William Kennedy - The Flaming Corsage

“I’ll go,” Annie said, and while she went for more glasses, Katrina spread a white table scarf on Emmett’s bedside table, then set out the paraphernalia Father Loonan requested: the holy water, a tablespoon, glass of water, wad of cotton, salt cellar, heel of bread, lemon sliced in two, two candleholders with blessed candles, the crucifix, and the palm fronds she undid from behind the torso of Jesus. The table was so crowded that she and Edward brought down a long table from the attic to give proper space to the final necessities.

When Annie came in with the glasses Emmett opened his eyes. “Is no one goin’ to pour the ale?” he asked.

“At your service,” said Dr. McArdle, and he poured for those in the room, giving the first to Emmett, who took the glass and looked at it, then set it beside a blessed candle.

“I think you did this just to have a drink your doctor couldn’t object to,” Katrina said. “You don’t look like you’re dying.”

“Half me life I didn’t look like I was livin’. It evens out,” Emmett said. And he closed his eyes again.

When Annie came back with Father Loonan, Doc McArdle poured an ale and handed it to him.

“What’s this?” the priest asked.

“I know you like your ale,” Emmett said.

“I never denied it,” the priest said. “But I never had any with the last rites.”

“It goes good with everything,” Emmett said.

“Emmett Martin Daugherty,” Edward said, “we’re all present and accounted for. What’s your pleasure? Where would you like your body anointed first, on the inside or the outside?”

“First I want to know what he does with that lemon,” Emmett said.

“It cleans the oil off my fingers,” the priest said.

“That’s clever,” Emmett said. He reached for the ale and raised the glass to the light. “By God that looks good. We’ll just have a taste.” He took a sip and others in the room did likewise. “All right,” Emmett said, “get it over with.”

“I was told you were dying,” the priest said. “But I’m not sure you’re dying.”

“That’s what I told him, Father,” Katrina said.

“I’m dyin’ nevertheless,” Emmett said. “I can’t stand on me pins anymore, and with every breath there’s a pain, and when I close me eyes I see somethin’ comin’.”

“What does it look like?” the priest asked.

“Like the inside of a fireman’s boot.”

“That’s not what heaven looks like.”

“Then I’m goin’ someplace else.”

“Since you’re able to talk, we’ll want to have a confession,” the priest said, and turning to the others he said, “If you’d all please leave the room. .”

“There’s no need,” Emmett said. “I’ve nothin’ to confess.”

“You’re a saint, then, is that it?” the priest said.

“Not hardly, but I’ve nothin’ to confess.”

“Confess the sins you forgot and I’ll forgive those.”

“I forgot none I ever committed. The memory of them kept me smiling for forty-five years.”

“I’ll forgive those. Anything else?”

“I let my wife work too hard.”

“You’ve got company on that one.”

“And I thought too little of meself,” Emmett said. “I paid too much attention to the work, and the trees in the yard, and Reilly the dog, God rest his soul.”

“Dogs don’t have souls,” the priest said.

“This one did,” said Emmett. “He went to mass every Sunday with me. And he never ate meat on Friday.”

“And did he do his Easter duty?”

“He did. On the parish house lawn.”

“Is that all the sins?”

“I could make some up,” Emmett said.

“No need for that,” and he made the sign of the cross, saying, “ Te absolvo in nomine Patris et Filii et Spiritus Sancti. For your penance say one Hail Mary and have some more ale.”

Emmett blessed himself, closed his eyes for a ten-second prayer, then reached for his glass and took one long swallow, all he could tolerate. Father Loonan did likewise, then opened his prayer book and said, “Now we’ll get on with it,” and, holding the holy oil, read in the Latin: “ Per istam sanctam Unctionem, et suam piissimam misericordiam, indulgeat tibi Dominus quidquid deliquisti . .”

Emmett said to him, “Will ye say it in English so I know what’s goin’ on.”

And the priest spoke the formal prayers of Extreme Unction, anointing, with holy oil on cotton, Emmett’s eyes, ears, nose, lips, hands, and feet, the sensory entrances of sin, saying to him, “Through this holy Unction; and of His tender mercy, may the Lord pardon thee whatsoever sins thou hast committed by thine eyes. . thine ears,” and repeating it on through to the chrismal swabbing of the foot from heel to toe, whereupon Emmett spoke up and said, “There’s no need to bother with the toes. I never sinned with any of them.”

Katrina giggled, then broke into sobs she tried to stifle. This gallant man really was dying and by loving him she felt like a traitor to her own dead, for he loathed her father and spiritually worked against him all his life, and against the world that had shaped her family and her life. She looked at Edward and her sobbing intensified: my husband who put my sister and father in their graves, guiltless, honorable man now losing his own father. And all her love for Edward seemed remarkable and perverse. This Main Street, this North End, where the Daugherty seed took root, was, in all its guises, a foreign place, and yet its river and its foundries and its traction barns and its Lumber District and its dying canal were the sources of life that sustained her family in all its lineages — the Staatses, Bradfords, Taylors, Fitzgibbons, Van Slykes. Here were the wellsprings of power and wealth that had gilded the heart, soul, and lifetime of Katrina Taylor Daugherty, weeping child of the new century, wounded by the flames of hellish flowers, who can now find no substitute in life for her loss, her diminishment, her abasement known so intimately: loving and losing Francis Phelan, that angry, lovely boy who defeated the abstraction of power with a flung stone. Katrina, faithless, sobbing wretch, you are adrift in this Irish Catholic fog that envelops your elegantly patrician self. (That woman with the bloody bicep must be Catholic. She would be all wrong as an Episcopalian.) What does your poet say to you now, Katrina? He says that the world goes round by misunderstanding, the only way people can agree: for if they understood each other they would never agree on anything, such as marriage to the enemy: that man across the room whom you say you love, who woke you into a terrifying nightmare, who had you screaming for release before you even made the bond with him, who led you, docile woman, out of fire into salvation; that man who is the son of this virtuous man dying in front of you. What part of this dying father has passed into that living son, do you know? When the soul’s light goes out forever, what is the loss to those who have stood for so long in that light? Your sobs are evidence of an uncertain mind, Katrina. You should not cry at the death of a beloved man to whom you once gave only hostility. Your allegiance is as fickle as the rain. Your giggle at his sinless toes is a proper response.

The priest ended the sacrament and made the sign of the cross over Emmett. Katrina breathed in, straightened her back, and raised her glass in emulation of Edward’s celebratory gesture.

“All praise to Emmett Daugherty,” she said. “All praise to a great man, I say. The truly great men are the poet, the priest, and the soldier, and Emmett Daugherty is a soldier of the righteous wars.”

Then, between sobs, she willfully drank all of her ale.