Shrooms

Four rubber wheels bumped along on the rough pavement as the scooter rolled down the thoroughfare. Irritated drivers swerved around her and cursed when they had to wait for an oncoming car before they could pass.

Olivia didn't care. She was on a mission.

Juanita hadn't been to visit for two weeks, and Olivia was out of buttons.

She was still a few miles short of her destination when she heard the crunch of tires on gravel behind her. At the 'whoop -whoop' of the squad car, she raised her right arm and saluted with her middle finger.

Leona lifted her walker and turned to her right. She repeated the movement three more times, completing a 360 degree search. Wooded paths led off in each direction. "There was a time when I could just turn my head to look," she thought. She sighed. No doubt about it, she was lost.

Trying to lean over the counter, Penny pushed the plate of cookies towards Dom. She had chosen the low-cut blouse with care, but the counter was high and Penny was short. She realized her effort was having less than the desired effect when Dom's eyes stayed on the cookies.

Dom moved three cookies from the plate to his desk and was reaching for more as he said, "I know what you are trying to do, Miss Penny, and the answer is no. The pharmacy is closed." He managed to grab two more before Penny snatched the plate away.

"No poppers, no cookies." She waited a moment to see if Dom would relent, but he seemed content with the pile that he had. She turned and flounced angrily back to her room.

Beverly was worried. She hadn't seen Olivia all morning and Leona should have been back from her walk by now. As she turned to the door to look for them, her phone rang. It was Olivia calling from jail.

Penny was the only one of them who still drove. Bev sent her off to collect Olivia and borrowed the golf cart from maintenance to look for Leona. She found her standing at the intersection in the woods.

"Jump in, dear."

Leona eased herself onto the bench seat and folded her walker in front of her. "I thought I would remember the turn."

"No worries, Lee. But for future walks, just remember Left Out and Right Back."

"But they are all left, when you get turned around."

Bev took the path to the left and shortly after, parked in front of the community gardens. She helped Leona out of the golf cart and followed her to the maintenance shed at the back of the plot. Leona pointed and Bev rolled back a loose section of fence. Both ladies walked around the shed to a raised platform in the back.

"Roy built this for my mushrooms. He put the fence up to keep the other biddies out." Roy was the maintenance man. Leona harvested what she needed and, after putting the fence back to normal, they returned to the main building.

That evening, Bev greeted her friends and locked the door to the conference room behind her. "Are you sure Ms Chapman won't be coming in this weekend," Penny asked. Ms Chapman was the director of the Brightmoor Independent Living facility. It was her conference room.

"She told me she was flying to Houston to meet her first grandbaby,"

Bev popped the first cassette tape in the boom box and cranked up the volume as Leona poured each of them a tall glass of her special tea.

The Grateful Dead's "Bertha" filled the room as the four friends prepared to celebrate their fifty-first anniversary of the Watkins Glen Summer Jam.

Mushroom photograph by Tom Walborn