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.
The hardest part of my day was leaving Dori and going back to Coach’s house. But rules were in place, with U-Haul looking for any excuse to take me down, so for most of March and April I’d been sleeping over there to keep the appearances. But after Vester died, I didn’t have the heart anymore to leave Dori. She’d never been alone in her life. Here she was this saint type person taking care of a sick man, and you’d never guess underneath it all was a child. A bedroom full of plush toys and a daddy that never said no. This was from a young age, starting after her mom died. Roller skates, Princess Di dress, horse on the roof, the occasional calm-down pill, what Dori wanted, Dori would have. It turns out, Jip started off as some old lady’s puppy that she was carrying around in her crocodile purse one time at the 4-H haunted corn maze. Dori was eight or nine at the time. She saw that fuzzy little head poking out and started crying to have them both, the dog and the purse. Would not let up her caterwauling until Daddy laid out two hundred bucks to this lady, and they went home with a pup in a crocodile purse. I was starting to get to the bottom of Dori. I’d tried explaining to her about my responsibilities as far as Coach and my grandmother and all that I stood to lose if I went AWOL from over there. My future, etc. Dori would just blink her sad, sad eyes and ask why didn’t I love her anymore.
Then my grandmother showed up. These were dark times. We’d had that late freeze that killed everything, including Vester technically, since ice took down the power lines and shut off his air. Then it warmed up a little and the rain set in. Now it was going on June, and nobody could remember a day where it wasn’t raining. The day Miss Betsy came up, we all sat around the king table with thunder rolling overhead while she went down the list of my various fails, and Coach’s face sagged, and it felt like the same black cloud had followed me all my life.
The problem was me and me alone, as far as Miss Betsy was concerned. Promises unkept. I’d flunked out of school past the point of all reason. She was stopping the monthly payments to Coach for my upkeep. As regards my staying there, playing ball or whatever, that was between Coach and me. Her interest was my education. She said you can lead the horse to water but the horse is not drinking. No need to waste more money. I was welcome to find my own way now, uneducated, and would soon find out there is more to life than kicking a ball. My grandmother never did get the mechanics of it, bless her heart. Thinking football is just the feet.