Crazy Dan

He shuffled along the sidewalk, thin and stooped, head down and hands clasped behind his back. Every couple of steps, he stopped, staring at the ground. He inevitably kicked at something in the gravel. Sometimes, he picked up whatever it was and placed it in his pocket before examining it. Sometimes, not. Either way, he continued along unhurried and unaware of anything except what he might find next.

I stood at the window of my room and watched. My face pressed against the wire mesh. I could poke my nose through one opening by wiggling it and peer out through two other slots. No one could see me behind my mesh mask, I believed.

His pattern never changed. He walked from the bench under the elm off to my left, passed in front of my window, about fifty yards out and just beyond the double-razor-wired fence, puttered along at the speed of sleep to the wall at the edge of the old dining hall almost out of sight to my right. There he stopped stomping his left foot – always his left foot -- down. Then, he turned around like the soldier at the tomb of the unknown soldier used to do and shuffled back to where he'd started.

Every couple of steps, he stopped and picked something up. I could never see what it was, a rock probably. He’d hold it up like he was showing it to me. He’d thrust it defiantly at me, like saying, “I have it, now.”

He examined his find like a jeweler inspecting the rarest of stones. Then he stuffed it into his pants pocket and began his shuffle on to the subsequent discovery. The parade was always the same. Mom called him their sentinel.

“There’s nothing to fear from him – or them, either,” she told me once. "They can't get in." I nodded as if comforted by her words, thinking all the while, "And, hopefully, we aren't put out.”

He was there every day, at least every day we'd been inside. He was there. I started calling him Crazy Dan, an older man with a scraggly beard, long tangled greying hair, and what indeed was smelly stained clothing. He was surely crazy. They, on the outside, were all crazy. While we inside, protected by the walls, double-razor-wire-topped fences, and snipers, we were all – okay.

Crazy Dan always came early in the morning, and every morning he walked to the bench under the elm and stood looking up into the tree. Talking and laughing with forced ha-ha-ha shouts, his hands digging deep into his pants pockets. I decided he must be distracting himself with his ha-ha-ha and talking to the tree while his hands dug around in his pants. He looked ridiculous, almost obscene, even, with his knurled hands fluttering around in those dirty, baggy pants while he stood there looking up into the tree, mouth a gap, laughing, laughing, laughing.

One day, Mom brought me some binoculars to see what he was "finding" and seemingly showing to me. At first, that was cool. Then, though, I decided I preferred to imagine the way Crazy Dan seemed to be doing. I gave the binoculars back.

When he finished and pulled his hands out of his pockets, he quickly clasped them behind his back and began his stroll. As he proceeded, tiny objects fell from his hands, one here, another some yards ahead, until he reached the old dining hall. After the obligatory about-face – sometimes doing it so fast he became uneasy for a second – he returned along a path worn into a rut, coming across the items he'd just dropped.

It was ingenious. Dan may have been crazy, but he wasn't an idiot. His joy was in the finding. So what if what he found today was what he returned yesterday. It was the cycle of life. I hoped I would be so brilliant. Wait. Would be? Was my mind going there?

Mom came to my door with a tray of food. It was as if she'd read my mind. I was hungry. I moved to the door, and Mom stepped back, leaving the tray on the panel of the bean-hole. I took the tray, and Mom moved forward to close the bean-hole door.

“You have your Sunday-go-to-meeting mask on today, I see." She was wearing the CM-6M tactical gas mask with the full-face respirator for CBRN defense. "Wow," I said. "Chemical, biological, radiological, nuclear. Which are we expecting today?”

She responded by taking a step backward into the hall and holding up the video camera. I smiled broadly. The camera was a bad omen.

“When?” The light on the camera meant she was taping. “Soon, huh?”

She finished and turned to leave, hesitating for a split second. To say goodbye?

She wasn't a real mom. Not mine anyway. That would have been just cruel to have your mother, the person who gave you life, monitor your slow decline. No, she was just one of the guards. I have to admit, though, that at first, she was exceedingly pleasant to me. She even told me that some people got over the rash and were let back into the group. The tactical gas mask was a dead give-away that wasn't happening.

I stared through the Plexiglas window in the door where Mom had stood and smiled. I would never forget her in her gas mask, the last healthy human I would probably ever see again.

I plopped onto the mattress on the floor, rolled the blanket into a tight pillow, and laid back, staring at the dirty, bare walls the color of a “flesh-tone” Crayola. My mind constructed all kinds of interesting patterns in the smears.

After a while, I went to the window again, but Crazy Dan was gone. I pressed my face against the wire mesh and strained to see as far as possible to the left and the right. Nothing. I wondered if we would become friends in that world.

As if practicing, I reached into the pocket of my pants and pulled out the only item stored there – a Sterling locket. Holding it between my index fingers and thumbs, I carefully spread it open and gazed at the photo—my darling Jenni. Maybe I would find her – out there. If I kept my wits about me, perhaps I would.

It was ironic. Being in a prison cell about to be "released," when out there was the real prison. I knew how it would go. Soon, I imagine, after I finished lunch, a buzzer would sound, and the door would unlatch with a metallic thunk.

No one would be there. I would go into the hallway unaccompanied. In case I forgot the routine, a soft, female voice would remind me. If I refused or hesitated too long, the laser's sting, like needles, would prod me onward, through the hall, down the steps, through the many doors, and finally out into the yard. At that point, I could choose not to go any further. If I did, a sniper would decide for me. It was as humane as anyone had come up with to be.

Closing the locket and replacing it in my pants pocket, I walked around the cell one last time and stopped at the sink to look at my reflection in the metal mirror. The rash had progressed up my neck and into my hairline.

The buzzer sounded, and the door popped open a crack. One last look around before going, and I saw a familiar sight through the window. In the distance, it was my old friend Crazy Dan.