At that point, he moved his neck, trying to get a better idea of where he was. The coffin that had once been an automobile was made of tangled pieces of metal that wrapped themselves tightly around him, some of them sharp and stabbing at his side. He tried to calm down, tried to free himself, but whatever was on top of his legs could not be moved. It was dark and he could barely see, even when his eyes had adjusted to the night, even when he’d stopped crying.
I’m alive I’m alive I’m freezing I’m alive I’m alive I’m getting out of here somehow, somehow.
During the drive, he had taken off his gloves, and his fingers were going numb. He was able to free his hands from where they had been trapped, but the metal around him was too strong to budge farther. He balled his hands into fists, he breathed on them, he stuffed them under his arms. He tried to use them to free his legs but it was useless—why wouldn’t his legs move? He couldn’t feel them, but he wasn’t sure if that meant he was paralyzed, or maybe they were broken and in so much pain they were beyond him, or maybe they were already frozen, all the nerves dead. The cold surrounded him and there was nothing he could do to protect himself.
He called out Fiona’s name again but she didn’t respond this time. He yelled again, preferring even the sound of his mother in pain to her silence. But he heard nothing. Then darkness again.
Later still he realized that part of whatever was pinning his legs was Carl’s body.
Through a shattered windshield or a torn-off door, the snow continued to fall. First the flakes melted, and then they started clinging to his face, accumulating. He would wipe them away and wake up covered again.
His heart had been racing earlier, but it felt so much slower now. Is fear something your body adapts to? He was still scared but when he tried to scream Fiona’s name his voice was like a soothing whisper, as if it were trying to tell him he shouldn’t be so worried, that he should just be still and go to sleep.
The next time he opened his eyes he found that his mother had somehow moved from wherever she had been and was huddled around him. He wasn’t shivering as much as he had been, and he said her name. She didn’t respond, but he could hear her breathing. He remembers that. Her head was behind his, and one of her arms moved, wrapping itself around his head, protecting his face from the snow.
But her arm must have moved again, because his next memory was of being buried in snow, and when he tried to clear it off, his arms did not heed his call. He was shivering again, colder than before, but not even these spasms could shake loose the snow. He stared into the whiteness as if the power of his gaze could melt it away, he blinked furiously, but he was blind, the snow piling so high it began to glow, to burn into colors.
He tried to call for his mother a final time and realized he couldn’t even talk. The snow was spangled with color, as if a rainbow had exploded into thousands of tiny teardrops. He squinted to make sense of things and the dots of color danced, revolved; he felt himself spinning. He couldn’t feel anything, couldn’t hear anything. His body, his whole being, had been reduced to nothing but his failing vision. That was all he was. The spinning made him feel weightless again, almost the same sensation as when the Ford had driven off the road, but this time it felt like a gift, bestowed on him, and the dots glowed until they were all gold, then they broke apart and washed over him.
Those feelings seemed so fresh when Philip woke up. He was in a hospital room, and Charles would soon walk in and explain what had happened, tell him that his parents had been killed. Philip would lie there and calmly tell Charles, No, they weren’t both my parents—she was my mother, but the man in the Ford was just some guy. As if this were the most important fact, as if he needed to clear up any misunderstandings before he could begin to contemplate what had just happened.
Philip gradually realized the stiffness in his limbs wasn’t from the accident but from sleeping on a cold, hard floor, and that he was not in a hospital but in the storage building. He was not eleven but sixteen, not in Everett but in Commonwealth. He sat up, the vestiges of his dream fading back into his memory. He hadn’t dreamed about the accident in a while now, and he wondered if it was his uncomfortable sleeping quarters that had evoked the memories or the sense of isolation, so familiar to him from his earlier life.
He sat up, pressing his palms against the wood floor. It was pitch black in the building. He could hear the soldier breathing heavily in his slumber; it was the only thing to remind him he was not alone.
The previous evening returned to him. Half an hour after Charles and Doc Banes had left, Philip and the soldier had heard a knock on the door. After silently counting to sixty, as he had been told, Philip had opened the door as slightly as he could and discovered two trays of food, two blankets, a box of matches, and a kerosene lamp. Philip brought the items inside, and before he had even lit the lamp, the soldier had started eating. Philip had tried not to stare at the man and the way he tore into the meat, gulping it down, and the way he drained all of his water in one long pull. So this is what a starving man looks like, Philip had thought.
There was a fireplace at the far side of the empty building, so they had wandered about, collecting scraps of wood scattered on the floor, left over from the construction. It wasn’t very good firewood, but it was better than nothing. Philip had held on to his rifle and kept the pistol in his pocket; that had impeded his efforts, but he didn’t trust the man enough to leave the firearms lying around.
Moments after gathering the wood, the soldier had fallen asleep again in front of the fire. As time dragged on, Philip also grew tired, so he had pulled a blanket over himself and put the rifle beside him, half concealed by the blanket. A young man sleeping with his rifle. They probably told you not to do it this way in the army, but he wanted to reduce the chances that the soldier would be able to take it. The pistol he stuffed in his left boot, beneath the wood block, confident the soldier wouldn’t think to look there.
Philip didn’t know how long he’d been asleep, didn’t know what time it was. He wished he hadn’t dreamed of his mother—there were enough reasons to be feeling bleak at the moment; he didn’t need to waste any emotion on her.
He lay back down, listening to the soldier’s heavy breaths. The man didn’t sound sick. The other soldier may well have been sick, but this one hadn’t so much as sneezed or coughed, not counting when he drank his water too fast and choked a bit. So there probably would be no outbreak in the town—no one would be harmed, and, hopefully, Philip would not be punished for his mistake. But that also meant he was trapped in here for two days for no good reason.
He wondered what Elsie was thinking, if she knew about his situation at all. Maybe they had called an emergency town meeting. Maybe all the workers were shaking their heads at the weakling gimp for letting the soldier in. Maybe all the younger boys were thankful they had this bad example to look down on, confident that when their time came, they would pass their tests with honor. Maybe Elsie would never speak to him again. Maybe Laura would face the unenviable task of having to defend her brother’s actions in the face of the other schoolkids’ taunts. Or maybe what he had done was indefensible, even to a sister. Not really blood, of course, but family nonetheless. Perhaps that was the difference—that a mistake like this was what would make a family that wasn’t really your family turn against you. The Worthys would cast him out of their clan, considering his brief time with them nothing but a regrettable error of judgment on their part, a story they would occasionally tell others after the passage of many years: Oh yes, once upon a time we adopted a son. Seemed a nice boy—shame how it turned out.
But would even his true mother have accepted him after something like this? She had always seemed so close to leaving him, had used that threat to cow him into obeying her. Maybe a transgression like this would have provided her the perfect excuse to take the next night train without him.
Philip closed his eyes, trying to remember her without anger. It was cold in the storage building, but he had certainly surv
ived worse. It didn’t matter anymore, he told himself. She hadn’t left him—for all her flaws and all her threats, she’d never walked out. The crash wasn’t her fault, nor was it punishment for any sins she might have committed. It had just happened. Sometimes things just happened.
The flu had just happened. So he would wait in here for two days, then he would be released, and normal life would resume. He clung to this hope more tightly than he could cling to wakefulness, and soon he was asleep again.
VI
While the rest of Commonwealth slept, Deacon stood guard outside the storage building.
The sky was clear and the glow of the nearly full moon seemed unusually powerful, as though that one tiny circle, if punctured, would flood the world with so much brightness that every last pine needle would be illuminated, all the trees aglow.
Beyond the storage building, Deacon could dimly see an outline of the Cascades’ foothills. The trees beyond the building would have been too deep in the blackness to be visible if not for the moonlight, which coated them with an almost metallic shine. They glinted like blades in the distance.
Deacon was past forty, but when he was sixteen and living in Minneapolis, he had decided to become a priest, delighting his Catholic parents. They had thrown a party for him the weekend before he began seminary, and he felt he’d finally found a purpose in his life, even if he had been lying when he’d told the abbot that he’d heard the voice of God calling him. In truth, he’d only wanted to hear something. His parents, too, had wanted him to hear the voice of God, had wanted it when his grades in school had slumped and when the local druggist had caught him stealing cigars and tobacco, had wanted it when other parents had told him he was harassing their children, especially the girls. So he had prayed and studied the Bible for many a long night. He had lied about hearing God’s voice because he was tired of waiting for it, and because he assumed he would hear something eventually, would hear that voice call to him, a voice or something like it, a voice disguised as the wind or the tolling of bells at church or the announcer at the baseball games he sneaked into.
But the silence dragged on, and it worried Deacon, and as the months stretched into a second silent year, he became angry. He grew quick to argue and lashed out at his instructors; he scared parishioners on the rare occasions when the diocese allowed him to participate in mass. The silence was mocking him, mocking his earnest studies and all the hours he spent on hard floors, his knees aching. The silence and the smugly devout looks on the faces of the other deacons finally drove him to rage, until he ransacked the seminary library and hurled a Bible at a priest, fleeing into the soundless night and jumping a train up north, someplace where silence would be expected, normal. Someplace where he could be surrounded by other men who neither heard the voice of God nor expected to.
At his first lumber camp he had introduced himself by his given name, but once the other men had heard his story, they couldn’t resist calling him Deacon, either out of misguided reverence or as a taunt. The name had stuck.
The silence again settled upon Deacon as he stood there, staring. The prisoners inside the building never coughed or sneezed, never spoke loudly enough to be heard. Occasionally, the silence was broken by the hoot of an owl, but that was all. Even the wind had fled the scene.
Deacon wondered if the man in the building had brought the flu with him, wondered if he himself was only a few yards from that bit of evil. It was the invisible things that were most dangerous in this world, he knew.
His watch had stopped that morning and he’d neglected to wind it, so not even its ticking could disturb the calm. The hours passed like an unnoticed procession of ghosts. He would stay there all night, until someone showed up to take his place, and the silence would follow him home.
VII
It was surprising how dark the inside of the building was even during the day.
Philip opened his eyes to the morning wake-up whistle. Another thirty minutes or so passed, the soldier still sleeping blissfully, before Philip heard a knock on the door. It startled him so much that his legs, folded beneath him, kicked out a bit, one of them smacking the butt of the rifle. So clumsy I’m going to shoot myself, he thought, moving the rifle a few feet farther away. Still the soldier slept, heavily exhaling as if trying to shuck off a great weight. Philip thought he could probably fire a shot and the man wouldn’t wake.
Philip lit the lamp, illuminating the stark surroundings. The huge room was empty, save one of the far corners, where the possessions of Commonwealth’s few enlistees to the American Expeditionary Force were stacked. The dozen or so men who had gone off to war more than a year ago had opted to move their belongings into the storage buildings so that their homes, where they had been living for only a few months, could house new workers during their absence. Boxes were stacked in the corner, and Philip could make out such objects as a banjo and a large ceramic jug. He wondered where the men themselves were, if they were hiding in a trench or nailed inside a box.
Philip waited the prescribed amount of time after the knock, then opened the door. It was indeed day, but barely. Two bowls of oatmeal, their contents still steaming, sat on a tray alongside two large pieces of cornbread, most likely Laura’s handiwork. Coffee, even some lumps of sugar beside the mugs. No one had taken sugar in coffee lately—more of the war rationing. He needed a moment to register the magnitude of this act. He had expected to be punished, but the sugar seemed like an apology for keeping him in here. He felt a knot in the back of his throat, and his eyes watered.
He pulled the tray in and shut the door, head down, waiting for the tears to fade.
“Mornin’,” the soldier said, sitting up as Philip carried the food toward him. “Nothing quite beats breakfast in bed.”
“I’m not your waiter,” Philip grumbled, sitting down by his own “bed” and placing the tray beside him.
The soldier stood up and walked over. Despite his cheerful spirits, he seemed almost menacing for a moment, hovering above Philip, who was divvying up the spoils.
“Why don’t you get a fire started?” Philip said, to get the soldier to move away.
“Yes, sir. Just like being in the army again—taking orders. Thank you for keeping me in my place.”
Philip had been getting cold, but the fire changed that. When he lifted his bowl and set it in his lap, he noticed that it had been sitting on top of an envelope. He picked up the letter and saw his name written in his father’s hand. He placed it on the ground beside him and covered it with a bit of blanket.
The soldier sat back down, and Philip handed him one of the bowls and a mug of coffee. Philip used two lumps of sugar and handed the soldier the others.
“Coffee and sugar,” the soldier said. “Haven’t had two lumps in a while. I normally don’t take it that way, but I might as well treat myself.”
After a mouthful of oatmeal, the soldier noticed that there was a discrepancy in the portions.
“How come you get all the cornbread?”
“Because my sister made it for me.” Philip replied without looking at the soldier, but still he sensed the man smiling.
“Awfully nice sister you got.”
They ate in silence for a moment.
“Aren’t you about old enough to be having a sweetheart cook for you instead of a sister?”
“What’s it to you?”
The soldier’s smile widened.
They finished their meal in silence. Philip still felt guarded around this man, uncomfortable in his weirdly dual role of being both the man’s guard and co-prisoner.
Philip noticed while they ate that the soldier’s right fingers were wounded, red marks gashed along the upper and middle knuckles. Scabs were just starting to form.
The soldier coughed suddenly. It started as a short cough, perhaps even a clearing of the throat, but it spawned several more, a long succession growing louder and more forceful. Philip turned his head away, considered standing up and walking to the other side of the room. Finally,
the soldier stood, coughing still, and wandered over to the fire. His coughing grew calmer, and then he made a short retching sound. He spat something into the fire.
He walked back toward Philip, picked up his mug, and drained the last of his coffee. He seemed fine.
“Don’t suppose there’s a bathroom around here?”
“I don’t think so.”
“Should we pick different corners of the building?” The soldier smiled. “I’ll crap in one side and you crap in the other?”
Philip smiled despite himself, unsure whether he was being joshed or if the man was serious.
“Hey, he can smile,” the soldier said. “There’s a start. Stop being so grumpy, kid, or I’ll piss on you while you’re sleeping.”
“Check the cellar,” Philip said, trying not to laugh. “Maybe there’s a hole or something.”
After the soldier had descended the stairs, Philip reached under his blanket and tore open the letter. Charles had written it the night before. Philip wondered if his father had had as difficult a time sleeping as he had.
Philip—
It pains me to think of how you must be feeling right now. I apologize again for the situation, but Dr. Banes has impressed upon us all the necessity of quarantining the soldier, and since you and he had come into such close contact, we felt we had no choice. The feeling of standing there talking to you through those walls was a terrible one.
It is still unclear to us what exactly transpired while you were at the guard post, but there will be plenty of time for explanations later. I have my suspicions as to why you acted as you did, but I want you to know that I do not rush to judgment. I feel I am to blame for putting you in an impossible and thankless position, and for that as well I apologize. You did yourself and this town proud when you and Graham defended us before, and whatever happened earlier today is something of which I am sure we can be proud as well.
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