Fay

by Larry Brown

“I crawled in there with her. Somebody finally handed me a blanket in through the window and I wrapped her up in that. Wasn’t a mark on her nowhere but her neck was broke. She just looked like she was asleep.” He saw her wiping at her nose and he hushed. The wind had picked up again and it had turned cooler. He began to wish that he hadn’t told her because he didn’t want her to feel sorry for him. They sat there for a long time with neither of them saying anything. She leaned over and put the cigarette out, rattled the ashtray. When she got up he thought maybe she was going back into the house but instead she came over and leaned over him and put her arms around him. He wanted her to understand what he had been through and as she held him tightly he felt himself drawing strength from her. “It’s all right,” she kept saying. “It’s all right.”

And what were people made of and how did they come together to be what they were? What made you be bad or good? Why did good men die and bad men live?

But then he knew the forgetting her would go on forever and never die.