Дональд Уэстлейк: Collected Stories

My mother stopped me in the hall. “Get the priest.” I just about heard her. I guess that’s when I really got scared. I raced down the stairs and out into the street. When I had gone the block to the rectory I was winded. One of the priests answered the door, and I gaspingly told him the story. He said, “Wait a minute,” and went through a doorway on the right. He was back in a minute or two with his coat and hat on.

As we walked back to the house, I told him about my father’s heart attack in ’47. He asked me if my father was a regular churchgoer, and I said yes. At any other time that would have seemed like a silly thing to ask, but then it was right. All the way home I kept trying to think of what I should have for Extreme Unction. I knew all the things by heart; yet all I could think of was a lighted candle; and then I remembered something I’d read somewhere about candles burning out. I said a quick Hail Mary.

When we reached the house, I couldn’t get the key into the lock. I almost swore, but caught myself in time. I led the way upstairs to my father’s bedroom. Then I went into the living room and sat down. I’d never felt so helpless in my life. And I’d never wanted to be able to help so much.

All of a sudden I realized I was sitting in my father’s chair, the chair he watched television from, my father’s chair. I jumped up and began walking around the room aimlessly. I felt somehow ashamed. I didn’t know why. I wouldn’t even look at my father’s chair. I felt as though I’d done something degrading.

After a while the doctor left. I heard him tell my mother, “I don’t think there’s anything to worry about, but you can’t tell in these things. If he gets worse during the night, call me. Otherwise, I’ll be here in the morning.”

A little while later the priest left. He hadn’t anointed my father, and somehow I felt better about it.

When I went out to his room, my father said to my mother. “Don stayed in tonight to take care of me.”

My mother smiled at me, and I felt pretty good, until I thought of that chair. I told myself I was being foolish, but somehow I didn’t feel right about sitting in my father’s chair, when he was sick in bed and might never sit in it again.

When I went to bed that night, I didn’t sleep for a long time. I did a lot of praying. I kept remembering what the doctor had said: “I don’t think there’s anything to worry about, but you can’t tell in these things.”

“Give me liberty, or give me death!” was merely a quotation from a history book to Dr. Lambert until Patrick Henry walked into his office and complained of suffering from a chronic headache.

“I’m a very busy man,” said the editor.

“I know,” said his visitor. “I won’t take long.”

“You can’t,” said the editor. “I have too much to do. Sit down.”

“Thank you,” said the visitor, sitting down.

“Now,” said the editor. “What is it?”

“First,” said the visitor. “I’d better tell you who I am. Doctor Philip Lambert. Medical doctor. And I’ve been to three psychiatrists. They all said I was sane, that I haven’t been having hallucinations.”

“Okay,” said the editor. “What haven’t you been imagining?” He looked at his watch.

Lambert leaned forward, “Patrick Henry is dead.”

The editor stared at him. Finally: “This your idea of a joke?”

Lambert shook his head. “No. He died in my house at eight-seven last night.”

The editor waved his hand between Lambert and himself, palm out. “Wait a minute,” he said. “The only Patrick Henry I know lived during the Revolution.”

Lambert nodded. “That’s the one.”

The editor stood up. “Three psychiatrists said you weren’t nuts?”

“That’s right.”

“They were nuts.”

“They talked to Patrick.”

The editor stood behind his desk, staring at Lambert, and then walked over to the door, hung a home-made sign saying, ‘Go Away’ on it, closed it, and returned to his desk. He sat down. “Okay,” he said. “Tell me. I believe anything.” Lambert smiled thinly. “He came to me about four months ago.

Of course, I didn’t know then who he was. To me, he was just a bent old man, very thickly lined of face, who came to me for relief from a chronic headache. I couldn’t find any superficial reason for the headache, so I gave him a thorough examination.

What I found was astonishing, impossible. A bit of metal, probably a bullet, embedded in his brain. A faint scar, caused by a deep wound years before, on his heart. Other things. He should have been dead a dozen times. Besides, he was a lot older than anyone I’ve ever examined before. He should have long since been dead of old age, if nothing else.

After I’d examined him, I sat and looked at him for a while, trying to make some sense out of it. Things that would kill any human being hadn’t killed him. Why? After a while, I asked him, “When were you shot?”

He looked at me oddly. “Why?”

“It should have killed you.”

“Eighteen twenty three.”

He said it just like that, and it was a minute before I caught it. Eighteen twenty three!

“How old are you?” I asked him.

“Two hundred and seventeen,” he said.

I got to my feet, backed away from him. “What are you? What do you want from me?”

“The word to use is who, not what,” he said calmly. “I’m Patrick Henry, and I want you to do something about this headache.”

“Patrick Henry’s dead,” I said. He shrugged. “They buried him anyway. In 1799.”

“Do you mean you’re a spirit?”

“Hell, no,” he said. “I’m as alive as you are. Probably more.” I sat down again, feeling weak. “I don’t get it. How can you be Patrick Henry? How can you be alive at all, whoever you are?”

“I’ll tell you,” said Patrick. “Remember that speech I made, when I said, ‘Give me liberty or give me death’?”

I nodded.

“Somebody in the hereafter must have been feeling prankish. That’s the only way I can figure it out. They decided I wanted one or the other, that I was giving them the choice. They gave me liberty.”

“You mean they refused to give you death?”

“Right.”

“By golly,” I said. “That’s wonderful. Immortality!”

“Bah!” he snorted. “When a man’s outlived his time, he should stop living and quit cluttering up the world. Living gets to be a bore after a while. Why, when I first realized I couldn’t die, I was overjoyed. I soon got sick of it, though. So I tried to give the humorist a hint. I got myself buried. For a year and a half I lay six feet under, with no air and no food, but I didn’t die. I got so hungry I ate my clothes and the lining of the coffin, but I didn’t die.”

“How did you ever manage to get out?” I asked him.

“Some damfool young medical student dug me up to experiment on. Huh. He almost needed a coffin himself when I sat up and said hello.”

“I can imagine,” I said. And it was somehow funny. I could imagine the scene. Then I thought of something else. “How is it nobody knows about you?” I asked, him.

“A few people do,” he said. “But if I went before a whole crowd, they’d think I was a vaudeville act, or a television mimic, and if I wrote to a magazine or a newspaper, they’d put it in their letter column as the gag of the month. A couple of the people who knew me tried, but they either wound up in a padded cell, or were laughed out of town. Besides who cares about Patrick Henry any more?”