Chapter 4: Grub and Maddie

Nate actually looked forward to going to school on Monday. At first recess, he grabbed his friend, Freddie Edwards, and told him about the serving-spoon beating Grandmother Tillman had given his Uncle Henry the night before. Freddie had pale freckles and straw-like hair that clumped in patches all over his head. Like Nate, he was scrawny and awkward, so their friendship was unencumbered by distractions, such as playing sports or spending time with girls. Nate also tried to retell the story of Old Redemption, but it didn’t seem as good as when his Uncle Henry had told it.

“Think your grandmother would’ve shot Mr. Thornton if he’d dropped Old Redemption into the river?”

“No doubt in my mind,” Nate said. “You should’ve seen her with my uncle. If she could get that mad with family just over a word, I know she could’ve shot Ricky Thornton over a dog.”

Margaret Haynes walked by and Nate froze for a moment, thinking she was going to say something to him. Margaret was just breaking into puberty. In the last few months, she had shot up several inches so that she was now a little taller than Nate. Other changes in her body were just beginning to show, and Nate was surprised by his recent fascination with her. She walked right past him and Freddie as if they were old, familiar billboards along a country road, paying just enough attention to avoid collision and no more.

Freddie saw the anticipation rise up in Nate and then dissipate. “Dream on,” he said after Margaret had passed.

Nate shrugged. “Just wish I knew what I was dreaming about.”

Nate and Freddie admitted their ignorance about sex only between themselves. Around the other boys, they laughed at all the jokes and innuendoes as if they knew what they meant. The week before, Bill VanDiver had asked Freddie which had more hair in it, his comb or his toothbrush. All the other boys had laughed and so Nate and Freddie had joined in. Only later did they admit that they had no idea what he’d meant.

All of a sudden, a hand grabbed Nate’s shoulder. “Hey, butthole, what’re you looking at?”

Nate jumped reflexively. It was Grub Hanley, the school bully, an eighth grader going on sixteen. He rarely showed up at school, and when he did, it was usually to extort lunch money or inflict pain on the other kids.

“Slug for flinching.” Grub promptly hit Nate on the arm.

Nobody knew what Grub’s real first name was. It actually might have been Grub, after all, his family was the low-life of Davis Corners and could’ve conceivably christened a child after insect larva. He was a big boy with black, greasy hair and the wispy start of a mustache. His clothes were soiled and smelly, and half a shirttail was always hanging out. Time with Grub was time spent wishing you were somewhere else.

“Got any money?”

“Pick on the little kids,” Nate said. He hoped that Margaret Haynes had moved on and wasn’t watching.

“Hey, butthole,” Grub said, while putting Nate in a headlock, “I asked if you had any money.”

Grub called everybody “butthole” and only “butthole” and repeatedly “butthole.” It wasn’t so much that it was his favorite insult, it was more likely the only insult his limited brain capacity could store. Over the years of being bullied by Grub, Nate had acquired a distaste for the word equal to Grandmother Tillman’s distaste for the disputed phrase about Jim Frank’s statue.

“Don’t have any money,” Nate gasped out through the choke hold.

“Purple tittie-twister.” Grub reached inside Nate’s shirt and twisted his nipple.

“Stop it.” Nate sounded like he was going to cry.

“How ’bout a squirrel, butthole?”

Being ‘squirreled’ consisted of a boy having his testicles jostled and squeezed until he threw up.

“Got a dollar in my pocket,” Nate said right away.

Grub frisked Nate’s pockets and took the dollar. He gave Nate’s nipple one last twist and let him go.

“You’re such a butthole,” he said and left.

“Why do I take that crap?” Nate said. He was just barely holding back his tears.

“Because he’d kill you if you didn’t,” Freddie said. “He’s bigger than you. What can you do?”

Nate thought about his grandmother. She was smaller than Ricky Thornton and smaller than Uncle Henry, yet she’d stood up to them. She wouldn’t have let Grub Hanley bully her. Nate knew if he talked to his parents they’d just tell him to notify one of the teachers. The teachers wouldn’t do anything, they were just as scared of Grub as he was. He wondered what Grandmother Tillman would’ve done.
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Across town, Doctor Jeremiah Lightcap was worrying about a different kind of bully. This one was a disease with a long, fancy name and was holding a woman named Maddie Flanagan in something stronger than a headlock. Actually, it was killing her, and this morning, Doctor Lightcap had to be the one to tell her.

Jeremiah Lightcap ran a simple, family practice, mostly giving out shots, delivering babies, and mending people’s parts that got torn or broken. Debilitating nerve diseases weren’t part of his mainstay, and he had checked his test results and diagnosis with some of his more sophisticated colleagues in Birmingham. Everyone had concurred.

Maddie Flanagan was a no-nonsense woman, somewhere in her fifties, and plain as a gray, weathered board. She was every bit as strong as Grandmother Tillman, but with none of her graciousness. “Tough old gal” is how Jeremiah Lightcap had described her over the phone to one of the other doctors. Not quite tough enough he thought as he looked over his notes and got ready for his appointment with her.

“Morning, Maddie,” he said as he walked into his office where she was waiting.

Maddie said nothing in return. It was obvious what part of the day it was, and besides, she was there to get information, not give it.

Jeremiah laid it all out for her in about three sentences. She was sick, she was getting sicker, and she was going to die and nobody could do anything about any of it.

Maddie stared straight at him while he spoke and took it in. “You lay it on the line, Doc, I’ll give you that,” she said when he was done.

Jeremiah Lightcap was noted for that. He was almost cynical in his dogged obsession with the literal truth. This trait didn’t make him popular. He was a man who’d say another man was wrong if he was, and he’d tell someone they looked silly if they did. On the other hand, he was Davis Corners’ final arbiter when objectivity was needed. Whatever else, Jeremiah Lightcap was a man who wouldn’t lie about anything.

“I can recommend some medication that will comfort the symptoms, but that’s all I’m going to be able to do.” His voice was kind, and it softened the starkness of his words. “I want you to make appointments with my nurse to come in every three weeks.”

Maddie looked at him with her own silent brand of cynicism. The only reason she was here was because her situation was desperate. She had come in for the first time a month ago when the sluggishness in her legs had gotten to the point where she was having trouble walking and even driving her car. If he wasn’t going to be any real help, she wasn’t going to waste her time coming back.

Maddie left the office and struggled back into her blue, ’53 Chevy Bel-Air. She adjusted the plastic statue of Jesus on the dashboard and said a quiet prayer. Maddie’s plastic Jesus was a familiar sight around Davis Corners. It was one of those religious statuettes with magnets in the feet, popular when cars had lots of steel and people had lots of faith. There weren’t many of them around any more, a sign of declining metal content in cars or in people’s faith. At any rate, between Maddie Flanagan and her Bel-Air, there were plenty of both, so plastic Jesus rode where the view was good. She wondered why he let her get into this mess and if, somehow, he’d get her out.

Jeremiah Lightcap waited a few minutes before seeing his next patient. He parted the curtains in his office and watched Maddie get into her car. He watched her adjust the plastic Jesus and he wondered if her faith was helping her take the news. He envied people with faith, he had none himself. His last attempt at it had been many years before and had left him disappointed.

He picked up the phone and called the school, the same one Nate attended. He asked for Elaine Collins, the principal.

“Elaine Collins here, how can I help you?”

“It’s me,” he said.

“Is everything okay?” It was unusual for Jeremiah to call her at school.

“Yes, everything’s fine. Just doing yucky stuff.”

It was all Elaine could do to suppress a chuckle. Here was a fifty-something-year old doctor using the word “yucky.” She knew it must be something emotional. Jeremiah was beyond being bothered by blood and bodily functions.

“Would you like to come over tonight?” Elaine said.

“I have to make a run to the hospital. After eight okay?”

“I’ll make us some dinner, bring a bottle of wine.”

Jeremiah rarely reached out. Elaine doubted that he’d open up about whatever it was that had bothered him enough for him to call. Still, she liked being there for him, even if it meant just being company.

Jeremiah showed up at eight-thirty with a bottle of wine someone had given him for Christmas. He didn’t know much about wine.

“It’s red,” he said, “I hope that’s okay.”

“Cork, no screw-top? Good boy.” Elaine put the bottle on the table. “I made roast, red is perfect.”

Jeremiah joined Elaine in the kitchen. “Dating on a school night, will the neighbors talk?”

Davis Corners was a small town. Everyone knew the town doctor was seeing the elementary school principal. Still, they were careful how they conducted themselves, in public and in private. They were friends, sweethearts even, but they had not become lovers.

“Long as we stay in the kitchen and living room and walk past the windows periodically, we should be okay.”

They both laughed. They were middle-aged professionals, and this small-town attention about their relationship seemed so adolescent.

“You sounded down on the phone today.” Elaine opened up the channel in case Jeremiah wanted to talk.

Jeremiah poured some wine and let it bite for a minute on the tip of his tongue. “Terminal patient. A doctor’s so damn useless in something like that.”

Elaine knew not to ask who. Had they been married, she felt Jeremiah could confide more freely. As it was, it would be a breach in the doctor-patient confidentiality for him to say.

“How’d they take it?”

“Okay, so far, but sometimes it takes a couple of days to sink in.”

“How’re you taking it?” she said.

“I’m a doctor, I deal with it. It’s part of the job.”

He took another sip of wine, this time a little deeper than before. Elaine knew this was as much as he was going to say. Even though it weighed on him, talking about it was not his way of dealing with it. She sometimes wished they were lovers, then she’d have a way to help, and he’d have a way to reach out without talking. Unusual, she thought, that she was the one who was ready and he was the reluctant one.

Jeremiah had certainly thought often about their becoming lovers. Issues of morality and reputations aside, he was afraid that being intimate with her would open up more than he wanted to let go.

So they ate dinner, instead, and talked about things that didn’t matter. He kissed her good-night under the front porch light and drove home.

Chapter 5

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Copyright (C) 2009 Michael A. Hughes