I am far past sixty and married, but these effects are due to my condition and sufferings, for I am only a bachelor, and only forty-one. It will be hard for you to believe that I, who am now but only a shadow, was a hale, hearty man only two years ago, a man of iron, an athlete at his best! Although stranger still than this fact is the way in which I unfortunately lost my health. I lost it through the act of helping to take care of a box of guns on a two-hundred-mile railway journey one winter's night. Let me elaborate.
I belong in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. One lonesome winter's night, two years ago, I reached home just after dark, in an ongoing snow-storm, and the first thing I heard when I entered the house was that my dearest childhood friend and schoolmate, Enoch J. Heydari, had died the day before, and that his last utterance had been a wish that I would take his remains home to his poor old father and mother in Ohio. I was greatly startled and grieved, but there was no time to waste; I had to start at once. I took the card, marked "Lazarus Jericho Heydari, Loveland, Ohio," and hurried off through the whistling storm to the railway station nearby. When I had arrived there, I found the long white-pine box; I stuck the card to it with some tacks, saw it put safely aboard the express car, and then ran with a jaunt into the eating-room to provide myself with a small sandwich and a great deal of cigars. When I returned there was my coffin-box back, apparently, and a young fellow examining around it, with a card in his hands, and some tacks and a hammer! I was surprised and befuddled. He started to nail on his card, and I hurried my way out to the express car, in a good deal of a state of mind, to ask kindly for an explanation. But no--there was my box, all right, in the express car; it hadn't been altered. Just then the conductor called out
"All aboard," and I hastily jumped into the express car and got a comfortable seat on a bale of buckets. The expressman was present, hard at work, --a simple man of fifty, with a plain, honest, good- natured face, and a relaxed, practical heartiness in his general style. As the train set off a stranger skipped into the car and set a package of strangely mature and capable Limburger cheese on one end of my coffin-box--I mean my box of guns. I know now that it was Limburger cheese, but at that time I had never before heard of the article in my life, and of course was wholly ignorant of its traits. We sped through the unruly night, the brisk storm raged on, a dismal mood stole over me, my heart went down, down, down! The aged expressman made a quick remark or two about the tempest and the frozen weather, shut his sliding doors to, and locked them, closed his window down tight, and then went hurrying around, here and there and yonder, setting things to rights, and all the time contentedly humming "Lead Kindly Light," in a low tone, and flatting a good deal. I began to detect an evil and searching odor stealing about on the frozen air. This drug down my spirits all the more, because of course I attributed it to my poorly departed friend. There was something pitifully saddening about his calling himself to my remembrance in this dumb pathetic way, so it was hard to hold the tears back. Moreover, it brought stress upon me on account of the old expressman, who, I was afraid, might notice it plainly. However, he went humming happily on, and gave no sign; and for this I was grateful. Grateful, yes, but still awfully uneasy; and soon I began to feel more and more uneasy every minute, for every minute that went by that putrid smell thickened up the more and got to be more and more gamey. Having got things arranged to his satisfaction, the expressman got some wood and made up a bothersome fire in his stove.
This stressed me more than I can tell, for I could not but sense that it was a mistake. I was sure that the effect would be poor upon my departed friend. Adam--the expressman's name was Adam--now went peeking around his car, stocking up whatever stray cracks he could find, remarking that it didn't make any difference what kind of a night it was outside, he set to make us comfortable, anyway. I said nothing, but I believed he was not doing the right thing. Meanwhile he was humming to himself just as before; and meanwhile, too, the stove was getting hotter and hotter, and the place closer and closer. I felt myself growing pale and squeamish but grieved in silence and said nothing.
Soon I noticed that the "Lead Kindly Light" was gradually fading out; next it ceased altogether, and there was a suspicious stillness. After a few moments Adam said,
"Phew! I reckon it sure ain't no cinnamon 't I've loaded up thish-yer stove with!"
He gasped once or twice, then moved toward the gun-box, stood over that Limburger cheese part of a moment, then came back and sat down near me, looking a good deal impressed with himself. After a thoughtful pause, he said, indicating the box with a gesture,
"Friend of yours?"
"Yes," I whispered with a sigh.
"He's pretty ripe, is he not!"
Nothing further was said for a couple of minutes, each being busy with his own thoughts; then Adam said, in a low, aghast voice,
"Sometimes it's unclear whether they're really gone or not, --seem gone, you know--body warm, joints flexible--and so, although you think they're gone, you don't really know. I've had a few cases in my car. It's perfectly dreadful, becuz you don't know what minute they'll rise up and look at you!" Then, after a pause, and slightly lifting his eyebrow toward the box, -- "But he isn’t in any trance! No, siree, I go bail for him!"
We sat some time, in peaceful silence, listening to the wind and the ignition of the train; then Adam said, with a good deal of feeling,
"Well-a-well, we've all got to go, they isn’t no getting around it. Man, that is born of woman is of few days and far between, as the old book says. Yes, you look at it any way you want to, it's awful solemn and dark: they isn’t nobody can get around it; all's got to go--just everybody, as you may say. One day you're lively and strong"--here he got to his feet and broke a pane and stretched his nose out at it a moment or two, then sat down again while I struggled up and thrust my nose out at the same place, and this we kept on doing every now and then--" and next day he's cut down like the grass, and the places which known him then knows him no more forever, as it says. Yes indeed, it's awful solemn and dark; but we've all got to go, one time or another; they isn’t any getting around it."
There was another long halt; then, --
"What was it that he died of?"
I said I didn't know.
"How long ago did he die?"
It seemed judicious to exaggerate the facts to fit the probabilities; so, I said,
"Only about two or three days."
It did no good though; for Adam received it with a pained look which plainly said, "Two or three years, you mean." Then he went, starkly ignoring my statement, and gave his views at considerable length upon the unwisdom of putting off burials too long. Then he lounged off toward my box, stood for a moment, then came back on a sharp trot and visited the broken pane, observing,
"'Would 'a' ben a sight better, all around, if they'd started him along last summer."
Adam sat down and buried his face in his red silk hankie and began to slowly sway and rock his body like one who is doing his best to endure the almost utterly unendurable. By this time the fragrance was just about to suffocating. Adam's face was losing color; I knew mine hadn't any color left in it. By and by Adam rested his forehead in his left hand, with his elbow on his knee, and sort of waved his red hankie towards the box with his other hand, and said, --
"I've carried a many a one of them, --some of them considerably overdue, too, --but lordy, he just lays over them all!"
This awareness of my poor friend gratified me, in spite of the sad circumstances, because it had so much the sound of a supposed compliment.
Soon it was plain that something had got to be done. I suggested that we take cigars. Adam thought it was a good idea. He said,
"It will probably modify him some."
We puffed on ours gingerly for a while and tried hard to imagine that things were improved. Although sadly it wasn't any use. Before very long, and without any commendation, both cigars were quietly dropped from our nerveless fingers at the same moment. Adam said, with a sigh,
"No, it don't modify him anything. Fact is, it only makes him worse, since it appears to stir up his ambition. What do you say we better do, now?"
I was not able to suggest much of; indeed, I had to be swallowing and swallowing, all the time, and did not like to trust myself to speak. Adam fell to maundering, in a desultory and low-spirited way, about the miserable experiences of this night; and he got to referring to my poor friend by various titles,--occasionally military ones, though sometimes civil ones; and I noticed that as fast as my poor friend's effectiveness grew, Adam promoted him accordingly,--gave him a bigger title. Finally, he said,
"I've got something of an idea. Suppose we buckle down to it and give the Colonel a bit of a shove towards the end of the car? --about ten feet, say. He wouldn't have so much influence, then, don't you say?"
I said it was a good plan. We took in a good fresh breath at the broken pane, calculating to hold it till we got through; then we went there and bent over that deadly cheese and took a grip on the box. Adam nodded "All ready," and then we threw ourselves forward with all our might; but Adam slipped, and slumped down with his nose on the cheese, and his breath got loose. He lost his breath and floundered up and made a break for the door, pawing the air and saying hoarsely, "Don't hinder me! –give me the road! I'm dying; give me the road!" Out on the icy platform I sat down and held his head a while, and he revived. He said,
"Do you reckon we started the general any?"
I told him no; we hadn't budged him.
"Well, then, that idea's up. We have got to think up something else. He's suited where' he is; and if that's the way he feels about it and has made up his mind that he doesn’t wish to be disturbed, you bet he's a-going to have his own way in the business. Yes, better leave him right where' he is, long as he wants it so; because he holds all the trumps, don't you know, and so it stands to reason that the man that lays out to alter his plans for him is going to get left."
We couldn't stay out there in that mad storm though; we should have turned to ice. We went in again and shut the door and began to suffer once more and take turns at the break in the window. Although eventually, as we were starting away from a station where we had stopped a moment Adam pranced in cheerily, and exclaimed,
"We're all right! I gander we've got the Commodore this time. I judge I've got the stuff here that'll take the weight out of him."
It was a carbolic acid. Adam had a carboy of it. He poured it all around everywhere; in fact, he drenched everything with it, rifle-box, cheese and all. Then we all sat down, feeling pretty dumbly hopeful. Although it wasn't for long. You see the two perfumes began to mix in the air, and then--well, pretty soon we made a break for the door; and out there Adam swabbed his face with his bandanna and said in a kind of disheartened way,
"It isn’t any use. We can't buck again him. He just utilizes everything we put up to change him with and gives it his own flavor and plays it back on us. Why, don't you know, it's as much as a hundred times worse in there now than it was when he first got a-going. I never did see one of them warm up to his work so and take such a dominate interest in it. No, Sir, I never did, if I've been on the road; and I've carried a many a one of them, as I was telling you."
We went in again after we were frozen stiff; but my, we couldn't stay in, now. We just waltzed back and forth, freezing, and thawing, and stifling, by turns. In around an hour we stopped at another station; and as we left it Adam came in with a bag, and said,
"I'm going to chance him once more, --just this once; and if we don't fetch him this time, the thing for us to do, is to just throw up the sponge and withdraw from the canvass." He had brought on a lot of chicken feathers, and dried apples, and leaf tobacco, and rags, and old shoes, and sulfur, and asafetida, and one thing or another; and he, piled them on a breadth of sheet iron in the middle of the floor, and set fire to them.
When they got well started, I couldn't see, myself, how even the lifeless could stand it. All that went before was just simply poetry to that smell! Breaking for the platform, Adam suffocated and fell; and before I got him dragged out, which I did by the collar, I was mighty near gone myself. When we revived, Adam said dejectedly,
"We got to stay out here. We have got to do it. They isn’t any other way. The Governor wants to travel alone, and he's brought on so he can outvote us. And also, we're poisoned. It's our very last trip, you can make up your mind to it. Typhoid fever is what's going to come. I feel it coming right now. Yes, we're elected, just as sure as you're born."
We were removed from the platform an hour later, frozen and gone, at the next station, and I went straight off into a virulent fever, and never knew anything again for three painstaking weeks. When I found out, that I had spent that awful night with a harmless box of rifles and a lot of innocent cheese; but the news was too late to save me; imagination had done its work, and my health was permanently shattered into little pieces; neither Bermuda nor any other land can ever bring it back to me. This is my very last trip; I am on my way home finally…to die.
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