by Shawn Inmon
Nathaniel stepped forward and reached out a hand, but Pup ignored it and wrapped him in a hug. Nathaniel laughed a little, then hugged him back, and held him out at arm’s length. “Hello, Pup.”
When Nathaniel had healed Pup, he had been four and Pup was in his mid-twenties. Now, more than thirty years later, Nathaniel was half a foot taller, and actually appeared to be a little older of the two.
It was an odd scene—Jon, Melissa, and Kate, all staring, unsure what to make of what was happening, while Vivian, Nathaniel, and Pup had a reunion of sorts.
“I don’t understand,” Violet said. “Shines like a lighthouse?”
“Huh. I figured you knew all about it. Not long after Nathaniel saved my life, I realized I could ...” He hesitated, looking for words to describe something he had never needed to explain. “Well, it was like I was connected to him. I could always kind of, I don’t know, feel where he was.”
Violet looked at Nathaniel. “Did you know that?”
Nathaniel shook his head. “No. It’s got to be a one-way thing, or I would have felt you coming, Pup.”
“Do you think that anyone you helped could do that?” Vivian asked.
“Oh, like Byron Creech?” Pup answered. “Yeah, for sure, for sure. Him and me talked about it once. Never talked to nobody else, though, ‘cuz there weren’t no reason to. We both felt it, though.”
Nathaniel looked at his mother. Fight or flight coming out in her again.
Nathaniel put his arm around Violet. “Mom, it’s okay.”
“It doesn’t feel okay to me, Nathaniel. I’ve been hiding from Cyrus Creech and his God Patrol for more than thirty years. Now I know he and his son have a direct pipeline to us?”
“It’s not like that. Is it, Pup?”
Pup looked puzzled. “Oh! Are you afraid that Byron or I would tell Mr. Creech how to find you? We’d never do that.”
“Look at it this way,” Nathaniel said. “They’ve been able to lead someone to us all this time, and they never did. Why would they start now?”
Pup stepped toward Violet. “Your boy saved our lives. Why would we ever do anything to hurt him, or you? We never would—we’re part of the same family now, in a weird way.”
Violet took a deep, calming breath. “Okay. Not to be rude, then, but why are you here?”
Pup looked at the floor, slightly embarrassed. “Missus, take a closer look at me. How old do I look?”
“Mmmm. You still look young. Maybe 30 or so? But, I know you’ve got to be older than that.”
“Right. I was 28 that day that Nathaniel saved my life. I’m sixty-three now, but I look pretty much the same as I did that day. Not that I’m Mathew McConaughey or anything, but I don’t seem to be getting any older.”
“It was a shock to see you show up out of the blue like this, but now that I know who you are, you do look pretty much the same,” Violet said.
“And you know, that gets to be a problem. I went to my class’s 30th reunion, and that’s where everyone noticed. Everyone else was older, a little paunchier, a lot less hair. You know, natural stuff. They took a picture of all of us and put it in the local paper, and that’s when the whispering started around town. Mrs. Kelton, at the diner, asked if I had a picture in my attic getting old instead of me.”
Pup looked at Jon and Melissa. “I’m from Tubal, Arkansas, which is a town so tiny, you can walk it end to end in less than five minutes and not be out of breath.”
Jon nodded, but Nathaniel could see he was still not clear at all on what was going on.
“I tried dyeing my hair gray, but that just looked weird, and I ended up cutting most of it off myself. Finally, a few months ago, I decided the thing to do was just move on, find a job somewhere else, a long ways away from Tubal, where no one will know me.”
“And you chose Middle Falls?” Violet asked.
Pup laughed at that. “No, I don’t think I could live out here. It feels too different to me, and it’s rained more in the last twenty-four hours than I usually see in six months. I like life to move a little slower. I think I’ll try West Texas. Nobody there knows me, so I can kind of start over. But, before I did that, I wanted to drive out here and say thank you for my life.”
He turned to Nathaniel. “You saved my life, and I didn’t even know it at the time, but by the time I did, you was gone. So, thank you. I know Byron appreciates it, too. He’s got the same problem, kind of—he kept getting older until he was grown, but then he stopped. He’s forty-two now, and looks like he’s about eighteen. He can’t just pack up and leave, though, cuz he’s second in command at his daddy’s company, which is a heckuva lot bigger than it used to be. One word of warning, though. Last time I spoke to him, he said Cyrus was still trying to find you guys.”
“Thanks for letting us know, but I’m not a little boy any more. We’ve got friends here, and nothing you’ve told me has me worried. There’s really nothing to thank me for. I was so young, and I didn’t really have any idea what I was doing. It’s like I saw a puzzle in front of me, and I wanted to put it back together.”
“Well, since that puzzle was my insides, I’m grateful you did. It’s been a good life, and it looks like I’ve got a lot more of it coming. Gonna try to make the best of it. Oh, one other thing. Everyone in town always figgered that Andi Riley went with you when you left, cuz no one ever saw her again. Did she?”
A shadow of pain crossed Violet’s face. “She did. She died in a car accident quite a few years back, now.”
“Well, shit.” He touched his hand to his mouth in surprise. “Sorry. And, sorry to hear that. She was a nice girl.” Pup looked at everyone assembled around him in the entryway. “I’ve intruded on your night long enough. This is probably the closest I’ll ever get to the Pacific, so I’m gonna drive over there and get my feet wet in it before I head for Texas.” He slipped his Peterbilt cap back on and opened the door. He turned half way out, and said, “You’ve got nothin’ to worry about from us, ever. We’d no more hurt the two of you than we would ourselves.”
Pup nodded a good-bye and closed the door behind him.
Violet walked to the window and watched him climb into an older van still boasting Arkansas plates parked just down the block.
“I’m still worried, I would have thought you would have sensed him coming.”
Nathaniel laughed. “I’m just a man, Mom, I don’t have spidey-sense. But, I keep coming back to this—either Pup or Byron could have tracked us down any time they wanted to in the last thirty years, and I never would have seen them coming. Why would they change now?”
“You’re right, I’m sure. Still, I don’t like it. But, I think we’re too wired into this community to just bug out again. And if they can see you wherever you go, it wouldn’t matter if we did.”
Chapter Twenty-Four
The following Monday evening, Nathaniel was back at Middle Falls Hospital, going about his rounds, but his mind was not as quiet as it normally was.
I can see some of what is ahead, but there are so many blind spots. Pup and Byron were in one of those blind spots. No idea what else might be waiting ahead. Something is drawing closer, though. I can feel it. I’m going to stand at a crossroads soon, and I don’t know which way to go.
He knelt and, pulling a rag out of his back pocket, wiped a spot where something had spattered onto a door into one of the rooms. He looked up to see a woman lying in bed looking at him.
“Sorry to bother you. Just wanted to get that.”
“It’s no bother,” the woman said in a small voice. “Nice to see someone other than doctors and nurses in here.”
“Is that so? Well, I’ll be taking my lunch in a couple of hours. Would you like it if I sat in here with you to eat it?”
The woman lifted her head off the pillow a few inches to get a better look at him, and Nathaniel could see the effort it cost her. She dropped her head back with a sigh and said, “Yes, that would be nice, if you don’t mind. It could be your good deed for the day.”<
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Nathaniel flashed her the Boy Scout salute, tapping three fingers against his forehead, and tipping her a wink. “It’s a date.”
He moved his cart around the corner to the family bathroom, took out his sanitizing spray, and continued on his routine.
A few minutes past eight, he slipped into the woman’s room, thinking she may very well have gone to sleep by then, and not wanting to wake her. She was propped up on her pillow, though, wide awake and waiting for him.
“I’m Nathaniel,” he said, sitting in the visitor’s chair next to her and unrolling his lunch bag. He had made a salad with some of the last pickings from his garden.
“I’m Veronica McAllister. My friends call me Ronnie.”
“What would you like me to call you?”
A phlegmy laugh and a small smile. “You can call me Ronnie. Thank you for asking. I don’t mind informality, but I admit that I don’t like it when it is assumed.”
Nathaniel never asked the people he had lunch with, What are you here for? He knew that if patients wanted to talk about their illness, they would. Some patients couldn’t be stopped from talking about what was wrong with them.
“Do you mind if I eat while we talk?”
“Of course not. What do you do here, Nathaniel?”
Around his first bite of arugula and butter lettuce, Nathaniel said, “I’m a custodian. That’s why I was cleaning your door.”
“Of course, of course,” she said, already having forgotten the circumstances of their initial meeting several hours earlier. “Please excuse me. My memory is normally good, but,” she said, pointing to the IV bag, “whatever they’ve got me on is throwing me for a loop. It’s all right, I think I’d rather not be in my right mind at the moment.”
Nathaniel took her in. Wispy white hair that was sticking up at all angles. Eyes that were fogged with opiates, but still filled with pain. He sat his salad down on her tray and scooted forward a few inches. He reached his hand out to her, palm up.
With no hesitation, she laid her own hand inside it.
She sighed, and then her eyes flew wide.
“Oh, my. What’s that? What did you do?”
“Nothing much, and nothing permanent. I just thought it would be nice if the effects of both the pain and the narcotics were gone while we talked.”
Veronica frowned. “You are not a normal custodian, are you?”
“I’m not really a normal anything. But then, who is? Normal is overrated.”
She took a deep breath and gave a small whoop. “I haven’t felt this good in so very long.”
“Good. Do you want to tell me about your life?”
“Are you the Angel of Death, come to collect my soul?”
“I promise, no. I am really the Middle Falls Hospital custodian, come to collect your garbage, as soon as I eat my dinner. I would think the Angel of Death would be too busy to sit and eat with each soul he collected.”
“Well, I’m afraid you’re going to be disappointed in anything I have to tell you. I didn’t really live my life. I let everyone else live it for me. First, my parents, especially my mother. Then, I got married right out of high school. Moved from my childhood bedroom into the house my husband already owned. No matter what I did, how many floral printed bedspreads or checked tablecloths I put out, that house never did feel like it was mine.”
She sat up a bit, then leaned back on her elbows. “This is amazing. I feel twenty years younger. If I’d known I was going to feel like this, I wouldn’t have scheduled my suicide for tomorrow. It’s okay, though. Even if the pain is gone, I’m ready to go. I’m tired, and I’m tired of this life. I wasn’t very good at it.”
“Why is that?”
“I let people run over me. I never stood up for myself. The next thing I knew, my life was ruined, I got so sad I could barely leave my house, and now, here I am, just waiting to die.”
“Waiting to die, or encouraging it along?”
“Oh, dying was inevitable, and soon. So, I invoked Oregon’s assisted suicide law. That’s quite an ordeal in itself, but I’ve jumped through all their hoops. Tomorrow, I’m heading off to whatever is next.”
“You said you weren’t very good at life. I’ve never heard anyone say that before. What do you mean?”
Veronica set her mouth in a grim line. “I mean, I just let people close to me take and take and take, and then, when I didn’t have anything left to give, they tossed me out the window like yesterday’s trash.”
She glanced at Nathaniel to see if he was actually listening. When she saw that he was, she continued. “I met my husband when I was just sixteen. I was working after school at the local drive-in. I was a carhop, and pretty cute, if I do say so myself.” She blushed at the thought. He was older than me, and he seemed so sophisticated. He came in to pick up his laundry, and he seemed so sophisticated. He was in his last year of college. He saw something in me, I guess, because he asked me out. We got married the summer after I graduated.”
She looked up at the ceiling, lost in the memory.
“It’s funny, isn’t it, how the bad times often start out so good? I thought we were happy. I know I was, at least. We had two daughters, and life seemed good. As soon as the girls were born, he became very controlling. He told me how to do everything—what kind of diapers to use, when to stop breastfeeding, everything. Maybe I should say, his mother told me how to do everything. The words came out of his mouth, but I knew it was really her words I was hearing.”
Tears formed and rolled down her cheeks. She wiped them away absently.
“By the time the girls were teenagers, I knew I’d lost the war. He controlled everything—the checkbook, the budget, what we did and when we did it, what we ate and how I cooked it—everything. Right after our youngest daughter graduated from high school, he told me we were selling the house and getting a divorce. He’d had a girlfriend for a few years by then. I knew about her, but I had pretended like I didn’t.”
She turned to look at Nathaniel.
“Do you know what the worst of it was?”
It could be so many things, but no.
“No. What was the worst of it?”
“The girls. I lost the girls too. And, I don’t blame them. Oh, they still sent me a card on Mother’s Day and my birthday, but it was all perfunctory. They never came for a visit, or wanted to go shopping. And why would they? I never showed them anything about how to be a strong woman. I suppose if they knew what was happening tomorrow, they would come, but it would just be out of a sense of obligation, and I don’t want that. I suppose they’ll read about it in the paper.”
“Who is going to be here with you tomorrow, then?”
“No one, I suppose. I think I’m going to leave this world the way I lived in it—alone.”
“Would you like me to come and sit with you tomorrow?”
A small smile brightened her face and chased away the raincloud that had covered her face. “Would you? The worst part of this was thinking about doing it all alone.”
“I will, but there are other options to consider. I could take this all away from you. Not just the pain, but whatever’s making you sick. You still have time to change whatever parts of your life you don’t like. You could repair the bridges that have been lost with your daughters.”
“Who are you?”
“Nathaniel. Just ... Nathaniel.”
“Could you really do that?”
“Yes.”
Veronica looked at him steadily. “I believe you could.” She stared down at her hands. Her skin was so paper-thin that blue veins traced a pattern across them.
“No. I had strength, but I was too afraid to use it. Now, I have found my will, but my strength is gone.”
Nathaniel nodded. “I’ll see you here, tomorrow.”
NATHANIEL SHOWED UP at Middle Falls Hospital two hours early the next day. He stopped at the nurse’s station and visited with several friends while the attending physician was in meeting with Veronica. After a few minut
es, the attending, Dr. Grant, poked his head out of the room and waved at Nathaniel to come in.
“This medication has to be self-administered,” he said. He sat a pill bottle containing two pills on Veronica’s table and took a step back.
“Afternoon, Ronnie. It’s a momentous day.”
“Nathaniel,” Dr. Grant said, “she is feeling much better today, although her long-term prognosis is the same, of course. Would you speak to her about what she is doing?”
“I am here to listen to her, if she has anything to say, but I am not one to try and persuade someone, Doctor. I believe everyone should be allowed to make their own decisions, whether I agree with them or not.”
Dr. Granted nodded curtly, but took a few steps back to give them some small measure of privacy. He was required to stay during the administration of the dose and the aftermath, but he did not like the duty.
“Nathaniel,” Veronica said, and her voice was clear. “Thank you for being here to see me off. I’ve known you less than twenty-four hours, and it feels like you are the only friend I have. I don’t know how I would do this without someone to talk to.”
“I’ve always believed your friends know you instantly upon meeting you, while acquaintances will likely never know you.”
Her IVs had been disconnected, so her hands were free. She caressed the pill bottle and said, “Come, bitter poison, come, unsavory guide!” She uncapped the bottle and without hesitation, put the pills in her mouth and washed them down with water. “I suppose that’s the Shakespeare everyone steals at this moment, isn’t it?” She smacked her lips and made a face. “Well, those taste awful. I should have asked for whiskey to take them with, but I’ve rarely tasted it, and I don’t want to cough them back up. I’m not sure the doctor would give me more.”
She put the back of her hand against her forehead, closed her eyes and fell back dramatically. After two seconds had passed, she opened one eye, looked at Nathaniel, winked, and said, “Still here? Very well then.”