Skin Medicine

They’d gotten into a drunken brawl at the Cider House Saloon and Heck had pulled his old Army Colt and shot Thomas and Thomas, before his blood had run out, had slid a skinning knife into his brother’s throat. They had died in a communal pool of their own blood, locked in a fighting embrace. They had been brought in that way. It had taken both Hiram and his brother to pull their stiffened limbs from one another. Heck’s wife Clarissa was paying for the funeral, wanted them in nice boxes and wanted them presentable so they could be photographed side-by-side, cheek-to-jowl for kin back in Missouri. She could afford it-as the only living relative, she owned a livery stable and meat market now.

With gray, watery eyes like wet tin, Hiram got down to work.

His fingers were nimble and busy, forever searching and prodding, slitting and plucking. He stitched and sewed, gummed and pasted. Knives flashed and saws bit, wax pooled into hollows and catgut sealed cadaveric mysteries intact. He embalmed the brothers with a solution of arsenic and covered them with sheets until the caskets arrived.

Pumping water into the basin, Hiram pulled off his rubber gloves and washed his hands thoroughly.

The wind picked-up outside and a tree limb scratched at the roof. For a reason Hiram could not understand, a chill swept up his spine. That sense of dread again. It had been gnawing at him for hours now…but why? He found himself thinking of the two men that had brought the casket.

They’d been scared white.

But why? Why? Fatigue, maybe. They’d been on the trail for two days from Toole County to Whisper Lake. And cold, inhospitable days they had been. Such deprivation and exposure could do strange things to men. Hiram cleaned up his instruments, decided against working on Cobb tonight. The oil stove in the corner was chugging away, yet he felt cold. Worse, his skin actually seemed to be crawling in turgid waves. He wanted out of the mortuary in a bad way and was not sure why.

He paused, a droplet of sweat coursing down the hill of his cheek.

There was something, something.

He could not hear anything, but…he turned around, staring at the casket. He stood there, watching it, his brain filled with cryptic thoughts. It was ridiculous…but he had the unnerving sensation that he was being watched, studied, stared at.

Children peeking in?

No, it was too late and the shades were drawn. Carefully, slowly, he went to the windows, peered around the shades. The dirt street outside was empty. He could see the town stretching out in the distance? clustered roofs climbing the hills and dipping into hollows. He could hear the wind skirting the lonesome spaces. Hear a wagon somewhere in the distance. The sound of voices over towards saloon-row. The ever-present rumble of mine machinery.

But no one looking in, watching him.

The shadows seemed to be growing longer in the mortuary, spilling out from crevices and cracks and crannies, tangling like mating snakes across the floor. The lanterns still burned bright, yet everything seemed oddly murky.

Eyes watching me.

Imagination?

Hiram had no use for superstition. He would have no truck with it. Yet, something in him was alive and electric and concerned, afraid maybe. He walked across the room to the casket. Licking his lips, he ran his hands over the roughhewn cedar, fingering nail holes and splintered knots.

Eyes staring at me.

That body in there…James Lee Cobb…Hiram began to wonder about it as something inexplicable began to take hold of him, but so gently he was not even aware of it. All he could think about was the body in the box, body in the box. Cobb had died up in Skull Valley, they said. His injun friends had bought him a casket, paid for him to be shipped back to Whisper Lake.

Now why would injuns do that for a white man?

Hiram wiped sweat from his brow. He knew there was a reason, but he couldn’t seem to remember what it was. Cobb had come home to the only kin he had. Sure. Had a half-brother over in Deliverance, the Mormon settlement just west of Whisper Lake. That’s why Cobb was sent. The half-brother was going to pick up the box day after next, he said.

Hiram’s hands were trembling now.

He mopped more sweat from his brow, thought: What the hell is wrong with me?

He couldn’t seem to think straight. His brain was filled with wild, leaping thoughts that could not be strung to together into anything reasonable. There was a tenseness behind his eyes. Perspiration was beading his face, pooling under his eyes, streaming down his jowls. A few droplets struck the surface of the box. Plop, plop.

For one irrational moment, Hiram thought it was blood.

Yes, like a sacrifice. A blood sacrifice offered up to some malefic pagan god. Blood. Burnt offerings. A tribute of blood and flesh and burned entrails. Atonement. Expiation. Some gods demanded these things, they-

Hiram began to whimper, tears mixing with sweat.

Eyes that won’t shut, won’t die, won’t stop staring.

He stumbled over to the tool bench, found a small crowbar.