It was the next patient who worried Banes the most.
Elsie Metzger had knocked on his door early that morning, requesting his visit. Walking into their home, he felt the noose tightening around Commonwealth’s neck.
Flora Metzger had never been so silent in her life, he thought. Her voice usually rang through the house, but Banes didn’t hear a sound as Elsie led him through the parlor, up the stairs, and into her parents’ bedroom. When he finally heard her, a moment before opening the bedroom door, it wasn’t her customary bright chatter but a cough, deep and husky.
Flora didn’t look pale yet, but she probably would soon. Her temperature was nearly 105, and she was shivering uncontrollably, her hair damp with sweat. She appeared to be covered by every blanket the family owned.
“I want to take a look at your eyes,” Banes said.
“Later. The light hurts too much.”
Flora told the doctor she’d felt fine the previous morning, but at some point in the early afternoon, it had begun. Within two hours, she’d gone from perfectly healthy to miserable. And it had only gotten worse.
“I think my legs are broke,” Flora whimpered after he’d listened to her lungs and peered into her nose and throat.
“Excuse me?”
“My legs. They’re broken.”
Banes paused. “Did you fall?”
“Don’t remember.”
Banes looked up at Elsie, hoping she might volunteer some information, but the girl’s eyes were fixed on her mother’s tensed face.
“I’ll have a look.” The doctor pulled the blankets up from the side, so Flora’s chest and neck could stay covered, and slid her nightgown up to her knees. She winced through clenched teeth as he did so, in so much pain that Banes would have expected to see shattered bones poking through her skin. Yet her thick white legs were free of the slightest bruise or inflammation. He gingerly touched one of her knees and she gasped, which triggered another coughing spell. Aches were common with the flu, but her reaction was extreme. He pulled the blankets back over her.
“There’s nothing broken. They’re just going to be sore a while.” He stepped into the hallway, Elsie following. “Has she been coughing much?”
“All night.”
Banes nodded, thinking. “Run and get your father; tell him to just close the store for now.”
By the time Elsie and her father returned, Flora was shivering so badly her teeth were chattering as loud as Elsie had ever heard. It sounded like rats gnawing through a wall.
Banes spoke to her father in the hallway, closing the bedroom door. He did not remove his mask. Elsie always felt somewhat unnerved in his presence, but now he looked particularly haunting.
He told them Flora had the flu, a bad case.
“Have any of your friends taken ill?” Banes asked. “Has anyone been coughing or sneezing in the store?”
Alfred’s face turned pale. “Just her.”
“How busy was the store yesterday?”
“Busy as it’s ever been. Everybody’s trying to get what they can.”
Banes said, “I want you to leave the store closed. Stay here and tend to your wife. And Elsie’s not to go to school.” He reached into his satchel and handed them two gauze masks from his already dwindling supply. “Wear these when you’re in her room. Wear gloves when you touch her, and wash your hands as often as possible.”
Alfred looked stunned. From behind the door, Flora started coughing again. “Doc, I can’t close the store. People are running out of food, and they need to—”
“Alfred, your wife probably caught this from someone who came to the store. God only knows who. Most likely it was someone who didn’t know he was sick, someone who didn’t feel it yet. If there’s been sickness in that store, it means anyone else who comes there could get it, too. Just stay home for a few days, until she’s recovered.”
Alfred nodded. “All right. I’ll just head back there and…put up a sign explaining things.”
Elsie didn’t like the defeated tone in her father’s voice. And her mother’s coughs were a tangible force, all but knocking on the closed door. She leaned back against the wall, hugging herself to keep from crying in front of Doc Banes, whom she never wanted to see again.
At first Banes tried to trace the emergence of the flu in Commonwealth, but every time he thought he’d found its path, the trail disappeared. Yolen was friends with Leonard, who had died within two days of falling ill. The night before Yolen had taken sick, according to Jeanine, he’d had a few drinks with his friends Otto and Ray, two rowdy shingle weavers. Ray had fallen ill the same day as Yolen and was in roughly the same condition, though not quite as advanced. Otto was one of the men who had reported to work at the mill the previous day but had left in the afternoon, overcome. By the time Banes made it to Otto’s house, the man was lying in bed, coughing and delirious. At first Otto had thought Doc Banes was his long-dead father and had launched into some sort of apology for the old man’s death. Banes had to interrupt him to ask about his symptoms.
Otto said he had felt fine, better than fine, that very morning. He had been standing at his position in the mill at about one o’clock and had abruptly felt struck down, as if by a blow square in the chest. His lungs were so constricted by coughs that he had doubled over and fallen to his knees. By the time he was able to get on his feet—with no help from his coworkers, who had backed away at the sight of his agony—his body was shaking and he felt so weak he could barely stand. How could that happen, Dad?
Banes wished he knew. He didn’t understand how Leonard had become sick, and since the victim wasn’t able to answer any questions, it seemed futile to investigate. Still, Banes asked Otto for a list of Leonard’s friends in town and made a note to visit all of them, to find out if more of them were visibly sick and, if not, to warn them to keep to themselves in case they were on the verge of showing symptoms.
But now that Flora Metzger was ill, and so many people had come through her store the day before—signing the ledger book with her pen, standing there breathing while she went on and on with one of her stories—there no longer seemed a point to tracing the flu’s spread.
Doc told worried families how to nurse their sick and told the afflicted to rest, unnecessary advice since the patients could barely raise their heads, let alone do anything else. Still, Banes wished he had a medical staff at his disposal, if only to visit each patient, but there was just one of him to answer their questions and to give them some reason to hope. He needed to see Charles and find out who else had left the mill due to illness, and he needed to get to the school and inquire about sick children and decide what to do about the youngsters with stricken parents. At the same time, there was little he could do but be a witness, a witness to events that were beyond his skill and beyond his reckoning.
Every time Banes knocked on a door, he saw people in the street watching him, faces peering at him through windows in nearby houses. Not a soul came by to inquire about their neighbors’ health or to offer aid. They simply saw Banes’s approach and retreated into the safety of their homes.
The gauze mask had become a permanent part of his face. Though he usually made his rounds on foot, using the excuse to get some exercise, he now drove through town in his horse-drawn carriage, aware that time was too precious and that, more important, he needed to maintain his energy; he could not afford to tire from too much walking back and forth across town. He wanted to see every sick person at least twice a day, but this would surely be impossible by tomorrow, if the infection rate continued at its current pace.
The symptoms were as ghastly as they were widespread. Some victims suffered nosebleeds that, combined with their coughs, often left them choking on their blood—which would explain the mess Banes had discovered in Leonard’s room. Before noon Doc’s shirt was stained by several patients’ bloody coughs; he stopped at home to change, to avoid carrying the contagion farther in his travels.
Many people were nauseated, vomiting into buckets
that their aggrieved family members could not empty quickly enough. Others had earaches and dizziness from middle ears so inflamed that Doc had already used his needles to drain the pus from four pairs of ears that day—finally, something he could do to alleviate symptoms, relieve pain. Hopefully that would quell the pounding, he told them, would cause the earth to stop wobbling around them, would ease the headaches so severe that more than one person had voiced fears that his brain was somehow growing beyond the capacity of his skull.
Banes was tired, but there were more names on his list. Again he felt a sick and surely immoral gratitude that his wife wasn’t alive to see this. She had always been such a talker, and she had hated the days he would come home too demoralized or broken by what he had seen to chat with her. But what if she were still home now—what would she think if she saw him stumble through the door and slump into his chair, staring emptily at the wall, too overcome for any words at all?
But he wasn’t home yet; there was still more to be done. And was it getting dark out already? Was this really night? Like the flu, it had come so quickly, almost without warning. Had he even eaten today? He couldn’t remember. He was sweaty from moving in and out of hot, stuffy rooms, and his clothes were a mess again from so much blood and saliva. It was indeed dark out now, but there were still others to visit, others to console. What should they do about the school? And what about the mill?
And had anyone taken away Leonard’s body yet? The town had one undertaker, an elderly man named Krugman. The small town had been filled mostly with people in the prime of their lives, and the undertaker’s services had rarely been called upon. Doc feared that the next few days would more than make up for Krugman’s prior inactivity. As Banes rode in his carriage along the river, he saw the many logs bobbing on the water’s surface like corpses, and he realized he should tell Charles to set aside some of the lesser pieces of wood. The town would need coffins—many of them.
VII
“You shot your dog?”
“Damn right I did. And it was the right thing to do.”
“I thought you liked him.”
“That ain’t the fuckin’ point. Point is, dogs can spread germs as well as anybody else.”
“Where in the hell’d you hear that?”
“It’s the truth, dammit. Dogs, chickens, anything can have the flu. And dogs wander around, go all over the damn place. What’s the point in keeping my family at home if the dog’s poking through other folks’ yards and getting sick?”
“Just can’t believe you shot your dog.”
“And you should shoot yours.”
“Shoot Ransom? I love that sonuvabitch.”
“Do you love ’im more’n you love your kids? Hell, it’s your choice. But I made mine already. I can get another damn dog once the flu’s passed.”
“The general store’s closed?”
“That’s what I heard. Flora Metzger got sick, and now Doc Banes says the store’s gotta stay shut.”
“Shit. My wife was gonna head over there later today—we’ve damn near run out of everything.”
“It sounds like your wife waited too long.”
“When’s it gonna open back up?”
“How the hell should I know? Go knock on Metzger’s door if you want—I just wouldn’t get too close to the poor bastard. Not now.”
“Whiskey, you say?”
“Yep. A small glass of the stuff, every morning. That’ll keep the flu away.”
“Huh. Never woulda figured. How ’bout moonshine or beer?”
“Hell, no. It’s gotta be whiskey. Works like a charm.”
“Mientkiewicz’s sick.”
“Him, too?”
“I just saw him. He was walking to the mill but coughing up a storm. I passed him and we looked at each other—just looked. I knew it and he knew I knew it. I guess he was hoping maybe he wasn’t so bad, you know? That maybe he’d be okay if he just tried to keep going.”
“So what happened?”
“He was about two blocks away when I saw him, and he had this guilty look in his eyes. Then he just started coughing and coughing, all doubled over and everything, so I walked away. Didn’t want to be too near him, you know?”
“I’m thinking I shouldn’t be too near you now.”
“I wasn’t that close. And after I walked a block, I turned around and looked at him again, and he was in the same damn spot. Looking at me, but this time like I was the one doing something wrong. You know? Then he waved.”
“Waved?”
“Yeah. He just kinda stuck his hand in the air, then turned around and started walking home. Kinda weird. Hope he’s okay.”
“What’s that around your neck?”
“Shut up.”
“No, what is it?”
“Garlic.”
“Garlic?”
“My wife’s idea. Says it’ll keep me healthy.”
“Does it work?”
“I don’t know. We’ll find out, I guess.”
“Bullshit.”
“No, I’m telling you it’s the truth. That big ol’ house of theirs has a goddamn giant cellar—I saw it myself one time when they had me over for dinner.”
“The house ain’t ‘big’—it’s just like everybody else’s.”
“First of all, no, the Worthys’ house is not the same. It may not be twice the size, but it’s definitely bigger than mine or yours. And since you’ve never been inside it, you’ll have to believe me. And second of all, my point is that their cellar’s so damn big they probably have more’n enough food stored away to last themselves the whole winter.”
“I just can’t see them doing that.”
“I’m telling you, that’s why Worthy wasn’t as worried about shutting the town as everybody else was. We all were worried about running out of things, but he wasn’t. He owns the mill, and he knows he has a cellar full of food and that his family’ll never go hungry.”
“Damn. That would explain a few things.”
“Stop smearing Worthy over there. Don’t believe what he’s saying, Lars.”
“Mind your own business.”
“Think about it—he closes the town, forces us all to work even though other mills are giving sick folks time off. Now we’re running short on food, and he’s in his nice big house feasting and his kids aren’t even finishing their plates. Their dogs are probably better fed than you are.”
“Shut up over there. The Worthys don’t even have a dog.”
“You know what I heard about dogs?”
“Y’all should stop talking so much. Voices spread germs.”
“Shoot. Good point.”
“So do your work and shut up.”
VIII
The following afternoon at least two people broke the doctor’s rule about staying inside as much as possible.
But Rebecca and Amelia felt they had little choice. They were walking to the community gardens together, where they were to meet three other women who helped tend the crops. Most of the gardens had been harvested already, but some of the winter vegetables remained. Normally, the women would leave them until after the first frost, but pantries were bare all across town. They could wait no longer.
The gardens had grown steadily in acreage over the past two years, with more than three dozen households contributing, planting in the spring and tending the crops throughout the year. Everything was divided equally or traded at one of the swaps in the town hall. If only they had known back in the spring that there would be a quarantine, they could have planted more, could have made the garden a greater priority. Instead, they would have to make do with what they’d planted months ago, when something like an epidemic had seemed unimaginable.
Rebecca knocked on the Stones’ door, a stack of wicker baskets in her free hand.
“I’m sorry I’m late.” She smiled. “The children were rambunctious today.”
“How are they?” Amelia asked as she closed the door behind her. She had answered the door in her coat, ready to go,
the baby swaddled in her arms. Rebecca noticed that she was not invited in.
“They don’t really understand what’s happening, which is probably for the best,” Rebecca said as they began walking. It was windier than usual as they hurried along the empty streets. She gestured to the baby. “Are you sure you’ll be all right with her?”
“I’ll have to be—I couldn’t get anyone to watch her. The neighbors all had excuses. They barely even opened their doors when I knocked.”
Rebecca nodded. They had made these plans three days earlier, right as the flu was twisting around them like some invisible choking weed. They were both nervous to be out despite the doctor’s orders, but the garden was large, and the five of them would be separated by a great distance, going about their work in near-solitude. Only when they were finished harvesting would they be close together, dividing among themselves the kale and cabbage, the carrots and beets. Surely that wouldn’t be enough time to catch something, even if one of them had something to spread. Of course, here she was walking beside Amelia, but somehow it seemed hard to imagine Amelia becoming ill, what with Graham being so protective of her. Rebecca knew that was a silly thought—no man could protect his wife from disease—but still she saw Amelia as safe.
“Are any of the children sick?”
It was unclear whether Amelia had asked this out of empathetic curiosity or out of fear that the woman beside her had spent the day in a sickroom. Rebecca scolded herself for being uncharitable.
“Three were absent today,” she said. Included in that number was Elsie, who had been kept home to care for her mother. The school had seemed emptier without Elsie’s eager presence, and Rebecca was worried about her.
They walked in silence for a moment. Rebecca thought she saw Amelia adjust her scarf so that it sat higher on her face, blocking her nose and mouth. But it was cold out, and a stiff breeze had preceded her action.
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