This is the Way the World Ends by James Morrow Read Free Book Online Page A

co-breathe in this manner, George neglecting to exhale, Nadine to inhale.
    The old woman’s blood was black. Black as her eyes. Black as South African granite. It had a sulphurous smell.
    ‘Would you like a bandage?’ he asked.
    ‘Please.’ She sucked her thumb.
    His nervous fingers returned to the shelves where the epitaphs were kept and procured a tin box. He punished himself by biting his inner cheeks. Way to go, George. Always be sure to draw blood – best way to firm up a sale.
    Ripping the tabs from the bandage, Nadine wrapped it around her black, burning wound.
    A rubber stencil spanned George’s work table. He sliced some final touches into the inscription. IN LOVING MEMORY OF GRACE LOQUATCH . . . THE HAMMER GROWS SILENT . Grace Loquatch’s birth and death dates followed. She had been a carpenter. The epitaph was her sister’s inspiration.
    Black blood? What awful disease had Mrs Covington contracted?
    He affixed the stencil to Grace Loquatch’s monument, Design No. 4306 on Vermont blue-gray. Using a hoist-and-chain he transported it across the shop, a job that if necessary he could have accomplished with his bare hands. Grace Loquatch’s immortality moved past three droning electric heaters, the mounted pencil drafts awaiting customer approval, and several shipping crates filled with uninscribed stones from the great quarries of Canada and Vermont.
    ‘Then we have your self-hatred stones,’ he said. (Self-hatred stones? Yes, that wasn’t a bad term for them.) ‘The customer uses them to take revenge on himself for never having gotten around to being alive, know what I’m saying? Yesterday we buried . . . a woman. She came here as soon as the doctor told her about the lung tumors. “For once I want to do something really nice for myself,” she said. So we worked up this special thing, all sorts of flowers and birds. Angels. Job took twice as long as usual, but I didn’t want to charge extra, she had enough problems. I brought the pencil draft into her hospital room. She said, “It’s beautiful.” Then she said, “I don’t deserve it.” ’
    George maneuvered the stone inside the chamber of the ABC Electric Automatic Sandblaster, closed the door, and turned on the motor. Sharp splinters of noise filled the air. Nadine watched in fascination as the jet of aluminum oxide gushed down the hose and spewed forth. The abrasive grains ricocheted off the rubber stencil; others slipped through the incisions, hitting the granite and biting deep. Corundum dust engulfed the stone like fog.
    ‘A person would not last long in there,’ Nadine observed after George shut the sandblaster down. ‘You’d be turned to bone.’
    ‘Unless you were wearing a scopas suit.’ He entered the chamber and peeled away the stencil. Now and forever the stone said, GRACE LOQUATCH . . . THE HAMMER GROWS SILENT . He ran his fingers along the excellent dry wounds.
    ‘You and I may be the only people in Wildgrove not wearing scopas suits, George.’
    ‘My wife and kid don’t have any either.’ He hauled the monument out of the chamber. ‘For some of us, seven thousand dollars is a lot of money. I sure wish Holly had a suit. She’s in nursery school.’
    ‘The Sunflower Nursery School,’ said Nadine. ‘I go over there sometimes. It’s my hobby, you might say – watching children play. Holly is very bright, isn’t she? And decent. Yesterday the class painted rocks. Holly helped the children who didn’t know how.’
    ‘Really? I wish I’d been there. Do you ever baby-sit, Mrs Covington?’
    ‘I would be happy and grateful to baby-sit for your daughter. Are you certain you want her to have a scopas suit?’
    ‘Of course.’
    ‘I’ll strike a bargain with you. Do this task – write an epitaph for my parents – and I’ll see to it that Holly gets a scopas suit, free of charge.’
    ‘Free?’
    ‘Free.’
    ‘I don’t even know your parents.’
    ‘Pretend they are your parents, not mine.’
    ‘My parents are