MERCY: We set ourselves to the grim work of going on. What else could we do? My father further devoted himself to sustaining the farm. He remained kind, but distant, with a haunted look, as though he was continually witnessing fresh horrors. Some neighbors helped looking after us kids, but Dad leaned on my brother Edwin to run the household. He grew into being as big and strong as a horse.

ART: Then Edwin fell ill.

MERCY: Yes, a few years after Mary Olive died, Edwin started losing strength and color, and he had that awful cough at night, a hollow, hopeless sound that rattled the wooden boards in my bedroom. Every tickle in my throat filled me with terror that I had it too. It was simply a matter of time before I became sick, but each night I prayed, asking God if I could have one more day before the coughs and fever kicked in. And the next night I’d again pray for one more good day, and the same prayer again the night after and the night after. Just one more day, please.

At wits’ end, Dad sent Edwin to Colorado, the thinking being the mountain air would help him, that the air here was foul, or fouled, and it was what made him and Mom and Mary sick. He did go into a kind of remission on occasion, but it always returned. He came back home, looking like a very sick old man in the fall of 1891. I was sick by then, too, but unlike Edwin who suffered with it for years, I declined quickly.

ART: Can you talk about what it felt like?

MERCY: What it felt like? It felt like dying.

ART: Right, sorry.