“Oh, you mean Simon Bale,” Callie said. “Simon’s an old, old friend of ours. He stops in all the time.”
Ellie Wells tipped her head and pretended to be satisfied. She rearranged the pies in the rack and dusted her hands and went over to see how the sugar dispensers were. She’d bet fifteen dollars that man had never been here in all his life. She made a clucking sound.
“It’s a terrible time for him,” Callie said. There was a hint of reproach in her voice. “His house burned down, you know, and he lost his wife in the fire. It’s really just terrible.”
“The poor thing,” Ellie said. There she was, put in the wrong as usual. She’d never said it wasn’t terrible.
“Didn’t you know?” Callie said. She looked straight at her, as if daring her to lie.
“Why, no,” Ellie said, “I hadn’t heard.” She did feel sorry for him, she truly did, but she didn’t have to like it that he was here. A man like that might do something crazy at a time like this. It was just one of those things. She said, “How long is he staying?”
“Oh, just a day or so, I think,” Callie said. She bit her lip as if she’d like to be able to take back that “I think.”
Ellie met her daughter’s eyes just long enough to let her know she had her own opinions. Then she said, “Poor man.” Then: “And poor Henry. He’s so good to people.” She dropped it casually, as if it meant nothing whatever (what it did mean, as a matter of fact, was vague in her mind). She had all the sugar dispenser tops off now. She went back to the kitchen for the sugar jar, and again, in misery, she began to cluck.
Doc Cathey came in a little after that and asked where Simon Bale was (straight to the point, as usual; no “How do you do” or “Nice weather we’re having”—nothing), and when she pointed to the bench in the garden Doc Cathey nodded, scowling, and went out to him. The next time she looked out the window Doc Cathey and Simon and Jimmy were all gone from sight. They’d gone on into the house, most likely. She wondered what Doc Cathey was doing here — up to no good, she was pretty sure — and it so puzzled her she forgot to smile at the customers for maybe five full minutes. She forgot, too, to listen to what the customers were saying among themselves, until finally it came to her that all they could seem to talk about, at least the people who lived around here, was the fire. Someone said, “They say he set it himself,” and she was so startled she nearly dropped her tray of salt shakers. It’s possible, she thought, and it was as if it had been in her mind all the while: It truly is possible. All at once she was so frightened that she had to sit down a minute till she’d caught her breath.
5
It was Doc Cathey who brought up the question of funeral arrangements. When he’d finished looking Simon over he sat with his hands on his knees, opposite his patient, looking at the floor between their two chairs as if crossly, his glasses far down his gray beak of a nose (Callie over by the window, with her hands folded; Henry standing against the refrigerator; little Jimmy playing, oblivious to it all, on the floor). Doc said: “You thought at all about the funeral, Simon?”
Simon went pale, and his hands, busy buttoning his shirt, stopped moving. He had a wart on the knuckle of his middle finger, and Callie couldn’t help but wonder if it came from his never getting clean. He smiled, just a flicker, as if in fright, and said, “The Lord will provide.”
“The hell he will,” Doc Cathey said.
“Now, Doc,” Henry said.
“Well she can’t stay there in the hospital morgue,” Doc said. “One way or another she’ll have to be buried. What kind of fun’ral do you people normally put on?”
Simon looked as if his mind had stopped. “The Lord—” he said. Then he said, suddenly awake for an instant, “Every nickel we had—” He looked at Callie, as if in panic, then over at Henry.
“You mean to say you let it burn?” Doc said. His face squeezed shut with fury and he shook his head. He fumbled with the hearing-aid button on his vest.
“Simon, don’t you have any friends you can turn to?” Callie said.
He looked smaller than ever, as it seemed to Henry. Like a woodchuck beset by dogs. He folded his hands and sat thinking, or daydreaming, perhaps, the frightened smile playing on his face, on and off. At last he said, and this time he knew what he was saying — there was no question of it now—“The Lord will provide.”
“Faddle,” Doc Cathey said. He reached for the bag by his foot.
But Simon looked up sharply, his mouth open, raising his clasped hands a little, like a man with handcuffs on, the muscles of his face tense, and the brightness that had come into Simon’s eyes made even Doc Cathey stop and wince and listen.
“Or ever the silver cord be loosed,” Simon said, “or the golden bowl be broken, or the pitcher be broken at the fountain, or the wheel broken at the cistern, then shall the dust return to the earth as it was; and the spirit shall return unto God who gave it.”
Doc Cathey leered as if with some sort of vicious triumph. “Much study is a weariness of the flesh,” he said. “Who pays the mortician?”
“It’s of no importance,” Simon said. “Dust to dust.”
“What?” Doc said. He leaned closer, turning his hearing aid toward Simon.
“Of no importance,” Simon said again.
They were like a couple of old witches, the two little men sitting knee to knee, bright-eyed as a couple of hawks. Doc Cathey said, “I believe you’d just roll her in a ditch and leave her lay!”
“Stop it,” Callie said, startled.
But Doc Cathey had understood.
“A living dog is better than a dead lion,” Simon said, “for the living know that they shall die: but the dead know not any thing, neither have they any more a reward; for the memory of them is forgotten.”
“Now Simon, you don’t know what you’re saying,” Henry said, and Callie felt a flush of pleasure, as if he’d defended her.
But Doc Cathey lifted his hand to hush him. “Yes, he does,” he said, looking at Simon for the first time as though he were in some sense human, not actually human, maybe, but related. “He’s saying the body in the morgue has nothing to do with his wife, let the County take it. And maybe he’s right, at that.”
“That wouldn’t be decent,” Henry said, but Callie said, “If that’s what Simon wants—”
Simon said, “I will rejoice. I will divide Shechem, and mete out the valley of Succoth.” Then, abruptly, as though it had been coming for a long time, waiting for the magic word Succoth, Simon began to cry as he’d cried this morning, but not so violently now. Jimmy had paid no attention to their talk, but he turned quickly, when Simon started crying, and looked up.
“Well somebody better see to some kind of arrangement,” Doc Cathey said. He stood up.
Henry looked at the floor, upset. “I’ll drive down tonight and see what needs to be done,” he said.
Simon continued to cry, but without a sound, wiping his eyes with his knuckles.
Jimmy said, forgetting all about him, “Go to the store with Daddy!”
“Hush,” Henry said. “Nobody’s going to the store.”
Callie said, “Simon, why don’t you come into the diner and have some supper.” He didn’t answer, made only a confused sign with his head, something between a headshake and a nod. She came over and stood beside him, but she made no move to touch him. When she saw that he was about to reach in his pocket for his handkerchief, she crossed over to the cupboard above the sink and brought back the Kleenex. Simon blew his nose.