The
Chickasaw
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SHORT STORY – in fact, chapter 2 from the Novel in progress,
Chickasaw: The Good
Life and Hard Times of Doctor Christopher Jacques
Dr. Christopher Jacques, divorced and lonely if
professionally successful, met Lilith McGee, a nurse
from
Two patients have been introduced,
Dr. Jacques and Lilith McGee, R.N. see
Chapter 2: Grady O’Toole
Christopher
stirred in his sleep as the rasping began, insistent, intrusive, and loud; an
ill-tempered cicada the size of a Volkswagen. His eyes blinked open. The number
He then
moved down to the kitchen, glancing at the stairs that led to his houseman
Sal’s two room suite in the lower level of the tri-level house as he passed.
First microwaving his Bigelow’s Earl Gray tea, he picked up the black leather
briefcase from the kitchen table, opened the kitchen door and stepped out into
the carport.
An early morning breeze
twirled about like a dancer, sneaking beneath his white clinic coat and up the
sleeves of the white shirt beneath, gripping him with its coldness. He saw only
the merest splinter of gold where the sun rose in a sky shaded in timber-wolf
gray and antique silver. Though the green sprouts of jonquils and narcissus
were already showing in the yard, the smell of impending snow was crisp and
fresh in his nose, an unusual event for the
He got in his car, sat the
cup of tea in one of the two center-console drink-holders, clunked the door
shut and cranked up. Pulling the gearshift lever into reverse, he looked over
his shoulder, and began to back out of the carport as the snow started to fall.
Flakes big as nickels wafted down, stippling the windshield and clouding the
way before him as he shifted into drive and the car crept forward, the whine of
the supercharger barely audible. He headed toward Grady O’Toole’s Chevron
Station, which stood, on
Grady, big and broad in
the shoulder, in his mid-forties, had a flat, friendly, open Irish face. His
pug nose glowed from the cold. He wore a green parka over his blue uniform, the hood pushed back, a navy blue stocking cap
pulled down over the tips of his ears. He waved Dr. Jacques into one of his two
work bays, the one with the hydraulic lift. Chris emerged from his car and
caught the scent of grease, of oil, and a slight hint of kerosene in the air.
He moved over and stood in the blast of the fire-engine red kerosene heater,
shaped like an airplane’s jet engine pod, that whooshed and vibrated as it
tried with limited success to warm the open bay.
Chris raised his hand in a
half-salute sort of greeting and spoke first. “Hi Grady.
You have your work cut out for you today, don’t you?”
“You got that right, Doc. I been here an hour already. Everybody wants chains on, and
wants them right now.” He pushed a lock of blond hair back from his forehead
periodically with the back of his gloved hand. Using an iron rod bent into a
hook at the end, he changed the lift arms beneath Dr. Jacques’ Jaguar from an
“H” to an “X.” He then tripped the lever that set the hydraulic pump humming
its one-note song. The snow dusted Jaguar rose, the wheels drooping at first as
the lift arms elevated the chassis, then following the rest of the vehicle.
When they were at chest level, Grady tripped the control lever again, stopping
the lift’s ascent, the car on it pitching ever so slightly as it did so.
A gray
Her breath was visible
puffs of mist as she spoke. “Sure. We’ve met.” She aimed a thin smile his way
and said a quick “Hi Dr. Jacques.” She turned her attention back to Grady and
said, “Grady, my car heater quit working halfway here.”
“Bad day for that, Lil,” Grady offered.
“Yeah, I’m freezing,” she
replied, still looking at Grady.
Grady bent his head back a
tiny bit, and said, “Probably just blowed a fuse, Lil. Doc, give me just a minute. If it’s what I think it
is, I can have Lil on her way in two minutes.” By
force of habit he wiped his hands on his hips, stepped over and opened the
driver’s door of the Honda. The hood latch clucked and the hood popped up
enough for him to get his fingers underneath and release the safety catch.
Chris, carefully intent on Grady’s actions, avoided looking at Lilith, but she stood there anyway, insistent and
unavoidable on the periphery of his vision. Beautiful as Tirzah,
comely as
“Busy day ahead, Chris?”
she queried. She sounded like southern
He looked up, gazing at
her. “It was scheduled busy, Lilith, but you never
know. Lots of people will cancel in this kind of weather, but you get surprise
visits. People who are sick enough to come in anyway.”
She nodded slightly,
pleasant enough.
Grady returned with the
burned-out fuse still in this hand. “Lil, it’s the
fuse alright, but I’m outta this one. I can have
Palmetto Automotive send one as soon as they open, but that’s 45 minutes.”
“Uh oh. I’m charge nurse on First South. I really need to be
there long before that.”
Chris studied her
perplexity for a beat before he said, “Lil, I’d be
glad to give you a lift.”
She hesitated, looked at
him, knitted her brow a little. He noted that this was an entirely nice
maneuver. Cute! “Oh, I don’t want to
inconvenience….”
He turned toward Lil again, smiling, the rumble of his voice softer.
“Nothing personal, Doc, but, Lil, I don’t know if
you’d wanna ride with Doc, I mean, you don’t know him
like I do.” He finally smiled at his own joke as Jacques shook his head in mock
despair at Grady’s humor saying, “gee, thanks, Grady.” He then looked at Lil who colored slightly. Chuckling, Doc added,
“Professional courtesy, right?”
“Good, Doc.” Grady continued. I can have
somebody take her car over when I get some help in.” He watched her, saw her
hesitancy, and remembered coming on too strong previously, and his consequent
humiliation. He pursed his lips and his face became serious. Before she could
answer, he glanced back at his car, checking it out as if his only worldly
concern was the well being of that collection of glass, lacquer and steel. He
sought to find reassurance in the memory of its deep-piled carpeting, the rich
scent of its yards of glove-soft cream-colored Connolly leather, the birds-eye
maple paneling on its dash and doors; its supercharged engine so powerful that
the car, luxurious or not, had the acceleration of a hooligan hot rod. But in that brief moment, as he waited for
her reply, it became nothing but a lump of metal, its wheels drooping
dejectedly, melting snow dripping from it to puddle the floor. Then Lilith smiled toward the doc and said, “Well, that would
help out. Thanks Chris. You too, Grady.”
“Great,” Doc responded. He
took a deep breath and smiled. Feeling better, he turned his attention to
Grady. “Grady, how’s everything going with you?”
Grady talked as he turned
his attention to the snow chains being applied to Doc’s car again. “Doc you know Shirley. She’s my nearly
ex-wife, Lil. She says she ain’t
gonna sit still for no divorce. But you remember,
Doc, how she got to coming around all the time, me working like a dog, her
saying I was going out with some other woman? She started saying that I was
running around on her and that it was the devil was making me do it.” He
brushed the hair on his temple back, “Then she started going through my
checkbook, and if I wrote a check at the grocery store, even though it said
Winn-Dixie on it, she said it was to buy stuff for some other woman. Lilith, I ain’t wanted no other woman, and even if I did, I ain’t
had no time for none, not and run this place. Then she started saying her food
tasted funny and I’d put something in it to hurt her.”
Jacques became more
attentive as Grady’s running patter continued.
“She said wasn’t no use
for me to lie about it, cause her guardian angel told her. I said, Shirley
that’s crazy. Oh, Lordy, she got really mad then. You
know what she did, Doc. After all, you sewed me up.”
The doctor shook his head,
glancing at Lil as he spoke. “Yeah,
the box cutter. Twenty-eight stitches.”
Lilith, wide-eyed, hands thrust deep in her coat pockets, did
a soft, “Dear me,” shaking her head.
Grady took a pair of Vice
Grip pliers from his pocket, adjusted the bite, and clacked the recalcitrant
keeper of the chain shut. “So I moved out, got me a four-room rental house over
on the Flint Mills village. But it’s got worse anyway. She came to my house
last Saturday. That was my birthday.
“Doc, Lil,
picture this; I was outside feeding my dog. I saw her walking fast, coming down
the street towards the house. Well, I was happy to see her. It’d been mighty
lonely, nobody there but me and the dog. I figured she was coming by because it
was my birthday, and maybe she had a little present in mind, if you know what I
mean. I smiled real big, started waving. Then I saw that little .22 in her
hand. She raised her hand up and aimed straight at me. I throwed
that pan of scraps down and took off running across the back yard. She started
running too. jumped across the gully next to the
street and ran after me. When I looked back over my shoulder.
She’d stopped, and had that pistol up, holding it with both hands by then like
on a cop show, one eye squenched shut. Smack! Smack!
She shot twice. I looked back again and ran hard as I could into the
chicken-wire fence at the back of the lot, hen I backed off and rolled over it
like it never was there. I got on into the patch of woods there and got behind
a big pine tree. You know what she did then, Lil?”
Lil, eyes fixed on Grady as he spoke, shook her head and
mouthed an inaudible “no.”
“She turned around and
shot my dog instead. That’s the God’s truth! Right there in my own yard. Then
she put that .22 in her hip pocket and went on out of the yard and walked on
back down the street, sashaying along as slow and easy as if she had just stopped by with a birthday
present. It was a good dog, too, Doc, Sooner I called him, half beagle, half
something else. Why’d she want to do that? Lilith,
you tell me.”
Lilith, made a wry face and
pulled her shoulders high. “Probably, Grady, she did all that intending to make
you love her more. But did you call the cops?”
Grady paused, looking back
at the chain-draped wheel before him. His shoulders sagged a bit. He lowered
his head a little as he spoke but continued working.
“No. I just couldn’t do that. I just couldn‘t, Lil. I just
wrapped my dog up in an old coat and buried him in the woods behind the house.
That’s all I did.”
A gust of wind brought snow pirouetting into the bay.
Dr. Jacques reached up with one hand and pinched his lapels shut at the neck.
Grady then paused in his work. He stopped working at this. He turned and looked
fully at Christopher and Lil, his brow wrinkled. “You
know, we been together twenty-seven years. I still love her. I don’t want to get
divorced. I believe in marriage, Doc, like in the Bible. I really do. But I don’t’ know what else to do. I never though
it would come to this.” He looked down at the floor for a moment, took a deep
breath, then quickly turned his head away again. He
tugged on the chain to check it, then levered the keeper open again with a
screwdriver. Putting his arms and shoulders into it, he pulled the chain one
link tighter, then closed it again with his pliers.
Finally, satisfied with
his work, Grady stepped over and tripped the lever so that the hydraulic
mechanism popped and hissed, and the lift slid smoothly downward.
Doctor Jacques said,
“Thanks, Grady,” and Grady scratched the figures for the bill down on a pad he
took from his shirt pocket. Grady opened the passenger door for Lil. Doc reached for the handle on the driver’s door, then
paused and looked back at Grady. Lilith followed his
gaze. Grady stood there, big enough to be a heavyweight contender, pliers and
screwdriver in one hand, the other on the door handle. He looked as mournful as
a much-whipped dog. Doc opened his mouth to speak, yet hesitated. It was Lilith who stepped back and looked full at Grady. She took
his big grease-stained mitt in both of her gloved hands and said, “Grady, I’m
sorry your marriage isn’t working. Sometimes things get better, though, just
like they got worse.” He nodded his big head, eyes bright now, as Lilith continued. “I’ll pray a special prayer for you both,
Grady. I promise I will.”
He sniffed, nodding,
lowered that huge head of his, swallowed hard, then said, “Thanks, Lil, thanks a lot.” They were silent. The wind from the
outside died and the heater on the floor filled the room with the keening of
its motor and the whooshing sigh of its exhaust
***
The snow continued
to fall heavily,
clouding the way and obscuring the windshield.
The Jaguar’s wheels spun a little as Chris shifted into drive, then began to roll. They drove
toward the hospital, chains clattering as they crept across the growing layer
of snow on the macadam. Christopher, his eyes fixed on the street before him,
took in the scent of her as she sat there. Something so light
that you might not even notice. Shampoo? Spring
Rain or something like that. Anyway, he decided, Essence de Femme. Women
smell good, perfumed or not, he realized. The sense of smell, the oldest of our
senses, he recalled. Pheromones, nature’s strategy for the
propagation of the species.
“Nice
ride,” she said, running her index finger over the paneling on her side of the
dashboard.
He
glanced toward her as he spoke. “Yeah, lots of gadgetry. Your seat’s awfully
far forward. You can adjust it umpteen different ways with the rocker switches
on your arm rest.”
The
servo-motor for the seat adjustment whined like a mosquito as she manipulated
the control, moving the passenger seat back and bringing the back rest forward
as Chris continued. “That was decent of you, the way you spoke to Grady, the
prayer thing and all. What denomination are you?”
Lilith continued with the seat adjustment,
bringing the lumbar section of the seat forward, then
adjusting it back slightly. “Really, I’m not religious in any ordinary way. I
don’t go to church. I’m especially interested in New Age stuff, though. Doctor
Jacques stiffened a little. Magic? Devil worship? Everybody who is anybody in Austerity goes to
church. Mostly quality folks are Baptist. Then Jacques relaxed, remembering
that he'd met all sorts of people when he was in the Marine Corps. He’d gotten
along quite well with them, even the unsaved. He smiled toward Lil and recited a standard Southern Baptist joke for her
benefit. “Question: What would I be if I weren’t Southern Baptist?”
“I dunno,” Lil responded, glancing
at him.
“Embarrassed.”
Lil made a wry face at this. What a cornball. Maybe a little conceited, stuck on himself and his
fancy car. Sort of cute, though, and decent enough.
Under other circumstances…but of course I’ve got other issue to deal with right
now. She smiled in spite of herself, though, then
continued. “May I?” she queried, indicating the passenger’s seat warmer switch
on the center console.
Chris
nodded, smiling, then spoke. “Interesting.
New Age and all. I don’t know much about that. I wish
I did. Just about all of us are Baptist here.”
She
frowned slightly as she responded. “Yeah. Everybody’s
Baptist here, aren’t they?” Brightening, she added quickly, “Doesn’t matter,
though, I guess, at least most of the time. I’d love to chat about it
sometimes. It’s so interesting…” Realizing what she had said and how
enthusiastically she said it, she paused, then added
quickly, “If I can ever finish my master’s thesis, that is.”
“Sure,
I’d like to do that,” Chris said. “When do you finish the thesis?”
She
hesitated again, then, looking out the window at the snowscape
scrolling by, she spoke, her breath a foggy patch on the window. “Oh boy. I…I don’t know. A few months if
I’m lucky. Three? Four?” Her words were forced,
tight, controlled. Jesus, why do I have
to meet this particularly eligible guy right now when I’m so tied up with the
baggage I brought along with me? Oh Boy
“Oh,” Chris replied quickly. He cleared his
throat, eyes still fixed on the road ahead. With Lilith’s
words still ringing in his ears, for an instant his former wife came to his
mind, scowling, scornful, rejecting. He’d opened
his mouth to protest when she left, but she’d persisted. “I’m not putting up
with this shit any more.” A spitting cobra. Beautifully packaged, but still a spitting cobra.
The
conversation between Lilith and Chris changed
suddenly in that moment, as if it had been rebooted into safe mode. They spoke,
then, of safe topics, of your patient census and mine, how many of this and
that you’ve seen lately and what a pain third party payers were to deal with.
Then they were parked in the Doctor’s parking lot, and she was out already out.
She
bent over and spoke through the open door. “And thanks a lot, Chris, I really
appreciate this. Please excuse me, but I’m late already and I really have to
run.” I need to get away from this, this feeling two different ways at once, about him. It’s
just not the time. Life’s too complicated already…
“Sure, Have a good
day, Lil.”
The
door clicked shut. Still sitting, Chris watched until she reached the building.
He then twisted back and grasped the sheaf of papers that had drifted across
the back seat, neatened the stack and brought them to the front.
Briefcase
in hand, Jacques he emerged from the car, the latches thunking
solidly into place as he pressed the remote on his key ring. A security light
the size of a B-B on the dash flashed scarlet twice He headed for the
entranceway through which Lil had disappeared. He
took two steps and stopped, hesitated, turned, and unthunked
the door latches again. Opening the passenger door, he reached down to the
armrest and pressed the seat adjustment memory button. He watched with
satisfaction as the LED blinked lime twice, preserving Lilith’s
seat position in recallable memory.
End of Chapter 2, Chickasaw
The
Chickasaw
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