seen them, but I know they’re there.” I said.
“What kind of trap’s he set?” Otis said. “If it was me, I’d just shoot ’em.”
“Raccoons are survivors,” Susan said. “They can elude a man with a gun, no problem.”
“I hope so,” I said. “You heard Dweezil died?”
“Who’s Dweezil?” Otis said.
“Poor old Dweezil,” Susan said. “Randy bugger though, wasn’t he?”
I lost the subtle thread for a moment. “Randy? Susan, the poor thing had asthma. You know that. It wasn’t his fault.” Up went the eyebrow. Oh. Duh.
“Well, he did mess around,” I said. “Probably got what was coming to him,” I said. “Old goat.”
“Who’s Dweezil?” Otis said.
“At least we know what killed him,” Susan said. “Now Otis, we have a full set of Grunbaum waterers and all the hookups in stock—look at this.” She pulled a bunch of plumbing off a rack and started to talk business. I crept away, having got what I wanted.
As I passed the rubber-boot family, I leaned down to the smaller of the two children, who was crying.
“Excuse me, sir,” I said. “Is there a problem here?” He was about three and looked up at me with some surprise.
“He wants the same kind as his brother, but they don’t make them that small. They only have these,” the woman said, holding up a very small pair of black wellies. The older child was looking smug and holding a pair of camouflage green rubber boots to his chest.
“Hey,” I said to the small kid, “see these?” I was wearing my barn boots, size eight versions of the tiny ones in the woman’s hand. The kid looked. Then he nodded.
“These,” I said, “are the very coolest boots in the world. If Michael Jordan was a farmer, he’d wear these boots.”
By the time I got to the counter, the older child was frantically searching for black wellies. I only hoped Susan had them in his size.
I bought and paid for a couple of bags of Shure-Gain and Theresa helped me carry them out to the truck.
“Polly,” she said, “can you do me a favour?”
“Sure,” I said. “What?” I didn’t know her very well, but any friend of Susan’s, etcetera.
“Well, my uncle’s in the hospital, eh?”
“Oh, I’m sorry. Not serious, I hope.”
“No. Just a head injury, they said. He’s conscious, but I ain’t been able to go see him yet and the hospital switchboard keeps saying he’s asleep whenever I call.”
“You want me to drop in on him for you, to make sure he’s okay?” I said.
“Would you? He knows you, so it wouldn’t be that weird.”
He knew me? Did I know him? I barely knew Theresa, who lived in Laingford and came from, according to Susan, a huge family. I didn’t even know her last name. Luckily, she was wearing her store name-tag. I let my eyes flicker over it. Theresa Morton. Morton. Oh.
“Spit’s your uncle?” I said without thinking.
Theresa frowned. “I heard some people call him that,” she said. “He’s Uncle Gerald to me. He says nice things about you.”
“I’m sorry,” I said. “It’s not very polite, I know. But he likes it. The nickname, I mean.”
“Not from me I bet he wouldn’t,” Theresa said. “So you’ll go see him?”
“Sure. Is he allowed to have visitors?”
“Only family members, but I’ll fix it. Just say I said hi, okay? Let me know how he is. Him and my Dad, they don’t speak, eh?”
“Your Dad would be Hunter Morton, the funeral director?”
“Yup. He hasn’t said a word to Uncle Gerald since they had that big fight about the hearse. So, like, he’d kill me if he knew I’d went there.”
“I’ll find out, Theresa,” I said. “I’ll call you.” I got in the truck and headed for Laingford Memorial.
I am not, like some folks, squeamish about hospitals. When I was in to get my tonsils out, the nurses were great and I developed a hopeless crush on my doctor and wanted to stay for ever. Aunt Susan says I screamed and cried when it was time to be discharged, although I don’t remember that part. Probably the best thing about being in hospital was that there were no chores to do and nobody was throwing sacks of grain at me.
I hadn’t set foot in Laingford Memorial since George had been there for a cataract operation three years before. Someone, in the interim, had taken away the scruffy old lobby. In its place was a vast atrium with gleaming marble tiles and swish modern sofas upholstered in mushroom polyweave. The reception area was now protected by what looked like bullet-proof glass, and there was Muzak.
I went up to the bullet-proof glass and spoke through a little speaker-thing to a woman wearing a crushed-raspberry-coloured uniform. Why is it that medical personnel don’t wear white any more? Has it gone out of fashion, or did someone make it illegal?
“Hi, I’m looking for a patient, Sp—Gerald Morton,” I said.
The woman nodded and tickered away at her computer keyboard, stared at the screen for a moment and then looked up, checking me out. I was dressed in farm gear—overalls and my very cool, Michael Jordan rubber boots—not perhaps the most appropriate hospital visiting attire.
“You’ll be a relative,” the woman said. Would I? Okay. I guess I was.
“We’re cousins,” I lied, blushing.
“Right,” the raspberry receptionist said, squinting at the screen. “Polly Deacon?”
“That’s right,” I said.
“Good,” the woman said, satisfied that she had pegged me as one of the Morton clan. Theresa must have “fixed it”, as promised.
“You can go up in a few minutes, Polly. Take a seat. I’ll call you.”
I sat down in the polyweave loveseat next to the reception desk and picked up a Cosmopolitan. The cover-girl was partially clad in a scrap of gold vinyl, her breasts rising out of the garment like warm bread-dough.
“DO YOU HAVE WHAT IT TAKES TO KEEP HIM HOT?” the cover shouted.
Probably not, I thought, looking glumly at my black rubber boots. Magazines like that depress me. Not because I waste my time trying to make myself look like an anorexic whore, but because there are advertising executives out there who think that I might want to.
I tossed the Cosmo back and picked up a National Geographic instead, entertaining myself with pictures of decimated tropical rainforests and endangered
