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.Bo had made two requests, "Kitchen Man" by BessieSmith and "Goodbye" by the Benny Goodman orchestra, and although Ned usually played well onlywhen backing up a recording, he remembered both these selections well enough to do them creditably.Then -- when Dr.Nesheim made it as official as anyone needed it made that Bo had really died -- Nedplayed "Amazing Grace," and that was the end of the music, the end of the afternoon, the end of a greatmany things.In the barn, Paisley said, "He's dead."She was squatting in a stall next to the big veterinarian as he examined a kar'tajan mare.They had alreadytraded introductions, and the young woman's deftness with Phylly, who had taken to her at once, andwith all the recuperating animals, had convinced the old man that she was "creature-wise."Now, she put a hand on his shoulder and advised him to go pay his respects to Bo Gavin.She also saidthat although Bo was dead, Brinkley should sit beside him and tell him the "muckfly" business that he hadtold Miss Libby last night.It was very important, Sam Coldpony's daughter said, that Bo have thatinformation."The muckfly business?" Brinkley said."Yes, sir.Please tell him."Brinkley ambled gimpily to the house.He took off his hat in the front room, nodded to everyone standingaimlessly in the little bedroom-study, and asked if it was okay if he paid the dead man his last respects.Libby gave him a chair, and Brinkley turned it so that its back was at a cattywampus angle near the headof the bed, eased himself astraddle it, and leaned out sideways to whisper directly into the dead man'sear.The brilliant Hawaiian shirt in which Bo had just bought it was one that the vet greatly admired.As the young Ute woman had suggested, Brinkley told Bo all that he had discovered and/or surmisedabout the disease afflicting the unicorns.He then told Libby that the animals in the barn seemed to beprogressing nicely, added that he was sorry about Bo, grasped Ned by the upper arm, crammed his hatback on, and gimped outside to shoot the breeze with Rudd's cowhands and to watch the eveningsunlight sparkle off Abbot's Pate.* * *"Bo wanted to be cremated," Libby told Ned."Sam and I plan to drive him down to Pueblo to take careof things.Why don't you go on to Josephine's? We'll keep you posted, okay?"Ned reluctantly agreed.Libby pressed the toy kar'tajan into his hand."For you, Ned.It hasn't exactly been a good-luck charmup to now, but Bo would have wanted you to have it, I think, and I've got a hunch that it's going to be.From here on out."Chapter 34t wasn't like release.It wasn't like freedom.It was like dreaming that you weighed tons.Unless you gotIhelp, you'd sink through the bed, the floor, the surface of the earth -- all the way to the molten furnace atthe heart of the planet.Bo hated the way death felt.He had believed that death would release him from the degradation of hisAIDS -- but now that he was dead, a down-bearing pain lay full length upon him, and he couldn't get outfrom under it.Would anything free him from the terrible heavy-limbedness imprisoning him in his owncorpse?Yes.A silent woman in buckskins, beaded leggings, moccasins, and a pair of long, silver-shot braids.Bo knew at once that this was Sam's ex-wife and Paisley's mama, the suicide victim who had blown herhead away with a shotgun.But when she entered his room tonight, not long after Ned had left for Pueblo,she had a head.She was a haggard, round-cheeked ini'putc' with transparent eyes, and her coming wasso sudden and solemn that at first Bo was alarmed."Come on," the woman said impatiently."Get up."Bo couldn't turn his head.He couldn't even shift the irises in his death-stalled eyeballs.Although he couldtell that no one living remained near his bed, he wondered if one of Gina Thrower's girls or Arvill Rudd'scowboys had sneaked into a corner to catch a glimpse of his dead body.Bo didn't really know if he wasalone, and he was afraid to speak to the ini'putc'."There's no one here, white eyes.Come on, move your tail.""I can't move." He tried."I can't." He noticed that he had spoken like a ventriloquist, without moving hislips.However, he had moved spectral lips that overlay his fleshy ones like sculpted eddies of air.Whereupon Dolores Arriola walked through the foot of his bed -- through its iron bedstand, its twostacked mattresses, and all of its various linens, coverlets, and ruffs.Then, seemingly trapped by themattresses into which she had waded, she held out her hands so that Bo could take her fingers.But because he couldn't raise his hands to her, Dolores reached down and clasped the immaterial handsinside the gloves of his dead flesh.By these, the revenant pulled Bo out of himself, overcoming his death fatigue and the oppressive tonnageof his dead-weight self.She walked backwards out of the bed, leading Bo clear of it with her.This featpermitted Bo's disembodied self to look back at the cold shell that had once housed his personality.A major shiver seeing himself dead: a major shiver.Especially spooky was the fact that he had arisen from his dead self wearing a ghostly set of the clothesstill on his corpse -- an indigo Hawaiian shirt with crimson poinsettias, and familiar khaki slacks.Bothdead and resurrected, his feet were bare.Also, his resurrected body still carried upon it the ghostly printsof his cancer lesions.Although now free of his dead self, Bo felt heavy.He was like a layer of plasma with the mass of acollapsing star, and the death fatigue on his shoulders got worse.He sank to his knees between the bedand the rolltop, and the dead Ute woman had to grasp him by the collar and wrest him to his naked feetagain."You'll be better outside.Come on."Come on.Her favorite command.Already Bo was sick of it.But he followed Dolores to the door bytrailing her as if burdened with chains and padlocks.Then he turned to tell his disease-pummeled bodygoodbye, shocked by how thin and exhausted-looking it was.He felt a vast, unbecoming pity for himself."Christ," Dolores said."Just like Sam, back when Authentic Ute Crafts was going under.Come on."She led him through Libby's little house.There were still two people in the living room -- Arvill Rudd'swife, Bernadine, and Gina Thrower.They sat together on the sofa formulating a plan to help Libby getover her "loss" (Mrs.Thrower's compassionate word), but the two ghosts were invisible to the women,and Bo realized that he was eavesdropping on them from another dimension.Then the weight of his death fatigue bore him down in front of the steamer trunk, very near the unseeingwomen, and Dolores had to return for him again.She lifted him to his feet and supported him until shehad manhandled him outside into the starry dark.* * *Bo could hear an owl hooting from a cross strut of the creaking windmill.There were lights on in thebarn.However, Dolores told him that he had no business going among the kar'tajans tonight.He mustready himself to climb Ptarmigan Mountain.Bad news, thought Bo.He was so heavy, even in death, that he couldn't imagine getting halfway toNaismith's Cabin, much less to Ptarmigan's forested peak.He begged Dolores to let him lie down in atire-rutted puddle near the house.He would wallow in it.He would pray for its cold scummy water tolend him buoyancy.Perhaps this buoyancy would enable him to climb the mountain."Dumb," Dolores said."Dumb [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]