Jonathan Newman stood six-foot-five and his shoulders were broad and heavy, with a thick frame to support a slightly bulging stomach. He was one of those men that, though tipping the scales at just under two hundred and sixty pounds, would not be considered obese; the weight was distributed nicely, if a little generously, on his large bone structure. He looked like a linebacker on a football team.

He might have been more comfortable among groups of people, except for his mouth and cheeks. His upper lip curled towards his nose in the middle and ended in something like a harelip, which had been clumsily corrected when he was in his early teens. His lips and cheeks were lined with thin, white scars made long ago by a sharp instrument. Together these things frightened most people away at first sight, and made Jonathan a shy man in social settings. He was not, and never had been, a social man.

He had gone to the Vietnam War in his twenties, and that experience had triggered the onset of a serious mental disease. He had been in and out of institutions for most of his adult life, and had met many doctors who did nothing more than shut him away by himself and promptly forget about him until cutbacks in government spending forced a scourge of the mental institutions and he was set free. This had happened many times, for though Jonathan was troubled and mentally disturbed, he was not dangerous. His problems were those of perception more than anything else. If the time was taken to get past the physical outside of the man, he was a fascinating subject, and occasionally he ran into a doctor who tried to treat him instead of lock him away.

His last doctor had tried more than anyone else ever had. His life had been dominated by disordered thoughts and feelings, causing him to withdraw inside himself for protection. She tried to pull him out and unravel the cocoon.

He ended up in this particular hospital after several weeks on the streets of Boston, during which he lived on park benches along the Common and anywhere else he could find an empty spot. He had become convinced over a period of several months that the police who roamed the streets in their dark blue cars were actually after him, and that if he tried hard enough, perhaps with a sharp blade or other instrument, he could scrape the stenciling off of the vehicles’ doors and underneath the words “crime enforcement” the words “people enforcement” would be clearly visible. So he tried to keep out of sight during the day. He never tried to hurt anyone, but frightened many people not expecting to encounter such a large and gruesome figure on their early evening walks.