The Infirmary

Knuckle

52 k n U c k L e There was a quiet knuckle on the door. and the deputy sheriff in his silver and browns, standing in the doorway with his death face on, so that the doorway made a picture frame. “Gretchen nolan?” he asked her. he was too small for the wide-brimmed hat. he took off the thing and held it in his palms as if it were a gift and asked again because he needed to be sure. “your son is charles nolan?” “i already know,” is what she said and she began the walk for the dead, making one death loop then another, through the kitchen and the living room, past the floral couch and the kelvinator, because she could not do any other thing. The deputy took a step inside. “are you all right? mrs. nolan, maybe we should go.” “yes, i suppose. should i take my purse? for what?” she thought. “But maybe then i should.” “charles,” she said in the back of the squad. she chanted it a hundred times because she could not stop the word from swinging on a tire in her head. mr. Grady owned the dead, the dead were his. he led her across the burgundy rug, what color’s death she said then down the linoleum stairs to the holding place and peeled the sheet slowly away from the boy, the way you peel the paper from the back of a stamp. his hands were not right, laid crisscross upon his lap; he never held his hands that way. she smoothed his hair and kissed him on an eye and pressed her cheek against his own and mr. Grady pulled the sheet back over the boy so there were only four of them: mr. Grady, the mother and the boy, and the other thing the mother had become. ...