She shrugged nervously. “He wasn’t sure. He meant to go by Leonard’s place last night to check on him, but he never got around to it.”
Banes had told the foremen at the mill to report any absences to him, but this news hadn’t reached him. Too many foremen had become guards, and too many instructions had been forgotten.
“Does Leonard live alone?”
Jeanine nodded.
Banes asked her for Leonard’s address, and as he prepared to leave, Jeanine asked with a quivering voice whether her husband had the flu.
“It could be,” Banes admitted reluctantly. “But maybe not. Just do what I told you to care for him, and he should pull through in a few days.” He took a step for the door, then thought of one last thing.
“In the meantime, don’t leave the house at all.”
Banes knocked on Leonard’s door, hard. He rapped again, three times, so forcefully it hurt his knuckles. There was no sound, just the noise of the mill in the distance. He tried to peer in the windows, but the curtains were drawn.
He had taken off his mask as he’d left the distraught Jeanine, but he put on a new one before opening the door to Leonard’s house. The door was unlocked, as was the norm in Commonwealth.
Inside, it was dark and the air was stale and cold, as if the house hadn’t been heated the previous day.
“Leonard?” No reply. “Leonard? This is Dr. Banes.”
The small parlor was unkempt, the home of a bachelor millworker. Banes’s footsteps on the wood floor were loud as he walked toward what he gathered was the bedroom. He noticed a sickening smell.
Banes had feared he was walking into a mausoleum the moment he had opened the front door, and his fears were confirmed when he reached the bedroom. Inside it, lying on the bed, was a still form, the blankets covering only the feet, as if Leonard had tried to kick them off in his final throes of agony. On the wall beside him was blood that had been coughed there or perhaps wiped by his fingers, which were also a dark red. There was blood on the pillow and blood on the sheets, and his entire jaw looked as if he had dipped it in reddish black ink. His eyes were white and opened wide, so wide Doc wondered if his eyelids had somehow been sucked into the space behind them. There was blood on the small table beside the bed, blood on the corner of a framed photograph that had fallen from its stand, an old portrait of a stern father and expressionless mother and three young sons in suit coats and shorts, blood on its lower left-hand corner and blood in the center, where he must have brushed against it one last time.
It had begun.
III
That morning Philip heard the first whistle, but something kept him from rising. It certainly wasn’t the pleasantness of his dreams; indeed, he’d suffered nightmares in which he was chased by various pursuers—people from the town, his mother’s ex-boyfriends, ex-schoolmates living all across the West, people he’d never met. They came after him for different reasons: for shooting the first soldier, for not shooting Frank, for reading those silly fighter-pilot books, for failing to grasp all that Charles had taught him at the mill, for reasons he didn’t understand.
Despite being intermittently awakened by those unpleasant visions, Philip stayed in bed because the outside world seemed so much less welcoming than he’d expected. He had thought the previous evening would feel somehow triumphant as he was reunited with his family, a free man. Instead, it felt like he’d walked into some altered rendition of his life, painted by a malevolent artist intent on revising Philip’s most halcyon memories. As if not the flu but some other plague had descended upon the town while Philip was away, robbing everything of its warmth and casting a sinister hue on every familiar sight.
Rebecca had served supper even though Charles had not yet returned from the storage buildings; when Philip had asked why they weren’t waiting, she had replied in an odd tone that Charles would probably be late tonight. His words were still ringing in Philip’s head, the accusation that Frank could be a spy, something about three dead soldiers. Laura had asked a few innocent questions about how Philip had passed his time in there and what the soldier had been like, and Philip had felt Rebecca’s eyes on him as he answered. Charles still wasn’t home an hour after supper, but when Philip had asked Rebecca, she changed the subject, commenting on how tired he must be and saying perhaps he’d like to lie down early tonight. He felt strangely scared by her manner and by the look he’d seen in Charles’s eyes and in Graham’s. So he had obeyed Rebecca and retired to his room, closing the door and feeling even more alone than when he’d been locked up with a stranger.
A knock on the door finally roused Philip from bed. “It’s getting late, Philip,” Charles’s voice importuned from the hallway.
As Charles walked away, Philip sat up. Waking up in his own room was reassuring, as was the ability to use an actual toilet, wash, and put on fresh clothes. When he walked into the kitchen, he saw that Rebecca and Laura had already left for school. Charles was sitting at the dining room table—normally, he would have left for the mill an hour earlier.
“I’m sorry I overslept,” Philip said.
“That’s all right. I’m sure you needed it.”
They spoke briefly about the mill, Charles catching Philip up on who had taken over which of his jobs during his absence and which tasks had gone incomplete. But they were talking around something.
“I’m sorry I let him into the town,” Philip blurted out. “I know I shouldn’t have.” He wasn’t at all sure he knew that, actually, but he knew it was the right thing to say.
“It’s all right,” Charles said. “You shouldn’t have been left alone at the post.”
Philip recapped the events of his last guard shift for Charles, omitting certain facts. He and Frank had shot at each other, Philip said, though he was vague on how the shooting had started. They had run through the woods trying to hide from each other, but Philip had managed to sneak up on the intruder and take his gun. He had realized then that he and the soldier had had such close contact that the quarantine was effectively broken, so he hadn’t known what else to do.
“I’m sorry,” Philip said again. “I know there are things I should have done differently, but right when it was happening…” He let his voice trail off. He still barely understood what had happened in the woods, whether Frank really had gone easy on him, as he’d claimed, or whether Frank would have killed him if not for stumbling and losing his gun.
“I blame myself,” Charles said. “We all assumed no one would try to come to Commonwealth, and that if anyone did, they would surely heed our warnings. I never imagined any confrontations like the two you’ve had.”
Philip thought. “Where is Frank, anyway?”
Charles shifted in his seat and put his palms on the table. “Philip, we can’t let that man go. We need to hold him here until we can allow someone from the army to take him back.”
“Why can’t we just let him leave? He’s afraid that if he doesn’t get back to his base soon, he’ll get in trouble.”
“Did he say that?”
Philip shrugged. “I guess he—”
“Did he seem anxious to get away?”
“Neither of us were very happy being stuck there, sir.” Philip went on, “Do you actually think he’s a spy? He seems like a good fellow. He’s just—”
“The army is looking for German spies who killed three soldiers. It happened just a few days before he showed up here. We asked him about it and…I don’t believe his answer.”
Philip sat there, taking the information in. “Why don’t you believe him?” he asked.
Charles explained that Frank came from the army cantonment but claimed to have been in a naval accident. Even if that was true, Frank would have to be a very poor soldier to trek from the Sound all the way here to Commonwealth, rather than in the direction of the cantonment. And surely he would have passed some other town; if he was so anxious to return to the base, why didn’t he stop in the first town he came to? Why had he stopped here, at a town far re
moved from all others? Charles was certain Frank was lying; the only question was whether he had come to Commonwealth solely to escape his pursuers or if there was a deeper plot at work.
“We offered to contact the base and straighten everything out, but he asked us not to. Why would an innocent man do that? He lied to you when he said he wanted to go back to the base. Now, we don’t know much about what happened there, but clearly he’s…done something.”
At those two hollow words, Philip folded his arms over his chest as if for protection. He looked away and spoke softly. “Graham and I…”
“You did the right thing then.”
Philip shook his head, gritted his teeth. “How could I have done the right thing both times?” His voice was shaking.
He had never challenged Charles before, and he feared that his father, though slow to anger, would chastise him. But he did not.
“Philip, if these men were both spies, then that means that what Graham did last week was shoot a German spy. That changes things, you see?”
It doesn’t feel any different, Philip thought. He looked up at Charles. “Maybe I should talk to him.”
“No.” Charles’s voice was forceful, and he said that with a brief shake of his head, as if punctuating it with the fall of a hammer. “I don’t think that would be wise.”
“Maybe I can straighten everything out if we just talk a little while. This is all wrong—it’s just a misunderstanding. No one’s been acting right since the quarantine started, and now—”
Charles opened his mouth as if to speak, and that was enough to stop Philip. Philip didn’t even know what he was saying, really. He was just flailing about, looking for something: explanations, justice, order. He wanted Charles to be able to deliver those, wanted it so much that he sat there mute, hoping that whatever Charles was about to say would make everything right. But Charles didn’t continue, and they sat there looking at each other for a moment.
Finally, Philip looked away. He felt a cruel headache fumbling with his forehead, trying to gain a firm hold of his temples. “Are people angry at me?”
“No. People understand.”
“Graham didn’t look too happy to see me.”
“Graham has been working very hard. He’s a bit worn down at the moment, but I’m sure he’ll come around. Don’t take it personally if he doesn’t want to see you yet—he’s worried about his family.”
Philip’s best friend wanted to avoid him, and the man he’d been playing cards with for two days was supposedly a spy. The man Graham had shot was also a spy, a murderer himself. None of this made any sense.
Charles was about to tell Philip to get dressed for work when a knock came at the door.
It was Doc Banes, and he’d been running.
IV
News of Leonard’s death spread like a forest fire through the town. Charles and Doc Banes decided that despite the risk of hysteria, people needed to know the truth so they could take precautions against infection.
They quarantined Yolen’s house, with a guard assigned to the front door. It was as if everyone in town were slowly being divided into guards and the guarded.
Charles sent word through his foremen, letting them know more guards were needed and that they must report any absences immediately.
Philip, who had gone to work at the mill while Charles and Doc Banes made their plans, felt a special dread as he headed out for his daily errands that day. It was eleven in the morning when he left the office, walking down the long plankway that overlooked the mill, breathing in the sawdust and pine. Below him a group of sawyers was manning the gang saws, taking out the fresh-cut wood and separating the tie cuts and shingle bolts. The first time Philip had accompanied Charles to a mill, he’d been stunned by the constant buzzing that seemed to wrap itself around his head. Now it fit as comfortably as the wool cap he donned as he walked outside.
It was getting colder, with a stiff wind coming in from the river. To his right was the gaping mouth of the mill, opening up to the river beyond. A long and continuous supply of logs floated into the building, ordered by the chained booms that the river hogs controlled. And there was the river, alive with movement: hundreds of logs floated upon it, many of them giving ride to the river drivers themselves, men armed with peaveys and spiked poles and cant hooks. From a distance, it seemed like those medieval devices were an extension of the men’s arms, as if the drivers themselves had become constructions of metal and wood. They jabbed and poked at logjams, they jostled recalcitrant drifts that were on the verge of straying downstream. What looked at first glance like chaos was in fact orderly and smooth, the gently bobbing traffic completely under the river drivers’ control.
Philip had been stunned when Graham told him that many river drivers didn’t even know how to swim, but after months of watching them work, he understood that they didn’t have to. An experienced river hog was as likely to slip into the depths as a tree squirrel was to plummet to the earth.
Philip saw the narrow skidways cut into the hills that rose from the riverbanks, saw fresh wood that had been firmly planted in the ground a moment ago sliding down the chutes, disappearing beneath the chilly surface for a second or two, then reemerging, the light yellow of its cut wound poking up first. From where Philip stood, the jacks were invisible; the constant procession of logs floating down the river was the only evidence of their existence.
Despite all this activity, the sight was still unusual for the absence of boats navigating to the mill and hauling off stacks of timber, the absence of draft horses painstakingly dragging carriages of cordwood to the pull-ups. As hard as everyone was working to maintain the mirage that all was normal in Commonwealth, the lack of buyers and shippers—of outsiders—was jarring.
Philip walked out to the narrow dock built alongside the sorting gap. The water below was shallow and clear, and beneath the glassy surface, Philip could see deadheads lying on the river bottom, useless wood that had sunk and would be cleared away only when the pile threatened to rise above the waterline.
Philip had found that river drivers were the least conversational of millworkers, their jobs requiring them to operate at an apex of concentration and equilibrium. The river chief was a laconic man named O’Hare, a lanky redhead who would have been tall even if not for the two-inch spikes on the caulked boots that he and his fellow river hogs wore.
Philip’s steps were silent, but O’Hare felt him coming from twenty feet away, felt the extra weight on the deck. When he saw Philip, O’Hare reached into his pocket and used a handkerchief to cover his mouth and nose.
Philip stopped several feet away. “M-morning,” he stammered. “How are the numbers today?”
O’Hare eyed him with suspicion, then bent down and reached into a small metal box with his free hand to pull out some papers. Behind him, some of the river drivers had allowed their attention to stray from their duties and were watching.
The river chief read the figures to Philip, who recorded them in his book. The pencil shook in Philip’s hand under the glare of so many squinting eyes.
“All right, then,” O’Hare said, which was what he always said to conclude their brief interactions. But instead of turning back to his work, as he usually did, he stayed where he was, as if to watch Philip go.
“One other thing,” Philip said. “Any unexpected absences?”
“Three guys haven’t shown,” O’Hare said, and told Philip their names. Then Philip, the mill pariah, walked back to the office as fast as he could.
“Where’ve you been, girl?” Elsie’s mother barked as Elsie walked into the store. Elsie had stayed after school later than usual to help Mrs. Worthy clean up. Now that Philip was out of the storage building, she and her teacher had resumed their routine of discussing the day’s events and planning for tomorrow’s lessons.
Elsie apologized for being late. “I didn’t think there’d be as much for me to do here.” An unfamiliar sense of boredom had hung over her the previous afternoon as she’d helped he
r father with inventory. There had been less and less for them to do, as they were running out of stock to count, organize, and rearrange.
Elsie grabbed a broom and dustpan as a young woman entered the store.
“How’s my favorite customer this afternoon?” Flora asked. Her voice sounded different somehow.
“Worried.” The woman was one of the newest timber brides—she looked only a year or two older than Elsie. Pale blond hair, freckles high on her cheeks, thinner than most. “People are saying the flu got here after all.”
“That’s what I heard,” Flora said. “Just a few people, though. Doesn’t mean it has to get out of hand. What can I help you with?”
The woman bought some coffee and a bag of flour, one of the last in stock. “You got any more of those huckleberry jams or marmalades?”
Flora shook her head. “We’re clear out of jams. Wouldn’t mind some myself. Getting tired of nothing but butter on my bread.” She smiled, an apology mixed with a reminder that everyone was in the same situation.
“Maybe I’ll buy some extra butter while I’m here.”
The woman was barely out the door when Flora started coughing. Elsie didn’t notice it at first, but as she finished sweeping, the coughing intensified. She looked up.
“Alfred,” Flora called out when she had the breath, “you mind interrupting your busy schedule and fetching me some water?”
But Alfred was in the cellar, so Elsie put down the broom and walked over to the spigot in the back room. Her mother was still coughing when Elsie handed her the glass. “Are you all right?”
Flora quickly drained the glass, but after she finished, she grimaced as if the water hadn’t been able to wash down whatever was in her throat. She nodded. “Be fine. Just something stuck down there.”
Elsie took the empty glass and filled it up again. When she handed it back to her mother, there was a distracted look in Flora’s eyes.
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