Free Numbers Don't Lie by Terry Bisson Page B

since he had been admitted in January, when he had called the Head Nurse, Florence Gaithers, a “stupid motherfucker, a bitch, and a ______,” and threatened to shoot her.
    â€œI was helping him out of his wheelchair to go to the bathroom, and he just up and slugged me.”
    I turned and saw a skinny young black man in whites, standing in the doorway. He wore a diamond stud in his nose and he was dabbing at a black eye with a wet rag.
    â€œHe got this look in his eye. Called me a ________ (excuse me!), and then he up and hit me. It was almost like the old Whipper Will.”
    â€œSorry, Buzzer. Thanks for calling me instead of Gaithers.”
    â€œIt’s no big deal, Candy. Old folks with Alzheimer’s have inci dents .” Buzzer pronounced it with the accent on the dent . “Gaithers would just get all excited.”
    â€œBuzzer,” said Candy. “I want you to meet—” I was hoping she would introduce me as her soon-to-be-fiancé, but I was disappointed. I was introduced as her “friend from New York.”
    â€œWhipper Will’s Yank,” said Buzzer, nodding. “I heard about him.”
    â€œSorry about your eye,” said Candy. “And I do appreciate your not calling Gaithers. Can I buy you a steak to put on it?”
    â€œI’m a vegetarian,” said Buzzer. “Don’t you worry about it, Candy. Your daddy’s not so bad, except for this one inci dent . He lets me wash him and walk him around every morning just as sweet as anything; don’t you, Mister Knoydart? And we watch TNN together. He calls me whenever Pam Tillis comes on, don’t you Mr. Knoydart? He wasn’t always so sweet, though. Why, I remember one time he took a shot at my mother, when we lived out at Kyber’s Creek Trailer Park. Called her a ______. Excuse me, but he did.”
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    â€œBuzzer and I are old friends,” Candy explained as we went back out to the car. “He was the first Black kid in my junior high, excuse me, African American, or whatever, and I was Whipper Will’s daughter, so we were outcasts together. I looked after him and he’s still looking after me. Thank God. If Gaithers finds out Daddy’s acting up, she’ll kick him out of Squirrel Ridge for sure, and I won’t have any place to put him, and we’ll be back to square one, and how would that be?”
    â€œBad,” I said.
    â€œWell, hopefully it’s over. Just an inci dent .” She said it the same way as Buzzer.
    â€œHope so,” I said.
    â€œFunny thing is, didn’t you think Daddy looked better?”
    â€œBetter?”
    â€œI think Buzzer’s been putting Grecian Formula on his hair. Buzzer always wanted to be a hairdresser. This nursing home thing is just a sideline.”
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    We had managed to miss lunch. We made a date for dinner and “a drive” (tonight was to be my night to pop the question), and Candy dropped me at the office. It was only three o’clock, so I opened a Caffeine-Free Diet Cherry Coke and spread out my Corcoran’s on the windowsill, determined to make up for lost time. I was awakened by a rhythmic clacking, jacking, cracking, snorting, cavorting noise, and a faint electrical smell. The floor was shaking. Whipper Will’s upright fax machine was spitting out a sheet of purple-ink-smeared paper, which drifted to the floor.
    I picked it up by one corner and studied it while it cooled:
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    But before I could figure out what it meant (I knew, of course, who it was from), the phone rang. “There’s the answer to your question,” Wu said.
    â€œWhat question?”
    â€œYou asked me if something here could already be going backward.”
    â€œNot there,” I said. “Here.”
    â€œBy ‘here’ I mean here on Earth!” Wu said. “And as my calculations show, it is theoretically possible. Perhaps