to traditional medicine. Sounds to me that’s exactly what she wanted from you.”
“But I can’t do it! She’d asked me before, I’d told her no. Then she’d told me I’d know when it was time to come home. But I can’t just come home. Home is Chicago now. In a penthouse overlooking the lakeshore, senior member of a general surgery practice. That’s home.”
“You’re sounding awfully defensive about it, boy.”
“Because I am defensive about it. I’ve worked hard at setting up the life I want, and I’m not about to change that to come back here.”
“Ah, but you could compromise, couldn’t you? You, know … practice what you want most of the time, slip in a little bit of what they want every now and again? Make everybody happy.”
Yes, right. Make everybody happy but him. “You are persistent, old man. Gotta give you credit for that.” In spite of the man’s almost daily nagging, Justin liked him. Always had. Amos Picou was ageless, with his unflawed black skin that showed no wrinkles, no age. Like Napoleon, Amos had come around for as long as Justin could remember, bringing his grandmother gator steaks, crawfish and whatever other food he managed to scrounge in Big Swamp. He’d always gone herb hunting with Eula, too, claiming Big Swamp was no place for a woman alone. Unrequited love, Justin suspected. Although he’d never asked and Amos had never told.
Rumor had it, though, that Amos had a little herb patch of his own, something he grew, cured and smoked. Perhaps that was the secret to his longevity and youth.
“That’s the only way you get what you want, son. If you want it bad enough, you go after it and don’t give up till it’s dead, or till you’re dead. That’s what my granddaddy always taught me.” He grinned. “Compromise is good for the soul, too. It’ll make you feel like you’re in a giving spirit, yet you have the good feeling that comes along with a victory of getting what you want. Best of both worlds, I always say.”
“But when you say you want me to compromise, you mean give up everything I’ve worked hard to get, just so I can come here and dispense swamp morning glory to cure centipede bites to a bunch of people who hate me? Because that’s not me, Amos.” He shook his head vigorously. “I have a great respect for my grandmother’s herbal cures, but for me life here is tough. Too tough. I don’t fit in and I never have. That’s what I ran away from when I was a kid, and I’m sure as hell not planning on coming back to it. That’s why I hired that nurse to come in and help my grandmother—to keep me away from the medicine here. So maybe she’s the one you should be trying to convince to take over, since all I’ve heard for the past year is glowing reports.”
His grandmother had called Mellette Chaisson a godsend. He’d called her the compromise he’d needed to assuage his guilty feeling at not being the one to help his grandmother. The worst of it was, a traveling nurse who spent two days a week here assuaged a lot of his guilt. Just not all of it.
“That nurse was a real blessing for your grandmother, especially getting on toward the end. But she’s not the solution here now, and you know that.”
Yes, he did know that, which was why he was passing his days and nights only writing. Writing was where he could escape, a different world. A place with no guilt. “What I know is that I’m doing the best I can for the people here. I support that nurse coming in, and I’ll continue to do that. Even up her presence here if that’s what needs to happen.”
“But what about the other days of the week, Justin? If we get sick, if somebody gets hurt, do we just wait until she comes back? Put our aches and pains on hold until her next day on duty?”
“You take a twenty-five-mile trip to the nearest hospital. This area of the bayou may be remote, but it’s not entirely cut off from civilization.”
Amos laughed out loud over that. “Whose universe are you living in, boy? Because you know the people here aren’t makin’ that trip. They keep to themselves, don’t step foot in the big city unless it’s absolutely necessary, go over to Grandmaison only when it’s necessary, and they never, ever, look for medical help outside Big Swamp. That’s just the way things are around here.”
“Then that’s their problem, because help’s available.”
“And it was your grandmother’s problem, because she doctored these people every day of her life.”
“She gave them herbs, Amos. The rest of it was …” He wanted to say hysteria, or emotional dependence, but that would be downplaying what his grandmother had done for the isolated people in Big Swamp, and he sure didn’t want to do that. “I’m not my grandmother. I don’t have her knowledge of herbs. Can’t be what anybody here wants.”
“Can’t, or won’t?”
“Same difference. Anyway …” He shrugged. “Let me think on it some more, try to figure out what’s best.”
“You know what’s best, boy. Seems to me you’re spending all your time trying to figure your way around it. And it’s not like we expect you to be here all the time. Keep that nurse coming in two days, then use some of that city money you make and fly down here for two days yourself. Or maybe transfer your fine medical skills to one of the hospital establishments in New Orleans to make it easier on you. That would work. Would suit us just fine, too.”
Amos pulled out one of his homemade cigarettes, tamped down the end of it, then stuck it in his mouth and lit it up. “But here you sit, all bound up with some heavy confusion,” he said, letting the first long draw settle into his lungs.
“Here I sit because I’m tying up my grandmother’s affairs,” Justin said defensively.
A deep, rumbling laugh started from what seemed like the pit of Amos’s belly and burbled its way out. “Tying up her affairs, my ass,” he said, offering Justin a hit of his cigarette.
Justin refused.
“You’re here because you got yourself caught someplace between heaven and hell, and you don’t know which way to turn. Part of you is pulling to go one way but part of you is holding back for some reason you probably don’t even understand yet.” Amos took another draw of his cigarette, and chuckled. “You’re confused, boy. Just plain confused.”
“Not denying it,” Justin said, taking another sip of tea. “I’m confused, and I feel guilty as hell that I didn’t know she was sick. Guilty that I didn’t come back to see her as much as I would have if I’d known. I mean, I loved my grandmother, but …”
“But you didn’t make her life easy.”
“Not when I was a boy.” He’d tried harder when he was a man, though.
“And now that you’re a man you’re paying for something she’d long ago forgot. She didn’t hold it against you, boy. In fact, she was proud of what you made of yourself. Bragged on it all the time.”
“And didn’t tell me she was sick.”
“Because you would have stuck her in some fancy hospital where she didn’t want to go.”
“If she’d gone she might not have …” He bit his tongue to hold back the bitterness. It didn’t matter. Choices had been made; he hadn’t been included. “Anyway, I’m trying to figure it out. I’ll be talking to the nurse, and I’ll see if she can give you another day. But that’s the best I
