By the time Nolan got Samuel home, the old man had already rolled his spine and was sucking madly on it. As Nolan watched from the doorway, his supervisor stumbled into his shack and fell onto the disheveled bed roll. His cigarette stubbed out against the floor.
“Dammit,” Samuel moaned from face down on the roll. With his legs folded underneath him, Samuel’s flabby, old-man buttocks were on full display and Nolan felt another surge of embarrassment.
He stomped in and rolled Samuel over. “Sit up,” he snapped. “You look like a stupid old fool.”
Samuel pushed up, his eyes half-lidded. His hands still shook, but the drug had deadened the palsy. “I am a stupid old fool.”
Nolan’s anger burned hotter. “Yeah, you are! Here I am tending to you when I should be home helping my dah. Least he didn’t give himself wet-lung! He didn’t choose that. You throw away a good life because you’re a… a coward!”
His ring of disheveled gray hair trailed wispily up and down as he nodded. “You’re right, my boy.” Samuel sniffed. To Nolan’s horror, the old man started to cry.
“Don’t,” he murmured, placing a hand on the old man’s shaking shoulder. “I didn’t mean it.”
“You did mean it and you’re right.” A stuttering sob hitched in Samuel’s chest. He pressed a trembling hand to his coveralls. “I’m a coward. All those years seeing the girl. All those years doing nothing.” His hand shot out, gripped Nolan’s shirt and hauled the boy forward. “Don’t be like me!” Nolan tried to pull back, but the old man clutched his coveralls like a man slipping off a ledge. “Don’t be a coward!” Then Samuel fell back on his bed roll, his eyelids fluttered and then shut.
Nolan stumbled out of the shack, shaken and tense. Get away, was all he could think. Get home.
He ran through the night like a drunken man. When he finally burst into his dah’s shack with the bronze jar of balm in his hands, he was shaking. How had the night grown so cold so fast?
“Dah.” He scooted into the shack, carefully set down the jar and knelt beside his father on the bed roll. Every bit of cloth they owned was piled onto his frail father. He grabbed his dah's shoulder and shook it lightly. “Dah.”
His father’s arm was stiff. Nolan yanked his hand away, a tightness circling around his throat. “Dah!” Nolan tugged off the layers of clothes and blankets until he uncovered his father. Glassy eyes stared up into Nolan's. Lifeless. Unseeing. Nolan staggered back and struck the shack wall. The world shook. A horrible drumming pounded in his ears.
This couldn't be happening. Nolan stared at his dah's body. This could not be happening.
He reached for his dah again, but the minute his fingers touched the stiff, cold arm, Nolan's stomach clenched. He stumbled out of the shack and fell to his knees on the ground. For a long while he sat, hunched over, his stomach clenching and threatening to revolt. Then he lay down on the ground with the cruel, cold moon lording over him for what felt like hours. Like lifetimes.
His dah was dead. He'd died while Nolan had been at the night bazaar while he was begging for a cure. Where was the jar of balm? Nolan found the jar at the shack’s door, tipped over but intact. He took the smooth ceramic in his hands. It had looked so beautiful an hour or two before. Nolan clutched it to his chest, his heart hammering against it. What if it had helped? What if the apothe had the balm all along and only now sold it to him? Nolan stood, tears streaming down his face, and hurled it into the night. When it shattered, the sound did nothing to sooth his jagged wound of a heart. He dropped his head and sobbed. Then he went inside and lay down beside his poor dah and fell asleep.
When daylight first woke him, he thought he’d overslept. He rolled toward his dah to ask the time. The stink of decay brought his memory back. His father's skin was paler, his flesh colder. Nolan squeezed his eyes shut. He wanted to remember his dah before he had wet-lung, smiling at him at his catechism, throwing an arm around him at the bonfire while they cooked their dinner. The wave of memories brought with it a sadness so thick it could've buried Nolan. Fresh tears trailed down his cheeks as he picked up his dah and began carrying him to the burial mound.