A Prayer for the Dying (2 page)

“Can we get something to cover him,” you say, and not just from respect. You don’t need folks in town gawking, making it their business. Since the mines shut down, gossip’s been Friendship’s biggest industry.

The boy comes back with a scrap of burlap and you fashion it over the body yourself. He climbs up on the seat. The smell of the horses is getting to you, making you think of mud, the way your stomach clenched when the Reb artillery whistled over.

“Take him straight to Doc Guterson’s,” you tell him.

“Yes, sir,” he says, still afraid to look back, and teases the reins to set the team walking. The dead man bounces as they cross the yard, his heels banging the bed. The tin cup clatters, then slides off into the grass with a glint. Bitsi dashes through the timothy and scoops it up like a prize chick and gives it to you. The metal’s already begun to warm. You tuck it in your pocket and head for your bicycle, leaning in the shade of the eaves. You want to get to town first, and you know boys when their father gives them the rig.

“Well?” Meyer calls over.

“Well, we’ll find out.”

“I don’t know why they gotta come here, there’s no work for them. Betcha I’ll load up the gun with rock salt tonight, sure.”

“Set your dogs out, that’ll take care of them. Say, which one’s that driving?”

“That’s Thaddeus.”

“Any problems with the Colony?”

“Nope, pretty quiet lately.”

“That’s good. You didn’t touch him or move him around,” you ask, sure that Meyer didn’t, but it’s your job to be suspicious, to think of things other people wouldn’t.

“No, sir. I wanted nothing to do with him, you bet.”

“All right,” you say, and trade a last batch of pleasantries, thank Bitsi and set off.

The dust on the road has settled and you can see the ruts left by Meyer’s rig. Barn swallows flit over the fields, hop post to post, calling. With every pump of your legs, the cup in your pocket worries your crotch. You don’t like that Meyer called you sir. He’s had money problems, that’s why he’s putting up honey to sell in town. He wouldn’t kill a man, and he probably wouldn’t rob one, but if there was something lying around he might just pick it up. That wouldn’t have been true before his Alma died, but now he’s got the twins and Bitsi all by himself, and that can make a man desperate. Last month in Shawano Oly Marsden lost two calves and the stationmaster shot him trying to rob the depot. Bart said he didn’t even tie a mask on, just walked up to the window with a shotgun like it was his due. The stationmaster had a skeet pistol and put a hole through Oly’s Adam’s apple. So there was a man who drove his daughters to the parish dances, bleeding to death on the boards of the platform, the passengers from the noon train flowing around him like he was nothing. You don’t like to think this way, so you stand up on the pedals and reach down and push the cup around so it doesn’t fuss with you so much.

By law, the man was trespassing, so if Meyer did do something, he was in his rights. But that’s a quibble, not really the spirit of the law. Meyer didn’t kill him. Maybe he turned out his pockets, shook his pack out in the grass. Not honorable certainly, but criminal?

You shake your head to dismiss it. A man’s dead, there’s no room for these fine distinctions. Murder’s always simple.

You mark the dust before you see the rig plodding along, the burlap thrown over him, Thaddeus still not looking back. You dip the brim of your hat, tuck your head down to keep the dust out of your eyes; it sticks to your lashes, powders your jacket. You dig hard to pass him, ignoring the horses, then give him a wave. In a few minutes you can’t even see him behind you, only the fields, the treeline, the sky.

It’s a perfect day, but you see the man sprawled across the fire, his one cheek dark with charcoal. You’ll talk to Doc, he’ll figure it out. You know it’s best not to think too long on these things.

Karmanns started haying last week, and as you pass, thinking of the snap beans Marta promised this morning, you see a woman lying in the brilliant stubble. At first you think it’s a fieldhand catching a nap, but she’s wearing a shift, her hair bright as the dry ricks. She’s facedown like your friend in the rig, and you slow and hop off and jump the ditch, thinking it can’t be, two in the same day.

Before you even reach her, you panic and wonder if it’s the work of one person, like those little girls Bart found in the smith’s cistern. Now there was evil. Bart showed you the odd parts, the marks on their bodies, and while you prided yourself on having seen worse, this wasn’t the war, these were just children. You helped Bart burn the smith’s barn and then his house to the ground while the whole town watched, silent as mourners. It was a distraction; while you and Bart offered up his property, the smith was being whisked out the back door of the courthouse by the same marshal who took care of Eric Soderholm.

Tromping across the stubble, you wonder if the smith could have broken out of Mendota, if you’ll have to wire Bart and tell him to bring the dogs. And it was such a pretty day too, you think, that quiet you like. Even now the trees are calm, riffling with the slightest breeze, then subsiding.

Closer, you can see she’s a good-sized woman, older. She’s from the city; you can tell by the gauzy chemise, the stockings, the high-buttoned shoes. Probably from the Colony. Occasionally they escape, go off on frolics in the saloons, and you have to corral them. You peer off over the field for a sign of Karmann or his boys, but there’s no one, only a hawk riding the day’s heat, spiraling high.

Her legs are scratched and bleeding, her stockings torn. You kneel by her feet for a better look. One line of blood’s fresh, still wet, and when you touch a finger to it to make sure, she flips over and kicks your hand away.

You back up, automatically going for your Colt, but your hand never gets there because you’re lost in watching her.

She jerks as if pitching a fit, thrashes her head side to side. Her neck is dirty, her hair all snarls, as if she’s been living in the woods. You think of the Hermit’s missing teeth, his curling fingernails, and pull your jacket back over the butt of your gun.

“Jesus Jesus Jesus,” she moans. “Jesus Jesus Jesus.”

“Ma’am!” you say, “Ma’am.”

It takes a while, but she slows, lets her head drop. “Jesus I love you, Jesus I love you.” It’s like singing, pleading. Her eyes are squeezed so tight she’s crying, but she sounds happy. “I love Jesus.”

It’s ecstasy, you see it each July when the revival comes through, their wagons painted with biblical scenes, bright as the circus. You’ve always thought it was fake, this rapture, a stage trick, a shill egging on the susceptible, filling the tent. You know the Lord as well as anyone, and there’s no call for all that show. Could be she’s been drinking.

“Ma’am,” you say, and take her arm.

She lets you help her up, muttering, “Jesus my Lord and savior,” but when you try to lead her back to the road, she tears her wrist away and falls to the ground again. She writhes in the hay at your feet.

“Really, ma’am,” you scold her. It’s too hot for this, too buggy. You’ll have to ride the handcar out the Nokes spur to the Colony now, see Chase.

You look back to the road, and there’s Thaddeus, the rig stirring up dust. You wave both arms over your head, and he slows, the cloud closing over him.

The woman’s gone quiet again, mumbling, eyes dull. She coughs and brings up something, a string hanging off her chin, and you step back, thinking she might be wild, mad like an animal. You’ve seen a diseased hog take a chunk out of a man’s knee, the foam dripping green from its lips.

“I saw Jesus,” she says, acknowledging you for the first time, and you think she’s just sick, that there must be a simple reason behind all this. “I saw Jesus,” she repeats. It’s a question now, directed at you, a fact you seem to be disputing.

“I know you did,” you say, because it’s foolish to argue with crazy people. You offer her your hand and she takes it and you pull her up again.

“He was so beautiful. He’s been waiting for me.”

“For all of us,” you say.

“Yes,” she says. “How did you know?”

“I know something of him.”

“Brother Chase says he saves all of us, the cleansed
and
the sick. Do you think that’s true?” She stops and gapes at you as if you really might know.

“Of course,” you say, “we’re all saved,” and steer her across the field. It’s not a convenient lie either; you truly believe this. Otherwise you wouldn’t have taken Reverend Toomey’s place, preaching from his pulpit after the diocese called him back to Madison. Deacon Hansen, they call you Sunday, and then Monday you find they’ve given the milk-hand a black eye, that their youngest got himself cut up in a sporting house over in Shawano. It’s all of a piece, you think; sheriff or deacon, you’re trying to remind them of their best instincts, their better selves.

“All!” She laughs. “Ah, Brother, but you’re not sick.”

“No,” you concede.

“It’s easy to believe then.”

You disagree with this but just nod. The whole idea of deathbed conversion strikes you as false, a sop for the dying. It’s when you’re happiest, sure of your own strength, that you need to bow down and talk with God. You wonder if that’s lax or fanatic. You know Marta worries when you make too much of your faith, so you’ve taken to praying in your office when the cell’s empty, the stone cold and hard on your knees. There’s nothing desperate about it, just a comfort you rely on time to time, but you’ve given up trying to explain it. You can’t, really. It’s a feeling of almost knowing something, of being close to some grand yet utterly simple answer. But what that answer is, you don’t know. It’s easier to hide it, keep it private, which makes you ashamed. You don’t trust people with secrets.

You walk the woman toward Thaddeus, who meets you halfway. He shies back from her, and, unfairly, you think he’s some squeamish for a farmboy. Bitsi didn’t have any trouble picking up that cup.

“Have you seen Jesus?” she asks him.

He looks to you, unsure what to say. “No, ma’am,” he says, tentative.

“He sees
you,
” she answers, as if the converse logically follows.

Thaddeus looks to you helplessly.

“He sees all of us,” you say.

“That’s right,” the woman says, and lets loose another hawking cough. She seems recovered, but that might be temporary. You’ll take her to Doc Guterson too.

The team is a pair of big Belgians, the kind that used to draw the guns. They stand champing, veiny bellies wriggling to toss off flies. The soldier’s begun to stink with the heat, and you can feel the past oozing up like mud. You rearrange him under the burlap and lift the bike on, then hop up to give the woman a hand in. Thaddeus is glad to take the driver’s seat again.

You shield the woman from the dead man, but she stares at the burlap, rubs her nose with the back of a hand. Thaddeus snaps the reins and the wheels grate over the road. Your bike settles, the man’s boots knock.

“In Heaven you forget everything,” she says. “In Hell they make you remember.”

No, you think, it’s the other way around. “Maybe so,” you say.

“Everyone smells, even the saved. My Daniel smelled. We laid hands on him but it was too late.”

“Was he at the Colony?”

“Brother Chase said it’s a sin, going against God’s will. I think it is now, I do.”

“Daniel was your husband,” you ask, but she looks off over the fields. Weitzels are out haying, the smaller boy atop the wagon with a fork. Midsummer day, start to make hay. They’re almost done, just one row of ricks left. They wave, and you know the whole town will be discussing this over supper, speculating on who the woman was, and what you had in the back of Old Meyer’s rig. People will drop by tomorrow to see if she’s in the cell.

“He takes the little ones first,” the woman says, and you can’t help but think of Amelia.

“I’m very sorry, ma’am,” you say, thinking this might explain at least some of her behavior. If this really is the truth.

“Heaven’s full of babies.”

“It is.”

She nods and coughs hard, and Thaddeus looks back an instant, as if he’s forgotten you’re there. From town comes the church bell tolling one. Doc should be getting up from his nap right about now, taking his collar off its stand, pinching the stays in place. He’ll be able to help her.

The road turns along the river, under a row of weed trees. The heat makes the cicadas scream. As you rock through the dimness of Ender’s bridge, you can hear children splashing and laughing below, the rafters holding an echo, pigeons lowing, and you nudge the man’s boot back under the burlap. Into the sun again. The woman stares blankly at the wake of dust rising behind you. The ecstasy seems to have passed, and she looks spent, empty, old. The river’s low, the flats cracked mud, the reeds rotting. The Belgians nicker at the smell.

Town’s green though, cool. You take the last turn before Friendship proper, and the clapboard houses of your neighbors slide by, neat behind their picket fences, the oaks above a tunnel. You look up and the limbs pass overhead, dip as if blessing you. Flickers chirp, unseen. In the shade, the day seems easy again, but it’s a trick. There’s a man dead, a woman sick with grief.

Still, you think, snap beans for supper. You’ll coax Marta into singing while you play the melodeon, and after Amelia’s down, the two of you will read to each other from Mrs. Stowe until you reach the end of the chapter. One of you will trim the lamp, and in the dark Marta’s hand will find yours. In bed you’ll need the comforter, you’ll snuggle down under it. That’s the nice thing about living so far north; even in the heat of summer, the nights are cool. “Jacob,” she’ll say, and wish you sweet dreams. And lying there beside her, silently saying your prayers, you’ll think, what a world this is, what luck you have, and you’ll thank God, you’ll let Him know how glad you are for everything—even the heat, the dust, the tears of this madwoman. And even you, then, will wonder how you have such hope, and marvel at how impossible it is to stop the heart from reaching out to the whole world—to all of your people here in Friendship, asleep under the summer moon—and alone in the dark you’ll submit, give in to this great blessing, and think, yes, tomorrow will be a better day.