A Prayer for the Dying

by Stewart O'Nan

  You apologize but it’s not possible.

  “Well, Goddamn you then,” he says pleasantly, and stands up on the bench to fish in a pocket. He pulls out a five-dollar bill and tries to hand it to you.

  You look at it, then at him. The orchestrion goes on. “You’ll have to loop around south. There’s wildfire north of here.”

  “Five minutes,” he tries again. “Down south’s going to take us way out of our way. We need to be in Montello—”

  “You’re not listening to me,” you say, and find you’ve grabbed his wrist to pull him closer, and you see he’s afraid, that you’re hurting him. You twist his arm and he winces, shifts his body to accommodate it. “If you cross that line I will have to kill you, and I will. People are dying here. If you want to be one of them, then come on. Otherwise, you leave us be.”

  He takes his arm back warily, then starts to turn his wagon around, bumping over the lip of the road.

  “South,” you call after him, but he doesn’t look back. The other drivers fix you with a glare, which you return expertly, daring them to say a word, spit, anything. None of them do, except the elephant, who leaves a single cannonball of a dropping as he swings around; it raises a puff of dust, then sits there like an insult as the tinny music fades.

  Millard gapes at it, amazed. “Why,” he says, “that thing’s as big as my head.”

  You laugh at him, but wonder why you threatened the man, what made you do it.

  It’s everything, you think. It’s reasonable, considering, but still you ask forgiveness, promise to stay on guard against your temper.

  “I would of liked to see it,” Millard says. “The circus.”

  “You saw more than most,” you say, and because of who you are, he agrees.

  Nobody in, nobody out.

  “I don’t want you shooting anyone though,” you tell him. “That’s up to me and Sheriff Cox. If it comes to that, shoot straight in the air.”

  “But the sheriff said—”

  “I know what he said. I’ll have a talk with him, don’t you worry.”

  He seems deflated, and to soothe him you show him the army way to about-face, how to pivot just one heel, use the other toe to bring you clean around. You leave him practicing, counting cadence to himself, walking box-guard around the dropping.

  Riding, you shake your head at Bart. Have to talk to him, get someone with a little more hair on his chin.

  In town, another crew’s wetting down the roof of the mill with a hose, drenching the mounds of cast-off sapwood. Lumber’s piling up because of the quarantine. The hose is anchored in the river, and two big Swedes are working the water engine like a teeter-totter. The channel’s narrow; on the cracked flats the sun’s baking a stranded sucker. You’ll have to set out barrels of sand at each street corner, find enough buckets. At least there’s no chance of panicking anyone further.

  Tomorrow, though. There’s hardly anything left of today. You didn’t even get lunch. Too much to do.

  You stop in at Doc’s before closing up shop. He’s got a list of families you need to keep an eye on, and two bodies he wants you to get to before you go home.

  “Who?” you ask.

  “May Blanton and little Stevie Roy.”

  You wish you were still shocked, that you’d search for a reason these two were taken. May’s only a few years older than you, and Stevie’s almost ten, resentful that people still call him “little.” Someone like Elsa Sullivan you expect to die, not these two.

  “I’ve got both houses under quarantine,” Doc says. “It’s coming to that, specially west of town. Tomorrow I’d appreciate it if you’d come with me to look in on some folks. They don’t tend to like what I have to tell them. And some are sure to have family that need to be taken care of. I’d like you to bury them on their land, where it’s possible. These two can go in the churchyard if they’ll fit.”

  “I’ll fit them,” you say, and it feels good, after so long, to make a promise you know you can keep.

  “And don’t bleed them,” he says. “Do I have to tell you that?”

  “No,” you say, and this time you mean it.

  To make up for it, you do good work on their coffins; don’t skimp, dig their plots deep. It’s good to work, to feel the hurt in your shoulders, your forearms hard. Grunt, blow a drop of sweat off your nose. You almost don’t think of Amelia, the spot in the garden. No, they’re both at home, safe, waiting for you. There’s no way they can get it; you’ve told them not to go out, to lock the door. You’ll protect them, keep them secret.

  It’s night by the time you pack the dirt flat with your boots, and when you go to close up the jail, you find someone has smeared your door with dung.

  At first you think of the elephant, and Millard, but without sniffing you can tell this is horse. You go inside and find an old County Record to swab it off with.

  “Fenton,” you say.

  Emmett Nelligan.

  Strange to admit, it could be anyone. Suddenly Friendship’s a nest of enemies.

  Just frustrated.

  No, more. You think of the circus driver’s eyes, the way he understood what you were capable of.

  You finish daubing it off, but there’s nowhere to throw the paper away. You look up and down the street, then cross and stuff it under Fenton’s sidewalk, rinse your hands in the scummy trough water.

  Marta’s waiting for you in the dark with Amelia. You light the lamp and visit with them, then go into the kitchen and make dinner. Beans and fatback tonight, the captain’s favorite.

  Set the table, arrange everyone around it—Amelia in her high chair, Marta right beside her. Say grace.

  After dinner Marta plays the melodeon and the two of you sing. She falls off the stool but you prop her up, set her feet on the pedals, her fingers on the keys, help her find middle C. Jesus Our Redeemer. He Will Come in Glory for Me. Amelia plays on the floor with her cornhusk doll.

  And then it’s late, time for bed. The two of you tuck Amelia in, then retire. You read a section of Mrs. Stowe to Marta. Finish, but she’s asleep, far gone, the plain of her cheek turned to you, and you kiss her tenderly, hold her to you, careful not to wake her.

  Friday’s the same—Millard on guard, everyone with questions. You ride beside Doc out west of town and stop at the quarantined houses. In the back of the wagon is a bucket of whitewash, and while Doc is inside with the Ramsays and Doles and Schnackmeiers, you paint a shaky Q on their front doors. Leave the bucket on the porch and join them, explain the legal consequences of breaking quarantine. The fathers nod solemnly, the mothers fix you with their eyes, sick with the idea that you would do this to decent people. Doc apologizes, says there’s no other way, that there are lots of folks in the same shape.

  And then the tour of the sickroom, masks over your faces as Doc bends to the infected. The mother comes with you, but no one else, stands behind you like a guide to the underworld. A lamp burns, the windows are closed. Under the comforter, the children sweat.

  Sarah Ramsay has already lost two of the four boys—Martin and Gavin. You’ve always thought of them as mean, even evil children, and now, ashamed, forgive them everything. Just wild boys, high-spirited. Across the small room from the living, the dead lie in bed together.

  “Would you like Jacob to see to them?” Doc offers.

  “No thank you,” she says, so calmly that after checking Tyrone’s throat he asks her again.

  “Oh, no thank you.”

  The Q on their door runs, white tendrils reaching for the floor. Hang a sign on the gate so no one stops.

  “It won’t be long there,” Doc says.

  “What about her?” you ask.

  He doesn’t have an answer, just flips his ledger, finds the next name on the page.

  The whole road, no exceptions.

  “Why do you think that is?” you ask. “Why’s it worse out here than in town?”

  “Threshing,” he guesses. “People in town don’t help each other. They stay inside. I don�
��t know, any number of reasons.”

  You chew on this as you bump along. First the soldier in the woods, then Lydia Flynn. Clytie. You think if you solve the mystery of how it got here that you can somehow reverse the process, make everybody well again. It’s pointless, but you fit the clues together. The soldier slept in Elsa and Millie’s barn. Lydia Flynn entertained him in a back pasture at the Colony. Everything you come up with is missing a beginning. Who had it first? Where did it come from?

  At Heilemanns, no one answers the door. Doc thumps it with a fist, but still no one comes.

  “Constable,” you holler. “Frank, Katie, you in there?”

  The front’s locked, the blinds drawn, and you walk around back. It’s locked too, but you find a pry bar in the dovecote and let yourself in, calling through the darkened rooms.

  The parlor’s neat, the beds empty. Upstairs there’s a cat basking on a windowsill; it mews when it sees you, slinks over to rub against your boots.

  “Don’t touch it,” Doc says, and you straighten up, pull back your hand.

  The dust in the attic is undisturbed, an unbroken coating.

  You expect to find them hanging in the woodshed, or in the well house, throats gashed open with sheep shears, by the milk house, drowned, their heads stuck in the rain barrel. There’s nothing; the doors open on cordwood, baled hay, cobwebs.

  “You been talking with Montello at all?” Doc asks.

  “Yes,” you say, and you have, though nowhere near as often as you’ve talked to Bart. You should have someone watching the road out where the valley narrows by Cobb’s tunnel. You’ll wire up the line, give them a description.

  “May be too late now,” Doc says.

  “I’ll do what I can,” you say, and feel betrayed. Heilemanns were good church people. Frank sang bass, Katie made a fine strawberry pie. What could it be but a lack of faith? That’s partly your fault.

  The children were sick, so the house has to go.

  “You want to take care of that cat before you fire it,” Doc says.

  “Way it’s been so dry, I can’t burn it till I get a crew.”

  “Then get the cat now.”

  “It can’t wait?”

  “Jacob,” he says, and you see he means it. Climbing the stairs, you wonder if it’s the disease that’s changed him, the demands on his skill, and think it must be. He’s not heartless. These people are his flock too, his responsibility. He’s lost almost as much as you have.

  You tug your gloves on. “Here, puss,” you call, and make kissing sounds with your lips. “Here, puss-puss.”

  You kill it like a chicken, with a twist. Its claws catch on the gloves’ rawhide. All the muscles stop at once, and again you marvel at God’s invention, His intricacy. You lay the cat on the sill, turn its head around so it seems to be sunning, just as you found it.

  In the buckboard, Doc thanks you.

  “Who’s next?” you say, hard, then want to apologize; you’re not angry with him.

  Millie and Elsa’s house needs burning, and Terfel’s sheep are spread over a meadow, moldering in the heat. You visit the sick until the sun touches the trees. The whitewash is almost gone.

  “Have to get a party out tomorrow,” Doc says on the way back, and though tomorrow’s Saturday, you agree. You’ll talk to John Cole, ask for his best men; they should be out west of town anyhow.

  “What else can we do?” you ask.

  “Just keep them inside,” Doc says. “Make sure none of them go the way of Heilemanns. That’s when you get an epidemic, when people start running off in the middle of the night.”

  Back at the jail, Harlow’s left a packet of wires marked Undeliverable, meaning the addressee is either dead or quarantined. Break the bundle into two stacks, nearly equal. You try not to read them, but you know they’re from family, that every message is urgent.

  First thing tomorrow, you think, and snuff the lamp. Even you’re turning heartless. Just tired, you argue, but unconvincingly.

  Locking your door, you smell dung, but it’s just a pile left by Doc’s team. Probably where the disease comes from. Damn horses.

  For supper it’s cabbage soup and a heel of bread. Got to stop in Fenton’s and pick something up.

  “What an awful day,” you say, and tell Marta all about it. Amelia looks at you slightly cross-eyed. The soup is thin and bitter, and you pitch it in the bushes, stand out in the backyard looking at the stars, the dish in your hand. Later, under the covers, Marta’s skin warms to yours, and you lay there with your arms around her, reciting prayers enough for all of Friendship.

  *

  Up early and out of the house, to deliver Harlow’s messages. You expect people to be grateful, pleased to hear from loved ones, but none of them speak to you until Margaret Kyne says, “And how am I supposed to wire her back? You just said yesterday I can’t leave this house.”

  “I’ll have Harlow send it for you,” you offer, and she slams the door. You wait for her to come back, thinking she’s inside, writing. She doesn’t.

  John lends you some of his crew, and you fire Millie and Elsa’s, the roses going up with the porch, tin roof buckling thunderously. After lunch you do two more. At Heilemanns, the cat’s where you left it, its eyes milky. The men seem to understand, dig the fire line with the same patience they’d tend the blades at the mill. You slosh the drapes with kerosene, darken the carpet, then stand in the drive with the rest of them, watching the flames eat down to the chimneys.

  “Takes longer ’n I thought,” Kip Cheyney says, and a few of you agree.

  Millard says a drummer with a valise full of patent medicines tried to bribe him and that Bart said he could fire at will.

  “Where is Sheriff Cox?” you ask, and he takes a step back, gives you the same face the circus driver had. “I will talk to him,” you say. “Meantime I do not want you shooting anybody.”

  You interrupt Harlow and tell him to tell Bart that Millard is wrong for the job and to get someone on there who’s done some killing cause it might just come to that.

  “That true?” Harlow asks.

  “Would I say it if it wasn’t?” you say, and leave him to his keys.

  Not halfway across the street and you see your window’s busted. Inside, there’s glass on the floor, and a rock; it’s taken a gouge out of your desk. You investigate, then come back out, look around Main Street and roll the rock under the sidewalk. Rub your thumb over the gouge; it won’t smooth away.

  “Goddamn,” you say, disappointed in them. You’re just doing what’s best for everyone, don’t they know that?

  Tomorrow’s Sunday and you haven’t even thought of a sermon.

  Am I my brother’s keeper?

  It’s a start.

  No one’s going to be there.

  I will.

  No one else though.

  Doesn’t matter.

  Saturday is bath night, and after a supper of just beans, you pull the tub out and put the kettle on. Getting Marta out of her blue dress, you decide you need to do laundry. The bottoms of her arms are turning purple, and scrubbing does nothing. Work the lather into her hair. Do the hard-to-get spots first—the back of the neck, under the breasts, behind the knees. A second kettle to rinse. Check the water with your wrist, not too hot. You want to think the heat brings a bloom to her cheek, but it doesn’t. Still, her skin’s warm. Towel her down, fluff up her hair, brush it in the mirror. Then a nightshirt and into new, clean sheets.

  Pour another kettle and ease in, strip the soot off your arms, the smoke out of your hair. You’re faster than Marta, and when you get in bed, it’s still warm. You take her hand and pull her to you, and she lays her head on your chest. The clean smell of her hair reminds you of courting, how she’d lean back against you in the swing and let you hold her. You do that now and close your eyes, and today is over, gone and done with, and you’re with her again.

  Cyril wakes you, banging out the dead. In church, he’s the only one. He sits in his usual spot in the back, sma
ck in the middle of the pew, as if the other parishioners might suddenly show up. And still, you appreciate his loyalty. The Lord does provide for His children. We are all blessed, even the least of us. You pick Abraham and Isaac—an old favorite—and preach to him as if he’s a crowd, a whole town.

  Midafternoon, Sarah Ramsay wanders into town, wild-eyed, her apron covered in blood, her nose still pumping out gouts. Her mouth opens as if to scream, but nothing comes out.

  You collar her, steer her into Doc’s office.

  “They’re all, dead,” she squeezes out, rocking. “My boys.”

  “Jacob here will take care of them,” Doc says, trying to soothe her, but she doesn’t stop. He tidies her up as best he can. “Here,” he says to you, “go look after them and I’ll be out with her directly.”

  On the road, you swear you smell smoke, though you can’t see anything. Have to check with Harlow and see what Montello has to say.

  You find the Ramsays two to a bed, just like last time, still in their nightshirts. Find a shady place by the wood-line. You try Martin first but his bare legs bother you, and you have to find some dungarees for him. The others too, all four of them nestled against each other, the dirt tucked up to their chins like covers. The dust powders their hair, sticks to their lips, and then they’re gone.

  Doc brings Sarah Ramsay out in the buckboard. She’s wearing a dowdy housedress of Irma’s, one nostril plugged with cotton. He steadies her across the backyard to show her your work. She stares at the mound, dry-eyed, stunned, like a trout struck by an osprey and left to gasp in the shallows. She turns to thank you, but can only mouth the words, her voice a squeak.

  “I’m very sorry,” you say, and pat her on the shoulder, a professional touch Mr. Simmons drilled into you. Make contact. Be a friend to the bereaved. Why does it sound false now?

  The Q on the front door’s already cracking. It’s sloppy work, which stings you. Doc leads Sarah Ramsay inside and sits her down in the parlor on an old sofa while you stand at the door like a footman.

  “I want you to rest,” he says. “I’ll look in on you tomorrow.”

  She nods, defeated, but later that afternoon she comes stumbling into town, mute and bloody, and Doc has you board up the windows, put a lock on the door. It’s best, he says. There’s nothing anyone can do; at least this will keep other people safe. You don’t believe any of it, though you know he’s talking sense. You drive the nails cleanly, make sure the space between the boards is too small to crawl through.