Micah lay in his bed and stared at a spot on the ceiling. Jackson’s pounding at the office’s front door had gone on now for a full five minutes. The man would not relent. Micah had allowed Jackson to rouse him yesterday, but only because of Chester’s funeral. Going to the funeral was the last thing Micah had wanted to do, but other than lie in this bed with the blue devils, it was the only thing Micah had done since Chester was killed on Saturday.
Micah had stayed at the cemetery long after the service was over. Everyone else, including Jackson, Fay, and the others, had gone once the last hymn was sung and the last prayer intoned. Jackson had brought Micah out in his carriage, and he tried to get him to leave with him as well, but Micah refused.
“Come along now,” Jackson had said as he gave Micah’s elbow a tug. Micah wouldn’t budge. Jackson lowered his voice so no one else could hear, “Fay’s worried about you, son.”
Micah turned toward the crowd that filed away from the grave site. Fay was watching them, her hands folded at her waist. A look of sadness cloaked her face.
It was the first he had seen Fay since Saturday. After he and Chester left the café Saturday morning, Fay had gone to the jail to retrieve Sonny’s breakfast dishes. It was then she discovered Collins’s body and Sonny’s empty cell. She ran back for Cedra and Polly, and the three of them drove Chester’s buggy to the field where they knew Micah and Chester were riding. But first they stopped for Fay’s shotgun.
Throughout Chester’s funeral Fay had been standing at the back, apart from the rest of the mourners. Except at the café, neither she nor Micah ever allowed themselves to be seen together in public.
“Fay wants me to take you back to town,” said Jackson. “She doesn’t think you should stay out here alone, and I agree. We need to go now, Micah.”
Micah jerked his arm away from Jackson’s grasp and turned back to the grave. To Micah, leaving Chester in this graveyard was the ultimate act of betrayal. After a bit, Jackson gave up and left.
Once everyone was gone, the two grave-diggers, who shoveled dirt into the hole, eyed Micah with suspicion. It was clear they resented his watching them work, but Micah didn’t care. He stayed until long after the last spadeful of earth was patted onto the mound that covered Chester’s body.
It was cold at the cemetery. The wind sliced in from the northwest, but Micah ignored its chill. When the grave-diggers were finished, they loaded the picks and shovels into their wagon. After that was done, the older of the two men asked Micah if he wanted a ride to town. When Micah didn’t respond, the man repeated his question. Still Micah didn’t answer, and the grave-digger gave a shrug, snapped his reins, and drove away.
It was dark before Micah—numbed by the cold—turned from the grave and limped the half mile back to Probity. Once he was home, he fell into bed still dressed. He had lain there staring at the same spot on the ceiling ever since.
Now, Tuesday morning, some fifteen hours after his return from the cemetery, there was one last volley of pounding on the office’s front door, then silence. At another time Micah would have appreciated the silence, but now he was indifferent. He welcomed that indifference; he embraced it. He wanted to bathe himself with indifference—every nerve of him, every feeling. Lottie was wrong. The opposite of passion was not practicality; it was indifference.
Micah’s mind turned that thought around, held it to the light, examined it. Indifference was the answer. For those who allowed themselves to feel, life was an endless flow of pain. Even if passion could be tempered with the practical, as Lottie would advise, ultimately there was still relentless pain and death.
Micah heard voices. At first he could not make out what they were saying, but he could tell it was Jackson and Fay.
After a bit, they were close enough he could understand them. They stopped at his back door. “Fay,” Jackson said, “I don’t think there’s anything to worry about. I mean, I can’t imagine Micah would—”
“I understand, Jackson.”
“But he gets so low, and when he wouldn’t come to the door—”
“You did right to get me, Jackson.”
There was a knock. It was the same soft rapping he’d heard so many times before.
Micah still lay staring at the spot. He didn’t even want to see Fay. Perhaps Fay was the last person he wanted to see. He had avoided her ever since the shooting. Except for the death of his father and now the death of Chester, it was Fay who was at the root of most of the pain Micah had felt in his life.
There was her rapping again. “Micah, open the door. Let me in.”
“Go away,” he said. At the sound of his voice he heard both Fay and Jackson sigh with relief. They had been afraid he’d killed himself. Done himself in.
Micah had considered suicide many times in the past. When the blue devils came to call, they always brought those thoughts along with them. It was odd, though. This time it had not crossed his mind. He wondered why. Indifference was what he wanted. It was what he ached for, and suicide was the purest form of indifference. Suicide was caring so little that a person could turn away from life entirely. Suicide was indifference at its most distilled.
Micah felt his brow furrow at the strange realization that this time there had been no thought of killing himself.
Maybe, he didn’t deserve to stop the pain. Maybe, just as Chester had said of Sonny, Micah was already dead.
Sonny. Micah hadn’t killed him.
With the sound of Chester’s words crashing through his head, Micah had moved the shotgun’s muzzle at the moment he pulled the trigger. The blast blew a hole six inches deep into the snow and frozen earth next to Sonny’s head. In his terror, Sonny had screamed nonstop for a full twenty minutes; finally his voice box broke, and as far as Micah knew, Sonny had not made a sound since. Micah had decided the hangman could have Sonny after all.
Now he heard Fay tell Jackson to leave. “I’ll see to him, Jackson,” she said. “You go on.”
“You know, Fay,” the old lawyer said, “it’ll be here in less than an hour.”
“I know. We’ll see how he feels. We’ll see. Now, you go on.”
With grumblings of reluctance, Micah heard Jackson leave. Again there was the rapping. “Micah, let me in. We need to talk.”
Micah wanted to shout that they did not need to talk; there was nothing either of them could say, but the weight of his indifference kept the words inside. Instead, he responded in the only way he could, with silence.
“Micah, I know your sadness for Chester. He was a man who knew things. And he was brave. Braver than us by far. Nothing mattered to Chester except what was right. He was ready to sacrifice himself for whatever he felt was right. He was ready to go to prison for what he felt was right.” There was a pause. When she began again, Micah could hear the tears in her voice. “You not killing Sonny, Micah, that was the right thing. And I’m guessing it was Chester who helped you know that. People like you and me, we’re good enough people. The world needs us to protect it against people like Sonny. But sometimes even good people need to be shown the right thing to do. We need someone like Chester Hedstrom to point the way. Maybe even show us it’s all right to sometimes take a risk. Chester could see things none of the rest of us could see. It was like we were all huddled in darkness, and ol’ Chester, he stood up, and he walked out into the light.”
She cleared her throat, and when she spoke again, in his mind’s eye, Micah could see her straighten the front of her dress in that prim, no-nonsense way she had. “His passing is a sad thing, and we’ll never forget him, but now, Micah McConners, it’s time for you to open up this door and let me in.”