Rachel Welch-Visiting

Everything looks bleached, the sky a washed out blue like old denim, the sun burning white, not a cloud overhead. The wind is blowing twenty miles an hour, the temperature just above freezing as Brother Dan rubs his eyes to stave off the headache he feels brewing. He rummages through the glove box for a bottle of aspirin but finds none.
Dan hates visiting. He spends entire days driving all over the county to see his parishioners because they don’t see him enough during the luncheons, Wednesday service, Sunday School, Sunday morning service, Sunday evening service, business meetings, or those times when they pop by his home unannounced just to say “hello” when Dan knows they want to bitch about their lives. He believes only death is a good occasion for calling on people, while his congregation believes if their pastor does not take the time to check up on them during the week, he is no pastor of theirs. He makes his rounds and thinks he might have enjoyed more the life of a car salesman. His brother owns a used car lot, and his brother is never unhappy; Dan thinks this is because no one holds a used car salesman to high standards of morality. And it wouldn’t have been that different from preaching. He would still have to smile and cajole the unsuspecting into paying for reliability, security, peace of mind.
He turns off the main road onto a dirt track running through a copse of

pines. The intensity of the sunlight eases, but the throbbing in the preacher’s head continues. In his old Lincoln he feels every bump and rut. An errant branch slaps his left side mirror–attached to the car by duct tape–and leaves it dangling against the driver’s door. In another thirty feet, he emerges from the pines into a clearing. The Sharp house sits in the middle, the paint on its white siding cracking and rust blooming on the tin roof. The hundreds of skinny pines surrounding the clearing create a barrier through which the only sound Dan can hear is the eerie roar of the wind.
Dan walks hunched against the cold. He knocks on the front door and is greeted by Mary Ellen Sharp.
“Hello, Brother Dan.”

“Good afternoon, Mrs. Mary Ellen. Just popped by for a visit.”

Her eyes open wide, her jaw moving up and down, slowly grinding her teeth, she turns to look behind her at the house’s empty foyer. “Won’t you come in?” She holds the door open a little wider. “It’s a cold day for it.”
“Yes’m, but the shepherd tends his fl ck winter and summer, rain or shine.” The little old ladies liked to hear these sorts of things, but saying them made Dan’s eyes darken and his smile go wooden. “I’m just making my usual rounds.  Been to see the Laniers and Louise Barker and that new couple.”
“Good, good. A preacher ought to make himself agreeable to the people

who pay his wage. He ought to call ahead, before he does it too.”

Dan feels his cheeks lock up as he tries to hold his smile. His right eye twitches as a fresh sprig of pain blossoms in his head. Over his hostess’s white hair he sees scuff marks on the wall running along the narrow front staircase, an empty wheelchair at its summit. Pictures hanging there are perfectly spaced, impeccably aligned. But the picture of her husband, young and somber in his Army uniform, is crooked.
Mary Ellen shuffles to the sitting room. She has a hump forming on her back and her skin is so thin it is easy to see the blue snakes of her veins twisting their way through her body. She takes a set in the rocking chair, saying nothing but picking at a scab on the back of her hand.
The whole house smells of bleach, and Dan gets his handkerchief just in time to shoot his mucus into it. “Smells like somebody’s been cleaning,” he says.
“Yes. I know I shouldn’t clean on a Sunday, but some messes just can’t be left.”
“Wasn’t there a rug in here before?”

“It needed to be cleaned too. Though I’m afraid its ruined.” “We missed you in church this morning.”
“Ernest was giving me some trouble.”

Her husband had a stroke four years ago and is confined to a wheelchair.

The left side of his face is slack. He can’t get his lips to form around words, so he speaks in grunts and grumbles. Dan hopes his own wife doesn’t have a stroke; he could never take care of her the way Mary Ellen takes care of Ernest. It takes a special kind of soul to devote themselves to life’s noblest and most futile purpose: sustaining the dying.
Dan nods, giving a small smile and hoping he looks sympathetic. “It must be hard for such a big man to be brought so low.”
“Yes, it’s hard for him.” “How is he now?”
“As good as he can hope to be.”

“That’s good,” Dan says. He doesn’t know what to do next, so he sits. Occasionally, he catches Mary Ellen’s eye and offers a reassuring smile. Her lip curls like she’s smelled something unpleasant; his sympathy is not appreciated. She is acting strangely.
To Dan she has always readily given her opinions on church, sermons, God, they all have. The deacons, the women's society, the Sunday School teachers, the choir members, infants screamed their disapproval even as he stood in the pulpit. He preached too often on tithing and appeared greedy, or he did not mention it enough. He spoke of Hell and was thought to be unnecessarily bleak. He spoke of Heaven, joyous reunions, and mansions of precious stones and gold, but they felt it would save more people if he spoke
of God’s wrath for the wicked. He visited the sick and dying in the hospital, eased them into the afterlife, held their hands as pulses grew weaker, weaker, stopped. Still, he did not visit enough. Every member of his congregation has a hook in him, and they pull him, each their own way. They want weddings and funerals and baptisms and money and prayers and absolution and salvation and speeches and devotions and miracles. He should have sold cars. People want one thing from a car salesman; he gives them that one thing; they go away and do not ask for more.
“Would you like some coffee?” Mary Ellen asks. “If it’s not too much trouble.”
“Cream and sugar?” “Yes, please.”
Dan is left alone in the sitting room. He pulls out his handkerchief to sneeze again, and notices Mary Ellen has left a pail of cleaning water by the staircase, just a few feet from where he sits. He takes the pail of pink water and bleach and sets it on the front porch. He’s back in his seat when Mrs. Sharp returns with his coffee.
“Thank you,” he says, wincing at its stale and bitter odor. ”Where’s that boy of yours today?”
“Asher went to the cow barn.” “And where is Mr. Ernest?”
“With  Asher.”  She  sips  her  coffee, and she  smiles,  fleetingly    , with the barest twitch of her muscles. “We had a dead cow that needed to be taken care of.”
“That’s too bad.  Was it one of your calves?”

She speaks softly, showing neither fear nor sorrow. The smile tries to return; the edges of her mouth tremble with suppressed glee. Dull light shines through the cataracts in her eyes. Dan recognizes this voice. He uses it when he buries someone, when he lies and says they’re in Heaven.
“It was an old bull,” she says. ”It’s a grim business, getting rid of carcasses. We have a graveyard, a dumping-ground I should say. Ernest used to drag all the dead animals out there. He’d hitch a chain to the little red Ford and then wrap the chain around the animal’s neck. The bad bit came when he started pulling it. The skull and the neck separate; then you drive it over bumps and briars and old tree stumps. The body gets all mangled, the limbs bent out of shape.” She shivers and turns green.  “It gets left out there with the rest of the rotting things.”
Dan feels a little sick himself. He chokes down the bile at the back of his throat. “Farming’s hard work.”
The glee slips from her voice.  “Yes it is.” The glee slips from her voice.

She stares into her mug, biting her withered lip. “I suppose it’s hard for you too.”
“How do you mean?” “Taking care of Mr. Ernest.”
“Yes, it’s hard.” She nods vigorously. “It is hard. Every morning I got up at dawn to make his breakfast. Then I’d go upstairs to wake him up, like he was child. He’d probably shit himself in the night. I’d clean him and change his diaper, dress him, shave him, comb his hair. During the day he’d call me a hundred times to take him to the toilet. That’s how I got my hump, lifting him from wheelchair to toilet, from toilet to wheelchair.”
Dan doesn’t think she is talking to him anymore. He watches her rocking, looking blankly ahead of herself as she urgently, angrily confesses. He listens, transfixed by the darkness oozing from her, his most Pharisaical parishioner. “Worst was getting him to take his medicine.  He’d spit it out, and I’d force it in his mouth.  He’d bite my fi    I’d shove the pills down his throat and hold his nose to make him swallow.  The fi    time I tried that,
he thrashed about and hit me. I learned to tie him down.

“Sometimes he’d just hit me because he was angry or frustrated. I can’t blame him for that; he’d lost his mind and his body. Still, I always wanted to hit him back. I can’t tell you how many times I thought about it. I’d stand with him at the top of the stairs, just stand there and look down. It’d be so easy. Just a little push.”
It occurs to Dan to say something spiritual. “God will forgive you, Mary

Ellen.  This is a trial the Lord has placed you in; He wants to see how you will handle it.”
She shakes herself, stares into the sludged coffee in her cold cup. “Patience is a hard thing to come by. Have you ever had to care for someone who couldn’t thank you?”
Dan is tempted to mention his fl ck, but no. He cared for them, but he never loved them. Mary Ellen loved her husband. No sense of obligation could keep her by his side through the pain and torment of futilely prolonging his ended existence; it had been love. Dan tries to remember if he has ever loved anything, devoted his heart and mind to anything beyond himself. His church never had such a claim on him. Not even God had.
“Not a person, no,” he says. ”I did have a dog once.  A hunting dog, a black lab I got when I was four years old. I loved it, took it with me everywhere. Some nights I snuck it into the house, so it could sleep in the bed with me. It lived for twelve years. Toward the end, it got less energetic; its eyes turned white from cataracts. Then it started having trouble walking and would limp, when it couldn’t limp it lied down. It wouldn’t even get up to pee. Worst of all, the dog got these blood-filled boils all over its legs. They’d pop, there would be blood everywhere. He got mean, too, wouldn’t let me pet him.  One time I tried and he bit me.  I had to get stitches and a rabies shot.” Dan rubs his hand like he can feel phantom teeth biting the
skin between his thumb and index finger.

“And what did you do with the dog?” She leans forward, eager.

Brother Dan knows the answer she wants. “I took care of that dog until the day it died.”
Mary Ellen slouches in her rocking chair and stares at the cup between her knotted hands. “Do you think I’ll go to Heaven, Brother?”
“Have you accepted Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior?” The question is habit; he has asked it many times before. He was asked this question by his Sunday School teacher, by his pastor on the day of his baptism, by his application to seminary, and he–like his parishioners–answered in the affirmative, with varying degrees of conviction.
“I have. I did. But sometimes I wonder if that isn’t the sort of thing that can be erased. They say nothing can separate, but what do they mean by ’nothing’? Is there really nothing I can do to lose God’s love? Or does it mean the little nothings; lie, cheat, commit adultery and your salvation is still intact. But murder? Do murderers go to Heaven with the good people?”
“If liars can go to Heaven, then murderers can too.” “And do liars go to Heaven?”
“I like to think so.”

Dan thinks about selling cars. People come onto a car lot; he smiles and shows them neon stickers with bold black prices. Customers sign papers then
leave. Dan is a moment in their lives, insignificant    t. He is not wanted for their big occasions: marriages, births, deaths.
“Will you stay for supper?” Mary Ellen asks like she fears he will stay though she doesn’t want him to.
“No, I best be getting on. Tell Asher I’m sorry I missed him.” “Of course.”
Mary Ellen helps the preacher into his coat. Dan looks again at the crooked picture, the black skids on the walls, the empty wheelchair at the top of the stairs.
He sees it, the ghost of the murder. He sees Mary Ellen, her boney chest expanding and collapsing, hair escaping its tidy prison. Red bursts up the sagging skin of her neck, across her powdery white face. Her cheeks are wet; snot is pouring from her nostrils, leaking into her mouth. She locks the brakes on the chair, her husband grunting and flails his arms. She pushes upward, arms in epileptic protest of the exercise; she pushes until the back wheels of the chair are off the fl or; she pushes until all Mr. Ernest’s weight tips forward; she pushes until he falls. He can’t open his mouth, and his screaming sounds like the pained, protracted grunting made during a difficult bowel movement. His useless legs fold under him. He rolls forward, his head striking a step, his body pulled upright though upside down; he is bent backwards, bends until his neck cracks. He continues to fall, no longer making his groaning cries. His feet disturb photographs; his shoes leave skids on the wall. His hips dislocate; bones splinter until he lands face down, blood beginning to run from his mangled nose, his ruined skull. His is twisted, still half on the stairs.
“Thank you for your visit,” she says. “It’s a part of the job.”
“I’ll be sure to be in church next Sunday.”

“I’ll understand if you aren’t, and I’m sorry for your loss.”

Dan walks back across the lawn to his car. He thinks he might go see Sheriff Oglesby next. He thinks he should, that he really should. That’s what good Christian men do when they think someone has broken the law. But Dan can’t stop thinking about tiny Mary Ellen changing the diapers of a two-hundred and fifty pound man. It reminds him of his eighteen-year-old self, changing the bloody bandages on his dog’s legs, washing the blisters in pink, soapy water.
He had been tired of caring for his dog. Every day had become the same, cleaning up the same shit and piss and vomit. Every day he fed it, gave it expensive pills from the veterinarian. He realized, one clear night in December, the dog was going to die, and any effort on his part was futile. The dog would die. Dan had carried it into the branch, far away from the house. He set it down on a bed of dead leaves, and it had looked at him with
his milky eyes.

He pulled the trigger.