Tampico (James A. Michener Fiction Series) by Toby Olson Page A

see it and the house too out the windows of Arthur’s car as we drive through the meadow. Arthur has rigged up curtains, and I can close them if I need to, and there have been good days, though long ago, when Arthur drove slowly and I walked at the side of the car, my hand gripping the frame of the open window. The house is safe and the open porch is safe, and I can step a few feet toward the crest, so long as I can see the porch. The car’s okay, though there have been tough moments from time to time, and I’ve worked at the Manor for over fifteen years, and it’s safe. I’m thirty-eight years old now and I don’t need the work, but it keeps me among people and I need that. Arthur gets my groceries and takes the trash away and drives me back and forth to work, and I have his fee and the utilities and food, and there’s enough in the bank to cover that. Ihave no friends, though I’ve had women and some men too over for dinner, and once I had a lover, but that was long ago. I had my two beautiful bettas in a tank in my bedroom, but the female died in June, and just last night the other failed.
    The Manor seems to be failing too, and each of the four doctor-owners, one of whom comes daily, seems to be waiting only for the men to die so they can put the place up for sale and get out from under. It had its good days once, when it was a private home for the aged. There’s plenty of land there, and a view, and the wealthy used it. But then they began to bring the old men in, on a good contract from the Veterans Administration, and the wealthy drifted away. Now the Administration has withdrawn the contract, is consolidating and closing such satellites. And when the old men die, Lisa the day nurse told me, that will be the end of it.
    The old men seldom speak of war, and the visible remnants of their injuries, John’s scar and Gino’s angry burns, seem to have nothing to do with war, nor do their psychological states as far as I can tell. The time in service that got them to the Manor is in a distant past. Gino, though he’s a hundred now, is spry, but there’s an absence that I’ve noticed in his face, some unfinished business, and I think I’ve seen the same in Frank. I can’t tell about Larry yet, he’s new and is still learning to get his feelings through his tracheotomy. The therapist comes once a week, but his work seems perfunctory. The doctors don’t care, and I think he must sense that, and any real movement toward articulation is left to the men themselves. It’s that they need to tell their stories again before they die that keeps them working at it.
    The man behind the screen in the solarium haunts me. I was there when they drove him up from the lighthouse in the bed of a pickup truck, and the doctor was still there. It was near the end of my shift and Carolyn had come in, and I stayed for an extra hour, Arthur out in the car waiting for me, and helped to get him settled. The doctor was excited, not sure that the blow was cause of the man’s continuing unconsciousness and curious about it. “It’s the kind of thing I do,” he said, and I could hear an interest in his voice that had never been there when he’d spoken of the old men. He said it was definitely coma, most probably from shock. There was swelling where the heavy board had struck his temple, but not much. “We’ll just have to run the X-rays, blood work and some other tests, and watch him.”
    This was a week ago and still he sleeps, and on my shift I pass into the solarium often to check the drip and pressure, though it’s not always necessary.
    There’s something about his body and about his face. His arms are like the smooth arms of a woman where they rest along his sides on the sheet that covers him, but under his thick skin there’s muscle close to the surface, and when I lifted the right one to pull the sheet away it was heavy, and I saw that his legs had the same properties as his arms and that his hairless chest did too. His