LITMIR.BIZ

      “Frank, you need to put down the knife,” Karen said in a firm, unruffled tone.

      Everyone else around her was going berserk, but she tried to remain calm and keep eye contact with the 73-year-old Alzheimer’s patient. The unshaven man had greasy, long gray hair and a ruddy complexion. His T-shirt was inside out, with food stains down the front. The pale green pajama bottoms were filthy, too. In his shaky hand he held a butcher’s knife. He looked more terrified than anyone else in the nursing home cafeteria. Just moments ago, he’d accidentally knocked over a stack of dirty trays from the bus table. He’d bumped into the table, backing away from an overly aggressive kitchen worker.

      “Drop the goddamn knife,” growled the short, thirty-something man. He wore a T-shirt and chinos under his apron. Tattoos covered his skinny arms. He kept inching toward the desperately confused patient. “C’mon, drop it! I don’t have all day here!” He kicked a chair and it toppled across the floor, just missing the old man. “You hear me, Pops? Drop it!”

      “Get away from him!” Karen barked. “For God’s sake, can’t you see he’s scared?”

      Two orderlies hovered behind her, along with a few elderly residents wanting to see what all the fuss was about. The rest home’s manager, a handsome, white-haired woman in her sixties named Roseann, had managed to herd everyone else out of the cafeteria. She stood at Karen’s side. “Did you hear her, Earl?” Roseann yelled at the kitchen worker. “Let Karen handle this. She knows what she’s doing!”

      But Earl wasn’t listening. He closed in on the man, looking ready to pounce. “You shouldn’t steal knives out of my kitchen, Pops….”

      “No—no…get!” the Alzheimer’s patient cried, waving the knife at him.

      Wincing, Karen watched the frightened old man shrink back toward the pile of trays. He was barefoot, and there were shards of broken glass on the floor.

      Roseann gasped. “Earl, don’t—”

      He lunged at the man, who reeled back. But the knife grazed Earl’s tattooed arm. A few of the residents behind Karen gasped.

      The little man let out a howl, and recoiled. “Son of a bitch!”

      One of the orderlies rushed to his aid. Grumbling obscenities, Earl held on to his arm, as the blood oozed between his fingers.

      “No…get!” the old man repeated.

      “It’s okay!” the orderly called, checking Earl’s wound, and pulling him toward the cafeteria exit. “Doesn’t look too deep….”

      “Fuck you ‘it’s okay’,” he shot back. “I’m bleeding here.”

      Shushing him, the orderly quickly led Earl out the door.

      Karen was still looking into the old man’s eyes. “That was an accident, Frank,” she said steadily. “We all saw it. No one’s mad at you. But you should put down the knife, okay?”

      Wide-eyed, he kept shaking his head at her. He took another step back toward the glass on the floor.

      “Frank, how do you think the Cubs are going to do this season?” Karen suddenly asked.

      She remembered how during her last visit with him, he’d chatted nonstop about the Chicago Cubs. But he’d talked as if it were 1968, back when he’d been a hotshot, 33-year-old attorney in Arlington Heights, Illinois with a beautiful wife, Elaine, and two children, Frank Junior and Sheila. The old man in the stained T-shirt and pajama bottoms used to dress in Brooks Brothers suits. The family moved to Seattle in 1971, where they added a third child to the brood, a baby girl. Frank started his own law firm, and did quite well in Mariner town. But he’d always remained a Cubs fan.

      Though she knew it was typical of Alzheimer’s patients, Karen still thought it was kind of funny that Frank often couldn’t remember the name of his dead wife or the names of his three children and seven grandchildren.

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