The Death Factory: A Penn Cage Novella

“I cheated,” Jack says with a smile. “But don’t tell Phil that.” He steps forward and takes Dad by the hand. “How you doing, Kemosabe? Not so great, huh?”

“Better than the friends I read about in the obituaries this morning.”

“That’s the spirit. Do you remember anything of what happened?”

Dad slowly moves his head from side to side. “Just a hell of a pain in my back. Nothing after that.”

“Well, you’ve got nothing to do now but loaf around and let ­people tell you how glad they are you made it.”

“That’s right,” Dad says, after a ten-­second delay.

He closes his eyes, takes a few labored breaths, then opens them enough to locate his baby brother again. “I thought I was taking my last ride this time, Jack.”

“You’ve got a lot of trail left yet,” my uncle says with assurance.

Mom smiles, but I see her chin quivering.

“Peg,” Jack says softly. “Why don’t you let me spell you for a little while?”

“Oh, no. I have to stay here.”

“Go, Peggy,” Dad whispers. “Take a break.”

“I’m not going anywhere. Not yet.”

Jack gives her a chiding glance. “You don’t want to hog all the quality time, do you? What do you think I came out here for?”

This was a good try, since Mom has a highly developed sense of guilt, but after a ­couple seconds, she sees through Jack’s ploy. “No, you’ve had a long trip. You go with Penn.” She takes my hand. “Drive Jack over to our house and get him settled.”

“No,” Jack says. “I’ve got a hotel room right up the road.”

“That’s ridiculous! Why waste good money on a hotel?”

Jack smiles and shakes his head. “Don’t worry about it, Peg.”

“I’ll put him up with me, Mom,” I interject, knowing it’s the quickest way out of this pointless discussion.

“You two go on,” she insists. “Get Jack settled. I’ll take a break later on, after Tom’s had some rest and those enzyme tests come back.”

Jack hesitates, then hugs my mom once more and says, “All right, Peg. I’ll see you in a ­couple of hours.”

Leaning down over my father, Jack squeezes his hand once more, until Dad opens his eyes and nods as if to say I’m still here.

“I’ll take care of everything,” Jack says. “You get some rest.”

After Dad nods, Jack straightens up and quickly walks to the door of the cubicle, wiping his eyes on his shirtsleeve. Mom and I follow him with our eyes, and then I go after him. At the nurses’ station, Jack picks up a weekend bag, and we start toward the hospital lobby.

“Did you fly right into Natchez?” I ask.

“Hell, yes. They didn’t have any rental cars, but when the guy who runs the airport found out why I’d come, he offered to drive me into town himself. I knew then that I was back in the South.”

In the lobby, a nurse stops me and asks how Dad is doing. I give her a brief update, and then Jack and I head for the parking lot, where the late afternoon sun has come from behind the clouds.

“So,” my uncle says in a man-­to-­man voice. “You think Tom’s going to make it?”

“For a while,” I reply. “If Dr. Bruen hadn’t come back and placed that stent, we’d have been picking out a casket today. But Dad doesn’t have that long, regardless of this outcome. His heart’s about worn out, Jack. He’s going to be in failure before long. If he’d quit the cigars and ease back on self-­prescribing pain medication, he might stretch that out for two or three years, but . . .”

“I know. He can’t keep practicing medicine without the pain meds, because of his arthritis, right?”

“Right.”

“Then forget that.”

“Mom’s pushing him hard to retire.”

Jack chuckles. “Never happen. The Lone Ranger dies in the saddle. Might as well chisel that on his tombstone now.”

“Let’s take Dad’s car,” I suggest, pointing to a five-­year-­old black BMW 740, which I bought my father with the proceeds of my second book.

Jack nods, then makes his way around to the passenger side.

“He really thought this was the end,” I say.

As Jack looks at me across the roof of the car, I tell him about Dad’s urgent request to see me before he died, then his later denial.

“You have no idea what it might have been about?” Jack asks.

“No.”

“Something about money, maybe?”

“Could have been. But Dad never cared much about money. And I think all that’s pretty well settled.”

“Tell you to take care of your mother, maybe?”

“He already knows I’d do that. I think it’s something else. But now that he thinks he has a good chance of surviving, he doesn’t want to tell me.”

“Did he know his chances of survival had improved by the time you asked him the question?”

I think about this. “He knew that Bruen had placed a new stent. He couldn’t know how badly his heart had been damaged, because it was far too early for diagnostic enzyme tests. But I think he sensed that he was going to make it.”

Jack purses his lips with a speculative cast to his eyes. “Some dark secret? That’s what you’re thinking?”

I shrug. “Maybe.”

“Well . . . maybe together we can get it out of him before I go back home.”

With the push of a button on Dad’s key ring, I unlock the car and we get inside.