Disclaimer: The SVM/Sookie Stackhouse series belongs to Charlaine Harris. I'm only borrowing her characters, not profiting from this story.
Ginger was stark raving mad.
At least, that's what you might believe if you listened to Long Shadow, Eric's combo bartender/alligator wrestler. "Whack job," he said of her. "Crazy bitch is a fucking menace."
I tried not to pay too much attention to the sullen bartender/wrestler, who had a complaint for every season. He didn't like the new napkins, which left soggy bits clinging to his glasses, rolled his eyes every time out-of-towners called the gators "crocodiles," and threw away linty pocket change a drunken person left for his tip. All of these problems were apparently just as offensive as the tourists who called him Chief Dundee or war-whooped after one of his shows.
No, I didn't blame him for being mad about the galling racial slurs, but Ginger didn't deserve the brunt of it simply because she wasn't…typical.
"What a shame," Bill had said with pity in his voice when he'd first spotted her, back in her LARC days, with her unusual hide, speckled and streaked vibrantly red. "The things that people do. Can you imagine…using her as a graffiti board like that?"
"You think someone marked her on purpose?" I'd asked.
"Oh, yes. One time I saw a gator spray-painted with the words 'Bite Me.' Or they toss dye on the gators to protect them from hunters." He shook his head. "It's a foolish, misguided effort. Marking them doesn't in any way keep them safe from baited lines. And it puts them at risk of being attacked by another gator."
He'd nodded confidently, as though he'd gotten the inside scoop on Ginger's past. His smugness bugged the hell out of me. "Out of all the possible stories for her, that's the best you can do?" I'd wanted to say, but kept to myself.
I'd never know Ginger's truth either-and I wished she could tell me-but still I spent an embarrassing amount of time coming up with better backstories for her. Like maybe she'd made her nest in a rusted drainage pipe. Or she'd gotten captured and trapped in a basement by three bank robbers who used her to guard their booty. She lurked their quietly, gaining strength and waiting for just the right moment. And then finally one day, she made her move among the stacks of money, causing a big scene by exploding a couple of inactivated dye packs. (The kind they use to deter bank heists.) Dripping red and ghastly-looking, she scared off the bad guys with her thrashing and growling and escaped into the wild.
Or, I mean...something like that.
Of course none of the stories had a truly happy ending, because eventually she'd landed at LARC. Now she was in a holding tank, where Eric had had to put her for the "trouble" she'd caused. Or as Long Shadow liked to point out, for the trouble she had caused him, the one who'd had to do the actual capturing and transferring. He was one disgruntled employee.
"She was fine and good while you thought she was still performing," I pointed out to both Eric and Long Shadow.
Long Shadow snorted. "When? When she was swimming around the tank with her fucking mermaid show? I knew it then—we shoulda pulled her."
Mermaid Show wasn't such a bad name for Ginger's behavior, and I kinda liked it. She'd become quite a stand-out among the other gators in the tank, silently lurking just at the surface of the water, all eyes and nostrils. A whole pool of them, floating buttons and baubles.
But Ginger…she'd started showing herself. More than once, I'd seen her full length weaving among the dark bodies in the tank, her curvaceous tail winding her forward. She was eight-feet long and 300 pounds, and the space was tight, but still, she managed to move playfully, if you can think of a gator that way. Here and there, without any obvious reason, she'd dip and bob. She'd made for a great show. Bar patrons bored with the brooding type had loved Ginger's wild, outlandish performance.
It all would have been fine and good except for one thing: Ginger seemed to have forgotten what was edible and what wasn't. She preyed on any garbage floating in her tank, like sticks, water lilies, a clump of tissues, a water bottle, and somebody's baseball hat, to name a few. Everything she treated with her same level of energy: chunks of rotten meat and cardboard Fangtasia beer coasters, tossed like Frisbees, all got devoured enthusiastically. She had plenty of mean-spirited "fans" who made a sport of her confusion.
Eric didn't care so much what her story was, but he'd had to move her away from the public eye because he couldn't keep his patrons from mucking up one of his main tanks. Also, she'd attacked a bull. Now she was costing him money in the "holding tank," which was more like solitary confinement.
"She's lonely in there," I told him.
Long Shadow scoffed at me. "Alligators don't make friends. Did you see the chunk she took out of Chow?"
Eric eyed me coolly, challenging me.
"Why not try putting her in with T-Rex?" I suggested, choosing on this occasion to refer to Bruce by Eric's preferred name for him.
Long Shadow huffed. "So now you want me to wrangle her out of that holding tank and then stand by while we set her loose on our biggest gator? She won't win that battle, Blondie, and I'm not going after her when she gets in over her head."
I nearly laughed, given how lackadaisical and unconvincing their star gator had been. He'd had as much vim and vigor as a sunken cypress log. Long Shadow's biggest flaw was his stupidity, and this time, I suspected he was also being lazy; he had no trouble wrestling any gator when it was part of a performance that showcased him. Unless maybe the real problem here was that he didn't like being upstaged by a so-called crazy bitch gator.
So I spoke directly to Eric. "I bet Chow tried to mount her. Females usually won't accept a bull smaller in size, and Ginger was the biggest one in that other tank." She had some heft to her, topping out on the scale for female gators. Crazy or not, she could hold her own; I was sure of it.
Long Shadow started to speak, but I cut him off. "And who knows, she might tweak T's interest. You know what that means." A bull gator who wants to mate makes a big scene with lots of bellowing and head thrashing. "What with the size of him, he'll look fierce." I let that sink in for a moment before I added, "Plus T's tank already has a better fence for keeping out the trash."
Eric looked to Long Shadow, whose tight grimace told me that he knew the deal was done. And that I hadn't made a new friend.
"She's dog food," he finally said, stepping closer to me. "Woof-woof." This last bit he said too close to my face, with an expression I could only describe as "knowing."
I had a whole lot of choice words I wanted to say to that asshole, but I kept my mouth shut since I figured I'd already won this particular battle. He stared me down—I didn't flinch—until Eric finally told him to "get back to work." He stalked off, leaving Eric, me, and one colorful mermaid-gator that looked woefully cramped in her solitary tank. No room for flips and turns. I wished I had some rancid chicken for her.
"Soon," I promised her. "You'll have more space to play."
What I didn't say out loud, to her or Eric, was that once I'd seen a program on the Discovery Channel about alligators that mate for life. Because maybe that's the stuff of romance. Of happily-ever-after fairy tale endings.
vV\/vv\/Vv
My great grandfather was shirtless, sunning himself in a grassy patch off his back porch, when I arrived at his house.
"How you doing, Grandfather?" I called out to him. "It's Sookie."
He turned and stood as though presenting himself for inspection, with his pants unzipped and his boxers gaping wide. His face was blank.
"Hello," I said again, forcing myself to not react strongly to his mode of dress. Or lack thereof.
"I think that man Murray came back."
"He did?" I had no idea who Murray was.
"Yes, and the hot water heater isn't working again."
"Oh…" Now I understood. Sort of. Claude had told me that the hot water heater had broken last week, and when Hank Clearwater had come to fix it, Grandfather had gotten belligerent with him, accusing him of "trying to drown us all." Somehow he'd gotten his stories mixed up, blending bits and pieces of present and past in a way that wasn't real. Though I was sure it seemed real to him, which was frightening enough.
"How 'bout you pull yourself together and I'll come in for a hug?"
"He's not on our side."
"Hmm. Can you zip up your pants, there?"
He looked down and zipped his fly as far as it would go, which was far enough to be decent.
I brushed his uncombed hair from his shoulders, remarkably smooth, pale, and unblemished. "Let's get you tidied up." I took the spare elastic tie around my wrist and pulled his hair into a ponytail. There. "That oughta feel better, right?"
He nodded. "Better. Yes."
"Just let him be," Claude had told me last time. "What does it matter what he looks like out here in the middle of nowhere?"
"It matters to me," I'd said. "I'm uncomfortable around a man who shouldn't be naked in front of me." Claude had scoffed, but I'd pressed my point. "And besides, it's basic decorum to be dressed when you're entertaining friends and family." I'd wanted him to be comfortable, but it hadn't seemed right to let everything slide just because he'd lost awareness of social expectations. It's not the way he'd have wanted it.
"What would you like to do today?" I asked my grandfather.
He began to walk.
"Wait a minute. Let's tell Claude I'm here. Can you wait a minute?"
"Yes. I can wait a minute."
I climbed the back porch steps, only to find a note tacked to the door: Sookie, gone out on errands. Claude.
Damn that Claude, leaving our grandfather alone. He'd known I would be coming, but what if I had gotten held up? How long had he been gone?
"Claude went out on errands," I said aloud.
"On errands," he parroted. He removed a coat from the porch railing and put it on over his bare skin. I realized it was a tuxedo jacket, and that his pants had satin stripes on the sides. Definitely an unusual daytime look, but one I couldn't quibble with.
He resumed walking and tripped on an old garden trowel that had been left out to rust. I picked it up, ran back to slip it under the porch railing, and returned to link my arm in his and guide him toward his workshop.
Great Grandfather's workshop was a modern structure that sat like a cube, tucked into a clearing at the edge of the woods. It was a beautiful space, with skylights and huge spans of windows and wood. On one wall, there was a fireplace, flanked by floor-to-ceiling cabinets. A large island occupied the middle of the room, where he did his work. A long, low, padded bench stretched on one whole side. Claudette used to stay here too, roaming freely most of the time.
"New girl," Claudette would say of me when I'd enter this space. "New-girl-new-girl-new-girl."
She was smart, that bird. Now I saw her cage, which Grandfather had insisted remain after she'd died, was gone. He hadn't even mentioned her today.
On impulse, I opened cabinets. He'd always kept this space clean, but today I noted that it had been completely emptied out. Bugger, wouldn't that be just like Claude to sell his stuff to pocket the cash? I gave myself a shake, reminding myself that medical bills were already mounting. My grandfather shouldn't be using his tools anyway. But… all of them?
I shook myself again. It did no good going over it now. Grandfather was looking more and more lost the longer we stood there. Even anchored to his workstation, gliding his hands over the burnished top, he still looked like he didn't belong in his own space. Without purpose. Maybe we could put something else out here for him to do. Exactly what, I didn't know. A needlepoint kit? Sketch pads and pencils? Clay? Jigsaw puzzles? I'd have to think on it and ask Claude for ideas, too.
"Let's go for a walk in the woods," I suggested.
He strode for the door.
The woods were Great Grandfather's playground, the inspiration for his work, and the place he went to unwind. For years, he tinkered on his land back there. Together, we'd often strolled the trails I'd come to know well too.
But today I was astounded.
"Wow," I said, at a loss for words. A large section of the forest had been…tidied. "It looks like you've done a lot of work here."
Next to me, my grandfather stooped to pick up a stray twig at my feet. It was one of only a handful of other twigs that lay strewn across the path in front of us. He gathered them one by one.
Apparently this was what he'd done with all of the other fallen branches in the forest. He'd collected them, snapped them into manageable pieces, and then used them to edge both sides of the paths. I watched as he neatly and precisely tucked the twigs he'd just picked up into the thick, rope-like bundles. They wound through the forest like twinned snakes.
Was it a labor of love? Boredom? A practical way to keep from getting lost? I didn't know. "Tell me about what you've been doing out here," I tried, but he merely toed the path.
I looked up again at the forest around us. Beyond my initial surprise, there was something unsettling here that I only began to understand as I took it all in, like one of those What's-Wrong-with-this-Picture puzzles that you get when you're a kid.
It was what he'd done to the trees.
From about as high as he could reach down to the ground, all of the branches had been removed. On the tree closest to me, I could see little stubs, some still green, from where they'd been snapped. Even as I stood there with him, he broke a twig by his shoulder that was starting to bud.
The effect was this: all of the forest around us had become a chilling space, full of rigid verticals, stiff upright columns with no natural messiness and flow. Barren and much too quiet. It hadn't simply been landscaped; it had been gutted. Overhead, the tree canopy, rustling with stray birds, covered us like a thin cap. Bizarrely, I thought of our 8th-grade science teacher, the toupee-wearing man Jason had called "Baldylocks." It wasn't funny—then or now—but now I had a new awareness that anything more than a gentle breeze would expose us.
This place was downright creepy.
And I really wanted my great grandfather to say something. Anything.
"All of these branches and twigs!" I said as I bent to neaten a section of edging, though it hardly needed it. "It must have taken you a long time."
He didn't acknowledge me and started walking. When he showed no signs of stopping, I trotted to catch up. Then, as he reached the far side of the trail loop, he stepped across the clear boundary marking the beginning of the unmanicured part of the forest. At once, I was frightened for him. So long as he stayed on his paths, I figured, he couldn't lose his way.
"Let's follow your trails," I suggested, even though I really didn't want to stay here. He'd spent days and days out here, probably without Claude's supervision. If I left his established paths with him, what would he do next time he was alone? "Could you tell me more about the types of trees in here?" I asked, hoping to distract him.
But he waved me off. "I want to show you a special place. It's magical." He strode ahead, sure-footed, off-trail. "Come with me. I know you'll follow."
He was already fifteen yards beyond of me, clambering over a fallen tree. And judging from his determined pace, I doubted he'd stop for anything short of being dragged home.
"All right," I called as grabbed for my phone to see that it was good and charged. "Wait up!"
vV\/vv\/Vv
"Watch it," Bill directed, holding his hand up to shield his eyes from the shine of my headlamp. We were in his skiff, patrolling the area of the bayou near Terry's house, looking for our gator.
Only moments ago, we watched the coiling trail of a cottonmouth, and now I was embarrassed to have the heebie-jeebies, jumping at the whine of every little mosquito in my ear and every rustle of undergrowth along the bank. The frogs were out in great force, stirring up such a steady racket they faded into the background. Here and there, we'd seen a gator, but nothing that looked big enough to be the one we were chasing.
It was as if the beast knew we were onto him. We had a lot of quiet time to fill as we sat and watched.
"I saw Victor's picture in the paper, out at the country club with his captured gator."
"Yes," Bill answered. "That didn't take him long."
"Now what?" I asked, feeling even more spooked as I thought of Victor prowling around us. All kinds of creatures go bump in the night on the bayou. "We can't keep sending him off on other high profile gators."
"No." Bill paused. "I suspect not." I could hear the grimness in his voice, even if I couldn't see the familiar hard set of his mouth. "But Victor has his hands in all kinds of trouble at the LDWF."
I thought about that for a moment. "Things he wouldn't want others to know about?"
Bill didn't answer.
"I don't think I like the sound of that." Suddenly I had the feeling that I was trailing a whole sequence of problems. That we were going after increasingly larger predators, when I'd be happy enough to keep the focus as low as I could on the food chain. How strange was my life that a massive gator ranked so low?
"I'll handle it. You needn't worry about it. I've only done some quiet checking around so far."
I was about to appeal to Bill's sensibilities—how his duck wing data belonged to the LDWF, not him—when I realized that was good enough reason to trust him. That whatever reasons Bill had for helping—whether it was to help me or get Victor or both—he wasn't going to jeopardize the career he'd struggled to build.
And who else was gonna sit with me in the middle of the bayou in the middle of the night to hunt for a monster illegally?
"All right," I said, rolling my neck and shoulders to release the tension, and I was placated enough to let this conversation drop for now.
We sat in silence for a few more moments before Bill asked the inevitable question, about how my great grandfather was doing. I told him about our trip into the woods and the way he'd "landscaped" it. I still got the willies thinking about it, especially sitting here in the dark.
But Bill had a different perspective. "Hmm," he mused. "That's interesting."
"What is?"
"Well, perhaps he's trying to tell you something. He's not telling you directly, but he's showing you. Like…installation art or…in this case it would be better to call it land art. I suppose since he was cleaning the forest in your presence, you could even say it was performance art."
"I get it," I said crossly. My great grandfather was the only artist in my family, and also apparently the only one who could appreciate art, a fact that Bill had made me painfully aware of when he'd taken Ms. Selah Pumphrey—not me—to the art museum in Baton Rouge.
"What do you think he wants you to know?" he asked, ignoring my irritation.
I swallowed hard. I hadn't told Bill about my grandfather's specific request. Hadn't voiced it out loud to anyone yet, nor was I ready to do so this evening. "He seemed most interested in showing me another part of his property," I said. Without telling Bill exactly what my grandfather had shown me, I went on to describe how he had guided me there without getting lost or looking confused once.
"That's interesting," he said again. "I know of people hanging onto memories for far longer than you'd expect, for those things that are…over-learned."
"Mm-hmm. That's just how it felt. It was like he went on instinct. And when it came time to go back, I made sure to let him take the lead. He guided us straight home. Though I think if I had asked him outright, 'Where's your house?' he would have gotten confused."
"Miss Caroline's late husband could play a good hand of Bridge almost up until the day he couldn't breathe. But if you'd have given him a math test, he'd have fared worse than a second grader."
I considered what that must have been like for him. "Do you think he knew?" I asked. "Was there a part of him that was aware of all he'd lost?"
Bill chuckled. "Of course we all joked that he wasn't about to let Miss Caroline have the last say. But as for whether he really knew…he had moments. Fleeting moments. As well as times when he was terrified without seeming to know why."
"That's awful," I said abruptly, the words coming from my gut and leaving a bad taste in my mouth.
"Yes. Yes, it was," Bill answered with equal candor.
"Like he couldn't…"
"…quit."
Old Mr. Bellefleur had reached the very end of bare functioning, hanging on until his brain couldn't even direct breathing. Great Grandfather would call that life lower than a reptile. He wouldn't want that particular ending for himself. He'd hate it.
I started to cry, angry that his fate could be so dependent on me. I even started to wish he'd taken matters into his own hands months ago.
"Sookie," Bill said quietly.
His tone was intent enough that I knew to look up, into the direction of his lamp.
The glowing red eyes of the alligator were visible. But he'd brought his head up too, massive.
"That's a dinosaur," Bill declared. "Surely big enough to eat a catahoula. A small child too."
I grabbed my rifle, never taking my eyes off him, and lined him up in my site. I was aiming for a quarter-size spot at the back of his skull. Anything else would be deflected off his bony plates.
"Little Debbie," I whispered.
"Excuse me?"
"That's what I'm calling him. Because after I've shot him, I'm going to cut him up in snack-size bites, roll him in cornmeal and spices, and fry him." And because that was the mood I was in.
"That's one big-ass hors d'oeuvre," Bill muttered, so out-of-character I put aside my rifle for a moment. I had to look at him sideways to avoid blinding him with my lamp. He was gazing out at our target, nodding his head.
"Aren't you gonna tell me that based on his size, that gator is likely a male and therefore Little Debbie isn't the best nickname?"
He shrugged. "No, because you just said so yourself."
I started to line him up again in my site, but Bill interrupted me once more. "Didn't you have a grill cook at one time named Debonair?"
"I don't think so. Maybe. We seem to go through them fast enough that I can't keep track."
I put my rifle up again.
"Little Debbie," he whispered.
"May I do this now?" I snapped, and he quieted. But I wasn't really angry. In fact, the little exchange with Bill had lopped off the worst of my anger, distracted me enough from the things that were really bothering me. A little anger is good. Too much gets in the way of good shooting.
I breathed. Here and there a breeze wafted, thick with the musky scent of our gator. The boat drifted and our heads bobbed, bouncing the light across the water. One shot. That's all I'd get. Breathe. Because after I fired my rifle, he'd go under deep. Nearly there…nearly…at that space…where the gun, my target, and me lock in...one more…
Plink.
He was gone.
Outta there.
Just…disappeared.
He'd slipped into his dark and watery world before I'd even had a chance to pull the trigger. I brought my gun down. "Where'd he go?"
Bill started to paddle. I grabbed the treble hook, a three-pronged hook attached to a line, and started tossing it out. I let the hook sink, and then when I thought it had sunk enough, I tugged it to try to snag him. It was hit or miss at best, given I didn't have a good idea which way he traveled or how deep. After a few tries I threw the whole thing in a heap on the bottom of our boat.
We sat, scanning the bayou with our lamps. I didn't hold my breath. Little Debbie could. Hold his breath, that is. Stay under for an hour or more. And he was probably smart enough to do just that.
For Pete's sake, why couldn't something be easy for a change?
"Let's call it a night," I finally said. "Mosquitos are getting to me."
"Sweetheart." Bill reached up and flicked a switch to turn off my head lamp, and then removed it. It was a small improvement, at least.
I pulled out my ponytail, ran my fingers across my scalp, and refastened the elastic tie. "Sooner or later, I'll get him."
"I hope you do," he said quietly.
vV\/vv\/Vv
From up close, near the front, the Rest Easy Nursing Home can fool you of its stateliness.
Step away from the extra-wide door, cross the porch, and then you're down a gentle ramp and onto the cement sidewalk. From there, it's only a few steps across a measly strip of lawn to the road, curving and heavily-traveled. Its crosswalk, repainted every now and then for safety's sake, meets up with skidding cars as orderlies, nurses, and other staff dressed in patterned tops dart across. If you make it to the other side of the street—alive—to the parking lot, you can gain a better sense of the structure, with its blocky, red brick appendages sticking out from both sides. Stubby, the whole building appears to have stopped itself up short at the curb.
"It's not so bad," my friend, Amelia Broadway said in her upbeat tone, stroking one of four white fluted columns. She peered up, probably looking for birds' nests or cobwebs, or whatever other critters might lurk up there. Then she turned her attention downward. "Nice planters," she said of the gigantic Grecian-style urns, which overflowed with late-blooming spring bulbs and trailing greenery. "Those are expensive to maintain," she added, and I knew she was speaking as a property owner who had to pay for professional landscapers.
"You want me to ring the bell?" she asked, and suddenly I was second-guessing myself over why I was here.
"Just a minute," I said, pausing to remind myself that I hadn't yet been able to find a way to help my great grandfather as he'd asked of me. Helping someone die, it's not like trying to find a good recipe for a chocolate cake. Or teaching yourself how to caulk your tub. But aside from that, I'd felt like I'd needed to look into alternatives too. Amelia had heard through the grapevine about my grandfather's illness; when she'd offered to introduce me to a nursing home director who was a business associate of her father's, I'd accepted.
Next to me, Amelia shifted her purse. "All right," I said, leaning forward to ring the bell. After all, I wasn't doing anything difficult today, like committing my great grandfather to someone else's care. Just...doing a little information-gathering. Due diligence. A petite woman wearing a nametag identifying herself as "Melanie" opened the door.
"Good morning and welcome to Rest Easy!" she said, glancing at her clipboard. "I'm guessing you are Sookie Stackhouse and Amelia Broadway?"
"That's us!" Amelia answered, as though Melanie had won the Grand Prize. "I'm Amelia and this is Sookie. We were referred by my father, Copley Carmichael."
Melanie's eyes skipped over me as though I were invisible before landing on Amelia. I didn't think it had anything to do with Amelia's connections, but Amelia apparently did. She stood up a bit straighter and flashed one of her perkiest smiles.
"We don't get too many visitors at this time of the day," Melanie said. "And I knew you weren't the leader of the Wolf Cub Scout den." She winked.
Amelia sniggered, as though she'd already been let in on an inside joke.
"They won't last long."
"Oh?" Amelia prodded.
Melanie waved her hand. "They're cute little buggers, eager to play board games and so on." We passed through another set of doors leading into a small lobby. There was the requisite seating arrangement, table, magazine/brochure display, and potted plant, along with an empty alcove for parking wheelchairs and electric scooters. "But if they're in it just for the badges," she continued, laughing in a way that verged on a cackle. "Let's just say our residents aren't easily fooled." She shrugged, "But if Mr. Herveaux wants to give it a try…"
"A fine morning to you, ladies!" a man named Rasul called to us from behind a reception desk .
"Good morning!" Amelia answered, wandering closer to him.
"Our front desk is staffed 24-7, and all visitors are required to sign in." Melanie waved her clipboard. "But I got you this time."
"Next time, then," Rasul assured us. His eyes lingered over me longer than necessary, though he wasn't staring. I'd call him curious, as opposed to the type like Melanie who can't meet my eyes without a nervous shift.
I gave him a wave and a thank you as he buzzed us through the next set of double doors, which led right past a large lounge/activity room. With a quick glance, I could see a few tables and seating areas arranged with plenty of space for wheelchairs and walkers. Melanie would have led us straight to our meeting—"The director will bring you back to see this room," she said—but I stopped, surprised to find not one, but two of Gran's friends.
"Good morning, Mr. Norris!" I said to the man wandering toward me and whistling an aimless tune. He smiled, nodded his head, got within five feet of me as though he was going to start a conversation, but then abruptly switched directions. He looked like he had a plan as he headed to the bulletin board, but once he got there, he turned around and set off in another direction, bouncing around the room like a happy, lazy pool ball.
Gran's other friend, Mrs. Velda Cannon, was having a much worse day. Her hair was wild—combed, but frizzy and unstyled—a sad reminder of her, my gran, and Everlee Mason with their beauty parlor hairdos and matching shoes and pocketbooks, gathered outside the church on a Sunday afternoon, fanning themselves with bulletins and planning their annual strawberry festival.
Today, Mrs. Cannon squirmed and swatted at her wheelchair as a boulder-of-a-man named Bert wiped it and said, "It's all gone now. See?"
She wailed in a voice too weak to work up any real oomph.
"Mrs. Cannon?" As I approached her, I watched for any sign of recognition in her eyes. She was utterly frightened, though not of me. Pushing at her chair, she was trying to escape from it with arms that weren't strong enough to hold her own weight.
"Are you a friend?" Bert asked.
He had a scar on his face too, slicing diagonally across his cheek. Amelia would later describe him as "tough," on account of his "hard as bricks muscles."
I nodded at Bert and bent to get closer to Mrs. Cannon. "Mrs. Cannon?" I tried again.
She still hadn't acknowledged me, and I felt like I was speaking to the air, but I thought that doing anything less than trying to carry on a conversation with her would be dishonoring her. "Mrs. Cannon, I'm Sookie, Adele's granddaughter."
She looked up in a beseeching manner, though still without any recognition. "They're back," she cried, swiping at her chair.
"Spiders," Bert explained. "She thinks they're crawling up her chair, spinning webs."
I wanted to ask if she was like this always, but somehow it felt too personal. And anyway, I could see she was tormented. If ever the word tormented applied, it was to Mrs. Cannon, trapped in a bizarre dream-like world without the mental framework to find her way out. Her disease had taken too much of her.
Reluctantly, I left her to take the grand tour, led for us by the director, a woman named Sophie-Anne LeClerq, who seemed young enough to work here as a summer camp counselor, leading residents through rounds of banana Bingo and wheelchair aerobics. But Sophie-Anne was ethereally elegant in a white pantsuit and a blood-red, beaded necklace. She spoke in a calm, steady tone that conveyed maturity. And no tolerance for nonsense. I had a feeling she ran a tight ship.
As we took the tour, I was vaguely aware of the rhythm of the conversation: Amelia's blithe chattering followed by Sophie-Anne's professional, tamed and tethered responses. Here and there I broke in with a question. There was nothing stellar or wrong about the place—aside from the outrageous price tag—but all along, I couldn't shake the image of a frightened Mrs. Cannon. Before we left, I stopped by the front desk.
"I wonder if I could trouble you for something," I asked Rasul.
He raised an eyebrow. "And what might that be, sweet woman?"
"It's Sookie." I offered him a handshake. "Masking tape?"
With a smoothness worthy of note, Rasul reached into his drawer.
"Thank you, kindly," I reached for the roll on his extended palm. He held onto it for one second longer than he needed to.
"Don't get into any trouble with that," he said.
I made a cross-my-heart motion, which drew his eyes downward.
Amelia followed me into the lounge area, where a limp Mrs. Cannon was now moaning, as though she'd run out of steam to let anyone know how frightened she still was. Basically, she'd just given up. For a moment, I saw the spiders too, wrapping their layers of silken threads around her until she'd be fully bound. And then they'd bite.
I shook myself and squatted in front of Mrs. Cannon, not without another look from Bert.
"Mrs. Cannon," I tried again, "I'm Sookie, Adele Stackhouse's granddaughter." My words weren't registering any better than they had earlier, but I seemed to be distracting her well enough. "I was thinking about the day we all went for a ride to tour the battlefields and Civil War museum." As I talked, I wound the tape around the shiny reflective parts of her wheelchair that she'd been batting at. I took care to wrap it smoothly, so there was no gape or bump. "We had a lot of fun that day. I still have a picture of you, my gran, Everlee Mason, and Maxine Fortenberry in front of General Lee's statue."
Her eyes were riveted on my hair.
"She gets ahold of your hair, you won't like it none," Bert warned.
I took his words to heart and pulled back. She settled for a moment. Another hulking man, also named Bert—which made me do a double take—joined us. We all waited. I prayed the tape would ease her agitation.
"Looks like they're showing the movie Field of Dreams," Amelia noted.
One of the Berts grunted.
"And tomorrow night a speaker is coming in to talk about baseball. Grilled hotdogs for dinner."
I looked around the room. There were a few folks in wheelchairs parked out of the main line of traffic, in places that gave them a decent view of things. Notably absent was a TV. At one table, a group of residents were using sewing cards. One person was working on a jigsaw puzzle with large pieces. There were two easels ready for use, though neither of them had any takers. And on one of the sofas, a man and woman sat snuggled against each other. He'd wrapped his arm around her as she leaned her head against his chest and played with his shirt buttons.
And then just like that, Mrs. Cannon began wriggling again, panic wilding her eyes. I wanted to give her a hug and tell her everything was okay, but I'd only scare her more. Not to mention the fact that everything was not okay.
"Is there anything that will help calm her?"
"Drugs," one of the Berts answered.
"Will you give her something?" Whatever that "something" was, I didn't want her to suffer any more.
"After I take off this tape," Bert answered, annoyed.
I took the roll back to Rasul and traded it for a couple of tissues.
"You're breaking my heart." He patted at his chest.
I swiped at my wet cheeks. Stupid. It was stupid to think there'd be an easy fix. Though maybe she'd take to a plush toy, like a teddy bear or a stuffed cat. Trading dignity for comfort would be okay in this case. Anything to ease the torment. Or even…
"May I bring my cat to visit?" I asked Rasul.
"We have a pet program," he answered.
Amelia nodded knowingly and chattered on about the non-profit group she'd heard about that pairs abandoned pets with nursing homes. It gave me time to take another look around the room with its carefully-positioned furniture, low-pile rug—light green with a tan border—tall windows, and framed photographs of the bayou. Cypress Trees at Sunset. Water Hyacinth with Dragonfly. Fisherman's Bounty.
"There was no harm in trying the tape." Amelia patted me on the arm. She was right, but I didn't want to hear it in her uber-cheerful voice, from someone who'd never had to struggle for anything. She'd always had one cushion or another—connections, money, a dad to swoop in and fix things. Picking yourself up from a blow is a lot easier when you don't have to start from scratch, dirt-poor.
"Poor Pitiful Pearl," my Gran would tell me if she were here.
She was right about that-it does no good wallowing in self pity. And I wasn't being fair to Amelia.
But some days are harder than others.
vV\/vv\/Vv
"I know someone," Eric said in his quiet, simple tone.
We were sitting in his kitchen, the homiest room in his house, the only one that hadn't been decorated to high heaven. He hadn't bothered with it, owing to the fact that he was a terrible cook. He hadn't cared to try. But he could make the best cup of coffee ever. He drank it all the time to keep himself away from other beverages of choice.
I grasped my mug, which was now cold. For nearly an hour, I'd told Eric about my great grandfather and his terrible decline. Until now, I'd kept the details of his disease to myself, out of respect for his privacy, but today they spilled out. Watching a loved one suffer, beginning to lose himself and become that thing that had taken over…it had become too much to deal with on my own.
"She's a physician in Houma," Eric prompted.
"I'm sorry?" I looked up from the pattern of scratches on his countertop. Slices running like hashtags.
"Dr. Amy Ludwig," Eric said.
"Alzheimer's is her specialty?"
There was a significant pause. "She's willing to work outside the bounds."
"Oh!" I flinched, and the crowded thoughts in my head suddenly blanked.
Eric waited. I felt my face flush and my throat tighten, and when I didn't speak—couldn't—he said, "It's what he asked, yes?"
I nodded, reminded of the descent of my Google search. Alzheimer's stages. Alzheimer's cause of death. Palliative care. Death with dignity. Assisted suicide. Euthanasia. And eventually on to the "How to" manuals.I'd written off a few options I'd learned about because I figured there'd be no way I could reasonably help my great grandfather carry them out. And others…they were unspeakable.
"I tried," I said, when I found my voice. "I mean, I started to look into it and…well, there aren't many good options. It's not like I can move him to Oregon where it's legal." Technically, though, it probably wouldn't even be legal there.
"Right." He crumpled a napkin and tossed it into the trash. "Dr. Ludwig can help him." He stood to pour himself another cup.
Numbly, I nodded again.
"Sookie?" Now he was holding the pot up to me.
I didn't want more, but pushed my cup toward him and watched curiously as he went about the motions in his kitchen, topping it off, stopping when I held up my hand, and adding the rest to his cup, right up to the brim. He let it sit there while he emptied the basket of his coffee maker and lined it with a new filter. "She'll procure the drugs for you and tell you how to use them," he said as he added heap after heap of coffee he'd ground earlier this morning.
Then he rejoined me, sitting at the barstool next to mine. From here, we could see his back yard, sloping down to a fence, which remained unlocked and sometimes even half open. I wondered how often he and his neighbors had trouble with gators straying from the man-made pond fifty yards away. The Super Green lawn that extended right up to the edge of the water had no good bare patches for a muddy slide. No tall, errant weeds for hiding. But plenty of dogs for the taking. Their owners walked them along the surrounding path and sat, on cooler days, beneath young trees that cast only wisps of shadows.
"I thought I had her number. It should be here," he said, irritated as he swiped and tapped his phone.
"Hmm." I said.
No swimming, the signs reminded. The warnings were posted on bronze metal plaques spaced evenly around the pond.
"I'll have to get it for you later." He set his phone on the counter, shoved it away, and then stopped to look at me.
Aside from a little glitch in obtaining a phone number, this matter was already settled for Eric. I thought for a moment about how nice it must be inside his head, his thoughts all neat and orderly and tidy. Resolved.
"Sookie," he prompted.
I had an urge to touch him, to put my hands on his smooth cheeks. I reached out. If Eric thought my gesture was odd, he didn't show it, holding completely still and silent. Within myself, Velda Cannon and Reverend Collins were at war with each other, pulling me in two different directions. Velda suffering her dark endless passages strung with sticky webs and spiders. The Reverend preaching his messages of the sanctity of life and Thou Shalt Not Kill.
I slid my hands down to Eric's solid shoulders, a good place for gripping him. My fingers pressed, digging into muscle, following the band above his collar bone. His tee was soft and thin enough that I felt the warmth of his skin through the fabric. I worked all the way to the edge of his shoulders and down his upper arms to slip beneath his sleeves, where I stroked.
But it never came, that sense of resolution and peace I'd been looking for.
And then the tears flowed again. I'd already cried through a heap of tissues today—all of them, in fact. Eric panicked as he realized the box on the counter was empty. Without that fallback, he grabbed the rim of my barstool to tug me closer, snugged up against his seat as close as they'd go. The metal feet clattered and vibrated across the tile floor in a jarring way, and I had to open my legs wide to accommodate the position.
"He's family," I cried, leaning my head into his chest. "I don't want to have to let him go."
There. I'd said the selfish thing: that I wanted to hold onto whatever inkling of him I could have, even though I didn't want to see him suffer.
Eric's arms circled around me. I felt the weight of them, holding me close to him, and the light brush of his thumbs, stroking patterns on my back. Circles and zig zags. Under his lovely silence, I could hear my own breathing, harsh but even as I felt my loved ones drawing out of me. Claudine. Cousin Hadley. Gran. Aunt Linda. Grandpa Mitchell. My mother. My father.
I rubbed my hands along the ridge of his thigh muscles. Claudine. Hadley. Gran…What's gone is gone.
I pushed out one last forceful breath and then quieted. Eric released me from his arms and slipped his hand under my chin, tilting my face toward his. After a moment of steady gazing, his mouth came to mine with a gentle kiss, with lips so soft they nearly retreated. Before long I found myself pressing my mouth against his more insistently, working my fingers along his worn denim, until finally, I felt the thrust of his tongue.
"Sookie," he said, throaty, as he pulled back.
My heart pounding and my head swimming, I opened my eyes. His hand came to my cheek, thumb stroking, as the strong, proud features of his face came into focus. "I love you," he said.
Through tears, I gave him one of my grins, lopsided as always, but real and uncontainable at this moment. He caught me fake smiling once or twice and told me his bullshit meter was going off. But now he grinned back and came in for another kiss with even more energy. His hands slid beneath the waistband of my jeans and under the band of my bra. When he stood and shoved his barstool behind him, I knew that whatever would come next, it would be creative and energetic and wholly satisfying. Something that would give me a cramped thigh and involve at least three rooms in the house. And probably that fur throw on his bed.
"Bring it," I said as my grin changed in tenor.
From there, it was quick work ridding ourselves of pesky clothes. Our focus was so single-minded that only afterward did we notice we'd both missed phone calls.
On his phone and mine too were a string of messages. All from Andy Bellefleur of the Bon Temps police department.