A Short Story By Michelle Hasty
May 16, 1951
Her screams could be heard from a mile away, the Rushton Banner reported; the Evening Star claimed it was three. The papers agreed on the relationship between Mr. and Mrs. Evers: the couple was “devoted.” Other details were similar between the articles. Vance Evers, a known prankster, left his home in the Rushton River Valley community at approximately 6:45pm, on May 15, 1951, and returned close to midnight. Corrinne Evers sat sewing in the front room, when a knock sounded at the door. She asked who was there, the visitor refused to answer, and she threatened to shoot. When no answer came upon her repeated request, Mrs. Evers fired a 12-gauge shot gun. Mr. Evers died later that night at Murray County General, victim of his own tragic prank, leaving a wife and three children.
Present day
Corrinne Evers stands at the window twirling the wand hanging from the blinds. Warm morning light bathes the sitting room. Five windows look onto the facility’s grounds, and Corrinne walks to each one, opening the dusty slats. She wants them replaced with curtains that can be drawn back or better still, taken away to give the residents a clear view of the back gardens, the koi pond, and hills. This request will need to wait, however, because she is already in trouble with the day shift nurse, and breakfast has not yet been served.
Fernlake Care Facility
Staff Change Notes
Staff/shift:
Cheryl Drake, day nurse
Day/Time:
Thursday, 5/24, 5:00pm
Resident of concern:
Mrs. Evers
Behaviors exhibited:
–stealing, eloping, lying
–non-cooperative during interrogation
-refused sleeping pill
-needs reminder of facility policies
-losing cognitive function?
Recommendations:
-better served on the other side?
Fernlake Care Facility
Staff Change Notes
Staff/shift:
Nan Kelton, night nurse
Day/Time:
Friday, 5/25, 5:55am
Resident of Concern:
Mrs. Evers
Behaviors exhibited:
I asked about taking the bread from the kitchen; she says she does not remember doing that or going out back to the pond. She did ask me if I had a nice vacation and if the ocean was warm, so she remembered where I had gone. We talked about how the sand and water are different colors in the Atlantic and Gulf. I like the wide, brown beaches on the East coast, and she prefers the soft white sand and warm, green Gulf.
She read to the group from that paper she gets until it was meds-before-bed time. Mr. Frandall asked where Quito was from the article she read out, and she showed him Ecuador on the map and then did a google earth view of the place. She told the group about how Quito runs through the equator so water swirls the opposite way when you flush a toilet there. After I delivered everyone’s medicine, I came to the desk and did not doze off because I was working on a story for a contest in the newspaper. Mrs. Evers did not leave her room all night.
Recommendations:
I will keep an eye out for her in case she comes out of her room again. It is possible that she is hungry and that is why she took the bread. Four residents have complained about the new cook. I will offer her some yogurt before bed tonight. I also will remind her of the policy about going out after dark. She has been here for only a few weeks and may not remember all of the rules.
Fernlake Care Facility
Staff Change Notes
Staff/shift:
Cheryl Drake, day
Day/Time:
Wednesday, 6/4, 5:01pm
Resident of concern:
Mrs. Evers
Behaviors exhibited:
-stealing, lying, inciting controversy and unrest
-bread in her room—again
-says she is making fish food
-agitated by weather in newspaper (no outdoor activities planned this week)
-read newspaper to sitting room gathering
-political debate ensued: raised voices, elevated blood pressure
Recommendations:
Night staff, watch her. Our residents’ safety is at stake.
Fernlake Care Facility
Staff Change Notes
Staff/shift:
Nan Kelton, night shift
Day/Time:
Thursday, 6/5, 6:10am
Resident of concern: Mrs. Evers
Behaviors exhibited:
After dinner last night, Mr. Frandall and some of the others asked Mrs. Evers to read another article from the political section. I told Mrs. Evers that I had heard about yesterday’s lively debate. She asked if she had been “banned from reading,” and when I said that she had not, she said, “Good. Everyone, regardless of their age, has a right to know what is happening in the world.” Mr. Frandall participated in the discussion that followed, and when I checked his blood pressure at bedtime, it was not elevated.
Mrs. Evers left her room last night about midnight. (I know that is what time it was because I had just submitted my story for the contest, and the deadline was midnight.) I waited to see what she would do. She had the yogurt container of bread in her hand, and she went out the back to the koi pond. I went to the kitchen windows and watched from there so she couldn’t see me.
She went out, looked up at the crescent moon, and then sprinkled the bread crumbs on the water. She sat on the stone bench and watched the fish come to the surface to eat the bread for about ten minutes. The moonflowers have bloomed, and she stopped at the trellis to smell them. Then she came back in and went to her room. I am not sure she was awake because I accidentally knocked over a plastic pitcher that was on the counter and it went clattering to the floor. Mrs. Evers was barely down the hall, and she should have heard it, but she never turned around.
Recommendations:
I will ask Mrs. Evers about getting up and feeding the fish tomorrow when I get to my shift. Also, re: Mr. Frandall, you might check to see if he is sneaking salt. The cook is concerned about the residents’ salt intake and is sparing. Miss Lister has her own shaker that her grandson brought her. She has been asked not to share, but this could be a contributing factor with Mr. F.’s blood pressure.
At the end of a long day, Cheryl Drake unlocks the door that leads from garage to kitchen and punches in the code before her alarm sounds. Depositing her bag and the mail on the desk, she retrieves an aluminum pan from the refrigerator and checks to be sure the contents have thawed. She cooks five entrees every Sunday afternoon and freezes them so on weeknights it is easy to pull something out and heat it. Landy will be home by 6:00; they will eat at 6:30. That should be plenty of time for Cheryl to put the signs in the yard and compose the email.
The signs are small plastic circles with a red slash through a picture of a dog lifting its leg. A point at the end of the sign sticks into the ground. Cheryl found these on the internet in one search. They arrived in a small yellow package in the mailbox today, with another sign that says, “Thank you for respecting our grass!” This came free with a purchase of five of the little circles. Cheryl places one sign at each end of the grass about a foot from the street. Then she estimates the middle, places one there, and one between each of the remaining spaces from middle to end. Cheryl decides the “Thank you” sign is most effective by the mailbox, positioned in the ground at an angle from the purple clematis vine climbing up the wooden post. She stands at the edge of the pavement surveying her work. Landy will not enjoy having to move these signs when he mows the grass she knows, but she also knows he will not say a word about it.
Cheryl returns to the kitchen and marks a straight line through “signs out” on her daily To Do, then sits to open her laptop. Letting the clinical director’s address autofill after a few letters, she pauses over the subject line. She does not want to give too much away, but she wants to catch Dr. Poston’s attention. With three facilities to oversee, Dr. Poston’s approach is to trust the nursing staff to make most decisions among themselves, and she rarely overrides or questions. Cheryl settles on “C. Evers: concerning behavior,” and begins to compose a description of Mrs. Evers’ behavior earlier that day.
Paranoid and defensive best characterize Mrs. Evers’ response when she entered her room during lunchtime. She told me I had no business being in her room or going through her personal things. I explained that I was bringing her mail, and I showed her where I had put it on the end table next to her Bible and the picture of her family. Consideration of a move to our memory care section may be warranted as paranoia is a common symptom associated with dementia. Cheryl considers citing a source here. She still subscribes to the Journal of American Medicine though she no longer thinks about becoming a doctor, but she is behind in her JAMA reading. The study she remembers is a few years old and could be unreliable now. She does not include the reference.
Nor does Cheryl include the fact that she entered Mrs. Evers’ room uninvited. It was lunchtime, and the older woman returned to find the nurse sitting in her green chintz chair reading newspaper articles she had removed from the Bible sitting on the end table. As Cheryl sends the message and hears Landy’s key at the door, the question that has been forming in her mind all day takes a definite shape: did Mrs. Evers know it was her husband at the door that night? If so, what does that mean for the other residents? Is she dangerous? What is my responsibility here? This last question is the real one, the heart of any matter for Cheryl Drake. What does duty demand of me?
While Cheryl and Landy sit at their kitchen table eating chicken divan, the residents of the Fernlake Care Facility are also having their evening meal. The day staff uses a table separate from the residents, but the night staff disperses and sits at the tables with the residents. Nan chooses Mrs. Evers’ table so she can make sure that Mrs. Evers eats well. The conversation is lively at the table because Miss Lister asks Nan about her vacation, and Mr. Frandall tells a story about picking up a set of false teeth on the beach thinking they were a shell. Mrs. Evers makes a dramatic show of offering her pie to Nan at the mention of the dentures, and the table erupts in laughter. Miss Lister’s salt shaker does not make an appearance.
After dinner, the residents gather in groups to play cards or watch television. Nan finds Mrs. Evers in the sitting room poring over the newspaper. Nan watches from the doorway, pretending to write on her clipboard. Mrs. Evers turns several pages, holds a section up and studies it, then puts it down and rushes out of the room barely noticing Nan, who steps out of her way. Mrs. Evers walks to her room. Nan follows. Mrs. Evers’ door is open a bit, and Nan sees her taking a loaf of bread from her closet. What is this about, Nan wonders, but it is time for her to begin the nightly medication rounds.
When she makes it back to the desk that sits in the center of the two hallways leading to residents’ rooms, it is close to 11:30pm. Nan often spends a half hour or more with some of the residents when she takes their pills to them at night. Mr. Frandall wanted to relay another story from the dentures trip week, his memory jogged by the success of the tale at dinner. Miss Lister asked Nan listen as she recited the Psalm she says each night at bedtime. This part of her job makes Nan feel useful.
The part of her job that Nan least likes is filling in charts on the computer. She is nearly finished when she remembers Mrs. Evers’ agitation over the newspaper. Nan goes into the dark sitting room and is relieved to see the pages just as Mrs. Evers left them on the couch. Nan is supposed to do a walk-through in each room to be sure things are neat, but she often forgets and hears about it from Cheryl in Staff Notes the next day. She picks up the paper and sees that Mrs. Evers was looking at the weather. Cheryl mentioned this. Nan sinks onto the couch. The weather is unremarkable. Sunny to partly cloudy all week, temperatures in the low 70s. What else matters here? Nan knows she is overlooking something. The page contains the daily weather, the moon phase, and a heating and cooling company advertisement at the bottom. Nan thinks about the last time Mrs. Evers went out at night. She had been looking at the weather. Or something on this page. The moon? Could this be what upset her and sent her out to feed the fish? Does she think they need to be fed when there is a full moon? But the moon tonight is a crescent shape. The same shape Nan had seen in the sky when she saw Mrs. Evers outside before. Nan heads back to the desk and sees Mrs. Evers walking down the hall toward the kitchen. Nan follows.
Nursing Staff Observational Notes
Fernlake Care Facility
Staff:
Nan Kelton
Date/Time:
6/18, 7:30am (please note that I have clocked out)
Resident:
Mrs. Evers
Behaviors exhibited:
I followed Mrs. Evers last night and sat with her on the stone bench while she finished sprinkling the bread crumbs for the fish. When she turned back from the water, she saw me, and her face was alert. She was not sleepwalking.
The moon tells me it’s time, she said.
Corrinne, he calls, and I know I must go, for I have seen the moon.
It is my offering to him, my way of honoring his memory.
Your husband’s?
Yes. I will tell you the beginning, she said.
I think that means she will tell me more in time, but this is what I know now… Mrs. Evers and her husband and their three children moved out to Rushton, Oklahoma, from Tennessee in 1950. A tornado had torn through the town earlier that year, and people were moving away from the city proper because it was a tornado alley. Mr. Evers was a roofer and got hired to work with a company building subdivisions. He went ahead to find a house for the family to live in, and Mrs. Evers went months later by herself with the children on train when he got the house fixed up enough.
Mrs. Evers says the house he had found was out of town a little ways, on a road with almost no other homes in sight, one across the creek, and one about half a mile away. At first she felt isolated and missed their life in the city, but then she said the place started to feel more like home and to show her some of its treasures—that’s how she put it. The creek ran clear and cold, and she and the children would spend hours with bare feet wading and catching crawfish. She made a garden and grew tomatoes and cucumbers. She had a few neighbors, Mrs. Petersen, up the road, and Mrs. Hollands, the preacher’s wife across the creek. Sometimes Mrs. Evers was afraid being alone at home, especially at night because around the time Mr. Evers died there was a thief out in that area breaking into houses and stealing from porches and sheds.
Mr. Evers worked nearly every day, even on Sundays. Sometimes he would not come home until the next night. Mrs. Evers did not know where he went, and when she asked, he would laugh, and tell her that was for him to know and her not to find out. When he did come home, after supper he would grab the last slice of loaf bread or what was left of the kids’ crusts and take the children to feed the minnows. The girls would clamor around him, fighting over who got to be on either side, usually the older two would win, and he would toss the youngest up onto his shoulders. They would head down through the tall grass to the creek and toss bits of bread to see the minnows come up to the surface to gobble the crumbs. Mrs. Evers watched them from the kitchen window as bands of pink light streaked the sky. She could see the children lean into Mr. Evers as they stood on the rocky creekbank. He was a rough man, she said, not given to affection, but he adored his children and attended to them gently. They would stay out till the light was gone, and he would tell them about pranks he played on his boss as bedtime stories.
Mrs. Evers stopped and said she would tell me the rest later, that she needed to go to bed. I will continue to watch out for her.
Cheryl bites the inside of her jaw as she reads the lengthy note Nan has left that morning. Nan’s descriptive story does not mention any concern about Mrs. Evers’ potential danger to other residents. Cheryl wonders why she is the only person at the facility who is able to see the possible harm. She regrets not telling Dr. Poston about the bird argument. It would provide a solid example of Mrs. Evers’ desire to stir up trouble. Yesterday in the sitting room, Mrs. Evers said that a male cardinal is evolutionarily programmed to feed any open mouth in its sight. It will even feed koi like the ones out back, Mrs. Evers claimed. Chaos ensued. Miss Lister became upset at the mention of evolution. Mr. Frandall argued the science, and then everyone demanded to go outside to test the theory. They wanted to pretend to feed the fish and see what the cardinals would do. It was not a scheduled outside time.
Dr. Poston responded to her email by requesting additional observations and suggesting that she call one of Mrs. Evers’ children for their perspective. Great plan, Cheryl thinks, who better to ask than people who have hardly been around her for the last thirty-five years? But her job is to follow her superior’s orders, so she retrieves Mrs. Evers’ file and dials the number listed for Willene Evers.
Willene gives Cheryl little of her time and less information. She talks to her mother every few weeks, and she has not noticed any slippage of memory or coherence. Willene laughs when Cheryl asks about this and says, “Mother? Nah. She always knows exactly what she is doing.” Cheryl does not think it appropriate to ask more questions, especially any about Willene’s father, but after she hangs up, Willene’s flippant answer repeats itself in her mind. Was she telling me more than it seemed?
Fernlake Care Facility
Staff Change Notes
Staff:
Cheryl Drake
Date/Time:
6/18, 6:12pm
Resident:
Mrs. Evers
Behaviors exhibited:
Under Night Staff’s supervision, Mrs. Evers organized a turn about the grounds after dark last night to see moonflowers resulting in the following:
– Hydrocortisone ointment administered to four residents for mosquito bites
-Miss Lister’s knee iced and wrapped to alleviate swelling caused by uneven terrain
-Mr. Frandall repeating shooting star story, blood pressure elevated
Recommendations:
Residents are not allowed out after dark. Mrs. Evers needs to be reminded of the peril she is putting others in with careless suggestions and hapless plans.
Nan reads Cheryl’s notes and the pink post-it attached reminding her to please straighten the sitting room at bedtime. Is Cheryl’s concern that Mrs. Evers is not coherent or that she is too coherent and cannot be easily controlled? Footlights and stepping stones would seem an easy solution to the problem. She will ask Dr. Poston about this in their next conversation.
The next morning Nan enters her last note into the computer, and checks her watch. It is too early to call Dr. Poston. Nan had hoped to have a conversation with the director along with the observational notes she leaves. She knows that Cheryl will read them first. Should she abandon protocol? She decides to leave the form, but adds a note asking Dr. Poston to call her when she has a chance. This way she is sticking to the procedure of noting objective facts, but she can explain more when they talk. Maybe if Cheryl understands the story better, she will stop her campaign to send Mrs. Evers to the other side. It had taken little prodding for Mrs. Evers to tell Nan the rest of the story as they sat together on the stone bench the night before.
One night, Mr. Evers went out fishing after supper. That night he did not take the children out to feed the minnows. Mrs. Evers had heard about the thief striking at a house just down the road, and she had asked him not to go, told him she was afraid, but he laughed and said, “You know where the gun is, and you know how to use it.”
It was a dark night, cloudless, with just a thin crescent moon. She had put the children to bed and was mending one of the girls’ dresses when she heard three quick raps on the door. Ice spread in her chest as she stuck the needle into the fabric and laid the dress in her chair. The sounds at the door came again, this time with a kind of a rhythm, tap tappa tap. Tap tappa tap. It was not the double, no-nonsense knock of Mrs. Hollands from across the creek, come to borrow thread.
“Who’s there?” she asked.
Silence.
“I said, ‘who’s there?’”
Silence.
“Name yourself and your business or I’ll shoot.”
Silence.
Then tappa tap tap.
A great weight flung itself against the door from the other side and the lock broke free from its catch so only the chain kept the distance between her and the intruder. The toe of a black boot shoved itself in the narrow space. Mrs. Evers was a good shot. As the eldest, with no brothers, she was her father’s hunting companion many a cold morning, and she knew how to handle a gun. She felt the cold metal and smooth wood in her hands, and she acted quickly.
The explosion rattled the windows, but she did not hear the sound. The noise she heard was her own voice, a low, growling, No, recognizing the boot wedged in the door as her husband’s.
Before leaving, Nan goes to the small office where she can have some privacy for the call to Willene, per Dr. Poston’s suggestion. Nan wants Willene’s view included so she cannot be accused of bias. It is an hour later on the East coast. Willene is brisk at first. As I said to the other nurse, Mother can be a pain, but I promise that she is a pain on purpose. But when Nan describes the after-dark outing Mrs. Evers’ organized for the residents to see the moonflowers and listen for the owl, Willene laughs softly and seems to relax. She likes to walk around after dark, always has. When we were kids, after that night, after it happened, we would wake up to her coming back in the door in the middle of the night. It scared us at first, but then it just got to be something she did. She always said my father was prone to wander, but she did her share.
Nan’s scalp prickles with Willene’s words. Last night, in the dark, with the sound of frogs croaking and the spicy-sweet scent of the moonflowers, Nan felt in her own heart Mrs. Evers’ sorrow, her need to make this strange offering summoned by the crescent moon. Now, as she steps from the fluorescent glare of the facility into the bright daylight of the humid June morning, Nan feels questions creeping into the edges of her thoughts. Did Mrs. Evers know it was her husband at the door? Does she feel compelled to honor her husband because she made a mistake or because she succeeded at what she intended?
The next morning Cheryl arrives early for her shift and finds Mrs. Evers straightening up the sitting room. Mrs. Evers’ good morning sounds tired.
Night staff didn’t clean up last night? Cheryl arches an eyebrow.
I couldn’t sleep and was in here a good bit of the night. I told Nurse Kelton I would take care of it.
Cheryl starts to open the blinds. The wand has fallen off one window, and she has to stand on a chair to rotate the short piece left at the top. Mrs. Evers holds the chair steady.
These blinds are terrible. Look at this. Cheryl holds up a finger she has raked along one of the yellowed slats. Her finger is caked in grey dust. We should see about replacing them with curtains that can be drawn back. Cheryl says and steps off the chair.
Or maybe just leave them bare. It is nice to walk into a bright room first thing in the morning.
Mrs. Evers heads off to breakfast, and Cheryl returns to the central desk.
Sighing, she starts fill out a Staff Note of Concern form. This will go straight to Dr. Poston. Night staff needs a formal warning that certain duties cannot be ignored.
Michelle Hasty is new to fiction writing. She has taken fiction and poetry writing courses and most recently worked with middle grades author and writing coach Hayley Chewins. A former high school English teacher, she currently teaches graduate education courses at a small university in Nashville, TN, where she lives with her husband and sons.