SUNDOWNERS SYNDROME

1 1 4 R S U N D O W N E R S S Y N D R O M E D A V I D B O T T O M S The last night my mother spent in Kennestone Hospital my cell rang at four, her voice raw and pleading – the nurses were trying to kill her, I needed to phone the police. Around that voice my bedroom tilted. Nurses were wheeling everyone into the basement. Thus all those hysterical gurneys clacking down the hall. Nothing would convince her otherwise – watch the elevators, listen to the screams. No one damned to the basement ever comes back. Last evening, fifty geese circled chaotically above our backyard pines, then vaguely fell into a V to break up and flag again. Something had gone haywire, shorted-out in the nervous circuitry of the world – dozens of Canada geese reeling over the suburb, tumbling, wheeling, ragging-out in a babel of figure-eights. A full two minutes before the planet leveled and sharp black lines arrowed south over pine tops not quite dark. ...