The Dreamers

54.

The dead: they are doctors and nurses, teachers and artists, professors of philosophy and French, the mayor of Santa Lora. They are young, they are old, they are in the middle of their lives. One whole family, three hearts, goes quiet within a few hours, like lightbulbs winking on a string. For the undiscovered dead, the cause is dehydration. But under medical care, it is most often the heart that gives out, a slowing so extreme that, at a certain point, the pumping can no longer support the body, like certain Buddhist monks who, in deep meditation, have been known to attain a state of such relaxation that their hearts no longer beat.

The dead are mourned with flowers left at the roadblocks outside of town, or funerals, sparsely attended, the pews moved out onto the lawns of the churches for the continuing fear of contagion.

More dreamers quit breathing each day. One in ten never do wake up. At least, some say, they die good deaths, peaceful. They are spared the experience of their own endings.

The names of the dead will one day appear on a plaque beside what is left of the lake, shaded by pine trees, browning where they stand.