Seven Days Dead (2 page)

Ora is pleasantly chubby, with a drooping nose, and quite a tall forehead above a round face the world regards as plain. She’s a bright-cheeked young lady. Lescavage finds her cute in her way.

“I put in my hours. Anyway, I’m not a freaking nurse.”

“Ora, he’s not dying. Ask yourself, since when are we ever that lucky?”

Her eyes asquint, she retorts, “He says he is! Doesn’t he? I wouldn’t put it past the old prick bugger anyway. Sorry for my language there, Rev, but I’ve had it up to here with him.” She frees up a hand to measure to the height of her scalp.

Lescavage removes his rain hat under the protection of the overhang, lets the water pour off. “Yeah, well,” he concedes, “if the shoe fits.”

“What’s that supposed to mean? What shoe?”

“It’s an expression.”

“So aren’t I the stupid mutt.”

“It’s a very common expression.”

“So now I’m dumber than the dumb asses.”

“Ora.” He sighs. “You called him a ‘prick bugger.’ I’ve not heard that one before. All I’m saying is, I don’t think it’s unfair to call him that.”

“Watch your language there, Rev.”

She pulls her hat more tightly down her cheeks. An umbrella would not survive two seconds out here except in a lull, so the strategy of clamping both hands to her rain hat is wise.

“You won’t stay?” His voice has gone falsely plaintive, coaxing, a plea.

“I’m gonzo, Revy. He’s all yours. See ya on the flip!”

True to her word, she splashes down into the broad puddle at the base of the steps, cocks her head to the right and into her shoulder against the wind, and stomps through an enveloping blackness beyond the fringe of walkway lamps. Lescavage watches her go for longer than he can actually make out her form, but he knows what this caring gesture really means. He’s putting off the inevitable. He goes inside through the open door, then shuts it tightly.

Amazing, he thinks, how much quieter this house is than his own in the midst of an onslaught.

He sticks his rain hat on the top hook of a shiny aluminum wall-mounted rack. His jacket, stuck to him by the wet, peels off slowly, like skin, and while trying to be free of it, he calls into the house. “Alfred! Upstairs or down?” He stays quiet, awaiting a response, but receives none. No sound is apparent other than the faint hum of the backyard generator and the underlying chant of the rain. “I know you can hear me!” he attests. “You might be dead but you’re not deaf!”

An insult might shake loose a reaction, but not this time. He continues to strip off his outerwear and wedges the boots from his feet, dries his face on a sleeve, then admits himself to the house and stands there in his socks.

In the living room off the grand foyer, the La-Z-Boy is vacant. A snack that Ora Matheson threw together for either her employer or herself—cheeses and an assortment of crackers, bread slices, preserves, and a few green grapes—has gone largely untouched. Lescavage is instantly aware of his own desire for a nosh. He cracks a scone in half, slathers on butter and raspberry jam, and has a nibble. Before finishing, he prepares a second scone then carries his snack deeper into the house.

“Alfred? Anywhere?”

Opulence abounds, but he’s used to all that and pays it no mind. Outside these walls, the house is legendary and valued to be more glamorous than it actually is. He and Ora entertained themselves one time by repeating stories they’d overheard glorifying Alfred Orrock’s home. They are among a select few to be admitted, and due to the proprietor’s frailty, both have been entrusted with keys. Yet their opinion of the place is never believed. Most islanders, preferring the imaginative tales, presume they’ve been intimidated into keeping mum, that they probably live under threat of retaliation if they speak. The stair railing is made of gold, so it’s been reported. The chandelier of diamonds. A subterranean wine cellar the size of a submarine will double as a bomb shelter at the world’s end. The upstairs master bedroom has its own indoor swimming pool, and when Ora scoffed at the idea, saying, “That’s ridiculous!” she was informed about secret doors to secret chambers, and, of course, the secret pool. “You don’t know more than nothing, do you? You’re just the hired help. Billy Kerr’s uncle worked on that house, it wasn’t all mainlanders.” She was excoriated for being dim, so unaware of the obvious. She simply didn’t have a head for the plain facts, people scolded.

One plain fact that the Reverend Lescavage knows, because he asked Billy Kerr’s uncle who was aging badly in Dark Harbour, is that the man helped build the chimney. Only that. No secret rooms. He never stepped inside the house while it was under construction, but he did see a floor plan. The layout for massive rooms. Only mainlanders built the interior, and what they said about it during the process was never believed, and, after they’d gone home, soon forgotten. The sadness of the rooms—the absence of life, of ceremony, of tradition, of
people
—leaves the more prevalent impression on the minister every time he visits, so all that is quite fancy here strikes him as unimpressive.

He climbs the wide staircase. Halfway up, it turns. If this were a daytime sojourn, or a moonlit night, the full-height window at this landing would show a seascape of shining beauty. The waves undoubtedly crash way below, unseen in the dark, their roar obliterated by the rain, wind, and, to a lesser extent, the generator.

The visitor goes straight on through to Alfred Royce Orrock’s bedroom.

Why anyone would need a space this massive just to sleep in baffles him always. Now, a space to die in. But Lescavage rejects that bit about death’s door being ajar. Just another Orrock ploy. A way to get something nobody wants to give him. Another craven extortion. Probably, anyway.

And yet, Lescavage admits, seeing the man under the fluffy duvet, partially propped up by pillows and sleeping rather peacefully, he looks barely alive. He observes the man in his slumber and finishes the last scone. Slaps his hands together to rid himself of the crumbs, then pulls up the bedside chair put there for the convenience of visitors like him, or only for him, and sits down.

The tyrant does seem sound asleep.

An occasional splutter indicates that he remains among the living.

“Alfred,” the pastor says gently, quietly, “it’s me. Simon.” Orrock does not stir. Yet Lescavage remains unconvinced by this evidence of nocturnal bliss. “Don’t invite me over here to tell me you’re asleep.”

The man’s eyelids flicker, the lips move, and for a moment the minister accepts that the other man is indeed frail. When he speaks, the voice is dry, a scratchiness in the tone, but the attitude, the
attitude,
remains pure Orrock.

“It wasn’t a goddamned invitation,” the ailing man decrees.

He seems to be waking up to his visitor’s presence, his eyes straining to stay open, and he adjusts his weight and straightens his back. By her own claim, Ora Matheson is his housekeeper and not a nurse, but Lescavage gives credit where it’s due—she’s done a fine job looking after the old geezer. One minor stain on the lapel of his pajamas, but otherwise he looks tidy. His thin gray hair has been combed. He’s clean-shaven. The spaces around him are in order and the bed is neat except for where he’s lying under the covers. Even at that he doesn’t disturb the duvet very much, having gone thin. Suddenly, the old patriarch winces and holds his eyes shut, waiting for a marauding affliction to pass.

“You told Ora to ask me here,” Lescavage points out to him.

“A command,” the man qualifies. “I ordered you to get your ass up here. On the double. Obedient puppy that you are, you obeyed. As you should.” He swallows, and moistens his lips with his tongue. “I’m reasonably satisfied, but you could have been quicker about it. You wouldn’t have had to wake me then.”

Lescavage stares at him awhile, noticing the scalloped cheeks, the desiccated skin around his eyes, nose, and mouth, the exaggerated wrinkling at the base of his neck. Ironic, the dismissive, autocratic words mated to the scratchy, failing voice. He gazes upon him long enough that he’s able to get the man’s attention, and Orrock fully opens his eyes to look back at him.

“What?” Orrock asks.

“Fuck you,” the minister says.

“Excuse me? Is that any way for my spiritual adviser to talk? Especially now.”

“What’s so special about now?”

“I’m on the brink of fucking death. I’m about to meet your goddamned saints. Do you want me to put in a good word for you or what?”

Lescavage stretches in his chair, then clasps a wrist and rests his head back against his hands. He’s willing to warm to this joust. “Your spiritual adviser is the devil himself. Doesn’t he swear?”

“Not like a sailor, no,” Orrock maintains, “and never at me. Give him half a chance, you’ll find out he has the soul of a poet. As do I.”

The pastor isn’t certain, but detects the hint of a smile on the faded, drawn visage. “Right. Poet. How are you anyway?”

On a dime, Orrock turns on him again. “Ah, you sweet
bitch,
how do you think I am? I’m dying. Just because you’re too scrawny to squeeze out a decent turd, Lescavage, doesn’t mean you’re not pure shit on a stick to me.”

The minister looks away in anger a moment. “Then why ask me over, Alf? Or
command
me? How can I help? Do I look like some sort of grave digger to you?”

“You stink. You’re putrid,” Orrock mutters aimlessly, adding, “I need a drink.”

“Ora could’ve made you a drink.”

“Or you can,” the old man asserts.

Lescavage is up for this battle. “Or not.”

Alfred Orrock gathers his energy. He indicates his water glass with a jut of his chin, a request Lescavage is willing to entertain. He helps hold the glass for him as the old man quenches his thirst.

“Whiskey,” he demands when finished, “with a dash of water and one cube.”

“Fuck you, Alfred.”

“Stop with the language. I’m not saying you can’t serve yourself.”

“I’m good, thanks.” Lescavage, though, does not sound convinced.

“All right.” The old man paces himself, the words emerging slowly. Perhaps affected by that rhythm, they gain a measure of gravity. “Truth is, there’s more to it.”

“That’s always the case with you.”

“I need more than a drink. I need one righteous piss.”

“Ora could’ve passed you the bedpan. You don’t need to drag me out here on a night like this so you can take a flying leak.”

“And—” He coughs, then uses the back of his hand to clean off a dab of spittle. “I’m not walking too good today, Simon. Feet like lead. My back’s in a vise. I need you to escort me to the can, then pull my pants down so I can take a crap. How do you like that?” He wipes some nastiness from his lips with the back of his hand. “I can’t ask that young thing with the cute titties to help me shit twice on the same day. It’s not dignified. As she reminds me so bloody often, she’s not a nurse.” He might be smiling, although it’s hard to tell as his facial muscles haven’t so much as twitched while holding his visitor’s steady gaze. One frail finger points at the minister, an implied accusation. “You, Simon,” he says, “will help me with that.”

Lescavage blows air from his lungs, looks away, and crosses his arms as though to indicate defiance. But he doesn’t find much of an argument for mutiny. “This has nothing to do with your dignity or your despicable bowels. All you care about is humiliating the other person.”

Orrock’s smile is quite evident now. “Not the other person, Lescavage. In my prime, maybe. Maybe. Now? I only have it in for you.”

The minister thinks the matter through. In so many elderly people, he’s noticed that their gentle failings—frights, regrets, grievances, revolving patterns—all come home to roost in their dotage and grow exaggerated as the person’s capabilities and faculties fade. Orrock is a mean man at heart, who is not about to reform at this stage of his life, not unless a few ghosts from decades and centuries past and future suddenly elect to haunt him.

“Seriously? Alfred? You can’t shit on your own?”

“I would if I could. Too long a hike across this floor. It’s a goddamn expedition. I refuse to use a bedpan for that, or shit where I sleep. I don’t own a walker. Here’s the kicker. I need assistance to squat down.”

Standing, the visitor peels back the duvet and reveals the skeletal form of the island patriarch. He looks shockingly frail in his too-large pajamas. At least two sizes too big for him now. A hip bone juts out, lacking flesh. Over the last couple of months, including just two days ago, Lescavage has seen the man only in street clothes, which apparently camouflaged his deterioration.

“I don’t know,” the minister remarks quietly, “if you’ve heard about a novel idea. It’s called a hospital?”

“Yeah, where at my age they force you to wear diapers. They never come when you call. Then bill you a mint. When they know you’re rich, they bill for all the poor who can’t pay. And don’t talk to me about nurses. Pack of thieves, the lot.”

“We have health care now. We’ve had it for your entire adult life.”

“I’ll die at home, thanks.”

“Yeah,” Lescavage murmurs, “about that. Dying. Promises, promises.”

Any such discussion will have to wait, as the men fall to the logistics of their procedure. The minister criticizes the ailing patient for not buying a wheelchair. “Lord knows you can afford one.”

“I never foresaw the need. Anyway, when I die, it ends up in a junkyard.”

“Donate it to the needy.”

“Socialism. Forget it.”

“Actually, it’s called charity.”

“Same difference.”

“Bullshit,” the minister sums up.

“Wash out. Your mouth. With soap.”

They must coordinate their movements. Orrock shows determination, but he also wails when a leg or a hip twists. Lescavage is shocked by the man’s weightlessness. He’s probably dipped below 150 pounds, when not so long ago he was at least forty more than that. Even his remaining weight somehow feels as though it’s composed of air. Or of dust.

“Up,” Lescavage instructs him.

The old man still has drive. With one arm slung over the pastor’s shoulders, Orrock hobbles off across the carpeted floor to the bathroom. Entwined in that embrace, he intones, “Sweetheart, after I piss and shit and you make me a drink—if you’re lucky, my last—I shall grant you the honor of hearing my confession.”