DAY 5: Dead Man Walking

Photo credit: Wikipedia

The House of Assembly was erratically, heated up. The perspiration on the faces of the members buttressed the point.

Grandpa Dexter was giving the matron lip and tearing out his hair while he was at it-so much emotion was driving him to the lip of the drop into madness. It was not exactly oblivious-the reason for his tantrums, that is, was not particularly concealed like the great drops of sweat standing out like overripe balls of pimples on faces of residents of Carune Nursing Home.

Storm winds knocked down the poles in the onset of the storm which was still raging fiercely that night. The standby gennie refused to pick up. The senior class citizens decided to have a verbal equivalent of a Mexican standoff with management. They’d elected to take the situation in their stride-stage a midnight protest cum demonstration. Thus, they clustered here in the general room where meals were served and taken, TV watched, newspapers read, and the old timers did only what only they could do better by unanimous definition-catch up on old times.

Things have taken a wrong turn in Carune. Things were either lying on their backs or sideways or, this was the crux and the worst of the bunch, on their goddam faces-senile faces at best.

            “You got some goddam explaining to do,” Grandpa Dexter said, shaking his twig-like arm at the matron. “This is goddam ridiculous. You got serious explaining to do, I tell you. Nobody ever seen or heard of a more outrageous situation. Do something about that genie before somebody cons out in this hellish heat. Several voices mumbled in agreement.

            “Suck it up, old fella,” Junior, the supervisor said. (Need to look it up on the internet. Find out what these guys are called.)

            “Don’t you fucking patronize me like that, you little twerp.” Grandpa Dexter wheezed. “You mind me now, Junior. Beware.”

            “And what are you gonna do huh, old fella? Pick your nose and cry like a baby?” He let out a little chuckle.

            “Quit it, Junior. That’s enough,” the matron said. This is no time for target practice.” She turned to Grandpa Dexter. “We are doing everything we can to bring the gennie up to speed. It should be up in no time so, I suggest you all get back to our rooms and stay in doors till electricity’s restored. I don’t need anybody tumbling off the stairs and knocking off a few teeth.” She swung around to face Junior. “Junior will lead-guide-you.”

            “This is ridiculous,” Grandpa Dexter said.

            “Ridiculous,” echoed the faces spread across the length of the shadow-haunted room.

            “Betty, here is scared of the dark. A handful of the others, too. You want to have something; a paraffin lamp would be a start, up in their rooms to keep ‘em from lunging into a seizure or worse, have a heart attack.”

            “Please, Grandpa Dexter, this situation would not be resolved if we keep standing around in the dark pitching for a overnight revolution.” Exasperation was beginning to take its toll on the matron. “What we clearly need right now, is all the understanding we can get out of you, guys.”

Grandpa Dexter stepped forward until he stood almost nose to nose with the matron and then put on his best matter-of-fact tone. “I understand that gennie ain’t gonna make one single sound until dawn cracks open the skies, is what I understand.”

            “I told you, we are on it. We’ll the machine walking and talking in no time.”

            “Then, why the hell are you standing there talking to us if indeed you are on it? Shouldn’t you be greased over, already? I bet this is one way of getting that budget cut alive and kicking. Bet all of hell and the portals of heaven, it is.”

            “Okay, old fellas. Let’s pack it up. We got work to do.” Junior turned on the flashlight, a powerful one and trained it on Grandpa Dexter. On his face. The old guy thought he saw patches of thicker shadows in the dim room when he smacked the hand gripping the flashlight.

            “Get that thing out of my face, you dimwit. Are you trying to blind me?”

            “Move old bones.”

The senior citizens of Carune Nursing Home trundled in a perfect Indian file and trudged head down to their separate rooms.

The Carune Nursing Home building was a mammoth-sized structure with a lot of rooms. It used to some sort of guest house for the highway farers in its own time. It was acquired by Carune & Carune Developers a few years ago-about twenty years would be a close guess. And then renovated to become the largest nursing home for the elderly retired in the state.

Carune Nursing Home stood on an extensive strip of land which boasted a garden and a lake.

The residents file out of the House of Assembly as the general sitting room/parlor was called.

            “Just pray nothing happens to none of us,” Grandpa Dexter said, as he ambled along with the others, “None of us or I’ll call my son up and sue your penny dreadful asses, you incompetent leeches.”

            “Yeah, yeah, yeah,” Junior mumbles casually, like someone speaking to a friend on the phone-probably about some uninteresting topic.

That night, by the time the rays of the sun tore through the cracks in the curtain like flaming white spears, marking the innocent brightness of a new-born day and, residents of Carune Nursing Home trundled out to the House of Assembly, they were two short of their population. Nobody really noticed the absentees at first. Not when they were all busy exchanging pleasantries and raining curses on the accursed gennie. Though, the matron fulfilled her promise and got the gennie going at exactly 0600hrs.

            “See, I told you these scrimpy scumbags are saving fuel. Stowing us away in the dark and saving the goddam fuel.” Grandpa Dexter was a few decibels from actually yelling. “Goddam bastards.”

Later when the table was set and nobody heard Grumpy whine about the salt like he was wont to do. And somebody made a remark about how the salt fairy finally had it with Grumpy and whisked him away that somebody asked, “Where the hell’s Grumpy?”

One of the nurses made to fetch him before the Matron found out one of the senior citizens was not at the table and none of ‘em noticed-a lecture fro Matron Beatrice would have been in order. A moment later-not too long-not quite 120 seconds after that nurse who went to fetch Grumpy left, she fetched a scream from his room. It got the old timers started.

            “It’s okay.” One of the nurses. “We’ll go check it out. Stay at your tables.” The old timers obeyed and stayed put however, not a single fellow touched his/her plate. They suspected the worst and now stilled themselves for the inevitable.

The nurses found Grumpy, whose real name was Kennan, on his bed with ghastly wounds on his body like he had been strapped to his bed with invisible and poisonous cords. There was pus oozing out of those wounds like he’d been dead for much longer than a mere six hours. He had an expression on his face. The look of a man who’d stared the worst form of horror in the face and paid his due. His head was twisted at angle to suggest it had been snapped-broken-by a powerful force. It’s a wonder the nurse didn’t pass out. It was a freak show, after all.

            “It’s the damn gennie that won’t kick up killed Grumpy,” Grandpa Dexter said, later while they all sat in the general sitting room. “Grumpy was one of ‘em folks who couldn’t stand the freaking dark. He always slept with his bedside lamp on and always threw a fit if he woke up to find one of ‘em nurses came along to turn off the lights. Guess, the only thing they do with any efficiency around this parts is freak us out with the dark.”

A few nights after the incident with Grumpy, two other residents made an appointment with death in a similar fashion. Terror had come to Carune.

One evening, while Grandpa Dexter was walking in the garden, kicking at invisible stones, he saw somebody standing by the lake, back-facing him. He mused about the striking resemblance to Grumpy but reminded himself Grumpy was one dead son of a gun. He thought it was good to have someone to get up close to and have a chit-chat with on such a nice day. Something, anything to get an old fella’s mind off the incidents of the past days.

He walked up to the man standing by the lake and just before he reached out to tap the stranger on the shoulder and say Hail fellow, well met, the man turned.

What Grandpa Dexter saw ripped the grin off his face like a crashing plane snatching off rooftops in the wake of descent.

He came to a few hours later. Grandpa Dexter could tell it was hours because darkness had fallen outside. (He was still by the lake, lying down where he’d seen the figure.) Faces peered down at him. To him, it seemed as if he was observing the world from the bottom of a very deep well-while staring up at faces peering into the darkness trying to help him out of the pit.

            “Is he awake?” It was Lucille, one of the residents who could have passed for Grandpa Dexter’s girlfriend in their heydays when youth was wasted on pleasure.

Water splashed in his face and Grandpa Dexter sneezed as it trickled in his nostrils. “He is now.” He registered the voice as Trey’s. Only Trey would splatter a guy’s face with water to prove he was awake.

            “Hey, pal. Welcome back.” There was no doubt about that one. It was Roger all the way-his best friend since he came to Carune Nursing Home.

Grandpa Dexter couldn’t quite bring himself to narrate his ordeal by the lake that Wednesday evening. He couldn’t tell them he’d seen Grumpy, alive and well, watching the lake like he used to while he yet lived on this side of existence.

Grumpy who died in his room two weeks ago. Grumpy  who actually turned and offered his hand while saying, “Hi, Dex. A lovely afternoon for a walk in the garden, isn’t it?” just before he passed out. “Must have been the goddam sunlight,” Grandpa Dexter said. They’ll fall for that, he thought. Rather be called weak than loony. Grandpa Dexter had been called a lot of things in his time, senile was one, foul-mouthed another. He was not about to top the lot with insane or plain old crazy.

A few nights later (not so far removed from the one that witnessed Grandpa Dexter slumped by the lake), after rolling over and over and over again and failing to catch sleep on either side of his bed, Grandpa sneaked out of his bedroom. He wanted to see if a little TV would calm his nerves and set him off snoozing. Lord knows, he’d done his share of sleeping in front of the TV while chewing popcorn in his youth. He promised himself he’d wake up early and get back to the confines of his bedroom before any of the nurses got up to do their chores.

He got to the landing after coming off the stairs and his heart picked up momentum. He saw light dancing on the walls. Light which signified someone had beaten him to it and turned the TV on, already. He thought it might be one of the nurses set to catch TV addicts like him. Nevertheless, he crept up for a close peek and saw . . .

            “Lucille? What the hell are you doing down here so late in the night?”

            “Dex, is that you?”

Grandpa looked into Lucille’s face and a knowing passed through the two old timers like ashstakes through a vampire.

            “You see them, too. Don’t you?”

            “They’ve been calling me to come. Said I’m next. Who are they? What’s bringing them back and why now?”

A few days later, Lucille passed on. Grandpa Dexter still couldn’t bring himself to confess his vision or Lucille’s confession to his friends.

Lucille’s questions are gonna serve the plot in the final draft when I rewrite this story.