The Undertaking of Hart and Mercy

Hart plans to tell Mercy about the letters, but first he needs to do something. He stops at his bank and his lawyer’s office. Then, when he arrives at Birdsall & Son, he tells Roy that he has canceled his prepaid funeral arrangement with Cunningham’s and would like to make arrangements with Birdsall instead. Roy takes him into the back office while Mercy makes him tea with a knowing smile.

Alone, Roy helps Hart fill out paperwork, which includes a copy of his will, specifications for his funeral, and arrangements for his key to go to Alma and Diane. Roy asks why Hart is changing plans, and Hart nervously announces that he is dating Mercy. Stunned, Roy says he thought they hated each other. Then he invites Hart to dinner that evening.

Mercy waits for Hart to emerge from the office with her father. When they are finished, Hart gives her a gift. It is a transistor so that she can listen to music while working. Delighted, Mercy turns it on and dances. When Mercy finishes work, she heads upstairs to clean and dress for dinner with her family and Hart. Hart starts to say something, then stops, and she invites him to sit with her while she takes a bath. They talk while she bathes, and Hart says he would like her to meet Alma and Diane soon. As Mercy dresses, Hart again starts to say something and pauses. Mercy kisses him. She feels the bandage under his shirt and asks about it, and he says it is just a scratch.

As they walk to Roy’s house, Hart panics, telling himself that he needs to come clean about the letters. However, he stays silent as the whole Birdsall family greets Hart with friendly chatter. Roy talks to him about sports, and Lillian introduces him to her husband. It is clear that they like him, and Hart feels warmth and comfort, as if he is at home. The evening goes smoothly until Zeddie makes a joke about Hart almost dying from his injury.

Zeddie reveals that Hart was shot and nearly died. Mercy demands to know how Zeddie knows this, and he explains that he gets regular letters from Duckers. Hart knows that this is the moment when his lies will come crashing down. Mercy reminds Hart that he claimed to be unable to send letters from Tanria. She orders him to follow her back to the apartment, and he does so meekly.

They sit to speak as Hart shakes. Mercy demands answers. Hart starts with his wound, explaining that he did not tell her about its severity because this proves that he is immortal, and he does not want to think about that. From there, he tells her everything. He tells her that he can see souls but did not realize what this meant until he joined the marshals and entered Tanria for the first time. There, he saw lost souls everywhere. He told his mentor, Bill, who was like a father to him. He also reveals that he could see a house in Sector 28 that looked exactly like his childhood home. Souls clustered around it, and he believes that the house is the house of the Unknown God.

Hart explains Bill’s belief that if they could open the door to the house, the lost souls would move on, and there would be no more drudges. Bill ordered Hart into the meadow to open the door, even knowing how many marshals had died there. Hart was 19 when they tried it. Drudges swarmed Bill, and Hart turned back to help him, abandoning his attempt to reach the door, but Bill was too badly injured. Bill begged Hart not to let him turn into a drudge, so Hart dealt Bill the final blow. Shortly afterward, more marshals arrived to save Hart. Hart now believes that he is responsible for Bill’s death.

Angrily, Mercy insists that the debacle was entirely Bill’s fault, as Hart was just a teenage boy while Bill was an adult. She believes that Bill should never have placed Hart in that situation. Hart tells Mercy that she does not know what she is talking about. She asks if he would ever make Duckers do something so dangerous, and although Hart knows that he never would, he cannot bring himself to admit this out loud. Unable to hear criticism about the man he has so long idolized, Hart furiously turns to leave.

As he does, the dog, Leonard, playfully grabs his pack and tears it open, causing Mercy’s letters to fall to the floor. Hart freezes. Mercy looks at a letter and realizes that he has kept his identity as her pen pal a secret since their confrontation at the café. Enraged, she refuses to hear his apologies and orders him to leave, saying that she does not want to see him again. Hart silently leaves and takes his autoduck out to sea, where he breaks down and cries.

Several days later, as Mercy and Lillian worry about Cunningham’s deal with the lumber company, Mercy has an idea to form a consortium with Cunningham’s other rival undertakers so that they might collectively gain better buying power with the lumber companies. Lillian thinks it is worth trying.

However, Lillian still believes that Cunningham is hiding something illegal, and she wants to find out what it is. Mercy realizes that the businesses Cunningham has destroyed all have special federal licenses to process indigents and drudges without premade burial arrangements. She realizes that Cunningham wants a monopoly on that government stipend contract. Lillian points out that this is lucrative work because of the recent surge in drudge attacks.

Later, Mercy walks through town and sees a newspaper. One headline mentions the increasing drudge attacks outside of, Tanria. Another headline states, “Cunningham awarded patent for miracle embalming patch” (322). She recalls the strange flesh-colored patches that she found on several dead bodies and realizes what Cunningham is doing.

Hart is wracked with grief over losing Mercy and merely goes through the motions at work. He hoped that he might be able to return to his former curmudgeonly ways, but now that Mercy has taught him how to live, he cannot go back to his old patterns. Trying to move on, he makes an effort to visit Alma and Diane for dinner and to joke around with Duckers while on patrol. One evening, Bassareus arrives with mail for Duckers and sincerely offers his sympathy to Hart for losing Mercy. Knowing that he will not send it, Hart writes one last letter to Mercy.

Duckers wanders away from camp to give Hart some privacy, but moments later, an emergency flare goes up, and Hart rushes out to find him. Drudges surround Duckers near a stream. They fight the drudges, and Hart shields Duckers, knowing that he can survive longer. He realizes that he could not bear it if anything were to happen to Duckers. They fall into the stream, and the water pulls them away to safety. Severely injured, they both make their way back to the barracks.

Mercy walks into Roy’s house to find Duckers lying on the sofa, swathed in bandages. She asks what happened, and he explains, adding that Hart was far more injured but seems to be healing well at Alma’s house. Mercy sobs with relief and realizes that no matter how angry she is with Hart, she still loves him. Duckers tells her that Hart has been miserable without her; he suggests that she give him another chance.

Mercy does not respond. However, this new drudge attack renews her determination to stop Cunningham’s illicit activities. She tells Lillian that they are going to take him down. To do so, Mercy enlists Nathan’s help. Together, they all watch outside Cunningham’s unloading dock. She explains that she believes Cunningham is using his new embalming patch to re-seal the appendix of deceased bodies, after which he smuggles the bodies back into Tanria to be reinfected by drudges. This way, he has a never-ending supply of bodies that the government will pay him to process.

They watch Cunningham load bodies onto an autoduck and drive toward Tanria. Nathan asks about the wisdom of bringing Lillian along, as she is very pregnant, but she ignores him. They follow as Cunningham meets with others who open an illegal pirated portal and start moving the bodies into Tanria. Now that they have conclusive evidence of Cunningham’s wrongdoing, Nathan moves to arrest him. There is a scuffle, and Cunningham nearly gets away, but Mercy and Lillian intervene. Nathan handcuffs Cunningham.