Day Shift

22

The day of the Bonnet Park field trip didn’t start well on any level. Manfred, Olivia, and Barry were up and ready by the designated time, and Olivia and Manfred both took their cars over to the hotel. Mamie, Suzie, and Tommy were up, which was good, and they’d had breakfast, which was good, but Mamie had had a bad night and she was hurting.

“I can’t go,” she said. “I just can’t face a long drive. My hip hurts too bad today, dammit. I want to get out of this hole and see some life.”

Manfred agreed with her assessment. Mamie looked frail and pale, and she moved with obvious difficulty. But Tommy and Suzie argued and cajoled and wasted time trying to persuade their friend to go with them. It was a relief to Manfred when Mamie remained adamant.

Then Lenore Whitefield became an obstacle. She was startled and dismayed to discover that “her” old people had planned an excursion. It was obvious she’d never imagined they might want to be anywhere else, and she was uncertain about whether she could allow it.

“Allow it?” Olivia stood with her hands on her hips. “Are they in jail? Do they have to bring notes from their parents?”

Lenore flushed. “Miss Charity, you’re being difficult on purpose. Of course not, but they’re in my care, and I’m responsible for their well-being.”

“Last I heard, I was an adult and responsible for myself,” Tommy said pugnaciously. “I’m no baby sucking on a tit.” Suzie nodded vigorously.

Lenore grew even redder. “No need for that kind of talk, Tommy. You’ll miss your nurse’s visit.”

“I ain’t dying today,” Tommy said. The force of his personality was too much for Lenore. She literally threw up her hands.

“All right, go on,” she said. “Please don’t try to do too much, and please take all your medication before you go.”

“We’ll have them back this evening,” Manfred said, trying to placate the woman. He had an uneasy feeling that if Lenore called Eva Culhane, they’d never leave the building, because from the little he’d seen of Culhane, she was formidable. Since his first conversation with Tommy, he’d been aware there was something wrong with the setup at the Midnight Hotel.

Instead of pleading with the old people, why didn’t Lenore call the families of the residents? Because they didn’t have families, and they’d been selected to live in Midnight because of that. They’d been picked because they’d be grateful. Shorty wouldn’t be there if he’d been coherent enough to remember he had a grandson.

Manfred had been so overwhelmed with his own problems that he hadn’t even tried to figure out why the hotel had reopened. As he ushered Tommy and Suzie out to the waiting cars, he realized he needed to spare some of his worry time for the situation at the Midnight Hotel. Barry could have told him that he and Olivia were thinking parallel thoughts.

Manfred wasn’t ready to be met with a firm refusal by Olivia when he suggested Barry ride with her.

“No,” she said. “He goes with you. He stays with you. I don’t like him in my head. I’ll take the first lap with Tommy and Suzie.”

Manfred couldn’t take any more upset that morning. “All right,” he said. “Fine. Call me when they need to stop. Hey, there’s a Cracker Barrel in a reasonable location for lunch. I checked the Internet last night.”

“And all old people love Cracker Barrel? That’s what you’re saying, sonny?” Tommy protested from Olivia’s front passenger seat.

“I do,” Suzie said as she buckled her seat belt in the back. “Let’s stop there!”

“They do have good breakfast, and you can get it all day,” Tommy said thoughtfully.

“Apparently these two old people do love Cracker Barrel,” Olivia said. Manfred could tell she was holding some irritation in with an effort, and that was another worry.

“So why’s she so mad at you?” Manfred asked Barry, once they were actually on their way.

“She didn’t want me to be able to read her mind. But I can’t block out specific people. No one wants me to be able to dip in their head,” Barry said reasonably. “But they want to know what everyone else is thinking.”

“Were you born able to read minds?”

“Yeah. It’s not an easy thing to grow up that way. To put it mildly. Especially when you’re little and you repeat what you hear without understanding there are going to be consequences.”

Manfred tried to imagine that, but he found himself so dismayed by the prospect that he could only say, “That’s awful.”

“Tell me about it.” Barry laughed, but not like it was really funny.

“Like I told you,” Manfred said, concentrating on the road ahead, where a pickup had just pulled slowly into his lane. “I’ve met another telepath. But I never thought about what being a mind-reading kid would be like. Damn.”

“You know Sookie, you said.”

Manfred glanced at Barry before turning his attention back to the pickup. Its right blinker kept going, monotonously and without conviction. Of course, this driver did not want to turn. He’d just left the blinker on. “Asshole,” muttered Manfred, and then returned to the conversation. “Yeah, I met her in Bon Temps,” he said. “You from there, too? You related to her? I mean, is this hereditary or genetic or whatever?”

“Whatever,” Barry said. “I thought I was the only one in the world until I met Sookie in Dallas.”

“I can’t picture her anywhere but Bon Temps.”

“I’d as soon live in a shack in the slums of Mexico City,” Barry said vehemently. “I had one of the worst times of my life in Bon Temps, and that’s saying something. Got abducted and tortured.”

“That’s seriously bad,” Manfred agreed. “So, if I called Sookie and asked her about Barry Horowitz, what would she say?”

“She’ll probably remember me under a different name,” Barry said. “But I’m not speaking it out loud in Texas.”

“Because of your vampire problem.”

“My very serious problem.”

They rode for some miles in silence.

“You must be pretty devoted to your grandfather,” Manfred said.

“If I’d been really devoted, it wouldn’t have taken me so long to track him down. Due to my own troubles, I kind of lost track of him. Now that I’ve found him, I don’t know what to do. He’s not in good shape mentally. He’s not a nice old guy. But he’s all I’ve got left.”

“I have a mother. Never knew my dad.”

“My folks were pretty ordinary, but my dad’s mother was something else, according to what I remember and what people have told me.”

“Lawbreaker?”

“Not like Shorty,” Barry said, and laughed. “Shorty was always in and out of jail. He was a thief. Not a violent guy, but he never thought the laws of personal property applied to him. My grandmother Horowitz was wild, and one minister told me he thought she was the spawn of Hell.”

“Wow, pretty drastic.” Manfred thought he would have liked to meet such a woman.

“Yeah, I only spent time with her once or twice. She disappeared after that, when I was in elementary school.”

They’d both had unusual childhoods, Manfred thought. And when he looked over at Barry, Barry nodded.

“You scared Olivia pretty bad,” Manfred said.

“She’s got a lot of secrets.”

And they rode in silence until Olivia called them to say Suzie needed to go to the bathroom.