John Gardner - Nickel Mountain

It was Doc Cathey who brought up the question of funeral arrangements. When he’d finished looking Simon over he sat with his hands on his knees, opposite his patient, looking at the floor between their two chairs as if crossly, his glasses far down his gray beak of a nose (Callie over by the window, with her hands folded; Henry standing against the refrigerator; little Jimmy playing, oblivious to it all, on the floor). Doc said: “You thought at all about the funeral, Simon?”

Simon went pale, and his hands, busy buttoning his shirt, stopped moving. He had a wart on the knuckle of his middle finger, and Callie couldn’t help but wonder if it came from his never getting clean. He smiled, just a flicker, as if in fright, and said, “The Lord will provide.”

“The hell he will,” Doc Cathey said.

“Now, Doc,” Henry said.

“Well she can’t stay there in the hospital morgue,” Doc said. “One way or another she’ll have to be buried. What kind of fun’ral do you people normally put on?”

Simon looked as if his mind had stopped. “The Lord—” he said. Then he said, suddenly awake for an instant, “Every nickel we had—” He looked at Callie, as if in panic, then over at Henry.

“You mean to say you let it burn?” Doc said. His face squeezed shut with fury and he shook his head. He fumbled with the hearing-aid button on his vest.

“Simon, don’t you have any friends you can turn to?” Callie said.

He looked smaller than ever, as it seemed to Henry. Like a woodchuck beset by dogs. He folded his hands and sat thinking, or daydreaming, perhaps, the frightened smile playing on his face, on and off. At last he said, and this time he knew what he was saying — there was no question of it now—“The Lord will provide.”

“Faddle,” Doc Cathey said. He reached for the bag by his foot.

But Simon looked up sharply, his mouth open, raising his clasped hands a little, like a man with handcuffs on, the muscles of his face tense, and the brightness that had come into Simon’s eyes made even Doc Cathey stop and wince and listen.

“Or ever the silver cord be loosed,” Simon said, “or the golden bowl be broken, or the pitcher be broken at the fountain, or the wheel broken at the cistern, then shall the dust return to the earth as it was; and the spirit shall return unto God who gave it.”

Doc Cathey leered as if with some sort of vicious triumph. “Much study is a weariness of the flesh,” he said. “Who pays the mortician?”

“It’s of no importance,” Simon said. “Dust to dust.”

“What?” Doc said. He leaned closer, turning his hearing aid toward Simon.

“Of no importance,” Simon said again.

They were like a couple of old witches, the two little men sitting knee to knee, bright-eyed as a couple of hawks. Doc Cathey said, “I believe you’d just roll her in a ditch and leave her lay!”

“Stop it,” Callie said, startled.

But Doc Cathey had understood.

“A living dog is better than a dead lion,” Simon said, “for the living know that they shall die: but the dead know not any thing, neither have they any more a reward; for the memory of them is forgotten.”

“Now Simon, you don’t know what you’re saying,” Henry said, and Callie felt a flush of pleasure, as if he’d defended her.

But Doc Cathey lifted his hand to hush him. “Yes, he does,” he said, looking at Simon for the first time as though he were in some sense human, not actually human, maybe, but related. “He’s saying the body in the morgue has nothing to do with his wife, let the County take it. And maybe he’s right, at that.”

“That wouldn’t be decent,” Henry said, but Callie said, “If that’s what Simon wants—”

Simon said, “I will rejoice. I will divide Shechem, and mete out the valley of Succoth.” Then, abruptly, as though it had been coming for a long time, waiting for the magic word Succoth, Simon began to cry as he’d cried this morning, but not so violently now. Jimmy had paid no attention to their talk, but he turned quickly, when Simon started crying, and looked up.

“Well somebody better see to some kind of arrangement,” Doc Cathey said. He stood up.

Henry looked at the floor, upset. “I’ll drive down tonight and see what needs to be done,” he said.

Simon continued to cry, but without a sound, wiping his eyes with his knuckles.

Jimmy said, forgetting all about him, “Go to the store with Daddy!”

“Hush,” Henry said. “Nobody’s going to the store.”

Callie said, “Simon, why don’t you come into the diner and have some supper.” He didn’t answer, made only a confused sign with his head, something between a headshake and a nod. She came over and stood beside him, but she made no move to touch him. When she saw that he was about to reach in his pocket for his handkerchief, she crossed over to the cupboard above the sink and brought back the Kleenex. Simon blew his nose.

Henry walked out on the front-door steps with Doc Cathey and closed the door behind him. There Doc Cathey paused and got out his vestpocket watch and opened it and looked longer than he needed to at the time. He said at last, “They’re funny damn people.” He shook his head.

Henry looked past him at the diner and the valley and the hills beyond, but he was seeing none of it. He saw, instead, Simon Bale as he’d sat nearly all day on the bench in the garden, like a man in a daze, with Jimmy at his feet. He walked down the steps with Doc Cathey and slowly along the gravel walk that led around the diner to the front, where Doc had his car. He said at last: “You don’t still think he set that fire himself?”

“I dunno,” Doc Cathey said. “I suppose I don’t.”

“You wouldn’t if you’d seen him this morning,” Henry said. He opened the car door and Doc Cathey got in, very slowly, pulling himself up in with one hand on the steering wheel, the other on the seat back, and drew the door shut behind him and hunted in his coat pocket for his key ring.

“Likely not,” Doc Cathey said at last. Then for a minute he stopped hunting for his keys and sat perfectly still, thinking. He tilted his head and looked over his glasses at Henry. “You be careful,” he said. It wasn’t as if he knew something more than he cared to say or even as if he had an uneasy hunch. It was some kind of half-pitiful, half-revolting plea, an old man pretending the years brought wisdom they hadn’t brought, wanting to be first to have given the warning if anything bad should come of all this, but wanting it without the faintest notion of whether what was coming would be bad or good.

“Oh, don’t worry, Doc,” Henry said. He slapped the old man’s shoulder.

Doc Cathey went back to hunting for his keys and found them at last and started up the car. Oil smoke bloomed up from underneath as if the car had caught fire. Henry stood with his arms folded, watching the old man pull away. Then, taking his time, brooding, he went back to the diner. He’d no sooner closed the door than the bell rang, calling him back to the pumps.

It was after six when Henry drove down to the hospital in Slater. He drove slowly, ponderously erect in the seat, as always, the steering wheel rubbing against his belly, and all the way down the winding road he wondered what the devil he was going to do. It wasn’t right that the woman should be shoveled away into a pauper’s grave and forgotten: Sooner throw her on a manure spreader like the carcass of a calf and haul her away to some gulley. He’d said to Callie’s mother, “What do you think? Would the Church have money for that sort of thing?” and she’d said, “The Baptist Church?” He’d pursed his lips and drummed on the tabletop. “No, I guess they wouldn’t,” he’d said. “The County handles hundreds of cases like that,” Callie’s mother had said. “It’s no shame, these days. Since buryings have gotten to be so expensive, some people get the County to do it even when they truly don’t need to. Some people think it’s a shame to spend money on the dead instead of the living. You should hear Frank talk about that!” Henry had nodded. He’d heard. There wasn’t anybody in this half of the state that hadn’t heard Frank Wells on funerals. But you could bet your bottom dollar old Frank would go in style: She’d see to it for spite.