Was_a novel

by Geoff Ryman

  The doors swung shut behind her. The tirade went on, echoing, horrible, down the corridor. Was it okay just to let her go?

  “Then they stick their knives up our sweet little dewlaps and rip them open and hang them from hooks until we dry in the sun and then they call us beef jerky and we clack and clatter when we walk, gutless, flies in the intestines. Oh, no! It’s not just enough to kill us! No! Never enough just to make us die.”

  It was the worst it had ever been. Behind the doors, a man shouted. Bill decided he better go see. He had to put down the trays first. He swung open the doors, following her into the corridor.

  Dotty was in a fight with Tom Heritage. She was punching him in the face as he hugged her. The Angel had fallen.

  Heritage seemed to have forgotten all his training. Don’t come at them from the front, don’t try to hit them, get them from behind and make them go still. Billy saw why he had forgotten. Tom Heritage was angry. He was trying to get a good enough hold with one hand, so that he could hit her with his right.

  Bill slipped up from behind and got Old Dynamite in a headlock. He pulled back tighter, and she squawked and howled, her arms hoisted helplessly over her head. They waved in the air. She tried to kick backward, but her legs were feeble. Bill held off as long as he could and then swept her feet out from under her.

  “Calm down!” he shouted at Heritage. Heritage swallowed blood and wiped his face. “Come on, Dotty, let’s go sit down.”

  She howled in nameless rage and slapped the air and tried to kick. Heritage also slipped in behind, twisting one of her legs in front of the other so she couldn’t kick. They lifted her up like a sack of potatoes. Both of them had been hired for their muscles.

  Dotty began to sob “No, no no,” over and over. The Graveyard was near. Jackson the janitor saw them and pushed open the swinging doors and flipped down the side of her cot. By the time they had loaded her onto the mattress she had gone quiet. She shivered.

  They stood over her. Heritage was nursing a split lip.

  “Do you think you could see a way not to report it?” Bill asked Tom Heritage. He looked around at Jackson.

  Tom Heritage glared back at him, working the inside of his mouth, tasting blood.

  “It’s only been this once. Only you, me and Jackson saw it. Please don’t tell anybody, or they’ll stick her back in the Pigpen. Please. It was my fault, I told her she couldn’t do something and I should have just humored her or something. Please don’t tell, Tom. Please.”

  “Okay, okay,” said Tom Heritage, sounding bored. “I shouldn’t have hit her anyway.”

  After lunch, Bill wheeled out the TV and stood guard over it. It was late afternoon by the time he got back to the Graveyard to see how Dotty was.

  She was lying on her back, smiling the smile, singing to herself.

  “Sleep well, Dot,” he told her. “Have yourself a beautiful dream.”

  The next day he got to work late, and Jackson greeted him, wheeling out a tub of laundry.

  “We’ve had a casualty,” he said, his voice dark and laconic. Accusing?

  “Who?” The old folks often passed away in the night or hurt themselves.

  “Old Dynamite. They found her out in the snow. She’d slept out in it all night. She was lying on her back. She’d been making those angel things the kids make. You know, waving her arms up and down to make wings.”

  “Is she dead?”

  “Near as, dammit. She can’t breathe.”

  Bill started to move toward the Graveyard. “Not there,” said Jackson, grabbing his arm. “Hospital ward.”

  Oh God, oh Jesus, please God, please Jesus. He said it over and over to himself as he walked. He got lost, found locked doors, heard strange cries, asked for help. “Why aren’t you on duty if you work here?”

  “The patient is kind of a friend of mine.”

  “We’re not here to be friends of patients.”

  “She’s ill. Can I see her?”

  They’d strapped her to the bed as a precaution. There were tubes in her nose. He breath came in wheezes and gurgles. Her eyes were closed, but she was smiling the smile.

  “Dotty?” he asked.

  “She’s been unconscious since they brought her in. She’s got pneumonia pretty bad. They call it the old man’s friend. It is around here, at any rate.”

  “She doesn’t want to die,” he said.

  “Really?” said the Nurse. “Why not?” She looked at him with a hard, straightforward glance that said, Are you kidding, with the lives these people lead?

  “She’s happy. Most of the time, she’s really happy,” he said. “The only thing that makes her unhappy is us.”

  He went out into the snow. The snow was still falling. It was filling in the angel she had made. It was a huge angel, with great sweeping wings and a head and a long, wide dress that she had made by moving her legs out and in across the snow. She had even scooped a halo out of the snow, around the top of the head. There were footprints all over the snow, big heavy, booted footprints. But none of them led directly to the angel. They had hoisted her up out of it. That was the whole point. It had to look like an angel had gone to sleep there. And then woken up and flown away.

  “It’s the best angel, Dot,” he said. “It’s the best angel ever.”

  He knelt down and tried to brush away the snow that was falling into it, blurring the crisp, deliberate outline. As he brushed, his gloved and clumsy fingers broke the edges, blurring them. There was no saving it. Like everything else, it was to melt away into history. Like all of us, he thought as he stood up and walked away. Like that great muddy brown river. Like those broken stones. The names wear away. Like the log cabins and the rickety old carts and the sod-and-stick houses and the tent churches. Whole towns swallowed up, gone, lost. A whole America, he thought, it’s going.

  He went back to work. He worked with a vengeance, trying hard not to cry. It never occurred to him to think crying was unmanly. His mother had told him, when his father died, that it would be unmanly not to, because not to cry, to pretend nothing had happened, that was really cowardice. So you cry, son, she told him. You cry all you can. You do it in his honor. Bill wept now, for Dotty and suddenly also for his father and for the mystery of why all things had to pass away.

  “Hard luck, Kid,” said Tom Heritage.

  “Yeah,” said Bill, his voice thin.

  “Kind of the end of an era, really.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Listen. Uh. I know I joke around and all, but . . . I really think you did the best another human being could do for that old lady. That was really good. You know?”

  “Thanks, Tom.” There was no consolation, because Bill found he blamed himself. “She said the snow was warm. She said she wanted to go out in it, and I stopped her, and so there was that fight.” The conclusion was inescapable. “We should have reported it.”

  Tom just shrugged. Nothing for it.

  Bill wheeled the TV out after lunch and listened to the soap operas. The Guiding Light. Brought to you by Ivory soap. The only washday powder that comes in flakes like snow.

  The Nurse came in. “Mr. Davison,” she said. “It doesn’t look like it’ll be too long now. Do you want to be there?”

  Anything less would be cowardice.

  “Yeah,” he replied, nodding.

  This time, led by the Nurse, it was a short walk to the hospital ward. Somewhere a radio was blaring. Voice talking. Music started up, some Christmas song or another, ghostly, echoing. It ended. The voice talked again, radio voice, soothing, phony. They opened the door.

  Dorothy looked emerald green, and it seemed there was no breath at all.

  “She’s real weak,” whispered the Nurse and left them alone.

  Down the hall, the music from the radio started up again.
Bill had heard the piece before. It was real old and sounded kind of creaky with just a couple of instruments and lots of people singing together.

  Hallelujah. Hallelujah.

  Bill had time to think: That’s it, that’s the song she sings all the time. Then Dotty was singing too.

  Hallelulah! She sang. Only she pronounced it like a child.

  Hally hoo hah! Hally hoo hah!

  Bill felt his breath go as still as the air in the underheated ward. The voice was clear and strong, pure as a river, though her eyes were closed and tubes were taped into her nostrils.

  She sang it over and over.

  Hally hoo hah! Hally hoo hah!

  Bill didn’t know much about music, but he knew it was a voice that could have sung opera. Oh, Dotty, thought Bill. How could you sing like that and no one know?

  They didn’t ask me, he remembered her saying. And she seemed to go on to say, You didn’t ask me.

  One thin and withered arm was lifted up.

  For the Lord God Omnipotent reigneth!

  The Nurse came back in. “What is going on?” she demanded.

  “She’s singing,” said Bill, helpless. “She used to sing in church.”

  The arm punched the air. Dotty was smiling as if in her sleep. The words began to weave back and forth, and Dotty lit on them where she would, like a bird.

  The Kingdom of this World . . .

  For the Lord God . . .

  Hally hoo hah!

  Reigneth!

  “Do you believe in miracles?” asked the Nurse. Her face was hard, and she was chewing gum.

  “Yes,” said Bill.

  “Well, you’re seein’ one. She shouldn’t even be able to breathe hardly.”

  The arms folded themselves up like the wings of a scrawny chicken. Dotty kept on singing: King of Kings. Lord of Lords. Bill and the Nurse watched in silence. There was no one else to see or hear.

  Bill took Carol to the service. There wasn’t going to be one, but Bill offered to pay for it, and the local undertaker, inspired by his example, donated his labor. It was not held in the Home, but in the local crematorium. Bill’s preacher, Reverend Carey, gave the sermon.

  It was overheated to the point of discomfort. The mourners tried to slip discreetly first from out of their winter coats and then their sweaters. Tom Heritage brought some of the Angels with him. They shuffled along the pews looking utterly and completely lost. Heritage saw Bill, smiled, waved and ushered some of the old people to their seats next to Carol. They smelled of medicine and confinement. They saw Carol try to smile at them and saw her draw back, and they stared at her like frightened children, their jaws slack.

  The Preacher told the story of Job, of faithfulness in suffering. Reverend Carey had listened to Bill and had understood that the old woman was in some way religious. Bill was trying to attend, but his mind kept wandering.

  It had fallen to Bill to sort through Dorothy’s possessions. She had two: the old green pioneer dress she was wearing now and another dress. At first Bill had not known what it was. It was tiny and crisp like an old leaf, brown, but made of lace. He had peeled apart its layers to find that it was a child’s dress. It had once been covered in sequins. The child’s dress was in the coffin with her.

  So was the book. Bill had never had a chance to give it to her. Its ashes would now mingle with hers. It was just a kids’ book, but Bill had read the first few pages and remembered them. There was so much in them that was like things Dot had told him about her life.

  Dorothy lived in the midst of the great Kansas prairies, with Uncle Henry, who was a farmer, and Aunty Em, who was the farmer’s wife. Their house was small, for the lumber to build it had to be carried by wagon many miles.

  Dot had said they kept pork cool in holes in the ground, sealed in earthenware jars full of lard. They wiped the lard off and fried the meat in heavy skillets that were protected against rust by leaving on the fat. Women wore the same woolen dress all winter and just changed the apron.

  There were four walls, a floor and a roof, which made one room; and this room contained a rusty looking cooking stove, a cupboard for the dishes, a table, three or four chairs, and the beds.

  Airplanes, Bill thought, airplanes and radio and movies. She never saw anything like that come in. She was in the Home, instead. Like she was safe from it.

  The Preacher was asking them to sing a hymn. There was a rustling of paper as people found it in the book. The music started too soon.

  Oh God our help in ages past

  Our hope for years to come . . .

  The Angels looked lost. They couldn’t find the place in the book—or even the book itself. Carol was trying to be nice and help one of them, her smile fixed and thin, but the old woman next to her had frail hands that mumbled the pages aimlessly while her eyes were fixed on the mystery of Carol’s young face, with its short, slightly bouffant hair and its magenta lips. One of the male Angels was singing, very loudly, in a bellowing, tuneless voice:

  Home, home on the range!

  Bill thought of the book.

  When Dorothy stood in the doorway and looked around, she could see nothing but the great gray prairie on every side. Not a tree nor a house broke the broad sweep of flat country that reached the edge of the sky in all directions.

  Drapes were pulled back. The coffin began to move. People kept singing.

  Even the grass was not green . . .

  The coffin was swallowed up. Carol wasn’t singing. Bill could tell from the rigid way Carol was standing that she was holding her breath. Bill felt sweat trickle from his ears onto his collar. The curtains closed. It’s like the old days, Bill thought, like the old days were being swallowed up as well. Nobody knows.

  When Dorothy, who was an orphan, first came to her, Aunt Em had been so startled by they child’s laughter that she would scream and press her hand upon her heart . . .

  Carol gave his hand a little tug, then a little shake. The organ finally stopped.

  The old man kept on singing, Home, home on the range. Billy, knowing that Carol wanted to leave, strode toward the lectern. Carol hastily gathered up her scarf and coat.

  It was Toto that made Dorothy laugh, and saved her from growing as gray as her other surroundings.

  Bill went up to Reverend Carey, shook his hand, thanked him, and offered him a lift. “No thanks, Bill,” said Reverend Carey, “came here in my own car.” He said hello to Carol, and Bill thanked him again.

  “I think Carol wants to go,” he said, his smile edgy.

  “Bill, I’m happy to stay,” said Carol.

  They walked in silence out of the crematorium. The corridor was the bleary kind of yellow or green that looks like vomit and there were echoes, of their feet, of dim voices, of the Angels being gathered up. The modern glass doors swung open and shut, and the air seemed to blast into their faces, tingling and cold.

  “Uhhhhh!” sighed Carol. “Feel that good, night air!” She smiled, bright-eyed, trying to be pert and full of pep.

  They drove home. Bill’s knuckles were white on the steering wheel and he couldn’t think why. Carol was silent and looking out the window.

  “I’m going to have to do something about all of this,” he said. It was a warning. He was saying: I will be going to work in places like that in the future.

  “Like what?” said Carol, in a tired voice. She still looked out the window at the snow. “What are you going to do? What can anyone do for them?”

  “I don’t know,” Bill said. He wanted to say something like: Make sure that they know somebody loves them. But he found he couldn’t say something like that to Carol.

  “Like maybe go to school or something,” he murmured.

  “You just got out of school,” Carol said, lacing the words with scorn. Going back to s
chool of any kind would be to surrender adulthood.

  “I mean, go to college or something. Study nights or stuff.”

  “Oh, that’s just great,” said Carol miserably.

  What am I supposed to do? Carol thought. Work my butt off in some beauty parlor while you hang around with a bunch of creepy college kids like Muffy Havis? And then what? Then I’d have to spend my life with people like in there this afternoon. But Carol couldn’t say that to Billy.

  None of this was normal. Maybe she wasn’t normal. Carol knew what was normal in situations like this. You were supposed to be warm and helpful and understanding and talk sensibly about how they could get by while he studied. She should be telling him how proud of him she was. She wasn’t proud of him. The life he was offering would choke her.

  “Why can’t you just go and get a job at Mr. Hardie’s?” she asked him, pleading. A job like everyone else. “What’s wrong with staying in the Army, like your father?”

  People like you and me, Carol thought, we’re better off in something like the Army, Billy. I can see you in the Army. I can see me there with you.

  “There’s nothing wrong with it.” Billy looked impatient. There was a kind of light in his eyes that Carol didn’t like, couldn’t trust. “But I’d like . . . I don’t know. I’d like some kind of qualification.”

  Big heart, thought Carol. If you’ve got such a big heart, what about saving some of it for me?