The Wooden Horse

Chapter Two

Some people might say that a nursing home is where people go to die. Not entirely untrue. Perhaps things can be put in perspective by the realization that we’re all dying. The place is just a setting. A person in prison can give up on themselves. It only makes life harder and more depressing when we don’t accept our own reality. Even good places can be prisons, if our minds decide that is what they are. Depression can be overwhelming. It washes over a person and takes them under the waters of sadness until there’s no breath left in them. Then try to eat salmon patty every third Friday, and you know how it feels to live in a nursing home.

Walter Franklin Odell had lived at the Greenbriar Nursing Home for three months. He was seventy five years old, a widower, and a veteran. He was diagnosed with dementia, spinal stenosis, and occasional outbursts of violent behavior. The Charge Nurse had a PRN med to help calm him down when he got out of control. They’d used it regularly when he’d first arrived. He “leveled out” after that. If staring at his lap and drooling while dazed and confused could be defined as “leveled out”. Nurse Shelly was sitting at the nurses station, charting, when Mr. Odell was being escorted back to his room by his visitor. She grimaced at every loud curse he shouted at Sonny. She tried to finish her charting, but at the third “ya little shit!” she went to the Med Room to retrieve Mr. Odell’s “leveler”. It gave Nurse Shelly no pleasure to quiet Mr. Odell down. She had a lot of paperwork to do, though, and all that cursing would upset the other residents. For the good of her residents, it was time for Mr. Odell to chill the hell out.

“Get that outta my face, Shirley. I’m warning you…” Walter always called Nurse Shelly Shirley, in spite of her many corrections.
“It’s Shelly, Mr. Odell. My name is Shelly. Now, please take your meds. You need to rest.”
Walter never took his meds easily. He didn’t like being told what to do. Never did.
“I don’t need it. You take it.”
“God only knows, I’d love to. I could use the sleep. It’s for you, though, Mr. Odell. Walter, come on. We both know I’m not going to let this go. You always get this way when Sonny leaves. And you get worse when you don’t get your meds. Do us both a favor and just take it.” Nurse Shelly held the paper cup out for Walter to take. After a long stare down, he took the cup from her hand.
“If you’re gonna be all pissy about it, fine.” He downed the contents in a gulp, then took a swallow of water from the cup she offered him.
“Happy now?” he asked, the resentment steaming from the words.
“I will be when you let me help you to bed, Mr. Odell.”
She called in his aide, Bea. They helped Walter undress and get in the bed. The nurse left. Then Bea cleaned his face with a wash cloth and put an adult diaper on him. He protested the diaper. He rarely wore one.
“Now Walt, you know what happens when they give you that stuff. I know it ain’t your fault, but it always happens. Let’s just be safe, instead of sorry, ok?” Bea sympathized with him, just not enough to change soiled sheets later, for no reason.

Dreams come in all kinds. Medication can certainly prompt some strange ones. The brain tends to pull all kinds of memories together into a mixed bag of a story, sometimes. Sometimes it makes sense. Sometimes it doesn’t. Sometimes they pull memories  from the deep, buried place we put them long ago. Sometimes they were as real as the day they were lived.  Those were Walters dreams.

An old gravel road stretched out into the vast bean field, ending in a small clearing where a solitary grain silo stood. A small blue car parked next to it, with a couple inside. A young man and woman made out in the front seat, slightly steaming up the windows. The sunset loomed in the distance. The silos’ shadow stretched across the vehicle, guarding it from the waning light. Inside the car, the couple were oblivious to the beautiful sunset. Warm hands, and hot lips, found destinations anticipated far more than the outside scenery. Walter felt warmth, happiness, joy even. He saw the scene as a whole, hovering above. He was everywhere, and nowhere, all at once. Voices cooed, then moaned, then exclaimed, in ecstasy, from the interior of the car. The car rocked gently for a while, occasionally shuddering as if an actual part of the dance. Eventually it stopped, and became still. The passenger side door opened with a creak. The woman emerged, her raven hair in a wet, tussled mess. It fell past her shoulders and down her back in waves that framed her curves perfectly. Walter felt such a shock of emotion that he nearly awoke. The medication moored him to the spot, like the chain around a circus elephants leg.
The girl walked towards the silo. The young man called to her, a muffled voice from inside the car. Walter knew what he wanted, without hearing the words.
“Don’t go. Come back.”
When she kept walking, with barely a teasing glance over her shoulder at him in response, the man got out of the car and followed. The girl wore a white sundress, unbuttoned down the front. She walked, floated and danced all at the same time. Time stopped as Walter took in the image of her walk. His heart leaped, fluttering like a hummingbird’s wings. Then she reached the metal staircase ladder that wound around the silo. Walter shouted at her, to no avail. She began to climb the stairs, her tiny feet taking the steps lightly at first, making sure to look back to see if the man would follow. Of course he was. Who wouldn’t? Walter felt his heart sinking, tearing into pieces. The girl circled the silo, with her lover giving playful chase. The stairs went round the big bin twice, then terminated at a small platform near the top. The red haired girl made it to the platform twenty steps ahead of her lover. She looked out at the farmland, the beautiful sunset casting light and color across the horizon in panoramic view. She noticed a door. A hatch, really. It was only about two feet above the platform.  It had a metal handle to one side. The young man was a few steps from reaching the platform when she swung the door open. The hatch swung towards him, at eye level with him on the lower steps. Surprised, he put up his hands and caught the hatch, narrowly avoiding getting banged in the face.
“NO!” Walter shouted, but he wasn’t really there. The scream inside his mind went unheard by the couple.
The girl thought she was being playful. She reveled slightly in her suitor’s distress at being almost hit with the hatch. She sat down on the ledge and swung both feet onto the bottom of the doorway. Her light summer dress fell away to expose her shapely legs. When the man dodged around the hatch and stepped onto the platform, she was a vision of beauty, framed like a work of art.
“Marie! No!” Walter shouted, the sound echoed into the silo. No ears but his own hearing the warning. His useless voice was the only thing that existed of his presence here.
The girl smiled, oblivious to anything but the young man. She reached out to him with her long, slender arms. He began to reach for her embrace, when the smile disappeared. In a split second, her hip slid inside the hatch, and she fell inside. The young man lunged at her, in a vain attempt to save her. He succeeded only in touching the top of her foot with the palm of his right hand. He felt it press against his hand, warm and tender, as it slid down his palm, her toes gliding past his fingertips as she plummeted to the bottom of the abyss.
“Marie! Marie! Marie!” Walter heard himself scream and sob. Only his ears registering the pitiful cries.
The young man stared down into the silo. The girl landed with an echoing thud that thundered into his, and Walters’ ears. The terror in his eyes drowned in gathering tears as he looked upon the broken body below. Her long red hair splayed across a back that lay in an unnatural bent. Landing on her stomach, face to one side, eyes wide open but body still as a granite stone. The grain dust settled in a cloud around her white-robed bodice. Walter could hear one long, gasping sob, followed by a single word.
“Walt….Walt…” the whisper traveled upwards with the speed of horror.
“Marie!” Walter screamed, over and over, until he awoke. His scream was barely a whisper in the dark light of his room.  He was drenched in his own sweat. He’d wet himself. His tears still flooded his pillow as he turned his head to look around. The medication still had him in a fog, but he knew he was awake, and was grateful for the dream to be over. He noticed Mr. Crutchers was looking towards him.

“Mind yer own business, old man.” he spat at his roommate.
A sloppy grunt and Crutchers turned his head slightly away, giving Walter at least a vestige of privacy. We all need some privacy when entertaining our innermost demons and fears. Mr. Crutchers understood. A head turn was the best he could do.
Walter Franklin Odell cried himself into a welcomed dreamless sleep.

More to come.

K.S.

Author: Kevin Stone

Kevin Stone aspires to write stories that you will enjoy. I hope to tell tales of the Stone Family that all generations may to come may read. I'll also write stories of all kinds, true and fiction, just for you to enjoy. View all posts by Kevin Stone