The Green Rolling Hills

by V. J. Banis

  “He was a nice old man,” Staci, one of the younger RNs said. “I wish I’d had the chance to say goodbye.”

  “That’s real sweet, honey. I wish you could have seen him. He had the most peaceful expression on his face, which is funny because on the way down to see what Jimmy wanted I heard him talking out of his head, like he had someone in the room with him. I couldn’t hear him all that clearly. That’s why I popped in on the way back. I was afraid he’d started hallucinating, you know how they do when they’re right near the end,” the Charge Nurse replied.

  “My Nonnie says that old people can see through the veil when their time comes,” Staci said, “and that their guardian angels and loved ones draw near.”

  “That’s as may be. All I can say is he sure looked peaceful, and I’m glad. Poor old man had more than his share of suffering, losing his grandbaby way back when. My momma said she was kidnapped and it was all anyone could talk about for months. The talk never really stopped because after he built that statue, it kind of kept the whole thing alive for everybody. Made them hold their young a little tighter, she said.”

  “What do you suppose happened to that little girl, anyway?”

  “Some say she must have been killed, but some hold that she might have lived, you know, been kidnapped by a childless couple or something. No way we’ll ever know.”

  “Do we need to add anything else to the report?” The younger woman was making the final notes for chart closing.

  “Just his personal effects inventory, for the next of kin. After the EMTs left, we went through his room,” she said, beginning to dictate, “There were six and a half pair of pajamas, seven tee shirts and ten skivvies in his dresser, plus his toothbrush, a bible and a five family photos, that’s all.”

  “Six and a half pair of pajamas?”

  “That’s right. We found his pajama top left behind on the bed. The techs must have slipped it off when they were unhooking the IV. I almost stuck myself with a pin the old fella had on his lapel. It was one of those hospice angels, you know. God knows how he got hold of it. One of the volunteers must have dropped it. I’ll have to make a note to remind them to be more careful. He might have injured himself.”

  “Awww,” the other nurse said.

  What? You don’t think I should tell hospice about it?”

  “No. I think it’s sweet. The man who built Pappy’s Angel Garden dying with an angel pinned on him.”

  They both smiled. “You’re right. I’ll just give this to his people when they come by to collect his things. They might appreciate the coincidence.”

  BIG EASYS, by Leigh Horne

  A bouquet of helium balloons bounced jauntily on its tether above the sandwich board. Behind it a new awning looked bright and fresh over large windows painted with revelers who seemed ready to party off the plate glass onto the sidewalk. The fact that someone had rented a vacant storefront was such a cause for celebration that members of the downtown development council were on hand for the Grand Opening. N’Awlins Big Easy Sweet Shoppe, was emblazoned on the fanlight over the door.

  Ed Sirbaugh watched the show with interest. He wasn’t sure why he got up from his habitual perch on the park bench, but the next thing he knew he had walked across the street. The shop owner, Alain Doucette, self-described refugee from Hurricane Katrina, was dressed like a Motley Fule. Somehow, he managed to look suave in his jester’s belled hat and parti-colored tights.

  “Bienvenue,” he said, guiding Ed to a table with a close-up view of the restrooms. Handing him a menu, Doucette smiled thinly and returned to the door where the after-school crowd was beginning to arrive.

  There you go again, you old fart, barging in where you’re not wanted, Ed thought. This place is for the young. He decided to get something and get out before his retired teacher’s face scared the kids off.

  The menu contained the usual fare and a kind of smoothie called The Big Easy, with “All the Excitement of a Personal Mardi Gras.” Because he had no interest in that kind of excitement Ed ordered a parfait to go and exited through tables now filled with a high school crowd. Most of the kids seemed to have ordered the Big Easys, using the half-off coupons on hand. A few turned his way. Some waved but he thought he saw a couple of smirks, including one partially obscured by the urbane moustache on Alain Doucette’s face.

  Relax, I won’t be back, Ed thought.

  * * * *

  Over the next several weeks he watched the crowd in the shop. Cheerleaders, preps, jocks, goths, skateboarders and self-styled redneck kids all mingled as if they weren’t ghettoized in mutually-disdainful cliques.

  At first, the teacher in him welcomed this, but Ed was an insomniac who often went for walks after midnight. He began to notice other things, such as the fact that even after the shop closed there were still young people clustered in the alley out back. They lurched into one another, laughing, kissing, and sometimes fighting like there was no tomorrow.

  By the sixth month of the shop’s operation, many of them looked sickly, and the paper was complaining about an uptick in petty theft and truancy.

  Concerned, Ed decided to seek out the Chief of Police, with whom he’d enjoyed many a casual conversation.

  “What can I do for you, Ed?” the Chief asked, smiling. Unlike others in the small town, Ed had never tried to ingratiate himself by tattling. His was a live and let live philosophy, but when it came to the vulnerable young, he was adamant. His own grandson had almost been killed riding his ATV last year. Sometimes, the young needed help tempering their enthusiasms.

  “Have any of your officers noticed anything odd about that place on the corner?” he replied, without preamble.

  “What do you mean odd?” The Chief had to be careful not to jump to untoward conclusions, especially about any new downtown merchants.

  “I mean the comings and goings at odd hours, and how the kids seem to be acting differently. That, and the rash of delinquency. I wonder if it all might be connected.”

  “Connected? Come on, Ed. You got too much time on your hands these days?”

  “Hear me out,” Ed answered, feeling testy at the implication that he would go off half-cocked. “When N’Awlins opened, most of the kids would head home by suppertime. Now they’re out back until the wee hours.”

  “I have heard reports to that effect.”

  “Have any of your reports included that ER admissions for kids are up 15%? Not only that but a lot of students haven’t bothered to sign up for their SATs yet, and the drop-out rate has been climbing. I can’t help asking myself what in blazes is going on.”

  The Chief smiled a bit indulgently. “Now Ed, kids will be kids,” he said. “Some of them are probably having a case of Senioritis.”

  “As I recall, in years past, ‘Senioritis’ didn’t set in until after kids completed their applications for college, sometime around late April. It’s still March.”

  “Every class is different, Ed. I’m not unsympathetic to your concerns, but believe you me, not much goes on in this town that we’re not aware of, and although we are taking the curfew issue very seriously, I think on balance N’Awlins is an asset. Why, kids from the city have been driving out in droves since it opened, and you know how those kids spend money.”

  “It’s not the tourists I’m worried about. Haven’t you noticed how our kids look?”

  “Yeah, they all want to look like those bands on MTV.”

  “I don’t know....”

  “No, you don’t, Ed. Now, if you will excuse me, I have to get back to what I get paid for.”

  Would that include hiding your head in the sand? Ed wondered, uncharitably.

  The meeting did nothing to ease the creeping sensation rising in Ed’s gut. Cursing himself as an ineffectual gasbag, he plopped down on his perch and opened his book bag, hoping to distract himself with a magazine, only to be assaulted with a cover shot of a garish mob wearing plastic beads and leering expressions.

  “Mardi Gras Expected to Be Bigger Than Ever,�
�� a banner proclaimed. He looked at the date on his Casio: today was Fat Tuesday. Would Doucette celebrate? Deciding he needed to know, he took a deep breath and started for the shop.

  A sign in the window read “Closed for Private Party.” The shades were drawn but between the slats Ed could make out a flurry of activity. The doors swung open.

  “Just what do you think you’re doing?” a surly Doucette asked. “I heard you were an English teacher. Have you forgotten how to read, or are you getting senile?”

  Stunned, Ed straightened his spine. “I just wanted to know whether you would be honoring Fat Tuesday. I didn’t see anything about it in the papers.”

  “That’s because this is a private party, like the sign says. I’m afraid I must ask you to leave.” Doucette’s face darkened. His eyes held something threatening: sinister; baleful; malevolent. Ed relished the resonant synonyms. Maybe he was getting senile. He noticed the menu taped to the inside of the window. “Big Easys” were now selling for four times the price they had when the shop opened.

  “Grandpa!” a voice behind Doucette called.

  “Ian?” His grandson had his arm draped over the shoulder of a pretty but pale, puffy-eyed and much too thin girl. “Mindy?”

  The girl took a moment to focus, smiling crookedly. One of her front teeth was darker than the other. He didn’t remember that. What he remembered was her brilliant smile after her solo at last year’s spring concert. At that concert, he had ribbed Ian about the way he’d looked at her. The girl leaning against his grandson couldn’t manage a solo now if her life depended on it and Ian didn’t look much better. They both stood there smiling and blinking until Doucette ushered them inside. This time, Ed thought he saw a flash of something that made the adjectives baneful and malevolent seem woefully inadequate.

  “Ian!” he called, only to hear the deadbolt slide into place.

  I might be old but I’m not dead and I’m not stupid, he thought as he made his way into the alley behind N’Awlins. He’d be damned if he let his grandson get hurt again. Taking out his cell he pressed speed dial.

  “Ronnie, this is your father.” He decided to skip the rhetorical, “Do you know where your child is?” question. “Ian’s in some kind of trouble. No, not another accident...I don’t have time to explain, just meet me on the corner by N’Awlins, pronto.” Ed didn’t want to be alone with this...whatever it was and Ronnie lived two blocks away. Even if his son thought he was demented too, he didn’t care.

  He took a few steps into the alley, stopping behind a dumpster. A reddish glow filtered out of the narrow windows in the back of the shop. It was ominously quiet. If there was a party, where were the cheerful sounds and cooking smells?

  The back door opened. Doucette and a woman emerged and leaned against the iron balustrade on the stoop. Doucette lit a cigarette and handed it to his companion, then lit another for himself. Both of them laughed suddenly, as if at some private joke. The sound sent shivers up Ed’s spine.

  “What’s going on, Dad?” his son asked quietly, coming up behind him.

  “Shhh. I don’t want those two to catch on we’re back here. They’re up to no good, I know it. Ian is inside.”

  “It’s been almost too easy, boring, even,” the woman with Doucette complained, exhaling langorously. The smoke from her cigarette ribboned toward the alley light. “These kids are like lemmings.”

  “How were they doing when you checked on them?

  “Every last one is asleep. They haven’t got a clue. We’ll just give them more Big Easys when they get up and put on some music, and that will be that, until next time.”

  “That’s where you’re wrong, Cherie. We’re finished here.”

  “Already?”

  “Mais, oui. These kids are tapped out.”

  “You know best. You always have. What now?”

  “We close up shop and go somewhere else.”

  The woman laughed again, a deep, throaty chuckle rich with self-indulgence. “Their parents will be in shock.”

  “They’ll think their kids ran away. I planted a few rumors this afternoon, and their friends swallowed them whole. After two Big Easys, they believe whatever you dish out.”

  “How will we get rid of the waste material?”

  “Burn it, like last time. Go on, get ready.” The woman butted out her cigarette and disappeared.

  “Waste material?” Ronnie whispered. “Dad, what’s going on?”

  “I don’t know. Go call the sheriff. Tell him to get down here right away.” If I call him, he’ll write it off as a crank call, Ed thought.

  Doucette went back inside, allowing Ed to creep down the alley and brace himself against the wall beneath the windows. Light continued to filter through the glass, but he couldn’t hear a sound; then a high, thin wailing arose and was cut off.

  At that, Ed burst inside. To his horror, he saw several kids, including his grandson, attached to what looked like bloodmobile set-ups, only it wasn’t blood collecting inside the bags. The oysterish liquid glowed dully, like the milk glass shades of an antique chandelier.

  “When we started tapping, their essence was much brighter. It happens,” Doucette smirked, emerging from the shadows with a donor bag. Behind him, a girl stared sightlessly at the ceiling: Mindy.

  “She went first,” Doucette said. Never breaking eye contact, he put the bag on the counter, took a syringe out of his pocket and sunk it into the opening, then drew back the plunger.

  “What in hell is going on?”

  Doucette stabbed himself in the back of the hand with the needle, closing his eyes and giving out a hiss of pleasure. Within ten seconds, he appeared younger.

  “It’s funny you should phrase it just that way,” he replied, “You might be much closer to the truth than you realize, even if your phrasing lacks a certain...precision. What you are looking at might be described as hell, more or less. Some would call it home.” Eyes burning he added, “And it won’t be long until your grandson joins us, in a manner of speaking.”

  The truth struck Ed all at once. “Monster! You’re draining these kids dry!”

  “They volunteered themselves, actually, to guarantee a supply of Big Easy. They really like the way it makes them feel.”

  “Ian would never volunteer for this.”

  “Oh, no? Remember: All the Excitement of a Personal Mardi Gras. Besides, the kids think they’re giving blood, something valuable but renewable.” He laughed, widened his eyes and began glimmering with pinpoints of fire, moving purposefully toward the remaining kids, including Ian, last in line. Ed threw himself toward his grandson, using his body weight to tear the IV loose and landing on the boy, who fluttered his eyelids. A siren approached from the end of the alley. Grabbing Ian under the arms, Ed began pulling him out the door.

  “In here, Sheriff!” he cried hoarsely.

  Shoving the groggy boy into his father’s arms Ed went back into the room, the Chief close behind him. Seeing the comatose kids, the Chief looked stunned. He knew mayhem when he saw it.

  “Doucette?” he asked incredulously. “Where is that bastard?”

  Ed pointed at where he’d last seen Doucette, but there was nothing. Nothing but the smell of sulfur and a bright red flyer.

  “Try a Big Easy—50% off, Today Only.”

  A WILDWOOD FLOUNDER, by Leigh Horne

  Lily lurched into the bathroom like a derailed locomotive coming off a blind curve. Grabbing the sink she braced a surge of vertigo and looked up: Oh, God. A matted thatch of tangles humped down her forehead, lowering her brow. Mascara speckled her cheeks and her wet eyes looked hot, like flares spitting fire in a fog. Redmond’s gift teddy hung by one strap; the torn length of the other dangled loosely, threatening to expose her left breast as she listed to the side. The matching thong was missing in action.

  Repelled, she considered herself: Slut. You’re just what all his friends think you are—a pathetic bought whore—and butt-ugly to boot. You could be back at Vixens, if it weren’t for the fan
cy packaging.

  The cold water smelled of metal as she splashed her face, quivering with the nightmare that had launched her out of bed. She could still feel the grit jammed under her nails as she scrabbled to contain the crumbling ball, could feel the rotted burlap and fine, loose earth slipping away until the roots lay stripped in her lap. Choking back a sob, she remembered the mute sapling withering against her chest, while the Swissair attendant refilled her glass with champagne. I know, I know, she appeased the watcher in her mind.

  Two large bruises were blossoming on her lips like a mold: Stupid, stupid slut! Now she would have to trowel on the concealer, but Redmond liked what he liked.

  “To violate your understanding is the only sin,” her mother would have said, quoting one of her precious gurus or another. Not that any of them had helped her all that much, unless she got somehow sanctified after death.

  First her mother, now her. It was like one of those old songs, the ones Nanny sang, like they were about someone else: some other female, a frail Wildwood Flower. She hummed a little, sadly. She was often sad, even wrapped in her mantle of irony:

  He taught me to love him, he called me his flower

  That blossomed for him all the brighter each hour;

  I woke from my dream and my idol was clay...

  My visions of loving have all gone away.

  Or how about:

  Oh, Willie, don’t you murder me,

  I ain’t prepared for eternity.

  Shit. Her eyes misted over and she pushed her offending hair back with an angry swipe: I will not end up like you, Rose Magginis. I swear on your Bible, your Bhagavad-Gita and your hippie-trippy User’s Guide to the Cosmos: Amen, shanti, right on.

  It would be easy to keep the literal part of that promise. Her arteries would never spatter the cheap walls of a single-wide, but she might end up like those roots, stretched across the duvet, empty bottles of Ambien and Absolut at her right hand.

  It wasn’t crazy to imagine Redmond killing her outright, but it really wasn’t his style. He was so damn clever. Before he’d let her leave him, he’d corner her into doing the deed, by crashing through a guard rail or slitting her wrists, convinced it was her only possible move, after writing a note declaring her undying love and unutterable shame. Check, checkmate. Log another one for the Grand Master: He who must never, ever lose.