THAT OLD SISTER
Jon Thörngren
She yelled, "Wakey, wakey. Rise and shine."
He heard it not as a yell but a muffled noise
from a distant moon. Half-parted, rheumy eyes
struggled for recognition. It was that old sister,
the one who should have retired, the one —- if
he could talk -— he'd tell her how the cow ate
the cabbage: just how mean she was. She jabbed
her forked appendages under his armpits and yanked
him upright. Can't she hear the crunching of bones
in my shoulders?
"Let's put in your teeth. Your daughter's coming."
He closed his ever-open jaw and "tweezered" his
lips. Advancing hydraulically with a glare, she
appeared determined to ram them in regardless.
A dutifully opened mouth awaited their entry.
Why do I need teeth; I'm not ready to eat anything.
"She's got a surprise for you". He smiled.
A frown or a smile — the last of his communication
skills. "That's a good boy," she said as she tossed
him from the bed into a waiting wheelchair. A pillowed
seat failed to cushion a derriere devoid of
flesh -— a ham shank with bone in, plucked and
thrown into a shopping cart. Down the hall she
pushed his lifeless carcass. "Where are we going?"
he wanted to ask. Perhaps to a green pasture, there
set me by an old tree and let me meditate with my
maker for a minute before you shoot me? A life
endured beyond usefulness and empty of purpose.
I'm ready.
The double doors to the dining area loomed as those
of an operating room, a room where "skilled"
specialists force-fed tasteless puree into ancient,
gaping mouths. It's not time for supper, and where
are all the other two-wheelers carrying their brittle
mannequins ... like that old cadaver you make me
sup with? The door opened and a standing crowd
looked down at him. It was a different dining room,
had to be; a big “T” covered in a white-paper
tablecloth had replaced all the little tables.
The old sister wheeled him to the head of the tee and
shoved his mobile prison under its ledge.
His daughter, Jean, the one who visited often, placed
a satin hand on his shoulder. "Happy Birthday, Dad.
You're officially one hundred years young today."
He smiled upward at his silver-haired saint as the rest
of the gawkers off-keyed a boisterous Happy Birthday.
A large sheet cake dominated his field of vision as he
slumped forward dangerously close to face down. If
I'm a hundred,why is there only one candle?
The old sister wrenched him upright and vanished.
He noticed several look-alikes, old, bald-headed men on
either side of his chair; probably my no-good sons, he
thought. A fat, young urchin kept finger-swiping the
icing on his cake and giggling every time one of the
look-alikes thumped him on his burr head. But there were
far more crumb-gobblers wriggling between middle aged
couples along the length of the tee — cockroaches in
frenzied anticipation for cake and ice cream. Surely this
is not my spawn.
Jean lifted a package covered in slippery-white paper
with red ribbon welded along each side and placed it
next to the cake. He frowned. I can't open it. Even if I
could get my marbleized claws from under the table, I
couldn't open it. Then he smiled as she ripped through
the paper to "Oohs" and "Ahs". A new bathrobe. An
extra big smile for his benefactors. Several of the trained
staff entered and served the throng. The elders hunched
over for some serious calorie consumption. Talk became
emotional and filled with "I think ..."; "My opinion
is ..."; and "There should be a law ..." You nincompoops,
you're wrong. It didn't help the economy in the 1930s and
it won't help now. He wanted to scream, but all that came out
was a milky stream of drool meandering through the gray stubble
on his purple chin.
"Oh, Dad, you want some more ice-cream." A deftly balanced
vanilla baseball chugged slowly toward his mouth. "Open
the station for the choo-choo train." Small favor for
having no real teeth or the frozen shock would catapult me
to heaven's gates. He smiled.
"I think it was Mr. X's fault," one of the look-alikes said.
"Well, you can't rule out Mr. Y's contribution to this
monetary crisis," said someone further down the tee. "It's
the President's fault. That's where the buck stops ..."
You're all to blame, you greedy brood of vipers. All of you
worship mammon above life. You even deify greed, the very
crooks who get caught with their thumb in the pie, you pluck
out and place in another position of power and say, "Oh, what
a good boy art thou." You hypocrites, you ... He soiled
himself. Then smiled as that old sister bounced like a flame
on a smoldering coal to his side and jerk-pushed him back
to his room.
Home