Mr. Childers’ Neighborhood

So Karl Childers, the touchingly tender subnormal of “Sling Blade,” who spoke more home truths than his IQ betters could ever comprehend, didn’t leave with a best actor Oscar in that paper sack of his, after all.

You liked the movie, did you? And that Karl--sweet guy, Karl. All right, then: Would you want the likes of him in your neighborhood?

And if you say no, where then does such a man belong? All the Karl Childerses of this world, all the not-quites and the nearly-weres--what of them?

*

Going to work one Sunday morning, I saw the naked guy.

He was at Temple and Spring, directing nonexistent traffic. That alone can get you arrested, but being naked in public is a dead-bang guarantee of a three-day psychiatric evaluation.

Wondering about the naked guy is how I found Department 95, once the site of a pickle factory, the county’s only court devoted not to criminal guilt but to the care of those who are AWOL from the behaviors that society applauds, like productivity and self-control and hygiene.

1997 is the 30th anniversary of what in psycho-legal shorthand is the mental patients’ bill of rights.

The social eruptions of the 1960s produced odd pairings: Ken Kesey’s 1962 book, “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest,” was an epiphany about dumping-ground loony bins. Ronald Reagan was bent on closing state asylums and sending patients into local care.

Subtler medicines began to edge out drugs like Thorazine. Abuses were exposed: people chucked into asylums by relatives who made off with the family nest egg, teens locked away as “maladjusted.”

In Department 95, lofty constitutional Latinisms like habeas corpus take on life, guarantors for people on mental disorder “holds” of two weeks, a month, six months, patients who don’t want medicine or electroshock therapy; people who may be unfit to live alone, or criminal defendants who may be incompetent for trial.

Legally, they cannot be a danger to themselves, nor to others, nor be gravely mentally disabled. Otherwise, there is no formula. A job and an apartment are obvious indicators of sane functioning, but what about a shopping cart, a toothbrush, and sense enough to come in out of the rain?

*

We hold this truth to be self-evident: Our nation was forged by rugged individuals, men and women cut from a different bolt of cloth than the rest of the world.

Real truth is that apart from the John Waynes and Karl Childerses, we have little patience with those outside the ever-shifting lines of conformity. And the mind’s foibles offer few ways to stay on track, and manifold ways to deviate.

“We’re not a society of individuals,” says Superior Court Judge Harold E. Shabo. “We’re pretty much a society of fear, and anybody who acts any different from what we expect them to act is a threat or a potential threat.”

Eccentric vs. crazy can even come down to the size of the bank account. Howard Hughes with a zero balance would have been a mental patient.

In other times and by other reckonings, Abe Lincoln’s profound depressions might have brought him here. Born a hundred years later, fabled mountain men could instead be exploring Department 95’s fenced patio with leather hobbles on their ankles and no laces in their tennis shoes.

The woman living with her lover’s mummified corpse makes wonderful literature in the hands of a William Faulkner; the L.A. woman living with her mother’s mummified corpse on the sofa had a date in Judge Shabo’s courtroom.

*

Hot as it can get with the spotty air conditioning system, the joke is that Department 95 is Siberia. DAs, judges, public defenders, caseworkers and officials know they will not hear their sound bites on the 5 o’clock news, will not schmooze with Larry King.

Instead, they work each day at the fulcrum of what Shabo--who addresses all comers, however rambling or disheveled, as Mr. or Ms.--calls “the tension and dichotomy between individual human rights and the power of the state.”

Most have favorite characters, and recount them with humor and tenderness, like the man whose lawyer asked him his name. “I’m a car,” he said testily. “Cars don’t have names. I’m a Chevrolet.” Some shuttle in and out of care for years; some disappear onto the streets, for there is not enough staff or money to check on them, make sure they get their medicine.

Sandy Krauss, Department 95’s indefatigable director for court services, remembers the midnight howlings of Screaming Sally. She passed her pain on to everyone around her, befouling porch steps until people took to watering the steps so she’d stay away.

There are fewer “colorful characters” like “General Hershey Bar,” who roamed downtown in full fake dress uniform during the Vietnam War, and more men and women like Sally, living on the margins of law and sanity, forcing us to ask how tolerant we are, and whether tolerance can be a conscience-salving name for benign neglect.