Kibitzing

by

Leslie S. Talley

                                                                    

Bertie opened his eyes and glanced, as was his custom, at the bed next to his. He did this every morning, telling himself he was checking on Adolph. In reality, he was hoping perhaps the bastard had died during the night. Adolph, that thorn in his side, that constant reminder of lost prestige.

Bertie Biemdieck’s tenure as Oldest Resident of Our Lady of Perpetual Charity Nursing Home had been short-lived, thanks to that damn Adolph. Bertie cast his mind back to the halcyon period of his reign.

The mantle had fallen to Bertie, 95, when Adele Schneider, 101, died. He could scarcely contain his glee. Not that he had anything against Adele personally. And he was careful to put on a proper long face and to heave gusty sighs, shaking his white mane and tsk tsking in a manner befitting his generation.

But enough was enough, already. Adele had received the respect and deference due the Oldest Resident for six years. High time the title passed to someone who had a far better fund of stories than Adele ever had, not to mention total recall. Well, almost.

“When are the services?” he had asked Mary, his favorite nurse, a big black gal, not fat, she didn’t have any excess flab, just taut muscled and, well, big. He bet she could flip a mattress over in one smooth motion, judging by the way she flipped his suite mate over. ‘Course Herbert probably only weighed ninety-eight pounds.                       

“Service is private. Family only. Adele’s request,” Mary said, as she eased Bertie’s legs over the edge of the bed and effortlessly hoisted him to his wheelchair. “You want your little pillow?”

Bertie leaned forward automatically for her to place the flat pillow at the small of his back. “What, you mean we’re not invited?” Bertie was affronted. He had naturally assumed that Adele’s funeral would be the setting for the unacknowledged passing of the torch. Nothing would be said. But everyone would know that there was a new Oldest Resident.

“Who’s this, then?” he asked, momentarily distracted, looking up from under his tufts of eyebrows that made him look quite fierce at times. He pointed one finger, gnarled by arthritis, at the form hovering in the doorway. Bertie didn’t see so well, but he never admitted this to anyone. Just said, rather irascibly, that you were standing in his light.

This figure was hard to miss, resembling as it did a barber’s pole. Mary smiled at the figure that advanced hesitantly into the room.

“Well, come on! I don’t bite!” Bertie said.

“Humph,” Mary said. “This here is Heather. She’s a candy striper and she’s only sixteen, so watch your mouth!”

Bertie chuckled, taking this as a compliment. A candy striper. That explained why she looked like a barber pole. Bertie brightened. A new face: one who hadn’t heard his stories. “You like baseball?”

“If she doesn’t, she will by the time you get through with her,” Mary said, ripping the sheets from the bed. “Heather, this is Bertie Biemdieck, our Oldest Resident. He’s not as mean as he looks. I swear, Bertie, I’m going to bring in my tweezers someday, tie you down, and work on those wild hairs of yours.”

Bertie ignored that last part. He was too taken with the fact that Mary had officially called him the oldest resident.

“Heather, why don’t you wheel Bertie down to the solarium? It’s time for his pinochle game,” Mary said.

Heather smiled timidly at Bertie and released the brake on the chair. Bertie said, more to Mary than to Heather, “Well, it’s high time they sent me a pretty, young nurse.”

Mary rolled her dark eyes heavenward. “Oh, Lordy,” she sighed.

“So how old are you, Mr. Biemdieck?” Heather asked, as she wheeled him swiftly down the hall.

“Not so fast! We aren’t in a damn race, uh, Missy.” What was her durn fool name, anyway? Some kind of flower or plant, wasn’t it? Not Rose or Marigold or--Heather! That was it. Where did they get these names today? Heather wasn’t a name; it was a Scottish weed. Next they’d name some unfortunate girl gorse.

But he digressed. “Born in Nineteen Aught Three. Carried as a babe in arms to the 1904 St. Louis World’s Fair. First hot dog. Iced tea. First fair lit by electricity. Why, I remember...” Bertie didn’t remember anything from the fair, but he almost did. He’d heard so much about it from his parents, his aunts and uncles. Some of his World’s Fair stories were actually Adele’s. The one about the ten-year-old boys sneaking in to see the hoochie-coochie girls, for instance. Bertie felt no guilt about appropriating Adele’s stories into his reserve. Hell, she was dead, wasn’t she? Besides, that was part of passing the torch.

Heather wheeled Bertie smartly, military fashion into place at the card table in the solarium. The other three players were already assembled, but, Bertie noted with approval, no one had yet dealt. A good thing, too. As oldest resident, he would claim the privilege. He darted a look from under his bristling eyebrows at the Henninger sisters, seated together on one end of the overstuffed sofa, each clutching a handbag, each retaining that wide-eyed innocent look from childhood. Presently a visitor would enter the front door, adjacent to the solarium, and the ladies would rise and accost the unfortunate person.

“We’ve decided to go home now,” the elder would announce, as the younger nodded rapidly, eagerly. The hapless visitor would be nonplussed, unless familiar with the duo, and try to divert the old ladies.

“The old biddies on the couch,” Bertie said in a low voice to Heather, “try to walk out every day. Made it onto a Tower Grove bus once. That’s when they started putting beepers on some of the wandering ones. So watch ‘em!”                

They hadn’t had to use beepers when Oscar was alive. A double amputee, he’d station himself by the front door and greet everyone who entered. Once, when a visitor asked him how he was, he replied, “I never felt better or had less!”                       

Bertie turned to the other players. “Gentlemen, have you met Heather? Heather, meet Walter, Henry, and Clarence. None of us,” he added, “wears a beeper.”

The other three elderly men nodded courteously, one even trying to rise from his wheelchair.

“Don’t get up, Walt,” Bertie said. “Chivalry’s dead. Haven’t you heard? Are we drawing for partners or am I stuck with you, Henry?”

“Do you mind if I watch?” Heather asked.

“Course not,” said Bertie. “Do you know anything about the game?”

“No.”                     

“Then you’ve come to the right place. Clarence here was born with a pinochle deck in his hands. And Walt and Henry learned the game when they worked at the door works. After their shift, they’d go down to the local tavern, play pinochle, and drink boilermakers. My own brand of pinochle,” Bertie said, lifting his chin, “speaks for itself.”

“What’s a boilermaker?” Heather asked, scrunching a straight chair up to the table.                “Shot of whiskey followed by a beer chaser,” said Walt before Bertie could stop him.

“Not a ladies’ drink,” Bertie added, frowning down Walt who remained oblivious.              

Bertie noticed Heather watching Henry laboriously arrange his hand and hoped she wouldn’t offer to help. Henry, a stroke victim, had no use at all in his left arm; a sling held the arm immobile across his chest. But Walt and Clarence had devised a cardholder in Occupational Therapy. “Might as well make something useful in there,” Walt had said. They’d taken two of those cardboard fans with a picture of Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane on one side and Mueller’s Funeral Home on the other (lifted from a Visitation for one of the residents) and glued them together, except for a slit at the top. Henry fitted the wooden handle into his sling and used his right hand to fit his cards, one at a time into the slit; then he could play the cards with his right hand.

“One fifty or bunch,” Henry said, just as Mary strode rapidly round the corner.

“Sister’s coming!” she hissed. “Come on!” She motioned to Heather. “Won’t do for her to see you sitting here watching a card game. You fellows know what to do.”

They were already doing it: Bertie scooped up the cards, Walt produced a checkerboard from the side of his wheelchair, and Henry stashed the cardholder behind his back. Sister was death on cards.                            

“The checkers, the checkers,” Bertie said in an undertone to Walt. Walt fumbled, dragged a box from under his leg.

When Sister Rotilla glided into the solarium, four pairs of innocent eyes turned towards her. Her brows snapped together. “What are you up to? Oh, don’t give me that kitty-at-the-cream-pot look, Bertie Biemdieck! I didn’t teach parochial school for thirty-five years for nothing!  The only difference between you and my former students is you should be old enough to know better.”

Sister was the only person in the world Bertie feared. She reminded him of the nun who taught him in first grade at St. Catherine’s; he worried that someday she would have the same effect on him and he would pee down his leg. Funny how things came full circle.

At least he wasn’t alone in his fear. Mary once confided to him that the first two weeks she had worked at Our Lady she would awaken in a sweat in the middle of the night, hearing Sister Rotilla’s voice: “Turn ‘em and water ‘em, girls; turn ‘em and water ‘em! Keep those bowels moving!”

One of the old school, Sister Rotilla flatly refused to wear the new habits. So, draped in black to the floor, she seemed to have no legs, to move on wheels, silently and deadly.

Once, Clarence was out on the patio, enjoying his cigar, one of the few pleasures left the old fellow. Sister Rotilla had pounced upon him (Clarence’s version), wrested the cigar from his mouth, ground it underfoot, and announced, “That’s a filthy habit!”

Inadvertently, Sister was the unifying force at Our Lady: staff and patients alike allied against her in a web of conspiracy. She bent over the card table. “Since when do you need four to play checkers?”

“Kibitzing,” Bertie said in a high-pitched voice, then cleared his throat impatiently. Felt as if he was fourteen and his voice was changing. He held his breath.                      

Sister nailed him to the wall with one eye, and then abruptly turned on her heel. The large bunch of keys at her waist jangled until she was out of sight.

Bertie let out his breath all at once.

“Don’t relax too soon, Bertie. She’s just biding her time,” Walt said.

“Probably thought it would be like shooting fish in a barrel,” Clarence said.            

“I heard that, Clarence.” The four men jumped in unison as Sister Rotilla poked her head around the door once more. Old crone must have muffled her keys, Bertie thought. She really shouldn’t treat them like schoolboys: schoolboys weren’t apt to have heart attacks.

“By the way, Bertie,” she said, “you’re getting a new suite mate. Someone you know.”            This was said in such a friendly tone that Bertie’s suspicions were instantly aroused. Sister only seemed friendly when she was doing you down.

“Who?” he asked, frowning.

“Your brother.” She wheeled and left the solarium.

“What did she say?” Bertie asked.

“She said you were getting a new...” Walt began.

“I know what she said! I’m not deaf!”

Adolph. Bertie’s brother, who, up until now, had been perfectly content to live out his days as an ex-patriate in Costa Rica. Adolph, who had never married or had a family, who remembered his brother’s existence only occasionally, was coming here to Our Lady. Adolph, the son-of-a-bitch who was six minutes older than his twin, Albert.                             

                                                      * * *

Bertie tuned into the conversation between Adolph and the orderly. Well, not a conversation, actually: a monologue. Adolph’s.

“...1944--that was the year of the so-called Streetcar Series. Named it that because the whole blamed thing was played in St. Louis--between the St. Louis Browns and the Cardinals. The Brownies...you know them as the Phillies now...”

“The Orioles,” said Bertie between clenched teeth.

“Eh?” said Adolph.

“The Browns became the Baltimore Orioles.”

“Oh. Right. Anyway...”            

The bastard better not take over his Grover Cleveland Alexander story. The 1926 World Series was his--Bertie’s. He’d honed it to perfection over the years, made it suspenseful, especially to these young orderlies who didn’t know the outcome.                             

Adolph had been here only two weeks and already he’d told about making bathtub gin in the Shaw Avenue house. Another of Bertie’s stories.

“...Black Tuesday, they called it--1939. The smog was so thick you had to use your headlights to get to work during the daylight hours. Just creep along at 7 miles an hour...”                       Adolph jumped around too much between subjects and decades. Didn’t he know that confused people? Bertie scrutinized the orderly who was making up Adolph’s bed. Weren’t his eyes glazed? Didn’t look like that when he was telling a story. Adolph never could tell a tale right. Bet he really wowed the natives in Costa Rica.                   

Mustn’t fume. Bad for his blood pressure.

Bertie shot a surreptitious glance at Adolph. You’d never guess they were brothers, much less twins. At least, that’s what people always said. Adolph was smaller boned, from their mother’s side, with fine hair that used to mold to his symmetrically round head but now seemed wispy, blown about. By contrast, Bertie looked the complete German--broad of face and body with hair like a wire brush.  

Bertie continued to listen resentfully as Adolph nattered on. Strange that he never told any Central America stories. Bertie had expected one-upmanship where he couldn’t compete. Jungle tales, Indians, lost Mayan temples or whatever they had down there.                          

Nothing. It was as though the last twenty years ceased to exist for Adolph the minute he arrived at Our Lady.

Couldn’t give a straight answer as to why he had suddenly appeared at Our Lady, either. He’d been...what was the word he wanted? Meant the same thing as shilly-shallying. He’d have to ask Walt who prided himself on finishing the New York Times crossword every Sunday. Evasive--that was the word. Bertie felt mildly pleased with himself momentarily, then lapsed into speculation once more.

Bertie remembered the last time he and Adolph had been together. That trip Winifred had insisted they take through the Panama Canal with a side excursion to Costa Rica. Healing the breach, she’d called it. Periodically during her long marriage to Bertie, Winifred had felt compelled to mediate between her husband and his estranged brother. Not one of her howling successes, that visit. Adolph’s primitive living conditions offended the house-proud, south St. Louis, scrubbing Dutch that Bertie and Winifred had remained. For God’s sake, Winifred had scrubbed the front stoop every Saturday until two weeks before she died of cancer.           

Another bone of contention. Adolph, off somewhere on one of his wanderlusts, couldn’t be notified of his sister-in-law’s passing. Or Bertie’s subsequent admission to Our Lady. Not that he could have done anything. Oh, Bertie didn’t blame his son. What was Will to do? An aged father, falling down all the time. Well, twice actually. But Will, a divorced man, on the road so much, his career to think of. He couldn’t be worrying that his father might be lying helpless on the floor. The legs. It always hit the Biemdiecks in the legs.

If only Adolph had come home then...perhaps the two of them could have rubbed along together. A little flat in the old neighborhood close to the church, a corner grocery, a bakery.

They probably would have killed each other.

Bertie roused from his reverie by Walt wheeling himself into the room. Adolph immediately broke off regaling the orderly.

“Well, Walt, how’s your hammer hanging?” Adolph asked.

Walt gave a thin smile, then moved pointedly in the direction of Bertie’s side of the room. Bertie got the message, if Adolph didn’t: Walt didn’t like Adolph. Well, maybe that was a little strong: Walt didn’t approve of Adolph. For some reason this didn’t please Bertie the way it should. After all, he didn’t want Adolph muscling in on his friends, his pinochle partners, did he?                Not that he had to worry about that: Adolph refused to learn the game. Bertie remembered all those summer evenings in Uncle Freddie’s flat on Palm Street, his father and uncles with rolled up sleeves, cigar smoke curling, his mother and aunts in cool summer voiles, Grandma holding up four fingers gnarled by arthritis, saying, “I had this many of your trump, Freddie!” And Adolph, sitting in a corner of the kitchen, looking bored.                     

“Why don’t you come watch, Dolph?” Bertie asked.

Adolph curled his lip scornfully. “So ethnic,” he said.

Bertie hadn’t known what he meant. The story of their lives. Bertie hadn’t known what Adolph meant since--when was the last time they had been in rapport? 1914? 1915?                   And when Adolph left home the first time at the age of seventeen, he hadn’t said good-bye to his brother or even hinted that he was leaving. Just that obscure note to Mother that he was off to “see the world while it’s still there.” Which made no sense at the time since they had just fought--and won--the War to End All Wars.

1920--the beginning of Adolph’s rolling stone existence that would take him to odd corners of the globe, fetch him up on exotic shores, and all but obliterate his ties to Mama and Pop, Bertie, the aunts, uncles, cousins who comprised his childhood in south St. Louis. Periodically he would appear, stay just long enough to make Bertie think he was putting down roots, then disappear once more.

“What do you want from us?” Bertie asked.

“Something besides stagnation,” Adolph had replied.

What Bertie wanted from Adolph was some sense of responsibility. To Bertie fell the care and worry of the aging parents in their last illnesses, the disposition of the house and possessions. Only during the last twenty years had Adolph had the semi-permanent address in Costa Rica, a country he extolled for its beauty and low cost of living. So why was he here?

Walt was saying, “...so if we can finish the in-house tournament by the twelfth, we’re eligible to send a team to the All-Parish Tournament.”

“What?” asked Bertie.

Walt sighed. “The parish pinochle tournament, Bert. Haven’t you been listening? First time they’ve ever notified us, asked us to enter. Gives us a chance to show these whippersnappers how the game is supposed to be played!”

A pinochle tournament. An event that would automatically exclude Adolph. Bertie smiled. “Count me in!”

The only problem was transportation. Sister signed off on each use of the home’s van. Sister didn’t approve of pinochle. So how were Bertie, Walt, Clarence, and Henry supposed to arrive at the parish hall?

“Assuming we’re the winners,” said Walt.

Bertie waved this aside. “ ‘Course we’ll be the winners. Who’s our competition?”         

Adolph cleared his throat. “I’ll drive you.”

Bertie stared openmouthed at his brother, then exchanged glances with Walt.      

“You have a car?” Walt asked.

Adolph nodded.

“You have a license?” Bertie asked.

“Welll...not a Missouri one.”

“American?” said Bertie.

Adolph fidgeted. “Which America?”

“North America!” Bertie shouted.

“Shhh!” said Walt.

Adolph shook his head.

“Right!” said Bertie. “We should trust our lives and old limbs to an s-b who’s used to driving on goat paths through rain forests...”

“Goats don’t live in rain forests, Bert...” began Walt.

Bertie waved this aside.

“...besides, should be good practice for driving on Lindbergh Boulevard.”

                                                      * * *

“And you mean to say you drove that jalopy from Central America to St. Louis all by yourself?” Henry said. “If I could do that...well, I wouldn’t be here.”

Bertie fumed. Adolph had become the hero of the hour. The rest of the boys treated him as if he were Charles Kuralt.  Making inroads, that’s what Adolph was doing. Inroads into Bertie’s friendships. Inroads by way of a road trip. Bertie didn’t even smile at his silent pun. Which just showed how disturbed he was.          

“Didja stop at Holiday Inns?” Clarence asked. “The wife always insisted on Holiday Inns.”   “I used to eat at truck stops,” Henry added. “Always figured the boys of the road knew where to find the best food.”

Clarence shook his head morosely. “Alice wouldn’t ever stop at truck stops. Said they were greasy spoons. Wouldn’t look at a place that advertised `Good Eats’ or `Home Cookin’. Said if they had to say it, then it probably wasn’t. Wouldn’t touch fast food, neither.”

“What route did you take? Did you come through El Paso? I been to El Paso,” said Walt.         Now they’d have to relive every trip the whole lot of them had taken since 1940, Bertie thought. They’d talk about two-lane highways giving way to interstates; Burma Shave signs; billboards; `Chew Mail Pouch Tobacco’; best mileage; best time made. Not that Bertie didn’t understand: he did. Even though he’d never taken many long automobile trips--Winifred preferred to fly or take a cruise--Bertie knew what losing the ability to drive did to a man.

He remembered when his son Will had sat him down after his second fender-bender and said firmly, “Dad, you can’t drive anymore.”

Might as well cut off our balls, Bertie thought.

But still.... Here was Adolph, usurping his title as oldest resident, and now his friends. All due to six lousy minutes and mobility.

“...have to have someplace to sign out to and someone to sign out with,” Walt was saying. “Now, Clarence, if we could say your niece invited us all to supper...”

“That’s no good,” said Clarence. “If she invited us to supper, she’d pick us up. How’d we explain that? Besides, if one of the staff checks my record, they’ll know she moved to Springfield.”

“Well, we have to have someone appear to be picking us up. They’d never let us drive ourselves,” said Henry.

“We have as much chance of finding someone to appear to be picking us up as we would of finding someone who actually could pick us up,” said Walt.

“I don’t see that,” said Bertie. “We get someone to take a cab to within half a block of the Home, come in, sign us out, go back to the cab, and go home.”

“Why not just call a cab, period?” asked Clarence.

“Because a cab driver would come in the building,” answered Henry, “to see if it was a legitimate fare. Wouldn’t wait at the end of the drive. Some of the cagey ones have tried that before.”

“So, say Adolph drives. What if they catch him behind the wheel when we return?” asked Walt.

“Won’t matter. We’ll have our trophy. What are they going to do, anyway? Kick us out? Sue us?” Bertie darted his eyes around the circle of men.

Walt thumped the flat of his hand on the arm of his wheelchair. “Bertie’s right. After the tournament, who cares who knows what we did.” He leaned forward. “So, who knows a patsy?”                                                                        * * *   

“But they’ll know I’m not your granddaughter,” Heather wailed. “I’ve been here six weeks already. Someone will recognize me.”

“The evening shift won’t. You’ve only worked days, right?” said Henry.

“Yeess,” Heather replied, wavering. “I’ll get in trouble. I know I will. And I don’t look old enough. They’d never sign out five residents to my care.”

“Nonsense,” said Bertie. “Tie a scarf over your head, smear a bunch of goop on your face, and you’d pass for twenty-seven.”

Heather wasn’t sure how to take that.

“What if something goes wrong? What if Mr. Biemdieck has a wreck?”

“What if?” said Walt. “That piece of junk he drives is like an armored tank.”

And so the plans were laid. Mustn’t leave until after supper. Sister supervised supper before returning to her room next door for the night. Mustn’t overdress. Had to look the part: five elderly gentlemen invited to a granddaughter’s house for the evening. Too bad it wasn’t a holiday to make it more plausible.

Everything was in train until the day before the tournament. Then, Bertie came down with a bug. Fever, chills, the works. He debated whether a pinochle game was worth his life, decided it was. Until they hooked him up to an IV.

                                                      * * *

Bertie was restless. Enforced bed rest and dozing throughout the day left him wide awake now. He glanced at the old wind-up clock with its oversized numbers on his bedside table. Eight p.m. Time when ambulatory and wheelchair patients were receiving evening care, being put to bed. He wondered if he’d sleep tonight at all. Sighing, he bent his mind to finding a solution to their dilemma. Mentally he ran through the list of residents, evaluating their pinochle playing (or lack of it). In desperation he reviewed the women. Oh, if only Grandma were here. She could whip the lot of them! But not this generation of women. Even Winifred had deserted the pinochle table for a bridge foursome. Bertie had never understood that. He viewed it almost as a betrayal of their heritage.            

His ears picked up noises in the bed next to his. Adolph was talking to someone. Or at least, he was talking in his sleep. Bertie twitched back the privacy curtain which separated their beds.

“Why it’s Grandpa Grahl!” Adolph flashed a brilliant smile at Bertie.

Bertie hesitated. “And how are you today, Adolph?” he said gently, groping for the call bell.

The medication nurse answered the summons. She approached Bertie’s bed, turned off the call light, and raised one eyebrow questioningly.

“Sundown Syndrome,” Bertie said, jerking his head to indicate Adolph. Then he closed his eyes and turned his face to the wall.

                                                      * * *

He became aware of a wheelchair beside his bed. He glanced over, expecting to see Walt. Instead, Adolph sat eyeing him quizzically.

“I thought,” he said, “you could refresh me on the game’s finer points.”           

Bertie found himself returning the scrutiny. And then he was reminded of his own 1926 World Series story:                    

Cardinals were leading the Yanks by one run, two outs, seventh inning, when pitcher “Pop” Haines ran into trouble, walking Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig to load the bases. Grover Cleveland Alexander--Ole Pete--a down-and-out pitcher acquired that summer, had already pitched two games; Hornsby, the player-manager, had told him he probably wouldn’t be needed again. So Pete had tied one on the night before. When Hornsby realized he needed Pete after all, he’d personally walked out to the bullpen to look at Pete’s eyes. When Pete reached the mound, he had looked at the man on first. He turned to second: another runner. Third--same story. Then he faced the batter. `No place for this guy,’ he thought. So he struck him out.                  

Bertie looked deep into his brother’s eyes. Like Pete’s, they seemed bright enough.

So, all of those years spent sitting in one corner of the kitchen hadn’t been totally wasted after all. They weren’t starting at square one. Adolph must have absorbed some pinochle strategy with his Pablum. Or maybe it was that, whaddayacallit, ancestral memory, stirring.

Or maybe...that other. Little things, scarcely noted before, added up. Adolph’s sudden return to his birthplace and boyhood home. His refusal to talk about Costa Rica. His obsession with the past. Bertie looked from under his bristling eyebrows at his twin, finger to lip, concentrating furiously on the cards held in his hand. Willing his mind that drifted more and more to long-ago years to stay here in this time, this place. Long enough for one game of cards.

“Now remember: if your partner melds 100 aces and you have the bid, what do you lead?” Bertie said gently. Don’t let him say the ace of trumps, Bertie pleaded.

Adolph hesitated. Then his face lit up. “A low trump. Leading to my partner’s 100 aces.”

“How low a trump?” Bertie asked.

“A counter,” Adolph grinned. “Not a jack or nine.”

Bertie beamed at his protege.         

                                                      * * *

“You accused a priest of reneging?” Bertie asked, awed.

“He sure did!” said Henry, slapping Adolph on the back with his good hand. “He was right, too. The old guy admitted it. Said he accidentally pulled out the wrong card.”

The whole gang congregated in Bertie and Adolph’s room the morning after the tournament, rehashing their glorious victory. Mary leaned over Bertie’s bed. “Scoot back, Walt. How’m I supposed to get this needle out of Bertie’s arm with all of you breathing down my neck?”

“Speaking of breathing...” Sister Rotilla loomed in the doorway. “Do the rest of you want to catch Bertie’s bug?”

Suddenly there was a traffic bottleneck at the door, with three wheelchairs trying to leave at once. Even Henry, one-handed, could hold his own.

“By the way, gentlemen,” Sister Rotilla said.

They stopped in mids troke.

“Congratulations.” She smirked, and then swished away, her skirts rustling behind her.

“Close your mouth, Walt,” said Clarence.

Bertie and Adolph, alone, eyed each other.

“Thanks, ‘Dolph,” Bertie said.

“I owed you a game,” Adolph said.

There was a pause. Then, in a low voice, Bertie began speaking. He talked about the days when he and his twin carried coal for a nickel a bucket to Uncle Freddie’s second story flat. “Remember?”

Adolph grinned. “A nickel and a piece of Aunt May’s coffee cake.”

“Remember playing on the old bear pits at Fairgrounds Park?” Bertie asked.

Adolph stared into the distance. “Gone now, I suppose.”

Bertie roused. “No. No, they’re not. Will drove me by there a few years ago. Maybe when he comes back from his sales trip he can drive us past some of the old places.” Bertie droned on, leading his twin inexorably into their shared past.