A Prayer for the Dying

by Stewart O'Nan

  What did she do with Amelia?

  Waited. Attended her.

  Yes, but that didn’t work.

  You want to run back to town and ask Doc, but he’s not there, he’s out helping someone else.

  For a minute you stand there, stuck, unsure, then go into the kitchen and paw through the larder. A half rasher of bacon, some potatoes. You dig a few splits of stovewood from the bin and get them going, lay the bacon in a skillet. When the fat turns gray you flip it and start chopping the potatoes. Take your jacket off, it’s too hot. Get the whole mess cooking, the grease washing over everything. Not elegant, but it’s all the army taught you.

  “Not all,” you say, seeing the dark of those nights.

  You look in on her before sitting down to the table. Still asleep, breathing.

  You say grace with your hands clasped above your plate.

  It’s awful, sodden with grease, and after a few bites you quit. Eat the bacon with your fingers, remembering the bloody strips of flesh, the cries in the night.

  Drop it on the plate. Dump the plate in the scrap bucket. There’s whiskey in the cupboard; the root cellar’s full of hard cider and ginger beer.

  You walk through the rooms of the house. The empty crib sends you to the backyard. The crab apple bows. The sun’s going down and it’s all in shadow, and you kneel there like a man checking on his garden, inspecting the leaves for chinch bugs. The dirt in the corner is dried and cracked, an ant struggling across it, carrying another ant bent double. Glance over the fences on both sides; there’s no one. You press your hand to the cool earth as if spreading it on her chest, close your eyes.

  What do you see when you remember her? Marta bathing her in the tub, a hand cupping her head. Playing on the floor, holding her above you and watching her tiny feet kick. Her one tooth.

  She never said a word.

  Open your eyes and it seems darker, dusk settling above the oaks. Bats flap, or are those swallows?

  Stand up and go inside, light the lamp. Think of whiskey, then dismiss it. You’ve seen enough drunken fools make a mess of the cell, then wake the next day cradling their heads.

  You go in to Marta, go get the rocker from the nursery and sit there in the dark, listening. Close your eyes. Notice how it’s never totally quiet, how the very air seems to have a sound. Or is that you? When she wakes up, you think, she’ll be hungry.

  Not with a fever.

  “When the fever breaks,” you say.

  It didn’t break with Amelia. Why should it break with her?

  Because she’s older, grown.

  So was Lydia Flynn.

  You don’t know why. It will. Have faith.

  Those nights in Kentucky, you promised Him everything. Just get me through this and the rest of my life is Yours. You could hear the Rebs calling across the water, taunting, and the little Norwegian beside you coughing. He’d been weak since the beginning, riddled with consumption, and you kept him alive, fed him that horse piece by filthy piece till you stripped it to the hooves. And still the shells tore over, sent rocks and clods of mud from the cliffs thumping down around you. You scratched the days into the dirt like a prisoner till you snapped your knife trying to pry the meat out of a knee joint like an oyster. You remember the captain calling roll in the dark, and the scattered responses, less every night. And then he stopped calling. The water ran by, high from the rains. The Reb fires popped on the far shore. Laughter, a fiddle scratching.

  A mouse scuttles in the kitchen, and you open your eyes. Darkness. Marta. How long have you been sitting here?

  Check your watch. She’s still asleep—probably best for her. Tomorrow you’ve got a lot to do. Go into the sitting room and blow out the lamp.

  Get in beside her. She’s hot from being under the feather tick all day. Kiss her cheek and lie back and read the ceiling. Wonder how the fire line’s going, if it’s reached the canal. Old Meyer out there on the Shawano road, alone.

  You know you won’t sleep.

  Why don’t you pray?

  You already have.

  Who would have thought you’d turn bitter? Of all people.

  And so you roll over and whisper another prayer into your pillow. Not because you’re too proud to admit you’re wrong. Not because you’re afraid. Because you can’t change who you are.

  *

  Cyril rings eight people the next day. The fire moves to the west. Marta sleeps in her fever. You touch a wet cloth to her lips, lay it on her forehead. She doesn’t stir, only a delicate pulse at her neck, the blue lump of a vein. A hard crab apple has fallen on Amelia’s grave. You gouge it with a fingernail, then pitch it into the bushes. Make beans and bacon for yourself, have a ginger beer. When you check on Marta, you purposely don’t look too close. Why? Won’t your faith save you?

  The next morning you go to see how Old Meyer’s holding out and find everyone dead—or Old Meyer and Marcus. Shotgun, looks like. Meyer’s inside, half his head gone, his pipe still neatly balanced on the table. You search the house and then the outbuildings, finally come on Marcus in the barn, in the sleigh, the tarpaulin thrown back, stippled with holes. Probably trying to hide. The others are down by the hives, the crosses neatly done, and you take a good portion of the morning to lay their father and brother beside them. Mark them too, bless them.

  Doc says he doesn’t see another way out of it, you’ll have to burn the house down.

  “I figured,” you say, so he knows the decision’s not just his. He’s the first person you’ve talked to today, and it’s a relief.

  “How’s Amelia?” he asks, and you answer him with a lie.

  “I’m glad,” he says, and you’re glad he doesn’t ask about Marta. “I think we got the road closed just in time.”

  You mention the fire turning back west and he rubs his mustache with a thumb—first one wing, then the other.

  “How long’s the quarantine going to be?” you ask, like everyone else.

  “Two weeks to do any good.”

  “Two weeks.”

  “One week at the least. It takes five days to incubate. Less in children. If we enforce quarantine house by house, a week might do it, but that means nobody goes outside.”

  You bring up the fire line, the shift from the mill. There’s no place they can all bunk together. And they have family, most of them. No, he’s got to come up with something better.

  “Here,” Doc says. “If the fire comes, it comes. Nothing I can do about it.”

  “I’m not arguing with you.”

  “I’m doing the best I can,” he says, “but there are just too many of them. And even if it was just one or two, there’s not much I can do for them. Do you understand me?”

  “I understand,” you say, and think of the valise in the front hall closet. “We’re in the same boat here.”

  “I know you know, Jacob,” he says, and yawns hard, rubs his face with both hands so it goes red. “It’s just hard to watch it happen.”

  He’s right, and you agree, but on the Shawano road, in the killing heat, you get to thinking about Irma waiting for him and it’s different.

  When blood goes cold it sticks to what it touches, stains like red clay. You had to scrub the tub in the backyard, pour the water into the garden.

  You’ve brought a jug of kerosene, in case, but end up using Meyer’s. Slosh it over the chairs and through the kitchen, a bandanna over your face so the fumes don’t choke you. It’s calm, but still you worry about the grass catching, back away after tossing the spunk on the rug.

  For a second you think it’s gone out, then a breath of white smoke like steam leaks out the door, a flame jumps in a window, cracks it, and soon a black billowing cloud rolls skyward and fire knifes through the roof. You close the gate and stand by the road, watching Meyer’s place burn. His family and all his hard work, come to nothing. If he did go through that soldier’s pockets, what is that compared to this? Everything’s been stolen from him, and you did nothing to stop it.

  “It’s no
t right,” you say.

  Who are you angry with?

  Not God.

  No? Who else is there? Is this the devil’s work?

  It must be, you think, but uncertainly. It must be, but you’re confused.

  Maybe tonight you’ll sleep.

  “Maybe.”

  But you don’t. You hold on to Marta, warming her with your own body, listening, imagining her breathing.

  Cyril rings and rings. You want to climb the ladder and silence him, beg him to stop. You arrange the comforter over Marta, kiss her before you leave. You need food, and there’s laundry to do.

  Town’s quiet. Town’s always quiet now. The dogs keep you busy. You find them behind the livery, alongside the churchyard, in the middle of the road. You toss them in the brush with Austin’s, shovel dust over the pile to keep the flies off.

  It’s like the war again.

  Burn down houses. Burn down barns filled with dead cattle, coops filled with chickens.

  At Bjornsons, one hen isn’t dead and tries to fly, its feathers burning. You hit it with your shovel until it stops.

  “Sorry,” you say, even though no one’s around, only the Bjornsons laid out by the woodpile, waiting for you to take care of them. Emil was more afraid of the fire.

  “I am too,” you say. “Still, better west than east.”

  Crazy Jacob.

  “Fiddlesticks,” you say, and take up the shovel again, bend your back. Dig them deep enough so the coyotes don’t get them.

  At home you learn to make cornbread from a recipe. Marta’s writing goes all over the place.

  “Is this salt?” you ask.

  What else would it be?

  “I don’t know,” you say.

  Two teaspoons of salt.

  “I’ve never made this before.”

  Don’t fret, it’ll be fine. Take a rest while it rises. Come in here and sit with us.

  Marta’s on the love seat in the blue dress you like, Amelia in her lap. You bring your whiskey in and sit with them. In the kitchen the stove hisses, a knot pops. You put your arm around her, give her a kiss on her cool, rouged cheek.

  “How are you feeling?”

  Much better. It must have been the sleep.

  “And how about you?” you say, and pick up Amelia, lift her under the arms so her feet dangle. Her blue, blue eyes. You give her a kiss and return her to Marta, get up to check on your cornbread, but at the doorway you turn back to look at them, to admire them sitting there, the ones you love, and count yourself lucky, yes, even blessed, having almost lost them.

  6

  All morning the quarantine brings town out of their houses. To challenge it, to complain of the decision, dispute its usefulness, its legality. They come to you with questions you can’t answer, though out of politeness—out of duty—you try. Byron Merrill, Bill Tilton—people you haven’t seen in weeks. They crowd into the jail, clog the sidewalk. They’ve already been to Doc, they say; like children polling their parents, they’re hoping you’ll give them a different answer, make an exception to the rule.

  “We’re all in the same boat,” you say, knowing it won’t placate them.

  How long, they all want to know.

  “One week, maybe two.”

  “What are we supposed to do till then?” Fenton says. “I’ve got business to tend to.”

  “Then tend to it,” you say.

  “How am I supposed to do that? I’ve got a shipment of coffee sitting in Shawano I can’t get to.”

  “Have them ship it.”

  It’ll cost too much to ship.

  Mrs. Bagwell’s daughter is stuck in Shawano.

  Carl Huebner was off on business, and now he can’t get back in.

  And George Peck, down to Rockford buying brick for the mill.

  Why can’t they come in if they want to? It’s their risk, no one else’s. Long as no one’s going out, what’s the difference?

  “It’s for the good of everyone,” you say, as if logic might satisfy them. You want to say it’s not your fault, yet a week ago you were ready to close the roads. Which is it?

  “I see you got Marta and your daughter all nice and locked up,” Mrs. Bagwell accuses. “Taking no chances with them.”

  “No,” you say, “and I’d suggest you do the same.”

  “That’s no kind of advice,” Fenton says.

  You turn on him, shoulders squared, like you mean to fight, then stop yourself. “It’s the right thing and you know it.” Then to everyone: “Two weeks is not a long time.”

  Grumbling, an obscenity that—admit it—shocks you. No one believes you. Two weeks is a lifetime.

  “Go on,” you say, “I’ve got my own work,” and herd them out, waving your hat around like they’re cattle.

  You’re right, you think, it is the right thing. Why do you have to justify it?

  Not all of them leave you alone. Emmett Nelligan won’t let go of his sister Esther coming to visit. She came all the way from Ohio just to have Bart stop her at the line. She’s in a boardinghouse in Shawano, terrified; she doesn’t know anyone there.

  You try to ignore him, collect everything from your desk before you leave. You need to wire Bart, check the fire line, look in on Doc.

  “Every day it’s costing money to put her up,” he says.

  You stop and look at him. “You don’t honestly want her in the middle of all this, do you?”

  “I’m not sick,” he argues. “I can’t see what harm it would do—”

  “Don’t,” you say. “There’s no point in it.”

  “I don’t want her to be alone there,” he says, and what can you say but you’re sorry? You understand him completely.

  Go over the telegraph office and have Harlow tell Bart that everyone’s unhappy. Phrased that way, it makes sense. They don’t hate you, they’re just frustrated. Deep down, they understand it’s best for everyone. They must.

  Bart thinks differently; he expects some of them to make a break for it. He has a deputy posted by the sign, making sure everyone’s on the right side. It’s costing him fifty cents a day, but he knows you don’t have time. You’ve promised to help him as much as you can, and with every minute you spend away from the line, you feel more and more obliged.

  Harlow’s swamped. Doc says it’s fine for you to bring mail in, but no outgoing post, so Harlow’s got a mess of wires to send. His bottom lip is black where he’s licked his quill. His hands ride the keys like spiders.

  “Get St. Martine back yet?”

  “Nope,” he says, concentrating, then relaxes, lifts his hands. “I tried Madison this morning and couldn’t get through. Tried to bypass through Milwaukee and that’s as far as I got. Everything north of here’s dead.”

  “How about west?”

  “I can get Montello, if that’s what you mean.”

  “West of that?”

  “Everything’s fine that way, but there’s nothing out there. Montello’s the one you’re worried about.”

  “Can’t fool you,” you say.

  “Don’t worry, I’ll let you know as soon as she goes.”

  “Think she will now?”

  “Tell the truth,” he says, “I’m surprised she’s still up.”

  Out on the fire line, John Cole has his crew almost to the canal. Their picks fall in rhythm like a railroad gang. You’re not surprised by their bandannas. With the pale dust rising around them, and the long, broad trench, they look like gravediggers after a battle.

  “They say it’s headed west again,” you tell John.

  “So are we when we’re finished here.”

  “Use the river.”

  “Hitch it to that stretch of road this side of Cobb’s.” He says it like it’s not his idea, waits for you to suggest a better one, and you know why. The road goes east-west; even if the fire doesn’t jump the line, it can stick to one side and run right into town. There’s nothing but woods out there, a few grassy pastures.

  “Not much else you can do,” you say
.

  “Nope,” he agrees glumly, and goes off to show the crew how close to the tracks they can dig.

  Hiking back through the thicket, you notice deadfall parceled around the living trees like tinder. Even the jack pine are drying up, tufted with clumps of orange needles. You can afford to ignore the planks laid across low spots; the ground’s hard, the ferns withered. When you get to the road, you search the sky like a farmer. The high blue stretches for Iowa.

  Bart’s deputy’s name is Millard—just a boy growing too fast for his clothes. He paces the line, holds a rifle like a soldier, solemn as Jeff Davis himself. Bart’s taught him well. Far off, Cyril rings three.

  “All quiet?” you ask, and as Millard says, “Yessir,” the two of you hear the same jingling music and turn to see a procession coming up the road.

  It’s the circus—red wagons and pennants flying. An elephant raises dust like a column on the march.

  “Oh my gosh,” Millard says, forgetting his charge. “Oh my gosh!”

  You’ve never seen one either, and watch it come on, interested in the way its skin moves, the funny trunk, the ridiculous ears, the dainty tail. You see why people called heading into battle Going to See the Elephant. No one could describe this to you, you have to see it for yourself.

  A huge orchestrion on its own wagon thumps a tune. The horses’ bits are silvered, their heads plumed. They have big cats in gilded cages, leashed bear cubs tussling, a man handling a snake as thick as your leg. As they approach, you naturally step aside in deference, then remember and go out to meet them, a hand in the air.

  The man driving the first wagon wears spectacles and a striped vest, like a chemist. He hauls on the reins and the team stops short. You can smell their horrible breath, their legs wetted against the heat.

  “What is it, neighbor?” the driver asks.

  “Town’s quarantined. We can’t let you in.”

  “What have you got?”

  “Diphtheria.”

  He thinks on this, as if weighing their chances. “All we want’s to pass on through. We won’t so much as step down, any of us.”

  “Can’t let you.”

  “We can do it at a trot,” he says. “Won’t take but five minutes.”