Omaha, Not Nebraska

Cutting his own toenails had become a very difficult thing for Arnie. For that reason he did not do it very often. Negligence, Arnie considered, saves a man a certain amount of trouble, which was certainly something he could do without at 80-something. By the same token, Arnie tended now to deal in round numbers, for it saved on frustration. He knew he was somewhere around 80, give or take, but he could not confidently remember the year of his birth, let alone the day or month. Therefore he kept quiet about it, and if someone put the question to him directly he would answer “Wouldn’t you like to know?” or “Why, you writing a biography?” It did notmatter to Arnie, and he really could not see why it would matter to anyone else.
The method Arnie had arrived upon for cutting his nails was to sit on the edge of his bed, pull the desk chair up in front of him, lift his leg from behind the knee until his foot was on the edge of the chair, and then grasping each toe in turn with his left hand, use the nail clippers with the right. The nails were yellow and thick, especially on the large toes, and it took serious effort to force them into the narrow mouth of the clippers. They were brittle also and they would snap and fly across the room when finally cut through. By the time Arnie was done his back ached, his abdomen ached, and he would fall back on the bed for a time, breathing hard. Sometimes he would have to laugh. Sometimes he would fall back to sleep.
Thus, Arnie began his day. He wanted to be thorough, for he was going somewhere.
A blonde woman walked into the room. No knock, no ‘excuse me.’ No, she just walked right in.
“Do you need any help?” she said.
“No, I’m done,” Arnie said.
“Done with what?”
The woman came to the bedside and started ruffling around with her hand under the sheets.
“You dry?” she asked.
“Haven’t touched the bottle in years,” Arnie answered.
He was trying to remember the blonde woman’s name. Charlotte? Charleen? Nancy?
The woman pinched his cheek. “You’re so cute,” she said. She slipped a couple fingers
into the front of his diaper and Arnie pushed her hand away. They made him wear these things at night. Arnie had refused at first but they had made such a fuss of it that he had finally acquiesced just so they’d leave him alone.
“My, you’re cranky this morning,” the woman said. Carol. Yes, Carol was her name.
Arnie tugged at the tape on his padded undergarment.
“Well, lets wait till you get to the bathroom, okay?” Carol said. “You need help getting up?”
Arnie met her eyes. She was pretty, he thought, but would be prettier if she wore makeup. Of course, he understood that coming into the room to check on whether he had been incontinent was not a compelling reason for wearing makeup.
“Hm?” she said. She had her hand already under his armpit.
“Don’t need help, but I’ll take it if I must,” he said.
She helped him into the bathroom and then Arnie pushed the door closed behind him, practically on the blonde woman’s foot. There was no lock on the door and so after he sat down on the toilet he put his foot against the bottom edge. He was aware that he was getting a little slow, and it didn’t hurt to have a little help with some things, but he’d be damned if some dumb blonde was going to stand over him while he took a crap and then wipe his ass to boot like they did with some of the other folks in this God forsaken place.
Arnie had heard that expression before, only with more power, more genuine bitterness, more truth. He wondered when he had heard it. He wondered where he had been. It left an impression, something he remembered, like suddenly recollecting a little piece of a disturbing dream.
Arnie sat on the toilet for a long time. Every now and then the blonde woman, or so he assumed, tapped on the door.
You okay? Arnie? Mr. Furth? How long you gonna be in there?
As long as it takes.
Knock, knock, knock.
“Arnie, I have to go help Mrs. Johnson. You stay there, okay? I’ll be back in a minute. Arnie?”
“Yes!” Arnie barked. Then, more quietly, “Yes, okay.”
Arnie grabbed the window sill on his right, the paper dispenser on his left, hoisted himself to his feet. He looked into the toilet and saw that there was nothing there, which he was
glad about, for once again this would save him some effort. He made his way through the small room to the door that opened onto the hallway and he shut the door. Something smelled real bad out there. He figured it was Mrs. Johnson, whoever that might be. He fumbled about to find the lock on the door, but of course there was no lock. No privacy here, no dignity, no trust. Nothing was sacred anymore.
Arnie found that his clothes had been lain on the bed, the gray sweatshirt with the hood and the one front pocket, and the gray sweat pants, a more of less white pair of socks – all laid out on bedcovers like a flat man without a head. Arnie sat down on the edge of the bed. The socks were the hardest part. He would have to do them like he had done with his toenails, using the desk chair. He positioned his toes in the opening of each sock and then pushed with his legs rather than pulled with his arms, for the latter method would very often cause him to fall to one side or the other. Arnie then wiggled his feet into his shoes. Arnie sat for some moments staring at the sweat pants. He had the vague sense that something was wrong.
The door opened and the woman came in again. The blonde one. Apparently, Arnie figured, he had forgotten to lock the door.
“How about a knock next time?” he said. He scowled at the blonde.
“A knock on the head?” she said. Then she started giggling, looking from his white legs to his socks and shoes. “What are you up to here, Mr. Furth,” she said She knelt down and pulled off his shoes, just like that, and then pulled at the legs of his sweat pants, which he was sitting on. “My shift is almost over,” she said. “You’re gonna have Frieda today.”
“Oh?” Arnie said. “Free to everyone, or just to me.”
“Very funny,” she said. “Or at least it was the first couple times you said it.”
“Three’s a charm,” Arnie said.
“Right. Now raise your ass up a bit, honey ... here, hold onto my shoulder.”
She pulled the sweat pants over his hips, tugged and twisted at the waistline.
“I was in the third wave at Omaha Beach,” Arnie said.
God forsaken . . . yes, that was it . . . that bloody, God forsaken sandbox by the sea . . . .
“Hm, I didn’t know Nebraska had any beaches.”
“Not Nebraska,” Arnie said. “France. You know, the war.”
As he was speaking the woman put the sweatshirt over his head. Dutifully Arnie lifted his
arms into the sleeves.
“Christ, don’t you got better things to do?” he said as soon as his head reappeared. “I can put on my own damn clothing, you know?”
The woman placed the palms of her hands on his cheeks. She brought her face close and touched her nose to his.
“Don’t be sour,” she said. She kissed his nose. “Tell me about Omaha Beach,” she said.
That God forsaken pointless sand, that open graveyard by the sea. At first they had tried not to step on the corpses, all wet and pale, like fish that had washed ashore, crawling with sand fleas, but then the sergeant said Go, Go, Go!
“All my life since then I’ve thanked God above for putting me in the third wave,” Arnie said.
“Oh?” The woman was straightening things up here and there. She folded Arnie’s pajamas and returned them to the dresser drawer. She brought his brush over from the top of the
dresser and began to brush his hair. “You mean, like, for the honor?” she said. “Because you got to save the world, you mean like that?”
“No,” Arnie said. “I knew a lot of people in the first two waves. “I heard the stories from some of them. The rest didn’t make it. Lots of those men died in the ocean and washed up to the sand. Like driftwood, you know?”
The woman went on brushing his hair. She brushed with one hand and with the other she straightened up the front of his shirt and the hood in back. Arnie began to feel like a Ken Doll. He felt uncomfortable. He wondered what the woman was up to.
“Guess what,” he said, leaning forward, sitting straight, interrupting her rhythm. “I can
brush my own Goddamn hair too.”
“Fine,” she said, handing him the brush. “Where’d you get such pretty silver hair anyway, cranky old fart like you?”
Arnie held the brush and looked at it. Then he slipped it under his pillow.
“I need to get going,” he said.
“So do I. Big plans for the day, Mr. Furth?”
“I have a friend in the VA.”
“Yes, so you’ve mentioned. But this is Tuesday, Arnie. No shuttle on Tuesday.”
“I know what day it is,” Arnie said. “Here, help me up now. You’ve been yakin’ at me so long I can’t feel my legs anymore.”
Again, the professional crook of the arm under one armpit, the other hand opposite on the torso to steady. Arnie waited for the floor to straighten up under his feet. They need to fix this creaky old place, he thought, shore up the foundation, put a level to it. He could show them how if they’d only listen for a minute.
The woman stepped back and wheeled an aluminum contraption in front of Arnie. She took his hands as if they had been a couple of thick skinned fish and placed them on the rubber-coated handles at the top of the thing.
“Okay, now don’t let me see you in the hallway without this,” she said. “Breakfast is ready, honey, so haul ass out there.”
Arnie wheeled himself out the doorway. He supposed it would do best to use the walker
and make the blonde woman happy. ‘Don’t rock the boat,’ his father had always said. Or was it his mother. No matter, it seemed good advice to follow, mostly. Arnie remembered how the boat, the landing craft, had rocked in the sea and how many had thrown up, himself included. He remembered just wanting to get to solid ground, no matter how many bullets were flying. He remembered the vomit pooling around his boots on the metal floor or the craft.
Arnie turned the corner and wheeled down the hallway, ‘hauling ass,’ as it were, but soon ran into a traffic jam
And there were so many beached and wrecked and blown-up landing craft littering the shore from the first and second waves that they couldn’t get through and they all stepped down into seven or eight feet of ocean water, sinking with their rifles and their cartridge belts and helmets and backpacks straight to the bottom, walking on the ocean floor, holding their breath, bullets zipping here and there through the water like little piranha.
“Come on, Edith,” the blonde woman was saying, “Arnie here is in a hurry behind us. Keep the train movin’, Edith.”
This caused the woman – Edith, apparently – to come to a dead stop in order to half glance over one shoulder, although her neck would not really move that far. She began to pat at her hair.
“Passing on the right,” Arnie said, nudging his walker up behind the blonde.
That made her laugh, but she answered sternly, “Just hold up, man. Move, Edith, move,” she said.
“Yee-Haw,” Arnie said. “Cattle drive.”
Again the woman tried to bend her thick, unbending neck.
“What did he say,” she asked.
“Nothing, nothing,” the blonde said. “Move along, please, Edith.”
“Get along little doggy,” Arnie said. He hummed a little tune from a long time ago – Wagon Train. “I don’t remember the words,” he said.
“What did he say?” Edith asked.
“Jesus,” Arnie said. “Haul ass!”
Finally they made it to the table. The blonde – Nancy, or maybe Connie – busied herself with helping the slow, large woman plop down in her chair and so Arnie took the initiative and chose his own, which, however, ended up belonging to someone else.
“What’s the difference,” he asked, having been asked to move.
The blonde woman stood straight and arched her back. “Ouch,” she said. Edith slumped forward over her plate like a dull hunk of Play Dough. “The difference is that you can’t watch the TV from there, first off; and secondly you’re sitting on Hazel’s doughnut.”
“Oh,” Arnie said. He moved. He felt sorry about Hazel’s doughnut, but then again he thought it a bit improper that breakfast should consist of such a non-nutritious item. He was happy then, as his plate was brought, to find eggs, hashbrowns and Canadian bacon.
“It’s cold in Canada,” he said.
“I’m sure,” Nancy answered. “Hey, the news is on. I’ll be right back with Hazel.”
“Tell her she’s missing the best part,” Arnie called after her. “She won’t know who dunnit or why.”
The blonde did not answer. Edith’s head hung just above her potatoes. She groaned.
Arnie watched the TV. It was hard for him to follow TV anymore. Everyone talked so fast and
the images flashed by so rapidly. Arnie had trouble connecting things. Often he could not tell if they were talking about the past or the present. There seemed to be something about America invading Afghanistan, but he knew that couldn’t be right. Arnie unfolded his napkin and put it in his lap. He began on his potatoes.
“Delicious,” he said to the woman named Edith. “Try it.”
The woman named Edith groaned. “I need help,” she muttered.
“Well, you won’t get none from me,” Arnie said. “I got my own potatoes here. Couldn’t eat another bite.”
Edith managed to lift her head a just a bit. She looked at Arnie from beneath her brow. Her lower lip was hanging beneath her teeth like a loose jockstrap and a bit of drool made its way to her chin.
“Mmm, mouth-watering good,” Arnie said. “Eat, woman, you’re salivating there.”
Edith’s head lowered to its former position. Her chubby hands levitated slowly from the table edge as if she were doing a magician’s trick with them. She looked from one hand to the other.
‘Waste not, want not,’ Arnie’s father had always said, or it may have been his mother. Children were starving in China. Arnie wondered why people in China were always starving. He had a friend who was shipped somewhere over there, to the South Pacific, in early 1945. He died just before the nick of time on one of those islands. Island hopping they called it. They had been blood brothers since age 10. Arnie remembered how they had done it, with a jackknife. They spit on the blade to clean it first, then each made a cut in his index finger. They pressed the fingers together. It was solemn. It was an eternal pact. They were under the front
porch of his friend’s house and it was about dinnertime and Arnie remembered the smell of fried chicken from the kitchen above and the dry earth beneath his feet. It was August.
Another woman came wheeling into the dining room, prodded along by the blonde woman. She was ushered to the chair at the end of the table on Arnie’s left. She smiled at him and nodded.
“Good morning,” Arnie said.
She smiled and nodded.
“Coffee?” the blonde said.
“No. No thanks,” Arnie said. “No time.”
“Why? You got a big date or something?”
“Told you,” Arnie said. “Going to visit my friend in the VA.”
The blonde put a bib on the new woman. She filled a spoon with some kind of gooey stuff from a bowl and popped it into the woman’s mouth.
“And I told you,” she said, “that the bus doesn’t come today.”
“Don’t need a bus,” Arnie said. “My son will pick me up.”
“No, Arnie, he won’t. Why don’t you just finish your breakfast?”
Arnie looked down at his plate. He was no longer hungry. He glanced at Edith. She appeared to have gone to sleep, head hanging over her potatoes. Hazel had her mouth open like a bird. Arnie looked around the room, at the fireplace across from the table, at the pictures on the mantle, pictures of people he did not know. The sun was coming through the tall window in the
front door, casting showers of tiny stars onto the threadbare arms of the old easy chairs. There was an ugly little black dog by the door but Arnie did not think it was real. It did not move at all. Outside the window he could see the leaves of the tall trees swaying and the blue sky in errant winks far beyond the tops of the trees.
“How did I get here?” he asked.
Nobody answered. He looked at the blonde woman. She was busy feeding the bird lady.
“Is there anyone else?” Arnie said.
As if in answer to his question a tall black woman appeared at the sliding glass door at the back of the house. She slid the door open, letting in a warm gust or summer breeze, and entered the room amid the sound and scent of jingling keys and red roses.
“Morning, all,” she said, whooshing past the table and heading to the kitchen, collecting dishes on her way, Arnie’s included.
“Morning, Frieda,” the blonde said. The old woman she was feeding smiled very sweetly and nodded her head. Edith’s eyes rose slowly from intense concentration on her potatoes. She reminded Arnie of a crocodile he had once seen at the San Diego zoo. That was back when his brother was stationed at the Naval base there. He was a radio tower operator.
“Gee, it’s been years since I been to the zoo,” he said.
“Really?” the blonde said. “Well, maybe we can take you one day.”
“Ooo, honey, I can’t do no zoo,” the black woman said from the kitchen. She was running water, rinsing dishes, and she spoke loudly over the clatter she was creating. “It just seems too sad, all those beautiful creatures cooped up in cages, pacing back and forth all day. Looks like they’d just as soon flop down and die.”
“Well anyway they’re well fed,” the blonde said.
“Ooo, and them lions,” the black woman went on, “just lyin’ on their poor old sides in the shade, likely remembering old times in the jungle, you know, or wherever they live – runnin’ and huntin’, matin’ with them lady lions. Mm mm. King of beasts they call em, but look at em now.”
“Well, at least no one is shooting them and sticking their heads up on a wall,” the blonde said. “Come on, Hazel, open,” she added, poking the spoon at the sweet woman’s lips.
“Well, sometimes maybe bein’ shot would be the showin’ of a mercy,” she answered. She was back at the table now, wiping her hands on her apron. “Here, let me take over,” she said.
The two women switched places, exchanged the spoon. The old woman named Hazel opened right up for Frieda.
“Had a dog once,” Frieda said. “Weiner dog. Got ran over by a motorcycle. He came out alive but had to drag his ass around with his front legs for the rest of his life. Now that’s a dog that might have been better off dead, but my daddy wouldn’t have it, no sir.”
“I have a dog too,” Arnie said.
“Do ya, Sweetie? What kind of a dog?”
“Gray. It’s a gray dog,” Arnie said.
“Well where is he?”
This Arnie did not know, but he felt embarrassed, having brought it up, so he said his brother was taking care of it for him, but he’d take the dog back when he got home.
“This another brother?” Frieda asked.
“Another?”
“Well, you know, the only one I knew about died, didn’t he? Cancer, wasn’t it?”
“Oh,” Arnie said. Come to think of it, he remembered that. It was in spring and all the flowers were out and the robins had come out of hiding and there were young birds making a great racket in the leaves of the oak tree that hung above the burial site. Marvin’s wife, Philomena, died just three years later, to the day. Not long after that Arnie’s own wife died, but Arnie had gone on, and on and on. He wondered why.
The blonde woman had left the room for a moment, then she came back wearing a leather coat and jingling, as the black woman had done when she entered the house.
“I need to get going,” Arnie said.
“Have a good day, Frieda,” the blonde said.
She stood behind Edith’s chair and pulled the large woman’s shoulders toward the chair-back. Edith’s head came up slightly. The blonde woman put a fork in Edith’s hand. “Eat,” she said. Then she came around the table and kissed Hazel’s cheek, and then around to the side by the window where Arnie was and she picked up his hand and held it for a moment and she kissed the top of his head.
“Am I going with you?” Arnie said.
She kissed his head again, then ruffled the top of his hair.
“Not today,” she said.
Arnie looked up at her. He wondered why. He wondered why not today. Arnie patted at the legs of his sweat pants.
“I don’t have any pockets,” he said. “Where do I keep my keys?”
Now the black woman was at his other side and she was holding his other hand.
“Come on, Honey,” she said, “let’s go sit in your chair and see what’s on the television.”
“Both of us?”
She laughed.
“Well now, we’d need a bigger chair for that, wouldn’t we?” she said.
Arnie laughed too, but he was wondering where he kept his keys and his matches and his pocket change and his wallet and it worried him. He wondered why they had given him pants without pockets.
The blonde woman was gone. He had not seen her go, but suddenly she was gone. Arnie walked behind the black woman. She was still holding his hand. Her name was Frieda. Arnie said the name once. His legs felt weak, kind of wobbly. He was leaning sideways toward the woman. He couldn’t help himself. She put an arm around his waste, switching his hand to her other hand. She was strong. Arnie could feel her strength. She was large and solid and young and strong.
“I’m sorry,” Arnie said.
She helped him sit down in the chair.
“Maybe there’s one of them courtroom shows on,” she said. “You know, the ones you like to watch.”
She untied his shoes. She took them off and set them side-by-side beneath the coffee table. She placed a quilt on his lap and placed his hands atop the quilt. She turned on the TV
with the remote control and skimmed through the channels until she found what she wanted.
“I have to take care of the ladies,” she said, “and then I’ll come back and sit for awhile.”
Arnie looked at his shoes and then at his feet and then at his hands on top of the quilt. He looked at the black woman’s face, the round cheeks, the thick pink lips, the large brown eyes, the hair pulled tight to her head in fancy braids.
“But when are we going?” Arnie asked. “You and me, we’re going soon, right.”
“Only the good Lord knows,” she said.
And she went to help the others.
Arnie did not watch the television show. He sat in the chair and worried more and more over the whereabouts of his keys and the other things which should have been in the pockets his pants did not have. There was a cigarette lighter that he had bought in Paris a long time ago bearing an engraving of the Eiffel Tower. He did not smoke anymore, and the lighter had long since stopped working, but he always carried it anyway because it felt familiar in his hand and it was like a good luck charm. Sometimes he would show it to people and tell them what Paris was like in 1944 and about the spontaneous parade he had found himself part of and how all the people were lining the streets and running up to soldiers, both men and women, and embracing them and kissing them, and how women in bright flowered dresses rode on the tanks. Arnie wanted his lighter back. He wanted to find out where they had put his things and he wanted some pants with pockets and a belt that he could adjust, and he wanted his neckties and his cufflinks, his wallet and his money, his wingtip shoes and his charcoal blazer. Arnie remembered these things, but they did not think he remembered. He was old but he was not crazy, but they thought he was crazy. So let them think so, Arnie thought. He would keep his mouth off it and play along with their game, but he would damn well find his stuff.
Arnie pushed himself to his feet, using the chair arms. His legs felt better now. There were things he had to do. He had done this before, he would do it again.
Because it was no harder here than it had been that time in the snow when he could not feel his fingers or his feet, when they could not light their heaters because of the smoke and when they were told not to move or even to breathe because of the clouds their breath would make. His life had depended on playing dead. Branches above were splintering, ice and wood thumping to the snow covered forest floor, and one small fir tree altogether split in half because of the relentless pelting of the bullets and shrapnel, and when they said move, when they finally said move, Arnie knew deep down, with all his mind, that he could not move, because of his feet, because of his legs, because of the overwhelming dread that held his heart in a vice, but he did move, yes he did, and he ran without feeling a thing, eyes fixed on the future.
Arnie shuffled toward the hallway.
“Mr. Arnold, where you off to?”
Arnie motioned toward the hallway and kept going.
“Don’t you think you should wait for help? I’ll be done in a minute here . . .”
“No, I’m fine,” Arnie said. “You go about your business, I’ll go about mine.”
“Hm. Well. Are you sure?”
“Sure as shootin’,” Arnie said, and he even chuckled.
He continued down the hallway. After he was out of the woman’s sight he put his hand to
the wall to steady himself. It was easier that way. He could move more quickly now. Arnie reached a doorway and entered a room. He could not find a number on the door or above the door. There were no arrows, no signs, and there was no one around to answer questions. It was a small room with one dresser and one bed and there was a man in the bed all hooked up to tubes and a machine that made a slow, monotonous sound.
Whish–Whoosh, Whish-Whoosh.
Before his wife died she did not even see him. There was only that sound. She was not really even there.
“This used to be my room,” Arnie said to the man in the bed. He shuffled to the bedside and sat himself down on the covers. He looked at the man’s face. His eyes were open but turned to one side. His mouth was open. His lips were chapped. His gray hair had a yellowish tinge, as did the skin of his face and arms. There was flower on the bed stand in a vase with water and Arnie dipped his fingers into the water and touched them lightly to the man’s dry lips.
“Roses. I love the smell of roses,” he said. He looked around the room again. “I guess they must have moved my stuff out,” he said.
How did that happen? When? Where am I? Where are my hat and coat? I wonder if anyone will help me . . . .
Arnie touched the still man’s hand.
“Is there anything you need?” he said. “Have you had many visitors? How is Marjie these days? Has she been here.”
The man was not speaking, but Arnie understood. He had been very badly injured, a long time ago. It wasn’t his fault. He had done his duty. He had been this way for much of his life, only not this bad, and Arnie had always felt very sad about it, almost as if he had been his fault.. He wondered why certain things happened to some people and not to others, but then he realized that everyone had his own cross to bear. His wife used to say that God had counted every hair on every head Just now Arnie wondered what that meant. He wondered if he had ever known. It occurred to him that women, that wives, have a way of making a man feel that he knows something. Arnie wondered if he could find a way to see her and then he remembered again. He remembered what it had been like to be alone in his house, trying to keep himself busy, trying to make some kind of life return to all that had known her hands, her fingers, her voice, her breath, the heart that had enlivened wood and metal and stone and glass.
“Well, Bob, we had a time of it, didn’t we,” he said, patting the silent man’s hand. “Remember those days? Remember what they used to call us? Hope and Crosby. Always together. I with my pipe and you with your bad jokes. I remember those things, Bob. I swear, I remember them better than I remember what happened two minutes ago. What the hell happened to us, Bob?”
Whish-Whoosh.
“Why, Mr. Arnold, sir, what you doin’ in Mr. Clifford’s room?”
Here was the black woman again, filling the doorway, hand on hip.
“Frankly, I would put the same question to you,” Arnie answered, surprised to see her, as she had so recently been in the other house.
“Honey, Mr. Clifford don’t even know you’re here. Mr. Clifford is in a coma. I done tole you that how many times?”
“Well, someone ought to do something for him,” Arnie said.
The black woman swished over to the bed. She pulled the sheets up over Mr. Clifford’s shoulders.
“Let me show you where your room is, “ she said. I think it’s nap time for Mr. Arnold.”
She reached for Arnie’s hand but Arnie pulled it away. He felt offended by how callous people could be in the face of human suffering. He knew that his old friend Bob deserved better.
“Well then, can you find your own room?” the woman said.
“Yes, I can find my own damn room,” Arnie said. “What, you figure old people are stupid just because they’re old?”
Arnie pushed himself to his feet. He swayed forward some but caught himself on the bedside table.
“No one said you was stupid,” she said quietly. “Maybe a bit cranky, but not stupid.
Arnie made his way to the door. The woman had his elbow but he did not argue. He needed a little help, just a little, and he wasn’t afraid to admit that much. Arnie reached the hallway and he made a left turn. He hoped that was the correct thing to do. He could see that there were two or three doorways down the hallway ahead. One of them would be his. One would open to where he was supposed to be. Arnie hoped that he could find the right one. It was a matter of pride. It was a matter of proving that he was still a man. He knew what he was doing. He had to know. After eighty-some years, he had to at least know how to find his own room. He felt very tired now and needed to rest, and then later he could get things done, get things in order, find his keys, find his car and visit his friend in the VA at last.