The Wizard's Butler

by Nathan Lowell

  * * *

  Roger spent most of the afternoon researching dementia. Treatments and medications seemed to have some efficacy. Still, he questioned how much of Shackleford’s trouble was dementia and how much was that damned amulet around his neck. The thought rocked him back in his chair, and he stared at the ceiling.

  A few months ago, the idea that he’d be weighing the implications of a magical curse on a patient would have had him considering his own grip on reality. It wasn’t like he could see magic or do magic, but he could see the results. The whiskey didn’t evaporate. The dust didn’t blow away on its own. He had no idea what it might really be, no alternative hypothesis to explain what he’d seen.

  Other than he might be delusional himself. He snorted. It was not an outrageous assumption.

  Pettigrew and her magic wardrobe. The wheelchair that wasn’t. Although that might have been another illusion, since he’d just seen it parked beside the old man’s bed.

  The Shackleford House Butler’s Bible caught his eye. Another artifact that appeared to operate on a magical plane, even if he couldn’t do magic himself. What was the old science-fiction quote about sufficiently advanced technology? Was it better to think the old man and Pettigrew were aliens?

  Did it matter?

  He looked back at the screen open on his desk. This thing did not seem like dementia. Sure, good days and bad days, but the occasions on which Shackleford had exhibited signs of dementia without Naomi in the room had been few. He had to force himself to take a deep breath and question his assumption about the wheelchair. He honestly didn’t know if Shackleford’s behavior had been just an act. Closing his laptop, he checked his notebook. He had chores to do before preparing dinner.

  Chores. That would distract him from the growing concern that Naomi was going to win, that the necklace would steal so much of the old man’s mind that the result would be indistinguishable from dementia.

  * * *

  By dinner time, Roger had calmed himself by falling back on routine. He couldn’t control much, so he worked on what he could—caring for the house, dealing with the evening meal, and setting aside a decanter of whiskey for later.

  He took the tray up to the library at the usual hour. Shackleford sat in his usual seat and looked up from reading the usual book. “Ah, Mulligan.”

  “Dinner, sir.”

  “Excellent. Something the good doctor would approve of, I hope?” He grinned.

  “Chicken Marsala, sir. Whole grain rice. Green beans. I’ve a pie in the kitchen for dessert.”

  “Your cooking lessons paying off, are they?” Shackleford said, crossing to the table on his own two feet and taking his seat.

  “They are, sir.”

  Shackleford leaned over the plate and took a deep whiff. “Smells delightful, Mulligan. Thank you.”

  “You’re welcome, sir.” Roger started for the door but Shackleford spoke again.

  “Mulligan? Did something happen this afternoon?”

  Roger stopped, turning back to see Shackleford looking up at him, a frown on his face. “Your niece stopped by, sir. She didn’t stay long.”

  Shackleford’s gaze seemed to be focused somewhere in midair. “I ... I don’t remember.”

  “She came in, found you in your wheelchair, sir. You spoke briefly and she left. By the time I got back, you’d gone for a nap.”

  “A nap?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Shackleford sighed. “How did I seem? When Naomi was here?”

  “Rather confused, sir. She left believing that you were quite far gone, mentally.”

  “And was I, Mulligan? Quite far gone?”

  “I didn’t think so at the time, sir. Your behavior around your niece is frequently indicative of dementia.”

  “Later?” Shackleford asked.

  “When I came back, I looked in on you, sir. The wheelchair was parked beside the bed.”

  Shackleford’s eyebrows rose. “Really.” He tilted his head a bit sideways and stared at the tabletop for a few moments. “That’s ... unexpected.” He looked back at Roger. “I don’t remember leaving my bed and returning here. Would you check to see if it’s still there?”

  Roger nodded. “Of course, sir.” He went down the hall to the master suite and found the room much as he’d have expected to see it. He made a circuit of the room and straightened the bedclothes in passing before returning to the library. “Nothing out of the ordinary that I could see, sir. Your bed looked like you’d slept in it.”

  Shackleford nodded. “Thank you, Mulligan.”

  “You’re welcome, sir.”

  Roger left him sitting there, picking at the food and staring into the distance. Clearly the old man was getting worse and there was damn all he could do about it.

  * * *

  Halfway through the morning run, Molly nudged Roger with an elbow as they made the turn back toward home. “Earth to Roger. Come in, Roger.”

  Roger laughed. “Sorry.”

  “Deep thoughts this morning,” she said. “You haven’t said three words since we started.”

  Roger shrugged. “Nothing I can really talk about.”

  “Something about that fire the other day?”

  “Yeah. We went over to show the fire inspector around.”

  “That part of butler duties?” she asked, swiping an arm over her forehead.

  “I’m a one-man band. What can I say?”

  “You still like it? Being a butler?”

  “I do. When this gig ends, I’m thinking of going to butler school.”

  “When it ends?”

  “One-year contract. It’s up next summer and I don’t know if it’ll get renewed.”

  “Why wouldn’t it?” she asked. “You stealing the silver?”

  Roger laughed. “No. Nothing like that. Mr. Shackleford is old. His family is worried about him living in the house with just a butler.”

  She cast him a side-eyed glance. “Uh huh,” she said. “Lemme guess. They’ve found a nice assisted living facility for him where he’ll be much happier?”

  Roger shrugged but didn’t comment.

  “It’s more common than you think,” Molly said. “I see it all the time.”

  “You never said where you work,” Roger said.

  “CNA at Bridge House.”

  The name meant nothing to Roger. He shook his head.

  “Assisted living facility. West side, out past the industrial park,” she said. “Not the most glamorous but it keeps me from feeling like a leech on society.”

  “You get many people there who don’t want to be there?” Roger asked.

  “I don’t know if anybody wants to be there,” she said. “Some need to be there. We can take care of them. Make sure they take care of themselves as much as possible. A few of them get pushed there, either by relatives or by conditions.” She shook her head. “Getting old is not for the faint of heart.”

  “How do you know?” Roger asked. “Who needs to be there, I mean?”

  She shook her head. “Some people just fade away before their bodies are ready to quit,” she said. “That’s what scares me the most. The ones who don’t remember themselves. Some have real trouble with short-term memory. Don’t remember they just had lunch ten minutes ago, let alone whether or not they took their medications in the morning. Some have physical issues with muscle control. The hardest cases are when they know what’s going on and can’t do anything about it. There’s not a lot of dignity there.”

  The images she painted in Roger’s head did not make him feel any better about Naomi’s scheming.

  “You have to dress him?” Molly asked. “Mr. Shackleford?”

  “No. He’s not going to be running any marathons but he’s able to feed and dress himself. Showers by himself. Just had a physical and the doctor’s given me some exercises to do with him for strength and balance.”

  “Are you doing them?” she asked. “That’s actually huge.”

  “We haven’t worked it into the dai
ly routine yet,” Roger said.

  “Tai chi,” she said.

  “Really?” Roger asked.

  “Yeah. Moving meditation. Wouldn’t hurt you either.” She grinned at him.

  He snorted and glanced over at her. “You think I need more exercise?”

  She shook her head. “Different muscles. It’s kinda like yoga in that it’s as much about thinking about moving as moving.” She shook her head. “More like training yourself to move without thinking.”

  “Muscle memory,” Roger said.

  She nodded. “You probably trained that way in the army. Do it until you didn’t have to think about it?”

  Roger nodded.

  “We have a couple of patients who can’t pick their spouses out of a lineup but they get up every morning and do their tai chi in the rec center. Long forms. I don’t know what they’re called but they get out and do that same set of moves every day.” She shook her head. “Their bodies are much stronger, better muscle tone. They both have better balance than I do.” She laughed. “I should learn myself, I guess.”

  “You do yoga? Meditate?” Roger asked.

  “I used to do yoga. Fell out of the practice when I started working at the Bridge.” She shrugged and shook her head. “Hard to work it in when you’re working shifts.”

  “You manage to make it out here often enough,” Roger said.

  “Timing is right. Doesn’t matter what shift I’m on, I can usually get this time slot. At least for now. We’re coming up on the quarterly schedule shift and I’ll be just getting home about this time for three months.”

  “You shift every quarter? Not every month?”

  “Yeah. Company policy. They say it helps if the patients see the same people for longer periods of time, so we don’t rotate every few days like some facilities.” She shrugged. “It is what it is.”

  Roger nodded, rolling the ideas around in his head. The open expanse of the ballroom suggested itself as a likely location for some better workouts.

  “Is he fading?” she asked, her voice low—barely louder than their footsteps on the trail or the birds waking in the bushes around them.

  Roger started to answer but his inner guardian shut him down. “I’m not at liberty to say.”

  “For some people, it’s really a good choice,” she said. “Assisted living. Even those with pushy relatives. I suspect it’s the hardest on those closest. Trying to make that kind of decision for somebody else? I think the only harder one might be whether or not to discontinue life support.”

  Roger shook the memories of broken bodies from his mind, or tried to. “Yeah. That’s a tough one.” He swallowed hard. “Tai chi?” he asked, his desperate mind scrambling for some other topic.

  “There are some studios here in the city,” she said. “Google can find them for you.” She grinned.

  He nodded. “Any good exercises for dementia?”

  She shrugged. “Textbooks say ‘keep the mind active by learning new things,’ which is well and good but finding something new to learn? I don’t know.”

  “Why’s that?” he asked.

  “Well, think about it. You go to school in the beginning because you have to, right? You’re a kid. No agency. No say in what or where. Just ‘go there and get good grades.’”

  “Yeah,” Roger said.

  “Later you have to go to get certified so you can get a job.” She shrugged. “There’s a certain amount of agency involved, but for people without the financial resources, it becomes impossible to get ahead of it. Even for some with limited resources.”

  “I never went beyond high school,” Roger said. “Army got me as soon as I graduated.”

  “You got your EMT certification, though, right? Didn’t you tell me that?”

  Roger nodded. “After the army training, it wasn’t that hard.”

  “Didn’t you have to take some classes, though?”

  “Yeah.”

  She shrugged. “But you wanted to take them. You had a reason for those particular classes? You’re thinking of butler school?”

  “Well, probably I’d need to do some preliminary work. Apparently they like their students to have a background in hospitality management.”

  She gave him a look. “You’ve done your homework.”

  He shrugged.

  “Point being most people have reasons for learning something aside from ‘I should learn something to keep my brain active.’ They’re either going because they don’t have the agency to say no, or they’re trying to achieve some end.”

  “I can see that,” Roger said.

  “So if I told you, ‘Go learn something. Anything. It doesn’t matter what,’ what would you do?”

  Roger shook his head. “I don’t know.”

  “Nothing,” she said. “You might look around for something you always wanted to know, but without a use for that knowledge, without engaging your mind in it, it’s useless. It’s not exercising the parts of the brain that it needs to, to get the benefit. People just give up when it doesn’t keep their attention, or doesn’t seem as interesting as it might have been.”

  Roger nodded. “I could see that. Suggestions?”

  “Hobbies are good. Learn a skill that you can apply. Something that doesn’t require you to do something you can’t actually do. A lot of our patients take up art. Sketching, painting. There’s enough technique to learn that it keeps them mentally limber, but the physical requirements are generally within reach. A surprising number of people like bird watching but by the time they get to assisted living, they have trouble getting out into the places where they’re likely to see birds.” She shrugged. “We have a small group of birders. Some of them need wheelchairs to get around, but we organize field trips to accessible parks. Nothing too far away but at least they can get out. That little extra stimulation seems to help.”

  “Change of scenery,” Roger said.

  “Yeah,” she said, pulling up to start the cool-down walk back to the gate. “You worried about him?”

  Roger sighed and thought about it. “Yes,” he said. “He’s a crusty old guy. I kinda like him.”

  She nodded. “It’s hard not to get attached, but nobody gets out alive.” She offered him a sad smile.

  Roger left her at her gate and headed for his shower. He knew Shackleford studied that one book for clues about the necklace and wondered if it was enough. The guy might be a wizard, but his body was human. Roger didn’t think you could reverse dementia. Shackleford’s magical mental state didn’t seem to follow the rules. He pulled the morning paper from its slot and plucked the day’s flower—a delicate, white petaled blossom with a tiny green center and golden stamens.

  Molly had given him a lot to think about. He pulled out his notebook to make some notes while he cooked breakfast—some oatmeal with fruit. Magical or not, when it came to the court hearing—and Roger felt confident that it would, eventually—being able to prove the old man had been looking out for his brain could only help his case.

  * * *

  Roger added the old man’s exercises to the morning routine.

  “I don’t see why I need to do this,” Shackleford said.

  “Doctor’s orders, sir. It will only take a few minutes and, who knows, it might make you feel better.”

  “I don’t feel bad now.”

  “Come on, sir. I’ll do them with you.” Roger stood behind one of the solid wooden chairs and placed a hand on the back for balance. He waited until Shackleford put his book down and stood with him at the next chair. Roger led him through a series of lifts and stretches ending with some squats. After the last set, Shackleford flopped into his favorite chair and picked up a book while Roger poured him a glass of water from the waiting pitcher. “Hydrate, sir.”

  Shackleford took the glass with a poisonous glance at Roger. “Do I strike you as the kind of person that hydrates, Mulligan?”

  “You strike me as the kind of person who might live to a hundred and twenty if he’d just pay as much attentio
n to his body as his mind, sir.”

  Shackleford tilted the glass back and swigged it down, handing it empty back to Roger. “I’m not going to have a mind much longer and that niece is going to have the house, unless I can find a way around the damned amulet.”

  “These exercises will help, sir. Improved blood flow, better strength.”

  Shackleford scowled and took up his book again. “I’m humoring you, Perkins. Don’t push it.”

  “Of course, sir.” Roger took the used breakfast tray back to the kitchen. He’d been tracking the old man’s mental state against the phases of the moon. There definitely seemed to be a correlation. The closer they were to new moon, the fewer mental slips, while the full moon could be something else altogether. At the worst, Shackleford had periods of perfect lucidity interspersed with absolute confusion about basic things like his own name.

  Roger sighed and focused on his duties. Shackleford House may have its pixies and fairies, but it still needed him to manage the more mundane moving parts like laundry, cooking, and keeping track of Shackleford’s schedule of medications and exercise.

  A wet and rainy fall rolled into early winter with a snow storm in November that put an end to outdoor exercise for Roger for a few days until the city cleared the snow and ice from the streets and sidewalks. He still found it uncanny that snow didn’t build up on the sidewalks and drive of Shackleford House. He watched the snow falling from the back door but it melted as soon as it hit the tarmac, leaving the surface wet but never frozen, never snow-covered even as the white stuff piled up on the grass and gardens. If he hadn’t been convinced by then, the snow would have provided the final argument.

  The gray weather continued through Thanksgiving, leaving Roger feeling cooped up and jumpy, even after Shackleford sent him off to have turkey dinner with his folks.

  “Are you sure, sir?” Roger asked.

  “Go, Mulligan. I’ve never been one for these holidays. Once you get to be my age, they turn into maudlin affairs as you remember all the people who’ve passed away.” He shrugged. “Go. Enjoy your family gathering.”