A Prayer for the Dying

by Stewart O'Nan

  The church bell strikes nine, and Chase looks up. “I better be going.” He frowns and composes himself, pockets the hanky and stands. “They’ll be waiting on me.”

  He’s right. Outside, the women are piled into the back of the wagon with their sacks and bags and boxes, talking. They’ve done a week’s shopping in less than twenty minutes. Their efficiency frightens Marta; she likens them to ants—mindless, dutiful. As Chase climbs on, they go through their purses, fishing up bills and handfuls of change. The woman closest to him collects everything and presents it to him. He stands to fit it into his wallet, then sits and takes the reins. You can see the line where the team’s sweat has dried, the dark sheen where their hair has absorbed it. The smell makes you take a step back.

  “I’ll be by tomorrow morning,” he tells Doc. “If anything should happen, I’d be grateful if you’d send word.”

  “I can take care of that,” you say, pleased to finally be of some help.

  “I’m obliged,” Chase says, and before he flicks the reins, he reaches down and shakes first Doc’s hand and then yours. Together, you watch them off.

  “Man’s an idiot,” Doc says inside.

  “Seemed genuine to me,” you say, and you’re surprised to find yourself defending him.

  “I’m not saying that,” Doc says. “He can bawl all he wants. I just got through telling him not to touch her, and what does he do?”

  “It’s only natural.”

  Doc harrumphs. He examines his palm, glaring at the cut.

  “How is it?”

  “Better,” he says, and turns it over, moves the paperweight, stewing.

  “You think he did it just to get your goat.”

  “Could be. Or some other reason. You never know with those types.”

  You want to challenge him, ask him exactly what he means by those types, but the argument’s old, there’s no point. You already know. He means people who let their faith take the place of their reason, people who believe this world is just a prelude to another, more glorious life. He means people like you.

  *

  The afternoon goes slowly. Even inside the air is thick and smells of dust. You sit at your desk, dealing hands of red dog to imaginary gamblers. A wood bee worries the frame of the cell’s one window. You think of walking over to the old depot to ask Harlow Orton to wire Bart and ask if he’s seen your tramp. You’re betting he hasn’t. It’s uncharitable, but you can’t shake the feeling that Meyer turned out the dead man’s pockets. Men get desperate and drift into sin. You fold a pair of threes and discover you would’ve won. Shuffle, deal. At home Marta’s probably worried about you. Maybe you’ll take a ride over. But you won’t. You’re supposed to be here, so you are.

  You’re here when Millie Sullivan rolls up in her buckboard. She doesn’t even hop off.

  “It’s Clytie,” she says, meaning their milk cow’s out again. Clytie’s breachy, and as strayward it’s your job to fetch her back. You do this for Millie once a week, telling her to mend the fence or you’ll fine her, though she knows you won’t. It’s just her and Elsa out on the Endeavor Road, two widow ladies who married brothers. There’s no blood between them but they fight like family. The last time you were called out because Elsa had stuck a fork an inch into Millie’s arm—over what you’re not sure. With Elsa it could be anything; she thinks demons live in the woods and doesn’t leave the house. She accuses Millie of coveting her money, of slowly poisoning her. There are rumors of a bag in a mattress, jars full of silver dollars lining the shelves of the root cellar. They’re untrue, just the usual box-social claptrap. The only thing they own is Clytie, and they can’t even keep ahold of her.

  “I’ll come get her,” you say, but Millie’s not listening. She’s already turning the buckboard around in the middle of Main Street. You toe the spittoon aside and close your door, then hop on your bike. The way she babies her team you’ll beat her there.

  The cranberry bogs west of town are parched, burned brown. Dragonflies slice by, wings shimmering. It’s good to be moving, and you stand up on the pedals and race a scarlet tanager, winning when he lights on a fencepost, but even as you slow, letting the breeze cool you, you know you’re trying not to think of the soldier, of the awful possibilities. Marta always scolds you for your ability to ignore the least thing painful, your sudden, incongruous bursts of cheer. Now you think she’s right. Sometimes you envy the Hermit’s life, the simplicity of speaking only to ducks, water, sky. What a comfort it must be not to care, to be ignorant of your neighbor’s worries. Insane, true, but a relief.

  The house looks deserted when you ride up, as it always does. Out front the roses are overgrown, twining up the porch; the grass is thigh-high and yellow from the sun, Queen Anne’s lace mixed in. You’ll have to talk to Fred Lembeck, convince him to take a scythe to the yard. You peer up at Elsa’s window, the curtains hanging limp. She must be in bed. Must be hot up there under that tin roof. Still, better being shut up in an invalid room than the state hospital. You went to Mendota once, taking an escaped patient, a woman with a mania for breaking windows. You still remember the screaming, how it echoed off the stone—the sores on the woman’s ankles, the bone showing through. Millie’s right to keep her here.

  You lean your bike against the shady side of the porch, then walk around back past the grape arbor and inspect the fence.

  The whole length of it is busted up, posts knocked cockeyed, rails’ edges splintered and skinned down to the blond heart of the wood. Looks like someone took a sledge to it, or a bunch of someones. The Ramsay boys, you think, remembering last Halloween when they swabbed the fence with creosote and set it on fire. One post is knocked clean over, the hole busy with ants. What did they use? You don’t see any sledge marks. There’s a tuft of something caught on one of the rails. Black hair, short like a dog’s. Farther down there’s another clump, and a splash of blood. It’s sad, but you wouldn’t put it past the Ramsays to torture the poor beast. You can see her hoofprints on the road, and on the far side a snapped sapling where she shouldered into the woods.

  Millie rattles up in the buckboard, and you head back to the house, winding between Clytie’s hardening pies. Grasshoppers pop. Their kitchen garden is withered, the squash tiny and rotting on the vine. You look to the sky hopefully; it’s so clear it’s nearly white, the sun directly overhead. You know it rained a few weeks ago, but you can’t picture it out here—the drops making the leaves nod, the barrel frothing to the top, overflowing.

  “How’s your well holding out?” you ask Millie.

  “I’m careful with it,” she says, as if you’ve accused her. You’ll never get used to her defensiveness, her refusal to see you as a friend. You’re the only one who comes out here, maybe the only person she sees all week. You’d want to talk, catch up on gossip; you’d invite yourself in, fix a little teacake the way Mrs. Paulsen does, hobnob in the parlor.

  “She gone off through there,” Millie points.

  “I’ll find her.”

  “Make sure and lock her in the stall when you’re done,” she says, and creaks up the porch stairs, a hand on the peeling railing. Her curtness is nothing new, but you’re always hopeful, always ready to step into people’s lives. It’s the best part of being a deacon, pastoral care. Just seeing how people get along day to day is enough to balance out the hard truths of your other jobs. It’s all one, you like to say, but don’t lie, you have your favorites.

  This isn’t one of them. Clytie reminds you of those horses you owe your life to, the ones your regiment ate raw from the inside out those long weeks, sleeping between their empty ribs while the Reb shells whined all night. Clytie makes you think of the nameless friends you had to load into wagons like sides of meat, of how small you are, how weak. You’re more comfortable with animals smaller than you—dogs and cats, animals capable of showing love—and this is a failing, you think. You need to embrace all creation, not just the easy parts.

  You drape your jacket over a post, strip the top of t
he sapling for a switch and start off into the woods. The track’s clear—grass crushed under hooves, the bent heads of ferns. It’s cooler in the shade, moss spotting the sides of the trees, beds of trillium. Bark torn off, another clump of hair. You try not to brush up against anything; you’re wearing a new shirt, and Marta’s tired of you ruining them.

  On one trunk you find a swipe of blood, and again you think of the Ramsays, their history with slingshots, the windows you’ve made their mother pay for. You imagine Clytie missing an eye, weeping runnels of blood. Children aren’t cruel, just curious. Like scientists, they just want to see how things work, what might happen.

  There’s blood on the grass, splashed across the face of a daisy. You stop to listen, thinking she might be close. Birds chirping, the rustle of a chipmunk. Frog lunk. Nothing.

  You follow the drips along a stony wash, across an orange bed of pine needles. The trail passes an old campfire circle, a ring of stones, and you think of your tramp. It’s tinder back here, logs rotted to dry mush. Any other summer this would be marsh, the black mud sucking at your boots. Even the ferns are yellow. A stray ember from the late freight and the whole woods could go up.

  More blood. Dark puddles of it in the dust, bright swatches on leafy weeds. Flies take a last taste before lifting into the air. The Ramsays must have cut her throat. Again, it reminds you of Kentucky, searching for your gut-shot buddies, following the same livid trails. You steer clear of the blood, saving your pants. You whip the switch and it sings.

  Ahead, hidden by a little hillock, there’s a cracking of sticks.

  Stop. Crows scolding in the trees. A single, sweeter chirp. Then the cracking again, snapping, brush thrashing.

  It’s her, and without thinking, before you even see her, you circle around to your left, trying to get behind her so you can drive her back toward the road. Keep to the soft, sweet pine duff, try to be quiet. Like war, half of this job is tactics. The thrashing grows louder, as if she’s rolling around or caught in a snare. Closer, you can hear her wet snorts—she’s been running. You crouch down; you don’t want to spook her, send her charging off again. Doc’s going to need you in town. You wonder how the woman from the Colony’s doing. You’ve got better things to do than clean up the Ramsays’ mischief.

  You reach the lip of the hillock. You’re so close you can smell her, the rich musk of dung. Her breathing’s slowed now, wheezing like a bellows. She’s not young, Clytie. It makes you think of Doc, how someday you’ll have to tend to him, but you shrug it off before you finish the thought, before you can picture it.

  You’ll have to trim his mustache, clip the stray nose hairs. Be as neat as he is.

  The brush crackles, and you swear you hear her grunt, like a man lifting something heavy. Then a dull thud and a rustle of branches. Gasps, more snorting.

  “All right,” you say, and stand, switch in hand, as if she might surrender to weapons.

  She doesn’t turn to you. They’ve beaten her about the head. Her muzzle’s foamy with blood, a beard of bubbles dripping from her lips. There’s blood on the grass all around her. She’s shaky on her legs, she’s fouled herself. Her eyes are locked on a tree a few feet in front of her; it’s splintered, the bark chopped and dark with blood.

  “Ho!” you cry, but she pays no attention. “Ho, Clytie!”

  She rears, then drives forward, lunges at the trunk. She tucks her head down and rams it.

  The collision sounds like a dull ax striking, echoes through the empty woods. The leaves shake; a few fall. Her rear swings around and she twists, falling sideways onto a patch of grass.

  She tries to get up but one leg’s caught underneath her. She lifts it, and it’s in two pieces. The hoof dangles below the knee like a broken fishing pole. She walks on it, stumbling, crushes it so the bone drives through. She limps back to take another run at the tree, stands there tilted, the skin of the leg a black rag, snorting, her nostrils blowing bubbles of blood.

  Mad then. Not the Ramsays. And you think of the woman in the field, how some form of madness must accompany the sickness. Is that diphtheria? You’ll have to ask Doc.

  Clytie hawks froth, but this isn’t Clytie. Now you wish it was the Ramsays. You drop the switch. You unsnap your holster and check the cylinder. You’ve got to get a little closer, get a clean shot at the heart. The head’s messy, you’ve learned that at least twice in your life.

  Clytie pants, resting for the next charge. If she would just fall over, you think, but you know she won’t. The tree’s just as smashed up as the fence.

  “Ho!” you call, and step out of the brush.

  She doesn’t turn, and you walk straight for her, the gun out in front of you like a divining rod. You cock the hammer, feel the trigger dig into your finger. Her head is huge, the skin gashed and livid. Her eye rolls, picking you up. You see her as a massive deer, her heart lodged just below the shoulder. You let off three shots, and she’s still looking at you, her giant eye taking you in, accusing.

  You have three more. You hope and hope, there in the bright clearing, the sun cutting through to settle hot on the back of your hand, but she stands there breathing, stunned, unsure who you are.

  You raise the barrel, sight on her eye, the black dot a target. A breeze floats through and the shadows dance across her face. Just one shot. You don’t feel it now, but later you know you’ll see this as merciful. Now you’re not so sure. Why agonize? It’s a responsibility, not a choice. But you do. More for yourself, you think; this hesitation’s a luxury in the face of another’s pain. You shrug the thought off, still clinging to some dream of innocence, blamelessness, even as you release it. You turn back to this world. You do what’s right.

  3

  Days go by, and nothing. Town’s quiet, the middle of the week a hammock you sink into. The county’s busy with threshing. Nobody on the road, only the wail of the late freight. Stones clunk in your spokes. You pour kerosene on Clytie, recite a few well-chosen lines and touch a spunk to her, and the smoke rolls up through the birches, the leaves spinning silver.

  You talk with Doc about a quarantine, but he doesn’t want to chance a panic. The woman from the Colony worsens; her mumbling drifts in the hall, seeps through the curtain into the dim parlor. Lydia Flynn, Doc has to prompt you. You can’t remember her name, only her rolling eyes, her glazed, crazy speech. Chase comes every morning, bringing biscuits and casseroles she can’t eat. Doc won’t let him in the room, so he sits with you, worried as a new father, his hat in his lap.

  Summer days long as the old post road and twice as dry. At lunch you go home and visit Marta. You sweep the jail, keep the cellar neat. You sit at your desk and deal losing hands to yourself, go out on the sidewalk and squint into the afternoon. Take your bike and fly between the high fields. Hawks, sun, blue.

  Worry rolls inside you like a wheel. What’s the connection between Clytie and the tramp? The woman from the Colony? How long till it hits town? Or will it pass by, suddenly veer into the fields like a twister?

  Marta stays inside all day. “Everyone else is out,” she argues, pointing to the window, the oak-shaded street. You don’t fight, it’s just a complaint she wants you to register.

  “I know,” you say, but don’t explain, take a bite of pie.

  Neither does she ask you to, your combined silence fearful, tinged with guilt. Shouldn’t you tell everyone what’s coming? You conjure Doc, the idea of needless panic, hysteria. It’ll come soon enough.

  At night Marta takes you to her, and in the morning Amelia clutches your pantleg, rides your knee, giggling. A paper man shows up and glues a shaky masterpiece to the side of Ender’s bridge—leering clowns and slope-browed elephants; the Ringling Brothers are coming in two weeks. The County Record expects the weather to turn in time to save tomato season. Marta holds the door and waves goodbye; you’ve told her to lock it behind you, but when she does it’s a loss, a betrayal of your faith. Outside, riding to town, you marvel at the bounty of the trees, the hills, the endless invention
set before you, but inside the jail, your boots crossed on the desk, you know you’re just waiting.

  You go to Doc, hoping he can soothe you, tell you Friendship’s lucky, that you’ve dodged it this time. His parlor’s dark, cool as a fruit cellar.

  “Wait and see,” he says. “Wait and see.”

  You do. You tick the hours off on your railroad watch, then pump the handcar out to Cobb’s tunnel, climb the winding path and stand on top facing west, the green humps of hills running to a hazy infinity. The late freight’s on time, the plume a gray exclamation in the distance, so far off you can’t hear it. Then the chuffing, the throaty steam. A long one, lots of hoppers. Wheat. You follow it until it’s under you, the hill shaking as it plunges through the tunnel, the cloud passing over you like a warm rain. And then it’s gone, hissing in the distance, finally quiet, just a shadow moving toward town and the horizon, down the line to Shawano. You wonder if Bart’s seen any cases yet, hope not. But what if that means it’s missed Friendship? You wouldn’t trade someone else’s happiness for your own, no, but if you had to choose?

  You don’t. And you cling to that on your way down the switchbacked path as if it’s some kind of wisdom, though you know it’s the opposite.

  Back in town, someone’s filched a jackknife from the General. Fenton shows you the velveteen gap in the display case, fuming, confused. No one’s been in today except for one of Chase’s women, and Harlow Orton to bring a wire, and he was there no more than a minute and right beside him the whole time.

  “How long’s it been missing?” you ask.

  Fenton can’t remember when he checked last.

  “What color was it?”