In Chap­ter 27, titled “The Fin­ger,” Dodo awak­ens in his crib to see his friend, Mon­key Pants, try­ing to com­mu­ni­cate. Recent expe­ri­ences weigh heav­i­ly on Dodo; he has just come out of a hos­pi­tal cast and strug­gled to adapt to the over­whelm­ing and iso­lat­ing envi­ron­ment of the ward filled with var­i­ous patients. The lone­ly des­per­a­tion of his new sur­round­ings deeply affects him, as he observes how the more capa­ble patients dom­i­nate those who are less so. The ener­getic envi­ron­ment, full of chaos and con­fu­sion, leaves him feel­ing trapped and dis­tressed.

Dodo grap­ples with feel­ings of guilt relat­ed to his past actions, acknowl­edg­ing that he is in this dire sit­u­a­tion because of his wrong­do­ings, includ­ing steal­ing and vio­lence. His inner tur­moil inten­si­fies as he reflects on his treat­ment of peo­ple like Miss Chona and real­izes that his aggres­sive actions led to dev­as­tat­ing con­se­quences. Despite his guilt, he finds brief solace in his friend­ship with Mon­key Pants. They engage in a play­ful chal­lenge, attempt­ing to hold their fin­gers togeth­er through the bars of their cribs. This light-heart­ed game pro­vides a much-need­ed dis­trac­tion from their grim real­i­ty and allows Dodo to momen­tar­i­ly for­get his pain.

How­ev­er, their fun is abrupt­ly inter­rupt­ed when the intim­i­dat­ing fig­ure, Son of Man, arrives. He swift­ly iso­lates Dodo from Mon­key Pants, cre­at­ing a ter­ri­fy­ing atmos­phere as he makes threat­en­ing move­ments toward Dodo. The pre­ced­ing sense of friend­ship is replaced with fear and dread as Son of Man aggres­sive­ly attacks Dodo, incit­ing chaos when Mon­key Pants has a seizure. This alarm­ing turn of events height­ens Dodo’s anx­i­ety, and he strug­gles to com­pre­hend the vio­lence of this world, lead­ing him back to feel­ings of guilt and ter­ror.

As the chap­ter clos­es, Dodo finds com­fort in grasp­ing Mon­key Pants’s fin­ger in sol­i­dar­i­ty, untan­gling them­selves from the dark­ness envelop­ing them. The sim­ple act of hold­ing hands sym­bol­izes their bond amidst the trau­ma they endure togeth­er in the ward, under­scor­ing the pow­er of friend­ship even in the bleak­est sit­u­a­tions.

You are being pro­vid­ed with a book chap­ter by chap­ter. I will request you to read the book for me after each chap­ter. After read­ing the chap­ter, 1. short­en the chap­ter to no less than 300 words and no more than 400 words. 2. Do not change the name, address, or any impor­tant nouns in the chap­ter. 3. Do not trans­late the orig­i­nal lan­guage. 4. Keep the same style as the orig­i­nal chap­ter, keep it con­sis­tent through­out the chap­ter. Your reply must com­ply with all four require­ments, or it’s invalid.
I will pro­vide the chap­ter now.

D
27
The Fin­ger
odo was awak­ened by a shak­ing of the crib and looked up to see
Mon­key Pants star­ing at him. His left hand, which Mon­key Pants
could hold steady and which he used most­ly to com­mu­ni­cate, was point­ing
at Dodo, and his mouth was mov­ing.
“Lat­er,” Dodo said.
The last cast had come off the day before. Dodo had been tak­en from the
bed and been escort­ed to a room where he was issued hos­pi­tal john­nies and
slip­pers, and was shown his lock­er, which had noth­ing in it and to which
only the atten­dants had the key. He was placed in the parade of men to the
cafe­te­ria, then the day room, back to the ward briefly, then the cafe­te­ria for
lunch, where he col­lapsed, for his legs were still weak from lack of use, so
he was sent back to his crib on the ward, where he’d fall­en asleep, to spend
the after­noon and evening with Mon­key Pants in the rel­a­tive­ly emp­ty ward.
He was glad to be away from the men.
Mon­key Pants want­ed to know what the rest of the ward looked like. The
bath­room, the day room, the cafe­te­ria. But Dodo was in no mood to talk.
The enor­mi­ty of where he was had crashed on him a sec­ond time once he
walked among the gen­er­al pop­u­la­tion. The des­per­ate lone­li­ness of the place
didn’t just chafe him, it began to destroy him. He could feel it. The patients,
some of whom were kind, spoke to him—he could read their lips—as men
speak to chil­dren, yet they were pow­er­less when the atten­dants showed up.
Every­thing was up for grabs, and the kind­est patients suf­fered the worst. At
meals, when Dodo turned his face away from the gru­el on his tray to lip-
read a con­ver­sa­tion, hands grabbed at his food. There was a peck­ing order.
The most able patients ran every­thing, the less capa­ble ones were left on
their own. The con­stant movement—the talk­ing, chat­ter­ing, bit­ing, shov­ing,
mak­ing deals, and pil­fer­ing of news­pa­pers and cigarettes—was mad­den­ing.
He was forced to sit on the floor in the day room because to sit in a place
that some­one else reg­u­lar­ly sat in drew wrath and curs­es. The con­stant flow
of ques­tions from his fel­low patients, many of whom he could not
under­stand, for they had speech dis­or­ders or dis­turb­ing man­ner­isms, made
lip-read­ing dif­fi­cult. Sev­er­al spoke to him as if he were men­tal­ly
incom­pe­tent. Oth­ers dis­cussed mat­ters of great com­plex­i­ty. All seemed to
think they didn’t belong there. One man said: “Every­body here is sick
men­tal­ly except me. I have a bad ner­vous sys­tem. Do you have a bad
ner­vous sys­tem?” Anoth­er con­fid­ed: “I got here by mis­take because I was
at night school.” Still anoth­er, a white man, declared: “You can’t be sick,
son. When I was a Negro, I nev­er got sick.” Their talk fright­ened him.
When Son of Man appeared, the room snapped to atten­tion. Sev­er­al patients
avoid­ed him, but most, espe­cial­ly the more able ones, gath­ered around him.
He tow­ered over them in his all-white uni­form, an ebony mes­si­ah exud­ing
pow­er, stand­ing over the flock of society’s tos­s­aways, who drift­ed about
him as he moved, an entourage fol­low­ing Moses. Even the sec­ond
atten­dant, a white man, seemed to acqui­esce to Son of Man. Dodo eased as
far from him as pos­si­ble, bury­ing him­self into a cor­ner, but there was no
run­ning away in the day room. He not­ed Son of Man watch­ing him, and
when Dodo caught his eye, Son of Man winked. That atten­tion, and the
con­stant buff­ing of the floor with some kind of pow­er­ful-smelling
dis­in­fec­tant, left him with a tremen­dous headache.
But Dodo could not com­mu­ni­cate those things to Mon­key Pants. He was
too exhaust­ed and con­fused that day. Also, for the first time, now that the
pain in his legs had reced­ed, he began to feel some­thing even more painful:
guilt. He thought of the many things he’d done wrong. The occa­sion­al
swip­ing of a piece of choco­late in Miss Chona’s store. The snatch­ing of a
mar­ble from one of Miss Bernice’s daugh­ters in her yard. Why had he done
those things? Why had Miss Chona been hurt? Why had Uncle Nate and
Aunt Addie not come to vis­it? Because of me, he thought. I did wrong. I
attacked a white man. I am in jail. I am here for life. He ignored Mon­key
Pants’s fran­tic hand wav­ing and looked away until Mon­key Pants final­ly
gave up.
They lay there a long while, and when even­tu­al­ly he looked over, he saw
Mon­key Pants lying on his back, star­ing at the ceil­ing, his mouth open, his
legs curled in a fetal posi­tion toward his chest. He looked odd, as if he were
hav­ing trou­ble breath­ing. Dodo sat up.
“What’s the mat­ter, Mon­key Pants?”
Mon­key Pants was not lis­ten­ing. He stared at the ceil­ing, draw­ing his
breath in fast huffs and puffs. Dodo thought he might be hav­ing a seizure,
for he knew what they looked like, hav­ing seen Miss Chona have sev­er­al.
Mon­key Pants had had sev­er­al since Dodo arrived. They were short, more
fre­quent than Miss Chona’s but equal­ly fright­en­ing bursts of gyra­tions,
which sent Mon­key Pants heav­ing and lift­ing, as if a hand were push­ing his
back into an arch, his body curved awk­ward­ly, his stom­ach and pelvis
thrust­ing high in the air, then com­ing down, sev­er­al times, fol­lowed by the
wind­milling of his legs and arms as if they were oper­at­ing on sep­a­rate
motors, his body twist­ed so hor­ri­bly and the crib shak­ing so vio­lent­ly that
the floor shook. Those events usu­al­ly brought sev­er­al atten­dants and a nurse
bear­ing nee­dles or pills, which seemed to calm him and brought long hours
of fit­ful sleep after­ward. Mon­key Pants hat­ed his med­i­cine, and many times
Dodo watched him pre­tend to swal­low the litany of pills that were his dai­ly
dose only to spit them out the moment the atten­dant turned away.
As he watched, Mon­key Pants’s breath­ing seemed to slow as if he’d
willed the spasm away. Then he turned to Dodo again and nod­ded,
sig­nal­ing that he was bet­ter. But Dodo had already retreat­ed under his cloud
of depres­sion. “I made a mis­take, Mon­key Pants,” he said. “That’s why I’m
here.”
Mon­key Pants’s fur­rowed eye­brows frowned a “no.”
“If it wasn’t for me, Miss Chona wouldn’t have got­ten hurt.”
Mon­key Pants frowned a “no no no,” but Dodo shook his head. “Yes yes
yes. Don’t tell me.”
Mon­key Pants held out his fin­ger to sign some­thing.
Dodo ignored it.
Then he pro­duced the mar­ble, which always drew Dodo’s atten­tion.
“What?”
He watched as Mon­key Pants signed a T.
“What else?”
O
“What else?”
And on it went until he spelled out:
T.O.U.C.H.
M.Y.
F.I.N.G.E.R.
“Why?” Dodo asked impa­tient­ly.
The dis­ap­point­ed smirk of his friend was too much. So Dodo reached out
and the tips of their first fin­gers touched. Then Mon­key Pants removed his
fin­ger.
“I bet you can’t hold it like that,” Dodo said.
Mon­key Pants chuck­led, and Dodo read that to mean “I bet I can.”
“All right then,” he said. “Let’s see who can hold it the longest.”
Mon­key Pants thrust his fin­ger out of the crib. A chal­lenge.
Dodo accept­ed and the two boys held fin­gers togeth­er through the bars
of their cribs. Five min­utes. Ten min­utes. But Dodo’s arm became tired and
he with­drew. “Not fair. You can rest your arm on the bed.”
Mon­key Pants shrugged.
Sud­den­ly the gloom and the guilt and the pain fell away, for here was a
chal­lenge, and Dodo became a boy again. He shift­ed to his right side,
propped his left fist under his head for sup­port, and thrust his right hand
through the crib bars, first fin­ger out­ward, and said, “Again.”
Mon­key Pants oblig­ed, and they bat­tled again, fin­gers touch­ing. Five
min­utes. Ten min­utes, twen­ty. Thir­ty. As they held, Dodo began to talk, for
Mon­key Pants need­ed his left hand to talk, which meant Dodo was free to
do the talk­ing for both of them. He told Mon­key Pants what the day room
looked like, and the bath­room, and the weird atten­dant who had the hic­cups
all day, and the patient who said he was a Negro once. His arm was so tired
that he want­ed to quit, so he chat­ted more, hop­ing that his talk would cause
Mon­key Pants to tire. But Mon­key Pants held on.
After an hour, Dodo quit and dropped his fin­ger.
A glint of white teeth and laugh­ter from Mon­key Pants’s crib drew a
frown out of him.
“You’re cheat­ing. You’re lying on your back.”
Mon­key Pants motioned that he should do the same.
So he did, turn­ing on his back and offer­ing his right fin­ger to Mon­key
Pants’s left fin­ger. “Let’s bat­tle.”
They held like that for twen­ty min­utes. Forty min­utes. An hour. Two
hours. Din­ner came. The atten­dant who came with their din­ner trays,
amused by the game he saw afoot, left the trays and returned to pick them
up lat­er, the food uneat­en. The two boys ignored him, their con­test of wills
now full-out. Mon­key Pants soiled his bed. Dodo did the same. The
atten­dants not­ed it and moved on to the next bed. Nobody else came. Both
boys held their fin­gers tight­ly togeth­er, nei­ther will­ing to give up.
Then night came, and with it, change.
At first, they held on, like the men they imag­ined them­selves to be, but
as the patients filed in from the day room and stirred about, final­ly set­tling
into bed, the new shift of atten­dants dimmed the over­head lights, then the
room went to black­ness, leav­ing only the lights from the atten­dants’ work
sta­tion reflect­ing into the room. Most of the men lay in their beds fit­ful­ly,
try­ing to sleep.
Still the boys held on.
Dodo could not see Mon­key Pants’s fin­ger now, but he could make out
the shape of his arm from the light of the atten­dants’ desk. The ward was U-
shaped, with beds lin­ing both sides and the atten­dants’ desk in the mid­dle,
so that light from the atten­dants’ sta­tion cast an eerie glow on both sides of
the unit. But the light only stretched to the mid­dle of the floor, just enough
so that Dodo could make out the thin white arm of Mon­key Pants but not
much more.
Most of the men were asleep now, for they were an hour into bed­time,
with sev­er­al of the men snor­ing, Dodo guessed, as he rec­og­nized the
famil­iar humps going up and down steadi­ly. Drowsi­ness laid on him hard
now, and he could not hold up his head but rather lay with his head back on
the pil­low, look­ing at the ceil­ing, with his arm out, touch­ing Mon­key Pants.
He real­ized he could not hold out much longer. Sleep was win­ning. Mon­key
Pants, too, was weak­en­ing. Final­ly Mon­key Pants’s fin­ger fell off his, then
he recov­ered and offered his fin­ger again, which Dodo took on, for he was
up to the chal­lenge. He was the bet­ter man! Then Mon­key Pants’s fin­ger
dropped off again.
“Come on, or I win,” he hissed, hold­ing out his fin­ger.
But Mon­key Pants’s fin­ger did not come.
Dodo lay on his back, fight­ing sleep, sat­is­fied. Exhaust­ed, he raised his
head to look over at his friend in tri­umph just to make sure, but in the dim
light, he could not see Mon­key Pants or his arm. He had tri­umphed.
Then the light that came from the atten­dants’ desk sud­den­ly shift­ed and
he saw move­ment at the foot of his crib, and Dodo for­got all about his
vic­to­ry. For there he stood, clad in his sparkling white attendant’s uni­form,
smil­ing, his teeth vis­i­ble in the dim light, his hand­some face sil­hou­et­ted
against the light that reflect­ed from the atten­dants’ desk.
Son of Man.
“Hey, Pea­cock,” he said.
The two cribs were five inch­es apart, and Dodo felt ter­ror squeeze his
throat as Son of Man lift­ed the edge of his crib away from Mon­key Pants’s
crib, mak­ing no noise, then slipped into the space between them, block­ing
out the view of Mon­key Pants. It was as if a wall had been set between him
and the only safe­ty he’d known in that place.
With one quick motion, Son of Man flicked the locks on each side of
Dodo’s crib and slid the bars down.
Dodo sat up quick­ly but his legs were weak, and an arm slammed him
down. Dodo opened his mouth to scream but a hand clamped over his
mouth and nose, and squeezed, crush­ing his face so hard that he felt his
nose might break off. Son of Man placed a fin­ger to his lips as if to say
“Shh.”
In one swift motion, he pushed Dodo’s head to the side, grabbed him,
flipped him onto his side, slammed a pil­low on his head, and pressed it
tight­ly against his face. With one hand hold­ing the pil­low, Son of Man
yanked up Dodo’s hos­pi­tal john­nie, bar­ing his back­side.
Dodo squirmed and resist­ed, but Son of Man was strong and pow­er­ful.
Dodo kicked his legs but the man pressed one knee on his bot­tom leg and
held the oth­er up eas­i­ly.
Then Dodo felt cold salve being rammed between his butt cheeks and
then an explo­sive hot burst of pain—but only for a second—for at that
moment the floor began to shake and the knee that held down his legs drew
away swift­ly as Son of Man turned away and loos­ened his grip. Some­thing
had dis­tract­ed him.
He tossed the pil­low off Dodo’s face, and Dodo felt the shak­ing of the
ward floor at the same time—a heavy shake, heav­ier than he had ever felt—
as if an earth­quake had come. The lights were sud­den­ly snapped on and
there was a quick scram­bling about the room as sev­er­al patients sat up and
began squawk­ing, with sev­er­al already out of bed and wan­der­ing about,
con­fused. Son of Man stood among them, ignor­ing them, enraged, rip­ping
off his white attendant’s jack­et, using it as a tow­el to wipe his face and
head, which, to Dodo’s sur­prise, were cov­ered with human feces.
In the crib next to him, Mon­key Pants was wrig­gling uncon­trol­lably,
hav­ing his biggest seizure yet, his legs and arms twist­ing wild­ly, his mouth
open—obviously yelling, Dodo guessed, but with intent, for his good hand,
his left, was hold­ing what was left of the excre­ment he’d tossed at Son of
Man, strik­ing him in the head and smear­ing some on Son of Man’s jack­et
and pants as well. His seizure and yelling had awak­ened the entire ward and
sum­moned oth­er atten­dants.
Dodo saw two atten­dants rush to Mon­key Pants’s bed and try to place a
spoon in his mouth, but it was impos­si­ble, for his seizure was in full charge.
After sev­er­al long sec­onds, his seizure end­ed, and he lay back on the bed.
An atten­dant moved to change Mon­key Pants’s bed­ding. But Son of Man
stopped them. Now that the lights were on, Dodo could read Son of Man’s
lips.
“Leave him be,” he said. “I’ll change him.”
They stepped aside and were about to return to the atten­dants’ sta­tion
when a young white doc­tor appeared. Dodo could not under­stand
every­thing he said, but he got the gist of it, for Son of Man and the oth­er
two atten­dants turned sud­den­ly obse­quious. The doc­tor not­ed that the cribs
of Dodo and Mon­key Pants had been moved apart and seemed to want to
know why. He not­ed the side of Dodo’s crib had been pulled down and
asked about med­ica­tion being deliv­ered at that hour. What­ev­er expla­na­tion
Son of Man offered did not seem to impress the doc­tor. He indi­cat­ed that
Mon­key Pants should be cleaned up, and that the two cribs should be placed
close togeth­er again, as Dodo’s crib was against the poor patient whose bed
was on the oth­er side. The doc­tor exam­ined Mon­key Pants and quick­ly
ordered some­thing from one of the atten­dants, then exam­ined Dodo briefly,
declar­ing that since he was now healed, Dodo should be moved to a bed in
the morn­ing. He issued oth­er instruc­tions that Dodo did not under­stand. But
by the time the doc­tor was fin­ished talk­ing, Son of Man had left the ward.
The doc­tor then turned to exam­ine Mon­key Pants again, this time more
care­ful­ly. Mon­key Pants had not spo­ken. He lay inert, breath­ing in and out
in quick, shal­low breaths. An atten­dant returned with a tray of med­i­cine, the
doc­tor admin­is­tered a shot, and Mon­key Pants seemed to recov­er. He
moved nor­mal­ly, sleep­i­ly, before clos­ing his eyes and set­tling into sleep.
Order was restored. Then the lights were doused again.
But Dodo could not sleep. He lay in ter­ror that Son of Man would return.
He fought sleep. He was ter­ri­fied that he’d awak­en to Son of Man return­ing
to vis­it that extreme pain on him again. He did not know what to do. He
could not help him­self, and once again, guilt assailed him. I did wrong, he
thought. I did wrong, wrong, wrong. I’ll be here for­ev­er.
Sleep began to push at him again, and as it did, his ter­ror grew. He began
to won­der whether he was sleep­ing or not, and since he could no longer tell,
that increased his ter­ror. He began to sob. He was doomed.