Jeff Salyards - Veil of the Deserters

“I didn’t know whether to cry or scream or hit him or fall into his arms. So I did nothing. Soff opened her mouth as if she was about to say something, but it got lost before it came out. He said one other thing, telling us that if we ever wanted to talk he would listen, and then he dropped his hands. He reached into a wooden bucket and pulled out three damp strips of cloth. He handed each of us one and then wrapped the last around his head a few times, covering his mouth and nose.”

“For the smell?” Vendurro asked. And then added, “Sorry, Cap.”

“Yes. The strips were saturated in fresh horse piss. There are numerous ways a man can stink, but never so powerfully as when he has decided to die. Even after a few days they begin to rot inside, to liquefy, and the stink is like the worst sulfur and swamp gas, enough to make the strongest stomach turn and the strongest man gag. Horse piss is a preferable alternative.

“We tied the strips around our mouths and noses, Grubarr pulled the flap aside, and in we went. Our father was laying on a table near the middle of the room. His chest was bare but otherwise he was dressed as he had been the morning he was stabbed. His skin had changed color and was now an odd greenish-blue tint. His body bloated, but not uniformly, some parts more swollen than others. There was some fluid collecting beneath his nose and at the corner of his mouth. And even with the cloth around my face I felt my gorge rise.”

He looked closely at me and said, “Perhaps it was a blessing you never knew your father, and your mother gave you away for a bag of coins. You never had to see them dead.”

It wasn’t said with cruelty, but stung just the same. I wondered if my mother was still alive.

Braylar said, “Soff and I stood next to each other, staring. Neither of us cried. Not just then. I had cried myself into a stupor just after his murder, and I wasn’t quite ready to begin again. I simply stood there, feeling empty, small, lost, exhausted. And as Grubarr had said, unbelieving. Despite the evidence in front of me, I refused to believe this was happening. Soff reached over, took my hand in her own.” He stopped and added, “I see your skepticism. Do recall, this was before broken vows, yes? At one point, there was some rough tenderness betwixt us.”

Neither of us responded and he went on. “There were no windows in the room-no one else in the village wanted to smell death and Grubarr didn’t want perversely fascinated children disturbing his work-but there was a hole in the roof, like a smoke hole, although there would be no large fires in this room. It was overcast that day, ready to rain, and the deadroom was very dark, lit only by a few candles in the far corners and what weak light came through the hole above. Flowers and herbs hung upside down from the support beams, drying, so many that it seemed there was an inverted field suspended above us. There were many, many shelves, all of them lined with bowls and vials, lidded jars and small boxes, all manner of things. I’d become familiar with some of them over the winter. Crushed flowers, tooth and nail from a hundred different animals, a multitude of dyes, mushrooms, small pelts, oils, dried milk, chalk, charcoal, and on and on and on.”

“What plaguing for?” Vendurro asked.

“Grubarr had told us once that there were those in our tribe who didn’t understand the old ways, the elaborate treatments of the dead, or the living for that matter. Some argued, although never loudly, and certainly never in the presence of their priests, that the dead should be burned, their ashes scattered, or simply buried, and be done with it.”

“Aye,” Vendurro said. “That’s how my people went about it.”

Braylar nodded. “I remember Grubarr had been smiling as he told us that, his heavy hands busy grinding holly with a stone pestle. And saying, ‘Old men keep old ways. Were I a youth, I might argue for change. But I’m old, and I do only what I can do. Someday you and your ways will grow old too, and you’ll cling to them, moss to a stone.’

“I tried to imagine another day, any day other than the one I was in, but it was no good. The stench was too strong and my imagination too weak. Grubarr stepped past us and approached my father. He rolled up his sleeves-his forearms were thick and the gray hair that covered them thick as well, almost fur really. Any other day this struck me as funny and put me at ease in this place, but it didn’t that day.

“He took a damp cloth out of a wooden bowl and began cleaning the dried blood off our father’s belly. There was a lot of it, belly and blood. Soff and I released hands and stepped forward as well. As we got close my breath stopped in my chest. Having prepared four bodies for burial over the winter, we knew what to expect-the stiff, unyielding muscles, the cold skin, the blood that had congealed-but those experiences did nothing to prepare us for this.”

Maybe Braylar was right about my parents. Some things were better left unseen and unknown.

“I stopped at my father’s feet, afraid to move closer. His boots and the front of his pants were still covered with the reddish mud, the mud that clung to him when he fell forward. It was difficult to tell where mud ended and blood began.

“Soff was braver than I was, but only a little. She stopped at his waist, opposite Grubarr. The cloth on her face was rising and falling quickly. Grubarr continued working as if neither of us were there, wiping, wringing, wiping, wringing. Soff, said, very quietly, ‘He… are we going to bury him?’

“Grubarr didn’t look up, continued cleaning. ‘A simple grave, yes.’

“Soff reached out to touch our father but pulled her hand away. ‘And what will we bury with him? We will bury something, won’t we?’

“‘Yes,’” Grubarr said, wringing out the cloth. “‘All of us go with something, smallest to largest, youngest to oldest. Your mother, she’ll decide. She will include honeycomb, yes?’ He smiled at Soff but she didn’t return it. ‘If you have other suggestions, she’ll want to be aware of them, I think.’

“Soff nodded but said nothing else. A short time after, she asked, so quietly I could barely hear her, ‘What will we do… what will we do once you’ve cleaned him?’

“‘Hmmm. Nothing. Something. I’m unsure. The wound, it will be filled with paste, dill and ash, but I will do this. I’ll do most of what needs done. If there’s something I need from across the room, you’ll fetch this something, and if I need mixing, you’ll do this mixing. But little more. It’s enough that you are here. And here you be. So.’”

His ability to recall conversations so many years gone by was just short of wondrous. Was his memory simply that astute? Had the gravity of the occasion imprinted the words in him somewhere? Was he simply filling in missing pieces? Had Bloodsounder somehow brought his own memories into sharper relief?

I asked none of these though as he went on. “Grubarr finished wiping my father’s belly and dropped the cloth in the bowl of bloody water. I looked at the wound then and I couldn’t take my eyes off it. So small, so narrow, only two inches long. It was hard to believe this was enough to kill a man. And yet it had. So quickly. So very quickly.

“I remember thinking it was amazing that my father’s fat belly hadn’t stalled the blade, hadn’t saved him, and then I felt ashamed, bitterly ashamed. It seemed even in death I couldn’t respect him. And that was when I began to cry again. Feeling it come, I tried so hard to stop. I wanted so badly to be strong, to at least appear strong. But I could feel it slipping, all my strength washed away with the blood. I stared at the bottom of my father’s old boots, at the dried mud, tried to focus on that, to block the rest out, to think only of the mud, and how it was so close to raining, it might start any moment, and as soon as it did, there would be more mud, new mud, everywhere, the rain would turn the whole village, the whole world to mud. But it was no good. The tears fell, my nose began to run. I stepped back, began to shake. I bit my tongue and clenched my fists, my nails digging into my palms. But having found my tears again I couldn’t get rid of them.”