Page 85 of Demon Copperhead

Vester died in dogwood winter. April, the month of the whole sorry world praying for deliverance, with dogwoods and redbuds all pretty on the roadsides and new green leaves lighting up the mountains.

Then comes a late freeze to turn it all black, every fruit of the year killed in the bud.

It’s a fitting time to die, I reckon. If you’re past believing in deliverance.

Dead people I had known, and so had Dori.

But she showed no sign of getting over this one.

She couldn’t stop crying or worrying she’d OD’d him on accident.

The nurses had left her in charge of so much, the morphine and fentanyl patches and pills she had to crush and give him in a dropper.

Nothing was her fault, least of all the ice storm that took the power out.

She was bleary and frantic on the phone, saying she’d been asleep and woke up with the house freezing and his oxygen had quit and she couldn’t get the lights to come on.

I told her to hang up and call the ambulance, but he was already gone. I should have been there.

The funeral was like Mom’s, in all the bad ways.

This Aunt Fred person with her L.L.Beans and mini-me daughter drove in from Newport News to take charge.

Newport News what state, we had no idea, it sounds like a brand of cigarettes.

Dori barely knew these people. They took one look around the house with their matching pulled-up noses and checked into Best Western’s.

The church, hymns, clothes he wore to the casket, all decided by Aunt Fred.

The daughter that gave up her entire life to drive him to his appointments and spoon-feed him got no say.

She sobbed through the whole service. They closed the coffin and put him in the ground, and I had to hold tight to stop her from crawling in there with him.

In weeks to come, she’d go every day to sit on his muddy grave.

I hate to say this. I got jealous of a dead man.

Once Aunt Fred got him buried, she called a meeting of the store employees and a lawyer to discuss the finances, not good.

The store would be sold to level out the debts.

The house was paid off, from the asbestos settlement years ago, and Dori could stay there if she chose, but was on her own as far as utilities.

She could draw his social security till she turned eighteen, which was five weeks away.

Not even time enough to file the paperwork.

And that’s Aunt Fred back to Newport News, over and out.

Taking care of Vester was Dori’s whole life.

The home health people came to take out the hospital bed and his sickness equipment, and she just howled.

His oxygen machine was like a heartbeat at all hours pounding through the walls, you don’t even realize.

Now it was a dead house. She didn’t know what to do with herself, and couldn’t sleep without a lot of help.

I tried mentioning the cheerful aspects, that we could be like other people now and go out partying or to the drive-in.

She got hurt at me and said I was dancing on Vester’s grave.

All the party she wanted was to take another round of 80s and Xanax and ride that Cadillac back to dreamland.

In other bad news, our medical situation fell apart pretty fast. All these legit things that had been in steady supply, the patches, morphine pills, 80- and 40-milligram oxys, his different nerve pills of Xanax, Klonopin, and so forth: gone overnight.

I’m not saying Dori took the man’s medicine out of his mouth, good Lord no.

But the way these doctors prescribe for a dying person, there’s plenty to go around.

And Dori was a smart little housekeeper, in that one regard.

The oxys alone, he got a bottle of 80s every month that cost him one dollar on Medicare.

If you know where to go, those pills sell for a dollar a milligram.

Eighty times thirty, a person could about live on that for a month, till the next scrip rolls around. Could and did, come to find out.

Not that I was completely ignorant. She’d always been particular about picking up his prescriptions herself, other than the one time mentioned where I ran into Tommy at Walgreens.

I knew she had to be going somewhere to trade some meds for other ones, according to what was needed.

How else is an old man going to come by Mollys, I mean.

You put two and two together. But I still had surprises in store, the first time I went along with her.

She rounded up everything we could find in the house and said she was making a run.

But she was in no condition. I told her I was driving and didn’t back down, so.

Our first date after Vester died: the pain clinic.

The one she used was out west of Pennington Gap in a strip mall that looked bombed out, as far as any other stores operating.

Even still, there were probably two hundred cars parked in the lot.

Seven o’clock on a Sunday evening, people lined up waiting to get in the door.

Ladies and kids asleep in cars, men lying on the pavement.

It was a rainy night and most were huddled under the awning but some of them were just out in the rain, like they no longer found it in their hearts to give a damn.

I told Dori I didn’t like the looks of this.

She was resting against the door, eyes closed, the seat belt running across her neck in a way that scared me.

My little nymph. These vehicles are made for taller people.

I leaned over and pulled the belt away from her throat so she wouldn’t choke, kissed her and nudged her a little till she came around.

She looked through the blur of rain and said, Oh.

She said this was busier than normal. It was May, the first of the month, the entire county had just gotten their benefit checks.

I told her I couldn’t see waiting in that line, we’d be here till midnight, and she said, Don’t be silly, we’re not going in.

All those people are waiting to see the doctor and get their prescriptions.

Our scrips come from Daddy’s doctors, we’re just here to sell.

I stared at her, trying to work this out.

She still had the mark across her neck from the seat belt, and looked about twelve.

She’d quit wearing makeup since Vester died, because the crying just wrecked it anyway.

I told her I should have been coming down here with her all this time, because I didn’t think it looked very savory.

We had an argument about keeping secrets, which she said she wasn’t.

She just knew I wouldn’t like it, and now I was telling her I didn’t, so that was the reason.

Also, supposedly the person running this clinic was somebody I knew.

Then she dipped out again, and I watched the comings and goings, trying to figure it out.

There were the ones waiting to go inside, and the ones that pulled up in their old Chevies and got out with their white paper sacks and went away with money.

Peddling the wares. You think of dealing as a young man’s game, but a lot of these were older.

I’m saying old, bum legs, walkers. A wad of chew in the cheek, flaps down on their hunting hats.

Mr. Peg would have fit right in here. I thought of that night Kent gave Mr. Peg the coupon for free samples, and Mrs. Peggot said she would flush them down the toilet.

The little did she know, they could have come over here and scored a month of groceries.

These old hillbillies were using their resources, the same way Mr. Peg, back in the day with all his mouths to feed, used to sell venison roasts after he’d shot a buck, or tomatoes out of their garden.

He’d made moonshine. You use what you’ve got.

It took me awhile to get up my nerve and go out there in the rain.

I was thinking how Dori was a pro at this and I’m chickenshit, and then a guy came over pecking on the car window and I sold him half a bottle of oxy, lickety-split.

Dori told me what to charge him for it. So that was good and we called it a day, headed out to Food Lion because she’d run completely out of everything at the house, t.p.

and food. Planningwise, Dori was on the par with Mom.

I asked her what happens if you actually get inside that clinic.

She said you just pay the money and he writes you.

Everybody gets the exact same thing, holy trinity.

Oxy, Soma, Xanax. But a lot of them end up having to wait so long, they’re having their DTs in the waiting room.

She always would fill Vester’s prescriptions at Walgreens, count out what was needed for the coming days, then come straight over here to sell the rest. She said she made almost two thousand bucks one time in that parking lot.

You look for the ones that are seizing or puking.

Technically I wasn’t shocked, these pill millers were known about.

Real doctors running their enterprises, the new philosophy of pain management as seen on Kent TV.

They all would have started out as regular doctors, pediatricians or what have you.

Sports medicine. That was the surprise. She said the guy running that clinic was Dr. Watts.