by Dan Dillard
*****
The rest of my day is lazy. My attention switches between a pro bowling tournament and the world’s strongest man contest on the sparse cable selection. All those steroids have got to wreak havoc on a man’s wedding tackle. I skip lunch but stop in the parlor to see if anything is going on. A few convicts huddle together with cards and backgammon but nothing commands my attention. At dinner—or supper as Evie words it—I eat alone wondering what the hell happened to my companions.
The meal is baked chicken and rice and it tastes like it might have already been eaten once. I need to mark this one off my menu for future reference. Glancing at my watch I see it is only five minutes from the end of the posted dinner time and decide to make my way to the courtyard for my date.
My tour included the explanation that the courtyard is off limits after dark, so I didn’t have much time to find out what Evie was up to. I’ve heard on the news about orderlies in places like this raping and torturing the elderly. Trash like that should be forced to eat their own diseased organs. If that’s what goes on around here, my shithead son will be hearing about it. So will Doc Williams and the twins. As I pass through the glass door overlooking the courtyard, I have no idea what Evie will tell me. But I’m prepared for some good old fashioned bullshit.
“You early. Good thing, I’m ninety-seven. I ain’t got much patience left.” Evie is sitting on a concrete bench with a brand new do of hair. “Hairdresser come today at lunchtime. You like?”
She looks like a q-tip with a wrinkled brown stick. “It makes you look fifty years younger!” I say.
“Mm-hmm,” she smiles. “Boy, I was something at forty-seven.” She laughs and waves me over, patting the bench. I sit feeling the cold concrete through my thin pants. I’m grateful for the fresh air, the scent of pine trees, and dread going back into the stink of old and dying. She looks each direction and then meets my eyes with hers.
“Edgar is not of this earth.”
“I’ll say. Did you get a look at those fingernails?”
“No joke, Mr. Aldridge. He death’s angel.”
I open my mouth to interrupt and she hushes me with a single finger. “I know you think you got something to say, Jimmy-boy, but don’t. Let me finish first.”
I sit back with a sigh and get ready for the show.
“You know what ‘Charon’ mean?”
“No,” I answer. “It must mean fruitcake or something in Greek.”
“It’s the ferryman,” she corrects. “The ancient Greeks believed the ferryman carry the newly dead cross that river Styx and into the afterlife.”
This old bat is twisted. I smile involuntarily and stifle a chuckle.
“Edgar touch old Claudine this morning at breakfast. That his way of telling her it’s time to go. You just watch.”
I’m intrigued now by Evie’s brand of crazy and can’t wait to see what yarn she spins next. That said, I have to call bullshit when I smell it. I have lived too long not to start an argument. Arguing is about all I have left.
“He’s just some confused kid. He’ll grow up one day and get a real job, realize all the bad decisions he made, and then get divorced and turn alcoholic, just like the rest of us.”
“No, baby. He got a job. He work for his daddy over next door.”
“Next door?”
She looks past me and I turn to see Plane and Simple Travel. “The travel agency?”
“That’s what they call it,” she says.
“They?”
I’m sucked in now. Waiting for the punchline, some sort of initiation into the linger-longer, rushing the fossil fraternity. Evie frowns and it isn’t much of a stretch from her normal look.
“Death is his daddy,” she says. “He come over here whenever one of us ready to go. Then he ferry us away.”
Fantastic. I have to listen to this shit for the rest of my living days. If Bill ever comes back to visit, I might just kill him, ferry him away to Edgar the Pimpled and Daddy Death. My dream is interrupted just as my hands close on Bill’s neck by the sound of an approaching vehicle and the stream of headlights in the dusk. It’s a rescue vehicle. I look at Evie who’s face is sad, but also smug.
“You see?” says Evie.
“What’s that, an ambulance? Who’s it for?”
“My guess is it’s fo’ Miss Claudine.”
“So the ambulance takes her, not Edgar? It’s just a coincidence, Evie,” I say, trying to sound logical.
“No, hon, that just to take her body. Claudine walked over with Edgar an hour ago. I seen it with my own eyes.”
