“I would guess,” Father Paul grunted sourly, “that Providence might appreciate His fair share of the credit.”
Old Donegal made a surly noise and hunched his head back into the pillow to glower.
“You want me?” the priest asked. “Or is this just a case of wifely conscience?”
“What’s the difference? Give me the business and scram.”
“No soap. Do you want the sacrament, or are you just being kind to your wife? If it’s for Martha, I’ll go now.”
Old Donegal glared at him for a time, then wilted. The priest brought his bag to the bedside.
“Bless me, father, for I have sinned.”
“Bless you, son.”
“I accuse myself …”
Tension, anger, helplessness—they had piled up on him, and now he was feeling the aftereffects. Vertigo, nausea, and the black confetti—a bad spell. The whiskey—if he could only reach the whiskey. Then he remembered he was receiving a Sacrament, and struggled to get on with it. Tell him, old man, tell him of your various rottennesses and vile transgressions, if you can remember some. A sin is whatever you’re sorry for, maybe. But Old Donegal, you’re sorry for the wrong things, and this young Jesuitical gadget wouldn’t like listening to it. I’m sorry I didn’t get it instead of Oley, and I’m sorry I fought in the war, and I’m sorry I can’t get out of this bed and take a belt to my daughter’s backside for making a puny whelp out of Ken, and I’m sorry I gave Martha such a rough time all these years—and wound up dying in a cheap flat, instead of giving her things like the Keiths had. I wish I had been a sharpster, contractor, or thief … instead of a common laboring spacer, whose species lost its glamor after the war.
Listen, old man, you made your soul yourself, and it’s yours. This young dispenser of oils, substances, and mysteries wishes only to help you scrape off the rough edges and gouge out the bad spots. He will not steal it, nor distort it with his supernatural chisels, nor make fun of it. He can take nothing away, but only cauterize and neutralize, he says, so why not let him try? Tell him the rotten messes.
“Are you finished, my son?”
Old Donegal nodded wearily, and said what he was asked to say, and heard the soft mutter of Latin that washed him inside and behind his ghostly ears … ego te absolvo in Nomine Patris … and he accepted the rest of it lying quietly in the candlelight and the red glow of the sunset through the window, while the priest anointed him and gave him bread, and read the words of the soul in greeting its spouse: “I was asleep, but my heart waked; it is the voice of my beloved calling: come to me my love, my dove, my undefiled …” and from beyond the closed window came the sarcastic wail of a clarinet painting hot slides against a rhythmic background.
It wasn’t so bad, Old Donegal thought when the priest was done. He felt like a schoolboy in a starched shirt on Sunday morning, and it wasn’t a bad feeling, though it left him weak.
The priest opened the window for him again, and repacked his bag. “Ten minutes till blastoff,” he said. “I’ll see what I can do about the racket next door.”
When he was gone, Martha came back in, and he looked at her face and was glad. She was smiling when she kissed him, and she looked less tired.
“Is it all right for me to die now?” he grunted.
“Donny, don’t start that again.”
“Where’s the boots? You promised to bring them?”
“They’re in the hall. Donny, you don’t want them.”
“I want them, and I want a drink of whiskey, and I want to hear them fire the beast.” He said it slow and hard, and he left no room for argument.
When she had got the huge boots over his shrunken feet, the magnasoles clanged against the iron bedframe and clung there, and she rolled him up so that he could look at them, and Old Donegal chuckled inside. He felt warm and clean and pleasantly dizzy.
“The whiskey, Martha, and for God’s sake, make them stop the noise till after the firing. Please!”
She went to the window and looked out for a long time. Then she came back and poured him an insignificant drink.
“Well?”
“I don’t know,” she said. “I saw Father Paul on the terrace, talking to somebody.”
“Is it time?”
She glanced at the clock, looked at him doubtfully, and nodded. “Nearly time.”
The orchestra finished a number, but the babble of laughing voices continued. Old Donegal sagged. “They won’t do it. They’re the Keiths, Martha. Why should I ruin their party?”
She turned to stare at him, slowly shook her head. He heard someone shouting, but then a trumpet started softly, introducing a new number. Martha sucked in a hurt breath, pressed her hands together, and hurried from the room.
“It’s too late,” he said after her.
Her footsteps stopped on the stairs. The trumpet was alone. Donegal listened; and there was no babble of voices, and the rest of the orchestra was silent. Only the trumpet sang—and it puzzled him, hearing the same slow bugle-notes of the call played at the lowering of the colors.
The trumpet stopped suddenly. Then he knew it had been for him.
A brief hush—then thunder came from the blast-station two miles to the west. First the low reverberation, rattling the windows, then the rising growl as the sleek beast knifed skyward on a column of blue-white hell. It grew and grew until it drowned the distant traffic sounds and dominated the silence outside.
Quit crying, you old fool, you maudlin ass …
“My boots,” he whispered, “my boots … please …”
“You’ve got them on, Donny.”
He sank quietly then. He closed his eyes and let his heart go up with the beast, and he sank into the gravity padding of the blastroom, and Caid was with him, and Oley. And
