The Rescuer by Joyce Carol Oates

Harvey sprawled in a ratty easy chair in the living room scribbling into his notebook. His hands were skeletal, but his fingers moved swiftly gripping a pen. His eyes were heavy-lidded, red-lidded. His lips were covered in scabs I had not noticed before. I shuddered to see that the smallest finger on his right hand was freshly bandaged—now, little more than a stub.
    “Harvey? What is that terrible smell? How can you stand it . . .”
    “ ‘Smell’? ‘Small smell quells all’—a haiku.”
    “Has something died in here? Inside a wall?”
    “ ‘Small smell quells all—inside a wall.’ No good.”
    “We should open the windows, at least. We should try to find the source of the smell.”
    “An experimental haiku, I meant. A classical haiku has seventeen syllables.”
    Maddening Harvey! He smelled the sickening odor of course but lacked the energy, volition, desire to seek out the source.
    There were only a few pieces of furniture in the living room. The easy chair in which Harvey sprawled, and several other chairs; a two-cushion sofa, of badly worn leather, upon which Leander and Tin usually sat when they came to the apartment—(Leander to the right, Tin to the left, invariably). There were scattered tables, lamps of which at least one was unplugged.
    The leather sofa had been shoved oddly into a corner, since I’d left the apartment. But behind the sofa, just visible from an angle, was what appeared to be a length of rolled-up carpet.
    As I approached the carpet, the smell grew stronger. It was unmistakable now—organic decay, rot.
    “Harvey? What is this? Something against the wall . . .”
    I was having difficulty breathing, the smell was so strong.
    Clumsily I pushed the sofa aside. For a small piece of furniture, it was heavy; and Harvey made no offer to help.
    I squatted over the rolled-up carpet. Holding my breath until my head spun. Desperately I managed to tug off a length of twine that had been securing the rug. (This was a rug that had been on the floor of Harvey’s bedroom when I’d first arrived.) Boldly, recklessly I managed to tug off the other length of twine, and to unroll the carpet—and there, arms stretched above his head, flat yellowish face dull as a much-worn coin and his eyes and mouth gaping open like a fish’s, was Leander’s lieutenant Tin.
    Tin’s flaccid torso was covered in a blood-soaked, dried-bloody T-shirt. He’d been shot, perhaps—or stabbed . . .
    He didn’t look young now. Something terrible had happened to Tin’s face, straining the skin to bursting.
    I screamed and stumbled back. I screamed and stumbled to Harvey. With a look of profound exasperation Harvey was regarding me as one might regard a lunatic. He’d had to set down his notebook and place his pen in his shirt pocket. As a schoolboy, Harvey was never without a pen or a pencil in his shirt pocket. In a disapproving voice he said, “God damn, Lydia—I told you not to look. Whatever you’ve found—it’s none of your concern. Just stop. ”
    “It’s Tin—he’s dead. It’s Tin’s body, rolled up in your carpet. We have to call the police . . .”
    Harvey cursed me, in a lowered voice. In moments of acute exasperation he lapsed into one of his ancient, extinct languages—might’ve been Aramaic, Sanskrit or Greek. He said, “I told you this was not a good idea, Lydia—living here with me. I warned you it was not a good environment for you. I said—s tay away . And now.”
    “Harvey, my God! We have to call the p-police . . . Tin is dead, Tin is behind the sofa, somebody has shot Tin in our apartment . . .”
    “There were no gunshots, that I heard. And we will not ‘call the police.’ No.”
    “A man has been murdered, in our apartment. We have to call the police . . .”
    Sighing, Harvey swung himself out of the easy chair, that had sunken and shaped itself to his buttocks. It was always startling to me, that my brother had grown so short .
    We would re-fit Tin’s heavy