Babies died. All the time.
Sometimes they died before they were born, their impression so small we only noticed them missing when we didn’t see my mother growing larger. Sometimes they died right after, like our last tiny Higgins. They arrived in the world too soon, never taking a single breath. We washed them. We buried them.
Of course I thought it was sad. But I won’t lie, it was also a little bit of a relief. One less body to clothe. One less mouth to feed. One less worry in a house crowded with worry.
Babies died all the time. But when they died on you after a year or two . . . or like Henry, after four, it was different. He was really there. And now he was really gone.
Having someone gone should make you feel empty, but it didn’t. It filled you up. My stomach was full even though I hadn’t eaten. My head was full even though I had no thoughts. Every inch of me was full, so much so that my feet dragged along the ground.
Last week, the first truly cold gale of winter blew in and he took to fever. My father heated the croup kettle until it boiled and I carried it steaming to Henry’s bed, where it rose the blanket like a covered wagon above his sick little body. The next morning, when we knew it wasn’t working, Joseph took off on Tam to beg for the doctor. But it was too late. By midmorning, Mary and Nan were laying him out on my parent’s bed.
I meant to help, but they were done before I could get there. The door seemed so far away.
Everything seemed so far away. The space in the house no longer taken up by his chubby little body was as large as the winter’s night sky, yet my knees knocked into every chair and table as I wandered through.
Henry. It had been four days. One day for each of the years he was ours.
“Where are you?” my mother cried out at night.
We laid in bed and listened with our eyes closed. She was worried about him. She couldn’t remember his face. She wondered if he ever existed. She thought she made him up.
I wished I couldn’t hear it. Our mother crying. Our father talking. He quoted poetry and philosophy to her. She cried harder. My father’s big ideas didn’t sound as big in the dark.
Mother begged to know if her son was with God. Henry wasn’t baptized. But Father didn’t believe in God. Not even for her. Not even in the blackest hour of the night.
We listened until we heard her sobs turn into gulps and fade into silence. And I was left to imagine that house I was to buy for us, the bedroom that would have been his very own, and the big featherbed . . . just for Henry and no one else.
* * *
The sweet tang of whiskey made me open my eyes. I was a little surprised at first because I thought I was still awake. Father motioned for me to be quiet and hurry.
Slipping out from under Ethel’s leg, I slid off the bed. The floor was so cold it felt wet. Nan turned in her sleep. I froze in place, waiting for her snores to settle, and then I scampered out of the room, avoiding all the known squeaky floorboards.
I didn’t bother to change out of my nightclothes, but instead stuck my bare feet into Mary’s boots, climbed inside one of the boy’s jackets, and followed him outside.
“I need your help, Margaret.”
He took off for the barn with me at his heels. I hadn’t seen him move like this, with clear-eyed purpose, for weeks. He’d either been off looking for work or camped in his chair mumbling into a book. Whatever he needed me to do, he knew I’d do it.
The night was black and the dew slowed my steps, but I could picture the way in my head just as easily as I could picture the knots in the wallboards across from the seat in the necessary. I looked back at the windows behind me. They were dark and empty.
Once inside the barn, my father lit a candle and handed it to me. He didn’t explain anything, but began to collect his tools, along with a couple of bags of plaster. He nodded at the wheelbarrow.
We hobbled toward town along the dark road. He carried the candle, the tools, and the plaster. I glided the wheelbarrow through dips in the road that turned into muddy rain puddles in the spring, and over jutting rocks that stung my bare toes in summer. I realized he was holding on to everything until we were a safe distance from the house so the sound of the tools bouncing at the bottom of the wheelbarrow wouldn’t wake anyone. I didn’t ask where we were going. Or what we were doing.
Something rustled under the cold dry leaves next to the road. I tried not to flinch, although my heart beat a little faster. I walked this road every single day of my life, but it was different at night . . . the woods were more awake, and it felt as if my father and I were on parade with a thousand eyes watching us from the shadows.
Finally, Father put his tools and plaster into the wheelbarrow and took over, handing me the candle. I focused on my new job as seriously as I did the previous one, holding the candle out so the light hit the ground in front of the wheelbarrow. The wax dripped, and I had to be careful it didn’t hit Mary’s boots.
“We’re going to the cemetery,” he said.
I stumbled, a splash of wax burning the soft skin between my thumb and finger.
“The cemetery?” I repeated in a whisper, although no one could hear us out here. We were half a mile from the house. Not even the loud metal shovel clanging against the floor of the wheelbarrow was in danger of waking anyone. My eyes couldn’t help glancing down at it, and I quickly looked away.
“You’ll stand guard. Alert me if anyone comes.”
I nodded in the dark. I had no voice to say, “Yes, Father.” Or “I understand, Father.” But I did understand . . . didn’t I? He used to work in the cemetery, before he became the Devil. It had been months since I’d seen him chip away at a block of marble. But maybe there was a commission? Maybe this was a job?
The soft trill of a screech owl reminded me of the hour, and I couldn’t help it, I glanced down at the shovel again. And the plaster. He saw me do it.
“She needs this.” His words came out of his mouth like a soft puff of air.
I now understood exactly what he meant to do and I clutched at the candle while my bare feet sweated inside Mary’s boots. I walked straight on, never taking my eyes from the puddle of light bobbing on the road in front of me. All I saw was the light. All I wanted to think about was the light.
We naturally slowed as we approached the cemetery. My father stopped the wheelbarrow and pulled the tools from it. I blew out the candle and took the handles of the wheelbarrow. We headed toward the entrance in complete silence.
Outside the iron gates, he stopped and dumped the tools onto the grass. Pulling out his whiskey, he looked around to be sure we were alone and then took a long swim in the bottle. Plugging it, he returned it to his trousers, pushed the wheelbarrow under a naked forsythia bush, and picked up his tools and plaster.
“Stay here,” he said. “Only come in if you see or hear someone.”
I didn’t want to stay, but I didn’t want to go. I didn’t want him to go either. I wished I was home. I wished I was in my bed with Ethel’s cold feet against the back of my knees and Nan’s snores buzzing in my ears. I wished that shovel my father had slung over his shoulder was hanging on its rusty nail by the broken window of the barn. I really wished he hadn’t brought the plaster. I watched him disappear between the graves and into the dark.
It felt colder the instant he was gone. I wandered back and forth peering off into the dark down Mill Street, dreading the thought of seeing someone, yet at the same time aching to see someone, anyone that might put a stop to this.
The chssst of the shovel slicing through earth made me jump, and I grabbed hold of the frigid bars of the iron fence. Yesterday was Saturday. That made today Sunday. Did Father know this? Did it matter? I looked up. The night sky was full of stars. Some looked close enough to touch. Could God really be up there somewhere? My father said no. My mother never said, but I knew she believed it. She believed it all.
The shovel struck wood with a thump. I was shivering so hard I had to hold my lips closed so my teeth didn’t chatter too loudly. He knew what he was doing. He knew. It was all right.
Then came a crack of wood.
Henry.
My hands slid down the cold bars and my knees sunk into the wet ground. I let my face fall against the fence, the cold iron cooling each hot cheek.
He chose me. To be out here with him. To push the wheelbarrow. To hold the candle. To stand by while he dug up my little brother’s grave.
Not Nan, or Joseph, or Thomas, or Ethel. He chose me.
But why?
Because they wouldn’t do it. And I would. I was doing it. He and I . . . together, disturbing sweet, round little Henry.
We should not be able to touch you, my lovely, lovely boy, because you are gone—somewhere wonderful, I hope. I hope so much. But I don’t want to think where you’ve gone.
To the earth? To the worms?
It was wrong, this digging. Father was wrong to do this thing. He was wrong to choose me. And if he thought I was like him, he was wrong about that, too. Because I was not like him. I was not.
Oh how I wished another cold gale would blow through this town and take me away with it.
“Margaret!” he called out in a hushed tone.
I rose from the wet grass as if I’d been dreaming and stumbled toward him.
We headed home. He pushed the wheelbarrow. I held the candle. In its light glowed the white plaster likeness of my dead brother’s head, one fine strand of red hair fluttering in the night breeze.
“We’ll come back tomorrow. I’ll need a second cast to complete the mold.”
My feet dragged along the road as I tried to keep up. I will not return with him tomorrow. I will never do another thing he asks of me. Never.