***
A week later Jill’s nervous idyll took another unexpected turn.
As Jimmy finished a plate of pork with cracklins, courtesy of one of the young hogs, he remarked, “I shore do have an appetite lately.”
Jill and Big Jim glanced sharply at the younger man, then at each other. Jill’s face whitened.
Big Jim leaned over to lift up the sleeve on his son’s t-shirt. “Scar’s fadin’,” he said.
Jimmy pulled the sleeve back and craned his head to look at the outside of his shoulder. “Well I’ll be doggoned. Why…” Then the color drained from his face as well. “I got it, don’t I?”
“Imagine so.” Big Jim pushed his own plate away and began to pack his pipe.
“Oh, I am so sorry,” Jill exclaimed, heartfelt.
“What did you do?” Sarah asked sharply.
“Simmer down, Sarah love,” Big Jim interjected. “They just been courtin’ a bit, the way young folk do.”
“That’s what the radio said – the disease is passed by close contact,” sister Jane remarked. “So Jimmy,” her eyes lit with a sibling’s joy in another’s discomfiture, “you been smoochin’?”
“Just that once, and it was all my fault,” Jill broke in, glaring at Jane. “My fault,” she repeated. “We haven’t done anything like that since.”
Sarah took a breath and seemed about to explode when Big Jim spoke. “What’s done is done. We knew a day like this had to come sometime, though I’d hoped to delay it a fair bit.”
“What do you mean it had to come?” Sarah asked, unable to contain herself. “She should have been more careful!”
“I mean,” Big Jim said heavily, “that eventually we’d have to give it to Owen, don’t you think?”
That stopped Sarah in her tracks. She turned to look at her youngest son as his eyes roamed here and there, and she breathed, “Oh dear Jesus I pray, you’re right, James. It could fix him. He could be normal!”
Big Jim lit his pipe and puffed. “Cain’t do it now. Not with things the way they are. It’s one thing for Jimmy’s scar to go away, but if Owen got cured and someone saw him…they’d round us all up.”
“Then we go on as before. We just be careful,” Jimmy declared. “I’ll taper off going to the meetings. I’ll tell ’em I gotta work the farm. We just got to buy enough time…” He abruptly stopped, as if he’d said too much.
Jill looked from Jimmy to Big Jim and back. The elder was imperturbable as usual, but Jimmy seemed embarrassed. “What?” she asked.
“Well, I figgered once your feet got better, you’d be moving along, goin’ to Los Angeles to find your family.” Jimmy eyed his empty plate, and reached for another slice of bread and butter, not meeting Jill’s eyes.
“I…I hadn’t thought that far. I suppose you’re right, that’s what I should do. I’ll go, just as soon as I can.” Stupid, Jill, she scolded herself. Every day you’re here, you put these people in danger. Now you’ve infected one of them, and that can’t be undone. At least with you gone they can blend back in to their own society, or run for the deep-woods mountains like their cousins.
***
UNIONISTS TAKE POWER IN STUNNING MASS
Reaper's Run - Plague Wars Series Book 1 Page 11