The view from the window never changes. The colors of the grass vary of course, season to season, month to month. As do the flowers that grow along the edge of the woods. Occasionally a bird or rabbit will come through the picture to add variety and the weather of course brings rain and wind and even on a rare occasion snow.
But the scene never really changes.
He stares at it throughout his day almost all day. At the grass; now a light green, turning to brown as the heat of summer beats down. At the trees; a stand of long leaf pine and scraggly yaupons, growing low. He never speaks of his thoughts on what he sees. If he did you might hear in his raw high pitched drawl complaints about the thin grass. "Why I can tell you about grass. Went to the
The trees would bring up a different rant of sorts. "Them ain't big trees, just a little stand of young plantation. Why my granddaddy, he worked the woods, he cut some big trees. Seen some as a boy, so big two men couldn't wrap their arms around them. I can take you to building now, walls and moldings made from he cut and hauled ot that mill over in Pineland."
He would tell you all this and anything else he knew about whatever you might think you knew something about. At least he would…if he could talk.
Or he might walk outside and criticize the grass and point to nearby houses and tell you of their owners and residents and share some negative comment or slanderous tale about each of them…if walking were still possible.
You see he sits and looks all day because that is all he can do. Call it a stroke, call it an embolism, say what you want. The simple truth according to the doctors is his brain betrayed his body and has trapped his mind inside a shell he can't move. Why it happened? The course of time, old age, too many bacon sandwiches and Marlboro reds maybe.
Or maybe something else.
I know all this because I come a few times a week and see him in this place, this nursing home. And I've known him a long time, most of my life, him seeming to be old when I was young though only 15 years separate us. He married my cousin, and so he's family of sorts. But the reason is not for family; I come because is I feel I owe it to him. That's it part of my contrition.
You see I put him here.
Oh I know, a stroke, an embolism, I said all that. But even modern medicine can miss things. Things that come from old ways, old recipes, things handed down. Things that could go in your food or your iced tea and not be noticed till your bodies paralyzed and you can't breath and someone is standing over you asking what's wrong and you realize you don't know what's wrong, but that smiling face in front of you damn sure had something to do with it.
I figure he knows I did something. Despite what they say, I think he knows everything thats going on around him. He genuinely likes to look out the window at the trees and grass. The nurses discovered that when they moved him away from it. Keeps him calm to look outside. And as long as he's calm, they say he'll live a long time. My coming around initially agitated him so I quit, or at least I quit letting him know.
As long as I'm out of his line of sight and quiet, he never knows I'm there. In fact he has no idea I come by like I do, that I act the concerned relative and talk to his doctors, talk to his nurses. That I watch them adjust the machines hat make him breath, keep him alive. The machines that delay the inevitable. Machines that have kept my vengeance from being complete for sixteen long months.
So I'm here now, watching him watch the world through his window. I stand behind him, listening to the wheeze of the respirator, the beep of the monitor that tells us his heart still beats.
"Hello Frank"
The beep increases, the rate of respiration goes up. I walk around and now my face fills his field of vision. The beeping continues to increase in rate until I reach over and push a button that cuts off the monitor. I see his eyes widen as he realizes what I'm here for, what I'm doing.
"Accidents happen Frank. You know all about that though don't you. Maybe the wrong buttons about to get pushed. Or maybe it's just your time, maybe you're wore out.'
I reach for the respirator control and step back where he can't see me. I lean down close though, so he has no choice but to hear me.
"Look out your window Frank. Take a good long last look. Keep that sight of green grass and the clouds and those pine trees fixed in your mind. There's no blue sky in Hell."
*********
Later...
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