Good and Dead

by Jane Langton

  Eleanor heard her mother’s sobs and appeared in the doorway of the bedroom, looking frightened. “What’s the matter with Mom?”

  “She’s all right,” said her father comfortingly, holding his wife in his arms, stroking her hair.

  But Eleanor knew her mother wasn’t crying about nothing. To see her in tears cast a shadow on the afternoon. Slowly, Eleanor went back to her room, walking carefully, as though a crack had opened in the solid floor. She lay down on her bed with her book and tried to pick up where she had left off.

  It was a big book, a big thick book, a heavy indigestible masterpiece, The Magic Mountain. At this moment in Eleanor’s fifteenth year, only massive volumes of proven literary genius were good enough. She had finished War and Peace and Tess of the D’Urbervilles and David Copperfield. Waiting in line were The Last Chronicle of Barset and The Brothers Karamazov and One Hundred Years of Solitude. Eleanor didn’t worry about difficult words and bewildering paragraphs. Her eyes merely glided over them. And yet passages like “your peregrinations in this metropolis” (Mr. Micawber) or “something nebulous, preoccupied, vague, in his bearing” (Angel Clare) left a vivid stain upon her mind.

  Blindly now, she turned the page. Oh, why was her mother weeping?

  But of course Lorraine had a very strong reason for her despairing tears. And she wasn’t the only member of Old West’s congregation to be seriously troubled by the death of Bill Molyneux. For a lot of people it was one swan song too many. It was too many crossings of the bar in too short a time. Carl Bucky, Arlene Pott, Philip Shooky, Thad Boland, Rosemary Hill, Agatha Palmer, Percy Donlevy, and Bill Molyneux—how many was that? Eight! Eight funerals in six weeks!

  Flo Terry, the reference librarian, was bleakly triumphant. When Homer crept into the library on the morning of Bill Molyneux’s funeral, Flo looked at him with an expression of solemn elation, as if she were thundering like Jeremiah, The Lord has opened his armory, and brought out the weapons of his wrath. Woe to them, for their day has come, the time of their punishment. Hark!

  But Homer, too, was oppressed by the large number of final departures. “It’s like the Black Death,” he said gloomily to Arthur Spinney as they came out of church together after the burial service for Bill. “You know, back in the fourteenth century, when three quarters of the living souls on the continent of Europe were cut down.”

  “It reminds me of those little graveyards in remote New England towns,” said Arthur in melancholy recollection. “You wander around from stone to stone and suddenly realize that whole families were wiped out in one terrible winter.” Arthur was plainly upset. “Listen, Homer, I’m not about to go to the police, but I’ve got a funny feeling somebody’s playing God around here, and I don’t like it at all.”

  “Playing God?” said Homer, raising his eyebrows. “You mean you think most of these deaths weren’t natural, after all?”

  “Well, of course there’s no question about Rosemary Hill’s suicide. She told me about those pills in her letter. But I’m pretty suspicious of some of the others. No apparent cause for death but simple heart failure? It’s happened too often. And I’m curious about the needle marks on their arms. Of course most of them had hypodermic injections of one kind or another anyway—Agatha, Phil, Percy, Bill—because they all had nasty illnesses. They were having their blood tested all the time. But who knows what else might have been pumped into them with a syringe? Some of those needle marks looked pretty clumsy, as if an amateur had been at work.”

  “Were there any hypodermic needles lying around?”

  “No, so it could have been a conspiracy. Somebody else was helping. Somebody gave the injection, then went away with the needle. It’s a plot. They’re helping each other out of their terminal diseases ahead of time. Phil Shooky, the veterinarian, I’ll bet he showed them how. I swear, that’s what I think.”

  “Is that so bad?” murmured Homer.

  “Of course it’s bad. There’s always the chance for new cures. And some of them had a good deal of life ahead of them. They could have lasted for months, possibly years.”

  Homer looked at Arthur Spinney reproachfully. “Like Howie Sawyer and Claire Bold?”

  Dr. Spinney turned holier-than-thou. “Playing God is a dangerous practice, Homer Kelly. You should know that. Thou shall not take the mantle of the Lord upon thy shoulders. That’s what it says in the Bible.”

  “Oh, go on,” said Homer. “Where does it say that? I think you made that up.”

  The matter was admittedly complex. Homer said goodbye to Dr. Spinney and turned away to watch Joe Bold hurry down the hill, stooped over in a painful crouch. Homer wanted to run after Joe and find out what he thought about the appropriation of the mantle of God. As an ordained Christian minister, trained in the niceties of ethical behavior, would Joe regard such a conspiracy as the merciful connivance of consenting souls and a work of virtue? Or would he think it was mass murder, kindly but misguided? Homer raised his long right arm and opened his mouth to shout at Joe, then thought better of it. This was no time to discuss mortality with Joseph Bold.

  But Ed Bell was another honest Christian. What would Ed think about the mantle of God? Homer went back to the house on Fairhaven Bay and made himself a lonely lunch, because his wife was taking her turn with Claire Bold, and then he drove back to Nashoba to Ed Bell’s house on Acton Road.

  There was no room for Homer’s car. Four other cars were taking up all the space in Ed’s driveway. Homer recognized most of them. One belonged to the Bells, one was George Tarkington’s old Chrysler station wagon, the one at the back was Bo Harris’s old wreck. Only the fourth was a stranger.

  Homer parked in the street, with two wheels up on the sparse grass of the Bells’ front lawn, and walked up the driveway. When he saw Eleanor, he stopped short and gasped. She was part of the October spectacle. The sun was dappling her gold-red hair in the same lavish way that it scattered itself in splendor on the yellow leaves of the maples around her. Eleanor’s lips were as pink as berries spilling out of a seedpod. She was crying. She looked up at Homer, tears running down her cheeks. Then Homer saw the reason for her tears. A pair of big feet in enormous sneakers was sticking out from under Bo Harris’s Chevy. Bo must have said something cruel.

  Homer squatted in the driveway and tried to see the talking end of Bo. “Hi, there,” he said. “How’s she coming?”

  In the shadows under the car, Bo lifted his head, his eyes white in his greasy face. “Oh, it’s just the hangers on the goddamned muffler,” he snarled. “I can’t make the goddamned things stay put.”

  “Anything I can do to help?” said Homer, conscious of the spotless cleanliness of his Sunday suit.

  “Oh, no, thanks, Mr. Kelly.” Bo heaved at something over his head and cursed savagely.

  “Well, okay, then, if you say so.” Homer struggled to his feet. “I’m a butterfingered jerk anyway.” He turned to Eleanor and inquired politely, “Is your father around?”

  Eleanor nodded at the house. “He’s inside,” she quavered. ‘‘There’s a meeting.”

  “A meeting? Oh, that’s what those other cars are here for. I see.” Homer patted Eleanor’s shoulder clumsily and walked around the house to the front porch. Then he dawdled on the steps, and stared into the living room.

  There they were again, silhouetted sharply against the windows on the other side of the house. There were only three of them this time, three people standing in a small circle with their heads down, holding hands. Only three? Last time there had been more than that—eight or ten of them, Homer was sure of it.

  Inside the Bells’ living room, Ed and George and Eloise were sitting down. Ed told a joke, and then they got down to brass tacks. They were seasoned veterans by this time, at ease with each other, unruffled too by the other presence in the room, which now seemed like an invited guest.

  Eloise Baxter was timid, that was the only trouble. She would need help when the time came.

  Ed assured her the help would be there.
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  George Tarkington wasn’t going to need anybody. He laughed. “Wait and see,” he said. “No problem. I’ve got it all worked out.”

  When the doorbell rang, they didn’t look up. Lorraine answered it, hurrying out of the kitchen with her coat on.

  “Meeting going on again, like last time?” said Homer Kelly inquisitively, staring through the screen door at the closed sliding doors of the living room.

  “Oh, yes, Homer. I’m sorry. Did you want to see Ed? How about tomorrow? Forgive me, Homer. I’m on my way to my volunteer job at the hospital.”

  “Oh, I see. Well, never mind. Tell Ed never mind.”

  On the way back to Fairhaven Bay, Homer drove blindly, lost in thought. When he slowed down at the end of his long driveway, he was surprised to see another car pulling up at the edge of the turnaround, its front wheels mashing the low pink blueberry bushes and yellowing ferns.

  It was Parker Upshaw, in his gleaming new Subaru. Parker got out of his car and stood in the driveway. Homer was astonished to learn that Parker had come to him for the same reason Homer had gone to Ed Bell. He was troubled by the sudden excess of deaths in Old West Church.

  “One from natural causes,” said Parker, “then a murder, then six other deaths right on top of each other—one an accident, one a suicide, four completely unexplained.”

  “One from natural causes?” said Homer doubtfully, running the melancholy list over again in his mind.

  “Carl Bucky’s, of course,” said Parker.

  “Oh, Carl Bucky’s.” Homer wanted to tell Upshaw that Carl Bucky’s death had been about as natural as Arlene Pott’s, but he refrained.

  “What does it mean?” said Parker, staring in philosophical despair at the choppy blue water of Fairhaven Bay.

  “Damned if I know,” said Homer, who was in no mood to engage in metaphysical speculation with Parker W. Upshaw. Courteously he waved at the high steps, followed Parker onto the porch, and opened the house door.

  Heaving a deep sigh, Parker sat down on the edge of the sofa in the front room. He clasped his knees, then unclasped them. He put his hand inside his blazer, then withdrew it. He smoothed his hair. “What we want to avoid, you see,” he said earnestly, “is the intervention of the police.”

  “I think you’ll find,” said Homer dryly, “they’ve already intervened. After all, they’ve locked up Wally Pott.”

  “Oh, of course, Wally Pott. Good grief, that was bad enough. It’s the others I’m worried about. We mustn’t allow Old West Church to acquire a macabre reputation.” Parker Upshaw raised his voice and thumped the coffee table with his fist. “These deaths must stop!”

  Homer was overjoyed. “Why, certainly!” he cried. “Stop them, by all means! Stay the hand of the grim reaper! Halt mighty death in his tracks! Let there be no more unseemly kickings of the bucket! No longer shall the tired warrior bend the bow in the happy hunting ground!” Homer’s enthusiasm knew no bounds. As Parker stalked out of the house, Homer ran after him, babbling, “I mean, you’re right. There’s been altogether too much of that kind of thing down through the ages.” Leaning over the porch railing, Homer bawled the first verse of an old hymn as. Parker stamped down the stairs and got into his car:

  Ten thousand times ten thousand, in sparkling raiment bright,

  The armies of the ransomed saints throng up the sleeps of light;

  ’Tis finished, all is finished, their fight with death and sin;

  Fling open wide the golden gates, and let the victors in!

  “I mean, ten thousand times ten thousand—it’s too many, right, Upshaw?”

  Parker started his car and swept it around the dirt circle. Then he leaned out, his face red with anger, and shouted, “Your driveway is a disgrace!”

  Homer was still in a transport. “I mean,” he bellowed, “who wants to throng up the steeps of light when he could be drinking a beer and eating a hamburger? Or gazing from a mountaintop at some stupendous view? I mean, I ask you, Parker,” shouted Homer as Upshaw’s Subaru tore up the steep hill, “why don’t we all just go right on being alive?”

  But it was no joke. When Mary Kelly came home from a long afternoon session with Claire Bold, worn out and discouraged, she listened with her head in her hands as Homer described Dr. Spinney’s conspiracy theory.

  “Spinney doesn’t know it,” said Homer, “but he’s absolutely right. The conspirators meet every Sunday afternoon at Ed Bell’s house. Did I tell you I saw them all before? I walked right in on them. It was a bigger bunch the first time. I was so ashamed of myself for interrupting I dodged right out again, but I swear I saw Phil Shooky and Rosemary Hill among the rest. Now Phil and Rosemary are gone. I’ll bet Agatha and Bill and Thad and Percy were there too. And now they’re gone. So the group I saw today is just the tag ends that are left. I couldn’t see who they were, but George Tarkington must have been one of them, because his car was there. I’ll bet those people are going to be next. They’ll turn up dead too. Do you know anybody else with a terminal disease who might want to be eased out of existence gently ahead of time? Somebody who might want to finesse the whole miserable final scene in the hospital, with hopeless surgery and bedpans and last-minute kidney problems and pneumonia and intravenous feeding and going into a coma and losing their wits entirely?”

  “So that’s it,” said Mary slowly, looking up at Homer. “They’re helping each other die.”

  “‘What a mercy,’ everybody always says, have you noticed that? ‘Isn’t it a blessing!’ Well, maybe the blessing is prearranged. It’s a Merciful Society of the Blessed Dead, that’s what I think, a prayerful organization for the cheating of death. It’s like a church within the church. They’re getting together to help each other take care of the matter themselves, before some hideous disease tortures them the way it’s torturing Claire Bold, before senility turns them into living corpses like Howie Sawyer.”

  “If you’re right, Homer, then surely it’s a good thing? It’s what I would want if some awful disease happened to me. Or if I had a stroke that threatened me with senile dementia. Listen, Homer”—Mary stood up and looked at her husband fiercely—“you’ve got to promise to kill me if that happens. Swear you’ll do it. Oh, I know, it’s vanity on my part, I admit. I’m too vain to want to be remembered as a helpless vegetable. Too proud, too conceited.”

  “Is that a formal request?” said Homer. “I’ve got carte blanche? Anytime Maud Starr crooks her little finger?”

  Mary laughed, and led the way into the kitchen.

  “That’s the trouble, you see,” said Homer. “Who’s to say when the moment has come? If you and I had a pact like that, we’d begin to be scared of each other. I can see you coming at me with a pill in your fist before I’m ready. I can see myself in bed, helpless and paralyzed from the neck down, whining, ‘Not yet, woman, not yet.’”

  They went out on the porch with their crystal glasses and their bottle of wine. Venus was still the ornament of the evening. Downriver it hung low between barred channels of gray cloud. Homer watched as the glittering point of light fell behind a cloudy strip, then reappeared below it, as though a woman were moving through a house, looking out of each of the windows in turn. Her piercing glance alarmed him.

  “It’s a serious thing, mercy killing,” he said uneasily. “In court it would be murder. And when you think about the ethics of it, what a baffling mystery! Is it the right thing to do, or not? God knows. God only knows.”

  “Maybe it’s just coincidence, after all,” said Mary. “Just because eight members of the congregation of Old West Church have died, it may not mean anything out of the ordinary. After all, this is an elderly congregation.”

  “It’s just coincidence, you mean, that all eight of them died at the same time?”

  “Why not? It’s perfectly possible. Anyway, it’s only seven. You can’t count Arlene Pott. That was something else entirely. So was Carl Bucky.”

  Then Mary went inside to get supper, and Homer strolled down the front yard,
pushed the canoe into the shallows, and paddled out to look at the sunset.

  It was cool on the water. The canoe rocked in the waves. Homer wished he had brought a jacket. Shivering, he tried to warm himself at the glowing fires of the display in the west, a clotted confusion of flaming archipelagoes, burning ships, blazing coral reefs, and. raging forest fires on the slopes of fiery mountains. It was the steeps of light—Homer recognized them—those selfsame steeps toward which the armies of the ransomed saints were thronging, turning up their rapt faces, bouncing out of their graves with pious good sportsmanship. Homer’s face was bathed in the sunset glow, but he scowled as he dipped his paddle into a puddle of pink sky. Ten thousand times ten thousand poor doomed souls died every single day of the year. God had certainly arranged things badly. He was the destroyer of every living thing, blandly arranging the extinction of every creature. His universe worked on a principle of mass murder. But now, at least, thanks to the Merciful Society of the Blessed Dead, some of the clever ones had outwitted him. With the kindly assistance of Ed Bell, they were marching in the direction of those horrid steeps of light with a firmer step than the rest.

  Then Homer had an uncomfortable thought, and he missed a stroke and nearly lost his paddle. What was Ed’s interest in all this? Why was Ed standing there in his living room with the rest of the society? Why did they meet at his house? Was Ed Bell going to die too? Did he suffer from some illness that was threatening his life? Or was he merely the leader, the man behind the conspiracy, the one who was playing God? Was he the inventor of the plan for saving the rest from pain and suffering and indignity?

  Homer put down his paddle in the bottom of the canoe and let the wind-driven waves slop against the metal sides. The air smelled of mud and turtles and decaying pickerel weed and the fresh water of the river, spongy and dark with organic matter. Homer thought of Betsy Bucky, who had killed her husband with deadly intent, and was getting away with it. Betsy was the very opposite of Ed Bell. Ed was a genuine angel of deliverance. But might he not be accused of murder in the first degree, multiple murder, if anyone else found out? Even though it was not malice aforethought in Ed’s case, but pure benevolence?