Full Dark, No Stars

had gone a dul pink that would be red by the end of the day. Touching anywhere on that hand except for the pinky caused excruciating pain. Nevertheless, I wrapped it as tightly as I could, and that reduced the throbbing. I got a fire started in the kitchen stove—one-handed it was a long job, but I managed—and then drew up close, trying to get warm. Al of me except for the bitten hand, that was; that part of me was warm already. Warm and pulsing like a glove with a rat hiding inside it.

By midafternoon I was feverish, and my hand had swel ed so tightly against the bandages that I had to loosen them. Just doing that made me cry out. I needed doctoring, but it was snowing harder

than ever, and I wouldn’t be able to get as far as Cotteries’, let alone al the way to Hemingford Home. Even if the day had been clear and bright and dry, how would I ever have managed to crank the truck or the T with just one hand? I sat in the kitchen, feeding the stove until it roared like a dragon, pouring sweat and shaking with cold, holding my bandaged club of a hand to my chest, and remembering the way kindly Mrs. McReady had surveyed my cluttered, not-particularly-prosperous dooryard. Are you on the exchange, Mr. James? I see you are not.

No. I was not. I was by myself on the farm I had kil ed for, with no means of summoning help. I could see the flesh beginning to turn red beyond where the bandages stopped: at the wrist, ful of veins

that would carry the poison al through my body. The firemen had failed. I thought of tying the wrist off with elastics—of kil ing my left hand in an effort to save the rest of me—and even of amputating it with the hatchet we used to chop up kindling and behead the occasional chicken. Both ideas seemed perfectly plausible, but they also seemed like too much work. In the end I did nothing except hobble back

to the hurt-locker for more of Arlette’s pil s. I took three more, this time with cold water—my throat was burning—and then resumed my seat by the fire. I was going to die of the bite. I was sure of it and resigned to it. Death from bites and infections was as common as dirt on the plains. If the pain became more than I could bear, I would swal ow al the remaining pain-pil s at once. What kept me from

doing it right away—apart from the fear of death, which I suppose afflicts al of us, to a greater or lesser degree—was the possibility that someone might come: Harlan, or Sheriff Jones, or kindly Mrs.

McReady. It was even possible that Attorney Lester might show up to hector me some more about those god damned 100 acres.

But what I hoped most of al was that Henry might return. He didn’t, though.

It was Arlette who came.

You may have wondered how I know about the gun Henry bought in the Dodge Street pawnshop, and the bank robbery in Jefferson Square. If you did, you probably said to yourself, Well, it’s a lot of

time between 1922 and 1930; enough to fill in plenty of details at a library stocked with back issues of the Omaha World-Herald.

I did go to the newspapers, of course. And I wrote to people who met my son and his pregnant girlfriend on their short, disastrous course from Nebraska to Nevada. Most of those people wrote back, wil ing enough to supply details. That sort of investigative work makes sense, and no doubt satisfies you. But those investigations came years later, after I left the farm, and only confirmed what I already knew.

Already? you ask, and I answer simply: Yes. Already. And I knew it not just as it happened, but at least part of it before it happened. The last part of it.

How? The answer is simple. My dead wife told me.

You disbelieve, of course. I understand that. Any rational person would. Al I can do is reiterate that this is my confession, my last words on earth, and I’ve put nothing in it I don’t know to be true.

***

I woke from a doze in front of the stove the fol owing night (or the next; as the fever settled in, I lost track of time) and heard the rustling, scuttering sounds again. At first I assumed it had recommenced sleeting, but when I got up to tear a chunk of bread from the hardening loaf on the counter, I saw a thin orange sunset-streak on the horizon and Venus glowing in the sky. The storm was over, but the

scuttering sounds were louder than ever. They weren’t coming from the wal s, however, but from the back porch.