Kent Haruf - Benediction

I don’t want her to know. Promise me, Dad. Nobody else either.

I have to get you down from there first. He got a stepladder from the side of the garage and stood it next to the rope.

Dad. Don’t bump me.

I know, son. Be quiet.

You can’t even touch me.

Stay quiet now. Hush.

He climbed the ladder slowly and shone the flashlight up and down the rope and over the boy’s frightened face and cut the rope loose with the knife. The end fell away. The boy began to cry, and he stumbled off the box and fell down in the dirt. Lyle climbed down and pulled the rope from his neck.

You’re all right now, honey. He held him tight. It’s all right now.

I want to go with Mom.

Yes, you can go with her. You’re safe now.

But you won’t tell her.

No. Not if it’s important to you.

IN THE EVENING, on the following day, Dad lay awake with the window open, the smell of dust and mowed grass drifting in.

Mary came in the room with a pan of hot water and set it on the chair next to the bed and brought in a second pan and set it on another chair and went out again and returned with towels and washcloths. She switched on the bedside lamp and got Dad out of his pajamas and his diaper and covered him with a flannel sheet. Are you ready to get cleaned up, honey?

That water isn’t too hot, is it? he whispered.

No. But I don’t want you to get chilled.

She began by washing his face and head with a soapy washcloth and rubbed his face and head with a washcloth from the rinse water and dried him with a towel. She washed his chest and arms and hands and rubbed him dry, and pulled the flannel sheet up, covering his upper body to keep him warm, and washed his wasted legs and feet and rinsed and dried them. Roll over on your side now, honey. Hold on to my hand. He made a little moan in pain and turned slowly to his side and she washed his back and his gaunt behind and cleaned him thoroughly and dried him, then he turned back and she washed between his legs.

Nothing there, he whispered.

There used to be, she said. We had us some fun, didn’t we.

She put a new diaper on him and helped him into his pajamas and drew up the sheet and summer blanket, then he lay back and looked at her.

I appreciate all this, he said.

You’re welcome.

I wish I could do something for you.

You have. All these years. I’ll just clean this up and come back and lay down with you.

She took the pans to the bathroom and wiped them clean and put the towels and the flannel sheet in the laundry and washed her hands. She put on lipstick and brushed her hair, then came back and switched the lamp off and lay down beside him.

He had dozed off but he woke now. He drew his hand out from under the cover and reached for her.

I don’t have long to go, he whispered.

Oh, honey, don’t you think so?

I’m tired. I want to go on. I need to let you be. So you can have some peace and rest.

Oh, don’t say that. I’m still all right. I just want you to be comfortable. Are you hurting?

Yeah.

She got up and got him another of the pills and a sip of water, then got back into the bed and took his hand.

Everything’s taken care of, isn’t it? he whispered.

Yes. Everything’s fine. Nothing to worry about.

The store and the money?

It’s all done. You’ve done everything. We’re all right. You can rest about that. Are you worrying, honey?

I been thinking about Frank.

I miss him, she said. I want you to see each other before you go. I wish he’d come.

He wouldn’t come even if he did know. Maybe you won’t see him now either.

I refuse to think that, she said. I won’t. She sounded close to tears.

Dad turned his head to look at her. Then maybe he’ll come. After I’m gone out of here.

At least Lorraine’s here, she said. That makes a difference.

I wish she had a different choice of men, Dad said. I don’t care for the one she’s got now.

It’s not our decision. It’s up to her.

I know.

They didn’t speak for a while after that. She thought he’d gone to sleep again. Then he whispered, You’ve been everything to me. All these years. Everything. I want you to know that.

I know, honey. You’ve been good to me.

He breathed quietly and she lay for a long time holding his hand. The room was all in darkness now, all was shadows. She got up and came around the bed and kissed him in his sleep and went out to the kitchen and turned the light on and made coffee. Lorraine came in from outside.

How’s Daddy?

I gave him his bath. He’s sleeping.

When Dad woke he was alone in the dark, the only light in the room was the light coming in under the shade from out at the barn, from the big yard light. The window shade breathed in and out, a little movement. Not much. There was not much of a breeze this night but still there was a little cool air coming in.

He turned in the bed and looked toward the window, then he saw he was not alone, people were already sitting here in the room looking at him, waiting on three wood chairs at the side of his bed. He knew them all. Frank. And his own old mother and old father.

His father was as he looked and dressed in the Great Depression and during the war. Sitting on the hard chair, patient, leaning forward a little, his hands holding his hat, wearing his old brown suit with the wide lapels, a stain on the lapel and another one at the old fly of the suit pants, the crotch so long that he always pulled the pants up practically to his chest, his hard-won gut paunch rounded out below the belt at the top of the pants, so that he looked short bodied, foreshortened, misshapen, all long thin legs with only a little upper half to him above his belt, like some comic figure out of a vaudeville show. Sitting with his hands idle, loose, not even turning the hat but just sitting motionless, patient, in the old-fashioned brown suit just as Dad remembered him. No hair on his head to speak of. His face burnt red, from working out in all the weather. Outside all day. Down at the hog pen and the cow barn and scooping grain in at the narrow slat-wood door of the granary and digging postholes in the ground, and every year planting dryland wheat back in Kansas and every year harvesting what meager crop there was. Working all the days of his life and never enough to show for it, never enough to get ahead.

And next to him, on her chair, his mother. The silent woman. The uncomplaining unexpressed uninflected woman. Gray hair pulled back in a tight bun. Her Sunday dress, old pearl-colored gabardine buttoned to the neck, shiny in places. Too loose, irreplaceable, out of poverty. And her long thin hands, bony red hands, and red bony wrists. With the scrap of battered adhesive tape wrapped around as guard holding the worn-out wedding ring on her bony finger. Her face wrinkled and lined. Her wire glasses on her nose that was too thin and pinched. Sitting here looking at him. His mother and the old man together just sitting, looking, quiet, as patient as some kind of old work-exhausted animals, waiting.

Beside them Frank was smoking a cigarette again. He looked worn out this time, tough, ragged, disheveled, unhappy.

Dad peered at them for some time. What do you want? he said. What have you come for?

We can’t stay long, his father, the old man, said. We got to be getting on here purty soon now.

We come to see you, his mother said. We come to see how good you’re faring, son.

Frank smoked and looked at them and looked at Dad.

I’m not too good, if you want to know, Dad said. I’m about finished. I’m going down now.

We come to see you, before you do, she said. We’ll be waiting for you.

We got to go purty soon, the old man said.