By day four I was almost as agitated as him. Katie had sent the pickers and foremen away indefinitely and the whole farm was at a standstill waiting to see what we did next. What I did. Ellie seemed especially worried, and had taken to bringing me soup in the back room just as I’d done for the prisoner up till then. I was skipping meals and she knew it, but most of all I think she wanted to keep an eye on me, and to see how close I was to declaring his soul lost. Truth was I didn’t feel capable of holding out another night the way I was going. Not unless I wanted to aspire to martyrdom at such a young age. But all through the afternoon I kept reading to him from the Bible, unsure of whether he could understand me, and hearing in my voice an absence of conviction that troubled me more than anything except the killing left to be done.
Then Jesus raised His eyes, I said. And He said, Father, I thank You that You have heard Me. I knew that You always hear Me, but because of the people standing around I said it, so that they may believe that You sent Me.
He let out a groan and rolled onto his side with his hand clutching his stomach. It was more of a torture now than anything, keeping him alive. But still I hesitated, because I was afraid, and because I’d learned enough from my own readings of Scripture to know what marks may be branded on those who take up arms against their brothers. And he was my brother. That was the shit of it. That was what I couldn’t get past. God help those who failed as their brother’s keeper. I took the blanket from the corner of the bed and laid it over him and knelt by the corner of the bed where his head was resting.
Do you want some wine? Would that make you feel better?
He stirred slightly at the mention of it and then rolled onto his back with his face curled in disgust. Vodka, he said. Enough to put me out.
I’m sorry. We still don’t have any vodka. It’s hard to come by in these parts.
Doesn’t matter, he said. Just stop looking at me.
What?
You heard me. I can feel your eyes on me every second of the day. Just stop it, please.
I shook my head and looked down at the carpet. You need to see a doctor, I said. You’ve needed one for a long time. I’ve been ungenerous with you until now. Just say you’ll forget about us, about the farm, and I’ll drive you into town myself. We can tell the people at the clinic it was a motorcycle accident. They won’t make a stink about it. And you’ll get the help you need.
He coughed violently into the bed sheets, his throat muscles convulsing with each strong hack. He shuddered and caught his breath and afterward he lay in such gentle stasis I was afraid he’d finally passed out. There’s only one way out for me, he said. You know it as well as I do. So take your little farm boy gun and finish me off. Unless you haven’t got the balls.
I stepped back and watched him from as much distance as the size of the room would allow. I’ll do it, I said. I’ll put you to rest. But on one condition. Confess your sins to me right now. Let me give you over to the other side with a conscience free of guilt.
The sounds of a dying man are troubling, but none more so than the sounds of his laughter. His body couldn’t handle the stress of it, and after a few big chuckles he was back coughing into his sheets. Are you a priest now? he asked. Are you equipped to deliver last rites?
He was too smart for me, damn him. He knew I wasn’t ordained to do anything more than offer him false comfort before the end. Any talk to the contrary was just Protestant optimism at its most weightless. I’m not equipped to do anything, I said. But who’s to say what God hears and what he doesn’t? If you unburden your soul to me now, before the end, I have to believe it would count for something. All this time you’ve been without God’s love, you must’ve thought at least once about what you would do when you were on your deathbed, if you were called upon to repent.
Of course not, he said. I never imagined I’d be anywhere near a believer when it happened. I hoped to die alone, with a small empire to my name, leaving behind a jealous public, and a few close friends to scatter my ashes into the Golden Gate.
We’ll bury you in the orchard and say a prayer over your grave, I said. That’s the best we can do. I’m sorry, but you haven’t left us many options. But you can still guard your soul against the doom of eternal damnation. You believed in it once. Why not now, here at the end?
He seemed to grow tender at the sound of my words. His eyes stayed shut for a good long while. Then he opened them again and cleared his throat and looked at me in a way he hadn’t since the afternoon he first came to us, when he was the very picture of importance, and all his ugliness was still waiting to be revealed.
I’m not who I was when I was your age, he said with sweat shining across his forehead. I’ve done things you couldn’t imagine. I know things that would leave you shattered.
I closed my Bible and crept closer to the side of the bed. My hands were shaking from a lack of sleep and from nervousness and from the sudden excitement of what he might say next. You sound ready, I said. You sound like you’re ready to confess.
You’re not a priest.
No, but I’m still your brother. We’re brothers by blood, and brothers in Christ. That’s about as good as we could hope for without having an actual priest around.
He wouldn’t look me in the eye. Actually, he appeared to shift his body away, as well as he could in his weakened condition, anytime I fixed my gaze on him too long. You’re not my brother, he said. Who fucked whose mother and who planted what seed don’t mean anything in the grand scheme of things.
He was still talking smart, but I could tell the fever was draining his resistance. There was a careful desperation in the way he spoke, like a drunk man talking slowly to avoid slurring his words. Our father wasn’t perfect, I said. But he was still our father. That’s a truth bigger than anything we can hope to change. The same is true for us. We’re still brothers. Blood is blood. The Lord decided it was so before any of us were made.
I killed our father. What does your God have to say about that?
I looked at him and smiled. You’re trying to bait me, I said. But it won’t work.
It’s true, he said. I killed him. He was sick and I killed him. I pressed a pillow over his face until he stopped breathing.
Why are you saying this?
It’s what you wanted. I just gave you my last confession.
That’s not possible. He died of appendicitis. The doctors said so.
The doctors didn’t look close enough. His appendix burst, but that’s not what killed him. I tied him down and suffocated him with his own pillow. I did it. Me. Not God.
You weren’t there. You couldn’t have.
I was. I was there when his life gave out. I felt it leave him. Big man that he was, it was like feeling the air go out of an inflated cushion.
My eyes went cloudy. I took a step back and put my hand on the bookcase to steady myself. All the sleepless nights in that room had made it seem bigger than it was. But once I was against the wall, seeing the room in its entirety, I suddenly felt more claustrophobic than I had in my entire life. Even the smell of the place, that stifling smell of sickness and stale air, seemed to close off the space around me. I leaned over and swallowed the saliva rising up from the back of my tongue.
How could you do that? Your own father.
Don’t pretend it’s a mystery, he said. You knew him. You know what he was like.
It doesn’t matter. You were his son. That’s like the worst thing a person can do. I can’t even think of anyone in the Bible who did something so evil.
Try a different religion, then. Look at the Greeks. That’s how Zeus got his big break.