The Wives of Henry Oades by Johanna Moran

services. Everyone seemed to expect it of him. He got through it. A bachelor colleague, Simon Reed, brought him back to the cottage afterward. “You’re not equipped to see to yourself, Henry.”
    “I am, Simon,” Henry insisted. His family would come. They’d see to him, and he to them. Things would right themselves. They’d all be fine. He believed it wholly.
    Simon pushed him up the new ramp and inside, muttering under his breath. “A man in your state shouldn’t be left alone.”
    “I shall get on fine here,” said Henry.
    Simon lighted a lamp and set it on the table.
    “If you’ll light the others, please.”
    Henry had him light every lamp, seven in all.
    “Where would you like them, Henry?”
    “I’ll take care of it,” said Henry. “You’ve done enough. Go on home now.”
    Alone, Henry maneuvered the wheelchair without difficulty. He put one lamp in his lap and rolled himself, setting the lamp in the side window, returning then for the next lamp. Lamp by lamp, he turned the room bright, as gay as a ballroom, making himself visible ten miles out.
    He ate hard cheese and opened the brandy someone had left, putting out another goblet. Meg enjoyed a nice brandy. He rolled himself to the front window again, restless, excited. But they did not come. Not that night, nor the next. A quiet week passed, then another. He sat on the porch daily, his eyes fixed on the road. He went inside eventually and sat there, a useless stump by the window. Sweet Jesus. Every bloody day.
    He rose one morning and limped unaided to the grave out back. He stood over the mound until his leg would no longer support him, then sat alongside and began to dig. He hadn’t planned to do it; but once started he could not stop.
    Almost before he pulled aside the sheet he knew. He brushed dirt from the skull, recognizing the sharp little tooth way back in her head, pointed, darker than the others. Henry cried out and began to cover her again. He scooped great handfuls as fast as he could, tamping down the crumbly dirt, beating it hard. He fell back exhausted, sobbing, struggling for air. He calmed after a while, but did not, could not, move. For months he’d felt her about, alive, and now he did not. He could no longer pretend. Meg was gone, lost to him forever. He lay stunned, face to the sun. He’d thought they had all the time in the world.

No Worse
than Here
    H ENRY FOUND flat black seeds lying loose on a pantry shelf and planted a few at the foot of Meg’s grave. He watched faithfully, witnessing the first shoot, the subsequent withering and dying. He gave thought to starting over, but knew the same would happen. He’d never had much luck in a garden. So he quit, and his days turned that much longer.
    Mr. Freylock rode out at the end of June. “Good God,” he said straight off. “Have a flock of filthy sheep been run through here?”
    Henry said nothing. A bit of dust, a dried rat turd or two hardly warranted comment.
    Mr. Freylock clucked like a woman. “There’s no excuse for squalor. Even for a chap on his own.” He dropped a slim packet of envelopes on the table. “A spot of comfort from home for you, Henry.”
    Henry didn’t get up. “Her parents?”
    “I wouldn’t know.” He picked up Henry’s urinal and went outside to pour it over the porch rail. Henry watched without interest from his usual place by the front window. Recently he’d moved from the wheelchair to an armless ladder-back and felt less the invalid for it. He was able to move about as necessary, using the broom as a crutch.
    Mr. Freylock came back in. “Have you written her loved ones?”
    Henry studied his fingernails, broken and blackened from tending her grave. He hadn’t written to her parents or his own. He hadn’t the words. “I’ll get round to it in due course.”
    “You should inform them immediately. They’ve a right to know.”
    “A right to know what precisely?”
    “The facts, boy.” Mr. Freylock pumped water and rinsed his