William Gass - In the Heart of the Heart of the Country

Colors on the towels had run.

Ma poked her toe in the kid’s clothes.

What are we going to do with these?

Big Hans began pouring whiskey in the kid’s mouth but the mouth filled without any getting down his throat and in a second it was dripping from his chin.

Here, help me prop him up. I got to hold his mouth open.

I didn’t want to touch him and I hoped ma would do it but she kept looking at the kid’s clothes piled on the floor and the pool of water by them and didn’t make any move to.

Come on, Jorge.

All right.

Lift, don’t shove… lift.

Okay, I’m lifting.

I took him by the shoulders. His head flopped back. His mouth fell open. The skin on his neck was tight. He was cold all right.

Hold his head up. He’ll choke.

His mouth is open.

His throat’s shut. He’ll choke.

He’ll choke anyway.

Hold his head up.

I can’t.

Don’t hold him like that. Put your arms around him.

Well jesus.

He was cold all right. I put my arm carefully around him. Hans had his fingers in the kid’s mouth.

Now he’ll choke for sure.

Shut up. Just hold him like I told you.

He was cold all right, and wet. I had my arm behind his back. He sure felt dead.

Tilt his head back a bit… not too much.

He felt cold and slimy. He sure was dead. We had a dead body in our kitchen. All the time he’d been dead. When Hans had brought him in, he’d been dead. I couldn’t see him breathing. He was awful skinny, sunk between the ribs. We were getting him ready to bake. Hans was basting him. I had my arm around him, holding him up. He was dead and I had hold of him. I could feel my muscles jumping.

Well jesus christ.

He is dead. He is .

You dropped him.

Dead? ma said.

He’s dead. I could feel. He’s dead.

Dead?

Ain’t you got any sense? You let his head hit the table.

Is he dead? Is he dead? ma said.

Well christ no, not yet, not yet he’s not dead. Look what you done, Jorge, there’s whiskey all over.

He is dead. He is .

Right now he ain’t. Not yet he ain’t. Now stop yelling and hold him up.

He ain’t breathing.

Yes he is, he is breathing. Hold him up.

I ain’t. I ain’t holding any dead body. You can hold it if you want. You dribble whiskey on it all you want. You can do anything you want to. I ain’t. I ain’t holding any dead body.

If he’s dead, ma said, what are we going to do with these?

Jorge, god damn you, come back here—

I went down to the crib where Big Hans had found him. There was still a hollow in the snow and some prints the wind hadn’t sifted snow over. The kid must have been out on his feet, they wobbled so. I could see where he had walked smack into a drift and then backed off and lurched up beside the crib, maybe bumping into it before he fell, then lying quiet so the snow had time to curl around him, piling up until in no time it would have covered him completely. Who knows, I thought, the way it’s been snowing, we mightn’t have found him till spring. Even if he was dead in our kitchen, I was glad Big Hans had found him. I could see myself coming out of the house some morning with the sun high up and strong and the eaves dripping, the snow speckled with drops and the ice on the creek slushing up; coming out and walking down by the crib on the crusts of the drift… coming out to play my game with the drifts… and I could see myself losing, breaking through the big drift that was always sleeping up against the crib and running a foot right into him, right into the Pedersen kid curled up, getting soft.

That would have been worse than holding to his body in the kitchen. The feeling would have come on quicker, and it would have been worse, happening in the middle of a game. There wouldn’t have been any warning, any way of getting ready for it to happen, to know what I’d struck before I bent down, even though Old Man Pedersen would have come over between snows looking for the kid most likely and everybody would have figured that the kid was lying buried somewhere under the snow; that maybe after a high wind someday somebody would find him lying like a black stone uncovered in a field; but probably in the spring somebody would find him in some back pasture thawing out with the mud and have to bring him in and take him over to the Pedersen place and present him to Missus Pedersen. Even so, even with everyone knowing that, and hoping one of the Pedersens would find him first so they wouldn’t have to pry him up out of the mud or fetch him out from a thicket and bring him in and give him to Missus Pedersen in soggy season-old clothes — even then, who would expect to stick a foot all of a sudden through the crust losing at the drift game and step on Pedersen’s kid lying all crouched together right beside your own crib? It was a good thing Hans had come down this morning and found him, even if he was dead in our kitchen and I had held him up.

When Pedersen came over asking for his kid, maybe hoping that the kid had got to our place all right and stayed, waiting for the blizzard to quit before going home, Pa would meet him and bring him in for a drink and tell him it was his own fault for putting up all those snow fences. If I knew Pa, he’d tell Pedersen to look under the drifts his snow fences had made, and Pedersen would get so mad he’d go for Pa and stomp out calling for the vengeance of God like he was fond of doing. Now though, since Big Hans had found him, and he was dead in our kitchen, Pa might not say much when Pedersen came. He might just offer Pedersen a drink and keep his mouth shut about those snow fences. Pedersen might come yet this morning. That would be best because Pa would be still asleep. If Pa was asleep when Pedersen came he wouldn’t have a chance to talk about those snow fences, or offer Pedersen a drink, or call Pedersen a bent prick or a turd machine or a fairy farmer. Pedersen wouldn’t have to refuse the drink then, spit his chaw in the snow or call on God, and could take his kid and go home. I hoped Pedersen would certainly come soon. I hoped he would come and take that cold damp body out of our kitchen. The way I felt I didn’t think that today I’d be able to eat. I knew every bite I’d see the Pedersen kid in the kitchen being fixed for the table.

The wind had dropped. The sun lay burning on the snow. I got cold just the same. I didn’t want to go in but I could feel the cold crawling over me like it must have crawled over him while he was coming. It had slipped over him like a sheet, icy at first, especially around the feet, and he’d likely wiggled his toes in his boots and wanted to wrap his legs around each other like you do when you first come to bed. But then things would begin to warm up some, the sheet feeling warmer all the time until it felt real cozy and you went to sleep. Only when the kid went to sleep by our crib it wasn’t like going to sleep in bed because the sheet never really got warm and he never really got warm either. Now he was just as cold in our kitchen with the kettle whistling and ma getting ready to bake as I was out by the crib jigging my feet in our snow. I had to go in. I looked but I couldn’t see anyone trying to come down where the road was. All I could see was a set of half-filled prints jiggling crazily away into the snow until they sank under a drift. There wasn’t anything around. There wasn’t anything: a tree or a stick or a rock whipped bare or a bush hugged by snow sticking up to mark the place where those prints came up out of the drift like somebody had come up from underground.

I decided to go around by the front though I wasn’t supposed to track through the parlor. The snow came to my thighs, but I was thinking of where the kid lay on the kitchen table in all that dough, pasty with whiskey and water, like spring had come all at once to our kitchen, and our all the time not knowing he was there, had thawed the top of his grave off and left him for us to find, stretched out cold and stiff and bare; and who was it that was going to have to take him to the Pedersen place and give him to Missus Pedersen, naked, and flour on his bare behind?