Pool in the Glen

                                          Photo by Thomas Bjorkan. 

            That another one of Walt Clayton's roommates had died was neither unusual nor disturbing in itself. Since arriving at Sycamore Glen Nursing Center he had been through five of them in as many years. At 78, Walt was one of the youngest residents, and one of the few whose mental faculties were still intact. He hadn't even liked George Pendleton, whose body had been wheeled out on a gurney earlier that December afternoon. But something about this last death vexed Walt, aside from the obvious fact that the 88 year-old George had fallen in the bathroom and cracked his skull on the rim of the toilet. At least Tom, Jim and Eddie were considerate enough to die in the hospital, and Lew quietly in his bed.

            Walt put down the book of Dick Francis short stories that he had been reading, recalling how his son Harry humorously suggested a correlation between Walt's literary predilection and the number of deceased roommates. He turned his motorized wheelchair 180 degrees and looked out the window as the first snowflakes of winter settled lazily onto the hedges, and onto the cold black asphalt of the parking lot several feet beyond.

            "Mr. Walt, it is time for your bath!"

            Walt recognized the annoying, too jovial voice of Betty Carver, one of the aides tasked with bathing the residents. A handful of the 80 residents at Sycamore Glen used walkers, shuffling along the halls at the speed of a glacier, but most were confined to wheelchairs. All of them needed assistance bathing.

            A short, ruddy-faced woman of about 45 years and 250 pounds, Betty waddled into the room, dressed in a white frock covered with a blue plastic apron. Bright yellow latex gloves that came up to her elbows bluntly stated that she meant business.

            "I just had a bath a couple days ago," Walt protested.

            Betty shook her head vigorously, like a German Shepherd emerging from the water. "No, honey, you haven't had a bath since last week. It's Tuesday, your bath day."

            "It's not really a good time," Walt persisted.

            With a huge sigh, Betty relented. "Okay," she replied. "But I'm gonna come back tomorrow afternoon."

            Walt merely nodded.

           

            The following morning brought Harry bearing gifts: two cups of yogurt, sliced Muenster cheese and a can of smoked oysters. Walt was grateful for his son's visits, both because he enjoyed the company and was always eager to eat different fare than that served at Sycamore Glen.

            Casting a glance at the pristine chicken with mashed potatoes entree sitting on the small table by his father's bed, Harry gingerly plucked a fork from the tray and skewered a chunk of dark meat.

            "Put that down!" Walt snapped.

            Harry froze. "What's wrong?"

            "You eat too much," his father told him. "You look like a pig!"

            Sheepishly Harry put the fork down. He was not fazed by the apparent vehemence of his father's remark; he knew that the old man loved him in his own inimitable way. And at five foot five and 175 pounds, Harry figured that he should probably heed Walt's frank if tactless reprimand.

            Rubbing his hands together briskly as if to clear the air, Harry tried a different approach. "So, what's happening?" he asked, trying to draw his habitually laconic father into conversation.

            "Nothing much," Walt replied, foiling Harry's initial attempt.

            "You hear from Molly?" Harry persisted, referring to Walt's daughter in Los Angeles.

            "She called last week."

            "How's your roommate?" Harry continued patiently.

            But this time Walt's lack of indifference, however slight, betrayed him. He then did something that he hadn't in years: spoke for five uninterrupted minutes.

            Most of the residents in the east wing had been upstairs in the community room, celebrating the 100th birthday of Mrs. Jill Coates. Although Mrs. Coates was probably oblivious to the fact that it was her birthday, the staff decided to throw her a party, complete with ice cream, angel's food cake and other soft comestibles suitable for an elderly, mostly-toothless crowd. George wasn't inclined to attend, and stayed in his room. Just before the party-goers had completed a hoarse rendition of "Happy Birthday," one of the aides burst into the room and delivered the dire news.

            "Mr. Pendleton," gasped the aide, a hulking Jamaican named Zacchaeus Newton. "He fell in de bathroom. I call 911, but I think he dead."

            And indeed he was. Zacchaeus had explained to the police that he had been pushing a cart of laundry down the hall when he heard a loud crash. Running to investigate, he discovered George lying on the bathroom floor of his room, near the toilet. His wheelchair was blocking the bathroom doorway. Apparently George, who had suffered from Parkinson's Disease, had attempted to answer nature's call unassisted. The head nurse, Agnes Atwell, said that she had been taking a cigarette break on the back patio, and Mort Cogswell, a custodian, said that he had been vacuuming the main dining hall and had heard nothing. Neither had Rhonda Corbin, who manned the telephones in the lobby. None of the other staff members had been present.

             "Wow," Harry responded to his father's grim narrative. "Are you all right?"

            "I guess so," replied Walt. "But I don't know why he didn't ask for help. He used to annoy the hell outta me the way he cried 'Help! Help!' all the time. Whether he was having stomach cramps or wanted someone to change the television channel, it was 'Help! Help!' Pain in the ass." Walt hesitated awkwardly before adding "Rest in peace."

            Except for the occasional bout of indigestion, which he attributed to institutional food, Walt usually slept soundly. But tonight was different. Two days had passed since his roommate's grisly demise, and even the soft, steady humming of the heater failed to produce its usual sleep-inducing effect. Walt knew that George's bed wouldn't remain empty long. He remembered last Sunday watching a program on cable TV about the Bubonic Plague when halfway through the show George commenced his shouted supplications. The staff, accustomed to his crying wolf, generally were not quick to respond. But eventually Zacchaeus and John Barber, one of the nurses, came to his aid. The emergency this time? A box of tissues on George's nightstand had fallen on the floor, out of reach, and while George had no need to wipe or blow his nose at the moment, he was much distressed at the prospect that a sudden fit of sneezing should overtake him unprepared.

            Zacchaeus cheerfully replaced the tissues, and pleasantly bid "Mr. Pendleton" a good evening. John maintained a surly silence. As the two departed, Walt noticed a small slip of lined paper, about the size of an index card, on the floor. At the top was the date, and written in pencil below that was a name. Underneath the name were five blank lines numbered 1 through 5.

            "Zacchaeus," Walt called. "You lose this?" He pointed to the curious blank list.

            Zacchaeus reacted with mild shock. "Oh, yeah. Thanks." He bent down and with thick fingers picked up the slip of paper. "We have little football pool," Zacchaeus seemed compelled to explain.

            "Sounds interesting," replied Walt, who had absolutely no interest in sports. "What teams do you like?"

            "I am big Philadelphia Eagles fan," Zacchaeus told him. "Always pick dem to win, out of loyalty. Love Tampa Bay, too."

            By this time John had departed. Walt had always surmised that the male nurse disliked the residents, as well as his job.

           

            "Exactly why do people say that they 'thought to themselves?' To whom else would they think? Also, what's up with the expression 'free gift?' If it's a gift, of course it's free! Did you ever wonder about that?"

            Walt was only marginally paying attention to his son. "I've wondered where you come up with these questions," he answered, not too unkindly.

            Harry shrugged, content to simply switch topics if one didn't work. "I see that you still have no new roommate," he remarked with a glance at the empty bed. "A week's already gone by."

            Walt grunted. "I'm in no hurry."

            Harry chuckled. "You'll probably kill him, too."

            Harry's father shot him a venomous glance. "Will you shut the hell up!"

            A loud knock mercifully took the focus off of Harry's irreverent sense of humor. Agnes stood in the half-open doorway, her 300-pound frame blocking out much of the light from the corridor. A pair of reading specs were perched on the end of her nose, and a long yellow pencil rested above her right ear. In one hand she clutched a red acrylic clipboard.

            "Walt, how are you doing?" she asked disinterestedly.

            "Okay, I guess," said Walt, who almost never responded differently to such inquiries.       

            "That's good," she replied apathetically. "You're getting a new roommate next week," she informed him. "His name's Don D'Alonzo."

            "Great," Walt muttered.

            Harry was in the habit of peppering his conversation with non sequiturs, which were occasionally flippant or just plain strange. This one was fortunately innocuous.

            "You must keep busy as head nurse," he remarked.

            "Yeah, I do," Agnes replied. "But I like it. Aging is big business nowadays. They're always gonna need nursing homes, and they're always gonna need nurses to staff 'em. At least it's a lot more interesting than my last job."

            "What was that?" Walt asked.

            "Bookkeeper for a medical supply company," Agnes said.

            Walt laughed. "A bookkeeper? You run that football pool here?"

            Agnes either didn't hear or chose to ignore him. "You have a good day," she said as she turned to exit. "I'll keep you posted."

            The next day, Walt had passed Zacchaeus in the hallway and noticed that he was sporting a thick gold chain around his muscular neck. Must have won big in that 'little football pool,' he thought.

            Don D'Alonzo had not yet made his much-anticipated debut at Sycamore Glen, giving Walt a few more days of privacy. At the moment Walt was embroiled in a staring match with a platter of marinated meatloaf and glazed carrots. A side of lemon cake with vanilla icing stood on the sidelines, while a lukewarm cup of apple juice refereed. Walt seized his fork very purposefully and with a brief yell attacked the beef product. The dripping brown substance slid off of the tines and rejoined the main mass of organic matter. Walt called time out.

            Negotiating the empty bed and adjacent table that had been George's, Walt maneuvered his wheelchair to the bathroom on the other side of his room. He was stuck with the manual chair tonight, as he had neglected to charge the motorized chair. Opening the door with some difficulty, he studied the distance from the threshold to the toilet: approximately six feet. George had been short of stature, perhaps five-foot one when standing, which he was infrequently. Why would he park his wheelchair so far from the toilet? If he had stood up from that point and then fallen forward immediately, which was ostensibly the case, his head would have landed nearly a foot from the deadly porcelain. Unless he got up and attempted to lunge forward.

            Or had been pushed.

            Feeling restless, Walt parked himself opposite the television atop his dresser, content for the moment to watch Fox's Bill O'Reilly pontificate. Bored, he pressed the remote a couple of times, passing over a sports broadcast. He returned to the skipped channel, something compelling him to listen.

            "After their thrashing at the hands of division rivals the Dallas Cowboys, Philadelphia is dead last in the NFC East. I spoke with the coach earlier today."

            Walt turned off the set. Reaching for the telephone next to his bed, he called his son.

            "Where are you?" he asked Harry immediately after he answered.

            "I'm at home, Dad," Harry said. "You called my home number."

            "Oh, right. Did Tampa Bay win their last game?"

            Slightly puzzled, Harry answered that no, in fact, the Buccaneers had lost. Before he could ask his father why, Walt tackled him with another question.

            "How many teams are there in professional football?"

            "What? How many. . . Okay, let me think," said Harry. "There are the NFC and the AFC -the National Football Conference and the American Football Conference-" he explained. "and each conference is broken down into four divisions -north, south, east and west-"

            "How many teams?"

            "I'm thinking! 32 teams. Yeah, I think that's right."

            "Are there more than five footballs games per week?" Walt pressed.

            "Yes, of course," said Harry. "Now if you count college football-"

            "I'm not counting college football."

            "Then at least 15 or 16 in the NFL," Harry told him. "No, even more. I didn't know you were interested in professional football."

            "I don't give a damn about professional football," Walt replied. "And apparently, neither does anyone else around here." He took a deep breath. "Son, I need you to come over tomorrow. It's very important."

            "Is everything all right?"

            "Yeah. I hope so. I mean sure. Don't worry."

            A large hand descended out of the darkness of the room, its thick index finger depressing the receiver button.

            "Don't shout," whispered a familiar voice. "I can snap your neck like a twig, but I don't want to. Now let's take a stroll."

            Walt was aware of being rolled slowly back, then turned about face, towards the door. His wheelchair began moving out into the hallway, which was unfortunately empty at the moment. The short indoor trek ended a few feet from a rear exit, bearing a red-lettered sign warning EMERGENCY EXIT: ALARM WILL SOUND.

            "Where are you taking me?" Walt asked nervously.

            There was no response. The same large fingers punched four numerals on a keypad next to the emergency exit. Then pushing open the door, Zacchaeus rolled Walt out onto the rear patio.

            "You know, Walt, the nursing home never did install dohs security cameras on de perimeter like dey said dey would," Zacchaeus remarked casually. He wheeled his captive down a winding path which snaked around a wooden gazebo.

            "No, dey never did," Zacchaeus reiterated.

            Shivering from the chilly December night, Walt fumbled in his right robe pocket for a familiar apparatus, and pushed three buttons. He prayed silently.

            Zacchaeus had paused at a small private road that cut behind Sycamore Glen and led to the Lutheran Convalescent Home a quarter mile beyond. Deliberately Zacchaeus guided the wheelchair across the road and stopped at the foot of a steep hill.

            "Zacchaeus," Walt said, being careful to speak loudly but not shout. "We are in the back of Sycamore Glen Nursing Center, 1444 George Washington Lane, Milford Pond, Pennsylvania."

            Zacchaeus returned a mystified expression. "I know dat," he said. "You are one crazy old man," he told Walt. "Maybe dat is why you wheeled out de back door by yourself at 10:00 at night and toppled over dis hill. A shame, really. Somebody forgot to set de pass code, I guess."

            "Are you going to kill me, Zacchaeus Newton?" asked Walt, increasing the volume slightly.

            Zacchaeus gave a short laugh. "I'm afraid so. It's nothing personal, Walt. I like you, but you should have minded your own business. What was dat Parkie to you, anyway?" he asked, using the derogatory slang for Parkinson's sufferers. "He better off dead. I do him favor."

            "But why, Zacchaeus?" Walt asked, already knowing the answer. "Was it a mercy killing?"

            Zacchaeus laughed again. Then, like a villain in a James Bond movie, he revealed everything. Of course there had been no football pool. 15 of the staff members had placed five-dollar bets every week on which of the 80 residents were likely to expire. If any of the five selected passed on, whoever bet on any of them would win. Multiple wins resulted in shared payoffs. After an appallingly long four months with none of the "geezers kicking de bucket," the pot had swelled to $2,400. Too much for Zacchaeus to resist, he admitted. Agnes, by the way, had run the pool.

            Walt was surprised. "Agnes was in on this?"

            The third laugh followed. "No, she don't have de stomach for killing. It was all me. She only run de betting part. Not de best system, but it work for me."

            Walt thought desperately how to buy an extra minute or two. He had the answer. "Won't they be suspicious if every time you bet on a resident, they die?"

            Zacchaeus shook his head. "Not every time, just once." An ominous pause. "Twice. But I only gonna win $150 on you, then I lay low for a while."

            Walt tried to conceal any smugness in his voice. "It's like I always told my son Harry," he said. "Your mouth will get you into more trouble than anything else."

            Zacchaeus jerked his head around just in time to see a police cruiser peal to a stop ten feet from where he and Walt were parked. The short bleep of a siren was followed by a brilliant flash of red and white. Two officers, a man and a woman, jumped out of the car, Glocks drawn.

            "Hold it right there!" the female cop shouted.

            Despite some residual anxiety at having nearly been "bumped off," Walt was in the mood to celebrate. He had broken up a heartless bookmaking ring, solved a homicide and prevented his own. Apparently all of those detective stories that he had read paid off. Agnes and about a dozen other staffers had been fired, and Zacchaeus was in custody, charged with first degree murder and conspiracy to commit murder. The remaining employees at Sycamore Glen had been forced to work a lot of extra hours pending replacements for their terminated co-workers. "They probably want to kill me, too," Walt joked to Harry as the two of them lunched at nearby Moody's Cafe. 

            "So you called 911 from your cell phone, which was in your robe pocket?" Harry asked.

            "That's right. Zacchaeus never knew what hit him." Walt sipped his coffee. "He spilled the beans, and all of those calls are recorded."

            "Oh, before I forget," Harry said, then paused to take a bite of his roast beef au jus. "I brought you some more reading material." Hauling a plastic bag from under the table, he dumped a pile of Ruth Rendell novels next to Walt's grilled salmon platter.

            But Walt shook his head. "I don't know," he replied. "I just don't have any appetite for murder mysteries anymore. At least not for a while."

            Harry was mildly disappointed. "Oh. Okay, Dad." He calmly collected the half dozen paperbacks. Then recovering his composure, he turned his attention to a cornbread muffin that came with his father's meal. "Speaking of appetite, are you going to eat this?"

            "Harry!" Walt growled. "You've had enough!"

            His protestations were ignored as Harry, with one sweeping motion, deftly seized the muffin, then took a large bite. He chewed with gusto, glad to have his father back to his grumpy, lovable self.