The Wooden Horse

Chapter One

Mr. Odell sat in his wheelchair, slightly leaning on his right arm. He was parked in the hallway, across from the Nurses Station, seemingly oblivious to the other residents and employees. He stared straight ahead, eyes unmoving. His five o’clock shadow was from yesterday, and there were crumbs in his lap from dinner’s dessert. The traffic was the normal bustle of aides, slow moving wheelchair-bound residents, and occasional visitors. They passed Mr. Odell with barely a glance. He sat there with a not quite angry, not quite happy look on his face. He had a reputation for “behaviors” that included sudden outbursts and lashing out. A week’s trip to a “behavioral facility” had remedied that. Now he was just an old dog tied to a drug-stake in the back yard. To the people around him, he appeared to be a drugged out old man. Inside, it was not so.

“Here we are again, staring at the fucking nurses station. Every damn night. After every damn supper. Wheel my ass out here till I shit, or piss, myself. Then they’ll stick me in bed, half-ass change my diaper, and leave me in bed. I bet they leave the damn tv on something stupid again. If I have to fall asleep to another episode of Andy Griffith…”

His mind was still present. The fiery temper still smoldered. The drugs only blocked how he expressed himself, or maybe whether he did so. The world around him only saw the shell. Inside, there was a man full of anger and hate. He definitely held a grudge against life for letting him get to this suck of a stage of living. He was once a mountain of a man. Powerful. Feared. Fast. Smart. Trusted with sinister secrets and deeds. He’d killed men, and done worse. All that, to end his days being talked to like a child, drugged, and pushed around like a sack of shit.

“Mr. Odell, It’s time for bingo!” the perkiest girl ever, in the history of perky girls told him. Without waiting for a response she began to wheel his down the hallway. He slowly reached down with both hands and set an iron grip on the wheels. The Perky Girl banged into the back of his wheelchair, not expecting the complete stop.

“Hell no.” he muttered in a deep growl, though calmly. He wheeled the chair slowly, but firmly, in a 180, headed back to his spot across from the nurses station. Perky Girl, nonplussed, followed him.

“But Mr. Odell, you’ll have fun! And you might even win a nice prize! How about we go see what we can win? Ok?”

Odell muttered something under his breath.

“What’s that Mr. Odell? I didn’t hear you?” She leaned over slightly and put her ear closer to his mouth.

“I’ll play bingo if the prize is you, sweet thing.” He said without a smile or any emotion whatsoever.

“Now Mr. Odell, that’s not nice. Ok, maybe we can play next time.” She walked away, slightly blushing and perturbed. She had others to gather for the game.

Odell watched her walk away. Her tight ass swayed like it held a quarter between it’s cheeks. A tiny hint of a smile (more of a smirk) appeared on his lips. Seventy six years old, or not, he got a tingle from watching a pretty girl walk fast. Even if they were annoying as hell. He was old, not dead.

“Hey Pops, whatcha staring at, with that evil grin on your face?”

The voice he immediately recognized. It was one he both loved, and hated.

“Awright sonny. I know you ain’t blind. If you don’t know what a nice piece of ass looks like, that’s damn sad for you. Me, I’d stare at that thing all day, if she’d shut the hell up.”

“Ok Pops. Yeah, she’s nice. You’re getting too old to be chasing tail, ya know?”

The smile got slightly bigger.

“I’ll quit chasin it when I’m dead. That’s when I’ll be too old. What the hell do you want, or did you just stop by to bust my balls for watching babes?”

“It’s Thursday, Pops. I always come by on Thursday. If you’d check your Playmate of the Month calendar you hide in your bedside table, you’d know what day it was. I swear, you’re getting more forgetful every week. It’s sad, Pops. Come on, look at the actual calendar sometimes. You don’t have to stare at titties all the time. You’ve gotta exercise those brain muscles sometimes, if you want em to keep working. Can you even remember my name Pops?” Now he was just being a smart ass.

“That’s easy for you to say, with twenty less years on me. Your name’s Mud if you didn’t bring me a Pall Mall. Let’s go outside and get some contaminated air that don’t smell like old people shit.”

The younger man wheeled Odell down the hall to the lobby. They always went out front to the wrought iron benches by the front door. There was usually less traffic and distractions there, in the late afternoons at least. The courtyard, where most of the employees and residents went to smoke, was often crowded with too many talkative residents and chatty employees. Neither Sonny or Pops liked to interact much with anyone else here. The traffic through the cull-de-sac was light, just a few family members coming and going. Sonny sat on the bench next to Odell, pulled out a pack of menthols and handed one to the old man. They lit up and smoked for a minute in silence, enjoying the quiet fresh air, tainted with tobacco.

“You know, I didn’t want it like this. It wasn’t really my call, Pops.” he said, finally.

Odell didn’t respond. He just sat, slumped forward slightly in the wheelchair, and smoked.

“I would’ve done this a whole lot differently. I know you hate this place. Goddamn, man, I hate this place. It’d be ok if you HAD to be here. Folks taking care of you, feeding you, doing all the …personal things that you need done. They’re good to the people who live here. It’s a nice place, for all that…” his voice trailed off.

“It’s a fucking jail, Sonny. You can’t go nowhere. You’re on a schedule that somebody else makes for you every damn day. You eat what they want you to eat, take pills when they want you to take em, tell you when to go to bed, wake up, and when to smoke. It’s noisy, what with the crazy dementia folks rolling up and down the halls and into your room, along with the aides and nurses yelling at each other and talking shit all day and night. You don’t know, Sonny. You ain’t lived here. I’m in jail. I been to jail before though. I’ll cope. I’ll adapt….improvise…”

“Overcome” Sonny finished the mantra for him. He took another drag off the Pall Mall and looked at the old man.

“Have you found what you’re looking for, after all this? I know it’s hard, but is it worth it?”

“No. Not yet. I will though. I’m not leaving this world till I’m damn good and ready. I’ll find what I’m after. I have to. It’s on me.”

“You’re just as crazy as the rest of these people, you know that? It could be that your mind is going faster than you think….”

“Stow it, Sonny. Don’t start that shit with me. Blow smoke up your own ass. Speaking of that, make sure you give my carton of cigs to the nurse. I can deal with no booze, no beer, and no pussy, but I’ma be damned if I can deal with going through all this shit without a smoke.”

“I already turned them in. And every pack has your name on em. You need to quit. You ain’t getting any younger, Pops. I’d hate to see you go through all this, just to croak from lung cancer. Ain’t a pretty site, I hear. You ready to go back inside? Or do I have to leave you here on the porch and drive off with a tear in my eye, as I watch you sadly waving to me in the rear view? That’d break my heart, ya know?”

“Fuck you, ya little shit!” he yelled.

“Quiet down or you’ll have a damn heart attack!” Sonny yelled back.

The younger man pushed him back into the building, his cheeks just a tad red with embarrassment as he passed the receptionist. Odell continued to harangue Sonny all the way down the hall. His deep voice boomed curse words that would make a sailor blush. The walking residents moved out of their way, and a few passing aides raised eyebrows as they passed. They finally made it to Odell’s room, albeit noisily.

The room would have been small for one person. It was definitely cramped with a second bed and roommate. Old man Crutchers was a bilateral amputee, missing both legs from the upper knees down. He’d been semi-comatose for at least five years of the twelve years he’d been here. He was actually a fairly ideal roomie for Odell, who didn’t enjoy much small talk. Crutchers eyes were open, and he even acknowledged their entry with a slight nod and a low grunt. Or he could have just passed gas. It was a coin toss. The room smelled like an abandoned house. Stale, at best. The housekeepers cleaned six hours ago, but the smell always crept back in.

“Hey, Mr.Crutchers. How’s it goin…?” Sonny never knew what to say to these people.

“You’d be better off talking to the wall. Now that we’ve had our little “fight”, what’ve you got for me, boy?” Odell motioned for him to close the door.

“Well, I DID bring your smokes.” A sly grin.

“Don’t play that shit with me. I know you brought something. Hope it’s worth my while. I may end up with my meds being “upped” again for that little outburst. You know how they deal with that kind of behavior around here.” The anger was gone, but so was the agitation.

The young man sat on the neatly made bed. He reached into his pocket and retrieved a small ring box wrapped in tissue and held it out to Odell. He took it quickly and put it into his pants pocket.

“Ok, then. See you in a week.” The old man sat and stared at him.

“Your welcome” The indignant sarcasm was obvious.

Sonny left Odell’s room and the old man watched out the window as he walked to his car and pulled out of the parking lot. He patted his pocket where the box lay, and sighed.

“This had better work” he said to Mr. Crutchers. The invalid grunted again through the drool and drugs.

Living in a nursing home is hard on a body. You don’t think about the affect it has on people, unless you’re the people it affects. The people who work there only see the effects from the outside, looking in. The residents have every aspect of their lives regulated and ritualized. Medicines, activities, meals, smoking, even bathroom times are all regulated to some degree. It actually helps most of them cope with the menial aspects of every day life. The ones that need help, at least. It’s the most normal of the population that hate it the most. The former free spirits and independent folks that don’t really appreciate that they’ve lived long enough to need professional care. Those are the ones whose minds the schedule grates upon. It was only a few years past that some of them were driving, running errands, going out to eat, and enjoying retirement. Illnesses, conditions and bad breaks may have landed them in a nursing home, but only temporarily. For some, it is an opportunity to recuperate, to heal. Those will eventually go back home. For others it is the beginning of the end.

To be continued…

 

Note: This is the first installment of “The Wooden Horse”. I hope you enjoyed it. More to come very soon.

K.S.