Fit Month for Dying Read Free

pulls up a chair beside the stove and hauls her sweater tighter around her as another gust of wind rocks the house. “I’m goin’ to sit here and warm me poor feet for a few minutes,” she announces, forestalling any more discussion. “And then I’ve got to get right back up there in case he goes faster than I think fer.”
    She takes a look at the half-empty wood box beside her and closes the subject of the candle. “I swear to the Almighty we burnt a cord of wood today. I thinks the wood whips up the chimney whole, with jest a few sparks on it. I bet the roof is covered with junks of half-burnt spruce.”
    Greg goes to the stove to wrestle another piece of wood into the fire and adds a shovel full of coal from a blackened bucket beside the wood box. When he sits back down, he reopens the subject of the candle.
    â€œLike Danny said, Mom, Dad’s not even Catholic.” His tone is calm, appeasing. “Besides, you must know it’s not considered proper anymore to shove candles in a dying person’s hand. Surely you must know that. Everyone knows that.”
    Philomena, exhausted, wipes her hand across her forehead, wishing she could let Greg’s remarks go by unchallenged. But she can’t. “Don’t take that high and mighty tone with me, me son. Don’t tell me what I should know and shouldn’t know and what is proper and what ent proper. Yer father’s getting a blessed candle in his hand. And that’s the end of that. Me mother got one. Me father got one. Even little Bridget got one. And the three of ye’ll get one, too, if I’m still around when ye goes.” In the full awareness of his ignorance, her tone softens. “Don’t ye know, me son, it brings peace to the dying person, that’s why ’tis done. Surely ye knows that. ’Tis the last thing ye sees on this earth, a light pointing yer way to heaven. Ye must know that. You just must !”
    She reads his answer in his blank stare. “Of course ye don’t know. If it was something about a court case ye’d know. About getting some rowdy off the hook. Some Duckworth Street souse out of jail. Then ye’d have all the ins and outs at yer fingertips.”
    Greg does not respond. Paddy and I, as outsiders, carefully avoid exchanging glances. Danny butts his cigarette in his saucer. A line of smoke quickly drifts toward the leaky window casings like a jet stream streaking across the sky. Danny’s eyes follow the smoke, looking out through the window at the spruce trees in the yard heaving in the gale. After a few minutes, he says, “Light your way to heaven, eh. A hell of a lot of good a candle will do on a night like tonight. The thing would gutter out in less than a half second. A smudge pot would be more like it. Even a northeast wind couldn’t put one of those damn things out. Dad would be better off with one of them.”
    Philomena pounds her fist on her knee and barks, “That’s enough disrespect out of you, young man! Ye don’t know that much about the religion you were baptized into. Not that much!” With her right thumb she measures off a sliver of nail on her left thumb to show the skimpiness of Danny’s knowledge.
    Knowing Danny will be quick to make a smart remark about Philomena’s thumbnail, Greg gives him a cautioning look, and Danny quickly changes his tack. He lights another cigarette and cups it in his hand as he usually does, confining the smoke to the fleshy part of his thumb that is already yellow from nicotine. He goes over beside the stove and squats at Philomena’s knees.
    â€œâ€™Pon my soul, Mom,” he says, crossing his heart with the hand that cups the cigarette. “I give you my word I’ll do it for you. I’ll make sure that candle will be in his hand at the last minute. Like you said, I won’t even wait until the last minute. I’ll light the bloody thing up at least