The Woman in Oil Fields by Tracy Daugherty

here the whole time.”
    â€œShe doesn’t know one way or the other. Her poor old noodle just comes and goes,” the second woman says.
    â€œStill, he oughtn’t to lie to her that way.”
    Last night a woman died in the room next to June’s. It was the first time I’d ever heard a death rattle. Her last breaths came gurgling out of her throat like water draining in a sink. Nurse Simpson cleared her out of her bed, an ambulance pulled up outside the building’s back entrance, and that was it.
    Now June’s clutching and unclutching a Kleenex in her hand. I open the curtains to let in the light. The two nurses who’ve been whispering enter the room with a pill cart. Tiny color snapshots of all the Parkview residents have been arranged in rows on the tray, next to little paper cups full of capsules and pills. Orange, red, yellow, green. One of the nurses finds June’s photo, picks up her cup. Her pills are gray. “Get those things away from me,” June says, covering her mouth with the Kleenex.
    â€œJunie, now, be a good girl –”
    â€œTrying to poison me with that crap.”
    The nurse forces the pills into June’s mouth with quick sips of juice. “Ought to try to walk a little today,” she says, squeezing June’s feet. “Work your legs some.”
    â€œI walked for ninety years. Leave me alone,” June says.
    The nurse’s white blouse is spotted with large yellow stains. Someone’s breakfast. She gives me a hurried look, and I know she’s the one who disapproves of me.
    â€œThank you,” I say as she replaces June’s cup on the tray.
    The pills always knock June out. While she sleeps I flip through a stack of Kodak prints my mother sent us last week. Family snapshots. A picture of Mom in her high school cheer-leading outfit; her graduation portrait. June pruning roses in her yard. There aren’t any pictures of Bill. June destroyed them all years ago, when he left.
    An alarm bell rings in the lobby. I go to see what’s happened. Mr. Edwards has tried to escape. He’s rammed open the back door, the ambulance entrance, with his wheelchair. He has an old fedora on his head and a blue sweater draped across his shoulders; otherwise he’s naked. Briefly, I find myself rooting for him but the nurses catch him as he rounds the patio. “Sons of bitches!” he shouts, spurring his chair like a pony.
    At lunch the Soup of the Day smells like mercurochrome. June won’t eat it. I bring her a ham and cheese sandwich from Burger King. She’s lucid and calm. “Where’s your wife, Glen? Didn’t you get married?” she says.
    The question catches me off guard. “No. Well, yes.”
    â€œShoot, boy.” She cackles then coughs. “Are you in or out?”
    â€œWe split up about a year ago,” I tell her. “She’s in New Mexico now.” Marge and I only lived together for a few months in a small apartment near Puget Sound. Mom had told June we were married; she wouldn’t have understood the kind of loose arrangement we had.
    â€œWhat was the problem?” June asks.
    â€œI don’t know. I didn’t make enough money to suit her.”
    â€œWhat is it you do?”
    â€œI’m a welder.”
    â€œThat’s right, that’s right. Making airplanes.”
    â€œYou want these fries?”
    She holds out her hand. “I never understood why you moved way the hell up there, anyway. What’s wrong with Texas?”
    â€œNothing’s wrong with Texas. I just didn’t want to work in the oil fields.” I brush a horsefly off the sandwich paper. “I heard it was pretty out west, so I went.”
    â€œThere’s worse jobs than the oil fields,” June says.
    I laugh. “Sure there are. It’s just –”
    â€œWhat?”
    â€œI don’t know, June, it seemed kind of aimless to me. Bill, Bud, even Dad. Moving