Page 19 of Stay Buried

“Will you help us, please, Margaret?” Thomas asked.

With some difficulty, the three of us hoisted the large man up onto the exam table.

“What’s happened to him, Tom?” Margaret asked, voice trembling slightly as she took in the chaotic state of the exam room, then returned her eyes to where the knackerman lay on the table.

He was making strangled, wheezing sounds like a strange, wet accordion. The blood seeped from the gash on his arm. His eyelids fluttered open and he glanced in Margaret’s direction, mumbled a wordnone of us could make out, then closed them again. Bloody sputum leaked from his lips, which were turning purple from lack of oxygen.

The man was dying before our very eyes.

“He was ill. I talked him into coming here so I could examine him, but he became quite aggressive—cut himself on the glass cabinet. But that goes with his personality, doesn’t it?”

Margaret shook her head, reached out, and put a hand on the knackerman’s arm. “No, Tom, it doesn’t.”

Uncle Thomas had retrieved a pair of scissors and was cutting the soiled and now bloody undershirt off the knackerman.

“He’s not a violent man,” Margaret went on. “His language is rough, but you should see him with his horses. He’s terribly gentle. Like a mother with a baby.”

“Well, he was anything but gentle just now,” Uncle Thomas shot back. He bent over the knackerman and put the bell of his stethoscope on his chest, then looked across at me.

“Frankie, wrap bandages around to get pressure to the gash on his arm, will you? We’ll suture it later. Let’s get some pillows under him, try to prop him up. We need to clean out his mouth and throat so he doesn’t choke on his own secretions.”

“It’s just like the horses, isn’t it?” Margaret asked, twisting the cameo ring on her finger, making the ivory face spin.

“Similar symptoms, yes, but—” Uncle Thomas began.

“The symptoms are exactly the same.” Margaret’s voice was full of alarm now. “Could a horse pass a sickness to a man like that?” She looked first at Thomas, then at me, sure that if her husband didn’t answer her, I would. I swallowed a hard lump in my throat.

“It’s possible,” Thomas told her, straightening up. “A bite from a rabid dog would give a person rabies. There are other, similar diseases—”

“Similar to rabies? A rabid animal has to be shot!” Her eyes fell on the knackerman gasping on the table. “What about a person?”

“It’s not rabies,” Thomas said, exasperated. “At least, not like anycase I’ve come across in any of my books.”

“Well, what is it then?”

“I can’t say,” he admitted.

“Will he live?” Aunt Margaret asked, her voice pitched high. “You’ve got to help him!”

The knackerman’s lungs sounded as if they were full of fluid. His pulse was weak and thready.

“I’m trying!” Uncle Thomas was growing uncharacteristically and increasingly frustrated.

Margaret looked panicked, tears welling in her eyes. “Do you think,” she began, “do you think there is any danger to us? To the baby?” Her hand fluttered down to her abdomen, hovering over it like a nervous bird.

Uncle Thomas’s face was grave. “Margaret, go out to the kitchen. We need hot water and compresses. And put a pot of coffee on, will you? And bring in some extra pillows.”

She nodded and left the room.

IT WAS NEARLYtwo o’clock in the morning when I’d fallen asleep in the exam room chair. We’d done all we could for the knackerman, which, it turned out, was very little. At eleven, Uncle Thomas had gone up to bed and encouraged me to also get some rest. But I knew these hours might well be the knackerman’s last, and I am of the belief that no human being should have to depart this world alone.

I’d been dozing in the chair, dreaming of my mother. It was a familiar dream, one I’ve been having all my life. In it, I’m a little girl, watching my mother die. I am lying beside her in bed, even though I’ve been told not to, that my mother is too weak, but she’s called me up, pulled me in next to her. The covers are damp with her sweat. I can smell the rank, spoiled odor of sickness coming off her. Her lips are blue. Her hair, once a beautiful thick chestnut brown, is stringy and dull and lies plastered to her face. She’s struggling for breath,making horrible gurgling sounds. Struggling to tell me something, but I can’t make out the words. I move my face closer, right against hers, but all I hear is a terrible hiss. She blows a bubble of blood-tinged saliva. I’m frightened and I try to pull away, but she’s got her arm clamped tight around me, and I can’t move. Then, I’m the one who can’t breathe. And I know we’re going to die there together.

But just now, in tonight’s dream, I made out the words my mother spoke to me:

“Can you hear them?” she asked.

I opened my eyes.