A Prayer for the Dying (12 page)

“There’s a fire coming,” you call across the gap.

“Eh?”

“I said, there’s a fire coming.”

“I can’t hear so good,” he says, and pats his ears. “Took sick this winter.”

You walk out on the dam, feeling it gently give under your boots. He climbs his side easily, in wide strides, making you aware of how town you are. Even before you lean across the spillway, you can smell the stink of infection. His fingernails are so long they’re curled like ram’s horns. He turns his ear to hear you. And still, inches apart, you’re separated, part of the world and not.

“There’s a fire coming. Big one. Killed a bunch of Winnebagos up north.”

He nods to let you know he heard you, but doesn’t say anything.

“You gonna be all right out here?”

He nods. “I got the lake.”

“You’ll jump in when it comes. Think of yourself. Don’t go running around after those ducks.”

Nods again. He looks off at the water, lost.

“All right,” you say. “Just thought you ought to know.”

“Right obliged,” he says, and turns and tromps away over the dam like it’s a sidewalk, his long hair swinging, and you realize what you can give him, how you can help.

“Hold on there,” you call, and when he turns to see what you want, you already have the knife out, its pretty finish catching the sun.

He climbs the dam to you, looks but doesn’t take it. “Already got one.”

“Always use another.”

“That’s true,” he says, and takes it, weighs it in his hand. “That is true.”

*   *   *

There’s no one out west of town, the bogs shimmering in the heat. The Endeavor road’s empty all the way to the line, and as you roll past the houses, you remember what Doc said about the swamping camp and wonder about the people inside, behind the windows and old horsehair screens. Millie and Elsa’s yard is burnt brown, the roses withered, the fence still busted up. The roadway’s baked, and driving the sign in raises a sweat. There’s no fire line out here, and everything’s brittle as tinder.

Do the railroad in the stink of creosote. No time to climb up Cobb’s tunnel, though you suspect you’d find a nice breeze on top. Get it done, get going.

Marta’s asleep when you check on her, in bed, her shift and stockings hung over the commode. She breathes so shallowly, a long pause in between, and you wonder if Doc could help any. Probably not. It’s not his fault. Chase can’t save them either, nurses, mansion, fancy city medicine and all. The only cure is to wait, have faith, hold to what’s your own. When isn’t that so?

You look at her face and see Amelia’s, the sudden upturn at the corner of her lips, the smile she wears when she’s not even trying, and then you’re on your knees again, asking Him to be merciful this time, to care for those who are His. It’s selfish, this beseeching, but there’s nothing without her, you’ve already lost Amelia, a man can only bear so much. Abraham and Isaac. Lot. Job. These are all lessons you’ve preached, yet when it comes time to walk in their shoes you run from it.

“Who wouldn’t?” you ask, and before standing up, you kneel there a moment in the whiskey-colored light, motes rising up between you and the window giving on the backyard, and find you can’t answer that question. A month ago you would have said—with no hesitation—any good Christian, but now you pull yourself up, careful not to wake Marta, grab your hat and head out the door, completely silent.

Austin’s dog is a mess—black with flies and mushy in the guts. It breaks in two when you lift it with a shovel. You’re used to the stink, but something about it makes you angry, and after you shovel dust over the hole, you bang the blade against a tree, tearing off a chunk of bark, and, suddenly stricken, you bend and find the missing piece and try to fit it back on. It doesn’t stick, and savagely you kick the trunk. Pick up the shovel and head back toward the churchyard. It’s hot. Maybe you’re crazed like Marta was last night, maybe that’s it.

“Crazy Jacob the Undertaker,” you say.

But when you reach the churchyard you shut up. Don’t want to be seen muttering among the tombstones, no. Then you realize the boys who make fun of you aren’t around now.

Look around town. Fenton’s never opened. The livery’s shut up, and Ritter’s. You and Doc are the only ones. Even the mill’s off digging ditches.

Cyril breaks you out of the spell, ringing six. Suppertime. No wonder everyone’s gone. You’re the only one not home.

And why not?

You decide to look in on Doc, see how things are with him, but there’s a sign in his window:
VISITING
.

Walk along the picket fences, smell the chicken fricassee, the boiled corn, the steaming crusts of pies. You expect to meet someone straggling back from the fire line, or a family moving through with their furniture piled high in the back of a wagon, but there’s nothing. Crickets. The rustle of a jay lifting out of a rose bush. Under the oaks, the air goes cool, and you see Mrs. Bagwell lift her shade and take you in, then let it drop again. Another day you’d wave, but you walk along as if you haven’t seen her.

Your door’s locked. Inside, it’s silent, and you don’t call for Marta. She’s still in bed, and while you’re standing there, she coughs, hard, her body jerking under the covers. Her bangs are plastered to her forehead. Bend and press the back of your hand to her skin. Burning. Fever sleep. You want to wake her up and ask her what you’re supposed to do.

What did she do with Amelia?

Waited. Attended her.

Yes, but that didn’t work.

You want to run back to town and ask Doc, but he’s not there, he’s out helping someone else.

For a minute you stand there, stuck, unsure, then go into the kitchen and paw through the larder. A half rasher of bacon, some potatoes. You dig a few splits of stovewood from the bin and get them going, lay the bacon in a skillet. When the fat turns gray you flip it and start chopping the potatoes. Take your jacket off, it’s too hot. Get the whole mess cooking, the grease washing over everything. Not elegant, but it’s all the army taught you.

“Not all,” you say, seeing the dark of those nights.

You look in on her before sitting down to the table. Still asleep, breathing.

You say grace with your hands clasped above your plate.

It’s awful, sodden with grease, and after a few bites you quit. Eat the bacon with your fingers, remembering the bloody strips of flesh, the cries in the night.

Drop it on the plate. Dump the plate in the scrap bucket. There’s whiskey in the cupboard; the root cellar’s full of hard cider and ginger beer.

You walk through the rooms of the house. The empty crib sends you to the backyard. The crab apple bows. The sun’s going down and it’s all in shadow, and you kneel there like a man checking on his garden, inspecting the leaves for chinch bugs. The dirt in the corner is dried and cracked, an ant struggling across it, carrying another ant bent double. Glance over the fences on both sides; there’s no one. You press your hand to the cool earth as if spreading it on her chest, close your eyes.

What do you see when you remember her? Marta bathing her in the tub, a hand cupping her head. Playing on the floor, holding her above you and watching her tiny feet kick. Her one tooth.

She never said a word.

Open your eyes and it seems darker, dusk settling above the oaks. Bats flap, or are those swallows?

Stand up and go inside, light the lamp. Think of whiskey, then dismiss it. You’ve seen enough drunken fools make a mess of the cell, then wake the next day cradling their heads.

You go in to Marta, go get the rocker from the nursery and sit there in the dark, listening. Close your eyes. Notice how it’s never totally quiet, how the very air seems to have a sound. Or is that you? When she wakes up, you think, she’ll be hungry.

Not with a fever.

“When the fever breaks,” you say.

It didn’t break with Amelia. Why should it break with her?

Because she’s older, grown.

So was Lydia Flynn.

You don’t know why. It will. Have faith.

Those nights in Kentucky, you promised Him everything. Just get me through this and the rest of my life is Yours. You could hear the Rebs calling across the water, taunting, and the little Norwegian beside you coughing. He’d been weak since the beginning, riddled with consumption, and you kept him alive, fed him that horse piece by filthy piece till you stripped it to the hooves. And still the shells tore over, sent rocks and clods of mud from the cliffs thumping down around you. You scratched the days into the dirt like a prisoner till you snapped your knife trying to pry the meat out of a knee joint like an oyster. You remember the captain calling roll in the dark, and the scattered responses, less every night. And then he stopped calling. The water ran by, high from the rains. The Reb fires popped on the far shore. Laughter, a fiddle scratching.

A mouse scuttles in the kitchen, and you open your eyes. Darkness. Marta. How long have you been sitting here?

Check your watch. She’s still asleep—probably best for her. Tomorrow you’ve got a lot to do. Go into the sitting room and blow out the lamp.

Get in beside her. She’s hot from being under the feather tick all day. Kiss her cheek and lie back and read the ceiling. Wonder how the fire line’s going, if it’s reached the canal. Old Meyer out there on the Shawano road, alone.

You know you won’t sleep.

Why don’t you pray?

You already have.

Who would have thought you’d turn bitter? Of all people.

And so you roll over and whisper another prayer into your pillow. Not because you’re too proud to admit you’re wrong. Not because you’re afraid. Because you can’t change who you are.

*   *   *

Cyril rings eight people the next day. The fire moves to the west. Marta sleeps in her fever. You touch a wet cloth to her lips, lay it on her forehead. She doesn’t stir, only a delicate pulse at her neck, the blue lump of a vein. A hard crab apple has fallen on Amelia’s grave. You gouge it with a fingernail, then pitch it into the bushes. Make beans and bacon for yourself, have a ginger beer. When you check on Marta, you purposely don’t look too close. Why? Won’t your faith save you?

The next morning you go to see how Old Meyer’s holding out and find everyone dead—or Old Meyer and Marcus. Shotgun, looks like. Meyer’s inside, half his head gone, his pipe still neatly balanced on the table. You search the house and then the outbuildings, finally come on Marcus in the barn, in the sleigh, the tarpaulin thrown back, stippled with holes. Probably trying to hide. The others are down by the hives, the crosses neatly done, and you take a good portion of the morning to lay their father and brother beside them. Mark them too, bless them.

Doc says he doesn’t see another way out of it, you’ll have to burn the house down.

“I figured,” you say, so he knows the decision’s not just his. He’s the first person you’ve talked to today, and it’s a relief.

“How’s Amelia?” he asks, and you answer him with a lie.

“I’m glad,” he says, and you’re glad he doesn’t ask about Marta. “I think we got the road closed just in time.”

You mention the fire turning back west and he rubs his mustache with a thumb—first one wing, then the other.

“How long’s the quarantine going to be?” you ask, like everyone else.

“Two weeks to do any good.”

“Two weeks.”

“One week at the least. It takes five days to incubate. Less in children. If we enforce quarantine house by house, a week might do it, but that means nobody goes outside.”

You bring up the fire line, the shift from the mill. There’s no place they can all bunk together. And they have family, most of them. No, he’s got to come up with something better.

“Here,” Doc says. “If the fire comes, it comes. Nothing I can do about it.”

“I’m not arguing with you.”

“I’m doing the best I can,” he says, “but there are just too many of them. And even if it was just one or two, there’s not much I can do for them. Do you understand me?”

“I understand,” you say, and think of the valise in the front hall closet. “We’re in the same boat here.”

“I know you know, Jacob,” he says, and yawns hard, rubs his face with both hands so it goes red. “It’s just hard to watch it happen.”

He’s right, and you agree, but on the Shawano road, in the killing heat, you get to thinking about Irma waiting for him and it’s different.

When blood goes cold it sticks to what it touches, stains like red clay. You had to scrub the tub in the backyard, pour the water into the garden.

You’ve brought a jug of kerosene, in case, but end up using Meyer’s. Slosh it over the chairs and through the kitchen, a bandanna over your face so the fumes don’t choke you. It’s calm, but still you worry about the grass catching, back away after tossing the spunk on the rug.

For a second you think it’s gone out, then a breath of white smoke like steam leaks out the door, a flame jumps in a window, cracks it, and soon a black billowing cloud rolls skyward and fire knifes through the roof. You close the gate and stand by the road, watching Meyer’s place burn. His family and all his hard work, come to nothing. If he did go through that soldier’s pockets, what is that compared to this? Everything’s been stolen from him, and you did nothing to stop it.

“It’s not right,” you say.

Who are you angry with?

Not God.

No? Who else is there? Is this the devil’s work?

It must be, you think, but uncertainly. It must be, but you’re confused.

Maybe tonight you’ll sleep.

“Maybe.”

But you don’t. You hold on to Marta, warming her with your own body, listening, imagining her breathing.

Cyril rings and rings. You want to climb the ladder and silence him, beg him to stop. You arrange the comforter over Marta, kiss her before you leave. You need food, and there’s laundry to do.

Town’s quiet. Town’s always quiet now. The dogs keep you busy. You find them behind the livery, alongside the churchyard, in the middle of the road. You toss them in the brush with Austin’s, shovel dust over the pile to keep the flies off.

It’s like the war again.

Burn down houses. Burn down barns filled with dead cattle, coops filled with chickens.