Alas, Babylon

Randy said, “Killed three, grabbed this one. They got Malachai through the middle. Look at him, Dan. Is he still with us, Sam>“

The Admiral said, “He was a minute ago. Barely.” Randy said, “Ben Franklin, get some clothesline.”

“We going to hang him right now?” Ben asked, not casually but still as if he expected it.

“No. We’ll tie him.”

Dan crawled into the truck. He held up the lantern, shook his head in exasperation, and then tore the patch away from his right eye. The eye was still swollen but not entirely shut and any assistance to his left eye was helpful. He crawled out and said, “He’s in shock and shouldn’t be moved and ought to have a transfusion. But we have to move him if I’m to do anything at all. On what?”

There was a discarded door in the toolhouse. They moved him on that.

They laid Malachai on the billiard table in the gameroom and then massed lamps and candles so that Dan would have light.

Dan said, “I have to go into him. Massive internal hemorrhage. I’ve got to tie it off or there’s no chance at all. How? With what?” He leaped on the edge of the table, swaying not in fatigue or weakness but in agony of frustration. He cried, “Oh, God!” Dan stopped swaying. “A knife, Randy?”

“My hunting knife, the one I shave with? It’s sharp as a razor, almost.”

“No, Too big, too thick. How about steak knives?” “Sure, steak knives.”

The short-bladed steak knives even looked like lancets. The Judge and Randy’s mother had bought the set in Denmark on their summer in Europe in ‘fifty-four. They were the finest and sharpest steak knives Randy had ever used. He found them in the silver chest and called, “How many?”

“T’wo will do.”

From the dining room Helen called, “I’ve put on water to boil-a big pot.” The dinner fire had been going and Helen had piled on fat wood so it roared and Dan would soon have the means of sterilizing his instruments.

Randy put them into the pot to boil. After that, at Dan’s direction he put in his fine-nosed fishing pliers. Florence Wechek ran across the road for darning needles. Lib found metal hair clips that would clamp an artery. Randy’s six-pound nylon line off the spinning reel would have to do for sutures. There was enough soap to cleanse Dan’s hands.

Dan went into the dining room, fretting, waiting for the pot and his instruments to boil. It was hopeless, he knew. In spite of everything they might do sepsis was almost inevitable, but now it was the shock and the hemorrhage he couldn’t lick. He wondered whether it would be possible to rig up a saline solution transfusion. They had the ingredients, salt and water and fire; and somewhere, certainly, rubber tubing. He would not give up Malachai. He wanted to save Malachai, capable, quiet, and strong, more than he had ever wanted to save anybody in his years as a physician. So many people died for nothing. Malachai was dying for something.

In the gameroom Helen was at work, quick and competent. She had found their last bottle of Scotch, except what might remain in Randy’s decanter upstairs, and was cleansing the wound with it. Randy and Lib stood beside her. The pool of blood in the round hole ebbed and did not rise again.

The water was boiling in the big iron pot when Randy walked into the dining room and touched Dan’s shoulder. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m afraid it’s all over.”

In a dark corner of the room where she thought she would be out of the way and not a bother, Hannah Henry had been sitting in an old scarred maple rocker. The rocker began to move in slow cadence, and she moaned in this cadence for the dead, arms folded over her empty breasts as if holding a baby except that where the baby had been there was nothing.

Dan Gunn went into the gameroom and saw that Randy was correct, that Malachai was gone. His shoulders felt heavy. He was aware that his head throbbed and eyes burned. There was nothing more to do except empty the makeshift sterilizer with its ridiculous makeshift tools. He did this in the kitchen sink. Yet when he saw the knives and the pliers and the hair clips steaming he realized they were not really so ridiculous. If he was very careful and skillful, he could make do with such tools. They had not and probably could not have saved Malachai. They might save someone else. A century ago the tools had been no better and the knowledge infinitely less. Out of death, life; an immutable truth. Helen was at his side. He said, “Thanks, Helen, for the try. You’re the best unregistered nurse in the world.”

“I’m sorry it was for nothing.”

“Maybe it wasn’t for nothing. I’ll just keep these and try to add to them. I wonder if we could find a small bag somewhere? Any little traveling bag would do.”

“I have one. A train case.”

“We’ll start here, then, and build another kit.” His eyes hurt.

Who in Fort Repose could build him another pair of glasses, or give him new eyes?