right. And when asked why he did this, he would say, I got somewhere to be.

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Franklin, a simple old man, it was supposed on average, managed but one thought a minute.

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More often than not, that word was shouted aloud, and it was simply cow, cow, cow, cow, minute after

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minute, throughout the day, cow, cow, cow, cow, cow, cow, cow, cow, kill. Surprisingly perturbed no one,

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as it echoed throughout the day room, as he never attempted to kill anyone, nor could Franklin move

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an inch without assistance. Most assumed he had a previous life in a slaughterhouse.

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If one could hear the day room orchestra, it would have sounded something like this.

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One, two, three, cow, oh my heart. Four, five, six, cow, oh my heart. Seven, eight, nine, cow,

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oh my heart. Nine, ten, eleven, cow, somebody please help me, I got somewhere to be. Twelve, thirteen,

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kill, and so on. While an actual conversation may have sounded more like this, so nicely was it done

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that not a drop of blood was spilled. I only laid them to sleep. Snakes, snakes, snakes, snakes,

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I don't know, I don't know. I stuffed cotton in my ears not to hear them. My child is dead, my child

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is dead. I was elected by a majority of 64,000 votes I tell you. My ears never stop ringing,

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they never stop ringing. I am a man, just like any other man. But well, you know I don't know how to

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explain it. But I suppose the gospel says so anyhow. I set a house on fire, that's the third

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house I've burnt. They didn't want to give me something to eat. I went off hungry and sat down

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and saw it burn. Somebody upstairs wants to kill me. Don't say anything to anyone. The day room was

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a noisy place, mostly when Slim was around. Slim believed everyone looked at him with wonder,

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as his tales and stories never ceased to amaze nor annoy. He had been a cowboy on the western plains

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since he was old enough to straddle a bronco and throw a lasso, and was always spoiling for a fight

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in his youth. And Slim joined the militia the moment he thought there was a chance for active

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service in the war. He was one of those fellows, always guilty of some escapade. How he managed to

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get into the army, only a recruiting officer can tell. Slim would talk to anyone who would listen,

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and if there were no one around to listen, he would go on preaching as though he was preaching

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upon the hatch of a ship en route to war, with a crowd of eager young admirers surrounding him.

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Dr. Zola recorded one of Slim's sermons, and it sat in his case notes. Shut up you rookies. Don't

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you know an enlisted man got no right to laugh? You fellas are coming over here to get killed,

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I say. And my business is to haul your asses off the field and see your bodies properly thrown in

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a trench. Oh, I'll see your graves kept green. It's an easy job, seeing the grass sprouts almost

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far the earth unsmoothes over your grave. It's much pleasanter to be the buried corpse than to be the

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buried corpse. I told them, rookies. I tell you it's a ticklish business, driven over a rice field

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after a fight and not run over the fellas lying in the grass who is still alive. I know how it is

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myself, being more in danger of being trampled to death by them mules than from the bullet that tore

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away half my face. Most of us that got hit got it right there in the noggin. It was afternoon, March,

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I recall. A little Filipino boy came crawling up from the river and told us there were damn near

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a hundred Americans killed when suddenly the lights went out. You don't know when you're hit.

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Next thing I remember was waking up with a headache. When I put my hand in my head,

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I found only part of me was there. And the little boy, he said, the soldier's all gone off.

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I looked around and couldn't see one of my comrades, and I knew they'd charge the line

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as they intended to for dark. Hell, the doctors wanted to cut out my tongue, but decided on the

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left eyeball instead. They said my jaw was sprung, so it would be impossible for me to subside on

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army ration. And they said my missing eye would prevent me ever again being a good marksman.

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But many a time I've thrown my hat in the air while I'm full gallop on the plains

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and put all six of my Colts bullets through it before it hit the ground. So hell, what do they

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know? You don't aim to do that. You just bring your gun in line with the jerk and pull the trigger.

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Now imagine the day room with slim in your left ear and Raymond in your right. Raymond had been

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catatonic for over 30 years, decades before arriving at the hilltop. Raymond had no relatives

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and no visitors. Raymond usually sat in a chair, smoking a cigarette the nurses would place in his

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lips. But one random day Raymond decided to stand up and talk. And just like that, every day thereafter,

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he chain smoked his cigarettes in one drag as he rambled and rambled and rambled, leaving everyone

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yearning for the old catatonic. You sat silent by the window.

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None of you jerks have a brain, but here you all think I'm the stupid one because I want to sit

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here by the window where I can seize the trees. Here are the birds. I like the birds, but you

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fool creatures fail to understand that. I want peace. I just want peace and quiet. But no,

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everyone is always talking, talking, talking, talking about nothing. Absolutely nothing of any

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substance at all. Shut up about the damn war. It's over. Get over it. Talk about something

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intriguing, entertaining, anything that doesn't make me want to saw off my own head. You could

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talk about the weather for all I give a damn or better yet the birds. I can't even hear the birds

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singing over that damn yapping, yapping, yapping. We could all sit in silence and look at the trees.

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Now, is that not a glorious idea? Hell, let's name off every damn tree in the great state of Illinois,

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shall we? Silver maple, sugar maple, Ohio buckeye, horse chestnut, red buckeye, tree of heaven,

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Persian silk tree, devil's walking stick, river birch, paper birch, trumpet creeper, mussel wood,

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bitter nut hickory, pignet hickory, sweet hickory, shag bark hickory, American chestnut, red bud,

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dogwood, stiff dogwood, hazelnut, cocksper, half thorn, washington half thorn, eastern leatherwood,

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autumn olive. Yeah, and we got the eastern wahoo, American beech, white ash, black ash, and the green

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ash, and the red ash, and the blue ash, honey locust, tucky coffee tree, carolina silver ball,

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eastern red cedar, golden rain tree, sweet gum, the old wild crab tree, the prairie crab tree,

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cork tree, even the nine bark tree, and the jack pine, and the red pine, and the wine pine,

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and the white pine, sycamores, white poplar, cottonwood, big tooth aspens, wild plum, peach,

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the wild black cherry, the choked cherry, the wafer ash, black jack oak, got the door folk,

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goat willow, pussy willow, blabber nut, northern white cedar, and the eastern hemlock,

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southern arrowwood, prickly ash, slippery elm, and the almighty American elm.

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And then there was Rose. Rose never said a word. Her body had long atrophied and doubled up,

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so she resembled more of a toad than a human being. She loved hopping around on her hands,

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however, chewing and spitting tobacco everywhere, which made at times a horrible mess to slip

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around in. So Rose spent most of her time sitting next to a spittoon on a mattress on the floor,

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having stripped off her gown in the warm rays of the sun.

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By the time Rose arrived at the hilltop, she had lived in the poorhouse for some 40 years.

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The first few, she lived in a basket lined with straw. And then after too many violent outbursts,

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she was confined to a locked crib, where she was cared for solely by other patients.

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Obsessed that old scratch was watching her, with her fingernails,

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she had scratched out her own eyes, and with her fists, beat her own face until her front teeth

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were missing. Rose had become a cursed and hideous object, hidden away in a dark and damp corner,

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with no ability to speak. Rose was quiet, and from what I gathered from her file,

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most likely didn't want to go to the dance at the pavilion that night. But her sisters had insisted.

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You see, Rose was a shy girl, but her mother held on to hope that she might meet a boy from a family

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who owned some land. So together, the family enticed her to attend the village social.

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Unfortunately for Rose, a combination of her odd disposition and her grandmother's penchant for

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witchcraft, undoubtedly provided Rose an unfavorable reputation amongst the community,

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let alone any suitors. So her chances of meeting one were slim, but Rose was beautiful back then,

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a 17 year old girl, though a bit awkward, very easy on the eyes. Easy enough at least,

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for the boy who asked her to dance. Rose's sisters dropped their jaws as he whirled her

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around the stage in delight, and soon he pulled her by the hand off into the night,

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where he must have told Rose he adored her beautiful smile, anything to get a kiss of her

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sweet, succulent lips. Rose must have been surprised when he pulled his warm lips away to ask,

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is your soul as cold as they say? Yet before she could answer, he laid her down in the straw of the

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old barn out back his house. He tore off his shirt, and she ran her fingers down his chest,

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then exposing her breast of which she devoured like a hungry dog, just as his ma noticed a

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lantern aglow in the barn. The boy squirmed like a worm on top of Rose, unaware his ma had entered

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with a butcher knife. Rose screamed and covered herself, and crawled back into a corner as a

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slap came across the boy's face. Profanities flew, and his ma dragged him away by his ear,

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as he made one excuse after another. He didn't even turn back, but as ma did, she stopped right

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at the barn door, looked Rose deep in the eye, and warned her never to return. Tears rolled down Rose's

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face as she put on her disheveled dress in the dark, and walked home in shame.

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But something came over Rose, and the two continued to meet in secrecy until the day the boy asked for

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Rose's hand in marriage. A few days later, there was a knock on her door.

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So you intend to marry my boy? asked his ma, as Rose's sister spied from inside. Rose stood

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speechless. In a deep, dark, horrible tone, his ma threatened a curse on Rose, and she

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was left to die. She was then taken to the hospital, and she was taken to the hospital.

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Rose was left speechless. In a deep, dark, horrible tone, his ma threatened a curse on Rose if she ever

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came near her boy again. The threat sank so deep into Rose's heart as she feared both the hoodoo

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and losing her husband-to-be. I love him, Rose said. With a shriveled, snarling face, his ma

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then cursed. If you ever even think of seeing my boy again, I'll send Old Scratch your way,

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and he will follow you to your grave. You'll never close your eyes without seeing his face again.

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Old Scratch, Old Scratch, Old Scratch.

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Rose fell to her knees in tears, and her sisters came out and stood silent.

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At sunset, Rose sat alone until midnight in the trees waiting for her love. But this time,

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he never showed. She came again the following night, waiting in the dark as she chewed off her nails.

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On the third night, she wept until she thought she heard something, calling out his name, relieved

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to see him again. But a shadow crossed the corner of her eye, and it was then she spoke his name.

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Old Scratch.

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Rose jumped to her feet and ran all the way home. Startled, her sisters found her jumping on her bed,

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laughing hysterically. They told their mama Rose was spinning around on the floor, on her head like

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a top, repeating again and again. Old Scratch, Old Scratch, Old Scratch.

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Rose's disturbing behavior went on for days until it drove her maw to her wits end, and she grabbed

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the shotgun and unloaded it from the front porch into the sky, screaming for Old Scratch to go on

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and get now. Nonetheless, a week later, Rose was sent off to the poorhouse.

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The interior of the poorhouse was as crisp as the air outside when Dr. Zola arrived. His breath was

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visible, although he quickly covered his face with his hands due to the awful stench permeating the

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air. A hall ran down each side of the building, the middle cells resembling a prison. Each was no

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larger than 4 by 6 feet, the doors made of a rough, hardwood plank, with a small bored hole in the

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center, which was the only source of light and air for those trapped inside. The beds were on the

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floor, with nothing to separate the inmates from where they sat except for a piece of plank set up

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edgewise. The whole construction, a stigma of humanity. There were 30 sleeping rooms, initially

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intended for one each, but were crowded with up to five inmates per damp, airtight cell, others as

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many as seven. Each in the greatest state of helplessness and dependence, many in a state of

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complete nudity, men, women, children, all living together in beds of straw, upon a damp, dirty floor,

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into which external light could find no entrance. Shocked by what he saw, Dr. Zola noted,

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He shall remember as long as he should live, those 120 doomed to that living tomb.

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Listless, idle, and useless, blue with cold, and utterly filthy in person, they lived in rows of

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which vermin scurried between, wretchedness in an atmosphere whose odor exceeds offensiveness,

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beyond which the imagination can conceive.

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A filthy naked woman curled up in a corner in a nest of straw, screamed at the doctor,

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There's the son of a bitch that did me wrong. There's the son of a bitch that did me wrong.

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He then found another man who had been in a straitjacket for six weeks,

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and a woman who had been fastened to a bed for days. Yet she had the reasoning enough to plead,

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Please get me out of this. I need to see the doctor, please.

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He entered a dark room into which those deemed the lamest patients had been kept,

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where he discovered, chained to a wall by his ankle, a crippled teenage boy weighing no more

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than 100 pounds, having limbs about the thickness of a man's wrist, but bent and twisted.

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As Dr. Zola attempted to comfort the boy, he heard a rustling from the shadows,

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and as he looked in the dark room, he saw a man with a black, dark-skinned,

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wiggly body that looked like a human being. He was covered partially by a canvas tarp,

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curled up inside of it withered gargoyle-like, crouched, a living mummy, skinny beyond any human

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comprehension, but impossibly alive. She was completely naked, the body was covered in a

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black, dark-skinned, wiggly body, and the body was covered in a black, dark-skinned, wiggly body,

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skinny beyond any human comprehension, but impossibly alive. She was completely naked and filthy,

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her eyes missing, the sockets dark and bruised and empty. She was in constant motion, black and blue

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from head to toe. She laid in her own bed of straw, covered in her own feces. Horribly deformed,

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her knees almost touched her chin, as little mice and other vermin had nested at her side.

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He reached through the cage and touched her on the shoulder, and she jumped, making an inhuman

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sound. My darling, everything's going to be okay now. I am here to help you.

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It was just before one in the morning when the train from Davis County finally arrived at the

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Asylum Depot, the engines had light piercing the dark night as it approached, blinding the nurses

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with tired eyes who awaited on the platform. They covered their ears as the whistle blew,

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and steam rose from the brakes of the screeching wheels in the chill of the winter air. Exhausted,

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everyone did their best to organize the entirety of the Davis poorhouse insane who stumbled off

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the train, yawning and rubbing their eyes, in poor and dismal condition as the nurses ran to their

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assistance. A large and heavy clothes basket assumed to contain all the effects of the newly

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arrived patients required two male attendants to carry. As they carefully carried the basket up the

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long staircase that stretched up the hilltop, about halfway the basket began to move, and when

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the mound of laundry began to shake, they each froze and looked at each other with the same look

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of shock as they dropped the basket and backed away. And with the ghastly sight of a filthy old

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skeleton sat up with a toothless shriek, eye sockets as dark as the night, hissing and clawing,

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they each fell back on their bottoms with a scream of terror, and a tale to be told for decades forth.

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The next morning Rose awoke in a clean bed with white sheets near a sunlit window.

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From that very first day, Rose was very honoring. Still, each nurse cared for her every need with

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compassion and with admiration for such a resilient soul as hers, and upon her new bed she sat like a

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strange species grabbing and putting what she could into her mouth. Dr. Zola however, was the

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only one who could calm Rose when she grew frustrated, as she responded amazingly to his

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voice and touch. And as each day passed, Rose looked remarkably better and warmed up to the others.

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She was eventually allowed to roam free, and she did, usually in search of her one true love,

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chewing tobacco. And in time, Rose would become the most pleasant patient in the chaos of the day room.

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you