Charlie, get a grip here. They could be dense as dishwater but they way far outnumber us. We might try to keep our head.
The crowd had backed Charlie into the same situation she’d found Darla, the deceased activities director. Most of the faces breathing on her were blank, but the gathering was experiencing agitation from behind and leaders soon made their way forward, as they generally do.
Gladys made her way to the forefront. Somebody stepped on Dolores’ foot or tail and he rose to screaming eminence somewhere back there, perched on someone’s head or shoulder before he too fell from grace and disappeared.
The way cleared further for the two leering Fatties. No surprise here. They of course opened the way for Rose and her pillow. And then came Marlys.
“Marlys, help me. I’m one of the babies you saved.”
“Should have buried you with Myrtle—stopped the curse. Abigail said so.”
“Killing me won’t stop the curse.” The stark-white tile surrounding Charlie leaked icy cold through her clothes. Her jacket was gone. When did that happen? “We need to get your suitcase and go to the cemetery, remember?”
“We’re going to die on her grave and stop the curse.”
“Right, Marlys.”
“But first we have to euthanize Charlemagne Catherine Greene, remember?” Gladys said. “Poor thing don’t have any boyfriends.”
“I’ll be her boyfriend.” One of the Fatties—all really old men looked the same to Charlie by now—wheeled up to pin her against the tile and reached for her crotch.
“Darla Lempke, Activities Director.” Rose brought the pillow.
“I’ll be her boyfriend, you dirty old coot.” The other Fatty surged forward and cut Rose off at the knees.
The first Fatty grabbed the shower hose and tried to separate Charlie from the second Fatty, who reached for the pillow poor Rose held up from her position on the floor, and Charlie realized that most of the crowd had lost interest. Like they had with TV or Dorothy and the Tin Man. Or life. They were wandering out of the cold, crowded room to continue their journey, only Elsina Miller knew where, thinning the crowd so Charlie could see how much trouble she was really in.
Sagging biceps, forearms, jowls, cheeks, and chins, anywhere there had once been muscle and firm skin. They obviously didn’t know their sad plight and looks and condition.
Charlie shoved a heel into a crotch to repay the groping finger and felt the last bit of energy leave her, leave her shaky and sagging. She fought the shower hose tightening around her neck by slipping the fingers of both hands between her skin and the ribbed plastic, watched the blaring-white tiles start jiggling, began a slow slide to the floor as the skinny, saggy Fatty with the pillow covered the light in the ceiling with his head.
“Lay still now and I’ll make you feel real good. Get inside your clothes.” He disappeared behind the pillow as it covered her face.
“Darla Lempke, Activities Director.”
“Well, you finally got the right one, you idiots,” Great-aunt Abigail Staudt said from somewhere. “Gladys, you know what to do when it’s over. Ben will help you.”
“No, what? We haven’t had our supper.”
“We bury her in the cemetery, where dreams really do come true,” Marlys said.
Charlie should have been suffocating, but there was an error in the program here. The pillow stayed pushed down on her face but nobody was holding onto her lower body or arms, so she squirmed out from under it. This should have been at least a three-man operation, but the Fatty with the hose had been distracted by a kick in the crotch. They should have held her down like Edwina, Kenny, and Uncle Elmo had after her nightmare upstairs at Viagra’s. And she still had use of her arms. Maybe this had happened here before, with someone lying over the victim’s middle, pinning down the arms as well as the torso, someone holding the feet below, and a third the pillow pressed on the face until the struggle was over. Was there a fourth to keep one and all focused?
Until Darla. Wrong victim but lots of wandering help, no fourth to give the orders. And Wilma Overgaard, the next victim. Something wrong there, too. Too much struggle—not enough handlers?
“Ben, stop her.”
“Ben, stop her,” Marlys mimicked. “I know, let’s tie her in a chair and make her watch the television.”
“Turn it up real loud and put in her hearing aids,” Gladys agreed, “until the sound beats at her on and on for hours and hours.”
Charlie knew better but couldn’t help glancing over her shoulder as she staggered to the door, unable to believe they were letting her get away.
“And then make her take a pill. Lots of pills.”
The Fatties had dozed off in their chairs. Even the one Charlie had kicked. They were blocking Ben, who was trying to help Rose to her feet. Abigail Staudt stood aloof, arms folded, trying to general the lunatics. Marlys and Gladys gleefully came up with more ways to torture Charlie.
“Make her sleep all night in her own shit and burn and itch—”
Charlie was out in the hall, sure that Ben was right behind her, but she had to grasp door moldings to keep upright. Lethargy overtook the buzz in her head, her heart pounded thunder, and her breath came wheezy and painful. Can you catch old age from old people?
“Que pasa?” said a muffled but urgent whisper from a dark space ahead between the dim lights.
Thank God, the Mexicans were back. The people who really ran this show. What was Spanish for “Help?” Charlie knew, but in her weakened state, her mind wasn’t working well.
“Señora, you can help?” a woman said beside Charlie, who let out a startled squeak. “The door, it is locked. They go to hide and someone locks them in. I am afraid.”
“Me, too. What is this?’
“The laundry.”
“The Mexicans have been hiding in the laundry room?”
“Everywhere we hide, but tonight they are not many because of the troubles here. I run outside but come back to find my friends. I haf look for the keys, but—” She chatted for a while with her friends on the other side of the door as Charlie leaned against the wall to keep herself off the floor.
She tried to hang onto enough mind and strength to persuade the woman to guide her to Marlys’ room to look for a phone to call for help. “I don’t know where the keys to this room are, but she has the phones in her suitcase.”
“Suitcase, jhes. Marlys, she steal everything. Maybe she haf keys, too.”
“You’ll have to help me, I’m very weak.”
But they’d made it no more than a few feet when they were stopped by a whump, like a giant pilot light finally lit, and a poof of flame tore along the carpet toward them in the dim hall, lighting it up major big time.
CHAPTER 41
AS HARD AS she’d tried, Charlie didn’t make it out of Iowa in time.
She stood beside her mother in the little cemetery again, where the shade came from gloom rather than leaves. It turned the new-fallen snow appropriately gray.
The memorial service was a week later than planned because of the carnage at Gentle Oaks Health Care Center and the ongoing investigation. Elsina Miller leaned on Harvey Rochester’s arm, one leg and foot in a cast. Harvey broke a finger when pushed from the hole in the ceiling. She’d broken a leg when he landed on her. And here, good old jaded Charlie had thought the heavy breathing and Elsina’s moaning in the cellar due to other causes. She’d still be willing to bet, considering the color of his eyes, that Mr. Rochester would get Elsina pregnant before she got him redone in His image. The administrator smiled encouragement at her now. Charlie winked back. She still didn’t like the woman but she could stand her. They’d lived through a lot together in a short while. If only Elsina knew why Charlie’d not gotten out of Iowa in time.
Marshal Delwood Brunsvold leaned against the red Cherokee like before, but more relaxed. There had been so much digging and publicity that the county had sprung for a backhoe rental with a professional driver. On either side of him stood his incred
ibly corpulent parents, making him look like a sliver of cheese in a focaccia sandwich.
After an overnight in the behemoth of a hospital, Charlie had recuperated at the Holiday Inn in Mason City. She’d been shuttled from the emergency room to the cardiac unit for some reason and her heart was found to be fine, so she needed no further hospitalization. She’d suffered no burns, just bumps and bruises and shock that had sent her back into old nightmares. There was no emergency. Charlie figured her insurance was suspect or something, and she had no Medicare or Medicaid coverage.
But her therapy came to her. She didn’t even have to charge her insurance.
The snow layer was a couple of inches, but began falling again as the three officiating ministers wound up the service—the lady Methodist minister from Floyd, a Catholic priest, and a Solemn Lutheran preacher from … Charlie didn’t know where. She counted about thirteen newly turned graves dotting the graveyard. The carnage could have been far worse if the fire sprinkler system at Gentle Oaks hadn’t kicked in. The new graves were rounded under the snow, with ripply dirt showing. The sucking earth hadn’t had time to depress them yet.
Everybody was saying—even the newspapers—that in two or three weeks, the ground would have been frozen. If the fire had to happen, better now than then.
Edwina had spent the last couple of nights at Helen and Buz Bartuseks’ to help plan the memorial service, and that ended Charlie’s nightmares.
The earth from Myrtle’s grave mounded in vast piles around it, the headstone set off to the side, still leaning. The huge root at the grave’s head stood exposed and wounded by the teeth of the backhoe. It seemed the deeper they had dug, the blacker the soil, steeper patches of which had lost the snow cover, making for a black and white and gray day.
Only relatives and press joined the clergy now. All of the surviving residents had been squeezed into other nursing homes or were still hospitalized until repairs could be made to Gentle Oaks, much of the damage due to water.
Kenny Cowper stood beside her, too—more like towered. He was to drive them to the airport in Minneapolis in time to catch a red-eye West. Charlie was so happy for these people to be dead, but she teared and sniffled anyway, which kept Kenny trying to hide a smug grin, that and the last two nights. Her recovery had nothing to do with romance, but he could make even a Holiday Inn in Mason City, Iowa, erotic.
Del had found a way out of the tunnel at Orlyn Sievertsen’s fruit cellar because Orlyn’s dogs kept barking at the hammering and yelling beneath the cellar doors. Orlyn found a flashlight, and he and Delwood came to the rescue of the three Charlie had left behind when Ben had yanked her out of the cellar and closed the door on them. Kenny’d had to carry Elsina, but by the time they reached the Oaks, part of it was burning.
Kenny’s grammy had survived. And so had the Fatties.
Sherman and Flo had taken their last smoke and managed to light up Rose, several people on loose oxygen tanks, and those too close to the resultant flames or smoke before the dousing of fire sprinklers took effect. And one died being resuscitated when overzealous ambulance types broke a fragile sternum.
The firebugs had somehow gained entrance to the liquid oxygen storage closet and the reservoir used to feed the smaller, more mobile tanks used by the less fortunate residents. It was assumed that the flames from the matches used to light cigarettes, flared by added oxygen, had spread from clothing and hair to carpet and wallboard. Perhaps Rose had read the sign on the door once too often and given them the idea.
“Did you find out who she was?” Charlie slid slanted glances at the tombstones they passed as they followed the procession out of the busy little cemetery. “And did you pay a lot of money for me because I was a white Iowa baby?”
“Your birth mother? All I know is she was Isobel’s daughter. I don’t want to know anything more,” Edwina answered. “And yes, Charlie, you came dear.”
“I don’t want to know any more either. I want to leave all this and Myrtle far behind.” What they were both avoiding was the implications of Isobel’s relationship to Abigail Staudt. Talk about inbreeding.
Instead, they turned for one last look while waiting for Kenny to bring the car around. “Mom, what happens when more and more old people keep living older and older?”
“I don’t know, Charlie. We can’t euthanize people like we do pets. We just can’t.”
Great-aunt Abigail Staudt and Ben were charged with instigating just that by leading frail, senile residents at Gentle Oaks in putting “born Staudts” out of their misery. She was the instigator, Ben the liaison, and ironically one of the probable killers was a Staudt himself—Abigail’s brother, the skeletal Fatty. The problem was, her dupes and those who watched them decided that there was finally an interesting activity in their limited world again. More fun than those of Darla Lempke. So they’d continued the “pillow game” haphazardly and with less organization.
Abigail suffered a stroke while under house arrest. Ben was in jail in Charles City. Abigail had arranged to put her female relatives out of their misery, but she too would now be fodder for the Oaks and take their place. Those she’d encouraged to commit euthanasia—who knew how many, or if they were always the same ones?—were supposed to forget what they’d done, like they forgot everything else. But something set off a memory, and the acts had continued without her supervision. Charlie rather suspected Gladys, whose memory seemed better than the rest. She’d also survived relatively unscathed.
“Daughters aren’t going to put up with being sacrificed in the new economy. Besides, they’re needed in the workforce. Economy’s screwed either way,” Charlie said.
“Modern capitalism will find a solution, a substitute for sacrificial daughters, perhaps. Or nature will discover how to outsmart the flu and pneumonia vaccines.” Edwina was a rare breed of environmental conservative.
The snowflakes came thicker, softly, with no wind in a silent world. Sad, stark, yet beautiful in black and white, and still, but for the falling snow and a lone photographer. He crouched on one of the mounds for some last shots of the enormous hole that had once been Myrtle Staudt’s grave.
Probably because it had become a public mystery. Probably because no bodies had been found in or around it. No unsold babes or unwed moms who hadn’t survived childbirth.
And most curious of all, not a trace or a fragment of the rebellious daughter for whom the town was named. There were no dead bodies in Myrtle’s grave, nor had there been ever.
CHAPTER 42
HER FIRST FULL day at home, Charlie snuggled in a corner of her kitchen breakfast nook and savored a communal dinner. Mrs. Beesom’s tuna noodle casserole ripe with canned peas and potato chips. A tall glass of milk. Jacob Forney’s fresh-baked yeast rolls with butter. Maggie Stutzman’s salad greens tossed with raspberry vinaigrette and sprinkled with raspberries. Charlie, as usual, provided the table and the entertainment.
“There’s no place like home, Toto.” She raised a fork of canned tuna and chips to Tuxedo, the black cat with the white chest and feet giving her a jaundiced eye from atop the refrigerator.
“My secret,” Mrs. Beesom, sitting across from Charlie, confided, “is the cream-of-celery soup, Campbell’s.”
Luscious Libby, with the Myrtle eyes, sat beside Charlie. “Mom, you’re not too old to get pregnant, right?”
“Excuse me?”
“I’m joining the Hemlock Society, first thing Monday morning.” Maggie Stutzman had raspberry seeds between her front teeth. She was a lawyer and next to the birth-control pill, Charlie’s best friend. Her eyes looked strangely dilated, reminding Charlie of the Floyd County deputy sheriff after he got in the med cart. “No ancient aging for me.”
“I mean, not some gross guy thing like Mitch Hilsten, but you go to one of those donor clinics and buy sperm? Have it injected or whatever?”
“Why would I want another baby?”
“Well, I’ll be leaving home soon. And you could use the company. And I could use a sacrificial si
ster to dump you on when you get to be a FROW. Works out for both of us. Right?”
“Well, I’m going to live in my house until I die in my sleep,” the eighty-three-year-old Mrs. Beesom said, and Charlie and Maggie exchanged that helpless look becoming more frequent by the month. Betty Beesom had not one relative to her name—sacrificial or no.
“FROW?” Charlie asked her daughter.
“Fucking really old woman. Be glad you’re not a guy or you’d be a FROG.”
If it was possible to choke on mushy tuna noodle casserole, Jacob was doing so. The newest neighbor in their little condo complex of houses, attached by a high stucco wall with heavy gates to street in front and alley in back, he, along with Tuxedo on the fridge, was the only guy living here. His eyes were watering but he cleared his throat and said, “I think it a great honor to live long and prosper.”
“Me, too,” Libby said. “Until you get sick and your muscle and flesh and brains turn to mush.”
“So the Mexicans just hid wherever and not down in the cellar and tunnels?” Maggie changed the subject with a warning look at the diplomatic Libby.
“There were only three of them the night of the fire, and few anytime. They just had such a gigantic job—you thought there were more.” The two in the laundry room survived only because of the sprinkler system. “The whole situation is so overwhelming. Think of a daycare center where most of the babies and children are well over a hundred pounds, in diapers, and tormented by images and phantom memories of a life they no longer understand, their minds and bodies can no longer tolerate.”
“That’s why I never go near them places, even to visit,” Mrs. Beesom agreed—with what, Charlie couldn’t imagine.
“If these were such helpless people, how could they take out the deputy sheriff?” Jacob Forney wanted to know.
“He’d apparently helped loot the med carts. Blood tests from the autopsy hadn’t come back yet when I left, but he had a few open bottles of really fun painkillers in his pockets. The ancient smokers ignored them and went after his cigarettes.”
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