Out Of The Deep I Cry

fetched out a couple of nurses, and had them wheel the old lady into the place themselves. He thought of it, later, but at the time, sliding her out of the Rambler seemed like the most logical thing to do. He took her feet and Shaun took her shoulders. He was so intent on avoiding a collision while walking backward that he didn’t see the commotion their entrance caused. Shaun did, though, and nearly dropped the woman on her head.

“For Chrissake, Shaun, don’t just-”

“What are you boys doing?” The nurse bearing down on them had a bosom like the prow of a battleship, and the face to match. In one swift move, she caught the old woman’s wrist lightly in one hand while digging her other fingers bone-deep into Russ’s shoulder.

“Ow!” he said. “We’re not doing anything!”

“Is this your grandmother?”

“I don’t know who it is! We just found her. At Stewart’s Pond. She walked into the water. She tried to drown herself.”

She sized him up with a single flick of her eyelashes, and even though she barely came up to his chest, she somehow managed to speak over his head. “Skelly, McClaren, get that gurney over here.” She glared at Shaun, who was looking longingly at the exit doors. “Don’t even think about moving, young man.”

Two nurses scarcely older than Shaun and Russ rolled a pallet over. One of them glanced sympathetically at Russ. The battleship let go of his shoulder in order to ease the old woman onto the gurney.

“Into the examination room,” she said to the other nurses, who obeyed her with such speed that Russ figured she must terrorize everybody she came into contact with. She hooked her hands around his and Shaun’s arms and followed the gurney, towing them past the admissions desk and through the swinging double doors into the examination room. She bulldozed through a square of limp blue curtains shielding the old woman from public view. “Get Dr. Hansvoort,” she said firmly. One of the young nurses disappeared. “Well, don’t just stand there,” she told the remaining nurse. “Get her vitals. Ah, Dr. Hansvoort. Thank you for coming so promptly.”

The young resident who had parted the curtains looked as if he wouldn’t have dared take his time. “Nurse Vigue?”

She rattled Russ’s and Shaun’s arms. “All right, you two. Tell Dr. Hansvoort here what happened.” She narrowed her eyes. “Truthfully.”

Russ and Shaun fell all over themselves trying to get their story out. While they described the woman’s strange actions, Russ’s dive to rescue her, and the mouth-to-mouth resuscitation, Dr. Hansvoort clicked on a penlight and looked into his patient’s eyes, nose, and throat.

When they had finished their recital-Shaun’s last comment had been “… and so we’d like to go now, please”-the doctor frowned.

“Attempted suicide,” he said to Nurse Vigue. “Or perhaps senile dementia. You had better put a call in to the police.”

“My thoughts exactly,” she said, nodding her approval at the doctor’s performance. She captured Shaun and Russ again and sailed them back through the swinging doors into the waiting room. “You boys sit here. The police will have questions about this incident.”

And if they don’t, Russ thought, she’ll make sure to tell them they ought to.

“But,” Shaun began.

“Sit.” She arched a thinly plucked brow at them and seemed to soften a little. “We have quite a few back issues of Boy’s Life magazine. I’m sure you’ll enjoy reading them.”

“For God’s sake, sit down and read,” Russ muttered to Shaun, taking a chair himself and opening the first magazine at hand.

Two issues of Popular Mechanics later, the emergency-room doors opened and Russ looked up to see the weather-beaten face of Chief Liddle. He was neither large nor intimidating-in fact, he looked more like a farmer than a cop-but both boys sank in their seats when he glanced their way.

The chief spoke briefly with Nurse Vigue and then vanished into the examination room. “Now you’re screwed,” Shaun whispered. “He’s had his eye on you ever since he caught us torching tires at the dump.”

Russ shook his head. “I’m not scared of him,” he said, and it was true. He had seen the chief a few too many times, back before his dad passed away, gently steering the incoherent and maudlin Walter Van Alstyne up the front walk and into the parlor. The chief always said the same thing: “He’s had a few too many, Margy. I guess he needs to sleep it off.” Then he’d look real close into Russ’s mom’s face and ask, “You be all right here with him while he’s like this?”

And she would get all brisk and efficient and tell him they would make out fine, and then they’d help Dad to his bed and she’d press a cup of coffee-usually refused-on the chief.

It wasn’t until after his dad was dead that Russ realized what the chief had really been asking his mom, and when he did, it enraged him, that anyone could think his gentle, soft-spoken father would ever harm his mother. But later, he thought about how the chief had always acted as if Walter Van Alstyne’s drunkenness was a onetime thing, and how careful he was of his mom’s pride. And he realized the question wasn’t that far-fetched after all. Because in his own way, his dad had hurt his mom a lot.

When the chief had caught him drinking Jack Daniel’s and leading a group of seniors in lighting tires on fire and rolling them downhill from the dump, he had hauled Russ behind his cruiser for a talking-to. To the rest of the guys, it must have looked as if Russ had missed getting arrested by the skin of his teeth. But in truth, Liddle hadn’t threatened him with the lockup. Instead, he had looked at Russ as though he had been stealing from a church, and said, “Russell, don’t you think your mother’s been through enough without you grieving her with this kind of foolishness? How are you going to look her in the eye if I have to bring you home…” he didn’t say just like your father. He didn’t have to.

Russ didn’t have the words to tell this to Shaun, so he just grunted and snapped open a year-old Life magazine. It showed pictures of a massive antiwar demonstration. He shut it again, leaned back against the vinyl seat, and closed his eyes. This was supposed to have been a fun day fishing, one last day when he didn’t have to be anywhere or do anything. Now it was all turned to crap.

“You boys want to tell me what happened?”

Russ opened his eyes. Chief Liddle stood in front of them, his thumbs hooked into his gun belt. Russ and Shaun clambered to their feet, and Russ let Shaun rattle on about the fishing and the old woman and the rescue and the resuscitation. He wound it up by explaining how they had driven the old woman’s car to the hospital, then said, “Can I please go and call my mom to come get us? Because I just now realized we need a ride back to the lake to pick up my car.”

The chief looked at both of them closely. He sniffed. “You two smell like the Dew Drop Inn on a Saturday night.”

Shaun’s eyes got wide and white.

“It’s me, sir,” Russ said. “I had a couple beers. But it’s not as bad as it smells-I knocked ’em over when I took my jeans off to go after the old lady. That’s why I stink so bad.”

The chief shook his head. “Russell-,” he began.

“Russ is leaving for the army next week,” Shaun blurted. “You know what they say, Chief. ‘If you’re old enough to fight for your country…’”

“You aren’t going, are you?” Chief Liddle asked Shaun.

“Ah, no.”

“Then I suggest you hush up and stay away from booze where I can smell you. Go on, go call your mother.” Shaun didn’t have to be told twice. He took off for the pay phone at the other end of the hall. Liddle looked straight at Russ, and the fact that the chief now had to look up to meet his eyes gave Russ a weird, disoriented feeling, like the time after his dad’s service when Mr. Kilmer, the funeral director, had asked for ‘Mr. Van Alstyne’s signature’ and he had realized that that was him, that he was ‘Mr. Van Alstyne’ now.

“Is it true?” the chief said.

“Yes, sir.”

“You volunteer, or did your number come up?”

Russ paused. “My number came up.”

“And you’re leaving next week?”

“Wednesday.”

The chief bit the inside of his cheek. “How’s your mom taking it?”