Free Death Rhythm by Joel Arnold Page A

were you looking in there for?”
    “Just curious.” He shrugged. “It’s nice to meet you.”
    Hector emitted a phlegmy grumph from the back of his throat. He quickly backed his wheelchair out of the living room. He rolled himself out of view down a hallway that led towards the front of the house, the wheels grinding over the wooden floor.
    “Did I say something wrong?” Andy asked.
    “He just gets that way sometimes. Don’t worry about it.” Natalie lowered her voice. “He’s getting senile. I don’t like to admit it, but – ” She glanced at Andy’s hand. “How are you doing?”
    “Oh, fine.”
    “Want something to drink?”
    Andy was about to accept when Hector called from down the hallway. “Natalie!”
    “Hold on a minute,” Natalie said, excusing herself from the room.
    Andy stood there imagining the old man telling Natalie of his roving eyes. He shifted his weight nervously back and forth, straining to hear their conversation. Bits of barely audible mumblings were all that reached his ears. He waited about five minutes until he made out a word.
    It was the word ‘out’.
    “Out.” He heard it again, for certain this time.
    Then he heard, “No, Dad. It’s all right.”
    Then, “Out,” again.
    Suddenly, there was the sound of wheels grinding against the wooden floor.
    “No, Dad, leave him alone.”
    “Out! I want that boy out of here!”
    Hector and his wheelchair flew into the living room, the grinding noise stopping as the wheels rolled onto the green carpet. Natalie followed close behind.
    “I want that bastard out of here!” Spit flew from between Hector’s dentures. “Out!”
    “Dad, stop it!” Natalie grabbed the handlebars of Hector’s wheelchair, stopping him from colliding into Andy. “Andy, I’m sorry.”
    “Out, you bastard. I want you out of my house!” The flab in his arms swished back and forth as he strained at the wheels.
    “Sorry, Andy,” Natalie said, her eyelids drooping.
    “You ain’t sorry about shit!” Hector screamed, his face growing purple.
    “You better go.”
    “Goddamn right, you better go.” Hector strained forward. Sweat poured off his face. Natalie struggled to hold him back. “Get the fuck outta my house!” Veins stood from his neck like cable. “Out! Out! Out!”
    Andy backed out of the living room, stumbling through the kitchen, pushed by Hector’s verbal assault. Natalie tried desperately to calm the man down as Andy let himself out the back screen door, his hands shaking. He tripped on a step, and then sprinted across the tall-grass field to Mae’s house.
     
    A minute later, Hector had shut himself in his bedroom. His phlegm-filled voice came through the closed bedroom door. “Get him away!”
    Natalie stood on the other side. “He’s gone, Dad. He’s gone.”
    She tried opening it, but her father and his wheelchair blocked it on the other side. Natalie leaned her head against the wall, her skin glossy with sweat. She was afraid he might hurt himself, afraid that his heart was racing too fast.
    “Let me in.”
    “No.”
    “Dad?”
    He didn’t answer.
    “Dad? Come on.”
    His voice came out tired and hoarse. “Why did you bring him here?”
    Natalie shook her head. “I don’t know.” Why did she bring him here? To show him off as a trophy to her father? Stupid, she thought. Stupid.
    “Keep him away from me.”
    “Okay. I won’t let him near you.” Natalie felt worn out. Exhausted. She had moved back in with her father only two months earlier. She was thirty-eight and had worked ten years as a nurse in Faribault. It was her father’s health that called her back to Ellingston. He needed her. But now, she wanted to go lie in her bed and sleep for a few days.
    She heard her father roll away from the door. She waited a moment, and gently pushed it open. He sat there, a pathetic figure in his sweat and drool stained t-shirt, head hung forward, hands limp at his sides, potbelly sticking out like an old wrinkled medicine