Jan Karon - In the Company of Others

Her quick breath stirring the sour air.

‘There was nothing left then of either of us, I thought I had died. But I had not died, as you see. What I thought was death was a peace such as I’ve never felt or believed possible. It was completely strange to me, and cannot be explained. I knew it had nothing to do with God, for God was dead, I had killed him in retribution for the many killings he has laid upon me. The peace did not pass quickly, as I believed it might. I thought, if this is dying, then I am not afraid to die.’

‘Don’t die,’ he said, simply.

‘There’s no reason to live. I only wished to live as proof I couldn’t be made to die.’

‘You must rest, Evelyn. You must give yourself time to heal.’

She licked her dry lips. ‘I cannot rest.’

‘Is the peace still with you?’

‘No. I did not deserve it, and it left me.’ Tears.

He sat, head down, feeling called out of himself, beyond his powers.

‘Water,’ he said, taking up the glass and bending the straw to her lips. She sucked.

‘So sick,’ she said, turning away.

He took a cotton-tipped stick from the jar and opened the lip balm and dressed the tip. ‘Let me,’ he said.

She opened her eyes to him, and he succored her lips as he had done for his mother. She was too frail to wrack herself like this, it was suicidal.

He stepped to the door to call Eileen, remembering for some reason his mother’s eyelids in death, how thin they seemed, and blue, like the wings of a moth. She had died at home, whispering that the garden gates were closed.

He turned and looked back and saw that she had gone to sleep, her mouth open in the awful gasping.

Wait, he wanted to say, you had a question. He went to her bed and fell to his knees and with his own last strength did what he could in the face of the impossible.

Without opening his eyes, he reached for his watch on the bed table, squinted at it. Nine o’clock. Unbelievable. He hadn’t slept ’til nine o’clock since when? Ever. He felt robbed, somehow.

There she sat in a chair by the bed as he had done at Catharmore.

‘Good grief, woman, why did you let me sleep the day away?’

‘I was painting you, that’s why.’

‘Painting me?’

She thrust the damp portrait in front of him. He sat up, put on his glasses.

‘Why did you paint me with my mouth open?’

‘Because it was open, of course.’

‘No fair.’

‘It was only slightly open.’

‘Slightly? It looks like Linville Caverns. You can practically see a stalactite.’

‘I’m not after mouths and noses and eyes and ears, it’s the likeness one strives to catch. This is a marvelous likeness, Timothy-admit it.’

‘I hardly ever see myself in profile, so I can’t vouch for it.’

‘Oh, please,’ she said, disgusted. ‘I’m trying to occupy myself. You were the only person in the room.’

‘We’ll tack it to a fence post in the garden, to keep out the crows.’

‘Wretch,’ she said. ‘What are you doing today?’

‘I’ll bring up breakfast if they’ll still make it for us.’

‘Maureen brought coffee at eight, you were sleeping like a bear cub. I can afford to miss a meal.’

‘Or I could carry you down.’ He didn’t know how, but he would give it a shot. ‘You need to get out of here.’

‘True. But what can I do? Possibly two more days of elevating, then the moon boot and I can start the old hobble…’

‘With great caution, Feeney said.’

‘… on the crutches.’

‘And then we’ll soon be home.’ A strange feeling as he said it. Weeks in Holly Springs and at Henry’s bedside in Memphis, and nearly two weeks now in Ireland. Home seemed lost in a mist.

She gave him the Worried Look. ‘Do you think it’s good to be called out like that, in the middle of the night?’

‘Of course it’s good,’ he snapped. ‘Sorry. Yes. It’s good.’ I’m all they have, he wanted to say. ‘You’re still keen to finish the journal?’

‘Definitely.’

He pulled a knit shirt from the armoire, laid it on the bed. ‘Time’s winged chariot is at our backs.’

He gulped the water on his bed table. ‘I need coffee. And a bite of something. Juice, too; I need juice. Anything I can bring you?’

‘Surprise me.’

‘Done.’

‘Your insulin.’

‘Right. When I come back, we’ll hit Fintan a good lick, then I’ll help Liam with the paint job and have a run in the afternoon. What’s going on with Bella?’

‘She’s very winsome, really, and bent, of course, on persecuting herself over what she’s hiding. I do love her, Timothy.’

‘Remember that Feeney’s stopping by to have a look at you this evening.’ He had a look himself-the swelling seemed somewhat diminished. Enough, he thought, enough of this.

In the bathroom, he gave himself the shot, removed his trousers from the doorknob where he’d hung them at nearly four this morning.

‘How was it at Catharmore?’

He tried to find a way of condensing it for her, for himself, but he had no words for how it was.

‘Later,’ he said.

Feeling strangely off-kilter as he went downstairs, he shook his head as if to clear it. Sleeping ’til nine. He was an orderly creature, liking things to go according to custom, to habit. He liked a crease in his jeans, so be it.

And the dream of Henry, of looking into a bathroom mirror while shaving and seeing Henry’s face. It was his own reflection, he knew, yet it was Henry’s face in dark contrast to the white shaving foam. So he, Timothy, was actually a black man? How had he kept this knowledge from himself these many years? What did it mean and how was he to go forward? Was he both Henry and himself in one, or had he become Henry altogether? He felt the fear rising in him, leaned closer to the mirror, looked into his brother’s eyes. Why had no one mentioned this, made him see it? In the dream, something broke in him and he wept, and then the smell of coffee, and the notion that Peggy must be perking it on the stove.

Anna also had the Worried Look-it was going around.

‘How did you rest?’ she asked.

‘Well enough,’ he said.

‘I’m sorry you were called out.’

‘A hard night.’

‘Yes.’

‘Not for me, for her.’

Will you go up? he wanted to say. Will you forgive her and go up to her? But he said nothing.

Back in the room with the tray, sitting in his accustomed chair, he realized a certain contentment, after all. The coffee hot and strong, the juice sweet and cold, their breakfast modest and good. And at least for now, their room a refuge, not a confinement.

They read together the Venite, exultemus Domino, prayed for those at home and those in the two households of this place and time.

She took the journal into her lap, then, and read to him, both of them happy in whatever way they could summon.

8th Day of Advent 1862

Frigid

Adam & Ltl Dorrit getting their Winter corn & through C’s insistence, each a blanket into the bargain

I must wonder to whom Uncle’s generosity would incline. To the Union would be my thinking, & even Sukey, formerly a slave, would place her allegiance there. On those days when C & I wish to be serving in Philadel we look about us & know we have undertaken the right course.

Rose McFee’s infant double-greatgrandtr stillborn, though we did all we could. When I passed the long mirror this morning, I was astonished to glimpse my father looking back. I felt an instant’s joy at seeing him, then realized the truth.

The lad arriving ten days hence-Michael & Kathleen the following week by train.

The Bride is set upon producing the finest Christmas Feast of her fortysome years tho we have yesterday reduced her allotment for Provisions. She gives me a Warring look & says she has made do all her life, twill be nothing new, & if she is carried to the grave for the extra work required to stretch this miserly sum, she will do it nonetheless as a matter of personal pride-end of sermon.