Fern was the gatekeeper. He slid off the last step and landed on the floor with a thud. And a groan. An audible groan. His groan-barely audible, but audible, yes.
Dr. Fern turned on the lights. It looked a little like a laundry-that's what it looked like. Or maybe like wash day at Fort Dix. Or maybe like a newsreel from a certain time and place. Which one? Pick one-he'd seen plenty. The kind they showed at Nuremberg, the ones that made all the gauleiters turn away and shrug with that who knew look they'd honed to perfection. You remember. Not the ones of bodies, but the ones of things that used to belong to the bodies. Before they were bodies. When they were still someone's daughter, or son, or husband, or mother. Those piles of glasses. Those mounds of hair. Those endless rows of shoes. That's what Fern's basement looked like.
There were piles of clothes nearly everywhere. Somber gray suits huddled in the corner. A menagerie of dresses so bright they hurt the eye. A veritable tower of underwear. Ties entangled one around the other like a nest of snakes. Socks, shirts, hats, and sweaters. Some piled neat as a linen closet, some haphazard as a rag bin. They were good clothes too: Sunday best suits were in there, the kind a person might wear on moving day to make a good impression on the new neighbors. And they were made for warm places, for summer, or places like summer. William remembered Collins Drive-the old people clip- clopping down the street in mules and Panama hats, the heat sending ripples across the pavement.
He was lying in a slaughterhouse, a graveyard; he was about to be interred there.
And now what?
Dr. Fern was pulling off his shoes, first the left one, then the right one. Of course. They were destined for a pile-the shoe pile, and that's where Fern promptly brought them, throwing them smack upon a pair of purple Hush Puppies. Then his socks, left, then right, Fern in a rhythm of sorts, William feeling a damp chill envelop each naked sole in turn. Really feeling it.
The muscle relaxant was wearing off.
But too slowly.
He was being prepared, being made ready for death. He spotted a white porcelain tub out of the corner of his eye, and that's where he tried to keep it, in the corner, where he couldn't really see it, and think about it, and mull its specific uses. It was a deep tub, squat and deep, so that a person couldn't really bathe in it, but everything that made a person could fit in it. It was that kind of porcelain tub. By its side was a table laden with gleaming metal instruments and he could smell alcohol wafting over from its general direction.
Fern was undoing the buttons of his pajama top now. They said no one really wore pajamas now. They wore sweatpants, or T-shirts, or just underwear. But even if old men die easy-old habits die hard. William was about to make a donation to the pajama pile.
One button, two buttons, three buttons, four.
Five buttons, six buttons, seven buttons, more.
Dr. Fern pulled off his top. The air made him shiver. Even with the huge burner going full blast in the corner of the basement, the one Dr. Fern had just upped the thermostat on so that it now glowed white hot. Even with that he'd shivered. Visibly shivered.
The muscle relaxant was wearing off.
It was.
His pajama bottoms came off with a sharp tug.
Then he was naked.
Dr. Fern, Dr. Petoit, stood and stared at him-as if admiring his work, or maybe just sizing up the task ahead.
Ashes to ashes. Dust to dust. William tried to remember, to remember back.
Though I walk through the valley of death…
Though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death… the words coming slowly to him, the way they do on instructional cassettes-one at a time, so there can be no mistaking them.
I shall fear no evil…
I shall not fear…
I shall not…
Dr. Fern took him by the legs and began to drag him toward the tub, the deep white porcelain tub, the one that he'd kept at the corner of his eye for as long as he could, but no longer.
He was dragged past suede and lace and cotton and burlap, past Mrs. Winters's favorite blouse and Mr. Shankin's lucky hat, and Mrs. Joseph's new shoes and Mr. Waldron's loud tie. Past a thousand reminders of people no one remembered. Past William's striped pajamas and threadbare socks-William, who'd no one much remember either.
Dr. Fern lifted him up, grunting, sweat glistening in little beads on his forehead-up and then into the porcelain tub. Not exactly into, but across, so that his legs flopped over the sides.
For thou art with me…
Dr. Fern was pulling on brown latex gloves, the kind dishwashers use, dishwashers and morgue attendants.
He picked a small saw off the instrument table, then wiped the sweat off his forehead with his left sleeve.
Oh God… Oh…
William understood now. Completely understood. There was to be no injection for him. There was, after all, no need for it, no reason to try and fool him, to tell him tales of vaccinations and South American immigration laws. Fern was about to dispose of the body before disposing of him.
And now he was dressing for it, with the solemnity all good surgeons must have before the big operation. He pulled a smock off the back door of a closet-a smock that even bleach had failed to keep white. It seemed more blood than cloth now, as if the red itself had faded and not the other way around. It was a butcher's smock; it had a butcher's smell.
The furnace was starting to pop and crackle, like the sound of snapping twigs in a dark and lonely forest. The beast was coming for him, the bogeyman and the troll. No one could save him.
And now Fern-Petoit was hovering over him like the very Angel of Death.
I shall fear no evil… no evil… I shall not… I shall not…
Fern placed the handsaw just above his left knee. He gave one small glance toward William, then turned and dug in.
At first, it was as if he was looking at someone else's leg, not his, but someone else's, pale white and threaded with veins, hanging limply over the side of the tub. A leg that twitched with each motion of the saw, a leg that bled, slowly at first, then in hard, powerful spurts that splashed up against Fern's smock and collar. What a curious-looking thing-a leg being sawed in half, right in half before his eyes.
Then he remembered.
The muscle relaxant was wearing off.
Remembered it because his nerve endings began prodding him about it, kicking up a fuss even though he was trying his best not to listen to them. But they would have none of it.
So suddenly it was his leg again, not someone else's, but all his. It felt like an itch, okay a bad itch-at first that's what it felt like, an itch he couldn't scratch. But then it became worse than an itch, more like a burn, as if Petoit had lit a match against his leg and was holding it there, as William waited only for a breeze to come and blow it out. But there was no breeze. It was the valley of death and it was dead calm.
Oh God… oh my God… it hurts… oh how it hurts… stop it… oh please stop it…
His leg was half sawed through. Half sawed in half. Half and half.
I shall walk through the valley of the shadow of death… the valley…
Petoit paused to catch his breath; it was hard work sawing through bone, especially at his age, why if he didn't watch out he could hurt himself…
The burn was like a fire now, like a bonfire, like a raging forest fire. There was blood everywhere, it was raining blood. Hot blood too. Hot and salty blood. Like tears.
I shall fear no evil… I shall…
Petoit bent down again.
Put out the fire!
