Michael Palmer - Oath of Office

“Can’t wait to get home,” he said.

When they arrived at Millie’s, the lunch rush was over, leaving plenty of available parking spaces. The restaurateur was waiting for them just inside the entrance, and burst out the front door before Lou shut off his engine. She was carrying a cardboard box of food. Lou helped undo Joey’s seat belt, then reached across his lap to open the passenger door. Joey set his bag on the floor before getting out.

“Hi, there, buddy,” Millie said.

“Hi, Ma.”

Millie set the box on the ground and gave Joey a quick peck on the cheek. Lou popped the trunk and set the food inside.

“I just put some snack stuff together for you. You can come over to the restaurant for your meals if you’re up to it.”

“Oh, I’m up to it.”

“The report is good. His surgeon thinks we’re looking at maybe seventy-five percent functional recovery. Maybe more.”

“Joey, you sure you don’t want to stay with me?”

“No, Ma. You know how happy I am to be in my own place. All I thought about in the hospital was how much I just wanted to get home. I have some pain medicine that I don’t even think I’ll need, but if I do, I can take one or two every four hours, and some infection medicine I need to take twice a day.”

“He needs to go back in three days,” Lou said. “I think I can adjust my schedule to come out and-”

“Nonsense. I have people who will drive us. You’ve been just wonderful, Lou.”

“He’s going to help me get settled in at my place,” Joey said, perhaps a bit too quickly. “I’ll be at the restaurant for dinner.”

“Very well, dear,” Millie said. “You know how I respect your privacy. That’s your home not mine.”

Millie thanked Lou again, wrapped him in her arms, and stood on her tiptoes to kiss his cheek.

The Dorms, ten or twelve units, white vinyl siding, black shutters, was nothing special. In fact, despite well-trimmed hedges and several small flower gardens, it reminded Lou of the sort of motel that might have rates by the day, half day, or hour. Unfortunately, it also reminded him of places he once took refuge in when he was in no shape to go home.

Never again, he thought, violating AA’s most essential day-at-a-time maxim. Never ever again.

The print curtains looked fairly new, and there were brass numbers nailed to the front of each red painted door. Joey lived in unit number six.

Carrying his package inside his sling, Joey fished his key ring out of his pocket and unlocked his door. Lou followed with the cook’s small duffel bag and then the carton of food.

Cozy, he thought. Cozy and surprisingly neat, but small.

There was a kitchenette and an adjacent dining area with a table for two that Lou guessed most often sat one. The sitting area featured a brown tweed sofa, modest flat-screen television mounted to the wall, and a couple of area rugs that covered part of a parquet floor.

“Where do you sleep?” Lou asked, noting that what was probably the door to a bedroom was closed.

Joey pointed to the couch. “It folds out into a bed,” he said. “It’s more comfortable than you’d think.”

“Oh, trust me,” Lou said. “I know all about foldout couches. What about your pet? Where do you keep it?”

“Them, not it. They’re in the bedroom,” he said. He nodded toward the closed door. Again, there was playfulness in his expression.

“So what’s in the bag?” Lou asked.

Joey pulled out what looked like a Chinese food leftover container and clumsily opened the top a bit.

Scampering about on the bottom were two small brown mice.

Ah, pet mice, Lou thought. Harmless enough.

Still, he understood why the young cook was reluctant to have Millie know about his hobby.

“Ready to see something cool?” Joey asked conspiratorially.

“Ready,” Lou said.

“You got to promise not to tell,” Joey said.

“Scout’s honor.”

Joey turned the knob and nudged the door open with his foot. A strange, musty odor immediately wafted out. The first thing Lou saw were two workbenches, with tools spread across the top. There was a small, empty wire cage at one end with a mouse wheel in it. But the main attraction was in the center of the room-a huge Lucite cube, six feet on each side, raised off the floor a foot or so on a heavy wooden platform. Fixed to the top of the cube and plugged into a wall socket by a long cord was what appeared to be a ventilation apparatus. There was also an inch-in-diameter Lucite tube, bent upward at a ninety-degree angle and sealed at the outer end with a rubber stopper and inside by what appeared to be a levered trapdoor.

Warming lights were clipped to two of the four sides, illuminating a tall, irregular mound arising from the floor at the center of the cube, and looking somewhat like the spired castle of a Disney princess. In one corner of the floor was a dish of water. In another was a mound of what looked like a mix of wood pieces and sawdust.

A complex mouse habitat, Lou thought. Just the sort of thing the eccentric kid of a hundred knots would build.

Then he stopped and caught his breath. The surface of the castle was moving.

“Get it?” Joey asked proudly. “The mice aren’t my pets. They’re the food for my pets.”

“Pet what?” Lou asked, his voice breaking between the words.

He remained fixed to where he was standing, unable to advance as he struggled to sort out what he was seeing.

“Termites,” Joey said simply. “Beautiful, aren’t they?”

“Termites?”

Lou could see them now-a sheet of constant motion coating virtually the entire castle. He managed a couple of baby steps toward them.

Termites -huge termites, some of them half an inch long or more.

“Joey, I’m not any kind of a bug expert, but I do know that termites eat wood, not mice.”

Lou tried with minimal success to tie the bizarre scene to the events surrounding Joey’s nearly amputated thumb, and the other strange behaviors he’d observed since coming to Kings Ridge.

“You watch and then tell me what these guys can and cannot eat,” Joey said.

He removed his arm from the sling and used it to hold the animal container while he removed one of the mice by its tail and set it in a mason jar with a cotton ball on the bottom. The other mouse he placed in the wire cage.

“I have to knock this fellow out first,” Joey said. “The termites won’t eat them if they’re dead, and I don’t want them to feel any pain.”

Lou watched, transfixed, as Joey poured a bit of liquid onto the cotton ball.

Chloroform.

In seconds, the mouse was on its side.

Joey used a long forceps to pick up the limp animal. Then he removed the rubber stopper from the Lucite access tube, set the mouse inside, and nudged it onto the small trapdoor with a thin stick, all the while, softly whistling the theme from The Andy Griffith Show.

Then, after giving Lou a final look at the ingenious setup, the cook pushed down the lever opening the trapdoor.

Instantly, the lower third of the princess’s castle flowed like lava onto the inert mouse, covering every millimeter of it. There was a loud clicking noise that reminded Lou of rain pelting against a tin roof.

More insects-huge heads with black pinchers and yellow bodies-poured or flew around it. The clicking sounds intensified as the swarm became more frenzied. The animal corpse, for surely it was already that, was now encased in a ball of clamoring insects at least three inches around, each trying to burrow down onto the meal. Then, just as quickly as the termites advanced, they began to retreat back to and into the mound. The clicking decreased in volume until it could no longer be heard.