“So that’s it, then,” the soldier said, waking Philip from his free-flowing fears.
The rifle seemed so heavy.
“Just get up and turn around,” Philip commanded. “Get out of here. Please.”
He shouldn’t have said “please.” It made him sound weak or conflicted and he regretted it immediately.
The soldier shook his head. “I’d rather die quick than slow, freezing to death. Go ahead.” He sounded something between spiteful and at peace with his fate.
“Just go,” Philip pleaded.
“Here. I’ll make it easy for you.” The soldier opened the first two buttons of his khaki jacket and held them apart, exposing a circle of undershirt that was the only thing covering his heart. “Right there, kid. Can’t miss it.” His eyes were almost completely blank, but the skin around his eye sockets was tensed. Philip could see a vein along the side of his head twitching. The man’s teeth were clenched and his jaw was rigid and his head and neck began to shake. All the muscles in his body seemed to be flexing in defiance of death even as their master was openly courting it.
He was so close that, from Philip’s vantage point, the end of the rifle covered the center of the man’s chest, the bit of white cotton shirt a perfect target.
They were so close. They were too close. They were breathing the same air, and the longer Philip stood there, the worse he was making it. Was it already too late? Was the secret, doomed fate of the town already in Philip’s blood?
They stared at each other, motionless. They stared at each other and breathed.
Philip lowered his rifle slightly. It was such a tiny movement but it meant so much, for he had made his decision. Whether he did it because he felt backed into a corner or because he was unable to follow through was something he refused to ponder.
“If we cut through these woods,” Philip said slowly, “we’ll get to an empty building. There’s a cellar, and you can hide down there. I’ll get you some food, then you can sleep. But before the sun rises, you leave. You’re gone before anyone else is awake.” He swallowed. “Do you understand?”
The soldier nodded, eyes wide.
“You’ll stay silent and be gone by sunrise?”
“Yes. Yes. Thank you.”
Philip lowered the rifle. He bent down and picked up the man’s pistol, looking at it briefly before putting it in his pocket. He’d never held a pistol before and he hoped to hell it wouldn’t go off in his pocket, but he wasn’t giving it back to the soldier.
“You got any more guns hidden in there?”
The soldier said no, but Philip made him stand and open his jacket, lift up his shirt, and empty his pockets to prove it. Philip noticed that the soldier’s hands were shaking, and his eyes looked more reflective than before. He had truly thought he was about to die, and his recovery from this was not quick.
“Lead the way,” Philip said, pointing ahead with his rifle.
Philip followed about ten paces behind, which he hoped was enough distance to keep him protected from whatever vile germs or malevolent spirits haunted the air around his captive. Maybe being a few feet away for only a minute or two hadn’t made a difference? Maybe he hadn’t ruined everything for the entire town?
He tried not to think about this—he was already so nervous and scared that he couldn’t afford to. The forest became even thicker as the hill rose, but Philip knew that after a few hundred yards, they would reach a clearing where a few empty buildings stood. The buildings had been built by Reginald Worthy’s mill years before Charles had bought the property and created Commonwealth; they originally had been intended to store excess wood, but they were poorly located, much too far from the river and the mill. They had never been used, a strange waste of space that made Philip wonder if Charles was deliberately avoiding these buildings out of self-righteousness. The fact that they were so removed, at the end of a barely used road, made them perfect for Philip’s purposes. The soldier could sleep in one all night and never be near enough to infect anyone. Maybe it would be like he had never been there. Maybe this wasn’t a horrible mistake.
Twigs snapped as they ascended the hill. Philip’s view of the soldier was dimmed by the falling dusk. The dirt and bark and grass and needles were losing their color, fading into a dull gray that would soon disappear into darkness.
Where was Mo? Now, of course, Philip was hoping that his bald accomplice would take even longer to return. If Philip could stow the soldier in the building and tell him to wait there, he could return to the post before Mo got back. Then he would tell Mo he needed to leave briefly—he’d make up some excuse—and he’d get some food for the soldier and bring it to the empty building. He’d do his best to avoid other people that night in case the air around him was polluted by disease. But if he had been infected by something, wouldn’t he pass it on to Mo, who would then pass it on to someone else, and on and on in a matter of hours? How exactly did this work? Philip would have to find Doc Banes, ask him a few innocent questions. Then again, if he was trying to avoid people, he couldn’t ask the doctor. This was already too complicated.
Soon the trees thinned out and a small clearing opened. It was a partially man-made clearing, and recent at that, as stumps littered the ground. Just ahead of them were three buildings, and Philip ushered the soldier toward the one that sat farthest from the town. As they approached the building, he had a view of the road that linked these forgotten structures with the rest of the town. The road went straight ahead, with the woods to the right and a thinner stand of trees to the left. Just beyond was one of the main streets—this road was one of the many spokes off of it, and most of the others were lined with empty new houses. Surely no one should need to come down here.
“Go inside,” Philip said to the soldier, stepping back several feet to give the man and his possible baggage of disease a wide berth.
The soldier obeyed.
“Head for the cellar. The stairs are in the back, on the right.”
Philip waited a few seconds for the bad spirits surrounding the soldier to dissipate before he followed. Inside was a large, dark, windowless room, musty with stagnation. It took his eyes a moment to adjust. Dust covered the floor and walls, mottling the dark wood. The soldier had left footprints, and Philip consciously avoided them, stepping to the side as if he could catch the flu though the soles of his boots. He closed the door behind him just as the soldier began descending the stairs. Philip figured he would walk to the top of the stairs and call down, tell the soldier that it might be as long as an hour or two before he could bring any food. He would warn the soldier again that if he poked his head out and walked around the town, the other townspeople would be far less forgiving of his trespassing than Philip had been.
But his plans dissolved when he heard the sound of the door opening behind him.
Philip turned around and saw the door slowly complete its swing back into the building, saw the light from outside seeping in, and saw Mo standing at the threshold. Mo had a handkerchief covering his nose and mouth like a train robber from a children’s book. There was also a handkerchief wrapped around the hand he had used to turn the knob and open the door. His other hand held his rifle.
“Philip? What are you doing?” Mo’s words came slowly, muffled by the handkerchief. Above it his eyes were wide.
Philip was stunned. Mo must have followed him, must have returned to the empty post and seen the two figures disappearing into the woods, must have tracked them here, careful to keep his distance. So much more careful than Philip, stupid Philip, cowardly Philip, who felt the weight of his mistakes piling upon him with terrible suddenness.
Mo was shaking his head in horror.
“I was just going to get him some food,” Philip said, or thought about saying, or tried to say, but maybe his voice gave out halfway—he wasn’t sure. Even if he had said it, it was so small and unimportant that it didn’t matter.
Mo backed up another step.
“Stay in there, Philip.” He spoke kindl
y, but it was clear that this was a command and not a suggestion. “Just stay in there and I’ll get Mr. Worthy and we’ll figure this out.”
Before Philip could protest or think of anything else to say, Mo moved his handkerchief-covered hand out of view and the door swung shut, casting Philip in total darkness.
I
J. B. Merriwhether sipped his whiskey slowly. He wanted only the one drink, but he was in no rush to leave, so he was determined to make it last.
His working day had ended and here he was at the Pioneers Club, delaying his journey home. Twice he had called his wife, Violet, checking in on their daughter’s condition. It had not improved. Gwen had been bedridden for over a week now and her cough was loud and thick. And persistent—all day, throughout the night, torturing his sleep and making hers nearly impossible. That morning a worrisome new symptom had appeared: a dark bluish hue around her eyes. J.B. had been unable to reach the doctor, who was one of just a few local physicians who hadn’t been called into war duty. At seven-thirty J.B. had driven to his office at the bank, leaving his wife to try to call the doctor.
Gwen seemed worse, Violet had told him at four-thirty. Her fingertips and lips were blue, her eyes even darker than they had been that morning. And the mail had brought no new letters from James.
One child horribly ill and the other fighting in France. J.B. lifted the drink to his lips, barely wetting them, then set the glass down and licked the traces of alcohol from his lips. He should be home, but what could he do there? Nothing. He could do nothing.
But here at the Pioneers Club, he could be of use. He had received a call from Joseph Miller, the third-highest-ranking member of the club and one of the most successful bankers in the Northwest. Although J.B. had done work for the Worthy mill a few years back, he mostly handled the accounts of townspeople, whereas Miller dealt exclusively with large business clients. J.B., in his small-town bank, secretly wished to be more like Joseph Miller, a man who seemed to know all the important financiers not only in Everett and Seattle but all down the Pacific Coast. One day, perhaps.
Apparently, J.B. had not been the only man summoned by Miller, as others began trickling in. Nathan Hightower was the first, and for this J.B. was not grateful. Hightower, foreman at one of the mills, had never been an easy conversationalist in the best of times, and he was now living in the worst: J.B. had driven by his house five days ago and noticed that the blue-starred service banner hanging from the parlor window had been replaced by a gold-starred flag, meaning that one of the Hightower boys had been killed in France. The next day J.B. had heard that both the young Hightowers, age twenty and twenty-two, had been killed in action. Now, every night when J.B. returned home, he stared for a long moment at James’s blue-starred banner, but when he blinked, he saw for a split second the reverse image behind his darkened eyelids, the banner appearing yellowish gold. The vision haunted him.
He had not seen Hightower since—the two knew each other through the club, and even there they barely spoke. Most of the Pioneers with whom J.B. was friendly were financial types like himself, other bankers and a few lawyers. The mill men were another circle entirely, one that only occasionally overlapped with his.
He knew nothing to say to Hightower, a large man who looked every bit the foreman with his barrel chest and huge arms. His red hair was disheveled, shooting here and there like anxious flames, and his bushy eyebrows hung low. His flannel shirt reeked of the mill, of sweat and sawdust.
They stumbled through awkward small talk but were soon rescued by the arrival of two other men: Lionel Winslow and Skip Bartrum. Winslow was the thirty-year-old son of one of the town’s most powerful timber barons, and J.B. had always been impressed by his confidence, if not by his professionalism or maturity. Lionel was known to lash out at others, to assume too quickly that he fully understood this world in which so much had been given him. He wore his dark hair slicked back with some foreign substance (something J.B. found a bit vain), his thin mustache was neatly trimmed, and his suits were impeccable.
Skip Bartrum was the Timber Falls sheriff. He never smiled and rarely made an appearance at the Pioneers Club. His round face had a sanguine hue, as if he had just downed a few shots of whiskey, yet no one had ever seen him drink, and he was reportedly in favor of Prohibition. For a sober man, J.B. thought, he sure as hell had the face of a mean drunk.
It was quickly apparent to J.B. that these three men knew one another well, were used to meeting together. He distinctly felt that he was the odd man out as the men discussed the war and the flu and the price of lumber. The Winslow mill was producing a cut of wood that turned out to be perfect for the new fighter planes, so business was booming. Not only was the mill shipping record amounts of timber, but because it was technically performing a vital military duty, the government had agreed to send agents to patrol the mill and make sure the workers didn’t even think about organizing to request higher wages. Times at the Winslow mill had never been better.
Bartrum had a son in France as well. He and J.B. compared what they knew of their sons’ locations, wondering aloud if they were together. During this part of the conversation, no one said anything to Hightower, each man in his small cowardice pretending the sufferer was as invisible as his dead sons. Their guilt paled beside their fear that their own sons would soon meet a similar fate.
J.B. took another tiny sip from the half-empty glass. He thought about Gwen.
“Sorry to keep you boys waiting,” Miller said as he appeared at the front of the room, quickly striding over and shaking hands. He sat at the head of the table. The room was dark, its walls covered in paintings of bears and other game from the surrounding woods. Two men sat at a table at the other end of the room, but apart from that, J.B.’s table was the only one occupied.
Winslow removed a cigarette from his case, failing to offer a smoke to the others.
“Thanks for meeting with us, J.B.,” Miller said. He was of average height, maybe two or three inches taller than J.B., and average build. He had an unremarkable round face topped with neatly parted brown hair, and the dark suit he wore looked just like any other businessman’s. He was the type of person who smiled apologetically when he had to break bad news, grinned broadly when he made a joke, and guffawed loudly when he heard one. Miller was everyone’s friend, but J.B. had heard that once he put you on his other list, he was a man to be feared.
“Well, J.B., as you may know, Sheriff Bartrum, Lionel, and I are part of the American Protective League,” Miller continued. J.B. nodded—he had not known that, but it helped explain why this disparate group was sitting together. The APL was a citizens’ enforcement league, deputized by the Department of Justice to make sure their fellow Americans weren’t fomenting dissent, interfering with the draft, or disparaging the war effort. J.B. knew the APL kept watch over certain people, making sure no one was agitating against the war or hoarding food, and he’d read in the papers about raids the APL had carried out in other parts of the country, rounding up slackers who hadn’t enlisted for the draft and carting them off to prison. It was news to J.B. that there was an APL in Timber Falls, but maybe its secretiveness was key to its success. “I called you here,” Miller said, “because of what you mentioned about your trip last weekend to Commonwealth.”
J.B. had told him of the sign, the quarantine, the armed guards. He nodded, and the other men rolled their eyes at the mention of that laughingstock of a town.
Miller’s voice was smooth, calm, but it had an unmistakable tone of purpose. “This morning I got to thinking there could be more going on in Commonwealth than we realize.” He made quick eye contact with all his listeners. “I’m afraid it might have something to do with what happened at Fort Jenkins last week.”
The other men nodded, and J.B. realized again he was the only one on the outside. With his forefinger, he traced the cool edge of his sweating glass.
“What happened at Fort Jenkins?” he asked.
II
“What’s going on?”
Philip heard the soldier’s voice calling from the cellar. “Hey, you there?”
“I’m here,” Philip replied. Ever since Mo had closed the door, Philip had stood there, paralyzed. “We have to stay here for a while.”
Footsteps. The soldier was climbing the stairs. Philip’s eyes were still adjusting to the dark, but he could see the man’s face, see his stubbled cheeks and his thick brows. The whites of his eyes seemed to shine.
“There a problem?”
Philip realized his legs were shaking. He decided to sit down, placing the rifle before him and lowering himself carefully lest the butt of the pocketed pistol jab his thigh. The floor was filthy with dirt and old sawdust and sundry other grime, but he leaned back on his hands nonetheless.
The building stank of mildew, and the lack of any light unnerved Philip in a way he didn’t want to admit. Each footstep was loud in the building’s emptiness, a hollow sound that perfectly echoed the feeling in his gut.
“I was going to help you,” Philip said. “Now we’re both stuck here.”
The soldier thought. “You’re in trouble with your buddies now?”
“We have to wait,” Philip said angrily. “We just have to wait here awhile.”
The soldier nodded. “You live in quite a friendly town.”
“I’ve already been too friendly to you.” Philip tried to imagine the horrified or disappointed reactions of Charles, of Rebecca, of Elsie. He tried not to think about Graham.
Philip and the soldier were not far from each other at this point, but somehow it didn’t seem to matter anymore. Philip was now tarred, just like the soldier. He too was an outsider, not to be trusted.
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