The Devil in Silver

They took the six blocks slowly. Some of them, like Pepper and Loochie, could probably have done with a faster pace but others, like Mr. Mack and Frank Waverly, the Haint, and Sandra Day O’Connor, had more gingerly strides. This wasn’t just the fault of old age or medication. The sidewalks around here were also a mess. On every block, there were a few trees whose roots had finally cracked through the concrete surface, causing the sidewalk panels to buckle and occasionally shatter. Neighborhood joggers didn’t bother running on those sidewalks because it was double hell on the knees. Joggers, bike riders, even folks out walking their dogs tended to move in the street. The only people limber enough to risk the sidewalks were neighborhood children, who found all the dips and rises kind of fun. The staff wouldn’t let the patients walk in the road, even though everyone could tell it was the commonsense choice. What if one of them got smashed by a passing van? All three staff members would lose their jobs for that one. Not to mention the tragedy of someone getting smashed by a van. (But really, the fear of losing a decent-paying job in 2011 could not be overstated.) So if the older patients, or the dazed patients, or the morbidly obese patients took their time to move six blocks, well, no one felt too angry with them.

People from the neighborhood watched the group go by. An old woman dragging her garbage bin out from the side of her house or a middle-aged couple returning home from the grocery store. They didn’t throw eggs or stones. No pitchforks and torches.

Mostly, the neighbors just watched them, as you would any time a parade made its way down your street. The neighbors watched intently but refused to admit it. They did this strange move where they ducked their heads as the patients passed, looking at the sidewalk or their front lawns or their garbage bins, always toward the ground. But anyone could clearly see the eyes shifting up to gawk.

“Hey, Pepper,” Loochie asked. “How come white people do that?”

She mimicked the move; head down but eyes surreptitiously on alert.

Pepper frowned. “Why you asking me?”

“You’re about the only white guy I know,” Loochie said.

Pepper blushed red. “That’s not true.”

“What other white guys you think I come across?” she asked. “I live in Laurelton.”

Now he caught himself looking at the folks in the neighborhood. All the people in front of these homes were white. He hadn’t even been thinking about it. But now he watched the neighbors like he was actually going to explain some behavioral trait to his naïve friend.

And once Loochie had mentioned it, he had to admit it seemed kind of true. Looking without looking. As soon as the group of patients reached them, the locals dropped their heads, but Pepper could see their eyes shifting warily. Was this really something white people did? Only white people? Did he do it, too?

At first, Pepper wanted to tell Loochie it was a way to pretend the patients weren’t there. A trick for making others invisible. That made a simple kind of sense to him. But as Pepper watched it happen again and again, he changed his diagnosis. It began to seem like these people thought that by dipping their heads they were actually making themselves invisible. As if you couldn’t see them if they didn’t look directly at you. Talk about insane!

That’s where things got uncomfortable for Pepper. After all, he was a white guy. So wasn’t Loochie criticizing him? Assuming he knew why white people played this eye-contact game meant that he, too, had probably done it. And had he? Probably! Pepper, who never really thought of himself as some great defender of the white way of life, felt the impulse to fight back.

“Let me ask you something,” Pepper said. “How come black guys are so loud on the subway? Like when they start yelling out rap lyrics? Or they just play music through those little speakers on their phones instead of using the goddamn earphones like normal people do?”

Loochie raised her eyebrows and let them drop. She sighed with disappointment.

“That’s easy,” Loochie said. “Those loud black guys on the subway? They’re being assholes, too.”

Then Loochie broke ranks and walked ahead of him.

Something strange happened after the patients left the hospital. Inside, they were patients, but the farther they walked, the less this seemed true. Pepper turned into a white guy from Elmhurst. Loochie, a black teenager from Laurelton. It’s not like this hadn’t been true (or obvious!) before, but inside Northwest it hadn’t really counted as much of a difference. Not when you considered their enemies: the pills, the restraints, the Devil. But out here, there were no restraints and no pills. Maybe even the Devil had been left behind for now. So something had to rise in the order.