“Mr. Martin?”
Marie is gone, and the man is surrounded by small beasts with smashed, toothy muzzles and the ears of hounds. He points at me. “Put him back to sleep.”
CONSCIOUSNESS breaks in briefly, coinciding most often with visits from Chaplain. I see him in patches of fog, a wavering crow there by my bed, flapping his black wings. He reads to me from Job. “We’re all tested in different ways, Roscoe,” but I am not Job. I may even deserve the infection that’s taken over the bandaged wounds on my leg and stomach, pitching me into a fever this warm and prickly. I don’t know whether this is Chaplain sitting at my side or, indeed, a big crow, set to devour me. His voice is a raspy caw, his mouth peaked and pointed.
He pecks at my sheets and then my arm, nipping at my clammy skin, then he opens a book with his black wings and reads, “ ‘And unto the married I command, yet not I, but the Lord, Let not the wife depart from her husband.’ Where is your wife, Roscoe?”
I don’t know which of us is asking this question.
“Listen, Roscoe.” The crow reads more from his book. He reads, and the words eddy and swirl like the Coosa. They break and pitch like Ed’s ocean. They are birdsong and wind, a field of corn, a bricked powerhouse. They are lines and insulators and poles. They are the branching veins of George Haskin.
“Is there a storm?”
“No.”
“The wind,” I say. “It’s so loud, and the rain.”
“It’s a beautiful, sunny day.”
“You brought the ocean, didn’t you, Ed? Brought it right into Kilby like I thought you would. How’d the warden take it?”
“Nurse,” the crow says. “Nurse.”
And there is my nurse. Here she is.
“Is it raining?” I ask.
She turns to the man. “It may be time for a rest, Chaplain.”
“Yes.”
“Can’t you hear it?”
“Mr. Martin,” the nurse coos. “Open your eyes — it’s a beautiful day.”
She whispers something to the man who’s now standing by my bed, but I cannot hear it. The man is wearing black. His face is familiar.
“Have we met?” I ask him, and I don’t know why his face looks so desperate and caught. “I’m hot, and sick of lying on my back. Will you roll me over?”
But the man is gone and in his place is Nurse Hannah, this woman tells me, the prettiest little bird in her fluted hat. I have forgotten how lovely women are. Look at her: almond eyes and a tiny nose, and lips that would never peck or bite. They squeeze together, those lips, and then they say, “You can’t roll over, Mr. Martin. Not onto your stomach. But we can arrange you on your left side, if you’d like.”
“Yes,” I croak, and I let my body fall into her hands — there at my knees, and again at my hips, and again at my ribs and back, and finally, here at my face. Her hands cradle it, one tiny palm against each of my rough cheeks, and I am sure that she will kiss me. I have never lived on Marie’s father’s land, or in his home vacated by his death. I never ran power lines that stretch across this state and out into the country and all the way to the sea. I have only ever been here, in this white bed, with this small bird’s hands on my horrible face.
“Are you comfortable, Mr. Martin?” she asks.
“Does God not live high in the heavens?” Chaplain responds. Has he returned?
“Mr. Martin?”
“Roscoe?”
“Chaplain?” I whisper back.
“No, Roscoe, it’s me.”
And, again, I open my eyes to a stranger.
“Marie?”
She puts her hands on my right arm, where the nurse left it angling over my chest as though it were broken. “The doctors say you’re mending.”
I cannot focus my eyes on her face.
“You’ll be all right. I spoke to the doctor, and he says you’ll be just fine.” Her hand is heavy on my arm, pushing through the muscle and tendons, deep into the bone.
Her voice is the same, and she’s put something in my hand — one of her fingers to grip? I am an infant curling my fist round the pointer of my mother. The slight effort awakens something rigid in my stomach.
“Right here, dear Roscoe,” and I am happy to be here with her, to hold this small bit of her. Where has she been?
Then Nurse Hannah is back, and I can see Marie there with her clearly, and the nurse is angry, viciously so, and Marie’s finger in my grasp is gone, though her other hand remains on my arm.
My nurse bird squawks, and Marie screeches back. I try to understand, but there’s only noise in the room, a strange chorus of sound, truncated and taut. The voices are clotted things, and they’re all I hear.
Now, Marie is standing. Her hand is leaving the bone of my arm. The muscle and veins close the gap, stitching themselves back together. I reach for her, trying to sit up, but she’s so far away already, down there by the sad iron foot of my bed, and I am stopped by the desperate torment in my stomach. The pain guts me, scoops a voice I don’t know I have from the depths of my lungs, shoots it dark and gruesome into the air, where it strikes Marie full in her nearly familiar face.
Does she tell me she’s sorry? Is that what I hear?
The nurse switches her tone, comforting now. “Oh, Mr. Martin. No, no, no. It’s too early to sit up.” I wait for Marie to say something more, but she is gone. There is only my nurse, this lovely thing. Marie’s words feel as light and shifty as her presence did, her apology hanging there in the sick breath of this hospital wing.
“Everything in time, Mr. Martin,” Nurse Hannah is saying. “Are you all right?”
Put your hands on my face, again. There. Like that. Keep talking. I am Gerald, quite possibly, a boy, under the hands of my mother.
My nurse is a full bird now, shiny jewel white, her fingers a feathery touch on my skin. In her bird voice, she speaks of forces and affinity, attraction and change.
We are in the pasture, standing over our dead grandchildren. The bird says, “They never meant much to me.”
But she must be lying.
“THE warden’s been asking after you,” Nurse Hannah tells me one morning. I have no idea how long I’ve been in this bed, but I know it’s more comfortable than the cot in my cell. I appreciate the pillow.
“Was my wife here?”
“Shush, now. Don’t make yourself upset. You’re finally getting past that infection. Goodness knows we don’t need another fever.”
I have not yet seen my stomach or leg.
“We’ll have you out of here soon enough.” Hannah’s checking on the solutions that drip slowly into my arm. Her voice reminds me of Marie’s.
“My wife.”
The nurse cuts me off with a curt shake of her head. “You realize how special you are, don’t you, Mr. Martin? What with the warden asking after you himself? He told me you work with Deputy Taylor on the dogs.”
I don’t work the dogs, I want to tell her. That isn’t my job. I collect milk and shelve books. Don’t think of me as one of Taylor’s boys.
“I visit them sometimes, the dogs.” Her thin fingers slide something up the tube that connects to the needle in my arm. “Deputy Taylor scolds me for being out there alone, but he always seems to be there when I come round, so I’m never actually on my own. It’s such a short distance to the village from there.”
This information shifts my attention, and instead of correcting her about my prison employment, I ask, “You live in the village?”
“Oh, I’m talking too much. You rest, and I’ll be back in a bit to change those bandages. The doctor will be round shortly.”