“I’m goin’ to pull out the remainin’ ones, Roy . . . You hear me, buddy . . . The last ones now, Roy, so bear up . . . Roy?”

Fearful barely human screams then rose from the barn door. The finches and song sparrows made a great fuss from the nearby pear trees and rose in little flocks into the air and winged their way out into the forest toward the west, and the horses whinnied in the nearby second barn and kicked at the siding.

Freed from the last of the nails, Roy fell into Sidney’s arms like a young tree will topple directly on you if you have not taken the proper precaution in your having felled it.

The impact from Roy’s falling body caused them both to stumble and slip to the earth where they lay facing Brian McFee, whose eyes were open, though they were more or less holes now, and the morning sun had begun deepening the look of rot on his face. Still he looked beautiful and young and, thought Sidney, very much like somebody in the colored plates of the family Bible, maybe Jonathan or Absalom.

Roy coughed up blood from his mouth all over Sidney’s hands and arms, but Sid barely noticed it in his rapt study of Brian.

Then rising, Sidney lifted Roy into his arms and carried him carefully to the kitchen entrance, but there, slipping, he fell down with him in his arms, and they lay there together on the thick woolen rug pressed against one another so close that they appeared to be one man with the same common injuries.

Sidney managed to get up again, and carried Roy all the way upstairs, though this staircase if anything was longer and broader than that of Irene Vaisey’s. Upstairs he hesitated as to which room he should choose. He selected the king-­sized one, though actually Roy slept in the small room at the end of the hall.

He laid the scissors-­grinder down on the bed. A toilet and bathroom adjoined the room, where he found a number of clean wash rags and towels. He waited a long time for the water to get warm, looking within the room anxiously as he waited. He picked up two bars of homemade soap, then selected a little wash basin and brought all this into the bedroom.

Sidney bathed the sick man with all the care and finesse which he had acquired from his months of having cared for Gareth. But Roy did not open his eyes during these ministrations.

“I guess that stuff you had in the bottle was the grand-daddy of all pain-­killers, Roy, for I feel like I’m in a sky of clouds though I didn’t begin to drink as much as you.”

Sidney waited a while studying the sleeper.

“Can you hear me, Roy?”

He took his pulse again, and then allowed his hand to rest in his.