The priest examined another blister on the water pipe. “I don’t quite see why I have been summoned,” he said softly. “Perhaps you’d better call the Protestant chaplain.”
“Oh, no, sir,” said the engineer hastily, breaking out in a sweat lest the priest leave and he, the engineer, should have to go careening around the walls again. “Jamie professed no faith, so it is all the same which of you ministers, ah, ministers to him.” For some reason he laughed nervously. He didn’t want this fellow to get away — for one thing, he liked it that the other didn’t intone in a religious voice. He was more like a baseball umpire in his serviceable serge, which was swelled out by his muscular body. “As I told you, his sister, who is a nun, made me promise to send for you. She is on her way out here. She is a religious of a modern type. Her habit is short, to about here.” Then, realizing that he was not helping his case, he added nervously: “I wouldn’t be surprised if she didn’t found her own order. She is doing wonderful work among the Negroes. Aren’t foundresses quite often saints?” He groaned.
“I see,” said the priest, and actually stole a glance at the other to see, as the engineer clearly perceived, whether he was quite mad. But the engineer was past minding, as long as the priest got on with it. Evidently this was an unusual case. The priest tried again.
“Now you. Are you a friend of the family?”
“Yes, a close friend and traveling companion of the patient.”
“And the other gentleman — he is the patient’s brother?”
“Sutter? Is he here?” For the second time in his life the engineer was astonished.
“There is a visitor with the patient who I gather, from his conversation with Dr. Bice, is a doctor.”
“That must be Sutter.”
“The only thing is, I don’t yet quite understand why it is you and not he who is taking the initiative here.”
“He was not here when Jamie had his attack. But he told me — he must have just come.”
The priest took off his glasses, exposing naked eyes and a naked nosebridge, and carefully polished the lenses with a clean handkerchief. Making a bracket of his hand, he put the glasses back on, settling the stems onto his healthy temples.
“It would help if we had some indication from the patient or at least from the immediate family. Otherwise I don’t want to intrude. In fact, I would say it is a ‘must.’”
“Yes sir.” Unhinged as he was, the engineer was still sentient. He perceived that the priest had a certain style of talking which he no doubt shared with other priests. It was a good bet that quite a few priests liked to say such things as “It is a ‘must’” or perhaps “Now that is the sixty-four-dollar question.”
“Sir, could we go in and speak to the patient’s brother?”
“Well, let’s see what we shall see.”
The resident had left. Sutter was leaning against the window in Jamie’s room, his foot propped on the radiator.
“Dr. Vaught,” said the engineer, handing the priest along ahead of him — the goods to be delivered at last. “This is Father—”
“Boomer,” said the priest.
“Father Boomer,” said Sutter, shaking hands but not taking his foot from the radiator.
After a glance at Jamie — the youth’s head had fallen to the side and his eyes were closed — the engineer told Sutter: “Val asked me to call Father Boomer.”
“You spoke to Val just now?”
“Yes.”
“What did she say?”
“She’s flying out.”
“You called because I asked you?”
“Jamie also asked me.”
Sutter put both feet on the floor and gave him an odd look. “You say Jimmy asked you?”
“He asked me to call Val about a book she promised him. That was earlier.”
Sutter sank into thought. There was time for another look at Jamie. The bed had been freshly made, the seersucker counterpane drawn tightly across the youth’s bony chest. It seemed to the engineer that Jamie’s nose had grown sharper and that his skin clove closer to his cheekbones.
“He’s developed a spruelike diarrhea and lost some fluid,” said Sutter from the radiator. Was this an explanation? Sutter turned to the priest. “I refused to allow intravenous fluid, Father,” he said in what struck the engineer as a challenging tone. “Even though it might prolong his life a few days. What do you think of that?”
“No objection,” said the priest, scratching his fist absently. “Unless he is unconscious and you want him conscious for some reason.”
Sutter’s eye gleamed and he lifted an eyebrow toward the engineer. How about this fellow? Sutter asked him. But the engineer frowned and turned away. He wanted no humbug with Sutter.
“Of course, whether he is unconscious or not, I’ll be glad to baptize him conditionally,” said the priest, settling the glasses with the bracket of his hand.
“Conditionally, Father,” said Sutter with a lively expression.
The priest shrugged. “I have no way of knowing whether he’s been baptized before.”
“Is that what the canon prescribes, Father?” Sutter’s eyes roamed the ceiling.
“I think, Father—” began the engineer sternly. He would have no part of Sutter’s horsing around. At the same moment he glanced at Sutter’s coat pocket: it still held the pistol.
“This young man asked me to come in here,” said the priest
“That’s right,” said the engineer sternly.
‘Therefore I should like to ask you, sir,” said the priest straight to Sutter, “whether you concur in your sister’s desire that I administer the sacrament of baptism to the patient. If you do not, then I shall be going about my business.”
“Yes,” said the engineer, nodding vigorously. He thought the priest expressed it very well in his umpire’s way, taking no guff from Sutter.
“By all means stay, Father,” said Sutter somewhat elaborately.
“Well?” The priest waited.
“Why don’t you ask him yourself, Father.” Sutter nodded to the bed behind the other two.
They turned. Jamie was getting out of bed! One hand had folded back the covers quite cogently, and the left knee had started across right leg, his eyes open and bulging slightly with seriousness of intent.
Later Sutter told the engineer that, contrary to popular notions, dying men often carry out complex actions in the last moments of life. One patient he recalled who was dying of tuberculosis had climbed out of bed, washed his pajamas in the sink, hung them out to dry, returned to the bed, pulled the covers up to his chin to hide his nakedness, and died.
“Hold it, son,” Sutter stopped Jamie fondly and almost jokingly, as if Jamie were a drunk, and motioned the engineer to the cabinet. “Jamie here wants to move his bowels and doesn’t like the bedpan. I don’t blame him.” The priest helped Sutter with Jamie. After a moment there arose to the engineer’s nostrils first an intimation, like a new presence in the room, a somebody, then a foulness beyond the compass of smell. This could only be the dread ultimate rot of the molecules themselves, an abject surrender. It was the body’s disgorgement of its most secret shame. Doesn’t this ruin everything, wondered the engineer (if only the women were here, they wouldn’t permit it, oh Jamie never should have left home). He stole a glance at the others. Sutter and the priest bent to their task as if it were nothing out of the ordinary. The priest supported Jamie’s head on the frail stem of its neck. When a nurse came to service the cabinet, the engineer avoided her eye. The stench scandalized him. Shouldn’t they all leave?
Sutter conducted Jamie back to bed fondly and even risibly. Suddenly the engineer remembered that this was the way Negro servants handle the dying, as if it were the oldest joke of all.
“Hold it now, son. Look out. There you go.” Leaning over the bed, Sutter took hold of Jamie’s chin, almost chucked it. “Listen, Jimmy. This is Father Boomer. He wants to ask you something.”