Mr. X

nearly solid cloud of river-bottom stench soaked into me, and I forced myself to look down. Lying on the mattress at the bottom of the wooden frame was a being made up of a filmy, insubstantial body glowing with light and the face of a man with a graying bush of hair and Confucian white tendrils of beard. His ecstatic brown eyes were already widening in shock. The layers of color sifting through the limbless rectangle of his body darkened from robin's-egg blue and ripe peach to a violent purple in which swirls of black bloomed like ink. The creature fixed me with amonstrous demand, shuddered sideways, and slammed its head against the side of the pen.

    Without the intervention of anything that could have been described as thought, I went to the cot, pulled the pillow from beneath the army blanket, and pressed it down upon the terrible face. The thing struggled and surged against the pillow. Its jaw opened and closed as its teeth sought my hands. Bands of brilliant red rose to the surface of its body. Then the jaw stopped working, and the color faded. A pure, depthless black swam up over the filmy surface of the little body and faded to a lifeless gray.

    My arms and legs were shaking, but I could not have said if the source of my horror was the thing whose teeth I could still feel beneath the pillow, what I had done to it, or myself. An inarticulate sob flew from my mouth. I released my grip on the pillow and hung on to a length of plywood. The floor seemed to waver, and I thought of Joy's body sliding toward me over the stiff, snaky shapes of the noodles.

    An unconvincing voice weaker than mine said, “I had to.'

    A wave of crazy hilarity went through me. The same unsteady voice said, 'He didn't have much of a future, did he?'

    No, I thought,he didn't have much of a future. He didn't even have his last howl of chicken noodle soup. I had said that aloud, too.

    I watched my hands tear the pillow out of the pillowcase and fling it onto the cot. My right hand dipped into the pen, closed on a wispy rope of beard, and lifted the thing I had murdered. A limp, ragged substance like old spiderwebs drooped from beneath the beard. I rammed it into the pillowcase and stumbled down the stairs.

    Clark was standing in the hallway. 'The ambulance should be here pretty soon.' He glanced at the pillowcase. 'Did you locate Joy?'

    “I think she had a heart attack,' I said. 'She's dead. I'm sorry, Clark. We have to call the police, but before you do that, I need a little time.'

    Clark's eyes moved again to the pillowcase. “I guess little Mousie starved to death.'

    'You knew about him.' I came down the hall with the pillowcase swinging horribly at my side.

    'Speaking personally,' Clark said, “Iheard about him, but I never saw the boy. Queenie and my wife assisted at the birth. Clarence and

    Joy, that child took over their lives. From the time it was horn, they never knew a moment's peace.'

    'They couldn't have named it Mousie,' I said, and remembered the names on the flat granite stones on New Providence Road.

    'Never really named it at all,' Clark said. 'Joy took pride in her command of the French language, you know. The way I heard it, Queenie burst into tears when the baby came out. Joy said, 'I want to see it.' And when Nettie held that baby up, Joy said,'Moi aussi.' That means 'Me, too,' in the French language. She blamed Howard for the way her baby came out, and she never forgave him. So we called the babyMoi Aussi, which pretty soon it turned into Mousie.'

    'Would you care to say farewell to Mousie?'

    'The shovel's out behind the kitchen,' Clark said.

 •133

 •The shortest and grimmest of the three funerals I attended during my stay in Edgerton took place in Joy's back yard, and the single mourner performed the functions of undertaker and clergyman. In the tangle of weeds against the rotting wooden fence, I dug a hole two feet wide and four feet deep. While I was digging, I heard Clark haranguing the ambulance attendants from Mount Baldwin. I lowered the pillowcase into the hole and scooped earth on top of it. Then I covered the raw earth with severed weeds and yanked living weeds over the dead ones.

    'Mousie,' I said. 'Not that it matters to you, but I'm sorry. Your mother wasn't able to take care of you anymore. Even when she could, you had a terrible life. You never got anything but the short end of the stick. I hope you can forgive me. If you happen to come around again, things almost have to be better, but if you want my advice, stay where you are.'

    I pitched the shovel into the weeds and came back into the house. Clark called 911. We went into the hallway. Ten minutes later, two baby cops piled out of a squad car and jogged to the door. I said that I had found the deceased, Mrs. Joy Crothers, my mother's aunt. The family had been worried because no one had seen her in two days.

    My Undo Clark and I had let ourselves in. Mr. Crothers was in an advanced stage of Alzheimer's disease, and when we discovered his wife's body, we telephoned the nursing home to which he had been accepted and had him removed there. “It looks to me like she had a heart attack while bringing lunch up to her husband.'

    On the way upstairs, one of the cops finally mentioned the smell. 'Mr. Crothers lost control of his bodily functions years ago,' I said. 'And my aunt was an old woman. She didn't have the strength to clean him properly.'

    'No offense, sir, but this smells worse than that,' one of the cops said.

    In the lead, Clark intoned, 'You fellows may be ignorant of what can happen to the human body when it is left to its own devices. Be grateful you still have your health.'

    'Why did she put him in the attic?'

    “I guess she thought he'd be safe there,' I said. 'She had a special bed made for him. You'll see.'

    Clark opened the door, and we trooped in. The cops walked around the body and wrote in their notebooks.

    'She died in the commission of an act of human kindness,' Clark said. 'That was her way.'

    'Chicken noodle soup,' said one of the cops. 'This isn't any homicide, but we'll have to wait for the M.E. to make it official. Is that the bed you were talking about, sir?'

    'She put up the plywood to keep him in,' I said.

    They stared down into Mousie's crib and looked at Clark. He saw an occasion to which he did not doubt his ability to rise.

    'The woman stayed by his side night and day, ministering to his needs as best she could. The tragedy is, the day before yesterday we found a placement for Clarence at Mount Baldwin. I believe the shock of his imminent departure was a factor in Joy's demise. Clarence was her life. Boys, always remember to display affection and regard for your wives. A woman needs that kind of thing.'

    “If I come down with Alzheimer's, I hope my wife won't dump me into a plywood crib,' said one of the cops.

    'An act of the purest tenderness and love,' Clark said. 'You may get an idea of the man's stature when you hear that it was Mrs. Rachel Milton who arranged for his placement at Mount Baldwin.'

    The cops glanced at each other. 'Let's wait downstairs,' one said.

 •Clark excused himself to tell his wife what had happened. They came out onto their porch before the medical examiner drove up in front of Joy's house, and they crossed the street in time to hurry up the walk behind him. It was the same weary man with mushroom-colored skin who had released Toby Kraft's body to the police. I was standing outside, and the two cops loomed in the doorway. Nettie caught up to the medical examiner and squared off in front of him. She looked like a mountain with a reputation for rockslides. 'Have you come to examine my sister's body?'

    'That's my job,' he said.

    “I trust that you will conduct your business in a respectful manner and allow us to deal with my sister's departure as she would have wished.'

    'Mrs. Rutledge, you will probably get what you want. I'm here to pronounce your sister dead and rule out the possibility of foul play. But to do that, I have to go into the house.'

    'Am I in your way?' Nettie asked.