A Prayer for the Dying

by Stewart O'Nan

  You’re still trying out first lines when you hear Fred Lembeck’s rooster. He calls and calls. You’re not going to sleep anyway. A spider’s working in the corner of the window. The sun’s not up yet, the sky deepening to blue in the east, the morning star low over the horizon. It’s cool enough for dew, and the tracks of something have dragged a dark path across the yard. Beyond the garden, the trees are noisy with birds.

  Marta comes in from the other room, bleary and yawning, taking baby steps. “She’s still asleep,” she reports, and lies down.

  “I’ll be quiet.”

  “When does Doc open?” She keeps her eyes closed.

  You explain about Chase coming in for the woman.

  She opens her eyes and gets up, starts going through her wardrobe. You follow her lead.

  “I can take her if you want to rest,” you say, but just for form’s sake.

  Marta ignores you, chooses a blue blouse you love. You button up beside her, the two of you silent, concentrating on getting dressed. Your belt buckle jingles and clinks; her petticoats rustle. You catch her eye as if you have something to say, and she stops brushing her hair, waits, her hand cocked. But what is there to say? She tips her head again and pulls the brush through, tearing out hair with a ripping sound. She pinches a wad from the bristles and drops it above the trash basket, and the dead cloud floats down.

  “I’m sure it’s just a cold,” you say, and immediately the heat of shame—of trespassing—flares through you.

  “Let’s hope,” she says, but bitterly, and you promise not to do this to her again.

  You put on coffee, your one concession to the usual routine. Neither of you can stomach it. Any other day you’d pour it back in the pot, but now you wait till she goes to wake Amelia, then open the window and dump both cups out on the ground.

  “What was that?” Marta asks when she returns.

  Rather than answer her, you take Amelia in your arms and hold her to you. She surfaces a minute, still dreaming. Those too-blue eyes, all Marta. She’s warm, and her breath flutters wetly in your ear. Her lungs seem to squeak. It’s just a cold. Doc will know.

  She coughs and fusses, grumps, nearly waking up.

  “It’s all right, honey,” you murmur, and sway to quiet her. “Papa’s right here. Yes, that’s better, you hush now, yes.”

  Marta’s about to take her back so you can get your jacket on when you hear the bells. Seven o’clock. Doc should be in by now. You hand Amelia over and go to the front hall closet. You palm the doorknob, and the church bell rings.

  You turn as if you can see the bell tower from here. Cyril rings it again, lets it reverberate away into birdsong. Marta looks to you, confused, though you both know it means a woman has died. Her eyes ask if you know anything; you just shrug, puzzled.

  Neither of you move as it tolls out the age of the dead. You count. Twenty-six. Twenty-seven. Amelia clenches a tiny fist, then lets it fall, drops back into sleep. Fifty-one, fifty-two. It goes on, preposterously, and you wonder if Cyril has lost track (but no, that’s not Cyril; he’s precise to a fault, his child’s mind exacting, inflexible).

  Then suddenly it stops.

  “Seventy-six,” Marta checks, and you nod yes.

  “Elsa Sullivan.”

  “Poor thing.”

  You don’t want to appear cruel, but you need to get Amelia in to see Doc, and you turn and open the door. You can talk about Elsa on the way. Doc probably has her laid out in back by now.

  It’s brilliant out—as it has been all month. You step aside to let Marta by, and the bell tolls again.

  You both stop on the walk.

  Twice, another woman.

  Cyril chimes out her life. The two of you stand there; it would be disrespectful to move. You count to seventy-three.

  “Millie,” Marta guesses.

  You know she’s right, but it doesn’t make sense. Elsa you’ve already conceded. Millie’s still strong.

  Marta crosses herself and then Amelia’s forehead. Usually you’d ask each other what could have happened—a fire maybe—but not today. Before the last knell has faded away, you’ve opened the gate and started off for town. And then the bells stop you again.

  One.

  “Jacob,” Marta beseeches you in the long pause, and you put an arm around her, squeeze her shoulder, the two of you standing there, facing the distant steeple, counting.

  Thirty-eight.

  There are a few possibilities—Fenton, Carl Huebner, Gillett Condon—but neither of you say their names. You walk fast, as if Cyril might stop you again. You wonder why Doc didn’t come and get you. The dust is thick and hard to walk in. A Menominee family creaks by in a wagon heaped with provisions, blankets, furniture, a skinny cow trailing behind. A minute later, a second family with the same cow, the father laughing deeply at something, making the best of the move. It reminds you of the retreat after the siege, everyone desperately grateful, a little wild.

  Outside the livery, in a ditch, one of Austin Phillips’s dogs lies on its side, flies swarming its eyes, the peach pit of its behind. Marta flinches, covers her mouth with a hand, turns as if to shield Amelia from the stink. If it’s not gone by lunch, you’ll have to ask Austin to bury it, under penalty of fine, and you don’t want to do that.

  Finally you reach the sidewalk. You expect to see Chase’s rig under Doc’s shingle, and people, a confusion of loved ones, but there’s only Doc’s trap.

  Inside, Fred Lembeck sits on the love seat, hunched over his barn boots, his one hand on his knees, as if leaning into a campfire. He lost the other arm to the leather belt of a thresher, but it hasn’t slowed him down any. He’s not like Bart, though; you’ve never heard him joke about it. He stands when he sees Marta, nods. He frowns solemnly as he greets you.

  “It’s the girls,” he confirms, and you say you’re sorry. While Fred and them weren’t close, they were neighbors, and that’s something.

  “Who else?”

  “Morning, Jacob,” Doc calls from in back. “I figured you’d hear Cyril.”

  You holler back, and Amelia wakes up and complains. You ask Fred again.

  “Austin Phillips,” he whispers, as if to protect Marta.

  “Austin Phillips?” both of you echo, and instinctively you turn to her as if she might have an answer. She doesn’t.

  “We saw one of his dogs on the road,” you say, but the clue goes nowhere. The three of you stand there, dumb. Austin Phillips has been the town farrier since before the war. His father was the town smith, and his father before him, an old Indian fighter.

  Doc comes through the curtain, drying his hands on a towel. He sees Marta and pauses, a hitch in his step on his way to the desk. He half-bows, dips his head in acknowledgment, then checks your faces, looks at Fred.

  “Austin Phillips,” you question him.

  Doc nods. “Last night. Fred here found Millie and Elsa this morning.”

  “Before chores,” Fred says, and again all of you stare speechlessly at Irma’s beautiful Persian carpet.

  “I just saw Millie the other day,” you say.

  “I know,” Fred says, just as baffled.

  Doc turns to Marta to change the subject. “You brought Amelia.”

  “She’s sick.” Marta moves to the desk, holding Amelia out like an offering, and you’re forgotten. Fred sits down again, leans his one elbow on his knee.

  “What seems to be the problem?” Doc asks, and Marta tells him everything.

  He moves his paperweight aside and lays Amelia on the blotter, turns up the lamp to look at her throat. Amelia wails. He ignores it, his face hovering above hers, his mouth grim as he concentrates. He sees something, you can tell by the way he squints and pinches his lips together, the way he goes still as a hunter.

  And then suddenly he straightens up, done with that. He peeks up her nose, slips a pinkie between her gums. She shrieks, her whole head red, a faint tracery of veins under the thin skin. Marta looks to you, unsure, and Doc shifts Amelia on the blo
tter, pulls the lamp closer. He leans across her, and you find yourself moving to get a better view. Her tiny eyebrows are white, her hands opening and closing on nothing.

  He has her jaws propped open, shifting his head from side to side, pinning her tongue down with his thumb. Amelia gags and hacks. He goes still again, holds his breath a second.

  “All right, you,” he says softly, lifting Amelia off the blotter, not quite satisfied, and bites his bottom lip in thought. Amelia’s screaming. Doc holds her in the crook of his shoulder and pats her back, but it doesn’t work, and he returns her to Marta.

  Amelia quiets, whimpering, then coughs and settles, Marta cuddling her, soothing her with words.

  Doc slides the paperweight to the center again, but doesn’t let go, as if contemplating the move. Chews his bottom lip. He still won’t look at you.

  “Why don’t we come on in back and get a better look,” he says.

  How can he possibly get a better look, you wonder, and though you want to know right now—does she have it, yes or no—though you want to protest, both of you silently agree and start to follow him through the curtain.

  He stops and you nearly run into him. “Marta, if you could wait out here with her, just a minute.”

  “All right,” she says, but she looks to you frantically, as if she doesn’t understand why she’s being left behind. You try to calm her with a nod, then do it too quickly.

  “Jacob,” Doc says, and you follow him in.

  He closes the door to the first room before you can see who’s in it. The hall is filled with that fatty, familiar smell, and you think of Lydia Flynn in her box, Chase on the way. Goddamn this thing.

  Elsa’s in the second room, on the bed, wrapped in a sheet, a patch of striped nightgown peeking out.

  Before you reach the third door, Doc turns to you. He lays a hand on your shoulder and pulls you close as a lover, leans his lips to your ear. You can smell the minty brilliantine in his hair.

  “She swallowed half a bottle of Paris green. You know what that does to someone?”

  “It burns.” Bart had a man once, a millwright, drank a glass of the insecticide to toast his bankruptcy. Bart still talks about it, almost joking, worst thing he’s ever seen.

  “You ever see it?”

  “No,” you confess.

  “I want to cover her if that’s all right.”

  He leaves you in the dim hall. At the far end the same spray of sun plays on the wallpaper. You remember seeing it only a few days ago, commenting on it, but what you were feeling then seems distant, almost lost. Compared to Amelia, it seems frivolous, and for an instant you hate it, and yourself for noticing.

  “All set,” Doc says, beckoning you.

  He’s laid a clean towel over her face. She’s wearing the same heavy dress, the same boots the Ramsay boys used to make fun of. First Clytie, now her. You think of their place empty, the withered garden, the listing porch. You liked the quiet there, the back door open on the yard. You say a prayer and take her ankles, careful not to touch the skin.

  “Looks like she gave half to Elsa,” Doc says, maneuvering her through the door. “Fred found her in the kitchen. Elsa was up in bed. He’s a little shook up.”

  “Naturally.”

  You’re quiet in the hall. Doc walks backward, then turns at the second door. You can feel her feet through the boots. Probably already swelling. You’ll have to cut the laces away, peel the leather like rind. If he lets you, that is. Probably not.

  There’s not enough room on the bed for both of them, so you bend over and lay her on the floor. As you do, the towel falls off her face, and for the first time you see what Paris green does to someone.

  Her lips are gone, carved away, along with most of her throat. The skin around it isn’t burnt but neatly sliced, livid, the layers of fat and gristle plain as a Sunday roast. You can see where the roots of her teeth meet the jaw, and all you can think of is the siege—the sun coming up on the dead, the strips of flesh gouged out and nibbled in the dark.

  You use the Lord’s name.

  Doc whisks the towel over her. “You all right?”

  “God have mercy.”

  “There’re easier ways,” Doc agrees.

  He lifts you under one arm, moves you to the door, then shuts it firmly. Amelia, you think, you need to worry about her—but Millie’s teeth. Her feeding it to Elsa like medicine. You pray she didn’t stay to watch. You imagine what it must have done to their stomachs.

  There’s no time. Doc parts the curtain and ushers Marta in. She stalks by the two of you, impatient with waiting, being left out of the secret. You trail her past the two closed doors, glimpse the green sunlight still shimmering on the wall.

  Across from the bed there’s a commode as high as a sideboard, and Doc has Marta lay Amelia on its wide top. She paws the air, trying to find her mother. He lights a lamp, gives it some wick, then a second one. Marta takes your hand. He strips Amelia’s shift off and presses two fingers to her chest, her neck, searches for her glands. You scan his face for the littlest hint; he seems satisfied but still grim, purposefully reserved. From a drawer he takes a cotton swab and a kind of jeweler’s loupe and leans over her, only her kicking feet visible. He leans in and fishes around her mouth with the swab, dips his shoulder to use the light. Amelia chokes and cries and Marta squeezes your hand; you squeeze back to reassure her—or are you pooling your terror, adding it to hers?

  Doc pulls back and motions the two of you over, keeping a hand on Amelia’s chest. He holds the swab up to one lamp. It’s tipped with blood.

  Neither of you have to ask. There’s the proof, irrefutable. And though you know what it means, you can’t understand it. You stand there like a man confronting a loaded gun for the first time. There must be something you can do. Leave. Flee.

  “I’m afraid it is,” he says.

  “Yes” is your first word, just as Marta’s is “No.”

  She looks to you as if you can change this. You have to. It’s your fault, you know it is, it’s all your fault.

  “She has what’s called a thrush on the back of her throat,” he explains, feeling his own. “You can see how sensitive it is; I barely touched it with this.”

  “It can’t be a cold,” you ask. “Or a sore throat.”

  He shakes his head gently.

  “She’s just a baby,” Marta says.

  Doc apologizes, trying to comfort you. He gathers Amelia and presents her to Marta, snuffs the lamps with two quick twists, slips the loupe into the drawer.

  “What can we do?” you ask.

  Doc pauses—stiff, gentlemanly. It seems he’s stalling, hoping you’ll pitch in, rescue him. You’ve seen him do this before, when he doesn’t have an answer. When there is no answer.

  “Try to keep her comfortable,” he says.

  “What does that mean?” Marta says. “Isn’t there medicine? Isn’t there something she can take?”

  “I’m sorry,” he says again.

  Marta sways with Amelia, her lips grazing her sparse hair. You hold her the same way, take strength from the smell of her. She shakes her head, still not believing him. But there’s the swab, the bright, wet tip.

  It won’t be long, Doc says. In children it progresses quickly. It’s already rather advanced, he’s afraid.

  You appreciate the way he says this—apologetic, respectful. He knows these words aren’t enough. He would rather be telling you anything else. You know how it feels; you’ve done this too.

  Marta sags in your arms. “Jacob.”

  “We’ll take care of her,” you say, when you want to say everything will be all right. It won’t be, you know that now, you have to admit it. It’s not a lack of faith; you’ve seen Millie, and Lydia Flynn. All Marta has is Doc’s word.

  “Jacob,” she pleads.

  And what are you supposed to do? You want to go home. You want to give up. You want to rage against God for what He’s done. You want to beg Him.

  There’s nothing to do. You�
�ve been in the business long enough to understand grief. That’s the awful thing: there is nothing to do but go on. You don’t want to, you don’t want to leave the loved one behind, but you do. Death’s taught you that much at least.

  You hold on to Marta.

  “I can give you some valerian to help her sleep,” Doc offers, and Marta quickly accepts. It’s almost a relief, just having some business to attend to.

  Up front, a bell jingles, someone coming in from the street, the glass door rattling.

  Doc rummages through a cupboard of clinking bottles like an apothecary, finally handing you a vial full of a clear tincture. No, please, he says, you don’t need to pay him. He gives you masks to wear when you’re tending her.

  On the way out, he closes the door. As you walk down the dim hall, he lays a hand on the back of your neck, and it chills you. Suddenly you understand everything you couldn’t in the room. It really is going to happen.

  Marta ducks through the curtain, Amelia looking back at you from her shoulder. She smiles, toothless, and you try to make a funny face. It’s mad, you think. She seems fine.

  Expecting Chase, you’re surprised to find that Sarah Ramsay and her four boys have taken over the love seat, little Martin on the floor, his hair a rat’s nest. Fred Lembeck’s gone, Gavin Ramsay laughing and menacing his brothers with one limp sleeve, his arm tucked inside his shirt. Tyrone coughs, and his mother clamps a handkerchief over his mouth. She sees Amelia.

  “Whatever it is, they’ve all got it,” Sarah tells Doc, almost joking at her motherly bad luck. She’s gone through two husbands, both drinkers, and lives off the insurance money. You want to say you’re sorry, but Marta turns from them and hurries for the door. Outside, Chase is just pulling up.

  “Here he is,” you warn Doc.

  “That’s all right. He’ll just have to wait.”

  “I can take care of him,” you say, though he knows you’re not really offering.

  “You go home,” he orders, and you do.

  It’s hotter outside, and blinding. Chase is dressed in an elegant mourning coat and a matching top hat, both trimmed with dust. You explain that the baby’s sick, and he agrees completely, wards off your apology.