Kill Switch

as he slips back into bed.

“I don’t take medications. Medications are for gimps, simps, and wimps.”

“Oh, another saying from your work?” I ask, snarky.

“I don’t have work. I am retired.”

“Where are your meds, Da?” I snap, tearing apart his modest allotment of underwear and toiletries packed nicely in his drawer like a new boarding-school schoolboy.

“I don’t have any,” he growls.

As he should, growl. Of course he doesn’t have his medication. I packed our stuff.

I blew it.

While Da sleeps and Jarrod mows, I pace. I sweat and fret and try and come up with a solution to this because we cannot go back home for the medicine because that will be the end of the road, and we cannot call the doctor to order more because that would give us away as well, and we sure as hell can’t go any further at all with no medication.

“My feelings exactly,” Jarrod says, walking in with grass clippings covering his legs.

“I guess I was thinking out loud,” I say.

“I guess you were thinking out loud, out there,” he says, pointing out the window. “I could hear you outside. I could practically hear you while I still had my headphones on.”

I’ll have to watch that.

“What’s the matter anyway? You got him back. You didn’t lose him again, did you?”

“No, I didn’t lose him again. But I did something just as stupid. I forgot to bring his medicines. Without those…” I shake my head, pace some more, grab two fistfuls of my own hair.

“You are a sight, cousin.”

Jarrod watches me as if I am in a pet-shop window. His amusement grows.

“What?” I say.

“I might know somebody.”

I freeze. “What do you mean by that?”

“My guy. In the next town. He claims he can get exactly anything I want.”

“Don’t screw with me here, Jarrod. I am very much on edge.”

“I can see that. I’m sure we can hook up something for your problem as well.”

“Yeah, one medical emergency at a time,” I say. “But thanks, I’ll let you know.”

We wait it out while Da sleeps off his moderately big adventure. By the time he comes into the kitchen, he looks a bit more rested, settled, and at least is dressed in regular outside attire.

“Where can I get a cigarette?” he asks.

“I know just the place,” Jarrod says.

We are off once again in the Subaru, and this time I don’t have to drive. There is a slight indication my cousin is starting to get the hang of low-level responsibility and commitment to a task.

“This is great timing,” he says. “I was fresh out of my own medication and had to make this run today myself.”

Close enough.

“Are we getting medication?” Da says from the back. “For me, too?”

He sounds so weak and lost to me, I want to cover my ears. I want to promise him anything. I want to make him better with my own stupid hands. I turn, see him wringing his own hands feverishly. “Would you like some, Old Boy?”

“I think maybe I need some. I don’t feel well.”

“We’ll take care of you, Da. Just sit back and watch the scenery.”

He does, and the scenery does basically the same granite-trees-granite-trees-flying-by trick for the whole forty-minute ride.

“Are we there yet?” asks a convincingly bored-out-of-his-skull voice. It belongs to Jarrod.

“You are the driver,” I point out. “You tell us.”

“Just about there,” he says as we finally turn off the highway and onto the lead-in road to the town. Five minutes later we are pulling into one of those classic northern New England towns that never wind up on postcards. There is a small steel-colored river running past a couple of hulking and empty factories that must have made shoes or shoelaces or shoehorns or something that somebody else makes even better now. The river has a couple of bridges over it, but neither is covered like in the calendars. They should cover them. They should cover everything else while they are at it.

“Oh yeah,” I say, admiring the ambience.

“You want meds or don’t ya? Don’t be so snooty.”

“Oh yeah,” Da says, recognizing something else. “Bet this town arms more militias in a year than I ever did. And I spent a lot of time in Angola.”

Like in slow motion, Jarrod and I turn to Da, who is poker-faced.

A horn wails at us. I spin and yank the wheel, pulling us out of oncoming traffic. The other driver is wailing even louder.

“Lucky you didn’t kill us,” I shout at Jarrod, shoving his head sideways.

“Even luckier that guy didn’t,” Da says, staring out the back at the other driver, still menacing us with a finger.

We pass several vehicles as we negotiate the main drag, and they all look like they were monster trucks in their playing days. Then we turn off the road, off that road, and then off that one. We park at a modest-looking little shop that appears like it doesn’t want to bother anyone. VENUS EXOTICS, it says in red lettering on a cream- painted window.

“Is this what I think it is?” I ask as Jarrod leads us in.

“Not if you think it’s a bakery,” he says.

“Whoa,” I say as we head straight down the middle of three aisles. The woman behind the counter, dressed in a schoolgirl uniform, waves us through to the back. If that is her uniform, she’s kept it nice for about forty years.

Da keeps muttering behind me as we walk toward the door that says MANAGER. I pull him in front of me and guide him. “Whoa,” he says. “Wow.”

“Jarrod,” the man says when we walk into the office.

They shake hands. Da and I get introduced.

“Nice place you’ve got here,” Da says.

“Thank you,” the man, Matt, says.

“I have never seen so many giant rubber penises in one place in my life,” Da marvels.

“Please,” Matt says, “you’re making me blush.”

We have only just met, but I am guessing that is purely impossible to do.

“Anyway…,” I say, catching Jarrod’s eye.

“Yeah, Matt,” Jarrod says. “About business.”

“Right, right, I’ve got your order. I take it your friends are here for something as well. What can we do?”

This is where it gets complicated.

I can just about recall the main couple of medications Da takes daily to almost hold it together. Matt is something of an expert, but he is not 100 percent certain.

“Do you sell cigarettes?” Da asks politely. His hands are starting to tremble from a number of different deprivations.

“Sorry, sir, I do not.”

Something my grandfather always pounded into me, and I always believed it anyway, but now that I am seeing his hard side I am believing it fantastically: Manners beget manners. Don’t start a ruck when you can just say please and get the same result. I suppose it works with a sex-shop black marketeer as well as it does with anybody else.

“Here,” Matt says, sliding a nearly full pack of Camels across his desk.

“You’re a good man,” Da says, smiling pleasantly.

“Keep that to yourself,” Matt says, smiling likewise.