The Birthday Lunch Read Online Free PDF Page B

a hand. “Nope,” Ralph says, and after looping the chain around the fender, he hoists the front end four feet off the ground. “That should do it,” he says. “Hop in.” Hal climbs into the cab, which is almost as hot inside as the Impala. The truck crawls downhill and through the village of Waterford before Ralph picks up speed.
    “Some heat wave,” Hal says.
    “Sure is.”
    “I appreciate you coming all this way.”
    “It’s my job.” Like his father, Ralph is a man of few words.
    Although he knows the answer, Hal asks Ralph if he gets many tow jobs out of town, places like Anagance and Petitcodiac, where there are woods.
    “There’s woods everywhere.”
    Hal is silent for maybe a quarter of a mile. When he has a particularly good story, he likes to pounce on it, take the listener by surprise. “I bet you don’t know there are black panthers in these woods.”
    “Sure there are, and I got two heads,” Ralph says, which is the kind of answer Hal was counting on. He knows a listener won’t believe a good story until it is backed up and Hal knows he can back up the panther story. And so he begins: “Last summer when my wife and I were driving home from Moncton in the early evening, she saw a black panther come out of the woods near Petitcodiac. I didn’t see it myself because by the time I turned the Impala around so I could get a look, the panther had disappeared into the woods.”
    “You’re pulling my leg.”
    “I’m not pulling your leg. A few months ago, a guest speaker, a biologist who works for the government, told the Kiwanis that over the years there have been at least five sightings of black panthers and he estimates there might be a dozen or more in the province. He said that it isn’t known if the panthers live here or are just passing through on their way somewhere else.”
    “You don’t say.”
    “It’s a fact.”
    Now comes the best part of the story. “My wife knows how they got here,” Hal says. “When she lived in Halifax, she visited the museum and saw a painting of a circus ship that was wrecked in the Bay of Fundy more than a hundred years ago. There was an elephant, a tiger, a lion and a bunch of other animals on the ship, but in the water close to shore was a black panther. After spotting the panther near Petitcodiac last summer, my wife got to figuring that the shipwrecked panther must have been pregnant when she swam ashore. After he spoke at Kiwanis, I told the government biologist about the painting of the circus shipwreck and he said that it was as good an explanation as any as to how black panthers came to be living in New Brunswick.”
    Ralph, in all seriousness, says, “A good thing a pregnant tiger didn’t swim ashore.”
    To avoid backing up, Laverne noses the Volkswagen into a hospital parking space that faces downtown. Side by side, the sisters walk across the hot asphalt. The hospital doors slide open and they step into an oasis of cool air and potted plants. Lily presents the requisition slip to a woman at the desk who tells her to take a seat outside the X-ray room. “Thanks, Carol,” Lily says, and disappears down the corridor. Laverne has no idea who Carol is. Except for her teaching colleagues, she doesn’t know many people in town, but her sister seems to have a passing acquaintance with any number of people.
    A nurse wearing blue scrubs appears in front of the tall, bony man sitting beside Laverne. “We are ready for you, Mr. Alyward,” she says. Laverne reads
Mona Kyle RN
on the plastic tag hanging around the woman’s neck. Why did nurses give up their crisp, white uniforms for this shapeless prisonwear? When Lily fills in for Dr. O’Donnell’s nurse, even she no longer wears the crisp white uniform hanging in her closet. Instead, she wears a white jacket over a skirt and blouse, which is an improvement over blue scrubs. Tired and disgruntled, Laverne closes her eyes, but not for long because in no time at all she hears her sister’s voice