A Prayer for the Dying (16 page)

“Keep them in it,” he says. “Bring ’em right back after.”

“I’ll have Bart to help keep ’em in line.”

He nods, watching the ashes fall. “That’s good. That’s what I was going to suggest.”

You nod back a thanks, let him know you appreciate his trust in you. “I’ll start west of town and move east.”

“Don’t worry about the sick ones. There’s nothing you can do.”

“I know.”

“Chase gives you any trouble, you just leave him be.”

“I will.”

“Don’t waste your time on him.”

“I won’t,” you say, but rightly he doesn’t believe you.

“Jacob,” he says, and coughs, makes you wait. “You can’t save all of them. That’s not your job here.”

You grimace to show you register it. Why can’t you just agree with him?

“I tell you about Fenton?” you say, and tell him.

“The son of a bitch,” he says.

He comes over and peels your shirt back to take a look at it. You can smell his hand, the blood on his breath. “Yep, that’s some bruise.” He presses it with his thumbs so you groan. “Nothing broken though.”

You’ll have to get Harlow to send a message to Montello, ask the railroad to hold the freight where it crosses the river south of town. Wire Bart to fill him in. Harlow can spread the word here while you round up everyone to the west. The freight comes through around three so you’ve still got a full six hours. You know it won’t be enough. You won’t get everyone.

You stop in the middle of your explanation.

“What?” Doc asks.

“Someone ought to be ringing the bell.”

“Cyril.”

“You hear him this morning?” you ask, because you didn’t.

He shakes his head, and you think of Cyril squeezing your hand after services, complimenting your sermon, then moving on as if there were people behind him.

“I’ll have to get someone,” you say.

“See if John Cole’s got a man to spare.”

“Good idea.” You get up and fit your hat on, then stop.

“Go on,” Doc says.

“I’ll come back and look in on you.”

“There’s nothing you can do for me,” he says.

“I’ll look in and let you know what Chase is up to.”

“I’ll be here,” he says, unconcerned, but then he stands and offers you his hand. The two of you shake as if sealing a pact.

“Take care of Marta and Amelia,” he calls after you, and you promise you will.

Outside, Carl Soderholm rattles past in his buggy, his bay mare raising a gray cloud. He sees you but doesn’t wave, doesn’t slow, just heads east out of town toward Ender’s bridge. As you cross the street, the air bites at your eyes, coats your tongue. Fenton’s door is open. Look inside, and the place is topsy-turvy, the shelves empty, the floor littered with yard goods. It reminds you of Kentucky, the looting. Wade through the clutter. His gun rack is empty, the lock sawed off. The entire display of knives is missing.

Harlow pokes his head in with a telegram. “Bart’s got trouble out on the line.”

You’re knee-deep in smashed sacks of flour and ask him to read it to you.

“Says a deputy of his had to shoot someone.”

“Who?”

“Emmett Nelligan. Just winged him, it says. Got the whole family in the pokey.”

High-step over the mess, read the wire yourself. Bart’s raised a barricade so no one else tries to break through. There’s still no word on Millard. You swear and tell Harlow what to wire him back. You tell him the whole plan and what he needs to do.

“Montello’s still sending,” Harlow says.

“I don’t care,” you say. “They’re fools if they stay there. After the freight gets in, tell them to get on it. And get someone to ring that bell.”

West of town the sky is darker, and the wind has picked up, the hot ash stinging your cheeks. It’s slippery, and you can’t ride as fast as you like. Your chest doesn’t hurt as much, just the remnants of a bruise. Someone’s finally ringing the bell, a slow, steady toll. Past the wreckage of Millie and Elsa’s, Winslet’s, Heilemann’s. It looks like Kentucky during the war, those endless hollows you marched through, the carcasses of hogs bloating in the sun, children hiding behind their mothers. Past Ramsay’s still boarded up. You’re tempted to stop at their gate, run up to the porch to see if she’s alive. Probably not; it’s been days. On the way back, you promise, if you have time. The horizon’s black as a tornado. When you pass the field full of Terfel’s sheep, you can’t even smell them.

You race all the way to the gap at Cobb’s tunnel, where John Cole and his crew are widening the fire line. The air is filled with cinders; they patter like sleet in the trees. The grass catches fire, and the men frantically stamp on it, dance in a huddle as if it’s a rattler, then pick up their shovels again. While you’re talking with John, a doe zigzags through the crew and bounds past you, headed for town.

“Don’t stay too long now,” you warn John.

“Don’t you worry about that,” he says. “You just make sure that train’s there.”

Back past the
Q
for the swamper camp, posted by a corduroy road running back into the pines. There’s no one there, you reason, and if they’re dead, you can’t fire the place because it’s in the middle of the woods. It’s that simple. So why are you stopped by the sign? Why stand there debating it, wondering how your bike will stand up to the ruts?

It’s been a week.

Don’t waste your time, Doc said.

He meant Chase.

He meant the dead.

There, that’s where you disagree with him. The dead need to be taken care of. Isn’t that your duty?

It’s just one of your jobs, and right now it’s a luxury. The air’s stinging with cinders. Be sensible. Get on your bike and ride.

Past Dole’s and Schnackmeier’s and Margaret Kyne’s. You leave them to die by fire.

Maybe they’re already dead.

You hope so. You picture them on the floor of the pantry, laid out in the front hall. Probably at the door, their last effort spent rattling the lock, cursing your name.

What, do you want to say you’re sorry? What good does that do? You killed them sure as the disease. Have you saved
any
of them?

Not Amelia. Not Marta. Not Doc.

The first house you stop at is Paulsen’s. The windows are shuttered. You rap at the door. A rumble, then footsteps, the jingle of a key, and Henrik Paulsen opens the door holding a shotgun from the hip.

“Stand back, if you would,” he says, and you do. “You ain’t sick, are you?”

“No,” you say, and ask the same of him.

“No. Ain’t planning on it neither.”

You keep your hands in front of you and explain the freight, and still he doesn’t budge. He comes out on the porch, looking around for your deputies, then forces you down the steps and into the yard. “I ain’t about to get mixed up with any town folk if I can help it.”

“Look over yonder,” you say, and slowly point to the massed blackness.

“John Cole still working that line of his?” he asks.

“Yep.”

“Then no telling where it’ll go. Ain’t that right?”

Agree with him, start in again with the plan.

“Where’s everyone else?” he asks, waving the barrel around. “If you’re taking everyone, where are they?”

You can’t answer him.

“No sir,” he says, “we made it this far, we’ll take our chances. If worse comes to worst, we can always go down the well.”

You’d forgotten about that. It’s an old Indian trick, though with the size of this fire, you don’t give it much chance of working. You tell Henrik that, admitting, though, that it’s possible, that your plan’s not foolproof either.

“To each his own,” he says, and when you nod at this logic, he lowers the gun. “No hard feelings, Sheriff.”

“None,” you say, and drop your hands. “I’ll look in on you after.”

“I’d be obliged.”

Riding away, you’re not surprised. People don’t like to leave their homes. They’ll bundle up the silver and bury it in the front yard, dig it up warm after the fire moves through. Let the stock run free, fend for themselves. You understand better than anyone, people don’t like to give up what they’re used to.

Yancey Thigpen’s already made a break for it. His horses are wandering the back pasture, harnessless, sneezing and waving their heads at the ashes. He’s locked the barn so they won’t rush back in, left his own front door open. You’re glad he’s gone, just hope he’s not out at the line.

Fred Lembeck says he’ll get his things together, calmly, as if he hadn’t planned to leave. For some reason it makes you angry. You’d think a man with one arm would get used to thinking ahead.

“Just take what you need,” you say, then think how ridiculous it sounds. Tomorrow there may be nothing left of the house. Take everything, you think.

“I’ll be more than a minute,” he calls from the back.

“We’ll meet at the river,” you tell him, “right below Ender’s bridge,” and when you’re sure he’s heard you, move on.

At Huebner’s you’re surprised to find Carl there with his family.

“I thought you were in Shawano,” you say.

“I was, but I couldn’t stay there. Not with this.”

“I suppose I understand,” you say, and go over the plan. You’re getting faster at it, and the more you explain it, the better it seems. You leave Terfel’s convinced it’ll work.

The next place is Ramsay’s, and against your better judgment you slow and then hop off at the gate. It’s latched, the post capped with ash, the sign still warning people away. Parts of the
Q
have chipped and fallen to the floor, but the lock’s solid. You hammer at the door, then listen.

Nothing. But you expected that.

Wander across the porch and peek through the boards. It’s dim inside. Broken dishes, what might be blood on the rug. You call her name, wait.

Walk around back, then the other side. The boards are intact, and you climb the porch steps again and pull out the key.

Fast around the downstairs, then up. You smell her first. She’s in a doorway, her legs fallen awkwardly across the hall, the rest of her in the bedroom. Flies lift from a pile of dried vomit. It’s yellow, dotted with tiny red specks—matchheads.

How cruel you’ve become, thinking it’s better than Paris green. Then it’s true, you’ve gone absolutely mad, utterly indifferent to those you know. Every day there’s less of you. How you’d love to stop, to follow her. Your stomach clenching around the chemicals would be a penance, an offering before the release. But who would take care of Friendship then?

You kneel and carefully recite a prayer. Eyes shut tight, you picture Sarah Ramsay in the kitchen, cutting the heads off matches two by two, building a little pile. Gather breath and ask Him for strength, for forgiveness, then stand and walk away, leave her sinfully unattended.

The road is trackless again, a pond of ash. From town, the bell sounds muffled and dull. The wind is hot and hard, pushing you along; it lifts your hat, bites at the back of your neck. Every flake makes you grunt. You can see why hell is filled with fire. Lord knows how John Cole and his crew are doing.

Just outside of town a swallow drops from the sky, plummets into the sere cornfield beside you. You turn in time to see a whole flock falling, bending the dead stalks, thumping into the dust like hail, a rain of stones. They come down around you, their soft bodies pelting your back. They cover the road, dead yet perfect. When you bend to touch one, its feathers are hot, its eye boiled white.

You check the sky—empty again, and then a crow wings slowly over the woods, untouched.

Is this prophecy? But you can make nothing of it. There’s no sin Friendship needs to redress. There’s no reason behind any of this.

You stop in at home and get Marta out of bed and dressed, set her on the love seat with Amelia. Tell them the plan as you get them ready.

You’ll be back, she asks, and you reassure her. She understands you have to help the others first, she doesn’t question it. You kiss her to show how grateful you are for her. She knows.

Just don’t leave us here, she jokes.

“I won’t,” you say, and wave, then lock the door behind you.

Harlow’s waiting for you outside the jail, a wire in his hand. The bell’s deafening. “Montello’s down,” he shouts, and waves the paper tape to prove it.

It’s their last message.

FIRE HERE. MUST LEAVE SOONEST. ADVISE SAME
.

“When’d this come in?”

Harlow counts the perforations on the tape. “’Leven-forty. Bout ten minutes ago.”

You reach for your watch, sure it’s earlier.

No. Where did the time go?

“Shawano still up?” you ask him.

“Already sent it. Haven’t heard back yet. I’m sure Bart’s busy. Lots of folks been headed that way.”

“He can take care of them,” you shout, mostly to convince yourself. “Who’s ringing the bell?”

“Cyril.”

“Where was he this morning?”

“I don’t know,” he says, and shrugs when you press him. “Maybe he slept late.”

Across the street, the crew from the mill is tossing buckets of water on Fenton’s roof. Let it burn, you want to say. None of it makes any sense.

Just as you’re going inside to get your rifle, John Cole and his crew hightail it in, swerving, their team foaming black around the mouth. They all jump off and rush around to haul someone off the bed. You run out and see one of the men is missing his eyebrows, his face a mask of soot. They’re carrying a heavy man on a makeshift litter; he’s burnt black as a minstrel show, his clothes stuck to his skin.

“Fire jumped the line,” John says, steering him toward Doc’s office.

“You can’t go in there,” you say. “He’s got the sickness. Put him in here.” You throw open the door to the jail and they lay him on the floor.

He coughs, moans without moving his lips. It’s Kip Cheyney, you didn’t even recognize him. His fingers show through the holes in his gloves—bubbles and bloody patches.

“I’ll see what Doc says,” you promise, and leave them standing around like mourners.

Bang the glass, the frame. Call.

You wait, expecting him to part the curtain, his breath a whistle. You hope he’s changed out of the dressing gown.

Rattle the knob, call again.

John comes out on the sidewalk. “Isn’t he there?”