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Slim's long sanitarium stay
A chapter in the book Right in the Eye
Right in the Eye, ch 3
by Wayne Fowler
In the last part Ben placed Slim in a Denver long-term care facility, talking to him the whole while. Here, Slim talks to himself.
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Loved that gal, I did, I said in my mind to every attendant who saw to my needs. Her name’s LouAnne, one word. Honest to God beautiful. Hurt me in the heart to see her go up those stairs with men who wouldn’t know the difference between love and a sheep. She smiled with her eyes, her entire being. Some scalawag rascal would grab her by the arm, she’d smile, but it wasn’t no smile, just upturned lips. They didn’t even care the difference. All I could do to not grab somebody’s handgun, fill the room with pistol smoke and his back with lead. I’d leave right then, no matter if I had a full glass left or half, just leave. Leavin’ and not even sayin’ goodbye was hard. The time I truly eyed a feller’s gun, seein’ myself usin’ it was the minute I made up my mind. Sold the claim the very next day and lit out to the San Juans.
My mind was as alert and active as everyone around me there in that home. I continued thinking, half believing that I was communicating as I told my tales. People and workers came and went. Most were nice enough. I liked the ones best who talked to me. Didn’t even matter if they interrupted me answering back. Some would smile and talk. Telling me about their families. Tending to me like I was one of them, part of their family. I liked them a lot. It got to where doing their jobs wasn’t humiliating anymore, just doin’ what needed doin’. One mornin’, a little missy of an attendant came up and said, “My, my, ain’t you the happy one this morning. You relax a little bit and I’ll get you a bedpan.” I would’ve been embarrassed to mortification. She would definitely have been someone to spark, if I was her age and in good health. She just did what needed doin’, no more’n wipin’ a kid’s snotty nose.
+++
“Yes!” I wanted to scream. Laying there day after day, night after night. I heard ‘em talk at the foot of my bed. Two doctors talkin’ about operatin’. “Do it!” I screamed. They ignored me like I never said a word. They did the operation. I don’t think they got the bullet. Never anyone said. I think they did something bad, though. I couldn’t see for myself, but I could tell. Takin’ water and soup seemed to be a lot messier after that. They were always wiping the left side of my jaw. I don’t feel nothin’, but somehow I don’t think my smile was right, either. Workers took to hesitating on their return smiles. Always delayed by just a tiny bit. Long enough to feel like they had to get over some sort of shock. Only difference was that I began to see a little bit. Couldn’t move my eye none, but light began to find its way in.
+++
I was born in 1851. Hit the Santa Fe Trail in 1869. I’da gone to the Sierras where the most of us went, but I couldn’t afford the trip, either by boat around the horn, or on an overland trail. The war was a lotta hikin’ and waitin’ around. I liked the idea of the Union and didn’t want no part of slavery. At the same time, I had nothing against those boys who were fighting for their home states. Here in gold country I got shot in ‘86. Thirty-five years old. Old enough to kick a bucket. But here I am, layin’ here like I’m dead, but not.
Time-to-time my attendants shifted about. Seemed like at least one new one all the time. The few I didn’t cotton to were all right, I suppose, just people stuck in the wrong job tryin’ to make a living. I tried not to hold it agin ‘em. Most all the others were fine folk. I learned to time ‘em, fittin’ my comments and conversation between theirs. Wasn’t easy sometimes. Sometimes I pretended to be asleep. Funny. I don’t think they could tell the difference ‘cause it never seemed to alter their chatter. I could make out faces and things, but still couldn’t shift my sight any.
Sometimes they talked to each other like I wasn’t in the room at all. “Hey! I’m right here! I can hear you!” It never worked.
I watched some of ‘em grow old. Heard about others that I know was young when I got there that were retiring. The new younger ones … Oh boy. What’s happening out there, I wondered. They need to hire kids out of the grades schools? I’ll swear, the new young ones didn’t ‘pear to be old enough to tend puppies, let alone old codgers like me.
The attendants talked about everything: their families, their boyfriends and girlfriends, politics, the news of the state and the country. I finally figured out that it was the turn of the century. And then I heard all about the war-to-end-all-wars. And all the new-fangled inventions and contraptions. Then the fifty-year celebration of Colorado’s statehood. Was a big to-do one day and into the night. By my reckoning, that made me 75 years old. I didn’t see how that was possible. I didn’t feel but thirty-five. Like the bullet to my brain stopped my aging.
In 1936 I was 85. One of the attendants, or aides as they started callin’ them, said I was grandfathered in. I got the notion that the last name of Goldman might’ve helped. One said I got saved from bein’ transferred to someplace that I didn’t want to be transferred to. I didn’t understand none of that – didn’t quite believe it. My real last name is Diddleknopper. Has somethin’ to do with wool, I think.
Oh well, blessed be the saints, as they say.
OASDI, SSI, FBI, OSS, CIA, WPA, CCC. I heard so many letters I thought sometimes I was a child and the things I wasn’t ‘posed to know were bein’ spelt out. Naw, I’m just joshin’. I had an idea about most of it; but my bill was bein’ paid by one of them.
Things got tough for a while those next years. The soup got thinner, the attendants fewer. Baths got more infrequent. I tried not to be no trouble, but … they were troublesome times.
It was 19 and 46 when the Great War was over. Never mind the War To End All Wars, I guess. This was a big deal. Quite a few of the aides were affected one way or another. My calculatin’ said I was 95. But I didn’t give it much thought. I had a bed sore that musta been that old the way they were makin’ over it.
It was along about that time that they moved all of us again. We’d moved into a newer building a long time ago and then we were moved across town. More than half my aides disappeared. I’d liked to’ve said goodbye to them. It became all business, purely by the book for a while. Somebody would come and turn me on one side or the other every few minutes, it seemed. But hardly any of them stayed long enough to say a word. A few did, but not much. Things let up some that next Christmas, though. Some muckety-muck got promoted out of there and things improved.
By my figures, I’d just turned 120. Didn’t seem possible, but there it was. Unless everybody was lyin’ to me about the date. Springtime 1971. Or I was really dead back there in 1886 and all this is the afterlife. How was I to know, layin’ there the last eighty-some years?
In the last part Ben placed Slim in a Denver long-term care facility, talking to him the whole while. Here, Slim talks to himself.
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Loved that gal, I did, I said in my mind to every attendant who saw to my needs. Her name’s LouAnne, one word. Honest to God beautiful. Hurt me in the heart to see her go up those stairs with men who wouldn’t know the difference between love and a sheep. She smiled with her eyes, her entire being. Some scalawag rascal would grab her by the arm, she’d smile, but it wasn’t no smile, just upturned lips. They didn’t even care the difference. All I could do to not grab somebody’s handgun, fill the room with pistol smoke and his back with lead. I’d leave right then, no matter if I had a full glass left or half, just leave. Leavin’ and not even sayin’ goodbye was hard. The time I truly eyed a feller’s gun, seein’ myself usin’ it was the minute I made up my mind. Sold the claim the very next day and lit out to the San Juans.
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Loved that gal, I did, I said in my mind to every attendant who saw to my needs. Her name’s LouAnne, one word. Honest to God beautiful. Hurt me in the heart to see her go up those stairs with men who wouldn’t know the difference between love and a sheep. She smiled with her eyes, her entire being. Some scalawag rascal would grab her by the arm, she’d smile, but it wasn’t no smile, just upturned lips. They didn’t even care the difference. All I could do to not grab somebody’s handgun, fill the room with pistol smoke and his back with lead. I’d leave right then, no matter if I had a full glass left or half, just leave. Leavin’ and not even sayin’ goodbye was hard. The time I truly eyed a feller’s gun, seein’ myself usin’ it was the minute I made up my mind. Sold the claim the very next day and lit out to the San Juans.
My mind was as alert and active as everyone around me there in that home. I continued thinking, half believing that I was communicating as I told my tales. People and workers came and went. Most were nice enough. I liked the ones best who talked to me. Didn’t even matter if they interrupted me answering back. Some would smile and talk. Telling me about their families. Tending to me like I was one of them, part of their family. I liked them a lot. It got to where doing their jobs wasn’t humiliating anymore, just doin’ what needed doin’. One mornin’, a little missy of an attendant came up and said, “My, my, ain’t you the happy one this morning. You relax a little bit and I’ll get you a bedpan.” I would’ve been embarrassed to mortification. She would definitely have been someone to spark, if I was her age and in good health. She just did what needed doin’, no more’n wipin’ a kid’s snotty nose.
+++
“Yes!” I wanted to scream. Laying there day after day, night after night. I heard ‘em talk at the foot of my bed. Two doctors talkin’ about operatin’. “Do it!” I screamed. They ignored me like I never said a word. They did the operation. I don’t think they got the bullet. Never anyone said. I think they did something bad, though. I couldn’t see for myself, but I could tell. Takin’ water and soup seemed to be a lot messier after that. They were always wiping the left side of my jaw. I don’t feel nothin’, but somehow I don’t think my smile was right, either. Workers took to hesitating on their return smiles. Always delayed by just a tiny bit. Long enough to feel like they had to get over some sort of shock. Only difference was that I began to see a little bit. Couldn’t move my eye none, but light began to find its way in.
+++
I was born in 1851. Hit the Santa Fe Trail in 1869. I’da gone to the Sierras where the most of us went, but I couldn’t afford the trip, either by boat around the horn, or on an overland trail. The war was a lotta hikin’ and waitin’ around. I liked the idea of the Union and didn’t want no part of slavery. At the same time, I had nothing against those boys who were fighting for their home states. Here in gold country I got shot in ‘86. Thirty-five years old. Old enough to kick a bucket. But here I am, layin’ here like I’m dead, but not.
Time-to-time my attendants shifted about. Seemed like at least one new one all the time. The few I didn’t cotton to were all right, I suppose, just people stuck in the wrong job tryin’ to make a living. I tried not to hold it agin ‘em. Most all the others were fine folk. I learned to time ‘em, fittin’ my comments and conversation between theirs. Wasn’t easy sometimes. Sometimes I pretended to be asleep. Funny. I don’t think they could tell the difference ‘cause it never seemed to alter their chatter. I could make out faces and things, but still couldn’t shift my sight any.
Sometimes they talked to each other like I wasn’t in the room at all. “Hey! I’m right here! I can hear you!” It never worked.
I watched some of ‘em grow old. Heard about others that I know was young when I got there that were retiring. The new younger ones … Oh boy. What’s happening out there, I wondered. They need to hire kids out of the grades schools? I’ll swear, the new young ones didn’t ‘pear to be old enough to tend puppies, let alone old codgers like me.
The attendants talked about everything: their families, their boyfriends and girlfriends, politics, the news of the state and the country. I finally figured out that it was the turn of the century. And then I heard all about the war-to-end-all-wars. And all the new-fangled inventions and contraptions. Then the fifty-year celebration of Colorado’s statehood. Was a big to-do one day and into the night. By my reckoning, that made me 75 years old. I didn’t see how that was possible. I didn’t feel but thirty-five. Like the bullet to my brain stopped my aging.
In 1936 I was 85. One of the attendants, or aides as they started callin’ them, said I was grandfathered in. I got the notion that the last name of Goldman might’ve helped. One said I got saved from bein’ transferred to someplace that I didn’t want to be transferred to. I didn’t understand none of that – didn’t quite believe it. My real last name is Diddleknopper. Has somethin’ to do with wool, I think.
Oh well, blessed be the saints, as they say.
OASDI, SSI, FBI, OSS, CIA, WPA, CCC. I heard so many letters I thought sometimes I was a child and the things I wasn’t ‘posed to know were bein’ spelt out. Naw, I’m just joshin’. I had an idea about most of it; but my bill was bein’ paid by one of them.
Things got tough for a while those next years. The soup got thinner, the attendants fewer. Baths got more infrequent. I tried not to be no trouble, but … they were troublesome times.
It was 19 and 46 when the Great War was over. Never mind the War To End All Wars, I guess. This was a big deal. Quite a few of the aides were affected one way or another. My calculatin’ said I was 95. But I didn’t give it much thought. I had a bed sore that musta been that old the way they were makin’ over it.
It was along about that time that they moved all of us again. We’d moved into a newer building a long time ago and then we were moved across town. More than half my aides disappeared. I’d liked to’ve said goodbye to them. It became all business, purely by the book for a while. Somebody would come and turn me on one side or the other every few minutes, it seemed. But hardly any of them stayed long enough to say a word. A few did, but not much. Things let up some that next Christmas, though. Some muckety-muck got promoted out of there and things improved.
By my figures, I’d just turned 120. Didn’t seem possible, but there it was. Unless everybody was lyin’ to me about the date. Springtime 1971. Or I was really dead back there in 1886 and all this is the afterlife. How was I to know, layin’ there the last eighty-some years?
Please keep in mind that this is written in first person. Slim is telling his story to himself.
Slim Goldman (Herschell Diddleknopper): miner who Ben Persons rescued in 1886
Ben Persons: young man with a calling from God
LouAnne: Saloon girl that Slim loved/idolized.
Pays
one point
and 2 member cents. Slim Goldman (Herschell Diddleknopper): miner who Ben Persons rescued in 1886
Ben Persons: young man with a calling from God
LouAnne: Saloon girl that Slim loved/idolized.
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