True North by Gary Eller

Author:Gary Eller
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: literary fiction, historical fiction, Turtle Mountain Reservation, North Dakota, Great Plains, generational sagas, family life
Publisher: BHC Press
Published: 2021-08-03T00:00:00+00:00

* * * * *

At the hospital the following day, Mrs. Crosby, the nurse, took them aside to explain that Richie Lee had “thrown a fit” that morning and struck another nurse, and they’d been forced to temporarily restrain his arms with towels.

After a quick conference, Harold folded the shopping list into his billfold and headed downtown. Leah entered the room to find their son propped up by a pillow with a pad of paper and pencil on his lap. The restraints had been taken off. “What are you up to?” she asked.

“Nothing,” replied the boy, his eyes down.

“Are you working on your lessons?”

No answer.

“Richie Lee, they said you were upset. How come?”

“They made it so I can’t move my arms.”

Leah pushed the image from her mind. “But they did that afterward. What made you so mad in the first place?”

The boy looked up from his paper. “Sam did.” He squeezed his eyes shut tight. An odd smile of triumph passed across his round face.

As she leaned in closer, Leah caught the strong odor of urine. Richie Lee had wet the bed and was sitting in the middle of saturated sheets. A deliberate act, no doubt. She chose to overlook it and sat, gathering herself.

“Can I see what you’re drawing?” she asked.

With a sigh of impatience, the boy threw the pencil to the side and held up the paper. Leah peered at it, horrified. Drawn crudely, the sketch featured a stick outline of a woman lying prostrate with a knife plunged through her chest and blood running into a pool.

“Oh my,” said Leah. “Richie Lee?”

“What?”

“Why don’t we change your bedding?”

“I don’t care.”

“But Daddy’s going to be here soon.”

“I don’t care,” he repeated.

“He misses you, you know.”

“I don’t care!”

Leah reached for him, but the boy threw himself backward, slamming his skull against the headboard and bringing a nurse in at a run.

“Maybe it’s better if you left for a while,” said the nurse.

Leah waited in the lobby. When her husband returned, they walked the three blocks to Pam and Joyce and Deb’s Café for the Saturday special—meat loaf—a rare treat. When they got back to Richie Lee’s room, they found his window covered with a sheet of plywood except for an opening the size of a baseball for the boy to peek through. They were told that he became riled at being served green Jell-O with pineapple chunks for dessert and hurled the dish at the window, cracking the pane. To the distress of the parents, the boy not only accepted the increased isolation but looked rather proud of it.

On Sunday, a late winter ice storm blocked the roads and snapped the phone lines. After chores and not able to go anywhere, Leah and Harold sat down for a game of gin rummy. Inspecting his discards, Leah couldn’t help but see that her husband, ever the peacemaker, allowed her to win.

With the phones back in order on Tuesday, Leah called the hospital and learned that Richie Lee had endured a trying morning but was cheered when Aunt Dolores visited briefly, dropping off a cowboy hat as a gift.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.