She’d been about to put her hand on his shoulder, but what he’d said was so strange, her hand fell away.
Bewildered, she said, “We ain’t got no horse.”
“Huh?”
Rae Lynn put her hand on his forehead. It felt clammy.
She said, “Lie back down and try not to move. You’re making it worse.”
“Worse? What could be worser’n this? Dammit, Rae Lynn.”
He’d cussed in the past, but never at her.
She said, “You could’ve broke your neck and be six feet under, that’s what could be worse.”
Tentative, her fingers probed his belly. It was hard, hot, and distended. Something was horribly wrong inside him, she was sure of it. He put his hand on top of hers and stared at her so pitiful-like, she couldn’t think of a thing to say.
He whispered a word: “Will . . .”
She didn’t understand and she attempted to help.
“You need something? Will I . . . ?”
Warren shut his eyes. He didn’t go on, so she stroked his arm until his breathing eased. For the rest of the day, she tried to keep busy, checking on Warren in between her chores, setting cool cloths on his forehead, and giving him sips of sweet tea. When it was time to finally begin her nightly ritual, she only wanted sleep to come for the both of them. She filled the wash basin and took it to their room. After undressing, she washed and pulled on her nightgown before removing the pins that held her hair up. Her head still hurt but brushing her hair helped. She caught Warren’s eyes on her from the mirror, and turned to him as he spoke, his voice was weaker than it had been earlier that day.
He whispered, “Your hair. It’s so purty.”
She set the brush aside, picked up the cloth, dipped it in the water, and went to his side. She wiped his face while sitting on the bed beside him.
He gazed at her and said, “Who’re you?”
She drew back a bit and frowned. “It’s me. Rae Lynn. Your wife.”
He blinked. “Rae Lynn?”
Unnerved, she said, “You thirsty? Can you drink some water?”
He nodded, and when she brought him some, his hands trembled as he reached for the glass. He clutched it tight and drank till it was empty. She set it on the nightstand and got in the bed beside him, trying not to jostle him. Somehow, she slept and didn’t waken until she heard a mockingbird singing outside their window the next morning. She turned to Warren and saw he was awake too, but the man staring back at her didn’t resemble her husband. Gray-skinned, purplish half-moons staining the area beneath his eyes, he was nothing like the old Warren, yet there was a clarity in his gaze she’d not seen for the past few days.
Trying to inject a bright tone, she said, “You feeling some better?”
He didn’t respond, as if her question tired him.
She went out to empty the chamber pot, and when she came back to the room, his gaze sharpened, and he gasped, “Need. Something.”
She went to him and said, “Anything.”
His pointed at the dresser.
She felt the beginnings of dread. “Can you tell me?”
She didn’t mention the doctor again, not wanting to agitate him.
“Like I done. For Bessie.”
Bessie had been Warren’s redbone hound, a dog Rae Lynn had grown attached to after she’d moved in. Bessie had been a good old girl who slept under the porch in the summer and under their bed during the winter. She got to where she couldn’t hardly walk, couldn’t control her bowels or bladder, and then stopped eating. She watched them with mournful eyes, her tail no longer thumping.
He’d put his big hand on the dog’s head and said, “She wants to go.”
He rubbed on her for a while, got his .22 revolver, gathered the old girl up, and disappeared deep into the woods with her. Rae Lynn had paced the kitchen, bracing for the gunshot, and when it came, and she knew it would, still she’d jumped, and felt her heart break. It took them a long time to get over Bessie. She’d filled a space in their hearts and took that piece with her when she went.
Rae Lynn was on the verge of tears.
“Warren. You can’t mean that.”
“I do.”
Sickened, she exclaimed, “I can’t. You shouldn’t ask me.”
“It’s. Unbearable.”
His hands shook as he laid them on his left side. She left the room, alarmed, afraid of what he asked, and his plea followed her through the house.
“Please.”
She tried to distract herself by cooking breakfast as if nothing was wrong. She brought it to him, but he’d turned his head so he faced the wall. She sat down, preparing to do like she’d been trying to do each and every morning, offer him some soft-cooked eggs, except he turned his head to the wall.
“Won’t you eat?”
Silence. She set the plate down, angry.
“That ain’t the answer. I wouldn’t ask you, if it was me.”
“Ain’t asking. I’ll do it.”
The words blew through her like a cold wind in the dead of winter. She pictured him doing what he wanted, and her standing there, letting it happen. My God. Just thinking about it gave her such an emotional jolt, she felt dizzy, nauseous.
She said, “I don’t understand this thinking. Let me bring the doctor, Warren!”
“Too. Late.”
Arguing with her cost him because he began panting. Rae Lynn went to him, reached out, and he pulled away. Hurt, she left the room and paced the kitchen floor. She tried to see it his way. Would it be an act of kindness? She was torn by his suffering, but this idea of his, it was barbaric.
She marched back into the room and said, “I’m getting Doctor Perdue.”
His eyes widened, and she thought it was because of what she said, but instead he heaved onto his side and threw up in the basin, filling it with thick black matter. Frightened, she went to him, rested her hand on his back as he continued to expel what was in him. He collapsed back on the bed, his mouth rimmed with what had come out of him. The smell in the room had changed, coming from what he’d left in the basin, as if he was dying from the inside out. For a second, she thought he had, until his chest rose and lowered. He still breathed, only barely.
Backing out of the room, she went outside onto her porch and took a deep, cleansing breath. At the end of the property line was a sagging, old tobacco barn, and she walked to it. Once there, she tugged the door open, the rusty hinges squealing. Stooping to enter, a memory came of her and Warren running inside it because of one of those typical, pop-up thunderstorms suddenly appearing on what had been a hot, sunny day. She turned her attention to where they’d lain as the pungent odor of tobacco greeted her, and those long-ago moments, a gift from her past, came rushing forward. She remembered taking off her wet dress, and Warren, usually shy about relations, shrugging out of his overalls and having her right there.
Afterward, she was sure she’d get pregnant because the impromptu act was as passionate a moment as either ever had. With Warren, it had always been lights out, under the sheets, hidden away. But, two weeks later, her blood came, and as was their way, neither of them said a word about how they’d been married several years and had yet to have a child. Rae Lynn didn’t know why. Didn’t know, was it her fault or his, and had long ago concluded it must be her. There was Eugene, after all. Her thoughts were chased off by what was going on at the house, as if she still stood beside their bed, the only witness to his suffering.