Kent Haruf - Benediction

WHEN THE TEST came back the nurse called them into the examination room and when the doctor entered the room he just looked at them and asked them to sit down. They could tell by the look on his face where matters stood.

Go on ahead, Dad Lewis said, say it.

I’m afraid I don’t have very good news for you, the doctor said.

When they went back downstairs to the parking lot it was late in the afternoon.

You drive, Dad said. I don’t want to.

Are you feeling so bad, honey?

No. I don’t feel that much worse. I just want to look out at this country. I won’t be coming out here again.

I don’t mind driving for you, she said. And we can come this way again anytime if you want to.

They drove out from Denver away from the mountains, back onto the high plains: sagebrush and soapweed and blue grama and buffalo grass in the pastures, wheat and corn in the planted fields. On both sides of the highway were the gravel county roads going out away under the pure blue sky, all the roads straight as the lines ruled in a book, with only a few small isolated towns spread across the flat open country.

It was sundown when they got home. By then the air was starting to cool off. She parked the car in front of their house at the west edge of Holt on the gravel street and Dad got out and stood looking for a while. The old white house built in 1904, the first on the street which wasn’t even much of a street then, and still only three or four houses there yet when he bought it in 1948, the year he and Mary were married. He was twenty-two, working at the hardware store on Main Street, then the old lame man who owned it made up his mind to move away to live with his daughter and he offered Dad the option of purchasing it, and he was a known man in town by then, the bankers knew him, and gave him the loan without question. So he was the proprietor of the local hardware store.

It was a frame house sided with clapboard, two-story with a red shingled roof, with an old-fashioned black wrought iron fence around it and an iron gate with spears and hard loops at the top. Out back was an old red barn and a pole corral grown over with tall weeds, and beyond that there was nothing but the open country.

He went inside to the downstairs bedroom to put on old pants and a sweater and came back out and sat down in one of the porch chairs.

She came out to find him. Do you want supper now? I could make you a sandwich.

No. I don’t want anything. Maybe if you could bring me a beer.

You don’t want anything to eat?

You go on ahead without me.

Do you want a glass?

No.

She went inside and returned with the cold bottle.

Thank you, he said.

She went back in. He drank from the bottle and sat looking out at the quiet empty street in the summer evening. The neighbor Berta May’s yellow house next door and the other houses beyond it, running up to the highway, and the vacant lot directly across the street, and the railroad tracks three blocks in the other direction, all of that part of town still empty and undeveloped between his property and the tracks. In the trees in front of the house the leaves were blowing a little.

She brought a tray of crackers and cheese and an apple cut up in quarters and a glass of iced tea. Would you like any of this? She held out the tray to him. He took a piece of apple and she sat down beside him in the other porch chair.

Well. That’s it, he said. That’s the deal now. Isn’t it.

He might be wrong. They’re wrong sometimes, she said. They can’t be so sure.

I don’t want to let myself think that way. I can feel it in me that they’re right. I don’t have much time left.

Oh I don’t want to believe that.

Yeah. But I’m pretty sure that’s how it’s going to be.

I don’t want you to go yet, she said. She reached across and took his hand. I don’t. There were tears in her eyes. I’m not ready.

I know.… We better call Lorraine pretty soon, he said.

I’ll call her.

Tell her she doesn’t have to come home yet. Give her some time.

He looked at the beer bottle and held it in front of him and took a small drink.

I might get me some kind of better grade of beer before I go. A guy I was talking to said something about Belgian beer. Maybe I’ll try some of that. If I can get it around here.

He sat and drank the beer and held his wife’s hand sitting out on the front porch. So the truth was he was dying. That’s what they were saying. He would be dead before the end of summer. By the beginning of September the dirt would be piled over what was left of him out at the cemetery three miles east of town. Someone would cut his name into the face of a tombstone and it would be as if he never was.

NINE O’CLOCK in the morning, he was sitting in his chair beside the window in the living room looking out at the side yard at the dark shade under the tree and at the wrought iron fence beyond the tree. He’d eaten his breakfast. He hadn’t been hungry but he’d eaten it and he was thinking he wasn’t going to eat anything anymore he didn’t want to eat, and he was thinking how he wasn’t going to paint the iron fence again in this life, and then Mary came in the room.

She was carrying a watering can. She had washed and dried the breakfast dishes and put them away in the cupboard and had gone out back to set the sprinkler going on the lawn, and now she had come inside to water the houseplants. It was a clear hot day. Not a cloud anywhere. But crossing the room she all of a sudden went down on the floor like a little loose pile of collapsed clothes. She threw the water can away from her as she fell. The water splashed up on the rose wallpaper and there was a stain growing on the wall.

Darlin, Dad said. You all right? What’s going on?

She didn’t move, didn’t answer.

Mary. Goddamn it. What’s going on here?

He stood and bent over her. Her eyes were shut and her face was sweating and very red. But she was breathing.

Mary. Sweetheart.

He got down on his knees beside her and felt her head. She felt hot. He pulled her toward him and slid his arms under her, propping her up against the couch. Can you hear me? I got to call somebody. I’ll be right back. She made no sign. Is that all right with you if I leave a minute? I’m coming right back. He hurried out to the kitchen and called the emergency number at the hospital. Then he returned and got down on the floor again and held her and talked to her softly and kissed her cheek and brushed back her damp white hair and patted her arm and waited. After a little while he heard the siren outside and then it stopped and people came up on the front porch and knocked.

Come in here, Dad called. Christ Almighty. What are you knocking for? Come on in here.

They entered the house, two men in white shirts and black pants, and looked at Dad and his wife on the floor and knelt down and began to attend to her. What happened?

She fainted out. She was walking across the room. Then she just went down on the floor.

The younger of the men stood up and went out to the ambulance and brought back a gurney.

Can you move back, please? he said.

What’s that? Dad said. What are you saying?

Sir, you’ll need to move back so we can take care of her. Are you all right yourself? You don’t look too good.

Yeah, I’m all right. Do what you got to do, and hurry.

They lifted the old white-haired woman onto the wheeled cart and buckled the straps across her chest and legs. Dad got up from the floor and stood watching. He put his hand on her.