A Death in the Family - James Agee [120]
The nostrils were very dark, yet he thought he could see in one of them, something which looked like cotton.
On the lower lip, a trifle to the left of its middle, there was a small blue line which ran also a little below the lip.
At the exact point of the chin, there was another small blue mark, as straight and neat as might be drawn with a pencil, and scarcely wider.
The lines which formed the wings of the nose and the mouth were almost gone.
The hair was most carefully brushed.
The eyes were casually and quietly closed, the eyelids were like silk on the balls, and when Rufus glanced quickly from the eyes to the mouth it seemed as if his father were almost about to smile. Yet the mouth carried no suggestion either of smiling or of gravity; only strength, silence, manhood, and indifferent contentment.
He saw him much more clearly than he had ever seen him before; yet his face looked unreal, as if he had just been shaved by a barber. The whole head was waxed, and the hand, too, was as if perfectly made of wax.
The head was lifted on a small white satin pillow.
There was the subtle, curious odor, like fresh hay, and like a hospital, but not quite like either, and so faint that it was scarcely possible to be sure that it existed.
Rufus saw these things within a few seconds, and became aware that his mother was picking Catherine up in order that she might see more clearly; he drew a little aside. Out of the end of his eye he was faintly aware of his sister’s rosy face and he could hear her gentle breathing as he continued to stare at his father, at his stillness, and his power, and his beauty.
He could see the tiny dark point of every shaven hair of the beard.
He watched the way the flesh was chiseled in a widening trough from the root of the nose to the white edge of the lip.
He watched the still more delicate dent beneath the lower lip.
It became strange, and restive, that it was possible for anyone to lie so still for so long; yet he knew that his father would never move again; yet this knowledge made his motionlessness no less strange.
Within him, and outside him, everything except his father was dry, light, unreal, and touched with a kind of warmth and impulse and a kind of sweetness which felt like the beating of a heart. But borne within this strange and unreal sweetness, its center yet alien in nature from all the rest, and as nothing else was actual, his father lay graven, whose noble hand he longed, in shyness, to touch.
“Now, Rufus,” his mother whispered; they knelt. He could just see over the edge of the coffin. He gazed at the perfect hand.
His mother’s arm came round him; he felt her hand on the crest of his shoulder. He slid his arm around her and felt her hand become alive on his shoulder and felt his sister’s arm. He touched her bare arm tenderly, and felt her hand grapple for and take his arm. He put his hand around her arm and felt how little it was. He could feel a vein beating against the bone, just below her armpit.
“Our Father,” she said.
They joined her, Catherine waiting for those words of which she was sure, Rufus lowering his voice almost to silence while she hesitated, trying to give her the words distinctly. Their mother spoke very gently.
“Our Father, Who art in Heaven, hallowed be Thy name; Thy kingdom come, Thy—”
“Thy will be d ...” Rufus went on, alone; then waited, disconcerted.
“Thy will be done,” his mother said. “On earth,” she continued, with some strange shading of the word which touched him with awe and sadness; “as it is in heaven.”
“Give us this d ...”
Rufus was more careful this time.
“Daily bread,” Catherine said confidently.
“Give us this day our daily bread,” and in those words still more, he felt that his mother meant something quite otherwise, “And forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us.
“And lead us not into temptation; but deliver us from evil,” and here their mother left her hands where they dwelt with her children, but bowed her head:
“For Thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory,” she said with almost