EMMETSBURG: Twenty-three

John went lightly up the creaky old wood steps. They were narrow and angled sharply to the left. He paused a half dozen or so steps from the top, where he could just make out the stranger quiet and asleep on the small cot below the front window. Whatever Anna had heard earlier, the man was quiet now. John climbed to the top of the stairs and crossed the room, sort of making a long slow arc around to the end of the bed. As he did John watched the man's still face the whole time trying to glean some small clue to who he was and what he was doing in Emmetsburg.

“Are you an angel or a devil?” John said quietly, the words escaping him with him fully realizing. It was almost as if someone else spoke them.

John picked up a King James Bible Anna left on a small stool beside the bed. He sat and held the book to his chest as though it was a shield, as the prettiest breeze washed through Anna's hand-sewn lace curtains. A night chorus of crickets found him with the breeze. John lay the Bible in his lap and pulled it open, flipping expertly to a favored passage. He cleared his throat and began to read aloud in a quiet steady voice. He almost knew the words by heart.

“... And the LORD said unto Satan, Hast thou considered my servant Job, that there is none like him on earth, a perfect and an upright man, one that feareth God, and escheweth evil? Then satan answered the LORD, and said, Doth Job fear God for nounght? Hast thou made an hedge about him, and about his house, and about all that he hath on every side? Thou hast blessed the works of his hands, and his substance is increased in the land...”

The man stirred slightly. He grimaced, and for the first time John truly took note of the terrible nature of the man' injury. John recalled a stray dog he'd whacked in the head with a stick as a boy when it growled at him. The dog came up dead the next day, laying in the street near the place where John had encountered it. He'd always believed the poor creature had died from that hit to the head. Then there was a member of his platoon in France who was hit in the head by a sniper's bullet. He'd stood up to take a piss when the bullet banged off the man's helmet, knocking him cold for a spell. He waved off the medics and insisted everything was fine. That night on watch he dozed off and never woke.

John reached across to adjust the man's blanket. Suddenly he reached up and gripped John's arm. His eyes flashed open, but the gaze was distant, off in some other world. He looked quickly to John, but more through him than at him.

“In God's hands!” he exclaimed. “In God's hands now.”
John fought to pull away, startled as he was, but the man's grip was far too strong. Indeed, it was impossible strong. More than that, the man's eyes were wild and filled with fire. John tried to pull away gain, but the stranger held him fast, john looked back at the stairs wanting to cry out. He thought of the gun and felt curse for it. It took John a moment to collect himself.

“Gods hands,” said the stranger, quieter this time, turning his eyes to the ceiling. “He's gone with the Lord.”

It was obvious he wasn't going to break the man's hold on his wrist. The more he tried the tighter the grip, until his fingers were almost numb. With his full weight John laid his forearm and back of his injured hand on the man's chest and pushed him back onto the cot.

“Who's with the Lord?” John asked.

“Why, Bert Himmel that's who,” the man's crazy eyes found John's again.

“Bert Himmel?” John inquired. “How do you know Bert Himmel?”

But the man's hold on John suddenly relaxed and the hand fell away limply. He gave a sigh as his eyes closed, his head turning to the window and the breeze. John stood and backed away from the bed, not believing any of it had really happened. Loss of blood he figured, the pain of the product of a long and exhausting day.