Chapter 50

Blood Moon

Owen Murphy thought he heard a gourd banjo playing somewhere. From the bed, he could see his fiddle and bow propped up on the bureau where he had asked Alexander to place them in view. That view was getting mighty limited now, and not likely to improve, except by varying light shining on his deathbed.

Now, evening moonlight, today sunlight, last night starlight, all came in through the window of the upstairs room.

Outside, the arc of the full moon, swinging upward and westward from low in the northeastern evening sky, began colliding with the shadow of the earth. The minutes ticked away. The sun’s reflected light began waning toward full eclipse from east to west. The darkened part of the moon, in time, turned a thin, watery blood red.

The fiddle kept reminding Owen of people he’d met and liked in his life. The faces appeared in his memory as if out of the fiddle, and he would recall time and place, thereabouts anyhow. A few of those friends and family seemed to be coming in to his room and standing by the bed every so often. Sometimes, he would hear threads of old fiddle tunes, and hymns playing. He saw his fingers working the strings from beyond his bow, beyond the bridge.

The room was very dim. The light of the moon almost overpowered the small bedside lamp. He tried to blink his eyes. His vision seemed clouded. I’m going blind, he thought, I’m a white stick walking. Not walking, not anymore.

Owen turned his face to the glass, and felt the tears run from his eyes down to the white linen of the old pillowcase Teresa insisted he have. His wife Ellen had used that pillowcase at the end, Teresa reminded him. That was 18 years ago. Ellen died in this very room, in this very bed. Owen missed her. He closed his eyes from the early moonlight outside. He tried to imagine Ellen coming to greet him. Would she be young? Or, would she look wrinkled like me today, he wondered.

A pressure on the bed revealed itself in Rosie, his granddaughter. She touched his cheek. Her hand felt like the hand of an angel.

“Grandpa,” she said in her matter of fact voice, “today we went on a field trip to the Mississippi River. We saw swans running on the ice and flying away south.”

Owen tried to speak. He could not. He imagined the magnificent tundra swans flapping their long white wings as they ran across backwater ice in twos and threes, launching themselves in low, flat trajectories, then gathering with a few companions, climbing the ridges of air near the northeastern Iowa bluffs. White, very white against black bluffs in the shadow of a November evening.

“Grandpa,” said Rosie again, “we saw pelicans, too, their wingbeats are slower, and black underneath.”

Owen reached for the child’s hand with his bony fingers. His lips could no longer make the shape of a kiss. His hand shook. Rosie touched his brow and kissed his cheek.

“Rose,” said her father nearby. “Your grandpa is tired, honey. Let him rest.” Alexander looked tired himself. The hospice nurse had been there mid-afternoon to see how Owen was doing. When the old farmer had retreated just after harvest from his chair downstairs to his bed for the last time, she’d brought morphine and showed Alexander how to use it.

Rose stretched out beside the old man and lay very still, careful not to press against his frail frame covered by the old quilt. Grandma Teresa, Owen’s 93 year-old mother sat in the wooden chair by the bureau. Her hands were folded in her lap. She seemed to be praying or drowsing. Michael, Rose’s brother, age 11, leaned against the doorway looking down at his feet. Delbert Crawford, Owen’s friend from childhood and lifelong neighbor had come and gone just after supper.

Alexander had never seen Delbert cry. He had taken Owen’s hand in both of his powerful farmer's hands, and said, “Take care, Owen. Thank you, my friend.” Then he left the room, descended the stairs, and walked out into the cold night. Owen himself had not cried until then.

Father Norbert Marquette arrived earlier that afternoon for the sacrament of the sick, supreme unction, the last anointing of Owen Murphy. When the family left the room, Father Norbert leaned his close to Owen's dry lips for the last confession. Then with the family around the bed, he touched the holy oil to the old man, and placed a small crumb of the host soaked in the wine upon his tongue while reciting the words of peace. The family prayed together with the priest, echoing his thanks for the life of Owen David Murphy, for the resurrection, and for the life everlasting. With an intoning of the Holy Trinity, and the amen, the priest went out.

Rosie began singing in her high, best children's choir voice, "Bright morning stars are rising." The family joined in, "Bright morning stars are rising, bright morning stars are rising. Day is a-break’in in my soul." When Alexander heard a harmony note, he turned to the door where Laura was standing, singing along in an alto voice he was hearing sing for the first time.

Not long after Delbert left the house, Alexander went downstairs to the kitchen where Laura was washing and drying the supper dishes. She wrapped him in an embrace.

"I'm sorry," she said. "You will miss him so much."

"I will. We've lived and worked together almost all my life. He's never lived anywhere but in this house, on this farm. It makes me very sad to see the land he loved, the farming of it anyway, killing him today for trying to earn of living." Alexander was weeping.

"He didn't know, hon', very few people knew that those pesticides would be killing the farmers who used them twenty and thirty years later," Laura said.

"We knew. How could we not know? We could see the results, couldn't we?" he asked emphatically.

Alexander pulled away from her and walked outside to look up at the now faint, bloody water moon still rising in the east. Except for the faintest white arc along its southern edge, the eclipse was complete. The air felt crisp, clear as crystal water. Bright stars closed in on the darkened moon.

Laura took Alexander's arm. "We'll have a child," she said. "Boy or girl, we'll name it Owen. He would like that." Alex leaned into her where they stood watching.

When the moon was full again at 11 p.m., Owen Murphy simply stopped breathing. Fifteen minutes before, he had opened his eyes wide and looked at his family.

They held him close.

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Next... Chapter 51.

Thanks for these resources:

NCI Fact Sheet: Agricultural Health Study, National Cancer Institute, May 2, 2003

Cancer Mortality Maps & Graph Web Site, National Cancer Institute

Hospice Net – For patients and families facing life-threatening illnesses

National Hospice & Palliative Care Organization (NHPCO)

Is the Decline of the Increasing Incidence of Non-Hodgkin Lymphoma in Sweden and Other Countries a Result of Cancer Preventive Measures? Lennart Hardell, Department of Oncology, University Hospital, and Department of Natural Sciences, Örebro University, Örebro, Sweden; Mikael Eriksson, Department of Oncology, University Hospital, Lund, Sweden

John Hartford – Renowned songwriter and old-time fiddler and riverboat pilot who died in 2001 after a 21-year struggle with non-Hodgkin's lymphoma.

David G. Hyatt - Banjo Enthusiast and Maker of Gourd Banjos. Also, "Gourd Banjos: From Africa To The Appalachians" by George R. Gibson

Clean Water Authority Restoration Act (CWARA) of 2003, RiverKeeper

Testimony of Senator Russell D. Feingold, before the Subcommittee on Fisheries, Wildlife and Water of the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works; Oversight Hearing on the regulatory and legal status of Federal jurisdiction of navigable waters under the Clean Water Act. June 10, 2003

World Water Monitoring Day, October 18, 2003

Smithfield Foods Employees Test Water Samples as Part of World Water Monitoring Day Observance, News Release, U.S. Newswire, October 20, 2003

Changes to Clean Water Act Could Spell Disaster for Wetlands, Ducks Unlimited, November 10, 2003

The Upper Basin Chronicles, Chapter 50 was written and edited by John Gabbert.

Upper Mississippi Basin Stakeholder Network and the Upper Basin Chronicles © 2003 Saint Mary's University of Minnesota. Your comments are invaluable. Please email feedback to The Upper Basin Chronicles, Chapter 50.

The characters presented here are purely fictional, and neither bear resemblance to persons living or dead, nor represent the views or opinions of Saint Mary's University of Minnesota.