Except the Dying

JOE SEATON GOT OUT OF BED IN A HURRY. He’d forgotten to pull down the alarm lever on his clock and had slept an hour longer than he should have. The window was already grey with the coming of dawn. He pulled on his trousers, lit his lantern and, rubbing hard at his head to wake himself up, clambered down the ladder to the stable. The horse whinnied softly in welcome and thrust his head over the gate of the loose box. Joe offered him the dried apple he’d pinched from the kitchen the night before, and Silver took it delicately between his big yellow teeth and ground it to pulp. Joe stroked the soft upper lip with its stiff whiskers and the horse nuzzled into his hand in the hope of finding more apples.

“That’s yer lot, greedy guts,” Joe said affectionately. “Come on, move over. I’m late. They’ll be on at me good if I don’t get cracking.” He pushed the animal aside and went into the box, where he forked some fresh hay from the bale into the feeding trough. Silver was a young horse but sweet-natured and biddable, and Joe was grateful for that. The big Morgan on the farm where he’d first lived in Canada was ornery and unpredictable. He’d landed such a kick on Joe’s thigh once he’d near broken the bone. “’Twas yer own fault,” said the farmer and cuffed the boy for good measure.

He shivered even though this part of the stable was warm. There was an oil heater in the corner, kept on a low burn, and the horse’s body heat helped. Joe’s room was up above in the loft. There was only a single layer of wood between it and the elements, and the cracks were so bad, snow sifted in at the corner.

He left Silver to his hay and climbed back up the ladder. The frost on the window shone like silver filigree as the winter sun grew stronger. He put his candle on the wooden dresser, reached under his narrow bed and hauled out the tin strongbox that had come with him from England three years earlier. That, a set of wool underwear and his navy-blue suit were all that remained of his original endowment from Dr. Barnardo’s Home. The suit was small for him now. His wrists protruded from the cuffs of the jacket and he was ashamed to wear it. The sturdy boots had gone too, traded to another boy at the Fegan Boys’ Distributing Home for a book now stored safely at the bottom of the box.

He lifted the lid. Inside was his scanty clothing, one-piece flannel underwear, two jerseys, a flannel shirt, all neatly folded as he had been taught. Underneath everything was the precious book, A Handbook of Physiology and Phrenology. He took it out and laid it aside carefully on the bed, giving it a little pat as if it were a live creature. Although there were a lot of words he couldn’t understand, he’d been well schooled in basic reading in the orphanage, and he studied the thin volume at every opportunity. He’d even shown it to Therese and they’d looked at the illustrations together, giggling as they determined that the high bony forehead of Edith Foy was a sign of excessive pride and John Foy’s bibativeness, his fondness for liquids, as the book called it, could be clearly seen above his prominent zygomatic arch.