A Prayer for the Dying

by Stewart O'Nan

  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 t
o 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.

  Maybe you are a fool. You remember what your mother used to say about Reverend Toomey: a holy fool is still a fool. It’s not true, you think, not completely. Funny how you never agree to anything, keep that last piece of yourself back. Is it prudence or faithlessness—and does it matter to anyone but you?

  The trees give way to Main Street, the sun hot on your hair. Fenton’s out in his apron, dusting a rug over the hitching rail with a wire beater. You check the woman; she’s muttering, shrugging, arguing with herself. Yancey Thigpen’s mare is tied outside the livery, otherwise it’s quiet, only the steam pulsing up from the mill, the distant drone of the saws. Thaddeus draws the team even with Doc’s shingle. They stamp, their traces jingling, and you take the woman’s arm.

  “Thank you,” she says, stepping down.

  Across the street, Fenton’s stopped thumping the rug. You motion for Thaddeus to get the door. First he wipes his boots on the edge of the sidewalk, and you’re sorry for thinking poorly of him. The bell rings and you guide the woman inside.

  Doc’s parlor is empty and dark and smells of violets fresh from Irma’s garden. She picked out the furniture in Chicago, and no one wants to sit on it. Even the city woman’s impressed, inspecting the flocked wallpaper, the golden innards of the clock in its bell jar.

  “Hello,” you ask.

  “Be a minute,” Doc calls from the back, behind the curtain. He splashes water in a basin, bangs a cupboard shut.

  “It’s me,” you call. “I brought company.”

  He flings the curtain aside like a magician. He’s just gotten up, small and dapper in his pin-striped suit and stiff boiled shirt, hair parted in the middle and brilliantined, mustache waxed. People say he’s taken to fancy ways since marrying, but that’s jealousy. Irma’s from Milwaukee, a teacher at the state normal school, and a few families here with prettier daughters are still bitter. And he’s always been fastidious; he orders his shoes through the mail, buys his shirts ten at a time.

  “Oh my dear,” he says, noticing the woman, and goes over to her. She’s bigger than he is. “We’re not doing so well, are we?”

  “Careful there,” you say, and tell him how you found her.

  “Right,” he says, “I see,” more interested in her neck. “I don’t think that’s going to be a problem, do you?” he asks her.

  “No,” she says absently, all the fight gone out of her. “Thank you.”

  He tips her chin up to feel along her jaw, and you notice a bandage on his hand.

  You ask.

  “Just clumsy,” he shrugs. He gives Thaddeus a nod. The boy returns it, his hat in both hands, shy, polite. “Why don’t you bring the other fellow in? This may take a bit.”

  Thaddeus waits for you to move, and again you’re impatient with him.

  You forgot how hot it was, how bright. Fenton’s gone back inside, Yancey’s mare flinging her tail to drive off flies. You try to keep the burlap over the soldier, drag him across the back of the wagon like a sack, get him under the armpits. The boy just stands there.

  “Lend a hand there, if you would,” you say, not too hard, and Thaddeus takes his ankles.

  You walk backward, your heels searching for the edge of the sidewalk, the step up. You’re glad he’s not a fat one. You remember wrestling Mrs. Goetz onto the table in the cellar, turning your knee and cursing her, then that night praying for patience. What was it you said last week in your sermon—even the meanest work is a form of praise? No wonder Marta worries you’ll end up in the Colony, dancing jaybird naked in the woods, a candle in each hand.

  You shoulder the door open and the bell tinkles.

  “Hold on,” Doc calls, and bursts through the curtain with his shirtsleeves rolled. “Put him down.”

  “Here?”

  “Put him down,” he orders, almost scolding, and before you can give him a look, he says it again. “On the floor. Now.”

  “What is it?” you ask, but he’s pulled the burlap off and kneels by the man’s face—the sunken eyes and greening skin. He leans in close as a lover, slips a hand between the man’s teeth and pulls down his jaw.

  “That lamp,” he says, pointing, and you give it to him. He sets the glass chimney aside and lights it, holds it over the man’s face. Flecks of wheat stick in his whiskers. Doc’s fingers rummage around in his mouth, under his tongue, as if searching for a hidden jewel. Beside you, Thaddeus is transfixed.

  Doc stands up and fits the lamp back together. “Take him next door and try not to touch him too much.”

  “What is it?”

  “Just take him down the cellar for now. I’ll talk to you when I get her settled.”

  “She acting up?”

  “You could say that. Just get him down, will you? And make sure and wash up good, both of you.”

  “Okay,” you say, but hesitant, to let him know he’s being strange.

  You rearrange the burlap, pick the soldier up and walk backwards again, brushing the jamb, tottering down the walk one door to your place. It’s open, and as you maneuver through, you see Fenton over the boy’s shoulder, peering from his door.

  Thaddeus looks around your office at the empty cell, the rifles locked to the wall, the old posters. What an adventure he’s having; how jealous Marcus will be. And now you’re taking him down to a room the boys of Friendship whisper about, the boldest professing intimate knowledge around dying campfires.

  There’s nothing to see—the clay walls, the table with its gutter draining into a pail, a few casks of fluid, a miter by a stack of cured cedar cut to the three usual lengths. Your tools hang neatly on the rough beams, polished and gleaming in the lamplight. To him it must seem ghoulish, fantastic as Ali Baba’s cave. You want to tell him it’s a job, and not simply a necessary one, but a last opportunity to care for another person, to serve their family.

  You get the soldier onto the table. If it were just you, you’d strap him in and turn the crank so the whole thing would tilt, but the boy’s seen enough for one day. You thank him and he thumps up the stairs.

  “It’s cold down there,” he says, washing over the basin.

  “Stays the same the year round.” It’s an old trick, you want to tell him. A hundred years ago the French used it to summer their furs. In the winter you store Friendship’s dead down there, their coffins waiting for the ground to thaw out. You want to tell him about the conversations they have, the arguments over things long forgotten. You want to impress on him how many stories everyone has within them, how much each deat
h diminishes Friendship, especially with the young people leaving. But again, he’s done enough. And he’s young, you don’t expect him to understand. Outside, he lifts your bike over the side of the rig, and you thank him once more before he starts off.

  Yancey’s mare is gone, but John Cole’s sorrel and buckboard are hitched at Fenton’s. You slip into Doc’s as if for an afternoon chat.

  The parlor’s empty, in back the sound of water sloshing.

  “That you, Jacob?” he calls, and you answer. “I’ll just be a minute.”

  You slap the dust off your bottom before sitting on Irma’s love seat. You wonder what Doc saw. Usually he’ll take you into his examining room and go over the littlest detail with you, as if you’re a student. Maybe it was starvation, and he was too busy with the woman. You don’t believe it, the way the man pitched into the fire. When soldiers go hungry too long, they liberate food. And it’s not like Doc to boss you around. Make sure and wash up good, he said. This is the hard part of being a constable: when it comes to Friendship, you don’t like mysteries. You worry too much. It’s like Amelia’s colic; you want to be sure it’s normal, that in the morning you won’t find her blue and motionless in her crib.

  Doc comes in with his jacket on, his bandage missing. He takes a seat behind his desk without looking at you, leans back and crosses his legs—a city thing. He’s frowning, going over something in his mind, and you know not to interrupt.

  “You say the fellow’s pockets were turned out,” he asks.

  “Probably his traveling companion. Why, what is it?”

  “If I’m right,” he says, “diphtheria.”

  “Diphtheria,” you echo, trying it out in your mouth. Endeavor went through an epidemic a few years ago, took half the town. And Montello had that typhus that went through the tannery there, killed all those women. You’ll have to enforce quarantine, burn the dead’s possessions. But of the disease itself you’re mostly ignorant. It kills, that’s enough.

  “Don’t bother dressing him out,” Doc says. “Just get him in the ground. And be damned careful how you handle him.”