Must be time for school, he thought.
“Wendell…”
No, not school. Maybe we’re moving back to the house.
“Wendell, wake up.” Agatha’s voice.
He opened his eyes, and turned to his window to see the rising sun, red, placental and shimmering. Tendrils of orange were spreading across the sky. The hills, now gold-tipped, rolled green with patchwork farmland, dotted with trees and silos. The road was elevated, so Wendell looked down into a valley with a dammed lake shining like mica, surrounded by fir trees. A town was sprawled out over the valley’s green carpet—houses, a school, a steeple, black specks of cows and a farm combine making neat chessboard rows—like something unreal, at least to Wendell, who had never seen anything like it before. The sun’s rays touched the lake and reflected up, painting the road, the car, Wendell’s face, a soft orange.
The car slowed as it turned left and began to wind its way up a tree-lined road, which quickly thickened into forest.
“Thought you were dead,” Agatha said.
“Probably woulda been better.”
“Well, don’t worry. It’s just up a ways.” She nodded her head up the road. “Roll down your window.”
Wendell rolled it down a crack, then halfway.
“Smell that?” Agatha asked.
He leaned towards the window, breathing deeply through his nose. Earth, pine sap, honey.
“All of those cedars,” she said, “apple and cherry trees, the honeysuckle. All of it, beautiful year round. Like it was meant for a different world.”
She slowed the car to allow Wendell a few moments to take it in. He knew it was there, this beauty, this unnamable quality, but his nose couldn’t quite catch it all. He could try to cup the air in his claws and shovel it towards his nostrils, but still he would miss something. He looked out, trying to see it, watching the trees lining the road go by, ordered and massive like a line of soldiers, behind which was the chaotic bloom of the forest with its trees and shrubs growing over and around each other. But he knew that it was there, whether he could fully grasp it or not. There, this beauty, new and powerful and seeming endless.
“Isn’t it amazing?” she asked. “It’s going to be fine, you know.”
“Maybe.”
“No, not maybe.”
“Okay then.”
Up ahead the trees along the road angled out, allowing for more grass. Farther ahead the forest opened up and out of it appeared the convent, a sleeping stone giant of a building, with an austerity that looked familiar to Wendell. But the tree-lined campus, or the carpet of lawn, or the sea of flowers before the building—something—gave it all a pacific mood. Pigeons took off from the tiled roof and landed among the daisies and purple gladiolas. A square line of shrubs ran in a short green wall around the red-blue flower sea.
It isn’t real, he thought. He clenched his claws together, expecting it to disappear, leaving the two of them still on the highway, directionless. But nothing changed. He relaxed.
“The hospital’s just a mile over the hill,” Agatha said. “We’ll start here. They’ll take care of us, then they’ll take us there. It’s going to be fine,” she repeated.
“I know.”
Sister Agatha pulled the car up to the front door.
“End of the road Wendell.”
He stepped out of the car cautiously, wincing at the sun. Above the front door was a giant stone cross; Wendell looked through the open front door and saw a statue of Jesus standing, hands open.
“Got himself off that cross,” he whispered, marveling at the detail of the statue, which almost looked alive.
There’s nothing more to do, he told himself. No running, no fighting back, no need to hold on to whatever’s been long dead.
He looked up at the building’s windows, painted pink from interior light. Walking the perimeter of the campus was a line of nuns in white habits. He turned to the car which, with their new backdrop, now looked like a remnant from another age, rusted and tired and incapable of traveling another mile. Agatha, perhaps knowing what he was thinking, exited the car and walked around its front, patting it lovingly on the hood before stopping next to him.
Wendell turned back to the building, took a deep breath, held it in, wondering how to proceed.
“…gonna be fine,” he whispered.
“Yes,” Agatha said. She smiled, took hold of Wendell’s hand, and led him through the door.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
THE DEATH OF WENDELL MACKEY is C.T. Westing’s first novel. He holds Master’s degrees in Theological Studies and Library Science, and along with writing, he teaches part-time as a college instructor. He lives with his wife and children in Western New York.
The Death of Wendell Mackey Page 27