The Last Town on Earth

by Thomas Mullen

  All the more reason to work ceaselessly, trying to forget the world around him by focusing only on what his father wanted him to master: the numbers, the cost of acreage, the price of timber and the price of shingles, the pay of the millworkers. While his father and his elder brothers did the hobnobbing and the wooing, Charles remained at his desk in his small office, where the sounds of the mill would have made concentration difficult for a man less single-minded.

  Still, to Charles, the great family narrative of amassing staggering wealth was a tainted one. He had never been comfortable with the way his family and all their rivals inflated their prices after the San Francisco earthquake of ’06, profiting off the suffering and helplessness of others. But worse than that was the bust that had followed, when the mills miscalculated and felled too many trees. Prices had plummeted, men had been laid off by the hundreds, and accountants like Charles had searched desperately for ways to reverse the losses. It was busts like those that made his father’s and brothers’ unbridled avarice during good times a necessity, they told him: one needed to exploit advantages as a hedge against unforeseen calamities in the future.

  To someone as conservative as Charles, this made sense in theory. What didn’t, especially when business was thriving, was firing workers who asked for better wages, failing to fix machines until after they had maimed forty or fifty men, and charging exorbitant prices in the general stores they had opened in the timber camps. Certain things simply were not right, Charles said. But his brothers scoffed. You’d understand if you had your own family to care for, they would tell him, shaking their heads. Their wives and children needed clothes, food, tutors, maids. Perhaps a single man could afford to worry about the finer points of worker treatment, but they could not.

  Marriage, as it turned out, did not mellow Charles’s sentiments, especially since he had married Rebecca, an outspoken schoolteacher with radical leanings. The birth of their daughter only strengthened his belief in living a more moral life, both at the mill and at home. But it wasn’t until 1916 that a decade’s worth of family squabbles and jealousies finally exploded, as did the town where they resided.

  It was the year of the general strike in Everett—the year the lines between the mill owners and the workers were drawn all the more starkly, even as the line between right and wrong was smudged. Charles found the unions’ requests not so unreasonable, and he said as much to his father, who threatened to disown his son if he ever repeated such sentiments. Reginald and the other mill owners were enraged by the various acts of skullduggery and sabotage being hatched by the nefarious Wobblies—the Industrial Workers of the World, radical unionists who had chosen Everett as the next stop on their road toward revolution. The brothers shook their heads at Charles, brainwashed by his socialist wife. Rebecca wanted to leave the town, arguing that this was no place for their twelve-year-old daughter to become a woman.

  The so-called Everett Massacre forever destroyed whatever creaky bridge had remained between Charles and the other Worthy men. Of course, his father and brothers insisted that it was the strikers who had fired the first shot and most of the following volleys—damn reds will try to burn down the town and rape and pillage their way across the country if we don’t stop ’em now. But Charles knew that most of the guns fired at the workers had been paid for by the Commercial Club, a businessmen’s group that his brothers chaired. If their fingers hadn’t been on any of the triggers, they had pulled the strings from a distance. As the backs of the strikers were broken, the men returned to their jobs and the town stumbled back onto the rocky road from which it had briefly wandered.

  But Charles and Rebecca believed the general strike and its violence had brought everyone’s true colors to the fore. The couple made their decision. Charles let his brothers buy out his share in the Worthy mill, and he used the money to buy the land for Commonwealth—a distant plot that his father believed to be unworkable. Reginald, outraged by the defection and apoplectic at Charles’s plan to build homes for workers and offer them higher wages, never spoke to Charles again. He died one year later. Charles heard about the passing when he received a letter from one of his sisters-in-law three days after the funeral.

  Now, barely two years after the Everett strike, Charles owned a successful new mill supporting a swiftly growing town where no one felt spat upon or cast aside.

  Look at this, Rebecca, Charles thought. Look at what we’ve created—look at what we’ve done. It was amazing how people could toil so hard but only in extreme moments marvel at the accomplishment. He looked at the crowd, at the tense and nervous eyes—every person in the hall had risked so much by coming out to Commonwealth, taking a chance on a dream Charles had been foolish or stout enough to believe in. He would not let their sacrifices go for nothing.

  “Thank you, everyone, for coming,” he began. “We need to discuss the influenza that has hit so many other towns so hard.”

  By then everyone had indeed heard about the so-called Spanish flu, but it was hard to distinguish fact from rumor, truth from gossip, rational fear from paranoia.

  What Charles told them was this: a plague that had apparently begun in eastern cities like Boston and Philadelphia had recently spread to the state of Washington. Dr. Banes added that he had received correspondence from a physician friend at an army base outside of Boston who attested to the disease’s extreme mortality, its speed of infection, and the strong possibility that it would spread via army bases as young men from all across the land were shuttled to various training cantonments. Fort Jenkins was only thirty miles away, Charles continued, and he had heard from several purchasers that the surrounding towns had been especially hard hit. Businesses had been closed and public gatherings were forbidden. Physicians and nurses were working all hours, but still the disease was spreading faster than could be believed.

  “The best anyone can figure is that this is some new form of influenza,” Doc Banes told the crowd. He was fifty-six years old, with dark hair that had retained its color except for a shock of white at the front. He wore a bushy mustache that he once waxed into handlebars, but lately it had lapsed into a thick tangle. A good friend of Charles, he had abandoned the possibility of a comfortable but lonely retirement in order to join the Worthys here when they founded the town.

  “It’s similar to the flu that you know in many of its symptoms—high fever, headache, body ache, cough,” the doctor explained. “It hits you quickly and can lead to pneumonia, and it’s incredibly contagious. But it’s far more severe than usual strains, and it’s killing people faster than any flu anyone’s ever seen.”

  Charles said that in his last trip to Timber Falls, he’d talked to several buyers with knowledge of the disease’s spread. The flu seemed to have sneaked up on most cities and towns, but Charles could only speculate that Commonwealth had bought a temporary reprieve because it was so cut off from the rest of the country. They had been afforded a glimpse into the suffering of those around them while there was still time to defend themselves.

  The hall was eerily silent as Charles and Doc Banes spoke. Many had heard rumors of such a flu but had hoped that the stories were embellished. Hearing the facts voiced by the soft-spoken Charles and the sober-minded Banes caused them to sit all the more still.

  Charles told them he had heard that the War Department was even putting a halt to the draft because so many soldiers were sick, and that Seattle had passed a law mandating that anyone walking in public wear a gauze mask over his mouth and nose. Other towns had outlawed spitting and shaking hands.

  Charles’s voice gradually strengthened, filling in the empty spaces that had been created by the people’s silence. “And as far as I’m concerned—as the manager of the mill but also as a man of this town, as a husband and father—we need to do whatever we can to make sure we stay uninfected.”

  “How do we do that?” A man called out. “You got a cure for us, Doc?”

  Banes shook his head, but Charles spoke for him. “The only way not to get sick is to pr
event the flu from getting into Commonwealth.” He paused. “I propose we close the town to outsiders and halt all trips out of town. No more errands to Timber Falls or anywhere else, as that only makes it possible to catch the flu from people in those towns and bring it back here. No one leaves Commonwealth, and no one comes in, until the flu has passed.”

  For a moment the crowd was silent. Then came the sounds of hundreds of voices—some of them low murmurs between spouses, others exclamations, some of them disbelieving laughter. Charles saw Philip turn around and glance at all those heads nodding or sternly shaking, all those brows furrowed or eyes widening.

  “For how long?” someone shouted above all the others.

  Charles opened his mouth and the voices grew quiet, awaiting his response. But Charles stopped himself, deferring to the doctor.

  “We can’t be sure,” Doc Banes said. “Probably no longer than a month—the flu moves quickly, and I would guess that after a month, the surrounding towns would have returned to health.”

  “You would guess?”

  Banes looked back at Charles somewhat sheepishly. He wished he could be more certain, but he couldn’t. No one could. What was happening seemed unlike any epidemic he’d experienced. He was already afraid that he had said too much, that he had given voice to fears he didn’t fully understand. Now those fears would only be multiplied by the number of skeptical and frightened faces before him.

  Charles held up his hands. “With the general store fully stocked, as it is now, we have enough provisions to keep the town closed off for nearly two months. If extreme measures need to be taken, some of us have livestock. Like all of you, I hope we won’t need to wait as long as two months, or even one. But I believe in being prepared and not taking senseless risks. If we don’t do something drastic, the flu will infect this town, and if it hits us as hard as it has other towns, there’s no way we could keep the mill operational until it passes. To say nothing of the lives lost.” He paused. “People, I believe that if the flu reaches Commonwealth, the mill will fail. And the town will follow.”

  “What about our timber buyers?” a man called. “Can they still come in the town?”

  Charles shook his head. “No, and that means not selling any timber until we reopen the town. I will contact all our buyers and explain. I know they won’t like it, but I also know that with the war demand for timber being so high, they’ll still be waiting for us when we reopen. Closing the town will make the mill’s finances a bit tight, but it can survive.”

  The only visitors remote Commonwealth received were the ships that snaked along the river to the mill, picking up timber, as well as some buyers who rode or drove into town for meetings with Charles. Both could be halted indefinitely. With no bank in town, most people subsisted on bartering and trades, in addition to visits to the general store, where their purchases were deducted from their mill paychecks.

  If Charles couldn’t travel to the banks in Timber Falls, he wouldn’t be able to pay the workers at the end of the month, but they would have his assurance that he would do so as soon as the flu passed. And hadn’t he already won their trust, giving each of them a house in return for the first few months of labor? Few residents had any savings, as most of their paychecks still went toward what they owed Charles for their homes, and those who did have bank accounts in Timber Falls would not have access to them during the quarantine. But to Charles, these seemed minor and necessary sacrifices.

  “What if someone from Timber Falls comes in without hearing about the quarantine?”

  Charles offered his idea about posting a sign, blocking the road, and stationing guards. He knew this might cause objections, so he tried to make light of it. “Guards would scarcely be necessary, as we have so few visitors. It would strictly be a precaution.”

  After a brief pause, someone else stood. “Mr. Worthy, I appreciate all you’ve done for us, and you’ve cert’nly given me a fairer shake ’n anyone else ever has. But, all due respect, havin’ guards is just a bit too similar to the kindsa work camps I came here to get away from.” The man sat down quickly, disappearing into the sea of heads, several of which were nodding in agreement.

  Charles was unprepared for that remark. He had expected that some would oppose his idea, but hearing himself compared to the types of men who ran prisonlike factories wounded him. He felt his cheeks redden.

  But before he could reply, a man in the row before Graham’s stood up to speak, wool cap in his hands. He had a thick brown beard and hair that his wife had tried to comb earlier that evening, barely succeeding. “I lost my first wife to typhoid thirteen years ago,” he told them. “Lotta people had it, and lotta people died. If something like that’s happening again, I say we close the town.” Several people murmured in response as he sat back down.

  Charles nodded. He too lived with the memories of past epidemics, including the awful winter of ’89, when he had lost his mother and his younger brother, Timothy. The sting of those deaths had faded, yet Charles had found himself thinking of Timothy more over the past few years, as the adoption of Philip had brought a boy of roughly the same age into his home. Soon Philip would be older than Timothy had ever lived to be.

  A new speaker stood far in the back. “So if we close the town,” he said, his voice a deep bass, “I can’t see my family?”

  There were a number of cautious husbands who’d initially come to work in the strange new mill but left their families behind, cared for by grandparents or friends in nearby towns. And some single men were courting women from Timber Falls, hoping to win their hearts and also their confidence in that mysterious hamlet deep in the woods.

  “I understand your concern,” Charles said. “Any man in such a situation can of course leave Commonwealth if he wishes, and when the flu has passed, I promise you will have a job to return to. But until the flu passes, you will not be allowed back in.”

  The man, who had remained standing, looked at Charles evenly. Charles knew, most likely, that he traveled to Timber Falls to see his family every Sunday, the most glorious day of his week. His choice was to abandon his family to possible sickness or turn his back on money that his family couldn’t afford to lose.

  Graham stood up suddenly, then paused, as if realizing he’d never spoken to so large a group before.

  “I don’t like the idea of being kept from coming and going as I choose,” he said. “But I like the idea of seeing my family fall sick even less.” Other men had sounded rushed, but Graham spoke slowly. Many heads nodded in agreement. “And I might not like the idea of guards either, but this ain’t a bunch of Pinkertons and cops we’re talking about—it’ll be us doing the guarding.” More nods. “I for one’ll be proud to protect this town.”

  He sat back down. A man voiced a “Me, too.” As did another and another. The hall echoed with the pledges.

  Philip nodded. “Me, too,” he was saying.

  Rebecca saw Philip’s lips move and she looked away, at her husband, who again seemed calm as a snow-swept field. The two of them had already argued about this at home, behind the closed bedroom door. To her, closing the town seemed the antithesis of everything they had worked for. The founding of Commonwealth had not been an act of rejecting the world, she believed, but of showing the world how it could be improved, so that others could follow their example. If they closed their doors—if they approved this reverse quarantine—they would seal themselves off from that world. She also worried about her family’s health, and she had seen those haunted expressions of fear in Timber Falls when she accompanied Charles on his last trip to that suddenly desolate town. But she could not bring herself to support a quarantine.

  She wanted to stand up. She wanted to say something, anything. She had spoken before larger crowds than this, crowds both supportive and hostile. But Charles had made his opinions plain, and the idea of making a marital disagreement public seemed untoward, if not downright wrong. She felt an uncharacteristic paralysis even as her heart raced.

  Philip sat bes
ide her silently as the meeting continued, more men and women voicing their concerns, but most of them in favor of a quarantine. After the silence between comments grew longer, Charles spoke again.

  “I call for a voice vote,” he said.

  Rebecca’s palms were sweaty; she rubbed one of them on her wool skirt. She wanted to stand. She wanted to stand. She stayed in her seat.

  “All those in favor of the town closing its doors until the flu has passed,” Charles proclaimed, “say ‘aye.’”

  The hall shook in response. Beside Rebecca, Philip voted quietly.

  “All against, say ‘nay.’”

  In the hall were many dissenters, but they represented only a small fraction of the total in favor. The sound of the nays was heavy with defeatism, those voters having already realized that they were in the minority.

  Rebecca voted nay, almost under her breath, aware that it barely mattered. The only person who heard her was Philip, who eyed her with concern.

  Her husband nodded, the hall growing louder again as people spoke to one another, seemingly congratulating themselves on their decisiveness. To Rebecca, it was an empty happiness, for they had succeeded in an act of only ambivalent courage, some moral compromise whose weight, she feared, would begin to feel uncomfortable on their shoulders.

  Next Charles discussed logistics: blocking the road and devising a schedule for the guards. After the meeting had adjourned and most people began exiting the stuffy building, a line formed in the left-hand aisle as men signed their names to volunteer for shifts. Rebecca wondered if as many men would have come forward if Graham hadn’t thrown the gauntlet at their feet. Perhaps some did so out of a sense of adventure, while others did so out of fear of what would happen if someone less trustworthy were given such a responsibility. She looked at some of the faces and guessed that they were driven by a sense of shame that they weren’t fighting in Europe. Some had enlisted for service but had been designated “essential war workers” owing to their duties at the mill; others had willfully turned their backs on what they considered a crooked war. Standing guard would prove to them and their families that they were indeed courageous men.