Sniffer opened his giant mouth and, with remarkable constraint, clenched his teeth around the waistband of Polk’s pajama bottoms.
"What the hell are you doing, dog?" Polk cried.
Sniffer tugged, pulling the old man close to the edge of the bed. Polk swatted at the dog’s face, but Sniffer paid no mind. He kept pulling, using his leverage and height advantage. Polk yelled as loud as he could, which was not very loud, for the nurse to come and remove the dog, but no one could hear him through the shut door.
"God, no," Polk said. "Please, dog. Stop it now. You are just a dog, right? Are you? What are you?"
With one final jerk of his head, Sniffer pulled Polk out of his bed. He let go of the pajamas as the man fell onto the floor. The cracking was loud, and it was then that Polk was able to scream audibly. Sniffer ran to the door and scratched furiously, barking and whimpering.
When the staff members showed up, they admonished Polk for being too feisty and moving around too much and now look at what he had done, would you just look. Sniffer got many scratches behind the ears, because he was a good dog, wasn’t he? Taking care of that old man like that. Such a good dog. What a good boy.
The fall shattered Polk’s hip, and they moved him into a new room in a different wing. Phone calls to family members were made; those that answered said they would try to get there before the inevitable, but couldn’t guarantee anything.
Even through the cloudy layers of sedation and pain medicine, Polk knew what happened when old people broke their hips. It was all downhill from there, and it was a short damn hill. With every part of his being, Polk did not want to die. Not like this.
A nurse came in, leaving the door open behind her. She checked all the machines and monitors, making notes on a clipboard and nodding. She stood over Polk and touched his hand gently. "I’ve got a surprise for you," she said.
It hurt to move his body, but Polk shifted his eyes down and saw Sniffer come prancing into the room. He snuggled up to the nurse, licking her hand, like he was the best dog in the world.
"He’s going to keep you company for a while," he heard the nurse say, then she left, and the dog stayed.
His room was right outside the nurses’ station, and he could hear them faintly talking. "That wonderful dog always knows the ones that are dying," one said.
"It’s like he knows! I saw on TV one time, there was this cat who could tell when patients had the cancer, and it stayed with them until they died. I’m telling you, they know. Animals always know."
Sniffer crawled under Polk’s bed, a tight squeeze for a dog so big. He located the mass of cords and plugs shoved into the wall outlet and unplugged them with his teeth. The machines keeping Polk Hammontree went to sleep, and the dog worked his way back out into the room.
There was no protection now, no warning. Sniffer lay his head on the bed and stared directly into Polk’s morphine eyes. Were the dog’s eyes really glowing red, or was that just a hallucination? Polk couldn’t tell. Trying to figure it out was a losing battle. The old man breathed deeply and mourned for himself.
The Irish Wolfhound licked Polk’s face a few times, then opened its mouth. Sniffer covered Polk’s mouth and nose with his own mouth and waited, waited for that release, the energy that come with letting go, that delicious final spark. The old man didn’t fight. He barely convulsed as he suffocated, unable to breathe as Sniffer sweetly sucked the life out of him.
When it was over, Sniffer sat on the floor for a minute and stared at Polk, making sure.
Then, like the good dog he was, he went to the nurse’s station, whining and licking hands, drawing attention away from their private conversation to the dead man in the room, the one he had been a companion to, the only one to be there when he had passed away.
As the staff rushed into Polk’s room with crash carts and worries, Sniffer wandered down to the Common Room, where the patients gathered en masse to watch television and do jigsaw puzzles. It has been a good morning, but he was still hungry.
Mouth
I
Bigmouth Strikes Again
THE MAN AT the bank, whose job it was to foreclose on peoples’ homes and deny small business startup loans, thought Larry Ford was an asshole. The schoolteacher who delighted in verbally humiliating her students and then punishing them when they showed any sign of weakness thought Larry Ford was an asshole. The nasty old men around the counter at The Meal Worm, hovering over their breakfast specials and making rude comments about Delores, their server, thought Larry Ford was an asshole.
Larry’s wife, Brenda, knew for a fact that Larry was an asshole. After living with someone for seventeen years, you get a fairly good understanding of the kind of person you’ve decided to spend the rest of your life with. Brenda had chosen poorly.
For one thing, Larry Ford was a cheapskate. It was one of the things that helped him become one of the richest men in Elders Keep. He owned three sled lots, selling junk cars at exorbitant prices to those who could barely afford them. Larry owned the bank, and he financed the vehicles himself, avoiding those jerk-offs at the credit unions with their low interest rates. His customers bought the car from one of Larry’s lots and they paid for the car at Larry’s lot, either weekly or bi-weekly. If a payment were missed, Larry simply found out where the vehicle was by checking the GPS unit hidden inside the car’s dashboard. A quick call to Goose’s Towing brought the car right back to Larry, so he could sell it again for even more profit while the former owner received a giant black mark on his or her credit record.
"Did you forget your payment?" Larry asked the woman on the phone. Moments like these were the high points of Larry’s day. He had sold the woman’s husband a relatively new SUV. The woman, however, did not speak English.
"Your payment?" Larry continued. "Where is my fucking money? For the car? Do you know what a car is, you stupid sand nigger?"
The woman on the phone was crying, bordering on shrieking. She had no idea what Larry was saying; just that he was extremely angry and probably using foul language. Where was her husband? Why wasn’t he home to deal with this madman?
One of Larry’s teeth was sore, and it just urged him on. "Look, you twat, you come into this country like you own the goddamn place. Your husband marches onto my car lot like the fucking Sheik of Araby and then, he doesn’t make the payments! Now, what kind of bullshit behavior is that for a sheik?"
The woman tried to explain that she had no earthly idea what he was referring to. Did he even have the right number? What did he want?
"Blah blah blah," Larry replied. "All I hear is your camel fucking jibber-jabber. Sounds like a shit-sucking meat-grinder. Now, I’m gonna repossess your car. I’m going to take it and after I get the stink out of it, from you people, I’m going to sell it to a goddamned American who can make his fucking payments on time. Do you hear me? Are we fucking clear?"
The woman gave up trying to communicate and simply began praying aloud.
"Have fun walking, you cunt-snarfingburqa bitch," Larry said, and he hung up the phone. Turning to his computer, he located the vehicle. What the hell was it doing in Bell Plains? No matter. A quick phone call to Goose’s Towing would bring that sweet cash cow right back to him.
Suddenly, Larry’s sore teeth transcended simple soreness and became a searing sinkhole of pain. His nerves felt electrocuted, and streaks of misery shot up into his forehead and down his spine. His ass clenched, trapping his boxers inside his sweaty crack. Larry’s hand flew to his cheek as tears forced their way out of his closed eyes.
When the pain eased off for a moment, Larry picked up the phone and called his wife.
"I need a dentist, Brenda," Larry said.
"You need a lot of things, Larry," Brenda said.
"I’m fucking serious, Brenda. This really hurts. Can you please make an appointment for me somewhere?"
Brenda sighed. Her day had been going so smoothly. "I’ll call around. Take some aspirin or something."
She hung up the phone. F
unny, she thought, how Larry can’t use a phone book himself to find a dentist. He can’t use the internet, where all the information lives. The man can’t do a damned thing for himself. She angrily lit a cigarette and began searching for dentists on line.
Larry’s tooth had become self-aware. It ordered Larry’s gums to swell, blister and throb. It seemed to Larry as if his tooth had grown terrible veiny fists and was punching his mouth to death from the inside. The pain flared and ebbed with every pounding heartbeat that made Larry’s eardrums pulse from the inside. He fully expected his head to explode, like that guy in the movie Scanners. Sweaty forehead, fists clenched, and then BOOM! Guys in suits hustle Michael Ironside out of the room, him proclaiming his innocence the whole time and then the phone rang.
"Hello?" It was hard for Larry to hear through the noise of his eardrums contracting and expanding.
"All right," Brenda said. "I got you an appointment for this afternoon at three-fifteen."
"With who?" Larry asked.
"Doctor Mike," Brenda said.
"Who the fuck is Doctor Mike?"
"You know," Brenda said. "He’s that cute doctor? We saw him at The Store a couple weeks ago. Long brown hair, full beard, blue eyes?"
Larry’s tooth felt like it was breathing. It hurt to talk. "Jesus, Brenda, you got me an appointment with a goddamned hippie doctor?"
"No one else had an opening," Brenda replied.
"I don’t want a fucking liberal sticking his welfare-loving fingers into my mouth," Larry whined.
Brenda shrugged. "Then let the tooth explode in your mouth, Larry. I don’t care. I did my part."
"Fine," Larry said. "As long as he can make this pain stop. Where is his office?"
"Downtown, on Campbell."
"All right," he said, and hung up, without a word of thanks.
Typical, thought Brenda, and she poured her first tumbler of Scotch of the morning.
***
The drive to Doctor Mike’s office was excruciating. It was hot, and the air conditioning made Larry’s tooth hurt worse. He turned it off, and the intense sunlight beaming in through the windshield quickly turned the car into a sauna. Larry cursed under his breath, thinking about all the bastards who wanted to use solar energy. The stupid tree-huggers obviously didn’t realize how dangerous the sun was.
Larry rolled the window down. There was no breeze. He tried to speed up a little to force some air into the car, but he was stuck behind a school bus going ten miles an hour. Larry laid on the horn, but what good would it do? School bus drivers worked for the local government, so why should they give a fuck about the small businessman? Pensions, minimal hours, damned near impossible to get fired. He briefly pondered the fact that he was in the wrong business.
It took thirty minutes to make the ten minute drive from the car lot to the dentist’s office. There was no place to park nearby, and Larry ended up in a space a good two blocks away. He mumbled to himself angrily as he walked, every other step sending new waves of pain through the right side of his body. He tried not to cry. It wouldn’t be good to have a potential customer see him weeping from agony in the middle of town.
Larry had never been so glad to see the inside of a dentist’s office in his life.
***
"I'M NOT GIVING you my Social," Larry told the receptionist.
She raised her eyebrow in surprise. "Mr. Ford, we need that for insurance purposes."
"I don’t have any fucking insurance," Larry said. "I’ll pay for this with cash, money I’ve earned with my own hands. Do you understand?"
"That’s fine, Mr. Ford," the receptionist said, and would have said more had Larry not opened his big sore mouth again.
"It’s none of the government’s goddamned business what I do with my mouth. I give you my Social Security number and they can track me. Fuck them. Goddamned liberals and their great Socialist plans for the National Health. I wish I didn’t even have a Social Security number. I wish it was just where you’re born, you buy a gun and you fend for yourself. Fucking government."
"Will you finish filling out your medical history, Mr. Ford?" the receptionist asked timidly.
"Why?" he asked. "So you can vaccinate me? Make sure I get some extra fluoride?"
The receptionist rolled her eyes. "All right, look. Are you allergic to anything?"
"Just bullshit," Larry said.
The receptionist sighed. "Fine."
He briefly glanced around the waiting area. Copies of Rolling Stone, Mother Jones and the New Republic were arranged on a coffee table. Liberal propaganda, Larry thought. This Doctor Mike guy probably got his degree with government grants and funding, where they pumped his brain full of terrible ideas and anti-American sentiment. He was probably part of some small-town splinter cell. One day a phone call would come, and a man with a thick accent would speak a nonsense phrase to Doctor Mike and he would snap, the post-hypnotic suggestion immediately taking hold and he would leave his office, a patient still in his chair, and drive to a hidden weapons cache where he would gear up with as many guns as he could strap to his body. Then he would drive back into the Keep and start blasting everyone he saw. Women, children, veterans, police officers, first responders, he would be unstoppable until he ran out of ammunition. When the bullets ran out, he would grab three babies from their mothers and with a resounding "Allahu Akbar!" he would detonate the explosive device wrapped around his waist, showering the downtown business district with the blood of those unbaptized babies and the twisted remnants of his own traitorous brain.
"Mr. Ford?" said the receptionist. Larry whipped his around towards her, the sudden move activating a new round of blinding pain from his rotting tooth.
"Doctor Mike will see you now."
Larry nodded in acknowledgement and rose slowly from his seat. He shuffled towards the open door where a petite blonde dental hygienist waited to guide him back to the operating theater.
II
Talking Only Brings the Toothaches On
"HELLO, MR. FORD, my name is Regina," said the woman as they were walking down the hallway. "I understand there was some difficulty filling out the forms."
"It wasn’t difficult," Larry said. "I just didn’t do it."
"Oh? How come?"
"This is still America, isn’t it?" Larry snarled.
They entered one of the side exam rooms. Regina motioned for Larry to sit down in the heavily padded dentist’s chair. Larry did, and Regina quickly snapped a blue paper bib around his neck with a steel roach clip. She sat down on a low rolling stool and pulled up next to Larry’s head. "All I need to know is what you’re allergic to so I don’t give you any medication that makes this chair the last place you’ll ever sit. Now. Are you allergic to anything, Mr. Ford?"
Larry glared at Regina, his stomach churning in disgust at the jewel poking out of the side of her nostril. Another goddamned punk kid bitch with a pierced nose. Why were these people so intent on making holes in their bodies? She had a point, though, and Larry was damned if he was going to let himself die at the hands of the likes of her.
"No," Larry said. "I’m not allergic to anything. Not even ragweed."
Regina smiled slightly, and rolled back a bit. "Good to know. Thank you for your cooperation, Mr. Ford." She pushed herself back to a small table and came back with a tray full of shiny dental instruments. She set the tray down in its holder on the side of the chair. From that tray, she took a tongue depressor and a metal hook. She flipped on the high intensity light and swung it over so it shone on Larry’s face.
"On a scale of one to ten," Regina began, "one being the least and ten being the greatest, how would you rate the discomfort you’re currently feeling?"
What a stupid question, Larry thought. Rate the pain. "Seventy-six," Larry said.
Regina raised one eyebrow. "Open your mouth, please, Mr. Ford. "
Larry complied, and Regina began poking around the back of his mouth with the steel hook. She tapped the tops of his teeth until she foun
d the right one. Larry winced and tried to push himself through the back of the chair.
"Relax, Mr. Ford," Regina said, and she shoved the sharp tip of the hook deep into the affected tooth, slowly turning and scraping, the high screech, like a fork missing a piece of hot dog on a thin ceramic plate, echoing in the sheer rock canyon of Larry’s skull.
"Is that the tooth that hurts?" she asked, removing the hook from Larry’s mouth.
"You fuckin’ think?" Larry spat.
It was only at this point that Larry took a good look at his surroundings. Normally, examination rooms were painted an off-white or a neutral blue. They chose the same colors used in prisons to try to keep the prisoners calm. But the walls in this room were black. Odd. Probably easier to hide the bloodstains, Larry thought.
Regina picked up a metal instrument that looked like an old metal ice-tray cube separator. She shoved it into Larry’s mouth. He tried to protest, but his mouth was suddenly full.
"Bite down, please," Regina said. She slapped a thick plastic shield over his chest, much like an umpire’s outfit. Larry bit down as hard as he could, which was not very, and Regina reached up and swung the X-ray camera down. "Hold still," she said. The camera ground and whirred for a few seconds.
Regina stood up, pulled the plate from the machine and said, "The doctor will be here in a few minutes." She walked away and, as she closed the door, she turned off the lights.
"Hey!" Larry yelled. "It’s fucking dark in here!" He could not see his hands in front of his face. He became aware of soft music being piped in. He knew the song, but it took him a moment to place. There were weird synthesizer noises and bad sci-fi spaceship noises with high-pitched male vocals. Good grief, Larry thought. On top of everything else, they’re playing fucking "Dream Weaver" by Gary Wright. Maybe it was some kind of hypnosis thing, a calming procedure Doctor Mike learned in some liberal psychology class.
Black Friday: An Elders Keep Collection Special Edition Page 9