Alice Munros Best

a squalling child in her arms. “Poor lamb,” she said. “They told her she wasn’t supposed to come in the house so where could she go? What could she do but have an accident!”
    The young woman came out of the front room dragging a rug.
    “I want this put on the line and beat,” she said.
    “Grace, here is Mr. Doud come to offer his condolences,” the minister said.
    “And to ask if there is anything I can do,” said Arthur.
    The gray-haired woman started upstairs with the wet child in her arms and a couple of others following.
    Grace spotted them.
    “Oh, no, you don’t! You get back outside!”
    “My mom’s in here.”
    “Yes and your mom’s good and busy, she don’t need to be bothered with you. She’s here helping me out. Don’t you know Lillian’s dad’s dead?”
    “Is there anything I can do for you?” Arthur said, meaning to clear out.
    Grace stared at him with her mouth open. Sounds of the washing machine filled the house.
    “Yes, there is,” she said. “You wait here.”
    “She’s overwhelmed,” the minister said. “It’s not that she means to be rude.”
    Grace came back with a load of books.
    “These here,” she said. “He had them out of the Library. I don’t want to have to pay fines on them. He went every Saturday night so I guess they are due back tomorrow. I don’t want to get in trouble about them.”
    “I’ll look after them,” Arthur said. “I’d be glad to.”
    “I just don’t want to get in any trouble about them.”
    “Mr. Doud was saying about taking care of the funeral,” the minister said to her, gently admonishing. “Everything including the stone. Whatever you want on the stone.”
    “Oh, I don’t want anything fancy,” Grace said.
    On Friday morning last there occurred in the sawmill operation of Douds Factory a particularly ghastly and tragic accident. Mr. Jack Agnew, in reaching under the main shaft, had the misfortune to have his sleeve caught by a setscrew in an adjoining flunge, so that his arm and shoulder were drawn under the shaft. His head in consequence was brought in contact with the circular saw, that saw being about one foot in diameter. In an instant the unfortunate young man’s head was separated from his body, being severed at an angle below the left ear and through the neck. His death is believed to have been instantaneous. He never spoke or uttered a cry so it was not by any sound of his but by the spurt and shower of his blood that his fellow-workers were horribly alerted to the disaster.
    This account was reprinted in the paper a week later for those who might have missed it or who wished to have an extra copy to send to friends or relations out of town (particularly to people who used to live in Carstairs and did not anymore). The misspelling
of flange
was corrected. There was a note apologizing for the mistake. There was also a description of a very large funeral, attended even by people from neighboring towns and as far away as Walley. They came by car and train, and some by horse and buggy. They had not known Jack Agnew when he was alive, but, as the paper said, they wished to pay tribute to the sensational and tragic manner of his death. All the stores in Carstairs wereclosed for two hours that afternoon. The hotel did not close its doors but that was because all the visitors needed somewhere to eat and drink.
    The survivors were a wife, Grace, and a four-year-old daughter, Lillian. The victim had fought bravely in the Great War and had only been wounded once, not seriously. Many had commented on this irony.
    The paper’s failure to mention a surviving father was not deliberate. The editor of the paper was not a native of Carstairs, and people forgot to tell him about the father until it was too late.
    The father himself did not complain about the omission. On the day of the funeral, which was very fine, he headed out of town as he would have done ordinarily on a day he had decided not to spend at Douds. He was wearing a felt hat and a long coat that would do for a rug if he wanted to take a nap. His overshoes were neatly held on his feet with the rubber rings from sealing jars. He was going out to fish for suckers. The season hadn’t opened yet, but he always managed to be a bit ahead of it. He fished through the spring and early summer and cooked and ate what he caught. He had a frying pan and a pot hidden out on the riverbank. The pot was for boiling corn that he snatched out of the fields later in the year,