A Prayer for the Dying (7 page)

You tend to Lydia Flynn. Unwrap the winding sheet, slide the nightshirt over her head. She’s tanned on the face and arms, the rest of her lard white. The girl in the station Chase described was stick-thin, a waif, but here she seems no different from the town women her age, gone broad with pies and white gravy, the comforts of the hearth. You expect some revelation from her flesh—shackle scars on her ankles, lash marks between her shoulders—but there’s nothing untoward save the gray tinge already settling around her mouth. She wears a small cross; it rests in a hollow of her throat.

“Did he save you,” you ask, “or did you save yourself?”

Neither, most likely. God doesn’t come and sweep you up like a lover, cure you like a doctor. You recognize something, a silence in the middle of noise, a stillness that no matter how fast you run won’t go away. Is that it, Lydia?

“What is it like, to go from one world to another like that?”

Strange, frightening. Blissful. Safe. You think of coming home from the war.

“Did it seem real to you at first?”

“I was grateful,” you say.

“But no, not real at first. Like a dream. Like a dream I was having.”

“And how does it feel now?”

“It’s still a dream.”

You know you’re not supposed to, but you find an empty cask and run a hose to it, make a slit behind her ankle and crank the table so it tilts. You’ll be careful; Doc won’t know. The blood fills the gutter, drums the bottom of the cask, then after a minute it runs silent, pours like oil. You never talk now; you check the level of the formaldehyde in the white barrel, make sure there’s enough. You’ve never done anyone from the Colony and you want to do a good job for Chase. For Lydia, really. For yourself?

“We are all saved.”

“Do you believe that?”

How you want to say yes to this, I do, but there’s nothing. You work, and work is praise.

Wait till the blood is just drips, then pump the handle to flush her with water. Now the fluid through its own stained hose, tartly stinking of paraffin thinned with kerosene. Stop the wound with a dollop of hot wax, apologizing as the faint hairs curl and wither around the plug.

You’re working on her part, plucking the few gray strands, when someone thumps at the front door. You leave the comb jutting from her hair, on the stairs remember your mask and toss it at your workbench. Before you open the cellar door, you touch your key ring, then set the lock.

It’s Chase, with a long white box tied with ribbon. His logger’s shoulders fill the window, behind him a team stamping in its traces. You open the door for him and stand aside, but he doesn’t come in, just hands you the box with a murmur. He seems tired, defeated, as if, the outcast, he’s been proved wrong in front of the whole town and has come for his punishment. Still, he expects you to say something, to comfort him; he’s like anyone else, and again you’re surprised. Why did you think he’d be different? All these years, you’ve scoffed at the stories about the Colony—the orgies and devil worship, the midnight sacrifices—knowing how fearful people can be of religion, but maybe some thoughtless part of you believed them, separated Chase and his people from those you love, made them less, expendable.

“I’ll make sure everything’s just so,” you promise him.

“I know you will,” he says glumly, and shakes your hand. He asks when he should come around for her.

“Tomorrow morning,” you say, though you’ll be done by sundown. Doc may have something to say in all this. You’ll probably end up accompanying her, making sure the box gets in the ground untouched.

“I’m very sorry,” you tell him, and he nods his thanks, lips muttering but saying nothing. He turns to his team and climbs up on the seat.

It doesn’t seem enough, and as he starts them off, you want to call after him, tell him how you too question the ways of faith, the injustice, the never-ending losses, that it stuns you too, that you still grieve for Mrs. Goetz and Arnie and Eric Soderholm just as their families do, though everyone else seems to have forgotten. Lydia Flynn, the tramp behind Meyer’s, the men in the swamps of Kentucky. If a sparrow fall, you want to say, it is not lost. I will remember. We
are
all saved. But Chase knows this, he must after so many years. It’s just a hard moment for him, a low point, not some soul-shaking crisis; you know those aren’t sudden or public, they take years, worming inside you like a disease. And anyway, he’s gone, lost in his own dust. You close the door and turn away, the box awkward in your arms.

In the basement, you see it’s the uniform—the black shift and linen blouse the Colony women wear—and you remember her in the field, how she had on city clothes. You take the comb from her hair, scourging yourself for such disrespect. You remember her stockings and her high-buttoned shoes, just like Irma’s.

“Maybe you were running away,” you say, and fit her arm through one sleeve. “Maybe you were going to run off with your lover.”

“No,” you say, “I was coming back in the dark and got lost.”

“That late in the day?”

“I was trying to get to the railway station.”

“The train doesn’t stop here anymore.”

“I didn’t know that.”

“Or the evening stage.”

“I didn’t know. I just wanted to leave.”

“Then where were your bags?”

“They took everything. Even the clothes weren’t my own.”

“They wouldn’t be,” you say. “Your old city clothes wouldn’t fit.”

You pause to contemplate this and see your mask on the floor by the workbench. You knot it on, smell your stale breath trapped in the thin cotton. You turn back to Lydia Flynn and pull the other sleeve up her arm. She’s cool beneath your fingers, the last heat of her retreating to a warm core.

“Why city clothes?” you ask, moving, like any penny-dreadful detective, back to your original question.

Is it a mystery? Maybe she was trying to spare the rest of them. Maybe she was out of her head, sick, insane. Afraid. And why she died isn’t a mystery. Still, it’s your job to be suspicious. You’d never say it, even to Marta, but you’re proud of your ability to both believe and question everything. Secretly you think everyone does, but at some point they give in, surrender to the comfort of certainty. It’s too much trouble, this endless jousting of belief and doubt, too tiring. Finally you suppose it will break you, yet strangely it’s the only thing that keeps you going—though, true, at times you feel unbalanced, even somewhat mad. Crazy Jacob the Undertaker. A holy fool. Wouldn’t your mother laugh at that.

You drape the shift over Lydia, pinch one side under a thigh, then roll her over and fasten it in the back. Tuck the blouse in, fix the collar, her neck still warm against your pinkie. There’s no hose, only a homely pair of black socks and a blocky pair of cast-off shoes too big for her, their soles holey, thin as paper.

“There,” you say, and retrieve the comb. Her hair’s snarled from the sickroom pillow, and then when you work it free, a sprig sticks out. Lick your fingers and wet it, draw the comb across and pat it down. A little pancake for the face. Rouge. Inspect, touch up.

“Very nice.”

The coffin won’t take long. You don’t have to measure anymore, you just naturally head for the right stack of boards. It worries you sometimes; walking down the street or peering out from the pulpit, you size people up, decide who’s likely. You worry that you don’t have a nice piece of cedar long enough to accommodate Harlow Orton.

Square the corners, drive the nails. The basement’s quiet, occasionally a drip from the table. The smell of the lamp and the paraffin when it hits you is dizzying. You pin in the crusted sheets like bunting, fasten them with tacks. Plane the lid so it fits. Muffled, the church bell calls four, then five o’clock, the mill whistle screams quitting time. You think you should get home—you don’t want to worry Marta—but you take your time and do it right. Take advantage of it now, you counsel. Make this your best work. You won’t have the luxury with Thaddeus and the others.

*   *   *

When you come up it’s twilight, the jail wrapped in shadows. The darkness seems hot after the cellar. Your back hurts from lowering her into the box, and you stretch, rolling your neck, pleased to have gotten the job done. You know Chase will be early tomorrow, so you buckle your gun belt, tug your jacket on and head for home.

It’s dusk and the bats are circling low above the oaks, the evening star clear as a lantern. You walk through town, the air rich with butter-fried onions, and as you pass your neighbors’ warm, orange windows, you see them bent over their plates, discussing the day’s events. Marta’s promised chicken, and you picture it keeping warm in the oven. It’s a superstition of hers, the whole family sitting down to supper. She’ll be waiting, distracting Amelia with a song and a piece of zwieback. She’ll set everything on the table while you wash up, and when you come back in, she’ll be waiting beside Amelia, fixing her bib. You’ll sit a moment in silence, the three of you together for the first time since breakfast, the day’s business evaporating, becoming, finally, unimportant, and then you’ll say grace.

A horse snorts inside the livery, and ahead, under the tunnel of trees, you can see the ghost of another coming up the road. Slowly it reveals itself—Doc’s white mare hauling his trap. It rattles and grinds over the stones. You flag him down, but don’t go closer. The mare rolls its eyes in the blinders, puffs its rubber lips. They always smell of blood and feces, the rank, wormy meat.

Doc leans over the reins to speak. “Get her ready?”

You say yes but nothing else, and he thanks you. He doesn’t ask why you’re on the road so late, and you wonder if he knows. Of course he does; he knows you.

“You see Thaddeus?” you ask.

“I saw both of them. You were right. I put a quarantine on the place.”

“What about Meyer and the other one?”

“I told them to be careful.”

“And the girl?”

Doc looks off up the road as if someone might be coming. He shakes his head, looks at his hands. “There’s nothing I can do for them. Just have to wait and see.”

Wait and see what? you want to ask, but don’t. You’ve seen what it does. And you know he’s doing his best. It reminds you of how sometimes folks will blame you for a crime left unsolved, like Fenton and his jackknife; until you catch someone, it’s as if you’ve robbed them yourself.

“Is he going to put up a sign or do you want me to?”

“I asked him not to,” Doc says. “I still want to be careful with this.”

“I’d rather be careful the other way. You can say it’s chicken pox.”

“It’s still isolated.”

“How many more cases till it isn’t?”

“Jacob,” he says. “Think. What will people do when they find out?”

“Leave.”

“And what if they have it? What if it isn’t isolated—and you think it isn’t.”

You imagine them moving through Shawano and back east toward Milwaukee, splitting off in all directions like spurs from a trunkline.

“I’d rather keep it here,” Doc says. “It’s easier to just close town off, quarantine the whole thing. That’s what they did in St. Joe.”

“And it worked,” you ask.

“It didn’t spread.”

“How about inside the town?”

“More than half the town survived.”

“Half the town,” you repeat.

“
More
than half survived. If it had gotten to Joplin who knows what would’ve happened.”

“What if no one has it except Meyer?”

“Then we’re fine,” he says.

“What if our other tramp has it and he’s in Shawano living it up with some new chums?”

“Then it’s Bart’s decision, not ours.”

The two of you look at each other, trying on arguments. Your head hurts, maybe from the paraffin, maybe from just talking with Doc. All of it, everything. The heat.

“I don’t like it,” you say.

“Neither do I, but right now we don’t have much choice in the matter.”

You agree out of habit, then wonder whose decision it is. Legally, you think, it’s yours. If you believe he’s wrong, why not fight him? Or is it too early? Is he right?

It’s not the right time, and you say you’ll see him tomorrow.

“Chase’ll be in early,” you say.

“So will I.”

“No rest for the weary.”

“No sir,” Doc says, and starts the team off. You wave, then turn and walk, and soon you can’t hear them.

It’s darker under the trees, the stars peeking through the canopy, a hint of hyacinth in the air. Tomorrow’s Saturday, and you haven’t even begun your sermon. How many ways are there to say have faith? You search your memory for a parable on strength, on trusting the Lord. Abraham and Isaac come to mind, but you just did that last week. Job’s overused. Lot. You shake your head and walk on. It’ll come, just give it time. Maybe leaf through Matthew after supper, look over your old notes.

Round the bend, and there’s your house, the lamp lit, windows warm and orange as your neighbors’. Is it selfish that you give thanks for this, that the sight touches you more deeply—that it seems to mean more—after poor Lydia Flynn? If so, you don’t mean to be cruel. And you’ve done right by her, you made sure of that.

Through the gate and up the walk toward the front door. It’ll be good to get this gun belt off, the jacket, the boots. You’ve earned your supper.

Locked, just as you instructed. You jangle the big key ring, searching.

Open the door and the light blinds you. Fresh bread, and the salty crackle of fat. On the floor of the sitting room lies Amelia’s stuffed duck, toppled on its side. You undo the gun belt—Marta won’t have it around the child—and stow it high in the front closet, thumping the door shut to announce yourself. When no one comes, you make your way to the kitchen.

It’s empty, a wisp of steam floating up through a hole in the stove top.

“Marta,” you call.

In the dining room the table’s set, your milk poured, the high chair between the two seats so you can each minister to her. The tray holds a spray of crumbs, a slug of gravy. Maybe they couldn’t wait.

The back of the house is dark.

“Marta?”

You try your room first, peering in the door. She’s not on the bed, and immediately you turn to the nursery.