Chapter Three

Insanity

          He sat awkwardly on the hard, splintered wooden bench, shoulder to shoulder with a snorer on his right, his head slowly drifting toward Thomas Francis's shoulder. Then he snorted and tried to sit upright; on his left sat a tall, lanky man reading the Reading Times, who had pushed his elbow into Thomas Francis's side.Who does this guy think he is? I'll press back a little, see how he likes that. There you go, boyo, how's that feel? 

          The newspaper reader grunted and shifted his arm slightly away at first, flicked the newspaper, but then came right back and gave a little tweak of a push further into Thomas Francis's arm. Oh, the hell with ya, Lad, I'm on company business and can't be doing fistycuffs on the train. Go ahead, boyo, take all the room you need.

          Thomas Francis Costello had always trusted trains. They ran on rails—predictable, literal lines that took you from one place to another without demanding choices along the way. But on this morning in 1908, as the Pennsylvania locomotive shuddered eastward toward Philadelphia, he felt himself wishing the rails would bend, or break, or carry him anywhere but Philadelphia. Soot and ash from the cheap anthracite coal dug out of a mine near the Wilkes-Barre basin drifted through a partially opened window. Still, the cool air was welcomed and felt delightful amid the smell of nearly 50 men packed in like sardines, most smoking nickel cigars. The train stopped often, crowding even more souls into the already tight conditions, making the trip seem to last forever.

       He held the manila envelope on his lap as if it were a secret document, and perhaps it was. Its contents—a court order, a handful of medical notes, train receipts paid for by the Commonwealth —felt heavier than usual. The name, faintly stamped beneath the hospital seal, had a gravity all its own: Billy Rourke. Billy Rourke of the waterfront bars in Tacony and Fishtown.

Billy Rourke of the Society Hill bombing; the same Billy Rourke, alleged head of the Irish mob that threaded its influence through the shipyards, the Irish taprooms, the dimly lit brothels, and across the Philadelphia neighborhoods to City Hall like a disease that penicillin couldn't cure.

          Billy Rourke, a man who kills like it doesn't matter.

          Thomas pressed his thumb along the edge of the envelope — given to him by Dr. Spencer just before he boarded the carriage to the rail station. Carefully, he opened the top flap. He slowly pulled out the packet inside. The train rattled loudly, but not loudly enough to drown out the Superintendent's warning on the cover page, written more as a threat than simple instructions: "We need clarity, Thomas Francis—a firm conclusion. The court is watching. The police are watching. And, if you think the mob isn't watching as well, you would be mistaken."

          The Superintendent had used the word' clarity,' but Thomas knew what that meant: certainty, delivered quickly, decisively, and in the direction that best suited those in power.

          He shifted in his seat, feeling the lurch of the train around him. Outside, Philadelphia lay still beneath a morning frost—quiet hills, familiar farms, the world he understood. He had traded shovels for ledgers, cows for patients, and now he was being asked to trade judgment for influence. The newspaper man quickly moved his elbow away and shifted his body slightly, giving Thomas Francis room. Thomas Francis looked down at the packet, and Billy Rourk's name was visible in bold, dark letters. He slowly moved his open hand over Rourk's name. Pissant, he thought, as the newspaper-reading chap shifted again, giving Thomas Francis more room. It won't be the last time Thomas Francis felt the gravity and force of the name Billy Rourke.

* * * 

          At that same hour, miles away from the soot and rank cigar smoke, a wagon creaked up the winding drive of the Pennsylvania Hospital for the Insane at Wernersville. Jennie Gearhart sat upright on the padded seat of the carriage. She tried to stifle her excitement by folding her hands around the handles of her small cloth bag, which held her clothing and a few cherished photographs of the farm family she left behind. She tried to settle the butterflies in her chest and pretended not to be the young woman who rarely left the farm and had little or no worldly experience — and hadn't the slightest idea of what she got herself into. The hospital rose before her like a sprawling fortress, and immediately her eyes were drawn to the expansive farming grounds surrounding the main building. It gave her temporary assurance that she made the right choice.

         To Jenny, it was like stepping into another world of which she had little or no prior knowledge. She herself was a light about to enter a dark commune. She kept her hair in a large bun positioned high on the back of her head. With a shapely body and pretty face, Jenny Gearhart was a "looker," a woman who quickly drew men's stares and women's envy. She wasn't frail or skinny but had the look of a Pennsylvania farm girl not unaccustomed to strenuous work. She looked like an 'apple pie' country girl, a woman any man would desire. Trying to hide her apprehension, Jenny stepped down onto the frost-stiffened path. A man came to her from out of nowhere, smiling and nodding, reaching out to take her bag. There was something odd about him that didn't seem right to Jenny. She was reluctant to give him her collection of nearly everything she held dear. The man noticed her hesitation immediately. His smile disappeared, and he backed away, his head down as if he were a defeated puppy, whimpering and ashamed, retreating from the world. 

          Then Jenny heard her voice, somewhat scolding, somewhat demanding, and looked up. She saw a woman who stood rigid, uncompromising, her uniform so sharply pressed it looked painful—an unattractive woman who immediately scorned any woman prettier than she. But at the Asylum, this brought her trouble, for Nurse Lacs knew Jenny would work under Thomas Francis's management. Upon seeing her for the first time, Nurse Lacs was immediately jealous, which spelled disaster for the farm girl from McAlistervile, Pennsylvania. Lacs saw Jenny as a direct threat to her beau — at least in her mind, he was — Thomas Francis Costello.

          "Howard just wants to help you. You'd better learn quickly, Deary, that you are not above our patients like some idol on an ivory tower. You may have milked a cow or two, but here you'd better learn that humanity doesn't serve you, you serve it." As she spoke, with disdain in her voice, she slowly walked down the steps of the building's main entrance and approached Jenny. 

          "Oh," Jenny muttered. "I'm so sorry. Here, sir," she said, offering her bag to the gentleman.

          "It's too late, Deary, you've destroyed his confidence." With his head still down, staring at his shoes, Howard backed away even further.

          "Gearhart, Mary Jane?" the woman asked.

          "Yes, Ma'am."

          "You will be Jennie here. I am Director Lacs, head of nursing. You report to Thomas Francis Costello, but you will also take orders from me. Understand?

          Yes, Ma'am." 

          "Already you've gotten off to a bad start. I must file a report of this incident with the Superintendent's office. I'm also putting you on temporary suspension until this matter is cleared up."

          Jenny turned back to Howard, standing nearby stiff as a board, with his head still down. "Sir?" she said, smiling.

          Howard slowly looked up to see the most gorgeous smile he'd ever seen, and he immediately smiled back.

          "It's okay, Howard," Jenny said, "I'd be honored if you'd help me with my bag."

          Howard stepped forward, eyes wide as saucers, a broad smile across his face. Looking up into Jenny's eyes, he took the bag from her hand and turned to climb the steps to enter the main building.

          "I see," Nurse Lacs said, "that you can't follow orders, either. That will also be in my report. Follow me, farm girl."

          Once through the large wooden doors and into the "rotunda," the air changed. It was colder, heavier—thick with disinfectant and something more human, more vulnerable: sweat, fear, confinement. Every footstep echoed as if the walls were listening. Jenny stopped to look around, taking it all in. Even Nurse Lacs' voice, like a distant drum, had no inflection but was merely an instrument meant only for instruction. Her voice is as cruel as a tomato worm, devouring every word of hope.

          "You will work in Ward A. Your quarters are on the third floor. Work begins at five-thirty. The Matron expects obedience, cleanliness, and efficiency. Questions waste time. Do you understand?"

          "Yes, Ma'am."

          They walked. Jennie tried not to flinch at the sounds drifting from the wards—shouts, then laughter, then silence so abrupt it felt unnatural. And the screaming, something she never got used to. She had known hardship on the farm, but this was a different kind of labor. Here, the work was measured not in bushels or hours but in patience and strength of spirit. Director Lacs stopped before an office door.

          "The Supervisor of Attendants is currently on assignment in Philadelphia," she said. "He was appointed yesterday."

A new supervisor. Jennie pictured someone stern, someone older, someone who would expect more of her than she yet knew how to give.

          "His name?" she asked quietly.

          "Costello."

          Costello. The name sat oddly on her tongue—neither comforting nor alarming, but present, like a thread she would later discover was woven tightly into her life. Through the transom window, Jenny glimpsed a tidy desk, a closed ledger, and—a surprise—a small, framed photograph lying face down. She wondered who turned it down, and why. The rotunda swallowed her in a rush of sound and movement. Patients sat hunched in chairs or paced the aisles. An attendant murmured calmly to a man with shaking hands, dressed only in an oversized diaper. A nurse guided a woman back to her cot with a gentle firmness. Jennie inhaled. To Jenny, the rotunda smelled like damp soil mixed with manure after a rain. A smell that took her years to forget. She could care for people. She had done it all her life—her younger sister, her mother and father, the Amish neighbors when they fell from horses or sickened in winter. But this work would demand more than care. It would demand fortitude.

          "This will challenge you," Director Lacs said. It was not a warning. It was a fact.

          "I understand," Jennie whispered, but loud enough for Lacs to hear.

          "We shall see, farm girl."

Jennie sensed an unfriendliness in Nurse Lacs' tone. She found that a strange way to greet a new employee.

***

By the time Thomas stepped into the crush of Reading Terminal, which he thought was a beehive buzzing with energy. He had been to the Reading Terminal before, and to him it felt like a thumping heartbeat. He purchased a six-cent cup of coffee and found a long bench beneath a blinking sign for Bassets Ice Cream. He sat down, placed the coffee on the bench next to him, looked around, and took a deep breath. Then he slowly opened the manila envelope.