He knows how to do this from pure repetition. He has done it so many times before. To keep animals from suffering. Always, to stave away suffering. He fills up two. It takes a long time but his hands are steady. He realizes, as he finishes, that he had brought a gun as backup, and now the gun is gone, and that it has been stolen or lost, and that now he has only this, and he must do it right.
He remembers Esme saying, The moments of joy, when you connect with the Alzheimer’s patient, will get less frequent. It sounds like a poem. Then he remembers a memory. Of him telling himself something. Telling himself something important. Courage and fear and prayers. He remembers seeing Renny’s journal. THE SAD STORY OF RENNY AND BEN. He wonders what she was writing when she hunched over it and scratched something.
Something is hurting his foot. He puts the syringes in his pocket and sits on the toilet seat, pants still on. He takes off his shoe and—huh!—there is a piece of paper stuck to the bottom of his sock. Well, I’ll be. How’d that get there? INSTRUCTIONS FOR BEN CROSS, it says on the outside. It takes him a moment to figure out the words, but he can do it. It’s in his own handwriting and indeed he can even catch the fleeting memory of writing it, his own hand scratching out the marks in pencil. He cannot read well and holds it far from his eyes. Now he can see the words but they do not connect with a meaning in his mind. He shuts his eyes and says to his brain, please, and breathes in and out, quietly. But no. It’s not coming. He closes his eyes and begs. Begs.
Then there is a girl in the bathroom, and now he knows he is dying or that his brain is really gone. She is a dream or an angel. He didn’t get to do his job in time. He stays seated on the toilet, puts his head in his hands, and tries to ready himself for a good-bye to the soul of Ben Cross.
But when he opens his eyes, she is still there, holding the paper, reading in a whisper. At first he doesn’t understand and she reads it over and over like a song stuck on repeat, and finally he lets the confusion of it all go away and he closes his eyes and listens. As he does, he has a flicker of a memory. Writing this. What it means. He feels his heart tinker or flicker or something like glitter.
Instructions to Ben Cross:
Dear Ben,
You are a rancher in Colorado.
You had two daughters and you’ve lived a good life.
You have been a good man.
You have Alzheimer’s.
I just found that out about me. Heart broke. But I stayed strong and steady. Tell you what I’m gonna do, see.
I’m keeping this simple for you.
You don’t want to be like that horse that ran around, suffering. You deserve to go quick. Believe me. Trust me. I’ve been you my entire life, so trust me now. Do the following:
1. Pink juice
2. Fill syringe.
3. Directly into the heart. It will take two hands, lot of force. Think of the horses. You’ve done this many times with the big animals. So you can do it. Punch hard. This is the right thing to do. The main thing I have to tell you is: Do it. Don’t back out. Don’t forget. Do this thing.
Good luck, Ben. Be brave.
It’s been a good life.
Willows, orange in the winter and green in the summer.
Aspen trees.
Mountains.
Everyone has to die, Ben. No life without death. And your time is now, and it’s okay. Do it fast. Trust me.
RENNY
For once, something has gone her way. The 9-1-1 call goes through. She hears the operator, she hears her own voice yelp, “In car, blizzard, please, Ault, truck tipped,” and she hears, “Your name?” then the phone beeps, goes dead. She holds the phone as she stares out into the dark night, the snow lit up by one headlight.
Perhaps it is enough? Anton has told her stories before, of how they triangulate 9-1-1 calls, something she was impressed by even as she judged the poor moron who got himself in the situation that required it in the first place.
“For god’s sake,” she says aloud, meaning to get the attention of universe. “When is enough going to be enough?”
She finds that she’s sitting on the door and glass of the passenger side of the truck, leaning back against the edge of the seat, Satchmo clawing at her, whining and shaking. Her own butt is frozen—the cold seeps right in through the window—and she’s starting to shake. From fear or cold, she doesn’t know. She hopes fear. Fear doesn’t kill you.
She fingers the dog’s ears and jowls and whispers good dog good dog over and over. The sky is black except for the beams of the truck’s headlights, which is how she can see the snow rushing at her. The engine is off and the truck is cooling quickly. Amazing, how cold it’s become already. Amazing, how fast nature takes over.
The flashlight flicks off and the inside of the cab is surprisingly dark. She whacks the flashlight twice on the dashboard to make it work and then, in the light, twists this way and that way, grunting, heaving the dog momentarily to the side so she can reach the blanket under the seat. The blanket is from Mexico and has a beautiful bright pattern but is only minimally warm. She shoves it under her butt and folds the corners over her and Satchmo. Then she grabs the first aid kit that usually rests underneath the seat but has come to rest on the dash. Inside she finds a space blanket and she unwraps and unfolds the thin shiny material, but it seems ridiculous, unable to do the task for which it was designed. There’s nothing else useful in the kit, really, but she likes knowing it’s there.
From where she is huddled on the truck door and window, she stares at the keys dangling in the ignition. She should start the truck, but only if the exhaust isn’t blocked. And what about leaking fluids and gas? What if she explodes?
No, she doesn’t want to die by falling asleep and she doesn’t want to explode. She’d rather see it coming.
So this is it.
As her shivers become solid and constant, she feels the knowledge seep in. She doesn’t know how to prepare for it, to prepare for the darkness, to prepare for God or not-God. She wonders if the afterlife is made up of what you believe, which makes her think that she doesn’t even have a clear vision of what she hopes for. She remembers how Esme once brought in a Buddhist to teach meditation to the Alzheimer’s group, and she tries that now. Breathing in, peace. Breathing out, peace.
Also, that woman said to write a letter, she remembers now. A good-bye letter to life. She digs around the dash for a pen and grabs Ben’s Valentine’s Day card. Febuary 16/17, she writes on the soft pink paper on the back. She holds the flashlight in the crook of her neck and writes as fast as she can.
Dear Life, Dear Everyone:
It’s a little hard to write a good-bye letter to you, because I don’t want to go. That’s the truth of it. I want someone to acknowledge that this dying business is as bad as Lipton tea. Bitter and empty and nothing beautiful. No flavor, no spice. No one wants it. At least without a little lemon and sugar, as in, something beautiful to hold on to. But none is provided. Thanks a lot, Universe.
But you, those whom I love, you were spice and flavor. I thank you for that. So was the ranch. I hope you know that. If not, I’m telling you now.
I know that there is no life without death. So here goes.
I think I tried pretty hard. I think I tried to rise to the occasion of life. Maybe I failed, but it often seemed as if I was tired from trying.
I think it’s a little unfair and unkind that all of humanity has been left so alone in this regard. That we have no solace, no answers. I think it’s hard that we’re so alone in this. I feel very alone. I don’t say that to make you feel bad. You’ll be alone too someday. It’s the nature of this.
She thinks she probably ought to wrap it up, but, on the other hand, she’s got to occupy herself with something. There’s nothing to be done. There’s nothing she can do. She’s trapped and claustrophobic in a small truck in a huge blizzard. She closes her eyes and lets the tears force themselves out of the eyelids. Writing will keep the panic at bay. So she keeps going.
Ray was h
orrible. What he did to us was horrible. But I love all the rest of you. Carolyn and Jess and Billy and Leanne and Jack and Ben and the friends and neighbors we have. I’m sorry for any meanness I ever threw at you, I hope you’ll remember anything nice I ever did. I’ll miss you. If dead people can miss. I’ll miss the clouds when they boil up over the mountains. I’ll miss Jess on her horse. I’ll miss watching the birds nest in spring and watching the mama and dad bird bring them food, one after the other.
I tried. Love to you all. Renny.
And by now, her hand is shaking and the last words are hardly legible. Her whole body is shaking, and about every half minute, the shakes turn into a convulsion. Here goes, she thinks. Here goes. She puts down the flashlight and tries to breathe in peace, but all she can feel is the fear, a disgusting roar of cowardly fear that sounds as loud as the wind. They’re both howling and whistling like a creature that is alive, like a devil, like something ready to kill her. She is shaking and cannot stop. Howling like all meanness, like the hurt of a daughter in the ground, like the wasted life of living on a ranch with a man who didn’t love her, who got sick and needed her anyway. Howling and howling.
This dying business, she writes in the margin. It’s not what I thought it would be. Sorry about Satchmo. We’re both shaking. I thought it would be a little more settled and kind than this.
She holds Satchmo to her, tight. Looks out at the dark night. She’s seen it happen to calves and to colts. The shaking as the body cools and tries to warm itself. Ben did love her. Ben loved her despite her hardness. He saw her spirit, saw something to appreciate about it. What would she do if she lived? She wants to complain about her grandchildren’s behavior. She wants to see her family on holidays and she even wants them to mess up her house. She hadn’t thought it through before, but she thinks it through now. She wants to die in the company of friends and family whom she has been kind to. She wants Ben there, the old Ben. God, how she loved how he quietly looked at the world. How he would smile and see all the way through her yapping.
Where did she get the ridiculous notion that people lived a full life and then died in peace? She didn’t know she was going to die with a broken heart. Die with so much hurt. Why did she think it was the other way around? Whatever gave her that stupid idea?
She leans over and vomits behind the seat, trying to avoid the dog, and then she places her hands on her heaving stomach muscles to calm them.
She is so cold. And so this is it? Yes, this is it. She will die of exposure.
The knowledge comes at her like a big dust cloud, just like in the photos of the dust bowl of her infancy, a big billowy dark cloud. Just like Ben’s brain, she knows now. She can see it coming. Death. Death is the dust cloud, boiling and roiling over the wind-seared plains outside her window. She can’t see out there. She can’t see anything, because the snow has picked up and the headlights are covered and buried now. The dog whines. She is shivering huge shivers that aren’t even shivers as much as they are spasms.
She turns off the flashlight and leans her head back. She doesn’t need it now so much anyway. The daylight is slowly working its way into being.
She should move. She should force herself to do one last thing. She should dig out her headlights. She pauses to consider the logistics of this, to think through the steps. She realizes that this is what Ben has to do about everything—think through the steps. By god, if he’s been doing that for who knows how long, she can do this one thing. The only problem is she can’t tell if it’s a good idea or not. Because her brain is slowed and not working. Would her smart self leave the car to dig out headlights? She doesn’t know. And knows that she doesn’t know.
She grunts and heaves herself up into a crouched position, moves her hands around to get some circulation going, and she tries the cell phone again but there is no signal. But she made the first call, right? Didn’t she? She feels confused and slow, as if in a fog, but she remembers Anton telling her another story about how they located a drunk farm kid who had wandered off from his crushed truck but had made a call—something about an emergency locating ping. She likes that word, ping. And they had found and saved the kid, hadn’t they?
She bends down, finds the leather gloves that are always in the glove compartment, wraps the space blanket around her. She doesn’t want Satchmo to go running off in the blizzard—the least she can do is try to save the dog—and she crouches upright again. She thinks the truck might rock or move, and so she pushes her body forward, but it doesn’t move in the slightest. It has been planted firmly sideways in the snow. She reaches up and clicks the ignition, enough to engage the automatic windows, and she depresses the driver’s side window, but it gets stuck and so she grabs on to the pane and pushes and in comes the wind, howling. The dog starts whining and barking.
She sees a bag of old beef jerky at her feet, and bends down carefully in the small space to get it. She pushes some into her mouth and sprinkles the rest around the dog. “Stay!” she whispers.
She reaches out with both arms, braced on the frame of the door, and heaves herself up. The cold sucks the breath right out of her and burns her face. It takes her three tries—she’s not as strong as she used to be, she’s old for cripes sake—and finally she finds herself flopped on her belly on the truck’s door. She’s not so sure about this. This is the wrong thing to do. Stupid. But dying in the truck. She’d rather die outside. Think, Renny, think. Once she throws her feet over she’ll land in snow. That will be fine. But she won’t be able to get herself back in. And yet. The lights. If only the headlights were bright and clear—then someone could see her—there’s a chance. She can blink them on and off and off and on. Someone, somewhere, will see her.
“It’s a gamble,” she pants. But still she can’t decide. Go out or go back in? People die when they leave their cars. People die when they stay in their cars. She should decide quickly. She needs to make a decision and stick with it.
She’s been hardening her heart—she can see that—for years. So that she wouldn’t mourn Ben too deeply. She’d lost him when their daughter died. She’d lost him when she had blamed him for not tackling Ray in time. She’d lost him at the trial, when they watched Ray be sentenced and knew it would never be enough. She’d lost him when he withdrew into himself. She’d lost him when he built his own cabin on the opposite end of the ranch and, without a word, moved himself in. She’d lost him so many times already that perhaps she’d come to believe he was already dead.
The wind is smacking into her face, and it snaps her awake. She’ll go out, shovel the headlights out, and then get back in. She’ll move fast, one surefooted trip, and it will be her one act of courage, to at least give it a good try.
She slides off the door and into the snow. Immediately, she feels attacked. She can’t fully open her eyes, she can’t fully move forward in a straight line.
With head ducked and eyes open only a slit, she tries to step away from the truck. Satchmo is barking and trying to claw out and she yells STAY but is pretty sure all words get lost in the roar.
She thought Ben was going to die last night. She knew about the pink juice, she knew about the syringe, she assumed he had two syringes because a needle might break, as they often did. She knew he was capable of this, how he would want to go. She didn’t know if he’d give himself the injection in bed or sneak out to the back pasture. All along, she figured he’d wait until spring, though, if not to see the flowers and the greening, but at least to make the burial easier. But after the cemetery today—was that today? Was that centuries ago?—after his weeping, after her weeping, she had assumed it was time. That he was going to take his life.
It hadn’t occurred to her that he might have another plan. That he might want to face down Ray. That he might be planning to kill Ray. Could that be?
She stumbles through the snow, doubled over to keep the shards of snowflakes from piercing her skin. Funny, she thinks, how much snow can hurt, how the sheer force makes each bit pierce her skin.
/> In front of the truck, she reaches up to clean off the top headlight that is crusted over. Immediately a beam of light shoots over her into the cloudy light. She has done it. Then she bends down to shovel out—with her hands—the snow that has piled up around the one that is buried. Two beams of light. Two.
The sun is about to rise, or has perhaps even started, and until then, in the dark, she has this.
She remembers Jess, her quiet sullen granddaughter, who once whispered, He’s not dead yet, Grandma, he’s in there, and Renny had demanded, What, what did you say? and Jess had shrugged and refused to answer. She knew then that Jess was right.
She is panting now, and hot, and drops the blanket to the ground. Her skin feels as if it’s overheating, as if it’s on fire. She needs to get her clothes off. She doesn’t know if Ben made it to Greeley before the storm or not. But once there, what would he do? Find Ray?
Maybe it was just instinct. Operating like she is now. A little uncertain, but by god, going to give it one strong try before going.
She wants so much to know what Ben was thinking, she wants so much to be the sort of woman who was warm enough to have curled next to Ben and listened to his plans, warm enough that he would have shared his secret. This one and all the other secret workings of his heart and mind. She wishes so much she could hold him one more time.
Don’t be such a coward. That’s what she wanted to tell Carolyn the other day, when she realized Carolyn was going to Mexico simply to escape. But now she understands. Ray’s release has set loose an invisible and horrible wind. Ben will get caught in the wind, she knows it. Ben is perhaps the only one, in fact, who will stand up to that wind.
She wipes the tears. “I don’t want to die yet,” she says to the bright light that is now shining directly on her. Then she is on her knees, hunched over, convulsing into the snow.
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