Deathbed by Kris Willcox

When Edwin was five his parents took him to see their elderly neighbor, Mr. Yeager, who was dying at home in a rented hospital bed. Edwin’s father explained that the bed could be raised up or down and it had wheels, which was the reason it was needed. Not because, as Edwin had assumed, a person wasn’t allowed to die in a regular bed. Mr. Yeager was old, and his family far away, so a small honor guard of men on the street took turns cutting his grass. Edwin’s father was one. When he was finished, he wiped the grass clippings off the mower with a cloth and rolled it back to the shed. Mr. Yeager’s son and his wife had come to stay and it was the son who came to the door when they rang the bell, and shook Edwin’s parents’ hands and invited them in.

Mr. Yeager was in the sunroom, where he could see the garden and a bit of the street. It was a small, cool room, with quick-moving leaf shadows. He smiled and asked if they were well. Edwin’s mother put her hands on his shoulders and pushed him forward, gently, so that he was standing directly beside the bed, the sheets and blanket level with his chin. 

“Say hello,” she said. 

“Hello.”

The old man turned his head toward Edwin and then lifted his hand with its silky, pleated skin and set it right down on Edwin’s head. He would have been no less astonished if an animal in the zoo— a bear, or a Bengal tiger—had put a paw through the bars of its enclosure and touched him. The hand was warm, but it gave him a spark of fear. At that time, Edwin’s understanding of dying was so incomplete he thought maybe it was being transferred, palm to crown, into him. He held very still.

“Young man,” said Mr. Yeager, and then inhaled, slowly. “What’s the weather like?”

Edwin was confused. The sunporch had windows on three sides. The weather was all around them.  But then he remembered what his father had told him about conversation, a four-syllable word Edwin liked to say. 

“It’s just two people filling a space with what they can think of, that’s all,” his father said. Now Edwin understood. There was a distance between himself, who could walk on his own legs out of the sunroom to see what the weather was, and Mr. Yeager, who would never do that again.

Edwin lifted his head and—it took courage—looked right into Mr. Yeager’s eyes. 

“It’s hot, sir. It’s near ninety.” Mr. Yeager’s eyebrows went up and he smiled.

“Well, what do you know,” he said. “So am I.” Then he laughed and the laughter seemed to grab him and rattle his whole body. His daughter-in-law came in to see what was the matter. She wore an apron and rubber gloves, the kind Edwin’s mother wore for polishing. Mr. Yeager waved his arm at her.

“I’m fine, Bette. Fine.” He coughed again. “Straighten this sheet, will you. I’m so tangled I can hardly move.” Bette pulled the blanket and sheets all the way back, so that Mr. Yeager was lying uncovered in blue, flannel pajamas, his feet long and white. He frowned and told Bette to cover him, but she said the bed needed to be done properly. Edwin and his parents backed up as far as they could—the sunporch wasn’t large—while she worked around the bed, tucking and tightening. When she was finished, she lifted Mr. Yeager’s arms from under the blanket and laid them at his sides. His eyes were closed. 

“He’ll need to rest now,” she said. So they left.

Later, while his mother made supper and his father swept leaves off the driveway, Edwin lay on his bed and imagined that it was his death bed. A bed from which he could never get up, though other people would come and go. It may have been only a minute or two but it became an elastic bit of time he carried for years afterward, a place he could re-enter if he wanted: the bedroom, early evening, summer light. First the thinnest needle of fear, and then a drowsy calm would come over him, and a gentle, grumbling voice saying, Don’t be scared. You’re all right. 

Mr. Yeager’s death was not recorded in Edwin’s memory. There was a gap, and then the Chen family appeared with their four daughters and low, green sedan. A swing set replaced Mr. Yeager’s flower beds. Mr. Chen worked on his golf swing and the girls bickered or practiced cartwheels in the yard. 

One night while Edwin and his parents were having a late supper, they heard someone playing the piano. A hesitant picking followed by heavy notes, crashing on each other.

“Clair de lune, if I’m not mistaken,” his mother said. 

“Must be in the sunroom,” said his father. 

“Oh, I hope they haven’t done that,” she said. “In an uninsulated room? It would be terrible for that instrument.”

Edwin looked at his chicken cutlet and mound of green beans his mother said he must eat and wondered why a sunporch was a good place for a person on his deathbed, but a bad place for a piano. The hammerings of Clair de lune continued. Then, quiet, maybe because the player was bored with practicing, and tired of the heat. When the notes began again they weren’t a song, just scales spilling up and down. 

Kris Willcox lives in the Boston area with her spouse, two teenagers, and a poorly trained but affable labradoodle. Her writing has appeared in Kenyon Review on-line, swamp pink, Beloit Fiction Journal, Cimarron Review, Tin House on-line, Portland Review, and elsewhere. She’s deeply grateful to her writing buddies. Thanks, weirdos.

17 July 2026