Wallflower Dynamite

Sugar Loaf offered myriad opportunities to observe human behavior. But because the Residents suffered from brain damage, biochemical imbalances, untold number of emotional aberrations, what was abnormal was the normal. At home we might wonder if we left the lights on in the basement. At Sugar Loaf, a Resident might sleep under two mattresses for fear the sun devil was going to burn holes through him. If a psychology student couldn't understand schizophrenia clearly because he'd only read the description from a text book, a one-minute visit at Sugar Loaf would make him an instant sage.

Through the years I witnessed hundreds of people and scores of conditions. They came, went, and returned, sometimes their symptoms submerged so they could pass unnoticed in a crowd, and not too often they reached straight-jacket, padded-cell intensity. My notebook is stuffed with accounts of all three varieties, and as I leaf through them I find myself chuckling here, cringing there, and sometimes following melancholically over the beautiful souls trapped in warped exteriors. My eyes stop at a section earmarked for severe cases, the ones that made me cringe.

Approximately seventy-five percent of the Sugar Loaf population fit into the Stable-While-Under-Medication category. Another ten percent could be classified as Completely-Innocuous. A third group, another ten percent, you might call Watchful. They were the ones on the edge, the ones you were wise not to turn your back on. But if you've been adding correctly, five percent are unaccounted for. These are the ones that

transcend Watchful, the ones who could set fire to the facility or mow down the entire population if something ticked them off. The court psychiatrists were careful to weed these people out and put them in facilities for the criminally insane where they never had access to matches or machetes, but occasionally, though rarely, one slipped through the net and found himself at Sugar Loaf. Heddy Barrow was one such person.

A psychologist once described Heddy in terms of an automobile engine. "She's like a V-8 with all the spark plug wires loose. You never know when a connection will be made. Or how many." This described the young lady's jerkiness well, for at one moment she might be as quiet as a parked car, but at any instant change into a race car, pedal to the metal. The uncertainty of which gear to be in must have been rough on her neurophysiology.

This, of course, is only a description. In real life, when she was acting as normally as you or me, her energy wasn't the only thing being exercised. Inside that calm exterior her Dark Force Fantasies were going wild, and in an instant Heddy could change from silence to a raging volcano. She was what we feared most if Tim Broadbent suddenly reverted to his wild youth but, thank God, never could. Not so with Heddy. For if she erupted, we all knew that the most severe restraints would have to be used.

We've all heard of the method used by oil riggers to quench well fires: drop a stick of dynamite into the inferno. The reason this stops the blaze is that other than fuel, oxygen, and heat, another ingredient necessary to keep a fire going is the necessary radio wave lengths. If these are changed, as from a massive explosion, the conflagration poofs out as quickly as a balloon poked with a pin. I witnessed this once and was amazed. At Sugar Loaf, in the mid-80's, I was equally impressed by the power of Hester Green when she came in contact with one of Heddy Barrow's uncontrollable attacks.

Hester was the quintessential wallflower. Her partially gray, somewhat frizzled hair, her ash complexion, her nondescript clothes, the quiet, peaceful smile, and the near-silence she exhibited day in and day out made her an obvious candidate for the ten-percent group of Completely-Innocuous. In the nineteen years she was at Sugar Loaf, I never saw a single indication that she was anything more than a harmless old lady. But when Heddy went on her rampage, the one who put her in a straight-jacket, fully medicated, and spent the rest of her life in a fully staffed and barred institution for the criminally insane, has made me wonder if God didn't made seventy-nine year-old Hester docile all those years so she could store up enough energy to take on this single blast. I still wonder how the wallflower transformed into dynamite.

It happened like this. Juice Break fell at Ten A.M. and Eight P.M. Morning breaks had few people because many slept in or went to work. But in the evening the full entourage was present. The group had become accustomed to patient waiting as T. Talbot and Staff distributed the punch and Fig Newtons. Juice Breaks were usually uneventful. But then the strike.

And screams. Not the occasional bursts of frustration when one didn't get mail or couldn't find her slippers, but the kind that everyone used to institutional living instantly freezes at. Though rare, everyone knows that these shrieks are real, and their cause could splatter onto everyone lest they sit in immobile silence. So there the Residents sat, hoping the rage would pass over, quiet Hester Green among them.

Then other shrieks terrorized the halls. Closer to the Dining Hall. Obviously the rage had not dissipated but was getting closer. It was as if someone one, some thing, was coming down the hallway reeking destruction in room after room.

At the third outburst Staff rallied from their Boiler-Room smoke-break. What they met shivered even their veteran, thick skins. Heddy Barrow had sneaked a butcher knife from the kitchen and was methodically wielding it at every defenseless Resident she met as she worked her way from her room to the Dining Hall.

No one in her right mind would get within yards of this knife-swinging maniac, so for all practical purposes Staff was rendered helpless. Before they could establish a battle plan, blood-splattered Heddy entered the Dining Hall. I remember the incident as clearly as if it were happening right now. The aged, innocent, defenseless Residents sat at tables looking like so many sheep ready for the slaughter, and here, wild-eyed and ready, hovered the butcher. We all felt totally helpless. And then, from the least expected quarter, the solution to blood-thirsty Heddy presented itself in the form of wallflower Hester.

Before Ms Barrow could decide where to begin hacking and carving, Ms Green quietly, but with the authority of a queen, said, "Heddy, you are a disgrace to Sugar Loaf. You owe us an apology for disturbing us so."

Heddy, blood running down her wrist from the latest victim, stood speechless. It was as if a stick of dynamite had exploded and left her numb from shock. She didn't know what to do. It amazed everyone that she dropped the knife and sat on the floor as harmless as the proverbial wet noodle.

In my years at the Health Care Center I never saw such an instant change. Not just in the attacker, but in the calm, quiet Resident that had deflated her. For Hester, always peaceful and tranquil, who never spoke above a whisper, had risen to the tragic occasion just as quickly. This seventy-nine year-old, paste-faced lady who never swatted a fly, dropped an out-of-her-mind maniac with one statement. Witnessing Hester at that

moment was one of the highlights of my long career.

I think of great things human beings have attained: the marvelous artistic achievements of Bach, Mozart, and Beethoven; the phenomenal levels of consciousness from the world's saints and exhalted souls; and creating space-age technology and super computers. Yet even barely measure up to the disarming power of Wallflower Hester displayed that night. For with just a few fearless words she stopped a bloody massacre. I learned from her that the strength of the human soul can rise to Astounding in times of crises.