Water Music by T. C. Boyle

Author:T. C. Boyle
Language: eng
Format: azw3, epub
ISBN: 9781862071551
Publisher: Granta Books
Published: 1983-07-27T14:00:00+00:00

♦ LIFE AFTER DEATH ♦

“It’s happened before, I tell you. An obstruction in the windpipe, shock and coma, the premature pronouncement of death. Good Lord, man, it was snowing to beat all hell—and Christmas morning on top of it. Who’s to blame the hangman for maybe rushing things just a bit?”

With the slow, steady persistence of grains accumulating in an inverted hourglass, the voice of reason is beginning to have its effect on Quiddle. Still, he resists. “He dangled twenty minutes, didn’t he?”

“Psssh,” Delp waves his hand contemptuously. “Need I remind you that the human animal is infinitely various, and that what will dispatch one quite neatly may not necessarily, inexorably and in all cases do the trick for another. A Fiji Islander might not last more than five minutes in the waters off Greenland, but what of an Eskimo? Or better yet—take your average greengrocer. He’d go up like a wad of paper if you sent him through a bed of hot coals, and yet the Indies are swarming with fakirs who do it three and four times a day—for a lark. Use your sense, man. Who’s to say that twenty or thirty or even sixty minutes’ hang time is sufficient to choke out a human life without first taking into consideration the vagaries of time and place, weather conditions, the type of knot and quality of rope, the endurance of the individual and any of a thousand other intangibles?”

“I don’t care how you explain it, I still think it’s a miracle that that man in there is alive. Whether it’s the hand of the Almighty or just a ripple of the law of averages, I’ll wager it’s the most extraordinary thing to happen round here since Queen Elizabeth’s handmaid got hit by lightning and sprouted a beard.”

Delp’s eyes have gone cold with exasperation. “Wager away,” he grunts, pulling the pipe from his mouth as if he were unplugging a drain, “but I’ll tell you this—I want that character out of here in a week’s time. Chafe his neck, let some blood, feed him broth—whatever it takes—but get him on his feet and out that door.” Here he pauses to strike a match and suck the yellow flame over the bowl of his pipe. “I have no objection to your parading him around a bit, incidentally. There’s been a lot of folderol about the miracle of modern science and all that, the patients looking on it with a certain degree of awe and so on. Walk him around. I don’t think it would hurt us a bit—if you know what I mean.”

♦ ♦ ♦

The door swings back and scatters light through the little room. In the doorway, Quiddle. A tray in his hands. Pewter mug, golden crust, steam rising from a bowl. “Well, you’re awake then,” he booms in a jaunty, whistling-in-the-churchyard sort of voice.

Ned Rise lies on a pallet in the corner, a dirty blanket pulled up to his neck. The room is dank and windowless: earthen walls, brick floor, deal planks overhead.

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