She set to work while Dr. Stewart dozed and Eli Hathaway’s pulse grew so slow it was nearly reversed, a clock unwinding, backward through time. When the light outside faded to dusk, Stella borrowed a lamp from the nurses’ station so that she and the doctor could play hearts. Brock Stewart felt proud for Elinor that this was her granddaughter. He wished that Elinor was here with them, but he knew she needed rest. He wondered now if losing so many people had all been preparation for losing Elinor Sparrow. At night, he still called her, at eight o’clock exactly. It was the time he always looked forward to, when they could discuss their day, no matter how small or insignificant the details. Now he was afraid of that hour, and every time he phoned he felt a sinking dread: What if this is the time when she doesn’t answer? What if it’s now?
“This might take all night,” the doctor told Stella, as he made himself comfortable in an easy chair after a good hour of cards, a blanket thrown over his shoulders. “I could call you a cab.”
“I’d wind up someplace I didn’t want to be. You heard what Eli said about the new driver. No. I’ll stay.”
It had taken three hundred years to get to this day, what was another few hours? Sitting in the darkened room, with both men now sleeping, Stella felt as though she were drifting through space. They breathed in, they breathed out, and then something else. Some time after 2:00 A.M., there was a myocardial infarction. Eli Hathaway began to have convulsions, and then his breathing altered; his color changed, and his eyes became so cloudy he couldn’t see this world anymore. The ETs from Hamilton Hospital were called, and while the ambulance sped toward Unity, Stella remained at Eli’s bedside.
“He’s going,” Dr. Stewart said.
Death was in the room with them at that very moment. If it was too much for the girl, she’d leave now. She’d make up an excuse, she’d get sick to her stomach or be desperate for fresh air. Instead, Stella held Eli Hathaway’s hand, and Eli held her hand right back, with all the strength that he had. He was a good man, and he’d had a heavy burden; he’d been driving that taxi of his for longer than most of the town’s residents had been alive. At night, he had dreamed of the lanes and roads of the village. Now he held tight, as though he’d never loosen his grasp. He did it until the girl leaned down, close, in order to whisper that it was all right, he could let go: He was forgiven. After all this time, he was free.
ONE MORNING, Hap went to the kitchen sink for a glass of water and then he stopped for no discernible reason. He merely felt that something had changed; a drop in air pressure, perhaps, a day that had begun quietly. It was early, and Hap was sleepy-eyed. Looking out at the field he thought he saw a huge pile of hay and leaves. Curious, he pulled on his boots and went out. There was his grandfather, weeping, sitting beside the horse, Sooner, who had died in the night. Already, the horse was cold to the touch.
“Didn’t it seem like he’d be the one thing that would last forever?” Dr. Stewart had officiated at dozens of deaths; he’d broken agonizing news, held the hands of the widowed and the bereft, and now he found himself crying over a horse that had lived far too long. One he’d never wanted in the first place.
“Stella will be relieved. She was convinced I’d ride him and break my neck.” Hap sat down beside his grandfather. The field was damp with dew, but Hap paid that no attention to the soggy ground. His grandfather, the strongest man he knew, was crying. “We’ll have to hire Matt Avery to come in with his bulldozer and bury Sooner right here. I guess it wasn’t sooner or later, it was forever.”
Dr. Stewart nodded. His grandson was a smart, good boy; at least he didn’t have to worry about that. Frankly, he felt connected to him in a way he never had to his own son, David. Maybe he was at fault for that estrangement; he’d been busy, he’d been young, somewhat self-important. The doctor patted Sooner’s cold body and remembered reading somewhere as a boy that cowboys in the freezing pioneer West would kill their horses if need be, and crawl inside them, blood and bones be damned, for the warmth. Although the doctor had been sitting beside his horse for four hours, he had missed the actual moment of death. Now he wondered if a horse breathed out his last the way a person did at the very end, a short exhalation, a rising of the spirit. Was Sooner still here in the field, among the grasses and the stacks of hay? Was he in the air they were inhaling right now, entering into them, becoming as much a part of them as their own lungs and liver and heart?
Later in the day, the doctor and his grandson went down to Town Hall together. A meeting had been called to discuss Eli Hathaway’s gift to the village, and the doctor, as the witness to the last will and testament drawn up in the nursing home, had been requested to attend. When they arrived, Hap sat in the hallway and read the Unity Tribune while his grandfather and Stella and the members of the town council went into the conference room. Mrs. Gibson was there, and Harry Strong, who owned the market, and Nathan Elliot, the bank president. Hap didn’t mind waiting. He especially loved perusing the police log, the news section he always turned to first. A car had been broken into on Hawthorne Street. A dog, a spaniel named Mitzi, had bitten the mail carrier and neighbors. Jimmy Elliot had been picked up for throwing rocks at the tea house, and his community service had been extended by ten hours.