Prayers for the Living by Alan Cheuse Page A

the poor little boy, he says, ‘Mama, you know, if they used paper bottles instead of the glass the weight of the wagon wouldn’t have been so much on Papa.’”
    â€œHe said this to you?”
    â€œHe said it. Of course, he said it. Would I make something up like that? He didn’t know what he was saying. He was in shock still.”
    â€œShock? Shock? Who wouldn’t be in shock? But they brought him to you? Or the police brought him?”
    â€œThey did. The Sporens. This was their name. It still is their name. The brother, of course, he’s alive. The mother, the father, they died some years ago. Terrible. They had their accident. He was inhis house, a very beautiful home in Cincinnati, let me tell you, and he was going to go to the basement to look for a bottle of wine—it was a Sunday, they were at home together—and she says, ‘Meyer, let me go for you.’ She was a cold woman in a way, the little I knew her I could tell that, but she also had a good side, a nice side. When she had a glass of wine, it came out.”
    â€œShe sounds nice.”
    â€œShe was nice this time. Already she’d had one glass. And look where it got her? She goes over and opens the door to their downstairs, to their cellar. The house was on a steep hill, they have many steep hills in Cincinnati . . .”
    â€œI’ve never been there.”
    â€œSomeday you’ll go.”
    â€œAt my age? I want to see Paris first.”
    â€œYou never saw Paris? We stopped there on our trip to Israel a few years ago.”
    â€œRome. When we went to Israel we stopped in Rome.”
    â€œRome we stopped too. But so you’ll never see Cincinnati, it’s a lot like Rome, they say, because of the hills—so she opens the door and reaches for the light, and in the reaching, loses her balance, and she falls down the stairs. Terrible.”
    â€œTerrible.”
    â€œShe hits her head. Without a sound she lies there. And he comes to the head of the stairs, the old boat captain, that’s how he started out, and he bought more and more barges, I told you already, and pretty soon he’s got a fleet, he’s got docks, he’s got bigger and bigger ships, and you think a man like this could live a long time to enjoy it. But . . .”
    â€œSo what happened?”
    â€œWhat happened? He comes to the top of the stairs, squints down into the dark. And he calls to her.”
    â€œAnd she answered?”
    â€œShe couldn’t talk. She was paralyzed. Her neck, you know? Her spine . . . the cord . . .”
    â€œSo? Don’t keep me in the dark.”
    â€œVery funny. He pulls on the light and he looks down and he sees her, and he starts down the steps. And by the time he gets to the bottom he’s already dead himself.”
    â€œYou’re kidding?”
    â€œWould I kid about such a terrible thing. It was his heart. He had an attack. From the scare. From the sight. And that was that. He falls over on top of her. And who knows how long she was lying there with the weight of her dead husband on her body before they found her.”
    â€œWho came? Who found?”
    â€œWho came? Who found? Guess who?”
    â€œHer?”
    â€œHer.”
    â€œ Oi .”
    â€œ Oi , is right. It was quite a sight, quite a sight. For a girl her age. Something to see.”
    â€œHow old was she?”
    â€œShe was old enough, old enough to feel the hurt and know the pain.”
    â€œSo it wasn’t like when your Manny saw his father, your Jacob, under the truck. She was older. He was younger.”
    â€œThank God for small favors. No, when he saw Jacob, he went into shock. And he came home, I told you, and he says this about the paper containers being better than the glass. And he’s holding in his pocket the piece of glass.”
    â€œThe famous piece of glass.”
    â€œTo this day, that’s right, he carries it with him