The Rampant Reaper

  “Being dead might not be so great either, you know. And not everybody’s a deserter in this army, Charlie. Some people feel sympathy, responsibility, for the suffering, aging members of the community.”

  “I hate that word.”

  “Aging?”

  “Community. One more reason to steal my time and energy. Always something.”

  He drove her out to the Staudt farm in his Range Rover, forced to rough it by the warming weather and the county snowplows, slightly pissed that he couldn’t have ferried her into the rural wild on his brand-new snowmobile. He kept the Rover in an off-ally garage behind the beauty/barber shop that was a converted house at the other end of Main Street. The shop was open two and a half days a week, which took care of the local population, so renting out the garage helped a lot. “Looks like you won’t be flying out today.”

  When they reached the home place, the helicopter was just taking off for Mason City. And Edwina was destroyed.

  “They’ll resuscitate him to be a vegetable for twenty years, and he smoked and drank and ate so hard. It’s not fair,” Charlie said. She, Kenny, Edwina, and Cousin Helen watched Elmo disappear into the forever-frigging clouds of this place. “At least you must not get skin cancer around here.”

  “Oh, yeah, you gotta slather yourself with sunscreen, wear long pants, sleeves, slacks, and floppy broad-brimmed hats. Best thing is to stay inside. But that doesn’t weed your garden. Plant your crops.”

  “Do you do all that slathering?”

  “Why bother? We live forever around here, the way it is.”

  “I don’t suppose you had time to buy plane tickets.” Charlie leaned over to look in Edwina’s face. Her mom sat on the bottom step of the back porch. The home place seemed desolate without the barn, the glint of sun on ice.

  “We can’t leave now, Charlie.” Edwina looked like a battered wife, with blotches for bruises.

  “I can.”

  “I need you. I think I’m responsible for what my uncle just did.”

  “Mom, he’s been trying to kill himself for years and it had nothing to do with you.” Charlie took another look at her mother and got a cramp that took her breath away. “I hate family.”

  “Me, too.” Edwina tried a wobbly smile, acknowledging Charlie’s capitulation.

  “God, so do I.” Helen Bartusek pulled a tissue from the cuff of her sweatshirt to wipe her ever-dripping nose.

  “I don’t,” Kenny Cowper said.

  The women looked at him as one. Nobody felt up to saying the equivalent of “well, duh.”

  Elmo Staudt had returned to the home place on the county snowplow, crawled into the cab of his half-buried truck with a cigar and two bottles of whiskey, and when sufficiently plowed, he took out a brand-new razor and got one wrist cut some but scraped good before he had a stroke.

  Kenny was staring at the open door of the truck. Even from the porch, you could see the flashy red of blood on what lingered of the snow where the county plow driver had pulled him out. “It should have worked. He had all night to bleed to death. There should have been time. Must have clotted on him while he was unconscious.”

  The county plow person had been uneasy about something Elmo Staudt had said. Like “Thanks for the ride and good-bye forever,” or similar words—and had stopped by this morning to check on him. He’d used Elmo’s phone to call for help and, having been trained as a paramedic, did the wrong things to allow Uncle Elmo to make his own ultimate decision. In all fairness, the suicidal man had done much to undo himself. His blood ran thick and slow. Wouldn’t you know? All the rich desserts and eggs and cheese and sausage had done their thing, but without clogging his heart. Clogged his brain instead.

  Charlie went upstairs to finally change clothes and pack for herself and her mother and to weep for Elmo Staudt in private. It was a great relief to change into cotton socks and athletic shoes and fresh everything else.

  When she came out onto the porch with the bags, Cousin Helen said, “You can’t leave. Someone has to look after the house. I told you there’s no place to stay around here anyway, and your mother and I have to go to Mason City and Elmo.”

  “Well, I’m staying at a hotel in Mason City or at your place tonight, cousin dear. Next time you call in evil relatives, consider accommodations and ramifications.”

  “Well, you can stay with Kenny while Edwina and I—”

  Both Kenny and Charlie were shaking their heads at her.

  “She just doesn’t get it,” Kenny said.

  “I’d rather stay with Buz.”

  “I could stay home until my shift, and you and Edwina could go to Elmo.”

  “No, sweetie, manipulation isn’t like that. Like poor Elmo’s going to know who’s out in the waiting room or not.”

  “What if he dies in the night?”

  “We celebrate,” Charlie answered. “At Viagra’s.”

  Charlie and Edwina Greene ended up spending the night at the Comfort Inn in Mason City. They visited Mercy Hospital to check on Elmo Staudt. Mason City wasn’t a city, it wasn’t even a big town, but the hospital complex was enormous. Elmo Staudt was not expected to recover, so he’d been sent to a nursing home.

  “I’m sorry, there was nothing we could do for him here,” said a female at the front desk who knew all this by typing his name into a computer database. “He’ll have excellent care there and should any sign of his coming out of the coma occur, the staff at Gentle Oaks in Myrtle will contact us immediately. We can have him back in no time.”

  Next, they drove out to the airport and purchased tickets for the day after tomorrow. On the way back, they stopped at an Appleby’s for huge chicken Caesar salads, garlic bread, and Chianti.

  “I’m not kidding about day after tomorrow being it, Mom,” Charlie said over coffee. It wasn’t as good as Viagra’s but it was rich and strong. “I’ve had it with Iowa.”

  “Is it Iowa or Kenny Cowper?”

  “That, too. And don’t forget I have a daughter with the Myrtle eyes all alone back home.”

  “Great-aunt Abigail has blue eyes, Charlie.”

  “What’s that got to do with the price of asparagus in China?” as her boss, Richard Morse, would have said, or something similarly out of frame.

  “Let’s not talk about it now, okay? It’s so nice to be away from there. Let’s enjoy tonight.”

  They showered and fell asleep trying to watch the news and read about it in the paper at the same time. In the morning, the TV and lights were still on. Charlie woke to grain futures and the price of gasoline and the governor’s office calling for a full investigation of the nine suspicious deaths in the nursing home in tiny Myrtle, Iowa. The person behind the computer behind the front desk at the hospital here hadn’t mentioned that little fact yesterday.

  She didn’t realize her mother’s bed was empty until Edwina shouldered in with a tray of complimentary bagels, coffee, and juice. Charlie announced that she had no intention of spending another night in Myrtle ever again and would keep her room to ensure she caught the plane to Minneapolis tomorrow. “But I will go there with you today after I’ve made a few million phone calls.”

  “Charlie, be reasonable.”

  “I have been. Now it’s time to get back to the real world.” To forestall any pleas for pity, she muted the TV and called Libby, woke her up forgetting there was a two-hour difference in the time zones. While her daughter explained just how much she appreciated this fact, a color-enhanced commercial showed a machine on TV spraying some chemical mixture on rows of plants. Charlie had the feeling it wasn’t Miracle Grow. Libby was not a morning person.

  While Charlie ignored her mother’s smirk and dialed the office to leave a message on Ruby Dillan’s voice mail that she would absolutely positively be flying back to blessed California tomorrow, a strange assortment of letters and numbers zipped along the bottom of the screen. Ruby Dillan was the office manager at the agency, and the zipping letters and numbers attempted to inform Charlie of such things as the pr
ice of corn, wheat, soybeans, soybean oil, and soybean meal—of feeder cattle, hogs lean, and pork bellies. It was like a stock-exchange ticker tape, but it was out of Chicago. Iowa was a foreign country.

  To further drive home her point, Charlie left a similar message on Larry’s machine, her stomach starting to eat itself again at the thought of another trip to Myrtle. Just before she awoke this morning, she’d dreamed that she and Marlys Dittberner held a pillow over Uncle Elmo Staudt’s face until he stopped breathing.

  They were met with a new sound at Gentle Oaks—La Traviata or something operatic, sung at full volume from a deep voice that couldn’t hold the pitch and ended each measure or whatever with a squeak or a rasp. More than one of the empty beds had been filled. The mind behind the voice was as garbled as the tune and the lyrics. Charlie’s tone deafness made most music painful, but this was excruciating.

  “God, I hate it when we get singers,” Cousin Helen said.

  His name was Eugene and he was a devil on wheels in a wheelchair, pulling himself along on the walk bars in the hallway at terrifying speed, driven by a music only he appreciated.

  “Yeah,” Mary Lou Hogoboom agreed. “He can’t coma-out soon enough for me.” She grabbed poor Rose and her walker with the green tennis balls out of the way of the musical maniac just in time.

  Eugene had once been a professor of music at the University of Iowa.

  Charlie didn’t want to be there when he met up with the scrawny Fatties. Retired farmers she could see, but a “professor?”

  “The best brains go down the hardest,” Helen reassured them.

  “Ahhaa eeeiahhhh,” Eugene sang/squeaked. Fat Dolores tore off in the other direction. The family of this songster had to hate his music a lot to allow him to be sent to a nursing home that had just suffered nine suspicious deaths.

  “It’s sooo hard to be alive nowww.”

  “Everybody keep me away from all pillows,” Charlie said.

  Uncle Elmo Staudt had settled in fast—mouth open, teeth out.

  Charlie turned on her heel, “I’m outta here.”

  “Wait.” Edwina pulled her back around by one elbow. “At least touch him, say good-bye—something.”

  “Mom, why are you putting me through all this? I’ve had enough. If you want to rot in this funky family stuff, be my guest, but—”

  “Charlie, baby, he’s your grandfather.”

  CHAPTER 31

  EVERYBODY BUT ELMO Staudt stared at Charlie’s mom, even Rose, who’d followed them to escape the professor.

  “He can’t be her grandfather,” Helen said finally. “The poor man never married. He—you mean … not Elmo, no way.” But now they were all looking at Uncle Elmo.

  “Well, he thinks so. Or he did.” Edwina was strung so tight she jerked when the opera recommenced out in the hall.

  “Mom, you gonna make it?” Elmo needed a shave. He looked kind of waxy. At least he probably didn’t know where he was. His stomach seemed smaller to Charlie, his breathing steady but shallow. “What made him think he’s my grandfather?”

  Apparently when they broke up Marlys’ possessions before shipping her off here, they’d sent quite a bit to the museum. She’d burned a lot of her papers but kept pictures of herself and the girls and babes she’d cared for. Some were pasted in the album they’d looked up in Kenny’s apartment. “You saw the one of Marlys holding you. Well, back farther there was a whole envelope of loose photos pasted onto a page. Kenny and Elmo and I looked through them and Elmo was pointing out the girls he had known. All had disappeared. And then he came to one that just turned him inside out. Her name was Isobel.”

  “Aaaeeesposo, whadaleda emyoo!” Eugene wailed. “Waa dozeedough, wannapena zeedough!”

  “Somebody get me a pillow,” Charlie said.

  One of the Mexican aides ran past the open door to the hall one way and soon another ran the other way.

  “She worked as an au pair for a large family on a nearby farm, but also went to the country school then, the same school as Elmo went to.”

  Abigail Staudt and her sisters, all spinster teachers, had started an informal scholarship fund to get promising girls into the teaching profession, and Isobel had earned one. When she left town, Elmo thought it was to prepare for the two-year teaching certificate from the teacher’s college at Cedar Falls. Apparently she’d dropped out of the world to have a fatherless baby instead. Elmo was convinced he was the father.

  “Nowwww what the bloody hell?” Mr. Rochester roared out in the hall.

  “It’s quite all right, Harvey dear,” said a smooth, serene voice that was not Elsina Miller’s. Must be an actor, too—real people don’t talk that way. “I’m quite accustomed to chaos.”

  Charlie watched Uncle Elmo’s eyelids quiver. Oh, God, don’t wake up and know where you are. But she said, “Isobel could have slept with other guys.”

  “Promiscuity didn’t use to be so promiscuous,” Cousin Helen explained with a sniff that was as much judgment as allergy.

  Sheriff Drucker walked past Elmo’s door, his arms full of Dolores, who looked ready to climb his head. “Settle down, Harvey. Let Mildred do her work.”

  “Laa feee madombo ohohohohohoh!”

  “It’s sooo hard being alive nowww.”

  “I suppose I should go out there,” Nurse Hogoboom said with a sigh. “Everything’s even crazier than it used to be. If I didn’t need the money, I’d quit.”

  “You smoke?” Sherman Rochester.

  “Oohhh, who is that ghastly gentleman?” The female voice in the hall lost some of its severity.

  “That’s his Granddaddy.” Myrtle’s Marshal Del.

  “I am sorry, Harvey, I didn’t realize.”

  “Just do your psychic thing, Mildred. Oh, Christ, what’s this? Nurse, aide, somebody, get out here this minute.” Harvey.

  “Beginning to wonder how bad I need the money,” Mary Lou Hogoboom muttered.

  Cousin Helen didn’t move either.

  “Don’t they wear Depends?” Mildred asked.

  “Of course they wear Depends. They just know how to get around everything man can invent.”

  “Where are the Mexicans?” Helen whispered as if under siege.

  “Disappeared, I guess,” Mary Lou answered. “Wonder who all is here.”

  “You’d think they’d know the difference between the sheriff and the feds.”

  The sheriff’s deputy wandered past the door.

  “We all look alike to them,” Mary Lou said.

  “Is this man dead?” Mildred asked.

  “No, Mildred, he’s in a coma.”

  “Why isn’t he in bed instead of a wheelchair?”

  “Because it’s daytime and beds give him bedsores. Now will you please—”

  Charlie watched the short vignettes pass the door to the hall: the two nurses considering options, Uncle Elmo beginning to twitch all over, Edwina staring into space and inward at the same time. And Rose, who picked up a pillow from the empty bed next to Elmo’s. She looked at it for the longest time and then, carrying it on top of her walker handles, brought the pillow to Charlie.

  Oh, boy.

  “You know where the Mexicans hide?” Helen asked Mary Lou.

  “If I did, I wouldn’t tell you. I’m a Democrat.”

  Elmo’s eyebrows and ear hair and nose hair even quivered now.

  “You see, Charlie, Isobel was your grandmother and—”

  “Why? Because your uncle got laid? Mom, you’re losing it. We gotta get you out of here fast. This place is unhealthy.”

  “Well, it’s a nursing home,” Cousin Helen whispered. “My God, what are you doing with that pillow?”

  Mildred, the psychic, passed by in the hall and backed up to look into the room, nearly stepping on the toes of a young man with a Palm Pilot. Her publicist?

  Mildred and the Palm Pilot guy entered Elmo’s room, the psychic all in lacy pink, literally floating on prissy pink wedgies. Her hair had been dyed for so many years that it was
pink and lacy, too.

  Elmo groaned. Oh, Jesus. Charlie didn’t think he was her grandfather, but she owed him something for his obvious affection for her mother—which, around here, was a lot to ask.

  “Chastity was the only way to beat the curse of Myrtle,” Edwina said for no reason, belatedly coming out of her trance.

  Mildred was really heavy. She reminded Charlie of the psychics on TV. So how could she float?

  “Hush,” said the psychic in pink. “I must listen and feel. Hand me the cat, Sheriff.”

  Drucker brought the overweight Siamese longhair in from the hall and placed it in her arms. Dolores appeared to cling to her. Charlie would have bolted.

  “It’s all right, kitty, there, there. This creature is terrified of something.”

  “This is a terrifying place,” Charlie said aloud by mistake.

  “Much sickness and death here, yes—”

  “This is a nursing home,” Helen reminded them all again.

  “A health-care center,” Harvey boomed. “When will anyone stop with the nursing-home thing?”

  “It’s the place nobody wants to end up in,” Charlie offered.

  “Many, many injured and ill people come to health-care centers to recover and return home to lead happy lives,” Mr. Rochester said, not so serenely.

  “Not anybody here,” Mary Lou Hogoboom said. “Not since I been here. And Medicare pays for two weeks if you stay in the hospital long enough.”

  “Laaa, deeriato, pissssa ria deooooh oh-oh-oh-oh, delaymia de arrrhhh—”

  “Come on, Edwina. I think our grandfather just choked off the opera.” Cousin Helen grabbed Edwina’s elbow.

  “Mom, you stay right here. You haven’t even looked at Fatty Staudt since you got to Myrtle. You can’t get involved in this. We are leaving tomorrow, remember?”

  But Charlie found herself suddenly alone in the room with Elmo, Dolores, and the psychic. She was revving up to join the deserters when Elmo said quite clearly, “Mildred?”

  Viagra’s was back in business with Kenny’s secret weapons, one cooking and the other manning the bar and serving tables, too. There were even a couple of guys playing pool. The talk was of how wonderful the snow had been for snowmobiling and how bad it had been for the crops not yet harvested, and the murders at Gentle Oaks. Except at Charlie’s table, where the talk was of Mildred Heisinger the psychic.