nurses when they’re trying to explain a complicated
drug regimen and the only translator may be the pa-
tient’s first-grade child. How can they be sure that a six-
year-old understands enough to tell her mother that she
needs to take the pills in increasing and decreasing dos-
ages? And don’t get me started on ID cards. We almost
120
HARD ROW
killed a man the other day. The record attached to that
particular ID card said that he wasn’t allergic to penicil-
lin, but guess what? The man who presented the card
that day was deathly allergic. We almost lost him.”
I showed her how to get into the site and suggested
key words that might pull up the info she was after.
I like Amy. She’s small and dark and claims to have
Latin blood somewhere in her background despite not
speaking a word of anything except English. She has a
firecracker fuse and gets passionate about causes, but she
also has a raucous sense of humor, all necessary traits to
stay married to Will.
He’s the oldest of my mother’s four children and a
bit of a rounder. Will’s good-looking and has a silver
tongue that could charm birds out of the trees or dol-
lars out of your pocket, which is why he’s such a good
auctioneer and just the person you want if you’re selling
off the furnishings of your grandmother’s house. He
doesn’t exactly lie, but damned if he can’t make your
granny’s circa 1980 pressed glass pitcher sound almost
as desirable as a piece of Waterford crystal.
While Amy roamed the Internet looking for factoids
to bolster her proposal, I read over what she had so far,
put some of her layman’s language into more precise le-
galese, and marked a few places where specific examples
would help illuminate the point she was making.
As she printed out the pieces she wanted to save, we
talked about the migrant problem. Floods of undocu-
mented aliens have poured into North Carolina in such a
very short time and not all are “Messicans” as Haywood
calls any Latino.
121
MARGARET MARON
“I heard Seth telling Will about y’all’s meeting last
Sunday.” She grinned. “Ostriches?”
We giggled about Isabel’s thinking hogs would be
more natural and about Robert’s reaction to the idea of
shiitake mushrooms.
“Seth said something about giving the kids some land
to grow some chemical-free crops?”
“They won’t be able to market their crops as organic
for a few years,” I said, “but it’s a start.”
