The Shore by Sara Taylor

the desk as they go by. The family has been in and out since Grandpa was admitted. Mama and Daddy come when work lets them, and bring Lilly, because the tubes and machines scare her and she won’t come with anyone but Mama. The cousins come in shifts and batches, solemn and respectful, and Grandpa likes seeing them though they don’t know quite how to talk to him, since they didn’t grow up around him. Pierce tries not to come, but his girlfriend Becky does, because Grandpa likes holding her baby and he’s one of the few people in the family that doesn’t scare her silent. Sally and Mitch drop by almost every afternoon; they’ve been in and out so many times and the staff seems so apathetic that they doubt anyone would stop them if they walked in buck naked and had a picnic in the lobby.
    Their grandfather is awake when they come in, sitting up in the hard railed bed, pale blue blanket tucked up to his armpits, sketching glacially on a thick pad of paper propped against his knees, the hose bringing oxygen to his nose buried under his thick white mustache. Sally avoids touching the IV tube as she wraps her arms around his shoulders and kisses his hard cheekbone: he’s shriveled since they brought him here, the rubbery Jell-O, tough meat, watery salads failing to stick to the bones that seem ready to poke through his papery skin. The sound of daytime TV from the other side of the privacy curtain cannot completely drown out the whirs and beeps from the heart monitor. He pats her arm and puts his pencil down; the sketch is of a very confused-looking rooster, mobbed by a clutch of chicks.
    “Think your mother will like it?” he asks.
    “Grandpa, I’ve never looked at a wall and thought, ‘Thatwall needs more rooster.’ It’s a good drawing, though.” It is, nearly photorealistic despite his feathery, rough style.
    “Your mama has.” His voice is slow. “She thinks everything needs more rooster. Sometimes I wonder if the fairies didn’t leave her.” Their mother is the oldest of his three daughters, and they suspect his favorite, for all that he doesn’t quite understand her.
    He hands the pad to Sally, and she puts it down on his bedside table, next to a plastic pitcher of ice water, a dozen or so cheap “Get well” cards, and the tin of Werther’s in powdered sugar that has always sat on the dashboard of his red truck. He’s not happy about the cards, says it’s silly to send pictures of teddy bears saying, “Get well soon!” when they should say, “Hope you have a pleasant death!” but the nurses refuse to throw them away.
    “Hasn’t rained since May,” Mitch says. Someone broaches the topic every visit, but not usually this early. He’s pulled the chrome-and-plastic visitor’s chair out of the corner behind the door and turned it back to front so he can straddle it like a horse.
    “And what do you expect me to do about that?” Grandpa whips back. Sally has settled on the edge of his bed, and is shuffling a pack of cards on her leg. Mitch doesn’t answer right away.
    “Mama’s garden is still putting out zucchini too fast for us to eat,” she offers.
    “That is the nature of zucchini,” Grandpa says, and accepts the cards that Sally hands him.
    “Tomatoes and eggplant too,” Mitch adds.
    “Your mama doesn’t know what she’s capable of.”
    “Are you sure you can’t teach Pierce?” Sally asks. “It’s not like he has any other place to go.”
    “Your brother doesn’t know his behind from his own head,” Grandpa snaps.
    Sally hands Mitch his cards, and gives him a pointed look. This is the general opinion of Pierce, though as far as they can gather Grandpa was the first to hold it. Their older brother teased them, broke their toys, egged them on for years to fight each other or do stupid things like lick frozen metal or touch the electric fence, but he is still their older brother. When he turned eighteen he wandered off with Dad’s old white Chevy and the wad of