By J. Stephen Nix
Fiction Award Winner
First the cats went fat. Then Esther asked for a bird feeder to set off the front porch, and Francis bought the kind that hung from a metal pole so the squirrels couldn’t get at the seed. There were good birds that came. Cardinals, blue jays, your run-of-the-mill sparrows—those were fine, too. Jesus took care of the sparrows as he did us. It wasn’t until Francis found his wife feeding the cats late at night that he thought something was wrong. She sat on the hardwood cross-legged, petting the cats with one hand and scooping brown pebbles onto a pile like a mudslide with the other. She looked at him and smiled. She smiled in a way that said nothing was wrong, Francis. Nothing was wrong at all. But that spooked him, and three weeks later a doctor diagnosed her with dementia.
In the front yard, Esther’s bony frame sunk into a camouflage folding chair. A bag of birdfeed slumped at her feet, and she threw handfuls of seed onto the grass for the squirrels. There were at least four squirrels living about the yard now. The bird feeder dangled empty— that was because Esther liked to feed animals from her hands. She didn’t talk anymore, but she had the same smile she had that night years before with the cats in the kitchen in the dark.
“Time to come in, honey.” Francis gently took her arm, and she followed him, smiling. He guided her through the screen door and into the kitchen, where she sat and patted his hand like a cat.
Francis had long since remodeled the kitchen into a pantry prison with each speck of food under padlock. The refrigerator as well had a chain wrapped around it like a belt. He had to do it or else she’d empty the whole food stores in a single afternoon. She just about did it once. Francis came home from church and found her in the front yard dumping cans of Spam and tomato sauce into a pile of slop for the squirrels who weren’t eating any of it. After that, he bought the chains and locks from the hardware store. He thought about getting a bolt for the bedroom door to keep her safe. It hadn’t felt right though, to shut his wife up like that. She wandered sometimes—that was true—but she never went far and there wasn’t much out there that could hurt her. Sometimes feral hogs passed through, and there were snakes in the pond. But mostly Esther just circled the hay fields, and there wasn’t anything worth mentioning in the hay fields. Still, Francis bought a dog tracker GPS collar and fastened it around her ankle. That hadn’t felt right either, but it was better than locking her in the bedroom.
Dementia was irreversible. That’s what the doctor said, but she didn’t need to tell Francis that. Francis knew that when the mind rolled downhill there was nobody to push it back up again. Esther’s mother died of dementia in a nursing home. She couldn’t feed herself in the end, he remembered, couldn’t talk, couldn’t bathe, couldn’t go to the bathroom in a toilet. Esther and Francis talked about it then. Esther said she’d rather die than end up that way. Francis agreed. But it was one thing to talk about it when you were healthy. It was another when it was your wife sitting at the kitchen table smiling past you.
And she wasn’t suffering. She was always pleasant and smiling, feeding her animals and feeding herself. She’d talked for a while, too, and sometimes she talked about something they’d done together like the time they drove to the boats in Shreveport and she won five hundred dollars at a slot machine. They bought a hotel room and stayed the night instead of driving back. Stories like that gave Francis hope that she was still in there. But watching his wife was like watching a fishing bobber in high winds—no matter the dance or the jig there was nothing biting. Now she was like a fishing bobber lying on its side, still floating but nothing underneath.
Francis left his wife sitting at the kitchen table and drove to town. The Snakeskin Gun and Pawn bordered the train tracks and was built out of gray aluminum siding like a backyard toolshed. Next to it was the bowling alley that burned down three times before the owner called it quits and left the blackened frame to burrow down into a grave of its own making. The soil was sandy in those parts.
The door closed behind him with a ring, and Francis walked to the gun counter where a skinny man in a Wrangler denim shirt read a hunting magazine. A terrarium stood on display with glass chalk scrawled across the upper right-hand corner, “Snakeskin Sam.” Under the name and in smaller writing was the price, seventy-five dollars. Snakeskin Sam rested his head on his own back and stared at Francis, tongue flicking. Francis wondered if his wife would ever feed an animal as horrible as that scaly thing.
The skinny man tossed the magazine and grinned. From behind the counter, he produced a black, hard-plastic box with a handwritten price tag. He opened the box and removed the operations manual to reveal a black handgun and accompanying clips. The gun was a Glock 22, a .40 caliber pistol with a magazine that held thirteen rounds. Francis said it was for home protection, the gun. The man—his name was also Sam—told Francis that he couldn’t do better than a Glock 22. It was easy to use, easy to clean, and with no safety it was easy to shoot if the need should arise. The .40 caliber rounds were the best choice because they’d stop about anything. Sam didn’t say they’d stop a wild hog, but really a rifle was better for that. For home protection, you couldn’t beat a Glock 22 for reliability, ease of use, and price. It was what the police carried, after all.
Francis picked up the gun, light in his hand, and placed it back in the case. He had never owned a gun and never thought he’d own one either. He knew how to shoot—everyone did here where the 4-H club was the next biggest thing to high school football. He just never had a use for a gun, not even a hunting shotgun. This fact made no difference to Sam. Home defense was an act of patriotism, a celebration of the Constitution, and plain common sense in today’s troubled times. Sam would sell him a holster (barely used) for a steal, just in case Francis found the need to open carry on his own private lands or elsewhere for that matter. The cartridges sold full price.
Francis drove home with the gun, the holster, and the bullets bundled in a plastic sack under the passenger seat. He’d thought a lot on if he could do it, and he wasn’t sure if he could.
He knew Esther wasn’t coming back, and it was a mercy but whether it was right or not he didn’t know. He read the Bible, and there was nothing in there about the merciful ending of a loved one. There was killing in the Bible. King David killed thousands in the name of Jehovah, but they were enemy soldiers, heretics, and blasphemers. His wife was a good Christian and went to church almost every Sunday like he did. Like he used to, at least. Now they watched a preacher on television.
One time, Francis was driving when a minister on the Christian radio station was talking about suicide. The minister said the Catholics believed suicide was an unforgivable sin, and if a man killed himself he wouldn’t go to heaven. Now Francis wasn’t Catholic and wasn’t rightfully sure if Catholics went to heaven in the first place, but the thought stuck with him. It stuck with him so strongly that he knew he wouldn’t turn the gun on himself afterward—what he’d originally planned—but that he’d have to live with what he did. And that brought on another set of considerations.
If he did it, he’d have to lay her to rest in a way that was fitting to a Christian burial. The first idea was simply to bury her in the woods, but that was no good. The land was sandy in that part of the state and didn’t hold well. Francis worked in the city manager’s office in his youth and remembered the calls from folks living near the public cemetery after a hard rain. They’d call and say that dead people juice was washing up their stoops, and Francis believed them, too.
One of the men who mowed the cemetery told Francis that the ground was so sandy the blades of the mower clipped bones off fingers reaching up through the grass after a rain. He said in Louisiana they put concrete over the graves and that they should do that here, too. That’s how Francis got his second idea.
You could buy fifty pounds of fast set concrete mix at just about any hardware store in town. All you needed was water, and it sets. Francis had already bought the concrete. The bag lay against the wall in the garage next to where he parked the pickup truck.
Francis didn’t do it that night or the night after. He kept the gun loaded and carried it on his hip when he took Esther outside to feed the squirrels or walk the fields. Their walks about the property stretched longer and longer each day. First, they followed the dirt driveway through the hay fields, and then they ventured down to the fishing pond. A derelict wooden dock jutted into murky water. Beyond the embankment, a copse of pine trees sprouted. That was the spot. He realized it when he received the sign from the Lord, a sign that came in the form of ducks.
Francis knew nothing of the ducks as they walked to the pond. She saw them first. While he straggled behind Esther with his hand on the gun, she veered toward the shore and dropped to her knees. A paddle of mallards quacked along the warm, dark water. Esther uprooted a tussock sedge at the edge of the bank and tossed the chaff onto the ripples one handful at a time. Though the ducks didn’t eat the sedge, they didn’t fly away either. The next time Francis walked his wife to the pond he brought a bag of cracked corn from the feed store. The mallards waddled onto the bank just beside the pines and ate the corn his wife threw. It was nothing short of a sign from the Lord.
The copse of pine trees lay beautiful and peaceful and undisturbed, mostly hidden on one side by the pond’s embankment and on the other by a cow-trodden hill. The only place where someone could get a good look at that patch of pines was from the house, and Francis knew no one would be up there when he did it. He hauled the wheelbarrow with the fast set concrete mix down to the spot after much prayer and consideration. His wife he took next.
But he didn’t do it then either. The ducks made habit of watching for Esther, and they saw her coming and shook water and marched uphill toward the house and even cleared the barbed wire fence separating the hay fields from the cow pastures, a good fifty yards from the pond. His wife dumped the corn in the weeds while Francis struggled with the latch on the rusted gate. After that, he carried the cracked corn himself, leading his wife and the waddling ducks to the embankment like an Arkansas Pied Piper.
There was one time that he even drew the gun. Esther squatted and outstretched her hand to a green-headed drake. Francis eased the gun from the leather holster and aimed at her back.
His hand shook like a top water buzz bait. Then he remembered he hadn’t put one in the chamber and pulled the slide and snapped in a round. Esther glanced back at the sound with that smile she had while feeding animals, but this time it looked like the smile she used to have when he told her that he loved her and she told him back. The mallard was eating out of her hand for the first time. Esther hadn’t made a sound in God knew how long, but Francis swore he heard her laugh at that yellow bill pecking away at the corn in her hand. He lowered the gun against his jeans.
It rained for three days after that, he and Esther cooped up inside the house with the cats and the rain beating heavy on the windowpanes. Francis watched golf while Esther paced floorboards, trying kitchen cabinet locks, walking away, and trying them again. He kept the front door locked, too, so she wouldn’t wander out and try feeding the squirrels in the rain.
Francis did let her feed the cats their breakfast, lunch, and dinner every day, and they trailed Esther big and fat as throw pillows. The vet told Francis that if he didn’t feed the cats less, they’d get diabetes like people. Francis bought an expensive weight reduction pet food because he didn’t have the heart to cut the portions Esther could give them.
Francis worried the ducks would be gone after those long days of rain. But on the third day the rain finally left, and he put on his black rubber boots and squished mud down to the pond where the ducks were waiting. The Lord had once again given him a sign.
The next day, the countryside broiled under a clear blue sky. Francis held his wife’s hand and carried the cracked corn. Though the gun jabbed his side with every step, he didn’t let go of his wife to adjust the holster. Today was the day he’d do it.
The ducks quacked at his feet as he unlatched the utility gate. He rested the bag of cracked corn on the fence post so that neither the ducks nor his wife could get to it while he closed the gate behind him. He intended to do it by the pond. That way he’d be near the pine trees and the wheelbarrow. He hoped the fast set concrete mix had stayed dry inside the black trash bag in which he’d wrapped it. If only he’d checked before, he’d have known if it hadn’t spoiled in the damp. It was too late though. Dry or not, he would do it today.
He handed the feed to his wife and guided her to the pond’s bank. She fished cracked corn from the plastic bag and threw it before her like a flower girl at a wedding. Francis, in the meantime, hiked down to the wheelbarrow where he untied the garbage bag and felt the wrapping inside. It was dry.
He drew the gun and pulled the slide. The bullet clacked in the chamber. There was no safety on a Glock 22. All he had to do was squeeze the trigger. It was a reliable gun. Reliable and easy to use. What the police used.
His boots dug grass as he climbed the embankment to reach his wife. That’s when he saw the cottonmouth.
The stubby, brown snake coiled tight on the dirt, and its mouth gaped wide and white. Straightened out, the snake would have measured near the height of Esther—Francis was sure of it. He scrambled up the last length of incline and dropped to a knee and aimed.
No shot rang out. His wife was too close, and she knelt calmly as if in prayer before the tensed serpent. And even more calmly her right hand reached inside the plastic bag for the cracked corn. Francis couldn’t see her face, but he imagined she was smiling that smile she had when feeding animals. She extended her hand and uncurled her fingers.
Francis never saw the snake strike. In an instant, it was hanging from her hand, the jaw sawing back and forth on his wife’s flesh. Esther’s screamed. Francis charged and fumbled for the snake, trying to grip its belly in his free hand, but he couldn’t hold it the way it twisted and lurched. Francis pointed the gun and fired.
The cottonmouth’s body spasmed and went limp. Francis shot again, this time missing completely. Esther held her arm up as if shielding herself from the beating sun overhead, the snake hanging heavy from her hand. Francis pressed the barrel point blank against the snake and pulled the trigger. It shuddered. He shot again and again, but the snake would not release. The weight of the snake dragged Esther’s arm to the dirt, and only then did Francis realize the cottonmouth was dead.
Esther no longer screamed. She stared blankly at the pond bank, the cottonmouth still gripping her hand. Francis dropped the gun and carefully grasped the snake’s neck. He’d heard stories as a boy about decapitated snakes still being able to bite and poison. He squeezed and twisted to loosen snake’s grip on his wife.
Suddenly, the jaw released Esther’s arm and snapped wildly in the air. Francis startled backward and flung the cottonmouth over the sedge grass where it splashed and sank into the muddy water.
Francis dropped to his knees and crawled to his wife and held her head to his shoulder. He told her that he was with her, and the Lord was with her, too. He realized the Lord had sent an angel in the form of a cottonmouth to take Esther home so he wouldn’t have to do it.
Francis rocked Esther slowly, determined to catch his wife’s last breath in this world. Then her arm was around his back. She was holding him. And in that moment, it felt like she was the Esther of years past, her mind no longer nothing but a hollow smile. Francis was crying now. He brushed her hair with his fingernails and whispered that he loved her, and he thought he heard her say it back.
In the emergency department, the young doctor identified the snake from description as a water moccasin and gave Esther antivenom. The damage to the hand was bad, he said, and there were other concerns, such as tetanus and swelling. He put Esther in a room with glass walls and a nurse outside at a computer and assured Francis that they were just being cautious and that Esther would soon be moved to a regular room.
Francis stood vigil by Esther through the long beeping night, and in the morning, they moved to a different floor where more doctors and nurses and students came to ask the same questions. Esther responded not a single word. Over and over, Francis told the story. He told about the snake and the dementia and how she started feeding animals. He told about how he wanted to take her home.
At dinnertime, a man brought a tray of country ham and sides. Francis watched his wife pick up the cornbread. She was smiling and staring past him into the corner of the hospital room.
Then she crumbled the cornbread into her palm and tossed it to the floor.
J. Stephen Nix is a neuropathologist raised in Southern Arkansas on watermelon and the American naturalism of Jack London. His previous works have been published in The Examined Life and Closler, and he is currently enrolled in the Johns Hopkins Master of Arts in Writing program. When not studying neuropathologic disease or writing, Stephen enjoys spending time with his wife and son, Fabiola and James, family, friends, and many pets.