Into the Inferno - Earl Emerson [10]
“We heard he got banged up pretty good from the fall.”
“No. He only had a few scratches.”
“So why’s he wearing a diaper?”
“Mary likes it on him. It’s easier to clean up.”
“So he’s incontinent?”
“It’s been a difficult demonstration. We thought he would have a healing before this.”
“He’s been this way for a month?” I asked, picking up Joel’s right arm. It fell limply when I dropped it.
She nodded.
“Jesus,” I said.
Stan Beebe was taking Joel’s blood pressure on his other arm. “What’d the doctors say was wrong with him?” Beebe asked.
“As I said before, they didn’t tell us.”
“Could have been an ischemic attack,” I said. “Could have been a lot of things. Head injury? Spinal column? They must have said something. They weren’t keeping him in the hospital just to jack up the bill. These days they release patients as soon as they can.”
“The doctors told us we’d have to wait to find out what was wrong. That was when Mary and I decided to bring him home and rely on Christian Science.”
“He’s been like this for a month?” Karrie said. “Why didn’t you tell somebody?”
The old woman, who was crying again, didn’t reply.
I got on the radio and advised the medic unit what we had. Near as I could tell, Joel was brain-dead. Had been for a month. The doctors couldn’t fix him, and the Christian Scientists were feeding him apples.
The old woman told us they’d hired a nurse but that she’d been called away and this was her first time alone with him. “Mary told me nothing but juice, but I was just so sure he was better, I guess I pushed things. That apple was just mortal mind trying to stop the healing. It was never part of the real Joel. It was the Adam apple.”
“Didn’t come out of there like the Adam apple,” Beebe said. “Came out of there like a cannonball. We should have worn eye protection.”
“The real Joel is the perfect son of God. Always has been and always will be.”
Beebe was hovering over Joel now, begging him to move his hand, a leg, anything. Mary was the godmother of Stan’s youngest child. Stan and Joel were both adherents of minority religions, Joel a Christian Scientist, Stan a Seventh-Day Adventist. I’d kept out of their frequent dialogues on religion, although there was plenty I might have brought to the table.
Beebe couldn’t get a blood pressure, tried twice more, and handed the ears to Karrie. It wasn’t like Stan to fumble a blood pressure, and I could tell he felt bad about it. Tears jeweled the corners of his dark eyes when he handed Karrie the stethoscope.
“Look at his hands,” said Beebe, presenting his own for comparison. Joel’s looked as if they’d been dipped in wax. Beebe’s looked similar, though because of his dark skin, they were a slightly different hue.
“Chapped?” I asked.
“Guess again,” Beebe said.
The medics showed up, looked Joel over, phoned his doctor, and agreed with what we’d already concluded. Joel wasn’t any different this afternoon than he had been yesterday afternoon.
The medics had just driven away and we were putting our aid kits away when the red Pontiac pulled up in the cul-de-sac.
The driver of the Pontiac got out and stalked around the front of the car, her movements looking so much like those of an assassin, I actually caught myself checking to see if she had a gun. When somebody walks toward you that deliberately, you’re usually in some sort of trouble.
“You asshole,” she said. “You dirty coward.”
Stan Beebe was on the other side of the rig. I could hear him chuckling.
6. SISTERS OF JILTED WOMEN CASTRATING MEN
Until she was ten feet away, I believed the woman coming at me like a missile was Holly Riggs, my former lover. I also believed I knew what she was going to say.
That I was a jerk. That I’d behaved badly. That I deserved her hatred. Most of which was no doubt true.
Although this woman was trim, short, pretty, and impeccably groomed, she was not Holly. For one thing, she was feistier. For another, she had a mouth on her like a snakebit sailor.
The fine lines around her eyes and brow suggested she was around thirty,