Free The Woman in Oil Fields by Tracy Daugherty

behind the screen, remind me of old photographs I’ve seen in the memory books here, on nightstands beside the beds.
    A slow ceiling fan swirls dust motes across the lobby floor. Brown summer horseflies light on the old men’s cotton sleeves. They’re wearing yellow pajamas – standard Parkview dress – and leather slippers. They don’t like each other: I can see that. Both are new arrivals here, never met before today, but while the movie hums at high volume these two guys’re giving each other the glare. June’s asleep; I’ve stepped into the lobby to stretch my legs, to get a Coke from the patio machine out front. As I’m sorting dimes I hear one old bird rasp at the other, “You son of a bitch,” and suddenly they’re both throwing punches. The rubber wheels of their chairs squeal against each other and scuff the red tile floor. These fellows’re too weak to really hurt each other, but the nurses panic and glide them toward separate corners of the room. “Mr. Davis! Mr. Edwards!” shouts one of the nurse’s aides. On the television screen a masked burglar jimmies a window.
    Good for you, I think, watching the old men grimace and cough. Don’t let the fire go out. (I swear I’ve heard – late at night, when only Nurse Simpson’s on duty, Nurse Simpson who lets me stay if June’s had a hard evening – I swear I’ve heard the sounds of sexual pleasure, whether from memory – a murmuring in sleep-or actual contact, I can’t tell.)
    I go to check on June. She’s awake now, lying in bed, clutching her box of Kleenex. She’s nearly blind; if she pats around on the sheet and can’t find her Kleenex she cries. Her hands are tiny and clawlike, tight with arthritis. Sometimes, to exercise or just to pass the hours, she rolls and unrolls a ball of blue yarn.
    I ask her if she wants some apple juice.
    â€œYes,” she says.
    I turn the crank at the end of the bed to raise her up; hold the cup, guide the straw into her mouth. Her teeth are gone.
    â€œYou tell him to talk to me,” she says.
    â€œWho?” I ask.
    â€œStubborn old man.” She waves at a chair by the wall. “He’s been sitting there all afternoon reading that damn paper and he won’t talk to me.” Her voice cracks. “Where’s your whore today, old man? Off with someone else?”
    I stroke the papery skin of her arms, offer more juice. She’s ninety-two years old. Since Bill died she’s had two other husbands (divorced one, outlived the other), six grandkids, and three careers (store owner, upholsterer, quilt-maker). But now, near the end of her life, it’s this one incident – Bill and the oil field woman – that clogs her mind. She’s been jealous for sixty years.
    She sips her juice. Her head seems to clear. “Glen?” she says.
    â€œI’m here.”
    â€œBill’s not really sitting in that chair, is he?”
    â€œNo, June.”
    â€œHe’s dead?”
    â€œThat’s right.”
    â€œWhen?”
    â€œWhen did he die? A long time ago – 1962 or ’63, I think it was.”
    â€œI remember now. In a drunk tank.”
    â€œYes.”
    Sunlight spreads, first bright then pale, through her peach-colored curtains. An air-conditioning vent above her bed flutters a poster taped loosely to the wall. Last week a Catholic church group, on their regular visit, left these posters in all the rooms: a little girl hugging a kitten. The caption reads, “I Know I’m Special – God Don’t Make No Junk.”
    â€œCan I get you something else, June?”
    â€œFrench fries.”
    â€œAll that grease?”
    â€œGet me some goddamn French fries!”
    I don’t know how she chews the silly things with just her gums, but she does. “All right,” I say. “I’ll be back.”
    I drive a few blocks to a Burger King. The