David Wiltse - Prayer for the Dead

Dyce pulled the brushes gently through the man’s hair from brow to neck, one hand following the other. First the top, then the sides, then the top again. Dyce heard the man moaning softly in appreciation.

“Funny how it always feels better when someone else does it, have you noticed? It’s never quite the same when you have to do it yourself There’s a girl where I have my hair cut who does the shampoo-I can’t just go to a barber anymore, my hair’s too thin, there’s no Italian in my woodpile, I guess. I need a real artist to take care of it these days, and women just know more about these things. Actually, the person who does the actual styling is a man, but you know what I mean, he’s used to working on women, but what was I saying? There’s this girl who gives me a shampoo before the guy does the cutting and her fingers feel so good I want to propose to her every time I go in… I don’t, though… His wife used to do his hair before she died, and then I took over. One hundred strokes a night, no matter what. It was practically a religious thing and that makes me what, an altar boy or something… There, that’s more than a hundred.”

Dyce stood in front of the man, admiring the results of his work. A tear seeped from the man’s eye.

“I know I promised you a treat and that was it, but I think I’ll give you another one, and then it’s my turn.”

Dyce pressed the syringe in the man’s arm, studying the level in the cylinder carefully. Contented with the dosage, he held the hand mirror so the man could see himself. The second treat.

The man looked at the face of his own death. His skin was the ashen pallor of a corpse, more deathly pale than the tape that covered his mouth. His eyes were an impossibly bright blue in contrast with his flesh, and his hair, fresh from the brushing and crackling with static electricity, stood up like the caricature of a man in terror.

Behind the mirror, Dyce’s face swam in and out of focus, nodding approval and smiling. The man closed his eyes and gratefully allowed the drug to lower him into unconsciousness as softly as a mother with a babe.

Dyce covered the man’s face while he worked so that he wouldn’t be tempted to peek and spoil his first viewing. He laid the board flat on the sawhorses that were draped with black felt crepe to hide their rough-hewn legs. The shirt, tie, and suit jacket were awkward to put on and the covering slipped from the man’s face several times. He drew the creamy silk up to the man’s waist and then crossed his arms, which had already been freed from their restraints, in order to put on the clothing. Working by feel, Dyce removed the tape and took the darning egg out of the man’s mouth. With the pillow under the man’s head, Dyce finally removed the covering from his face, carefully avoiding even a glance.

With Mozart’s Requiem playing softly on the tape machine, Dyce selected a tray of spicy chicken wings from his freezer and heated them in the microwave. Working with his back to the man, he set up the television tray in front of his favorite armchair and put out his napkin and a fork for the simple tossed salad. The chicken wings he would eat with his fingers. Normally he would not eat during such an occasion, but since it was only a preview, he reasoned, and because he was very hungry and would not want to have to interrupt himself as long as the emotion gripped him, he would do it this way just this once.

Throughout his preparations he felt the excitement of anticipation stirring him. With an effort he made himself slow down and go through every step methodically. Finally, when all was ready and the microwave sounded its buzzer, he took his tray of chicken wings to the television tray, sat in the chair, and for the first time allowed himself to look at the man.

In the gloom of the living room, the pale face and hands seemed to be lit with an inner light. The man’s features had relaxed under the drug and his expression was one of utter serenity. From this distance, Dyce could not see the man’s chest move with his shallow breaths, but, of course, he knew. He knew, and that detracted from the pleasure somewhat. And the man’s color was not yet perfect. It never was while they were alive, but it was close. The difference between what was and the perfection he could so easily attain detracted, too. Life itself was the problem; it refused to be completely disguised. But still, it was close. And as long as they lived, they did not decay.

“So beautiful,” Dyce murmured in the gloom.

He sat perfectly still for a long time before he reached for the first chicken wing.

Seventy-five feet in the air over Route 87, clinging to a rock with all the dubious tenacity of a cookie magnet to a refrigerator door, Becker came to the conclusion that he must have been crazy. Would a sane man have decided to take up rock climbing at his age? Would a sane man have taken up rock climbing, period?

“There’s a little depression just above your right hand. Not more than eighteen inches.” The voice came from below, which meant it was Alan Something, the kid with the stringy hair. Alan could look at a bare rockface from the ground and see every handhold and piton strike all the way to the top, then leap at the rock as if it weren’t going up straight as a plumb line, and scamper up it with the agility and contempt of a kid vaulting over the neighbor’s fence. Becker didn’t care for Alan very much; he was the expert who had convinced Becker to take the lessons.

“Just eighteen inches. But if you feel you can’t, you don’t have to.” That voice was Cindi’s, the girl who had preceded Becker to the top in what seemed like a minute and a half, finding the holds, wedging the pitons into the cracks so Becker could secure his rope and have a “safe” trip up. Her hair was as stringy as Alan’s, but on her it looked better. “No one will think any the worse of you if you don’t want to try,” she said.

“Except me,” said Becker. His words were muffled by the rock against which his face was pressed as if he could somehow cling to it with lips and cheek.

“Just reach up with your right hand,” said Alan from below. He was having a hard time concealing his impatience. Becker had been frozen in position three-quarters of the way up the one-hundred-foot palisade for almost a minute. To Becker it seemed the better part of a day. His left hand was extended to the side and down, gripping with only the fingertips an irregularity in the rock that was slanted toward the ground. His left klettershoe was firmly planted-or as firmly as anything was ever planted in a sport that sought insecurity as its challenge-but only his right toe had the slightest purchase on a nub of stone. If he reached for the next hold with his right hand, he would have to release his left foot, which was the only thing keeping him up in the air. The other two grips had as much purchase on the rock as tail flaps on a jetliner. They might steer him a bit but they certainly wouldn’t hold him up.

“Your muscles will cramp if you don’t move,” called Alan.

“He’s right,” said Cindi in a softer tone. She was nearly as good in her way as Alan was in his, but with none of his arrogance. Becker liked her, but didn’t want her to see him in this position. The muscles in his left arm and right leg had been dancing for the past several seconds already. He either had to move or be kicked off the rockface by a muscle spasm. The question was, move where? Upward and onward to glory, or the ignominious climb back to the base. “What did you say?”

Cindi was on her stomach on top of the rock, leaning out as far as she could to watch Becker. If Becker rolled his eyes upward, he could just make out the bright red of her helmet. Crash helmet. If Becker kept his eyes strained upward long enough to make out her features, he got dizzy. It seemed a poor choice of pastimes for a man with a tendency to vertigo, which confirmed Becker in his suspicion that he was crazy.