Recessional: A Novel by James A. Michener Read Free Book Online

the weirdest feature of all, a huge crisscross tangle of weather-beaten dead fronds, gray-brown in color, like a half-oval in shape, wide at the top, narrow at the bottom, as if the tree were wearing an immense bustle built upon brown interwoven wires.
    The damnedest trees I ever saw! Zorn thought as he stopped his rig to inspect them. Look at them! Naked up to the belly-button, then that huge bustle, then the necklace of black pearls, and that preposterous hairdo on top! He looked down the roadway and saw that more than a dozen other towering palms, each a duplication of the first with their crowns high in the air, marched in order, leading the way to the retirement complex in which he would be working.
    “Well,” he said with a shake of his head, “with that handsome parade the place is entitled to call itself the Palms.”
    A flash of red off to the left attracted his eye, and when he turned away from the palms to inspect it he saw that it was a row of strange tropical bushes that also lined the road, each about eight to ten feet tall, extremely wide and covered with copious dark green leaves decorated with generous clusters of bright red berries. What handsome bushes! Never heard of them either, he thought.
    As he approached the end of the roadway he was greeted by an imposing structure built of reddish stone, a giant gateway consisting of two turreted towers from which extended a wall made of the same stone. The wall was seven feet high and appeared to encircle a substantial area of manicured lawn, in the center of which stood the single, many-cornered building of the retirement center. With that gateway and those walls it’s really a medieval fortress, Zorn thought. A man could find himself at ease in a retirement place like this. Then he found that he had overlooked a significant feature that tied the place to its home office in Chicago: into the face of the right tower had been inserted a rather small brass plate containing in cast letters almost as small as those on the wall outside Mr. Taggart’s office two austere words: THE PALMS .
    Staring at the modest sign, Zorn said to himself: The chief doesn’t go in for conspicuous display, but then he reflected: Wait! If you consider the whole setup—trees, gate, wall—it adds up to one clear message: class—this place has class. My job will be to keep it that way, but to make it profitable.
    Once through the gate he entered an oval driveway that curved first to the right, then under a porte cochere leading to the main entrance, then on to the left where another porte cochere gave entrance to the health care area, and around to the exit through the gate. The area inside the oval was meticulously landscaped, with a cluster of varicolored croton bushes near the entrance to the main building. But the effect of elegance was somewhat marred by large macadamized parking lots covering almost every other inch of available space and packed with cars, many of expensive European make.
    As he tried to back his bulky tandem in what he took to be a free area for visitors, an elderly woman of erect posture and blue-white hair, neatly coiffed, exploded from the main entrance, waving her cane and shouting in a voice unexpectedly rough and bold: “Wait! Wait! That’s my parking space, young man. Get your contraption out of there!”
    Startled by the fury of her attack, Zorn became confused. Instead of maneuvering his car forward and out of the restricted parking area, he continued backward, which made the infuriated woman think he was ignoring her protest. She started beating on his left front fender with her cane, shouting louder and louder: “Get out of there! Right now! Get your pile of junk out of my parking space!”
    Though still disoriented by her attack, Zorn now shifted to goforward but stepped on the gas so firmly that the tandem leaped forward as if he were trying to run the woman down. She screamed: “He’s trying to kill me!” and stepped back but continued to