Slow Death

[tamcranver]

Now this is a pretty sort of thing, isn’t it, that you should have been left here all these years and no money paid after the first six…

I
He was very curious, the first time he laid eyes on the wild moors of Yorkshire. He had been taken from the place he had called “home” six weeks before, and everything since then had been awful. The room in which he was kept was dank and dirty, and he never saw the sun. The open sky and the endless stretches of grass made his heart soar a little. Perhaps, he hoped, his life could change; he could be as free as the untamed land. Then he met Mr. Squeers, and his hope died quietly, leaving only fear and resignation.

II
His nurse had told him what school was, but he’d never seen one. The only parts of Dotheboys Hall that fit with his remembered definition were the parts when he and the other boys sat in the room with the blackboard and Mr. Squeers wrote upon it. He supposed some day he’d learn what the man was writing. It was those times, though, that he detested most. Usually, the cruelty of the place was laid out in the open, almost honest. But in the schoolroom, it was hidden by layers of chalk and false kindness. He decided he hated school.

III
There was something nasty in Mrs. Squeers’s smile, and when she turned her face towards him, he felt unaccountably frightened. He was too small, too weak, too sick, to cut wood or paint fences or care for animals with the older boys, so to him fell those tasks the others didn’t want; he cleaned the privy, he scrubbed floors, he washed dishes under her watching eyes. It made him nervous. The first time he broke a dish, she cuffed him on the head and sent him away with a kick. He ran. He had never known escape was so easy.

IV
Mrs. Squeers was heavy with child for much of the year, which made her angrier than ever. He avoided her as best he could, but she shared her bad mood with her husband, who had no patience for a boy too weak to be beaten. He struggled on as best he could. He was carefully carrying Mrs. Squeers a plate of food when he nearly stumbled upon Miss Fanny, who was sitting at the bottom of the stairs. She looked up.

“I hate it when they’re like this,” she said with feeling.

Not knowing what to say, he only nodded.

V
The baby cried all night. The Squeerses never slept, so they made certain that neither did the boys. They were out at all hours, sweeping the path in the cold brown-grey before dawn and weeding the garden at midnight. The boys talked among themselves, mostly about their families. They asked him about his, but he was forced to admit he knew nothing about them. Indeed, he thought as he swept, he didn’t even know what the others meant by “family,” other than something that sent packages from afar and letters that the Squeerses mocked. He had never felt so alone.

VI
Winter was especially cold, and he took sick. The others tried to help him hide it, but the Squeerses soon found out. When he gave them back their medicine—and his breakfast—in a puddle on the floor, they were quite vexed. Still, they let him sit by the fire and work indoors during the day. He developed a passionate love for warmth and decided he could do without food, or water, or light, if he could only have warmth. Even after he grew well again, he remembered those hours by the fire and dreamed of them even in summer.

VII
Something had changed. The Squeerses no longer gave him even false smiles, and while the other boys sat in class, he worked. They were freer with blows, too, and he went to bed aching most nights. Once Mrs. Squeers pushed him down the stairs. His ankle made a sickening noise and exploded with pain. One of the other boys wrapped it with cloth. When he told Mr. Squeers the next day why he could not carry water from the pump, he got a smack on the head for his troubles and was told to be grateful and not to lie.

VIII
He began to lose himself. The pain in his ankle was so great, at times, that he could not bear to inhabit his body. As a result, he let his mind wander. The change was noticed, and the number and force of slaps and kicks was increased in adjustment. He forgot—not only that ever elusive first home, but the years that followed. His leg healed, but badly, and he was slow to move, slower to work. At any given moment, a blow could come out of the darkness and knock him to the ground. But he soon forgot it.

IX
That spring, the mare foaled. He feared disturbing Mr. Squeers, so as best he could, he pulled the baby out of her mother’s body. As he cleaned her, he thought she was the most beautiful thing in the world—something totally new and wonderful. She lay there, exhausted from the birth, but when he moved to clean her head, she licked his hand weakly. Her wet nose was soft and warm, and she had huge dark eyes. He immediately loved her. But the Squeerses did not want another horse, so Mr. Squeers sold her to the Browdies down the road.

X
The Squeerses had visitors sometimes, especially Miss Fanny. Usually their eyes never fell upon him or the others, as if they were nails in the wall, or not there at all. Sometimes, though, they would stare as if at something loathsome or horrifying. Once, a boy took him aside and pressed a coin into his hand. Mrs. Squeers had seen, though, and when the visitors were gone, she took it. He didn’t know what he would have done with it, anyway. But he liked visitors. They were clean and healthy and they made him think of that long-forgotten world outside.

XI
Sometimes he crept into the schoolroom at night. He heard the boys reading from books, during the day. When he was in class, he had learnt a little. He had forgotten most of it, now. He held the books in the darkness, trying to recall how it had felt to read and failing. But if he could only remember how, he would write a letter to—whom? To whom would he write? If he thought about it for too long, he forgot. Sometimes, though, he felt that he wanted to leave, and that this would tell him where to go.

XII
Gradually he came to realize that he was older than most of the boys. They had begun to look at him as if he were a curiosity, an outsider. One of them began crying at nights from hunger. He took the boy one night and showed him what weeds in the garden one could eat, and that the horses would not miss a handful of oats, and how one could subtly crack and eat an egg right from under the chicken. The look in the boy’s eyes was not one of gratitude, but of companionship—one fellow survivor to another.

XIII
Mr. Squeers came to him in the night and told him to dig. Rubbing sleep from his eyes, he recognized the new boy, the one who had fallen ill. He knew death when he saw it. It took him all night to dig the grave, even with Squeers standing by, shouting him on. As he hid the new boy under shovelfuls of dirt, he had a strange feeling that soon, it would be him under the earth. He prayed for the new boy and hoped that whoever buried him would do the same for him. It would probably be Squeers.

XIV
He knew he would die soon. He had been growing steadily weaker through the last few winters, and he could feel it. He was actually rather happy about it. Perhaps when he died, he would go to a warm, bright place where there was no pain. Mr. Squeers finally had more boys than even he could control, and he’d hired a new teacher. It was too much to hope for that the new teacher would be kind. It was only a matter of time before this new man’s torments in addition to the Squeerses’ overcame him completely. He was ready.