The Rosewood Casket Read Online Free PDF Page A

see any sign of intruders. The only disarray was the ordinary detritus of a solitary man who had ceased to care how things looked, or even how they smelled. He walked to the living room, to get away from the kitchen stench, and cupped his hands over his mouth, calling out for Randall, but all was silent. Illness, then, thought Stallard.
    He walked from one littered room to the next, praying he wouldn’t trip over his neighbor’s remains in the dimness. He found Stargill in the little back bedroom, burrowed under a load of quilts and blankets, eyes closed. He was pasty-faced and gaunt, but when Stallard pulled back the blanket he could see a faint movement of the old man’s chest, and he sighed with relief that he had not come too late.
    Stargill wasn’t dead, but he wouldn’t wake up. J. Z. Stallard went back to the kitchen, intending to call the rescue squad. He had just lifted the receiver when he noticed the white envelope atop an address book by the telephone, addressed “To Whoever It Concerns.” J. Z. replaced the receiver and picked up the envelope. He reckoned that the act of intruding with good intentions made it his concern. He hoped it wasn’t a suicide note, because it suddenly occurred to him that he might be the closest thing poor Randall Stargill had to a friend, and he didn’t want to blame himself for his neighbor’s despair. He could have visited oftener, he told himself, as he tore open the envelope. Not that Stargill ever seemed grateful for company.
    For an instant, before he looked at the contents of the envelope, Stallard wondered if he would learn the end to the old tragedy. He hoped not. It was best forgotten. It had nothing to do with him, and he did not want the task of deciding what should be done with the truth.
    “I DO NOT WANT TO LEAVE HOME.” The words were printed in shaky block capitals on the top of a sheet of lined paper. “I WILL DIE HERE.”
    Below that, Stargill had written the names of his sons: Robert Lee; Dwayne (deceased); Charles Martin; Garrett; and Clayton, with a phone number listed only for the oldest and the youngest. Beside Charles Martin’s name, the old man had written, “ Unlisted. Keeps changing it. ” And after Garrett’s name the words “Warrant Officer” appeared in parentheses, with the notation: “ On active duty. Hard to find. ” On the succeeding pages the handwriting became more crabbed, words packed close together, filling one sheet after another with instructions. J. Z. stared at the contents of the envelope, wondering what he ought to do.
    Mr. Stargill was still hanging on to life, but he remained in a coma. There was no doubt in Stallard’s mind that his neighbor belonged in the hospital in Johnson City. The county ambulance could transport him there in less than an hour, but the note was adamant: he was to be left at home. That seemed clear enough, but Stallard wondered if such a document would legally absolve him from the responsibility of getting the old man more help than perhaps he wanted.
    What if Stargill really was at the end of his long life? He was nearly eighty, and failing; his family was gone. Sometimes nursing homes kept you from dying without really keeping you alive. They could hook old Stargill up to purring machines that fed him and breathed for him without really bringing him back, and he could linger like that for months, tended by strangers, trapped in the concrete walls of the old folks prison.
    It wasn’t cheap, either. Somebody at church had mentioned an elderly aunt who’d had to go into a nursing home for long-term care, and her children had ended up selling the farm to pay for a comatose existence that may have been intolerable to her. J. Z. hoped that if he ever hovered between living and dying, with his foot caught in the trap, that his daughter Dovey would have the good sense to let the end come quickly. He didn’t want to die by inches among strangers.
    He looked again at the scribbled sheet of lined paper.