A Prayer for the Dying

by Stewart O'Nan

  You’re sorry and you’re not. You’re sorry for Millard; he didn’t know any better. Bart you’re still angry with. Of all people, he should know what Friendship means to you. None of these people are sick, but he’d never believe you. You would have sat there and died like Chase’s people, when there’s no need.

  Does this excuse you?

  No.

  Is this evil?

  You’re not sure.

  Then what is it?

  You don’t know.

  You unhook the handcar, give it a push with your foot. The bar seesaws, then stops, waits for you to climb on.

  Walk up front, past Bart and Millard, still lying there draining. The faces in the boxcar follow you, but you don’t acknowledge them. It seems plain that while you love these people you don’t belong with them, that even in caring for them you’ve managed to damn yourself.

  Give John the rifle, tell him to ride with the driver. The others hop back in the car, arrange themselves on the crates. You leave them, head the other direction. No one protests; they know what you’ve done.

  “You be careful, Sheriff,” Harlow calls.

  “You too,” you say.

  Cyril waves, and for a minute you wish you could go with them, explain. But that passes.

  On the handcar, you look back. Bart and Millard are still there, the plume’s pouring up from the boiler. You wait till they move out before you pump for town. To the west, the sky is like night, a red glow just above the horizon.

  Your chest is sore from doing nothing, but the grade helps you. The canal is an ashpit, no hint of water. You keep looking back; the train doesn’t seem to move, and then you turn a curve and it’s gone and the marsh is on fire, the cattails waving like flaming brands. The Hermit’s lake flits in the trees, slips back.

  Ridiculous, but you’re worried about him. You’ve always included him as part of Friendship; that hasn’t changed.

  And what about the sick, can you dismiss them so easily? What about Bart and Millard? Where do your responsibilities stop?

  Sometimes you have to choose.

  But don’t you see the vanity in your decisions? Aren’t you at all sorry? Why do you need to believe you’re right? In the end, do you think that will save you?

  No.

  The fire’s louder toward town, the constant rush of a waterfall. The bridge is intact, and Ender’s, just up the river. The bank’s littered with their possessions. The cow’s gone, only the fish floating. You run for town, wishing you had your bicycle, every breath hurting your throat. The wind blows so hard you have to lean into it, and the dust peppers your skin.

  The mill’s already gone, the hose of the water engine burned through. The lumberyard is a field of black ash, a smudge. You pause to take it in, then think better of it when a maddened horse crashes past, dragging a buggy on its side, one wheel busted to the hub. You know it—it’s Soderholm’s bay mare—and you wonder what Bart did with them.

  Turned them back, he said.

  Which was his right. Why are you still trying to justify it?

  Friendship is still standing. The bell tower’s untouched, you mark it from a distance, and when you reach Main Street you see everything’s fine: the empty County Record office, the bank, the foundry. Fenton’s, Doc’s, the jail, the livery, Ritter’s. All standing abandoned, doors flung open, windows smashed, goods strewn over the whole street.

  Who would do this? you think, but the proof is irrefutable—someone did. There’s Doc’s blotter, and your Wanted posters thrown around like a joke. For a minute you forget what you’re doing and stand there disbelieving, in a rage, crushed by what they’ve done to your town.

  The air is filled with cinders. An ember lights the sidewalk on fire and you stomp it with your boots.

  Across the street, a branch lands on Fenton’s roof, and the shingles flash and catch. You run to the trough but it’s empty. Throw the bucket away and race for home, your eyes stinging.

  Under the oaks there’s just a dusting of ash. No one’s gone through your neighbors’; their shutters are battened tight against the fire, their owners hopeful. You expect your house to be gutted—hope against hope—but it’s fine, and you’re grateful. You vault the fence and dig for your keys, sure of your purpose. At least this promise you can keep.

  Marta’s on the love seat, holding Amelia. Her head’s bent, as if leaning down to rub noses with her.

  You sit beside her, tip her chin up and give her a kiss.

  She looks at you, her eyes milky, her mouth fixed in a grimace, lips pulled back from her perfect teeth. You should have used more fluid. You almost want to say you’re sorry.

  You are.

  “It’s time,” you say.

  But I don’t want to go.

  You don’t want to argue, and kiss her again, hold her to you a last time. She understands.

  Fetch Amelia’s coffin from the root cellar and lay her in it again, bless her.

  The backyard’s covered with ash, the garden neatly outlined. You dig in the same spot under the crab apple, take the cross from above the crib, but this time it seems you say the words with less feeling, rush, hurrying to get it done. It’s wrong, and back inside it nags at you.

  You’re sorry you don’t have a box for Marta. What a waste, all that planed cedar downstairs in the jail. You would have made a lovely one, taken pains with it, maybe a window for her face, silver fittings. Something worthy of her.

  Pry the cross off the wall above your bed.

  The plot’s not deep enough either.

  “I’m trying,” you say, and the ash falls hot on the back of your neck.

  She’s soft in your arms, and her perfume’s strong. You carry her through the hallway, her feet nudging the wall.

  Lay her beside Amelia, fix her hair with your fingers. Her blue dress, she’d be happy with that.

  “I did the best I could,” you say.

  I know, Jacob.

  You tell her you love her, turn the first shovel of earth. The wind lifts the dust, scatters it like ash. You do it almost purposely slow. Are you hoping the fire might light here and consume you? Or is it reverence, a debt you know you owe her?

  Please don’t leave me.

  “No, I have to.”

  Eyes closed, you recite a prayer for the dead from memory, then linger there, unsure of what to do. It’s that time in the ceremony when you go over to the bereaved and lead them from the churchyard, the rest of their friends a slow procession. Today there’s no wake. You’re alive; it seems another failure. How many times can you say you’re sorry? Is it true, after all you’ve preached, that you’d rather live a sinner than surrender to Him and be forgiven?

  Do you really think that’s your choice?

  You walk through the house and out the front door. The wind pushes you, rips your hat off and tosses it up into a tree, then knocks it down again and kicks it along the road toward town. It’s hotter now. A window smashes, a fence slat pinwheels by, and always the constant fall of ash. Your head smarts and you reach a hand up and touch flame and your hair’s on fire. You slap it out, already starting to run.

  Fenton’s is raging, and the chemist’s, Soderholm’s, the splash and tinkle of bottles exploding. His windows are melting, the glass like taffy. A swirling wind combs the flaming debris over the street, and before you reach it, the sidewalk in front of Doc’s catches and flares up. Your bike leans by the door of the jail, and you dart for it, ignoring the heat. Drag it back, hop on and turn for Ender’s bridge, Friendship going up on both sides of you in twin curtains. And here, remember this: you do nothing to save it.

  The seat’s hot, and it’s hard to breathe. The fire thunders, pops like gunshots. You don’t stop until you cross the river, and then you vomit, hawk phlegm, hack, gasping. Behind you, the cupola of the livery topples in on itself, the white bell tower smokes, then suddenly erupts.

  Why do you always have to look back?

  Even here you’re not safe. Right in front of you, the roof of
Ender’s bridge bursts into flame, and you get up on the pedals and ride.

  You think you’re ahead of it, but farther out the fields are burned over, and patches of forest, weakened trees fallen over the road. A charred deer lies in a ditch, its legs just nubs. Karmann’s fence is on fire, and Old Meyer’s hives. Above the treetops, a whirlwind rides alongside you, roaring, casting out flaming shingles and boards, tattered scraps of bills you recognize from Ender’s bridge. They light in the fields and run like prairie fire, shoot past you, only slow when they reach a windbreak or the woods’ bushy edge. But even there it can catch you, the underbrush is so dry, brittle from a month without rain. You think if you can make the Hermit’s lake, you can jump in and let it pass over you.

  You think all this, though you know you won’t have time.

  And then a whoosh and it’s on you like a downpour, all around you—a rumbling, and trees crashing down on both sides. You turn the curve and there’s the lake. You don’t slow, bump hard across the ditch and into the woods. Toss the bike aside and run. The brush stops and then there’s nothing but the gray of ash on water. Thorns scratch at your face. You can hear the trees cracking from the heat, the rustle of branches as they fall, and the whump of the earth jumping. And then you’re running in the shallows, the water grabbing at your legs, the mud sucking, and you dive and pull for the middle, the sour taste of lye in your mouth.

  You stay in the very center, treading water, turning to watch the trees if one should fall your way, drop like an axe on top of you. Through the storm of ash you can barely make out the Hermit’s cave on the far shore, but you don’t see him. You don’t see his ducks either. The reeds are burning. You kick, kick.

  Smoke shoulders through the trees, rolls low over the water, and for a minute it’s midnight, you’re utterly blind, stifled. You cough into your hand, try to breathe. And then it lifts, a gust of wind whisks it off, and the sky brightens until it hurts.

  The fire comes suddenly—not from the treetops, as you imagined, but from the brush, driving a fox in front of it. Its coat breaks into flame, it stumbles, and the blaze overtakes it. Pines bend in the heat, strain and creak, the meat of the trunks bursting like cannon. The fire sweeps through, runs up the limbs and leaps to the sky. It comes from the west and follows the wind around both sides, a solid wall, taking everything, scorching your face so you have to duck under and hold your breath. The water warms, turns hot as a bath, and when you have to come up again, your nose is inches from a dead sunfish. You splash it away, and with a slap a tree pitches into the shallows on the far side.

  The flames strip the dry pines, send whole branches floating over you, the needles aglow. The water’s black as week-old axle grease. The Lake of Fire, you think. If anyone deserves it, it’s you.

  Yes, a murderer. A lover of the dead.

  Take me then, you think.

  Do you mean it?

  Yet already the fire’s moving on, the trees left smoking, the very ground. The rumble comes from the east now, walks off like a thunderstorm. You swim through the fish for the far shore, afraid you might bump into the Hermit, floating facedown, his ducks bobbing beside him, still alive, pecking his head.

  You don’t. The shallows are hot, and you drag yourself out, covered with muck. The grass is blackened, even the dirt around the cave mouth. “Hello?” you call, “Hello?”

  Pace the bank and peer into the gray water. Inspect the dead logs under the slurry. There’s so much ash it’s hard to see anything; he could be one of these lumps.

  You poke your head into the cave and call again.

  You know the smell too well by now, but this is bad. It makes you stop and clap a hand over your nose.

  He’s in there with his ducks, lying on his back. The ducks are lined up along one wall like decoys, arranged like toys, not a mark on them, and you think, the disease. The fire’s touched nothing. It’s been a while. His throat is slit, the blood already dried dark on his army bedroll. His head rests on a straw pillow. The knife with the black pearl inlay sits in his open hand, as if he means to return it to you.

  Sickness, despair.

  But who, you think. Who in the world did he get it from?

  And the answer comes to you. That reach across the beaver dam.

  So it is you, it’s been you the whole time. All of them—Marta, Doc, Sarah Ramsay. It must have been the soldier or Lydia Flynn, then no one but you.

  Then why don’t you die?

  What about the train? Did you kill Bart and Millard for nothing? Or worse, to get it through, spread the infection.

  You make your way to the tracks. They’re burned over. In the woods, trees are falling steadily, a rush and then a shudder, the ground throwing up a gush of embers, sparks darting like fireflies. You walk along the flickering ties, leaving footprints, your wet clothes binding, grabbing at you. The wind is calm and it’s almost quiet, cold even. No birds, nothing. The ashes have stopped falling, and you can breathe easier, each mouthful a cup of water. In the distance, the fire drums, the sky sullen. Already it’s far away. The speed of it—you hadn’t expected that.

  Past the marsh, out along the canal. Bart and Millard are still there, the color of the ground, as if they’re part of it. Hairless, their clothes burned off. You’ll have to see to them as best you can.

  You are sorry, but what good does that do?

  You walk on toward Shawano, wondering how many of them you spoke with, touched. There’s no point—Cyril’s in the boxcar, and Harlow, John up front with the driver.

  What are you supposed to do, stop them?

  Bart tried to.

  He was right, you admit, but they’re probably halfway to Milwaukee by now.

  You’ll walk as long as you have to.

  You wonder how Kip Cheyney is, if anyone’s seen to him, if that doctor’s looked at anyone else, someone from town. You remember what Doc said about the epidemic in St. Joe. Half.

  Merciful Jesus, you think.

  Far ahead, there’s something black on the tracks, and you crane to see what it is. It’s small, maybe a switching engine. Not big enough to be the freight.

  You walk faster, then begin to run.

  The black thing is the boiler of an engine. That’s the first thing you see.

  Closer, you see the stretch of wheels staggered behind the engine, the trucks unconnected to anything, the steel shell of a hopper. Nothing left but metal, the couplings still clasped on the tracks.

  You slow to a walk, try not to picture the fire racing the train, the huge wave of flame rolling over it.

  So you know even before you see the twisted skeleton of the boxcar. Not that you’re ready for it then. If all of this has taught you anything, it’s that hope is easier to get rid of than sorrow.

  The ground’s burned over, and scattered about the right-of-way lie the bodies, curled in the dirt. They’re small, and it’s not like Bart and Millard, you can’t tell who’s who. Their hands are just stumps, their faces missing. The children are obvious, the rest of them impossible. You don’t bother counting. It looks like they were running for the woods. Didn’t get far at all.

  John and the driver are still in the cab, the throttle wide open. The shovel in the tender is just a blade, warm to the touch, the handle completely gone. You jump down and walk among the bodies, sit in the dust and ponder them. Cyril’s here somewhere, and Harlow, Fred Lembeck. The rest of Friendship.

  You still feel a duty to them—owe it, really—and you climb the engine again and bring back the shovel. It’s hard but the dirt’s loose, and you’ve got gloves. You’re used to work. In Kentucky you did this for weeks.

  You remember tending to the little Norwegian, taking great care with him. They all thought he was your friend, that the two of you were inseparable, the way you looked after him, so devoted. You wouldn’t let anyone touch him. You buttoned his sleeves so they didn’t see the marks on his arms where you stripped the meat off when they were asleep. You said a prayer after you buried him, made anothe
r promise to God, instantly became a different man. But did you really change? You thought you had. Now you don’t know.

  The hardest are John and the driver, who you have to gently let down, their bodies delicate, light as charcoal. And then when you think you’re finished, you find what must be the brakeman beside the hopper. You’d all but forgotten him, and silently apologize. It’s dusk when you get Bart and Millard in, and full dark when you set the Hermit to rest, his ducks tucked about him like children.

  You sit in the cave, opening and closing the knife by candlelight, the Hermit’s world spread around you. You’ve turned the bedroll over, twisted a cigarette to chase the smell of blood. The knife’s sharp, and for a second you’re tempted. Both wrists, then the throat, deeply.

  No. You fold it closed, set it on his dented tin plate.

  Because you still believe, isn’t that true? Because you do love this world.

  You’re not sure anymore, are you? It’s easier to be by yourself.

  No.

  Yes. Alone, with no one else. Don’t lie, you like it this way.

  “No,” you say, though it has nothing to do with being humbled either. The whole idea of penance is selfish, misguided. You can’t bargain with God, buy Him with pieties. This is what you’ve found out—that even with the best intentions, even with all of your thoughtful sermons and deep feelings and good works, you can’t save anyone, least of all yourself.

  And yet, it’s not a defeat. After everything, you may still be saved. Your mother was wrong; it’s not up to you. It’s always been His decision.

  You pick up the shovel, blow out the candle and go outside. The moon moves on the lake, stars smeared across a clear sky. The smell of ashes still lingers. Always will, you imagine. You walk in the dark, stumble up through the woods till you reach the tracks. You look east to Shawano, as if a train might be coming, then head for Friendship, the shovel scuffing your leg with every step.

  And it’s not a mystery to you why you’re doing this. It’s not a secret. A man who’s lost only wants to go home. A pariah, if just some small part of him, wants to belong, to be, in the end, forgiven. Don’t those souls in Hell lift their faces to Heaven? Tonight, you think, you need to be with the ones you love.