A Glimpse of the Ankou
Ray lit another cigarette, but this time he offered it to Betty, taunting. She steadfastly refused and concentrated on her driving. He watched how her lips pressed tightly together, how her hands gripped the steering wheel almost desperately. Betty had quit, all right—hook, line, and sinker. New Evidence Shows Cigarettes Cause Cancer all the newspapers and all the newsreels screamed. Too bad they hadn’t told him that a couple of years ago—Ray didn’t have much to lose anymore.
Wind whipped around the windshield of their brand-new convertible, a baby-blue 1954 Buick Century. They had bought the car just a few months before, back when Ray had his whole life ahead of him, back when everything was fine and normal. The wind seemed to sting Betty’s eyes and they glistened, brimming with tears. Christ, she was going to have one of her sobbing fits again. He wished she’d stop being so selfish.
Ray leaned back against the passenger side door, tired and cramped from the long drive. His joints ached most of the time now, and he had long ago stopped trying to “keep a stiff upper lip” about it all.
“Ray, will you please put up the top now?” Betty asked.
Grudgingly, he turned around and leaned over the back seat, fumbling with the canvas top to the convertible. His aching joints protested, sending complaints of pain to grate on his nerves. In the back seat, their baby Scotty fussed and whined in his basket, cranky after spending so many hours in the car ignored by both his parents. Scotty had also recently come down with a low-grade fever, the kind that babies seemed to get regularly, just bad enough that it made him fussy and miserable all the time.
Ray finally managed to pull up the convertible top against the resisting wind, locking the struts and fastening it firmly to the windshield. He felt a wetness below his nose and touched it, not surprised to find blood running out of one nostril. “Oh, hell!” he whispered to himself, biting back a more bitter outburst. He yanked out a stained handkerchief from his trouser pocket and dabbed at the blood. If only he had worried about his nose bleeds sooner …
He didn’t really care how many Communists were abroad in the land—Ray knew now that doctors were the ones doing a lot more to destroy the American way of life. Who would have thought that aching joints, a few mysterious bruises, and bleeding gums could come together as this!
One day he had come home from work, grinning from ear to ear. The brand-new Vice President of the bank—Betty hugged him and called him “Big Shot” over and over again. He changed his tie, combed his hair back with a fresh dab of hair cream, and promptly swept Betty off her feet. He gave her only time enough to call Shirley, their usual babysitter, before they went out for surf and turf at the “best supper club in Northern Wisconsin.” Soon after, they had bought the new car, putting themselves out a little bit with a too-large loan, but the Vice President of a bank had to have a new car.
It wasn’t long before he stopped sleeping well at night, and found himself taking hot baths more frequently, trying to ease the soreness in his joints. For a while, he kidded himself that the pressure of the new job was getting to him … and then—
Acute Myelocytic Leukemia
Decreased production
of normal blood
Great excess of
abnormal leukocytes
No Effective Treatment
No Effective Treatment
You’re going to die
Everything was a confused blur in his mind, but it all focused down to one fact. And the damned doctor hadn’t even been able to offer any hope: one month—at best.
Aminopterin. Methotrexate. Thioguanine. All the chemical names were irrelevant—the doctor insisted that some of the treatments showed distinct promise, but for such an advanced case as Ray’s … He suggested that Ray drive to Rochester, Minnesota, check into the Mayo Clinic, and let them do their best.
The doctor was rather young, but he wore an odd monocle in his eye, reminding Ray of the commandant in Stalag 17, which he and Betty had gone to see earlier in the year … back when they used to spend their Saturday nights at the theater. The last big movie they had seen together was From Here to Eternity—and now Ray was on the road to Eternity all by himself, taking an express route.
Before he left the doctor’s office, Ray pulled the wallet from his back pocket and took out a picture of his wife and baby son. The doctor pushed the monocle back into his eye, looking at the photograph in silence. Then Ray got dressed, retrieved his snapshot, and turned to leave.
“There’s something at the University of Chicago called krebiozen,” the doctor said before Ray could open the door. “It’s very new, but their researchers say it’s a painless cure for all forms of cancer. Some other people say they’re just quacks, and that krebiozen does nothing. I simply don’t know. I can’t recommend it. But a man in your position—I can’t tell you what to do. I just wanted you to know about it.”
Ray was too conservative to be a gambler, but only one of the options had a large enough payoff to make it worth risking everything. With only a month to live, he didn’t have time to make mistakes. Krebiozen. Chicago.
They had left early in the morning, taking the convertible out on the web of little country roads in northern Wisconsin, the roads which eventually joined up with Highway 51 and led straight south. They passed through dozens of small crossroads-with-taverns towns, each of which forced them to slow down momentarily before Betty could let the convertible fly down the highway again. The dark woodlands, with their summer-tourist villages and sportsmen’s bars, gave way to farmland as they reached the center of the state. North of Madison, when they reached their last chance to turn west and head instead toward Rochester, Minnesota, to the Mayo Clinic, Ray closed his eyes and made himself concentrate on the way south. Chicago. Krebiozen.
“Do you want me to drive?” Ray asked disinterestedly.
Betty shook her head, making her wavy hair bob back and forth. “Not if there’s a chance you might pass out again. You just rest.”
“I can’t stand sitting here much longer. It’s three more hours to Chicago.” He turned his head to watch the cornfields flicker by. “I think we might have to stop for the night.”
Betty didn’t answer and kept driving. The road was not busy, though occasionally they found themselves stuck behind a slow pickup truck or some farm machinery. Ray concentrated on the optical illusion of the cornfields, as the car rushed past the individual rows so fast they seemed to flash on and off. The fields of alfalfa had been cut and baled into hay, and some of the land looked naked without a crop. Scattered barns and silos surrounded by the wide fields looked like misplaced modern-day castles. The corn itself was bleached brown from an early frost and stood waiting to be harvested. Ray watched the scenery, letting the monotony and the helpless boredom lull him.
The sun had recently gone down, taking the day’s warmth with it as the blue sky faded into burning colors. Ahead, like a black blot on the landscape, one of the cornfields was charred and lifeless. The bronze shadows of sunset fell on the burned field, showing how it abruptly ended against a tree-lined lane that ran straight back into the cropland. The lane was rutted, and partially grown with weeds, and seemed not to lead to any visible house.
Ray sat up to look, feeling a rusty nail of pain in both elbow joints. Where the dirt lane met the road back under the growing shadows of the fence line’s oak and wild cherry trees, he saw a dark man standing by a bulky oxcart, as if waiting for something. For a moment, Ray stared at the half-hidden shapes of the two oxen in front of the cart, surprised at how incongruous they seemed. The two animals appeared massive and powerful, very dark in the failing light, but they were turned away from the road, ready to plod back into the fields, and he couldn’t make out much detail.
Then Ray focused his attention on the man by the cart. He was dressed all in black, with a tight collar like a preacher’s and even black gloves on his hands. The man was gaunt and cadaverous, with his downturned mouth slightly open and showing only a black emptiness, no teeth, no tongue. His nose jutted sharply, twisted, as if broken several times and poorly healed. He wore a wide-brimmed hat that draped a muffled shadow over his eyes, but Ray still could see burning orange slits in the sockets.
Then the man looked directly back at him. Time stopped. Ray suddenly felt a shadow leap out, wrapping around his heart and squeezing it with icy fingers. Ray’s eyes bulged, and he felt the ice in his chest thickening. He believed he was staring at a spectre, haunted by a shadow of Death itself. An unreasonable, gibbering terror mounted his shoulders, making him begin to shake. His lungs didn’t want to breathe any more. Black spots started to swim before his eyes.
The spectral man slowly reached down to lift something out of the cart, a sharp farming tool.
“Ray!” Betty screamed, he realized, for the second time. “It’s Scotty!” The car swerved back and forth on the road as Betty tried to reach to the back seat. Suddenly, Ray heard the little-animal sounds of a baby choking. Scotty was already turning blue in the face, and he writhed with his tiny arms and legs, eyes wide with disbelief and betrayal.
Ignoring the roaring pain in his joints, Ray broke his fascination with the spectral man and snatched Scotty into the front seat, flipping him over his knees, and pounded him roughly on the back. Scotty finally coughed and spit up again, crying and breathing great gasps of air.
Ray pulled a hamburger-stand napkin from the glove compartment and wiped off the baby’s mouth. Scotty had apparently spit up and started to choke, unable to turn over in his basket. Betty’s eyes were glassy and terrified. Her voice fluttered as she tried to shout. “He’s got a fever, Ray. We’ve got to watch him! It only takes a second, and if—”
“He’ll live,” Ray said, and was surprised at the accusatory tone in his voice. Betty shut up almost immediately and looked as if she were trying to keep her tears back. Ray hated it when she cried.
“Did you see that man?” he asked.
“What man?”
Almost fearfully, Ray turned to look back, but they had passed him by.
The ancient attendant turned the crank on the rust-red Conoco pump, ratcheting the numbers back to zero before he began to pump gas into the Buick. As the numbers slowly turned, he massaged the bugs from the windshield, checked the oil, and performed all the typical service station amenities. The station sat at the intersection of two infrequently travelled roads, but “G. DuBay, prop.” seemed to be doing an adequate business with his two gas pumps.
The old man’s house was attached to the station building; several automobile skeletons in various stages of decay littered his back lawn. Somehow, Ray expected to see a mongrel dog pressing its snout up against the weathered picket fence around the yard.
“Ready to close up for the night,” the old man said, wiping his hand on his stained, gray coveralls. His voice carried the ragged ends of a faded French accent. “You jes’ caught me before I started cleaning up.”
Ray avoided looking at the man and sat motionless against the passenger-side door. Twilight had plunged deeply into the sky. He kept looking behind him, where a curve had caused the road to be swallowed up in the darkening cornfields. The gaunt man with the oxcart was back there someplace. Ray felt fear begin to swell in him again, a maddening paranoia that refused to admit any explanation for the spectral farmer other than a supernatural one.
Betty stepped out of the car, stretching her legs and ignoring the mud that splashed on her high heels. “Are you Mr. DuBay?” she asked, nodding toward the sign in the window. A red Coca-Cola machine hummed next to a rocking chair in front of the station’s door. Old newspapers were stacked beside the chair on top of a case of empty bottles, as if the man carelessly read the papers in whatever order he happened to pick them up.
“Yes, ma’am, I am Gillie DuBay,” he answered, grinning at her with a mouthful of perfect teeth, odd in itself for a man his age. He almost held out his hand, but saw the black stains from engine oil, kerosene, and gas embedded into the skin. He tipped a non-existent cap instead.
“Is there any place to spend the night near here?” Ray spoke up, sounding gruff. He didn’t want to be out on the open road, in the dark. The spectral man could be waiting for them around any curve, from any side road, beckoning Ray to climb into his cart. Ray realized what he was thinking, then, and became even more frightened, wondering if the leukemia and the unrelenting fact of his own upcoming death might possibly have squeezed his mind into a dark corner where healthy men could never go.
DuBay pointed down the road. “Tucker’s Grove is not too far, a couple of miles. Jes’ this side of the town you will see one of those motor-hotels, and you may get a room there, sure enough. They might even have a television for you to look at. Red Skelton should be on tonight … or is it Tuesday? I know Fibber ’n Molly will be on the radio.”
“Thank you, Mr. DuBay.” Betty paid him for the gasoline and looked sidelong at Ray, as if to be sure that he wanted to stop for the night rather than continuing for another hour or so.
“DuBay—” Ray sat up and turned to look the old man square in the eye. “About two miles up the road we passed a big burned-out cornfield …” He paused, afraid he would sound ridiculous. Ray had been dealing with the fear of his own mortality almost constantly for the past week, but this fear of the shadowy man was something he couldn’t put a finger on—and that made it much worse.
“That is Sanderson’s place,” DuBay interrupted. “He is a hothead, yes—heard about how Eisenhower was going to remove price supports due to the farm surplus, so he went out and burned his crop to the ground.” He slapped his knee, as if he thought it was funny.
“I saw a man with an oxcart parked in the lane by that field,” Ray continued, fixing DuBay with an intense and frightened stare. “He was all dressed in black and wore a wide-brimmed hat. He didn’t seem to have any eyes—but he looked like Death himself, like the Grim Reaper or something. I never felt so horrified in my life. Do you know who I’m talking about? Does this man live around here?”
DuBay looked at Ray oddly, studying him. Then he laughed a short disbelieving bark. “I think you are pulling my leg, mister!”
Ray began to lose his temper. “Dammit, I asked you a question!”
DuBay frowned gravely. “My Meme, my Granny, used to tell me stories. I cannot imagine how you might know them or know me enough to think I’d be familiar with it.” Hesitantly, he put a grimy finger to his lips. The black semicircles under his fingernails looked like tiny perplexed scowls.
“She talked about a horrible spectre called the Ankou.” His slightly accented voice drew out the last syllable, slurring it. “He is the ghost of the last man to die each year. The Ankou stalks the night, with his scythe in one hand and his demonic oxen pulling a creaky cart by his side; he looks for victims, poor souls to throw into his cart, until the next year brings another Ankou to take his place. Now, I do not mean to scare you none, because it means not a thing. My Meme said any person who catches a glimpse of the Ankou is doomed to die within a month.”
For just a moment, Ray’s blood stopped cold in his veins. Then he snorted at the old man from behind the convertible’s windshield. “Tell me something I don’t know.”
DuBay raised his eyebrows, then looked searchingly at Betty. She remained silent for a brief, hesitant moment, and then seemed to draw strength from her own ability to answer. “My husband has leukemia, Mr. DuBay. He does have less than a month to live. According to one doctor, anyway. We’re going to Chicago for a new treatment.”
The old man appraised Ray with such intensity it made him uncomfortable. But the scrutiny didn’t make Ray feel pathetic, as many other people made him feel when they wept their crocodile tears for the poor, terminally ill man, the martyr to the terrible disease (“only thank God it didn’t happen to Me!”). DuBay came over to the passenger side of the car.
“Maybe you did see the Ankou, then. It is possible, you know.” He leaned down to look Ray in the eye. Ray wanted to slide over the seat to get away from the old man. DuBay spoke softly, with touching sincerity in his voice. “You’ll get used to the dying, mister. I have been doing it for the past forty years.”
“Yeah, well, I don’t have quite that much time to adjust.” Ray caught himself on the point of rebuking DuBay for having had so long to see all the places, to do all the things—He cut himself off before the words started to roll of their own accord. That particular sermon had been building up in him for days, and his nightmare was that he would unleash it at Betty, condemning her for having a life ahead of her, that she’d be able to remarry some other bank Vice President, someone else who could watch Scotty grow up, who could go with her to see all the new movies in the cinema, who could hold her hand in the darkness while the Big Screen romance took place in front of them …
“Do not be too sure I have seen all that much in my life,” DuBay said in his mellow way, seeming to understand the anger bubbling beneath Ray’s silence. “But, yes, I have learned to be satisfied with what I have done and seen. It takes a special kind of trick to sit and look at your own yard every sunset, year in and year out. I cannot remember the last time I have left Rutherford County. Some people want to go everywhere and see everything—but I could stare at that field for the rest of my life and still not see it all.”
“Don’t stare too hard, Mr. DuBay—you just might catch a glimpse of the Ankou yourself. Then we’ll see just how prepared for Death you really are.” Unconsciously, Ray flinched and almost looked back over his shoulder again.
“Ray!” Betty cried. DuBay didn’t seem to take any offense, though, and rapped his knuckles on the baby-blue paint of the Buick’s hood.
“Good luck to you.” He smiled with his perfect teeth and pulled at his imaginary cap again. “About that treatment in Chicago, I mean.” As if by a silent agreement, he said nothing more about the Ankou. Ray wanted to be safe behind a locked door for the night.
Ray pulled himself slowly out of the steaming bathwater, trying to make the heat work a moment longer on his body’s pain. His skin was crab-red as he grabbed a scratchy, bleach-smelling motel towel. While in the tub, he had spent most of his time feverishly thinking about death, and about Death personified, whether it be the Grim Reaper or DuBay’s Ankou. The Ankou, the spectral man Ray had seen on a deserted farm lane—Betty said she didn’t remember anyone, but perhaps his own nearness to death made Ray able to see things other people could not. Maybe the vision he had seen was the real Ankou, the real precursor of his own death. Certainly, no ordinary farmer could give him such a case of the creeps.
As he toweled himself off, Ray felt a slow-burning anger grow in him, overshadowing his irrational fear. After all, what did a man like himself have to fear from death anyway? He could not direct his helpless anger at the abnormal white blood cells in his veins, so he lashed out at his wife instead, hurting her because he needed someone to blame for his helplessness. But if the Ankou by the field were real, then Ray could confront him, focus his questions, his fear, his outrage.
What did he have to be afraid of? He was going to die anyway.
Betty had dozed off in the motel room chair, and Ray moved quietly as he dressed, not completely willing to consider the plan already forming in his mind. He slipped into his black shoes, picked up the car keys, and dropped the large motel key in his pocket. Ray stared at his wife for a long moment, remembering her, thinking about her. Betty’s makeup had smeared, and her hair looked as if it needed the curlers, but she appeared peaceful while she slept. He wanted to kiss her on the cheek, but he knew that would wake her up. He didn’t want her to worry about him.
Scotty had also fallen asleep in his basket propped up on the floor. Ray bent over the boy and touched his small forehead. Scotty stirred and squirmed but didn’t make a sound. His fever had dropped a little, and he seemed to be getting better. Scotty’s immune system hadn’t been raped by something it couldn’t handle, like leukemia. But Ray would never be getting better—unless, for some crazy reason, he was able to strike a bargain with the Ankou.
He hesitated for a moment at the door of the motel room, staring one last time at Betty awkwardly asleep in the chair, at Scotty lying contentedly on his back in the basket. He wanted to fix the scene permanently in his mind. Then he quietly shut the door behind him.
Out on the open road, he left the convertible top down, letting the brisk knives of night wind buffet his skin. He breathed deeply, looking up at the magnificent arena of stars overhead, and pushed down heavier on the accelerator before he could lose his nerve.
The burned cornfield was several miles down the road, but Ray knew the exact location. The convertible passed by Gillie DuBay’s darkened Conoco station; he saw that a light still burned in the kitchen window of the old man’s home. Ray kept his eyes fixed on the left side of the road as the semicircle of headlights scooped a path of illumination in front of the car. Soon he could distinguish the short black stubble of the burned field, and he slowed almost to a stop as the trees along the fence line loomed up to block out the stars just beside the narrow dirt lane. The swath of light from the headlights bounced up and down as Ray turned slowly off the road and parked in the middle of the shallow ditch. He switched off the engine and the lights, allowing himself a moment to adjust to the darkness. He heard grasshoppers, crickets, frogs.
Ray suddenly became aware of the spectral man standing in the darkest part of the lane beside his massive oxcart. Ray could see the burning orange of the Ankou’s eyes. He stepped out of the convertible and left the door open; the small courtesy light shed a feeble yellow glow into the shadows.
Taking two faltering steps before he finally remembered his boldness, Ray strode up to the dark man and placed his fists on his hips in an absurd gesture of bravery. The night air around him was cold but suffocating, like the air in a sealed coffin; a sickening stench hung faintly around the Ankou, just barely beyond the range of detection. Ray felt mindless horror building up in him again, making him want to cringe, making him want to run back to the car and laugh insanely as he drove off at full acceleration into a telephone pole.
The Ankou said nothing as Ray stood defiantly terrified in front of him. Ray had no more doubts about the reality of the thing; he could feel his mind stretched and distorted by the wrongness of the spectre, stretched almost to the point of snapping.
“Look, I know who you are,” Ray stammered. “I know I’m dying. I know I’ve got only a month.” The Ankou glanced sharply at him with his blazing orange eye sockets, and Ray almost collapsed then. But he kept thinking to himself, I’ve got nothing to lose, I’ve got nothing to lose. He forced himself not to mumble; he tried to shield himself with thoughts of Betty, of Scotty, of his promotion to Vice President, of the new car that Betty would have to sell once he was gone …
“Why do you have to take me?” Ray realized he had tears in his eyes, and he felt pathetic. “I’ve got a wife, and a son! He’s just a baby—how can you take away his father? And my wife, how can you hurt her? She won’t be able to survive without me!”
The Ankou seemed to show no interest whatsoever and turned slowly to stoop over his cart, reaching down inside. The two massive oxen stood in complete blackness, unmoving, facing away from Ray so that he could see only their bulky backs. The Ankou pulled out a long, gleaming farm implement, a scythe, and gripped it in his gnarled hand with enough force to make the wooden handle groan. He held the scythe for a moment, as if drawing power, then stalked toward Ray.
The man stumbled backward in terror and fell to his knees. “Please don’t take me! Wait! I understand—you have an accounting to make. You have to balance the ledgers, take your proper toll. But if you’re really Death, you shouldn’t care who you take.”
The Ankou stood over Ray and seemed impossibly tall. His glowing orange eye sockets were indeed lifeless. He said nothing and raised the scythe.
“But it shouldn’t matter to you! Take someone else! I can bring you someone else! Please—if I bring you someone else, will you promise not to take me?”
The Ankou stopped and looked down at him, as if silently considering. Ray pushed himself to his feet, trying to stand on shaking legs. He didn’t feel he had control over his own mind anymore; his brain had changed into a nest of shadows slashing at his sanity. He pushed the issue, repeating himself and praying he could sound convincing. “If I bring you someone else, will you promise not to take me?”
The Ankou stood rigid like a statue, and Ray backed off one step, widening the distance between himself and the Deadly scythe. The shadows made details of the Ankou’s face uncertain, but Ray desperately wanted to believe he saw a smile form on the cavernous mouth, a slight nod of the leathery head visible under the wide-brimmed hat.
Ray stumbled and fled back to the car, breathing great gasps of air. The Ankou made no move to follow him.
DuBay’s porch light came on the second time Ray pounded the rattling screen door. The old man opened his door and squinted into the light of the harsh yellow bulb. Ray could hear voices from the radio inside, and smelled kerosene from DuBay’s house. “Ah, it is you,” DuBay said, blinking in the direct light, smiling with his bright teeth. “I am closed, you know. But what may I help you with?”
Ray stepped back away from the porch, trying to find the edge of the light. “I’m sorry to come so late, Mr. DuBay. But you know I’m … you know we have to drive all the way to Chicago tomorrow morning. Our Buick’s making some strange noises, and I wondered if you could have a look?”
DuBay stood by the door in slippers that had several large holes in them. He seemed reluctant to leave his radio program. “I can give you a minute or two, but I can certainly fix nothing until the morning. It is the light, you know—my eyes are a bit weak, and I will not do your engine much good in the dark.”
“But you could tell us if it’s something serious or not, if we’re going to break down somewhere between here and Chicago.”
“That I could.” DuBay pulled on an insulated jacket, found a flashlight from somewhere near the door, and followed Ray out into the darkness in front of his station.
Ray sobbed and wheezed as he drove, trying to keep the convertible from weaving off the edge of the road and into the ditch. He couldn’t see straight. His joints screamed in agony, and he knew it would never get better again until he died. But DuBay, Gillie DuBay, that poor old man, oh, God!
DuBay was crumpled and bleeding in the back seat of the convertible, staining the new white vinyl seat covers. He had wrestled the old man’s body there, then tossed the tire iron back into the trunk. Ray’s nose had started to bleed again from the exertion. His head pounded and whirled, making him giddy from the leukemia, from his conscience, from the awed abhorrence at what he had just done.
He tried once more to call up the resentment he felt toward DuBay, who had had seven decades to enjoy life … the frustrating despair that DuBay had all that time to see the world, to do anything he desired, and instead he sat on his porch and watched the sun set night after night. Ray focused on creating hatred for the old man, hoping it would help his own conscience. But the anger wasn’t there anymore, only a stunned horror.
The baby-blue hood of the convertible had been up, DuBay squatting under it to look at the mechanical mass of the engine. “Yes, and what seems to be the trouble?”
“I’m dying, that’s the trouble.”
Ray prayed he had killed the old man with his first blow to the head. He could hear the thud and the squash over and over in his ears, like a skipping phonograph record. He felt like a betrayer, a vile and selfish monster. A murderer—he had killed somebody. He wanted to squeeze his eyes shut and hide, or scream, or run back to Betty and hold her close. DuBay. DuBay. He had killed DuBay.
If I bring you someone else, will you promise not to take me?
It was worth it. Even if it meant he had to face the Ankou again. He kept telling himself that a second chance at life would be worth even twice this agony. He was doing it for Betty. For Scotty. For himself.
He parked the Buick in the rutted lane again, and made certain to switch off all the lights, just in case someone might drive by. Betty could be awake now, she might be looking for him, growing more and more worried when she noticed the car was gone. Don’t worry yet, Betty, he thought, I’m going to have a big surprise for you very soon.
The Ankou waited by his cart, blanketed with darkness. Ray wiped the wet blood from his nose and got out of the car, breathing fast, shaking his fear away. He wrestled with DuBay’s heavy body, dragging it out of the car and dropping it on the lumpy dirt lane so he could get a better grip under the old man’s armpits. Feeling anxious, hearing his heart pound like African drums in his ears, Ray heaved DuBay up into a rubbery standing position and draped him half over his back. He stumbled and dragged the dead old man toward the Ankou’s cart.
“I brought you someone else, someone who deserves to die more than I do,” he said breathlessly. “Fair exchange, right? Now you won’t take me, right?”
The Ankou only stared coldly at him, then placed a hand on the rough edges of his cart, and Ray understood immediately. The spectral man watched as Ray shuffled awkwardly forward, pulling the old man to the side of the cart. Ray paused a moment, panting, and then tried to heave DuBay up over the edge.
DuBay let out a loud, agonized groan. He wasn’t dead.
Frantically, Ray pushed his shoulder against the old man, heaving him into the cart. DuBay’s shining white dentures dropped out of his mouth, clattering against the wood before falling to the ground.
DuBay dropped awkwardly into the bed of the cart, limbs flopping every which way—and he kept falling. With one insane glimpse, Ray saw that the cart had no bottom at all, but was a swirling vortex of bottomless stars, extending infinitely like a gaping mouth that was always hungry.
Ray collapsed in numb shock at everything that had happened in the past hour, sliding against the rough wood of the cart wall until he was kneeling on the ground. The Ankou stood over him, holding another sharp farm implement. Ray sobbed and found he couldn’t even try to run.
The two oxen turned toward him at last, and Ray nearly screamed again. Both oxen had grossly distorted human heads wearing idiot expressions, with blunted horns curving out of their foreheads, and blasted eye sockets that had already seen far more than any human eye could bear.
If I bring you someone else, will you promise not to take me?
The Ankou shouldered his scythe and turned away from Ray, letting him get back to his feet. Ray stepped backward, afraid to take his eyes from the spectre as the Ankou dropped the implement back into the cart with finality.
Ray suddenly felt the barbed wire of pain unwind from his joints. His head stopped pounding; his bruises were healed. He ran his tongue along his gums, and they felt whole and healthy again. New energy flowed through his bloodstream, and he felt explosively alive. The leukemia fled defeated into the night. Ray laughed out loud until he began to cry, and he kept crying until he managed to get back to the convertible. By the time he had found the keys and started the engine, he saw that the Ankou had vanished. Of course, he thought, starting to laugh again, only dying people can see the Ankou.
And it was all worth it. As he drove off, he laughed heartily because it felt so good to laugh. He filled his lungs with air, raised one triumphant fist above the windshield, and reveled in feeling his body respond as it was meant to respond, without the claws of cancer surging through his bloodstream.
He was euphoric as the Buick flashed down the highway, and he paid little attention to his speed or his driving. Ray purposely didn’t notice DuBay’s darkened home or the deserted gas station as they passed. Back at the motel, he left the convertible’s lights on and the engine running as he leaped over the door in a boyish gesture he hadn’t wanted to do in years. Look at the stuffy bank Vice President now, whooping like a wild Indian! He tossed the motel room key high up in the air and caught it with one hand, then he grinned as he fit it into the lock. Ray was whistling, ready to explode with joy and love for Betty.
He didn’t take me! All’s fair in love and war—and death. He didn’t take me!
As he strode through the door, Ray saw immediately that Betty was not in her chair. Instead, he heard an animal-like sobbing of despair, a heart-torn keening. She hunched over Scotty’s basket, and her body shook with spasms of stunned helplessness.