Saddled, Chapter 10 (Patreon)

Chapter Ten

John checked his phone for his mother’s room number again. He didn’t know the Boston hospital, and he felt a little like Jed Clampett stomping around a Beverly Hills mansion in oversize boots. The crowded and dated lobbies he’d grown so familiar with back in Maine had given way to modern furnishings and open spaces that made him feel like he needed to shave before showing up for visiting hours.

His mother had moved up one floor, so hopefully she was still in the experimental treatment group. John didn’t know how he’d handle it if the hospital wouldn’t treat her. Even more worrying, when John had called Fawn to ask about the room change, she hadn’t even known their mom had moved. Apparently her son had been suspended for three days for skipping school, so she hadn’t been visiting.

John wasn’t sure how making Petey stay away from school punished him for refusing to go to school, but he was really angry that their mother had been in a strange hospital without anyone to sit with her. Fawn could have brought Petey or her husband could have taken off work. She could have asked a neighbor to watch Petey or hired a babysitter. Hell, the kid was twelve. He could take care of himself. Probably. At twelve, John was working the boats, and the same was true with Kevin, but Petey was less mature. The kid did stupid shit.  

As John got off the elevator, he spotted a young volunteer in the pink and white top worn by the hospital volunteers. Posters everywhere gave the color of the scrubs and the meaning of each. Personally, John would hate being color coded like a damn candy, but then he dressed up like a horse and got fucked, so he wasn’t sure he had a lot of room to judge. He stopped near her and waited for her to finish helping an older woman put a magazine back in a rack set up for people using the small couches clustered near the elevators. When she turned and gave him a toothy smile, he asked, “Can you tell me where to find room 842?”

Her smile faltered a little, and John’s gut went on full alert, like when a fog mull settled over the boat and he wasn’t sure what might be drifting in the water. He’d turn the motor down and pray real hard that he didn’t run into some idiot in a sailboat drifting through the fishing lanes. “Do you have family here?” she asked brightly.

“Yes… in room 842.”

This time the girl took a step back. John knew he intimidated some people because of his size and the way his hands were calloused from the nets, but he hadn’t done anything to make her back away. “The nurse’s station is this way,” she said before turning and power walking down the wide corridor. Her sensible rubber shoes slapped the tile floor, and John could only follow.

“Is it near room 842?” John asked. 

The volunteer stopped at a tall counter and greeted an older woman with steel gray hair before asking about the room number. Maybe the duty nurse disliked perky as much as John because she didn’t look up from her computer for several seconds. Then the girl said, “This gentleman is looking for room 842.”

The older woman turned to John. She maintained a neutral expression, but something about her still made John feel like he was being sized up. The nurse had the sort of gaze high-paying clients had when they were trying to decide if an assistant was worth the price. She said calmly, “I need to see ID and check to see if you’re on the visiting list.”

John took out his driver’s license. “Did something happen to my mother?”

The woman checked his ID, holding it up to her computer before she handed it back. “We had to remove someone from your mother’s room yesterday.”

“Kevin,” John said wearily.

The nurse finally smiled. The expression was full of sympathy and understanding. “We all have one in the family. I have three.” She shrugged.

“Thanks for the warning,” John said. He really appreciated that the hospital was looking out for his mom, but he had to wonder how bad the screaming got if they moved her and warned the staff to keep people away from her room. “Is my mom okay?” he asked.

“She’s fine, hon. Head down the hall and take the first left.” The nurse pointed to a hallway.

“I’ll show you,” the volunteer said, all smiles and relief now that she knew John wasn’t some drug-addled psychopath. John was probably being unfair to Kevin, but he had created more chaos than all the other siblings combined, and considering that Logan had come out as a gay man in rural Maine during the eighties, that was a lot of drama. 

“Here you go.” The girl stood next to a room with a plaque with 842. “Sorry about giving you grief.”

“It’s fine. If it keeps my brother away, it’s worth it.”

She offered a sweet smile and headed down the hall, detouring around a man using a walker to pace the halls, a nurse right beside him. John stuffed all his anger down and plastered on a smile before he pushed open the door to his mother’s room. A television blared with angry voices, and John caught a glimpse of three people on a stage arguing before his mother turned the program off.

“Hey, mom. How are you?” John asked. She was pale, but she looked better than she had in months. Someone had fixed her hair, so her curls had more bounce, and she had on makeup. Wrapped in a crocheted afghan and sitting in the hospital chair, she didn’t look sick. John went over and sat on the edge of her hospital bed. At home, his mother had always condemned the sort of people who sat on beds, but she was in the only chair. The room wasn’t even large enough for another one.

“I’m fine. The staff here is really helpful,” she said with a smile. Beverly Michaud never complained, not even when cancer was trying to eat her from the inside. John hated that she felt like she had to put up some sort of front, but he struggled to find a way to give her permission to complain without sounding like a condescending ass.

His mother continued before he could find the right words. “There’s a nurse with a really beautiful tattoo. She keeps it covered, but I saw the edge of it and talked her into showing me. It looks like a watercolor of honeysuckle flowers.”

“Did Kevin see it?” John asked before he could edit himself. His mother’s smile turned brittle and she narrowed her eyes. Shit.

“Who told you?” His mother’s voice had a dangerous edge. “I said I didn’t want the rest of you bothered.”

“The staff wouldn’t show me to your room without looking at my license and checking it against a list of approved visitors. Since other people weren’t getting the same level of scrutiny, and since you aren’t a millionaire who fears a kidnapping plot, I concluded that something had happened.”

She crossed her arms. “And you just assumed your brother was involved?”

“Um, pretty much, yes.”

“Your brother has made mistakes, but you cannot assume he is the source of all things that go wrong in my life. I sometimes think you would blame him for my cancer if you could figure out a way to. I raised you to be more forgiving.”

“Dad raised me to be more realistic and cynical.”

“Your father was less cynical that you.” She had a crossword puzzle book in her lap and she slapped it down on the rolling table.

John tried to strike a conciliatory tone. “Mom…”

“Of course Kevin has made some mistakes. None of my children are perfect, which is convenient since I was not a perfect mother.”

John was almost sure that was a Dr. Phil aphorism. His mother had started saying it with such regularity and with such a tone of reverence that he knew it came from somewhere. Considering how much she watched the talk shows, that seemed like a good guess.

He remembered a mother who tended her huge garden, filled the basement with home-canned foods, trudged through the snow to check on animals in the barn and who generally considered television the biggest waste of time ever invented by human beings. He wasn’t sure when she’d started planning her life around talk shows, but it bothered him in ways he didn’t want to think about. If Dr. Phil made her happy, he should be cheering on the bald bugger.

“Kevin outperforms the rest of us on the not perfect front,” he said dryly.

“Oh, I don’t know. I find all my children unforgivably stubborn. And if Kevin is a little louder about it, that’s no worse than Logan leaving his family behind to become one of those people in California.”

John figured “those people” could encompass anything from a Democrat to a screaming, flaming queen, but John definitely didn’t want to go there. “So what did Kevin do to get thrown out?”

“I never said they kicked him out. I don’t like it when you make assumptions about your brother that way.”

“Mom, he pissed the staff off badly enough that they’re checking IDs to keep him out. I don’t think I’m making assumptions.”

She pulled her blanket tighter around her. “I’m not discussing Kevin with you.”

John sighed. Honestly, that was probably for the best, but he hated the idea of Kevin hanging around. He caused a lot of stress and had stolen or conned thousands of dollars out of their mother. His father had threatened to kick Kevin’s ass if he showed his face around the Michaud’s house, but their father’s version of a restraining order had expired when he died.

“Logan said you’ve been working for a new company,” his mother said. From the calculating expression on her face, she had a few words she planned to share. John mentally reviewed his conversations with Logan to try and figure out how much damage he might have done with his gossip. Luckily, John had never shared the juicier details.

“He did?” John kept his voice unconcerned, but mentally he was plotting to hunt Logan down and give him the world’s biggest wedgie. What an asswipe.

“Yes, he did. He said you were working for some rich people. Something about babysitting.” Now she had her mom-glare turned to high, and John could feel the cover story starting to thin like ice on a sunny spring day. Shit.

“I’m not a babysitter,” he said with all the disgust he could summon. He never had been good with kids, so his mother would never believe that short of bullshit.

“Oh? And what do you do?”

John shrugged. “Lots of weird shit.” It was best to give her something to worry about, something he could frame as largely harmless and something he hid because of his dislike of the work rather than because it was illegal. 

“Don’t swear. And what do you mean by weird?”

John leaned back on the bed. “Do you remember that old movie—Scared Straight?”

She smiled fondly. “Your father loved that stupid documentary.” She shook her head.

“I’m Maine’s version of Scared Straight for rich people.” When his mother gave him an odd look, John went into his spiel. “I work for a company that supplies rich people with assistants who can do weird shit—teach them to survive in the forest or take them camping with Navajos or stuff like that. I take people out to see what a fishing boat is really like, only not many people actually care. I do a few tours for people who want to see the hidden Maine.” John added finger quotes around hidden. “However, most of the time, people hire me to teach spoiled brats the value of a hard day’s work.”

“You teach children?” His mother’s voice said it all. She was planning on hiring an exorcist and looking for the pod because she didn’t believe he had the ability to teach.

He glared at her. “Yes, I do. Mostly I yell at them about tangling lines and scream for them to get away from the pots, but I do make them work somewhere in there. If they have to haul in a few fish, they feel like they’ve endured enough abuse for a month, and when they see how much I pull in, they’re sometimes embarrassed. But mostly the parents want me to take their spoiled darlings into the weighing stations so the kids can see how much money they really earned. Supposedly it teaches them the value of a dollar and how hard people have to work for it. So I pretty much channel every lecture you and dad ever gave me.”

“And they pay you for that?” His mother had gone from suspicious to mildly startled. “Really?”

“Yes, Mom. Really.”

“Enough to pay the bills at a place like this?” she waved at the room. It was a tiny space with a view of the parking lot, but even with the charity’s help, it was blindingly expensive.

“I still fish, and the lady in the office just got me a new job that pays five hundred a week, so I’ll have to work sometimes, but I should have a little more wiggle room in the budget. I can take some long weekends down here with you.”

“What’s this new job?”

“I’m consulting. Apparently some Hollywood guy has a script that involves a fisherman, and I’m supposed to tell them how badly they screwed up all the parts that involve fishing. I still don’t know if they want to actually get it right or if they’re paying me to point out all the stupidity so they can put it in anyway.” John shrugged. 

“You’re working in Hollywood. Does Logan know that?”

John held up both hands to hold off the coming disaster. If Logan started poking around or got Clive’s name, it could all fall apart. A kink like Clive’s was going to generate gossip, and it would be entirely too easy for Logan to put the clues together. He might be a giant pain in the ass little brother, but he wasn’t stupid, so John had to keep him as far from any details as possible. 

“I’m not working in Hollywood, Mom. I agreed to read some things and answer the phone when the writers called, and I don’t want Logan knowing I have anything to do with this. You remember what happened when you made me volunteer with the hand bells club.” Hand bells had been one of Logan’s passions, right along with theater and chess. John really wasn’t sure how he got to junior year before the rest of them had figured out he was gay. He was the only boy in the high school allergic to athletics. Actually several heterosexual guys hated sports, but they all faked it to fit in. Logan didn’t. 

The year after he’d graduated, John had been “encouraged” to volunteer with the hand bells group so he could have quality time with his brother, who’d been a freshman. That had been the first time Logan ran away. The little shit had gotten as far south as Yarmouth before a conductor on the train had pulled him off and called his parents.

His mom flinched. “I do wish you would be nicer to your brothers.”

“I was nice!” John almost shouted. “I didn’t say anything to him. I didn’t look at him. I just told the class I was his older brother; I didn’t realize that thirty years later, that was still a felony.”

She sighed. “It probably is best that he doesn’t know you’re working on a script. Is that why you told him the story about babysitting the spoiled kids?”

“It wasn’t a story, Mom. I really do teach kids to work hard. But the script thing will hopefully pay better. But no matter what, I don’t want you to worry about it. What did Dad always say?”

His mother lowered her voice to mimic Albert’s voice. “God takes care of the birds, and they’re lazy little buggers. We’ll be fine.”

John laughed.

Then his mom grew more serious. “And then after you kids were in bed, he’d point out that those same birds froze to death by the dozens or hundreds. Your father never wanted you to worry, but he didn’t assume the best would happen just because he wanted it.”

John remembered standing next to the pot hauler as his father pontificated on life. He’d said the second half of the saying to John just as often as the first. He knew Kevin and Logan had heard it when they came on the boat, so of all the kids, their father had only sheltered Fawn. Hell, maybe he’d said the same to her. She was ten years younger, and John had been in Alaska before she’d been old enough to go out on the boat and help with the business. However, his mom didn’t need the memories of her husband tarnished by the idea that he had been less careful with his sons’ psyches than she’d thought.

“It’ll work out this time, Mom,” John said. He silently prayed that he wasn’t lying. “So, what’s on television? I have some rare time off, and I thought I might catch up on all the popular culture Logan always tells me I’m missing.” 

Chapter 11: https://www.patreon.com/posts/saddled-chapter-18483089 

Chapter 12: https://www.patreon.com/posts/saddled-chapter-18786045 

Chapter 13 and 14: https://www.patreon.com/posts/saddled-chapters-18974026 

Chapter 15: https://www.patreon.com/posts/saddled-chapter-19132781 

Chapter 16: https://www.patreon.com/posts/saddled-chapter-19490176 

Chapter 17: https://www.patreon.com/posts/saddled-chapter-19634666