A small bunch of bushes near the path rustled in response to the scream.
“What’s in there?” Sarah asked.
“Probably a raccoon.”
She steered Mark down the path, and they both kept their eyes on the bushes. It was quiet now. Maybe the raccoon had fled in the shadows.
When there was another scream, as quiet as the squeak of the wheelchair axle, the bushes shrieked and seemed to be tom apart. Something big took to the air and soared into the nearby trees, shrieking briefly.
“What was that?” Mark asked in disbelief. “Did you get a look at it?”
“Not a good one,” Sarah said. “It was big.”
“Must have been an owl. They get pretty sizable.”
“Mark,” Sarah said, “I think it talked.”
Lois Larson was so old that the birth year on her official documents included a question mark. “I was born on a farm way back up the hills,” she said. “Never had a birth certificate until I was in my twenties. I never saw a doctor until I was in my thirties.”
She still didn’t take kindly to doctors. She stayed in this place because it was very nice, and she didn’t want to burden her family. Lois occasionally became confused. Being ninety-six—or ninety-seven—years old, a woman was bound to get a little confused now and again. Lois didn’t take kindly to being confused, either, and tended to get angry and boisterous. They called her “Incredible Hulk” Larson. Lois didn’t quite understand the joke but, being all of ninety-eight—or ninety-nine—pounds, she was delighted to be nicknamed “Incredible Hulk.”
She was, right now, doing what some of her friends called “hulking out”.
“Come and get me, you overgrown chicken!” She shuffled a few more paces down the path, her tennis racket in both hands. “I’ve had about enough of you.”
The bushes were quiet. The nearby trees showed no signs of life. Lois kept moving. “I’ll find you. You know I will. You ain’t gonna be stirring up no more trouble.”
She stopped again. Another copse of trees. Her challenge went unanswered.
“How about we head back inside, Lois?” asked Larry, her nurse. Larry was a heck of a piece of a nurse, Lois had to admit.
“No. I have me a crow to catch.”
“We’ve been out here for an hour,” Larry complained, allowing himself to approach one step too close.
“You better not try nothin’!” Lois Larson declared vehemently. “You know what I’ll do?”
Larry knew well enough. He could still hear the crunch of Lois’s tennis racket against the forehead of Nurse Rubin. Nurse Rubin should have known better than to mess with Incredible Hulk Larson when she was hulking out.
Lois Larson was a sweet old lady most of the time. Tough, yeah, but she didn’t hurt people unless people got unreasonable with her. Like right now, she was hunting for the crow that was “skeering” the patients and nothing was going to stop her. So you just let her go hunting—with a big nurse keeping an eye on her. This was the kind of personalized accommodation that the public mental health facilities simply did not offer.
An hour was about the limit to Lois’s stamina. She reached an outdoor veranda near her room and sat down heavily on a green metal rocking chair, lips pursed in frustration.
“That bird probably took one look at you and flew south for good,” Larry said comfortingly as he took another rocker. “You do that to me sometimes, Lois.”
“You’s just trying to make me feel better,” she said, unable to hide her pleasure.
“Hello?” said a voice inches from her shoulder.
“Son of a gun!” Lois tottered out of her chair and swung around in a full-body blow. The bird flopped into the air with a surprised sound that ended with the crack of the tennis racket against its foot.
“I got you, you monster!” Lois shuffled after the bird, which somersaulted out of the air and landed hard -on the lawn. It picked itself up on one foot and craned its head to see Lois Larson coming at it in a green rage.
“Why?” it asked, then threw itself bodily off the ground, clawed at the air and barely managed to get out of the reach of the slow-moving nonagenarian.
“I don’t like birds that eat my friends, that’s why!”
“Why? Why?” the bird cried. It nearly collapsed on the earth again, but it found extra height with a few painful strokes that took it into the treetops a hundred feet away.
“Aw, nuts,” Lois gasped, then collapsed from sheer exhaustion.
Sarah Slate had heard the talk. She didn’t know what to believe, but she knew she had to help that bird. Mrs. Larson claimed to have broken its foot with her tennis racket—and one of the nurses witnessed it. As for Lois Larson’s claim that the bird was a man-eating carnivore—that was a little hard to swallow.
“All it talks about is chewing,” Lois told her. “It comes to folks’ windows in the night like asking for permission. I heard it myself.”
“Really,” Sarah asked her. “What did it say?”
“I told you, girl! It said ‘chewing.’ ‘Chewing?’ it says. ‘Chewing? Chewing?”’
Sarah wasn’t about to argue with Lois Larson. Still, just because it said “Chewing?” was it necessarily a flesh-eater?
“It didn’t say ‘chewing,’” corrected another longtime Folcroft patient. “It stood outside my window for ten minutes so I heard what it said most clearly.” The man skootched close to her and said, “Chewin. Not ‘chewing’ but ‘chewin.’”
“Oh, God.” Sarah Slate was so surprised she didn’t notice the old man’s hand on her knee. “Thanks, Mr. Hampton.”
She was gone before he could ask her to dinner.
“Don’t go out there!” cried a gaggle of ancient patients in the sunroom. “It’ll try to eat you!”
All those worried old women had their own set of serious problems, and now they were too scared to take a step outside because of some misplaced fears.
“Don’t worry, ladies,” Sarah said. “I’m going to take care of this problem once and for all.”
“Oh, really?” asked a white-haired woman in her fifties. Her wide eyes told Sarah she was very afraid, very often, and yet she effortlessly placed her confidence in a strange woman who looked too young for the high-school prom.
“You work here?” asked another woman, less trusting. “Pretty soon everything will be back to normal,” Sarah declared loudly so that everyone in the sunroom could hear her. The patients looked at her with doubt or hope. She smiled and met their eyes, each and every one of them, then left the building.
She crossed the grounds fast and felt as if she were walking a tightrope. She poked out a number on her mobile phone.
“They’re in a meeting. They’re not to be disturbed. I’m so sorry, Sarah,” Mrs. Mikulka said. “Where are you, dear?”
“On the grounds. Trying to solve this bird problem. Have you heard what the patients are saying?”
“Oh, yes, they’re quite upset and staying indoors.”
“Mrs. Mikulka, there’s a bunch of sad-looking people down here, and I think I can make them feel a little better. Would you help me out? I need somebody with your authority.”
“Oh, goodness. Oh, my. What do you have in mind, dear?”
The security chief joined her fifteen minutes later. “I wanted to hear about this for myself,” he said.
“Wait here,” Sarah said. “I’ll call when I’m ready.” She snatched the medical kit and the body bag from his hands and tromped away into the trees until she could barely see the man.
“Hello? Here I am. I’m looking for you? Can you hear me? I’m here to help you.”
One of Sarah’s charms was a melodious voice, which she lifted into the trees. She had worked miracles with that voice, more than once. She would do so again.