It is easy to make friends. Sometimes I catch the Conestoga tram up to Trail Blaze Corral or down to the Ole Fishing Hole. Though we are hedged off from our neighbors by a brake of cypress, pine and palmetto, they are only a few feet away. A haze of perfumed briquet smoke, friendly talk, laughter enlists us in a community of back yards.
We meet on the tram or strolling about Jack Rabbit Run or Sunny Sage Way or Quail Trail.
Most of my neighbors are from Canada or Ohio. They are very pleasant fellows, mostly retirees who have done well and are cruising America in their Bluebirds and Winnebagos and Fleetwoods. The Ohioans are recognizable by their accents, not their license plates, which are mostly Florida, for they have settled down in places like Lakeland or Fort Myers or Deerfield Beach and have hopped over for a few days.
Native Floridians look down their noses at the Ohioans. The saying is: An Ohioan arrives with a shirt and a five-dollar bill and never changes either. But it isn’t true. My Ohio neighbors in Jack Rabbit Run couldn’t be nicer. It is quickly evident that I know nothing about motor homes and they spend a great deal of time demonstrating electrical and sewerage hookups and even the features of my own Bluebird, which they know better than I (they marvel at the modifications Leroy has made, especially the map locator).
The Canadians are as affable but standoffish — though not as shy as the English.
But both, Canadians and Ohioans, are amiable, gregarious, helpful — and at something of a loss. Here they are, to enjoy the rewards of a lifetime of work, to escape children and grandchildren, and they have. They stand about nodding and smiling, but looking somewhat zapped.
Ellen gets along splendidly with them too. She talks to the women by the hour, especially the Canadians, about the queen of England and Princess Di. Like many American women, she loves British royalty even more than the Brits.
Their expressions are fond and stunned.
The Ohioans looked zapped but keep busy.
The Canadians looked zapped but also wistful.
Every time I talk to a Canadian, either he will get around to asking me what I think of Canada or I will know that he wants to.
I realize that I do not have many thoughts about Canada. Reading Stedmann, who mentions the heroic role the Canadians played in World War I, I realize a curious fact about Canadians: When you hear the word Canada or Canadians, nothing much comes to mind — unlike hearing the words Frenchman or Englishman or Chinese or Spaniard—or Yankee. I realize this is an advantage. The Canadian is still free, has not yet been ossified by his word. (Why am I beginning to think like Father Smith?)
I read Stedmann about the Battles of the Somme and Verdun for a while, then step out into my tiny plantation fragrant with hot palmetto palms — it is like summer here — walk over to Quail Trail, and have a Coke with my amiable, stunned neighbors.
Like my cellmates at Fort Pelham and unlike folks at home, they want to talk about current events, politics, Communism, Democrats, Negroes (their word), terrorists, and such.
I listen attentively and with interest.
After reading Stedmann in the Bluebird and stepping out into the fragrant Florida sunshine and discussing current events with my knowledgeable, up-to-date neighbors, who even with their knowledgeability — unlike me they’re up to date — still look fond and stunned even as they speak, I experience the sensation that the world really ended in 1916 and that we’ve been living in a dream ever since. These good fellows have spent their entire lives working, raising families, fighting Nazis, worrying about Communism, yet they’ve really been zapped by something else. We haven’t been zapped by the Nazis and the Communists. On the contrary. It is a pleasure to fight one, worry about the other, and talk about both.
We stand about in the Florida sunshine of Jack Rabbit Run, under the minaret of Cinderella’s Castle, they fresh from the wonders of Tomorrowland — Tomorrowland! — We don’t even know what Todayland is! — fond, talkative, informative, and stunned, knocked in the head, like dreamwalkers in a moonscape.
Ellen wants to stay on the road, head for Wyoming and Jenny Lake in Jackson Hole. But I have to get back to testify in the trial of John Van Dorn and company. We’ll go later.
3. VAN DORN AND HIS STAFF were not convicted of child abuse, after all. The presence of heavy sodium in their bloodstreams (they’d been taking a cocktail now and then for one reason and another) compromised the case against them. In a plea-bargain agreement with the district attorney they were confined to the State Forensic Hospital in Jackson until their bizarre symptoms and behavior abated, whereupon they were paroled into the custody of Sheriff Vernon “Cooter” Sharp and sentenced to five years of community service. Sheriff Sharp, after consulting with me and Max, assigned them to St. Margaret’s Hospice.
Meanwhile, Father Smith had come down from his fire tower and the hospice was reopened.
Mr. and Mrs. Brunette were assigned to the Alzheimer’s patients, old addled folk who could not take care of themselves and in whom no one, not even the Brunettes, could take the slightest sexual interest. It was a hunch, mine and Father Smith’s, and it paid off. The Brunettes went to work willingly and in good heart. Father Smith says they are a caring couple. What he actually said was: “Paroled murderers are the most trustworthy aides but sex offenders and child abusers are also excellent, once occasions of sin are removed.”
Mrs. Cheney works as a nurse’s aide in a ward of malformed infants, formerly candidates for pedeuthanasia. An excellent babysitter for twenty years — I so testified — she was and is never otherwise than her old motherly and solicitous self toward the children. And even though she persisted for some weeks in her odd rearward presenting behavior as the effects of the sodium ions wore off, there was no one to present to on the children’s ward.
Coach also found his talents put to good use. He was assigned to the AIDS wing, which housed not only dying adult patients but also, in a separate cottage, a little colony of LAV-positive children, that is, children who harbored the virus but were not sick. Neither I nor any other physician considered them a threat, but since federal law requires quarantine, what to do with them? Coach did plenty. He is, after all, an excellent coach. His sexual preferences were no problem. The dying adults were too weak to bother him, and he was too terrified to bother them. In a word, he was good with them, didn’t have to feign sympathy, was willing to talk and listen. He organized card games, skits, and sing-alongs. But the children were the challenge. He formed a soccer team which, since soccer is not a contact sport, was eligible for Little League competition. His Jolly Rogers (smiling death’s-head insignia) are undefeated, have every prospect of winning the league and being invited to the Special Olympics in San Francisco.
Van Dorn, however, was a difficult case. He did not recover as rapidly as the others. Perhaps he ingested a more massive dose of sodium additive and suffered brain damage.
Anyhow, he had to be detained in the Forensic Hospital. When anyone approached, he would at first rattle the bars, roar, and thump his chest. Then, after this ruckus, he would knuckle over to the toilet and cower behind it. He became abject. What to do, legally or medically? No statute could be found to fit his case. Nothing in the Louisiana Civil Code seemed applicable. No medical or psychiatric diagnosis could be arrived at.