41

Truly it is a solemn thing to die.

James Lorin Chapin
Private Journal, Lincoln, 1848

On this first day of spring they were all in church—the Kellys, the Bells, the Harrises, the Upshaws, the Fensters, the Sinclairs, the Otts, Joan Sawyer, Arthur Spinney, Donald Meadow, Geneva Jones, Maud Starr, Mollie Pine, Mabel Smock, Priscilla Worthy, Jill Marx, Marigold Lynch, the widows Deborah Shooky, Judy Molyneux, Betsy Bucky, Maureen Donlevy, and Hilary Tarkington, and widower Bob Palmer. The Gibbys were there too. They had driven all the way out from Cambridge.

In the pulpit Joe Bold conducted the service and surveyed his flock. He was still like a man cut off at the knees, but his vision had cleared. When the hospital bed had been taken out of his living room, along with the jars of morphine and the wheelchair and all the other desperate paraphernalia of the sickroom, it had been like coming out of a cocoon into chill, biting air of an amazing transparency. This morning, looking over the reading desk at his congregation, he was surprised by their resemblance to animals. With her little topknot, Betsy Bucky was a Celebes crested ape. Ed Bell was an American river otter, Dr. Spinney looked exactly like a kinkajou, Homer Kelly was a rough-coated dingo, and Parker Upshaw was remarkably like a Bactrian camel. Joe gazed in startled appreciation at Upshaw, wondering why he hadn’t seen the resemblance before in Parker’s heavy eyelids, his immensely long nose, his supercilious expression. Then Joe caught sight of Augusta Gill in the balcony. She was glancing over her shoulder at him questioningly. Immediately, Joe leaped to his feet, late for the call to worship, seeing out of the corner of his eye the flash of Parker Upshaw’s silver pencil in the sunlight. What was Upshaw scribbling in his pocket notebook?

Joe’s sermon was a little delayed too, but this time it was the fault of the car that roared past the church up Farrar Road. Joe had to pause and wait until the noise died down. The congregation waited too, flinching at the rending clash as the driver shifted gears, waiting for the end of the grinding racket as the car picked up speed and thundered up the hill. Parker Upshaw grimaced at his wife. Why didn’t people have the courtesy to slow down, passing a house of public worship on a Sunday morning?

It wasn’t until the service was over and everyone had emerged into the glare of outdoors to stand basking in the unaccustomed warmth, shaking hands with the minister, exchanging the time of day, that the car came back. This time it was lunging down the hill out of control, swerving around the curve of Farrar Road, veering off the pavement. There were shrieks, and people flung themselves left and right as it bounded across the grass and thumped violently up the steps of the church. Lorraine Bell cried out as she saw her daughter’s white face behind the windshield, but Ed turned only in time to throw himself at Joe Bold, who was in the way.

“Ed, Ed,” screamed Lorraine.

As the car struck, the shaft of the steering wheel burst the spleen of Paul Dobbs and broke his back, and the door popped open, tossing Eleanor to the side like a morsel from a vending machine. As for Ed, he was pinned and crushed between the crumpled hood of Bo Harris’s Chevy and the easternmost pillar of the church.