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- Story Listed as: Fiction For Teens
- Theme: Family & Friends
- Subject: Survival / Healing / Renewal
- Published: 11/01/2011
The Night Shift
Born 1931, F, from Albany CA, United StatesTHE NIGHT SHIFT
A Short Story
by
Barbara Mullen
They arrived at our two story gray shingled house on the corner of Center Street about seven o’clock that night, two men that had come in the past and a new one. The old gray haired gentleman dressed as usual in a suit and tie came in first followed by Dr. Jordan, a stubby middle aged man who had delivered all six of Molly’s mother’s children. Brushing past the rest he scurried down the hallway through our drafty old kitchen toward the rear of the house. The third man, unshaven, wearing a red and black checkered wool shirt, lumbered in with an awkwardness that told Molly this was his first time.
Well, it wasn’t Molly’s. At fourteen she knew the routine. Each time was a little different from the time before but always a little worse. The old man and the new recruit followed her to the smell of coffee brewing on their ancient black gas range. They filled up cups that Molly had set out on the linoleum topped counter while telling her there would be no need for cream or sugar. “We’ll take it straight, the blacker the better,” the elderly man said taking out a pack of Lucky Strikes from his pocket and offering one to the new man. Then he slid his saucer out from under his cup for both of them to use as an ashtray.
A moment later a burst of shouting at the back of the house forced both men to smack down their mugs and listen. The newcomer jerked his head back and turned toward the old man as if waiting for an order of some kind but the old man just shook his head and took another long drag from his cigarette.
Molly’s mother and two year old brother Denny had ducked out of the house earlier taking refuge two blocks away at her friend Beatrice’s home. A few years back, Molly’s two older sisters had married. Young and full of hope, they had moved to another section of town. Her oldest brother had joined the army after high school, another brother was away at college, leaving only Molly and Denny still at home. In Molly’s opinion they’d all deserted a sinking ship leaving her all alone to deal with these bad times. I’ll do my job again tonight, she promised herself, but I won’t give a hoot about the outcome the way I used to.
With a big Algebra test coming up in the morning she hoped there would be no special trouble. But before she could even finish that thought the shouting at the end of the hallway had turned into a high pitched wail followed by sounds of scuffling and then a loud thud. “Get in here, men! Damn! I can’t lift him on my own,” the doctor cried out.
The older man and the newcomer both raced down the narrow hall toward the old woodshed that had been converted to a rough hewn bedroom. With the men gone, Molly dropped onto a kitchen chair. She hugged her belly in a useless attempt to squelch the cramps that had suddenly gripped her belly. She closed her eyes and tried to imagine something nice, perhaps a large gentle bird swooping down, scooping her up in his wide open beak and whisking her off to -- well, anywhere but here.
Jerking her back to reality, the old man called out, “Come in here, girl. We need you now!”
She dragged her 90 pound frame to the end of the unlit hallway and into the stuffy windowless room where a semi-conscious body on the wooden floor slapped and thrashed its arms at an invisible enemy. Abruptly, the writhing stopped, and the carcass squinted a half opened eye up at Molly. Slurring one word into the next, he groaned, “Aaaaaah! Don’t just stand there you stupid girl. Go get my gun and shoot them!” He tried to say something else but couldn’t seem to get his mouth around the words.
Good, Molly thought, maybe he’s going to swallow his tongue and strangle to death on it.
The old man bent over the slovenly foul smelling heap on the floor to drag it closer to the bed until a fist shot up and smacked him in the mouth. The old man’s dentures slipped from his lips onto his chin. He shoved them quickly back into his mouth. “Take over for a minute,” he asked the newcomer whose brawny chest and arms told Molly he could easily finish the job. His black and red checkered back leaned over the 200 pound dead weight, whipped it up under its arms and tossed it onto the mattress.
Jerking and heaving, the body let out a piercing shriek when it landed. Molly smacked the palms of her hands over her ears. At the same time, she swore to herself, I will never respect, never mind love, this squirming mess they call my father. Never. Ever.
Molly knew exactly what her dad ought to have been like -- caring and smart, brown hair combed smoothly back from his face, clear blue eyes twinkling. He’d often appeared to her in her dreams. Standing at the foot of her bed he’d inquire about her friends and French Club and her figure skating. Sometimes he told her about his life as a world renowned architect. One night he made her a promise that one day he would take her to the beautiful Lakeshore Restaurant at the end of the sailing dock.
She dropped her hands from her ears and watched the doctor who was now rummaging through his satchel. He yanked something from his bag, turned away from the bed and attached a long needle to a three inch liquid filled vial.
Molly glanced back at his unsuspecting victim, drool dripping from the corners of his mouth. He glanced at her and garbled, “Come here you skinny little mouse. Afraid of your own shadow, are you? Do you know where you came from? The devil sent you, same as the other five. Look at you. You sanctimonious little saint. Looking down on me, are you? I didn’t want any of you. All I had to do was hang my pants on the bedpost and another one of you was on the way.”
This was the beginning of his mantra. Molly could have spit it out verbatim and saved him the trouble. She tried to look away but he rolled over suddenly and started to slash wildly at the space around him. “Ayuuuuuu! Grab that one! By the horns! Yaaaaaaaaa! Get away! Off me! Off me! Jesus! Jesus! Jesus!” he roared. He jolted and shuddered, first his legs, then his arms, his chest heaving with such gusto it raised his half dead corpse a foot off the bed. Each time he slammed back down he let out a ghastly growl from the deep of his throat. “Look! They’re slipping in through the ceiling! Hordes of them! Bat wings with walking feet! Are you blind, girl? Get them off me, for God’s sake!”
He swung around fast and gazed at her through purple ringed glassy eyes. Suddenly lucid again, he sneered. “I know about you, you scrawny little sneak. Fooling around with every boy in the high school like a prostitute, I heard. But I didn’t believe it. What boy would want to mess around with a bag of bones and a mop of frizzy hair?”
Then he screeched again and thrust both hands up to his face. “The buggers are on top of me! Shiiiit! A foot tall now!”
If she could speak to his ferocious demons, Molly would have told them: Gnaw away at his mouth and throat first, and if he yelps, let your long sharp teeth sink in deeper until you shut him up for good.
“Get up on the bed now,” the old man said. “You know what you have to do.” Oh, yes, she knew alright. She shoved herself up onto the bed and plopped down on a pair of wriggling legs. She tried to hold the lower half of his body still but he flipped her up a half a foot or so and back down again. She knew she wasn’t doing any good but the old man asked her, “Molly, try to hold his legs still!” And she tried again.
Suddenly the repulsive monster aimed another of his venomous blasts at her. “You’re the daughter of that witch, all right! Heeeellllp me! They’re back! Get them off my legs! Can’t you f___in’ grab them? They’re stomping on my chest now!”
He raised his hand and shoved a pointed finger at her. “Who do you think works his rear off to feed you, you little brat?” Then he clamped his mouth shut and his body started to jerk harder, his face contorting, eyes twitching, head rolling back and forth.
She prayed that he was running out of steam, but guessed he was just floating in and out. His garbage talk was lasting longer than usual tonight. He gave her a rough kick in her behind with his knee and mumbled. “What the hell is your name? So, who cares anyway? Numbskulls 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, I call you.” While he concentrated on Molly the doctor moved in closer holding the vial at his own back. “Okay,” he said to her, “Are we ready?”
“Yes,” Molly answered, and twisting herself around, laid herself diagonal across his flopping torso. The doctor slipped in next to his exposed left arm. The old man and the new man fastened their hands over his tremulous legs and held fast to them. To keep the patient’s attention, she opened her mouth wide and howled into his face: “You stinking rotten excuse for a man! I hate you! I hate you! I hate you! I wish you’d drown in your own pee, you miserable nothing!” She caught her breath. “Now who’s a little mouse?"
At that very second the doctor shoved the beautiful sharp pointed needle into his blue red vein.
She slid off the bed. For the next twenty minutes Molly and the men took turns holding him down while waiting for the shot to take effect. The pitiful figure calmed down some, his noises becoming more of a grumbling sound. Dr. Jordan whispered to the group, “I’ll wait an hour and give him another injection. It might take two or three to put him out tonight. We can take turns on watch duty from here on.
“You okay, Molly?” he asked.
“Sure. I’ll boil some more coffee,” she said. The old man offered to take the first watch while the doctor and the newcomer followed her back to the kitchen. She glanced up at the grandpa clock on the wall and saw that it was nearly eleven. Quickly she figured with an hour between shots and two more to go, the men wouldn’t be leaving till early morning. I hope my mother will return before then, she prayed, she promised me she’d come home when Dr. Jordan called her saying it was over for the night.
Molly knew if her mother hadn’t left the house her father would still be chasing after her and slobbering foul accusations at her. If she’d stayed at home it would have taken more than herself, the old man00., the doctor and the newcomer to hold him down for the needle. She calculated again: If the doctor calls my mother by three o’clock and it takes her fifteen minutes to walk home from Beatrice’s, with any luck, I can be asleep by four.
At quarter to four just as Molly poured the last cup of coffee from the fifth pot she’d boiled, her mother rushed into the house. “Are you sure he’s out? Was it bad?” she asked. Not waiting for an answer she swept past us in the kitchen and down the back hall to the dark room. The motionless body, now swaddled in her mother’s best, prize winning patchwork quilt, had at last passed out.
Her mother dragged herself back to the kitchen, weariness evident in her pale complexion and red rimmed eyes. Her prematurely gray, formerly luxurious red hair was tousled and uncombed. Molly saw in the rigidity of her mom’s shoulders that she was trying not to break down in front of the men. Her mother took a deep breath as if to steady herself. “I’ll be all right. You can leave now. Saying thank you is so little. But that’s all I have. Thank you and God bless.”
Dr. Jordan walked toward her and gathered her into his plump open arms. “Call AA tomorrow as soon as he starts to stir. You know one of us will come if you need help.” He paused. “Please try again to get Jack to come back to the meetings.”
Backing away from him a few inches, Molly’s mother managed a stiff smile with what appeared a terrible effort. “Oh, Martin, I think Jack is beyond that. You’ve all tried so hard with him. You know we just spent all our savings on that twenty-eight day wonder program in Minneapolis. He was barely home a week on Friday when he started in again. I can’t live through any more of this. So many disappointments. I had let myself hope this time. But I’m drained dry. I’ve even stopped praying for a miracle.”
“I understand. Call me tomorrow, no matter what.”
“I will but all I yearn for is some peace of mind.”
Molly slipped out of the kitchen unnoticed, dragged herself up the stairs to her tiny bedroom that she’d decorated with Sandra Dee posters the year before. She set her Sleeping Beauty alarm clock on the night table for seven a.m. and fell into bed. She pulled her puffy pink comforter over her head and tightened her arms around Mac, her worn out old Teddy bear.
She had already washed up by seven-thirty, tip-toed down to the kitchen, still cluttered with dirty coffee cups and a saucer overflowing with cigarette butts, and swallowed a glass of icy cold milk. On her way back up the stairs she glanced over the wooden banister into the front parlor where her mother had collapsed on the couch still wearing yesterday’s clothes.
Back upstairs, Molly reached into her closet and grabbed her fuzzy red angora sweater that had always been cozy on mornings like this. She pulled it over her head and then stepped into her red and black plaid skirt and thought one more time: I hope that cowardly being rolled up in his own filthy rotten stink who was blubbering insults with a thick slippery tongue, one eye half open, the other stuck shut with blobs of mucus, a few hours ago, wakes up from his stupor and gets in his car and slams into a tree -- or chokes on his own vomit -- or falls off a cliff or slips in the bathroom and smacks his head on the tub and bleeds to death. Or, better yet, shoots himself in the head. He is nobody to me. Nobody! I swear nobody at all!
She went into the bathroom, splattered cold water on her face again and looked her mirror image in the eyes. “You’re going to be all right,” she said. “Nothing happened last night. You did your homework and went to bed early.”
She ran a light pink lipstick over her mouth, then placing a dot of lipstick at the top of each cheek bone, she brushed over it with two fingers. She picked up her brush and swept it over her long auburn hair. Parting it carefully in the middle she scooped it up behind each ear and clasped it down with two silver barrettes. She shook her shoulders, puckered up her lips and blew herself a kiss.
Grabbing her book bag by the handle, she ran down the tree lined sidewalk two blocks to the bus stop where her friend Shirley was already waiting and waving her arms wildly. “I had a neat surprise last night,” Shirley gasped, “Johnny M. actually called me.”
“You’re lying,” Molly said.
“No, cross my heart,” Shirley giggled. “I was so excited I almost peed my underpants then and there!”
“Tell me every word he said, every word.”
“I will at lunchtime.”
“Okay, but every word. Remember.”
“I promise.”
“Well, I had a surprise last night, too,” Molly said, thinking swiftly. “You know that darling gold locket with the rose engraving on it at Simon’s Jewelry that I’ve had my heart set on for so long? Well, my dad bought it for me and gave it to me at dinner last night. He had it all wrapped up with a pink bow. ‘That’s for your excellent report card last Friday,’” he said. Then he came over and gave me one of those big fat daddy kisses on the cheek.”
“Wow, really swell, Molly. Wow! That beautiful locket. You deserved it. Hey look, here comes our bus right on time.”
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