Cards in the Cloak

by Jeremy Bursey

  ***

  Norman continued down the road for another hour or two. When he decided he couldn’t walk any further on the strength he had, he trudged into the next available yard and stopped. Even though his vision had gotten blurry from a body full of exhaustion, he made out the image of a small house protruding from the surface of a green wooded area. He hobbled to the front porch and passed out.

  An uncertain amount of time slipped by when a slight tremor woke him. He opened his eyes to see a young couple staring down at him. Neither displayed a look of confidence. The girl was kneeling beside him when his sight came into focus. Her hand was on his shoulder. A tiny smile crept across her lips.

  “You okay, sir?” she asked, brushing a strand of hair out of her eyes.

  Norman felt his stomach churning. He wasn’t sure if he was okay or not, but he definitely knew he needed something to eat.

  “Where are you from?” she continued.

  Norman didn’t feel like talking. He wanted only to eat or sleep. As much as he wanted to eat, he thought it would’ve been easier just to stay where he was and fall back asleep. The hard wooden floor wasn’t very comfortable, but he was too tired to move. He closed his eyes and tried to tune the girl out.

  “Sir, are you from the nursing home down the road?”

  Norman smacked his lips, hoping that his signal for her to leave him alone was clear.

  “Maybe you should just call them,” said the guy.

  Norman opened his eyes. He could see her nodding. Perhaps his choice to ignore her was made in haste.

  “Please don’t do that,” he said. “I just want to sleep right now. Or eat if you have any apple sauce or mashed potatoes.”

  The girl nodded, then looked at the guy. Her mouth hung open for a beat before looking back at Norman.

  “I’ll see what I have, er?”

  “Er, what?”

  “Your name?”

  “Norman.”

  “Your last name?”

  “Why do you want to know my last name?”

  “I don’t feel right calling you by your first name.”

  “Why? Because I’m old? Bah. It’s Jenson.”

  “Okay, Mister Jenson. I’ll see what I have.”

  Without hesitation, the girl stepped over him and disappeared behind his back.

  While he waited, he stared at the guy to see if he could figure out what the girl saw in him. It had been generations since he’d last played the dating game and really didn’t know what the kids were into anymore. The guy rocked back and forth on his heels. Norman wanted to close his eyes again.

  “Stop doing that,” said Norman. “You’re making me seasick.”

  The guy knelt beside him.

  “So, what are you doing on my girlfriend’s porch, sir?” he asked politely.

  “Not trying to court her, if that’s what you’re worried about.”

  “Well, sir, if there’s any kind of trouble, we would like to help out.”

  “Why are you acting like you care about me, boy? I know you won’t give me a second thought once I walk off this porch. You’ll go on living your happy life, and you won’t think twice about me. Maybe if you live to see your hundredth birthday, then you might think about me. That’s provided you can remember me. How old are you, boy?”

  “Twenty-five, sir.”

  “You haven’t lived long enough to care about me. Go live your life, then come back and see me if you think you can honestly say you want to help a hundred-year-old man fast asleep on your girlfriend’s porch. Now, go away.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “And stop calling me ‘sir.’ My name is Norman.”

  “Okay, sir.”

  “I was your age once.”

  “If you say so, sir.”

  The guy stood and backed off the porch. Within a moment, the distance between the two of them left the young stranger blurry.

  After a couple of minutes of silence, the girl returned to the porch and knelt beside Norman. She held a bowl of mashed potatoes in her hands with a spoon handle protruding over the rim.

  “Here’s my test bowl to see if I can make a good batch before Thanksgiving,” she said.

  Norman reached for the spoon. He shoveled some potatoes on and scooped them off with his mouth. They were bland, but he ate more anyway. She smiled.

  “You like it?” she asked.

  “No, just hungry.”

  Norman ate half the bowl before he saw a pair of headlights pull into the driveway. The beams arced around the left half of the yard before floating up the steps and stopping right in his eyes. The light temporarily blinded him, but he heard a sliding van door open. He looked up to see a silhouette stepping out of the vehicle. The silhouette was large in size and emitted an aura of darkness around it. Large arms clutched the door and slammed it shut. The body then stomped to the front of the van, blocking the headlight beams from casting additional light in his face. Within the flood of illumination he could finally make out pieces of the silhouette’s identity, the parts that the light could catch. He dropped his spoon.

  He tried standing up to run away, but his agility was not like it used to be. He managed to get up only as far as his knees when Nurse Bullard reached the porch. She rolled up her sleeves and cracked her knuckles. The sound was like thunder.

  “Mister Jenson,” she said, “why did you leave? We were worried sick about you.”

  She grabbed his waist and hoisted him over her shoulder.

  “Thanks for calling us,” she said to the girl.

  The girl nodded.

  “We just didn’t want to see him get hurt or anything,” the girl said.

  Nurse Bullard carried Norman to the van. He tried squirming to break free, but he was too tired and sore for it to be effective. He reached out toward the young couple, but they went back to focusing on each other. The next thing he knew, the nurse had shoved him into the van.

  “You forgot my cane, you barbarian,” he grumbled.

  “Maybe you won’t pull this stunt again if we leave it,” she said.

  She strapped him in the seat belt, making it almost too tight for him to move. Without checking to see if Norman could still breathe, Nurse Bullard got into the driver’s side and put the keys in the ignition. Norman yelped from his discomfort.

  “You never answered my question, Mister Jenson,” she said coldly. “Why did you leave?”

  Norman could feel the tightened seatbelt cutting off his circulation.

  “Because I wanted to go to the beach,” he said. “What business is it of yours?”

  The nurse looked at him and smiled.

  “Well, you can’t go to the beach, Mister Jenson, and that’s final. We don’t do field trips, and you’re too old to leave the home anyway, so just get used to staying there.”

  “Why don’t you just dump me out on the side of the road? Pretend you never found me.”

  “How would that make us look, Mister Jenson? We have a reputation to uphold. I’m taking you back, whether you like it or not. And if you don’t like it, well, it’s not like you’re going to be around forever anyway, right? You are after all, really, really old.”

  The nurse chuckled to herself. A moment later she turned the key and fired up the engine. She continued to amuse herself with sadistic light laughter as she backed out of the driveway.

  The only comfort she could give him was the unspoken knowledge that she would never see a hundred years like he had. No one with her black heart could ever live so long.

  When they got back to the nursing home about ten minutes later, Nurse Bullard brought Norman to his room and unlocked the door. As soon as she hurled it open, she pushed him inside.

  “Now, go to sleep, Mister Jenson,” she said. “And don’t give us any more trouble. We’re tired of it.”

  Norman turned to face her.

  “You heartless twit,” he yelled. “Somebody locked me in my room earlier today, and yet the door is still locked.”

  “Yeah, an
d?”

  “You people always leave it open when I’m not in there.”

  The nurse shrugged.

  “So, what’s your point?”

  “You had no idea I was gone, did you?” he shouted.

  The nurse smiled. Then she slammed the door. He heard the handle lock angrily. He would’ve thrown his bed at the door if he had any muscles left.