Every Now and Then Read online

  “Cruikshank told Holloway to put me in a room on the second floor until he could examine me. A few days later, he deemed me harmless enough to move me down to the first floor, and I was allowed to spend time in the recreation yard. Leo wasn’t out there, of course, but Roger was. I don’t think he’d had the surgery yet, but he was so heavily medicated that he didn’t even recognize me.”

  Audrey Cavanaugh set Aunt Jane May’s hankie down and took back over. “Harry and I should’ve done more research before he decided to get himself committed. We assumed that the hospital was a minimal security facility. Much like Leo had when he came up here to save Roger, we hoped that Harry would find Leo and waltz out with him. Of course, that wasn’t the case, and as soon as I found out I wouldn’t be able to speak to or visit with him because contact with the outside world was forbidden, I closed up my house and bought the Jenkins’ place. I wasn’t sure how I could save my boys because confronting Cruikshank would be pointless at best, and at worst, I could be locked up, too. It wasn’t until I learned that some of the patients were allowed time in a recreation area that I began to think there might be another way to free Harry and Leo. I bought a map and explored Founder’s Woods, and much like you girls did, I found a way through the pine trees to the fence. I was thrilled to see Harry in the yard, but I couldn’t get his attention, and when there was a cold snap a few days later, the yard was closed for the winter.”

  How awful that must’ve been for her and how she must’ve yearned for the spring, the whole time not knowing if and when she’d be reunited with her boys. “Why didn’t you go to my father or the sheriff and tell them your story?” I asked her. “They would’ve helped you.”

  “I almost did,” she said, “but I was afraid they might think I’d lost mind when I told them that a world-renowned psychiatrist and pillar of the community was kidnapping men to perform brain surgeries on them against their will, and had imprisoned both of my sons as well.”

  She had a point.

  “When I was allowed out in the yard again in March and noticed Mom hiding in the bushes outside the fence, I told her that she’d done the right thing,” Harry added. “Doc treated the wounds of some of the patients who’d had the surgeries, and he’d never sounded the alarm. And when she told me the sheriff was his brother, I didn’t think either one of them could be trusted. It wasn’t until everything came out that we learned that your father had known about the trepanations, but not that they were being performed against patients’ will, and the sheriff had no idea what’d been going on.”

  So maybe the article Mr. Wilkes had written in the Summit Courier hadn’t been wrong.

  It was still hard very hard for me to believe that Doc knew what Cruikshank was doing to the patients, but he must’ve had a really good reason for not stopping him, and as soon as I could, I’d ask him what it was.

  Frankie asked Leo, rather indelicately, I thought, “How come Cruikshank didn’t just kill you instead of keepin’ you locked up all those months?”

  “Because the doctor sees himself as a savior, not a murderer,” he replied. “He visited me many times to discuss what he calls his contribution to society. He believes that homosexuality isn’t just illegal, but that it goes against the laws of God and nature, and that it’s his moral responsibility to convert homosexuals into normal men with his treatments. He thought the public wouldn’t understand that, as with all medical breakthroughs, there were bound to be complications and loss of life. He wanted to wait until he’d perfected his technique before he shared his story with the world, and he promised me first crack at it. I told him time after time that I understood and admired his work, and if he’d release me, I wouldn’t write the story until he gave me permission to, but he’s a brilliant man and a highly trained psychiatrist. He knew I was lying. He also had to be aware that instructing Lance Howard to kidnap Roger and transport him across the state line to perform a trepanation, even in the name of science and God, was illegal. As was secretly burying patients who’d died as a result of the surgeries. Desperate people do desperate things, but I never thought Doctor Cruikshank would kill me to protect his secrets. But after he fled, I’m certain that I was a loose end that Lance Howard intended to dispose of on the night of the Fourth.” Leo removed his tortoise-shell glasses and massaged the bridge of his nose. “There are still many questions that I need answers to, and I’ve asked to interview Doctor Cruikshank in the Cook County Jail, but he refuses to speak to me.”

  He was looking a little peaked, and when he excused himself to use the bathroom, I asked Harry, “After you got committed, when did you find out that he was okay and locked up on the third floor?”

  “When I heard Albie laughing about the patient up there who thought he was a reporter like Clark Kent, I knew Leo was still alive. But after I heard the stories about patients that’d mysteriously disappeared, I began to wonder for how long,” Harry said. “Holloway told the staff the missing patients had been transferred in the middle of the night and would shut them down if they asked questions. I didn’t know then that was a sick joke. That Holloway meant the bodies of patients who’d died during trepanations had been transferred from the room in the basement to graves in the woods. I just knew that I better get Leo out of there before he was transferred, too.”

  “Do you think any of the nurses or orderlies knew what was going on?” Aunt Jane May asked Harry.

  “I think a few of them suspected, but who would they tell, and who’d believe them?” he said.

  What Harry was leaving out, I thought, was the education level and the skin color of almost all the nurses and orderlies who worked at Broadhurst and the color of renowned, Harvard-educated Dr. Cruikshank’s skin. Like Jimbo had told me when I asked him why nobody from Mud Town would go to town meetings, “Us givin’ our opinions to those in charge is ’bout as useful as throwin’ a T-bone to a toothless dog.”

  Harry shook his head. “Honestly, I can’t blame the hospital staff. It’s still hard for me to believe that Cruikshank was doing what he was.” He took a quick swallow of the lemonade Aunt Jane May had brought him and a nibble of one the shortcakes. “All I knew for sure at that point was that patients were mysteriously disappearing in the middle of the night, and I spent most of my time sneaking around the hospital, trying to figure out a way to the third floor to free Leo. After I discovered the back staircase off the kitchen led up there, I crept up it a couple of times when Dolores wasn’t around, but I couldn’t open the door to the locked ward.”

  When Bigger told us that Harry had been “skulkin’ ’round my kitchen,” we all thought he was trying to steal aluminum foil, but he’d been looking for a way to break into the door on the third floor and rescue his brother.

  Harry said, “So when I heard Albie complaining to Jimbo in the yard that they’d have to watch the Fourth of July fireworks from the third floor because Clark Kent was getting transferred that night—”

  “That was on the day Albie thought you were escaping, right? The day you gave me the note,” I said.

  After Harry nodded, Frankie stuck her into Viv’s shorts’ pocket pulled out the piece of paper he’d pressed into my hand, and set it down on the table in front of him. “But if you just found out that afternoon that Leo was gonna get transferred, and you thought that meant his life was in danger, how come you had this note all printed up and ready to give to Biz?”

  Harry smiled and ripped a piece of paper off the pad his journalist brother had in front of him and wrote: Tell Audrey Cavanaugh they’re going to kill Leo.

  I wasn’t a handwriting expert, but any fool could see that his scrawl didn’t bear any resemblance to the beautifully written note he’d passed me through the wrought-iron fence that afternoon. If I’d given me the one he’d just written, I would’ve thought he was referring to the Mondurians and had gone off the deep end.

  “So, if you didn’t write the note you gave me, who did?” I asked him.

  “Florence.”

  Well, I didn�
�t see that coming, and neither did Frankie and Viv.

  “She came into my room the night before,” Harry said, “handed me the note, told me to put it in my pants’ pocket, and made me swear on my mother’s life that I would. After I read it, I tried to get her to explain, but all she’d say was, “You’ll need to give it to little Elizabeth tomorrow.” I didn’t believe her, of course, but I wasn’t taking any chances.”

  The last time I’d seen my favorite patient was the afternoon Albie had pulled the point-of-no-return siren and all hell broke loose. Florence was standing in the middle of the yard and trying to tell me something. When I read her lips, I thought she’d been saying Help … hurry, like she wanted me to quick do something to save her from the chaos. But what she must’ve been mouthing was Help … Harry.

  “Who’s Florence?” Aunt Jane May asked.

  “She’s a patient who’s gifted like you,” I explained, and—” I almost added “and me,” because I was certain by then that I had inherited the “little voice” from her. But I didn’t feel right bringing it up just then. That seemed like something I needed to talk to her about when we were alone. “But instead of plucking things out of thin air like you do, Florence can predict the future.”

  In an attempt to discard the mantel of guilt she’d been wearing, Viv asked Harry, “So were you tryin’ to escape that day? Is it my fault that Albie give you that shot?”

  “No, I was unnerved by Florence’s note, and when I heard Albie tell Jimbo that Leo was going to be transferred the night of the Fourth on my way to look for the Mondurian you told me was hiding behind the hospital—”

  “I’m sorry,” Viv said. “I shouldn’t have said that.”

  “No need to apologize. It wasn’t your fault that I panicked, and Albie thought I was trying to escape when I ran to tell my mother that Leo’s life was in danger,” Harry reassured her.

  Audrey Cavanaugh said, “I saw the terror in Harry’s face when he came racing toward the fence that day. He’s always been cool under fire, and I knew he wouldn’t have reacted that way unless the situation was dire. But the orderly was practically on top of him by then, and I couldn’t afford to be seen and questioned, perhaps even charged with trespassing, so I stepped back into the bushes. That’s when he came running to you girls.”

  Harry turned to me. “I should’ve trusted Florence and given you the note as soon as you showed up for your visit that day. I’m sorry for hurting you, Biz.”

  “It’s all right, Harry.” I showed him my wrist. “See? Good as new.”

  Audrey Cavanaugh, who looked enormously relieved to have gotten through the reliving of that ordeal, leaned back in her chair and said, “You know what happened next.”

  Not only did we, but the whole country knew.

  During their visits together, Harry had shared the layout of the hospital with his mom, so she knew where she was going the night of the Fourth. After she removed a fuse from the box in the basement, she snuck up on the new nurse, took her keys, and shoved her into the supply closet. She let Harry out of his room first. He insisted that she free Ernie Fontaine as well before he ran up to the third floor. Harry was the one, not his mom, who gave Jimbo a love tap on the head with a fire extinguisher. After he used the new nurse’s keys to free Leo from his cell, they must’ve fallen out of Harry’s pocket when he and Leo ran down the hall. Or maybe Eddie King dropped his keys when he went up to the third floor to watch the fireworks. We’d never know for sure how the mayor got a hold of the keys that he used to free Hopper, but only the girls and I knew that he had, and our lips were sealed. After Mrs. Cavanaugh, Harry, Leo, and Ernie ran out of the hospital, they cut through the Withers’ to the back road where Mrs. Cavanaugh had left her car. By the time the sheriff and his deputies got to the farm, they were already speeding back to Chicago via I-94.

  Ernie Fontaine, who had been listening so quietly during the visit that I almost forgot he was there, laid his stuffed bunny down on the pine table and said, “You were so brave, Mom.”

  Viv jumped up and said, “He’s your boy, too? For criss—” Her eyes darted toward Aunt Jane May and then came back to Audrey Cavanaugh. “For Christopher Columbus’s sake, how many boys do you have that ended up in a mental institution?”

  Audrey Cavanaugh smiled at Leo and Harry and said, “As of now, just these two lugs, but I’m in the process of adopting Ernie. When it’s final, we’ll be moving back to Summit. I grew up in a town very much like this one, and I’d like to raise him here.”

  “And I’m gettin’ a puppy!” Ernie turned to Viv and winked—just once. “So maybe you can come to my house and pet it, or we could go to the movies or dancing sometime.”

  “Or knit,” Frankie said under her breath.

  Viv batted her eyelashes at soon-to-be Ernie Cavanaugh, who seemed to like the opposite sex after all, and said, “Count on it, buster.”

  Rehashing the story that’d changed all our lives had been cathartic, and after we spent some time talking about things of a more pleasant nature, Harry asked the girls and me to meet him on the front porch of the house.

  “Thank you,” he told us when we got out there.

  “For what? We didn’t do anything,” I said. “We never even gave your mom the note.”

  “If it weren’t for your shining faces and those shortbread cookies to look forward to, I’m not sure I would’ve made it all those months in Broadhurst, Biz, and I wanted to repay your kindness,” Harry said. “Your aunt told us that you’ve been very worried about Florence, so Leo did some digging, and you’ll be happy to know that he tracked her down to a wonderful hospital in Lake Geneva. Before her family committed her, Florence was a schoolteacher, like my mom, so she suggested that Leo arrange for us to pay her a visit on our way up here today.” He smiled and how good it was to see him do that. “Florence told us she knew we were coming and asked me to pass on some messages to the three of you.” He looked directly into Viv’s green eyes that were so close in color to his own. “You’re on your way to becoming a famous actress,” he said, then turned to Frankie. “Your smarts and willingness to do battle are going to pay off in a courtroom,” Lastly, he came to me. “Florence said that you need to keep writing stories because someday your books will touch peoples’ lives.”

  Not sure if Frankie and Viv believed those predictions, but they grinned and I did, too, because who doesn’t like to hear that their dreams might come true?

  I would’ve liked to spend more time visiting with Harry, and I wanted to ask Leo how he made his writing feel so real, and Viv could’ve spent all day mooning over Ernie, but Audrey Cavanaugh stuck her head out the front door and reminded Harry that they needed to get back to Chicago, and they left soon after.

  As their car pulled out of the cobblestone driveway, Ernie was waving his fool head off at Viv, who waved back and said, “Yum-yum.” When I groaned, she called me a dumb chump, and then Frankie called her boy crazy, and they got into one of their tiffs that didn’t stop until Aunt Jane May came out onto the front porch.

  She was wearing cherry-red lipstick and a peach shirtwaist dress, white kitten pumps, and her hair was down in loose waves. If I didn’t know that she was headed to the 4-H building at the fairgrounds, as impossible as it seemed, I would’ve thought she was going out on a date.

  “See ya up there. Wish me luck,” she said.

  As the girls and I watched her walking down Honeywell Street, there was more sway in her hips than I’d ever seen, and when Viv said, “Oo là là,” I couldn’t disagree with her.

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  The girls and I played a mostly peaceful game of jacks on the front porch until Bigger showed up and called to us from the sidewalk, “C’mon, now. We got a lot to see and do today.”

  She and Jimbo had been tied at the hip, but he wasn’t with her that afternoon. After Broadhurst closed down, Jimbo was given Lance Howard’s town maintenance job at the insistence of the Buchanan family, and we passed him fiddling with the mower on the
town hall’s lawn on our way to the fairgrounds.

  When Bigger leaned over and kissed him, Viv began to sing, “Love and marriage, love and marriage …” until Frankie told her to shut up.

  First thing we did after we passed through the fairground gates was hurry, as fast as the heat would allow, to the building where the yearly Bake-Off was held. We held our breaths when the judges did the pinning, but every single one of Aunt Jane May’s pies and her shortbread were given a blue ribbon, and every single one of Evelyn Mulrooney’s entries got a second place. Viv cheered and hooted louder than anyone in the crowd when she saw the look on that so-and-so’s face.

  After that, the girls and I stood in lines for rides that wouldn’t hurt Frankie’s leg. Viv tortured us until we agreed to check out the Tunnel of Love, because we’d not been to Whitcomb’s in a while and she was dying to know who was making out with whom. It was dark inside the tunnel, so Aunt Jane May and Uncle Walt didn’t know we were in the swan behind them, but when they passed under the emergency exit sign, we saw them kissing. I had to slap my hand over Viv’s mouth so they wouldn’t hear her yell, “Hot damn! Told you so!”

  Of course, we skipped the Camelot Ferris wheel that “Sir Lancelot” had once buckled us into, but we did negotiate the House of Mirrors, and let the toothless carnies coax us into playing a couple of games. Frankie won a teddy bear for landing rings on Coke bottles and she gave it to Viv. We ate like hogs, too.

  We had front row seats to the Magic and Mystery Show, and boy, that was something. Bigger enjoyed it, too, but when we exited the tent, she gave us more of the worldly, womanly advice she’d been giving us that wasn’t anything like Aunt Jane May’s “mark my words” warnings.