Читать книгу Komatke Gold - Benjamin Vance - Страница 5

After four days in Parker feverishly arranging to burying my father, applying for death certificates, completing other paperwork and travel preparations one accomplishes after a death in Arizona, I dropped by the hospital to see Myra, ostensibly to thank her and say goodbye … I thought. I was completely unprepared for what happened next.

When I walked in, the entire ward went eerily quiet. I saw Myra’s unmistakable little backside at the nurse’s station, and she must have sensed I was there, because she wheeled around abruptly, slammed down her clip board which immediately fell metallically to the floor, and started my way at a fast walk and then almost at a run.

She needed no makeup, but usually wore just a touch of lip-gloss and always, always that perfume. That night she had on no makeup; her eyes were already red and were quickly filling with tears as she sped toward me without decorum. She started to say my name, but nothing more came out, save a stream of some Indian words mixed with sobs. She hit me like a train and clung like a demon.

Of course I started crying too. Everyone in the area politely averted their eyes and left us with a mutual pain which seconds earlier I thought was mine alone. Between sobs and some snotty unintelligible mumbles she said she thought I was gone and she’d never, ever see me again. Also snuffing a bit, I told her it would never have happened that way.

Since I was then staying at a motel in Parker rather than at MCAS, the Indian grapevine didn’t work well and she didn’t know what happened to me. As she settled down some, she told me my father had asked her for a couple of things for his funeral, but she could only find a death blanket. So, I silently established where that blanket on his feet came from. She said she was trying to find the other item for his casket, but couldn’t tell me what it was, for fear of getting me in trouble, and she would not take payment for the blanket.

Luckily, her kind supervisor could do without her for a while so we sat in the coffee shop and I was fully briefed, partially enlightened, wiped her nose for her and fell completely and utterly in love. I quickly realized there were many things she hadn’t told me over the past weeks, thinking she was protecting me somehow. She even knew about my father’s ex-wife and kids. Parker was a smaller town then. I wondered why she didn’t come to the funeral since she obviously knew when it was. I asked her, was told a half-truth, but found out the real reason much later. Myra was the niece of my father’s best friend!