Free Blue Asylum by Kathy Hepinstall

meantime, he found the soldier’s progress and ardent devotion to be a source of great pride.
    The turtle soup was musky and strong and slightly bitter, as though the turtle contributing its meat had its own surly vexations. He made a face and set the soup to the side. Perhaps, under all his professionalism, he was jealous that his most loyal patient was keeping company with someone else. And not just anyone.
    A thought was coming around the corner, headed right toward him. Had he allowed its arrival, it would have diplomatically introduced the possibility that the attention Iris Dunleavy gave the soldier was the actual source of his jealousy. But the doctor was an expert in avoiding conclusions he found unsettling, so he chose to sniff the orange and lemon scent of the breeze that bore the thought and ignore the thought itself altogether. He took a swig of water from a hobnail cup.
    “Dr. Cowell.”
    A nurse had appeared, one whose skittery demeanor always reminded him of the red-tailed herons that made such a fluttering drama out of nabbing a fish from shallow water. “It’s your son, Wendell. He’s run out of class again.”
    The doctor sighed. “In the direction of the woods?”
    “Yes. Your wife is afraid he’s up the tree again.”
    “Then he can wait until I’m done with my soup.”
    “But Mrs. Cowell says—”
    “Please! Leave me be!”
    “Very well,” she said in a defeated voice, and left him. He hated when he had to talk his son out of his favorite sulking tree, a gumbo limbo that sat on high ground a half-mile from the asylum. The path into the woods ended after a hundred yards. He was going to have to pick his way through the swampy woodland, which harbored not only midges but alligators and water moccasins. He supposed it was too much to ask of his son to shinny up any of the worthy palm trees on the grounds of the asylum.
    After a few minutes, he heard different footsteps approach him from behind, then stop. He knew his wife was standing behind him before she said his name, for since the nurse had come to get him, there had not existed the smallest chance of him finishing his meal in peace. She hadn’t dressed for the day and she was still in her long robe and mules. “I have a migraine,” she said in a querulous voice, “and I had to get up off the bed and drag myself out here to get you to do what you would naturally do on your own, were you a caring father.”
    “I am a caring father! But I will not be a party to rewarding our son for his dramatics. He’s inherited his tendencies toward hysteria from you and I won’t support them.”
    “There are dangers out there. Snakes and wolves and alligators and poisonous berries.”
    “You’re exaggerating. He’s always traipsing around the island alone.”
    “He is strictly forbidden to leave the property, and yet he comes and goes as he wishes. He’s become simply uncontrollable.”
    “He’s a boy. Boys are adventurous.”
    “How would you know what he is, Henry? You never spend any time with him. You’re the worst father in the world!” Red blotches had appeared on her face. Tears would follow soon.
    Dr. Cowell took a deep breath. He knew exactly how the next few minutes of his life would play out. He and his wife would argue back and forth a few more moments, she would let out a cry that would scatter the white moths circling a nearby yucca blossom, and then he would slog out to visit his son’s sulking tree and he’d get dirty and hot and be bitten by insects and possibly pick up a rash as well.
    Perhaps a rash. Perhaps not. See, Henry?
he told himself bitterly.
There is still some uncertainty left in the world.
     
    The first midge bit him between the knuckles after he had passed through the citrus orchard and taken the short, overgrown path hacked into the forest of mangrove and buttonwood. He winced and slapped himself on the back of his hand. Gnats danced around his face as he trudged through the gloom, brushing sticky vines