Billy Luck

He stood with his suitcase gazin at the green home with yellow shutters, and window boxes crammed with geraniums. Its wide porch with four pillars featured a swing where as many as three people could dangle their old swollen legs. House looked to be well over a hundred years old.      

Daisy and Jack invested well. Freaks always made more money than norms, at least till the sixties before it become incorrect, but midgets and dwarfs worked on, cause they wasn’t too scary lookin.

The home with a rail leadin up to the veranda reminded him of all the times he passed by in trucks and trains thankful he never had to settle down in one place, made life hard for the wives, cept for Alice, who divorced him cause he was still married to Betty. And kids? Well, he ain’t sure how many he done fathered. None never showed up on his doorstep, course he never had a doorstep, till ’05, the year they made him retire.

He trudged up the walkway. It’d be three years since he last seen his girl. He come down for Jack’s funeral and what a spectacle it turned into, musta been more ex-carnies and circus folk there than in Gibtown; fire-eaters, sword swallowers, even a Wallenda showed up, tights an all. But Jack was no ordinary midget. He was a magician, an entertainer, a munchkin in the Wizard of Oz, so charmin he could con a con and how he loved shootin craps. Billy chuckled, just thinkin bout his friend Jack.

Sure enough, Billy’s pants sagged in the butt and his shirt forced its way out of his belt. If only he could turn back into that tall blond stud with light blue eyes that drove women loco. Ah shit, least he was alive and not in some sick home like Daisy. He held onto the railin and shuffled up the porch steps.

Billy tucked in his shirttails, he unstuck his hat from his sweaty head and steered a comb over his damp scanty hairs.

He rang the bell.

A black woman opened the door dressed in white pants and a lime-green jacket. “Why, you must be Mr. Luck.”

“That’s me, Billy.”

“I’m Geneva.”

“How’s Daisy?”

“Well, Miss Daisy is having a rough day, but seeing you will lift her spirits.”

Billy wondered. She was a tightfisted little mother, always lecturin him on savin his dough. Comin down for her funeral woulda been enough money spent. But callin him before and spendin more bucks to come down after she died? Musta had somethin to do with that night, and gitten religion an all.

“Leave your suitcase and hat here in the lobby. Ruben will take it up.”

Billy stepped into a foyer with a tall potted palm tree next to a narrow table. There was a stairway in front of him and on either side the ground floor fanned out to where he couldn’t see no more, just the fronds of palm trees wavin from the air-conditionin. The place seem all spick-and-span.

“We have your room ready for you. It’s on the third floor.”

“Hope I don’t have to walk up no steps.”

“Lord have mercy! You wouldn’t find me walking up three flights of stairs. No, Mr. Luck, we had an elevator put in years ago.”

“I’d like to see Daisy, right soon. An call me, Billy.”

“Sure, Mr. Billy.”

He smiled at Geneva callin him Mr. Billy.

“We’re going to have dinner in couple of hours. Would you like to join us in the dining room?”

“That sounds right nice, ma’am.”

“Let’s go see Miss Daisy.”

Billy followed Geneva past the stairway. The house seemed bigger on the inside.

He went into the room. There on a child’s bed he saw his old friend, tiny, scrunched and shriveled, her white-blonde hair thin and dull. She looked at him.

He passed a room where people watched TV with a piano off to the side, and several white-haired ladies sat on a couch. Three old geezers played cards at a table, lookin like waxworks they did, till one of em eyed Billy—the scrape of emptiness passin between em.

“How sick is she?” Billy asked.

“She’s had hospice this morning. She ate some and that’s a good sign.”

“How long she gonna live?”

“Months, maybe weeks.”

“Can ya fix her with chemo?”

“Mr. Billy,” Geneva said, pausing at the doorway, “Miss Daisy refuses to have any more chemo.”

“She got tubes and needles in her?”

“No. We’re keeping her as comfortable as we can. She’s a spirited soul.”

“She always been stubborn. Her sickness got anythin to do with her bein little?”

“Not that I know of. But she’s eighty, that’s a long life.”

“Don’t seem long enough even when you’s ancient like me,” Billy mumbled.

He followed Geneva though a courtyard with hangin ferns the size of bushes and flower beds, all kinds, roses, pansies, other plants and colors he didn’t know the names of, all of em shootin toward the sky.

A fountain splashed down into a small pool. Billy wiped his upper lip with his handkerchief. “My that water looks invitin,” he said.

“We have a pool. Guest are allowed to swim. If you’d like.”

“Oh I don’t look so good in trunks.” Billy chuckled. “Used to,” he added.

“Well, if you change your mind we have bathing suits for our guests.”

“Don’t think so,” he said.

Billy tried to keep up so’s not to look feeble.

Geneva stopped at a door, knocked and inched it open. “Miss Daisy, Mr. Luck is here.” Geneva pushed the door open for Billy to enter.

A sweet sickly smell like hamburger goin bad greeted him as he took a step inside. He’d been so eager to see her but sometimes emotions made him feel lost, runnin blind into nowhere.

Through the cracked door he saw a child’s dresser with pictures on it, a kid’s table and a small chair.

“You okay, Mr. Billy?”

“Oh, I git all sorts of tummy problems.”

He went into the room. There on a child’s bed he saw his old friend, tiny, scrunched and shriveled, her white-blonde hair thin and dull. She looked at him.

Not movin no further, he stood in the middle of the room wonderin what to say, what to do, how to bring cheer to his friend who was dyin.