The Devil in Silver

Coffee sat, and removed the orange, the cookie, and the juice carton from the tray. He slid the cookie to Dorry. He slid the tray, which held franks and beans for the main course, toward Pepper. Baked beans from a can, hot dog from a package, a bun that felt (and tasted) like a soft foam microphone cover. Pepper ate it all gratefully.

While Pepper chomped, Coffee said, “Give me your credit card first. Then I’ll join you.”

Pepper sneaked a look at Dorry.

“That’s certainly one way to destroy your credit,” Dorry said. She slipped the cookie into her lap.

“Stop!”

On television the woman risking five thousand dollars and a vacation to Fiji winced as an animated demon chortled and clawed back all her winnings. The game-show host offered his practiced sympathies, then said good night to the viewers with a vacant grin.

“She lost the trip to Fiji!” Loochie shouted. The kid looked despondent.

Mr. Mack shouted. “That’s six thirty even!” He pointed at his naked wrist. And, sure enough, he was right. “Now stop daydreaming about places you are never going to visit and turn on channel 148.”

But Loochie wasn’t about to do his bidding. She dropped the remote on his table where its plastic casing thunked.

Pepper finished the last of his meal as Mr. Mack pushed his chair back and stood. He aimed the remote at the television. It took a few dozen presses on the controller before the machine did as it was told.

Dorry pointed at Pepper. “You like symbolic victories, I guess. You want to get Coffee here to refuse his medication just like you did and then both of you get written up, both of you get punished, and neither does anything to face the real problem on this unit. That’s a brilliant plan.”

The television roared now. A guy in his fifties who was modular-furniture attractive, sat in front of a nondescript news desk, wearing an expensive but unstylish jacket and tie.

“Good evening,” he said. “I’m Steve Sands. Welcome to News Roll.”

Behind Steve Sands, a large flat screen showed images of Coffee’s idealized leader, the Black President. And after him, a series of men and women in their fifties and sixties, all of them white except one black guy with glasses and a big smile.

“With presidential elections only a year away …”

Not even the local news, it was a “news program.”

Cue the exodus!

Two-thirds of the patients scrambled. The Air Force’s finest fighter squadrons don’t move as fast. Patients skedaddled to avoid the yapping trap of Steve Sands.

Even the orderly, Terry, gathered the empty meal trays fast. Dorry, Coffee, Pepper, Mr. Mack, and Frank Waverly. They were the only ones who stayed.

Dorry reached out and grabbed Pepper’s forearm. She said, “The real problem here is fear.”

Pepper wanted to say, Fear? Really? I thought the problem was the Devil coming into my room and stomping me out. Fear hadn’t nearly crushed him to death. And she should’ve known, since she’d been there.

On-screen, Steve Sands said, “As we gear up for the blood sport of politics in 2012, I thought we should look back to 2008, just to remember where we were then. And to help us think about where we might be going.”

Mr. Mack tapped Frank Waverly and pointed at the screen, as giddy as a child watching “Elmo’s World.”

Steve Sands said, “Now my producers and writers, even my wife, had a lot of suggestions for the clip that should start us off this evening. But I knew exactly which one has stayed with me the longest. And it’s not a major event. In fact, it’s the kind of thing that might never have been noted in the pre-YouTube age. Remember this one?”

Now the screen showed an auditorium during a town-hall meeting. An older man in a black suit stood at a lectern. A microphone on a stand before him. He said, “Okay. Let’s go.… This lady in red has had her hand up for some time.”

The fingers of a right hand could be seen at the bottom of the screen, waving with great energy. When the woman was called on, the hand dropped and the camera pulled back to reveal seven other people up on the stage with the man in the black suit, all seated behind tables. Below those folks on the stage, people’s heads and shoulders could be seen in the rows. The auditorium looked pretty full. The woman in red, her hair pulled up and held with a clip, said, “Thank you, Congressman, um, Castle.…”

The lady, in a red T-shirt, carried a plastic bag with a yellow sheet of paper inside and a tiny American flag. Her other hand gripped the microphone.