In the following essay, Meyer presents an overview of "Errand."

"Errand," one of the crowning jewels in Carver's oeuvre, is unlike any other story he wrote, with the possible exception of "The Train." Just as that story borrowed from a separate text, John Cheever' s "The Five-Forty-Eight," so does "Errand" work from the facts presented in another text: the story of the death of Anton Chekhov. There is a certain amount of factual material to be established at the outset of the story, and Carver presents it straightforwardly. He explains that, in the middle of the night, during a heat wave at the spa at Badenweiler, Chekhov finally succumbed to the tuberculosis that had been slowly killing him. The only people with him were his wife, the actress Olga Knipper, and his doctor, Dr. Schwohrer. Immediately prior to Chekhov's death, however, Schwohrer had ordered champagne for the...