Geoff Ryman - Was

Dotty was in a fight with Tom Heritage. She was punching him in the face as he hugged her. The Angel had fallen.

Heritage seemed to have forgotten all his training. Don't come at them from the front, don't try to hit them, get them from behind and make them go still. Billy saw why he had forgotten. Tom Heritage was angry. He was trying to get a good enough hold with one hand, so that he could hit her with his right.

Bill slipped up from behind and got Old Dynamite in a headlock. He pulled back tighter, and she squawked and howled, her arms hoisted helplessly over her head. They waved in the air. She tried to kick backward, but her legs were feeble. Bill held off as long as he could and then swept her feet out from under her.

"Calm down!" he shouted at Heritage. Heritage swallowed blood and wiped his face. "Come on, Dotty, let's go sit down."

She howled in nameless rage and slapped the air and tried to kick. Heritage also slipped in behind, twisting one of her legs in front of the other so she couldn't kick. They lifted her up like a sack of potatoes. Both of them had been hired for their muscles.

Dotty began to sob "No, no, no," over and over. The Graveyard was near. Jackson the janitor saw them and pushed open the swinging doors and flipped down the side of her cot. By the time they had loaded her onto the mattress she had gone quiet. She shivered.

They stood over her. Heritage was nursing a split lip.

"Do you think you could see a way not to report it?" Bill asked Tom Heritage. He looked around at Jackson.

Tom Heritage glared back at him, working the inside of his mouth, tasting blood.

"It's only been this once. Only you, me and Jackson saw it. Please don't tell anybody, or they'll stick her back in the Pigpen. Please. It was my fault, I told her she couldn't do something and I should have just humored her or something. Please don't tell, Tom. Please."

"Okay, okay," said Tom Heritage, sounding bored. "I shouldn't have hit her anyway."

After lunch, Bill wheeled out the TV and stood guard over it. It was late afternoon by the time he got back to the Graveyard to see how Dotty was.

She was lying on her back, smiling the smile, singing to herself.

"Sleep well, Dot," he told her. "Have yourself a beautiful dream."

The next day he got to work late, and Jackson greeted him, wheeling out a tub of laundry.

"We've had a casualty," he said, his voice dark and laconic. Accusing?

"Who?" The old folks often passed away in the night or hurt themselves.

"Old Dynamite. They found her out in the snow. She'd slept out in it all night. She was lying on her back. She'd been making those angel things the kids make. You know, waving her arms up and down to make wings."

"Is she dead?"

"Near as, dammit. She can't breathe."

Bill started to move toward the Graveyard. "Not there," said Jackson, grabbing his arm. "Hospital ward."

Oh God, oh Jesus, please God, please Jesus. He said it over and over to himself as he walked. He got lost, found locked doors, heard strange cries, asked for help. "Why aren't you on duty if you work here?"

"The patient is a kind of friend of mine."

"We're not here to be friends of patients."

"She's ill. Can I see her?"

They'd strapped her to the bed as a precaution. There were tubes in her nose. Her breath came in wheezes and gurgles. Her eyes were closed, but she was smiling the smile.

"Dotty?" he asked.

"She's been unconscious since they brought her in. She's got pneumonia pretty bad. They call it the old man's friend. It is around here, at any rate."

"She doesn't want to die," he said.

"Really?" said the Nurse. "Why not?" She looked at him with a hard, straightforward glance that said, Are you kidding, with the lives these people lead?

"She's happy. Most of the time, she's really happy," he said. "The only thing that makes her unhappy is us."

He went out into the snow. The snow was still falling. It was filling in the angel she had made. It was a huge angel, with great sweeping wings and a head and a long, wide dress that she had made by moving her legs out and in across the snow. She had even scooped a halo out of the snow, around the top of the head. There were footprints all over the snow, big, heavy, booted footprints. But none of them led directly to the angel. They had hoisted her up out of it. That was the whole point. It had to look like an angel had gone to sleep there. And then woken up and flown away.

"It's the best angel, Dot," he said. "It's the best angel ever."

He knelt down and tried to brush away the snow that was falling into it, blurring the crisp, deliberate outline. As he brushed, his gloved and clumsy fingers broke the edges, blurring them. There was no saving it. Like everything else, it was to melt away into history. Like all of us, he thought as he stood up and walked away. Like that great muddy brown river. Like those broken stones. The names wear away. Like the log cabins and the rickety old carts and the sod-and-stick houses and the tent churches. Whole towns swallowed up, gone, lost. A whole America, he thought, it's going.

He went back to work. He worked with a vengeance, trying hard not to cry. It never occurred to him to think crying was unmanly. His mother had told him, when his father died, that it would be unmanly not to, because not to cry, to pretend nothing had happened, that was really cowardice. So you cry, son, she told him. You cry all you can. You do it in his honor. Bill wept now, for Dotty and suddenly also for his father and for the mystery of why all things had to pass away.

"Hard luck, Kid," said Tom Heritage.

"Yeah," said Bill, his voice thin.

"Kind of the end of an era, really."

"Yeah."

"Listen. Uh. I know I joke around and all, but… I really think you did the best another human being could do for that old lady. That was really good. You know?"

"Thanks, Tom." There was no consolation, because Bill found he blamed himself. "She said the snow was warm. She said she wanted to go out in it, and I stopped her, and so there was that fight." The conclusion was inescapable. "We should have reported it."

Tom just shrugged. Nothing for it.

Bill wheeled the TV out after lunch and listened to the soap operas. The Guiding Light . Brought to you by Ivory soap. The only washday powder that comes in flakes like snow.

The Nurse came in. "Mr. Davison," she said. "It doesn't look like it'll be too long now. Do you want to be there?"

Anything less would be cowardice.

"Yeah," he replied, nodding.

This time, led by the Nurse, it was a short walk to the hospital ward. Somewhere a radio was blaring. Voice talking. Music started up, some Christmas song or another, ghostly, echoing. It ended. The voice talked again, radio voice, soothing, phony. They opened the door.

Dorothy looked emerald green, and it seemed there was no breath at all.

"She's real weak," whispered the Nurse and left them alone.

Down the hall, the music from the radio started up again. Bill had heard the piece before. It was real old and sounded kind of creaky with just a couple of instruments and lots of people singing together.

Hallelujah. Hallelujah.

Bill had time to think: That's it, that's the song she sings all the time. Then Dotty was singing too.

Hallelujah! she sang. Only she pronounced it like a child.

Holly hoo hah! Holly hoo hah!

Bill felt his breath go as still as the air in the underheated ward. The voice was clear and strong, pure as a river, though her eyes were closed and tubes were taped into her nostrils.

She sang it over and over.

Holly hoo hah! Hally hoo hah!

Bill didn't know much about music, but he knew it was a voice that could have sung opera. Oh, Dotty, thought Bill. How could you sing like that and no one know?