I’m thinking too much, Rebecca told herself. Her role as shepherd for nervous children had taken its toll on her today. She tried to focus on the good things. She cast a glance at Amelia’s waist, made herself grin. “How have you been feeling?” she asked.
Amelia smiled. Rebecca was the only person other than Graham who knew that Amelia was pregnant now, though soon it would show. Rebecca had picked up on the subtle signs that men missed, and the two had whispered about it while washing up after dinner at the Worthys’.
“I’m well, thank you. I haven’t been nearly as sick as I was with her.”
“Are you eating well?”
“As well as I can, while trying to conserve what we have. Today will certainly help.”
They had passed the last of the houses and were walking along the narrow dirt path that headed west, up a slowly rising hill bereft of trees. As they reached the crest, they saw the community gardens before them, neatly arranged in plots that they had helped lay out two years ago, when each of them had secretly wondered if the new town would survive long enough for the gardens to be harvested the next fall.
Rebecca thought something looked odd, but perhaps it was the wind blowing leaves and vines through the thin rows, throwing old fragments of pumpkins into the leeks, casting the purple-veined stalks of beets into the greens. But as she came closer, she understood. She dropped the baskets, and Amelia gasped.
The garden had been ransacked. While Amelia stood there, the oblivious child in her arms, Rebecca jogged forward into the carrot patch and saw the freshly torn earth, the discarded pieces of stalks and leaves lying about. She wandered on, saw a few shreds of cabbage but no heads despite the rows upon rows she had planted. The carrots and beets had been unearthed and spirited away, as had the leeks. The winter squash—which would have filled so many for so long, would have helped stretch out the small quantities of remaining meat—had vanished. There were but a few remaining, buried under the dirt that had been torn out during the frantic excavations.
Rebecca felt the prick of tears starting in her eyes as she hurried from plot to plot, hoping in vain that the scavengers had tired at some point, had left a section untouched in their hurry. But the entire garden had been plundered.
“Who would do this?” Amelia asked as tears came to her eyes, too.
Rebecca watched as the wind scattered her baskets. “Anyone.”
IX
After standing guard outside the storage building from sunrise to sunset, Graham returned home for dinner. His wife had yet to start cooking, however, and was pacing in the kitchen. When she told him the news about the gardens, he nodded in sympathy, but he was not terribly surprised.
“People are panicking,” Graham said. “More folks are getting sick—lots. Flora Metzger’s one—they’ve even closed the general store.”
“There must be some way to find out who did it, Graham. Someone out there has acres of vegetables in their house.”
“I’m not about to go knocking on people’s doors, not with everyone sick. We have to just leave it be.”
Millie started crying from her crib in the parlor. Amelia walked over and reached a hand down to the baby but seemed too agitated to pick her up. Graham could see she was not satisfied with his response.
“We’ll find out who it was eventually,” he tried to reassure her. “Someone’ll talk, things’ll get out. But we can’t worry about it now.”
“This never would have happened before,” she said.
“I can go hunting in a couple days. One deer’d last us a long time.”
Amelia shook her head. “I feel like we should start locking our doors. People know how big our back garden is.” She had finished harvesting the last of their own vegetables the previous day. “I don’t want our cellar broken into.” She laughed sadly. “Our doors don’t even have locks.”
He held her, and her nails dug into the back of his shirt.
“I’ll build some latches on the doors tonight,” he told her as she started crying again despite herself. He rubbed her neck and promised, “No one’s breaking into this house.”
Later that evening Graham was busily constructing latches for the front and back doors while Amelia knit another sweater for the baby. He knew he should be trying to catch up on sleep, but there was no end of things to do. He was tired, but it felt good to do something that soothed his wife, something other than standing all day or night with a gun in his hands. It had felt good to hold her and let her cry on his shoulder. She didn’t do it often—it took a hell of a lot to upset her, he’d learned—and over the last few weeks, they’d had few quiet moments alone. They had not held each other like that since the day of the first soldier.
She seemed to regret having mentioned the need for latches, twice telling Graham that he needn’t trouble himself after all, that he should let himself rest. But both times he shook his head. She was right about locking their doors, and he could sleep later. At one point she commented that this was one of the first times in days he’d been home in the early evening for more than a quick supper before heading back out to stand guard somewhere. She’s right, he thought. I should probably see if any of the guards need to be spelled.
It was past ten when he finished the latches. As he put his tools away, he felt her walk up behind him and put her arms around his waist, her hands flat against his chest. He allowed himself to relax slightly, lowering his shoulders a bit so she could kiss the back of his neck softly. He closed his eyes. But then he took her hands away and turned around.
“I need to visit Mo,” he told her. “I’m sorry.”
She kissed him on the lips. “You have to see him this late?”
Graham wanted so badly to stay, but he knew what he had to do. “I do. I have to tell him he needs to stand guard tomorrow morning—the fellow who was supposed to is sick.”
He was lying. He wasn’t sure he had ever lied to his wife before, but even if he hadn’t, this was a white lie. Tiny, microscopic. And it was a lie for good reasons. It was a lie with a halo atop its head.
She relented, knowing there was no way she could talk him out of anything relating to guard duty. “Will you be long?”
“I might be. I’m sorry.”
“Maybe you should go to Philip’s instead,” she said. “His house is closer.”
“I don’t think Philip is working guard duty anymore. I have to see Mo.”
As he walked toward the closet to retrieve his jacket, she found herself saying, “I feel bad for Philip. I’ve heard people saying it’s his fault that people in town are sick, but I can’t believe that. It doesn’t make sense.”
Graham put on his jacket and stopped for a moment before the door. “You don’t think so?”
“I don’t know.” She shrugged, then her voice became lighter, as if she realized too late that it had been a mistake to bring this up. “Maybe we’ll never know how it happened. He let a man in, but they’re both still healthy, aren’t they? Maybe he did the right thing letting that man in.”
Graham was frozen, stunned. “It was not the right thing.” His voice was as loud as it had ever been in his wife’s presence. Amelia shuddered. “If that was the right thing, then what does it make what I did?”
He stood there, almost daring her to answer. He could not keep the anger from coloring his face, nor the pain, the pain that had left everything else exposed, raw.
She held up a hand. “Graham, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean it that way.” She stepped toward him, but he turned back around.
“I need to see Mo.” He quickly moved to the door, closing it behind him as he escaped into the night.
It was cold out, but it could have been far colder and he wouldn’t have felt it. He seethed, each footstep pounding into the earth. Did even his wife think he’d done the wrong thing? He tried to tell himself she was just confused. But what she had said made him realize all the more strongly that what he was about to do was the right thing. Was necessary. No one else seemed to understand, but
he saw it now with a clarity he had not been granted in days, and the vision stirred him. There was something he could do to redeem himself, redeem Philip, redeem the entire town. He only hoped he wasn’t too late.
X
The next day thirty-two sick men were absent from the mill, the lumber camps, and the river crews. Many of those men had wives and children who were also ill, Doc Banes had told Charles and Philip that morning as he’d stuffed the newest list of addresses into his pocket and headed out the door. The numbers were growing at an astounding rate—Banes figured the sick could number more than a hundred within two days.
Depending on when Leonard had first become sick, this was only the fourth or the fifth day that people in Commonwealth had been infected. Leonard already had three companions in death, including his friends Otto and Ray, who had both joined him the previous evening. The speed with which they had succumbed—the ravishing violence of this flu—shocked Dr. Banes.
Right before leaving, Banes had said to Charles, almost offhand, that Flora Metzger was among the sick and that the general store was closed.
Philip froze. Then he interrupted the doctor and asked how Elsie and Alfred were doing.
“They seemed healthy when I saw them last night.”
Philip faced his desk, too overcome to let Charles or the doctor see his reaction. He stared at the pages and charts before him, unable to think of anything except the fact that Elsie was now confined to a sick house, that she had to watch her mother suffer, had to fear that the same fate awaited her as well.
Philip was useless that day, unable to concentrate. He wanted to go straight to Elsie’s door but knew he could not. There was nothing he could do, and Charles needed help in the office. Besides, Charles was friends with Mr. Metzger and with several of the sick workers; surely he was as worried as Philip was about Elsie. Philip thought about Graham, how he always seemed able to contain his emotions and focus on the task at hand, and tried to imitate that strength.
During the day, Philip collected reports from the foremen: twelve more men had reported sudden illness and left for home, bringing the total absentee number to forty-four. Each hour the ranks of the sick grew. Yet there was no companionship in it, as they were all isolated in their semi-delirious states, alone with their fevers and chills and strange waking dreams that seemed to talk to them like voices from beyond the pale.
That afternoon Banes visited the office again for a brief status report, and Philip asked if there was any more news on the Metzgers. Banes shook his head, saying only “Mrs. Metzger is much worse.”
“Maybe I should go by and see if they need any help or—”
“Don’t do that,” Banes said, stopping even as he was nearly out the door. It was as though Philip had proposed burning down the mill. “Don’t visit anyone who’s sick. Don’t try to help—all you’ll do is get sick yourself.”
Banes turned and left before Philip could say anything more.
Philip stayed at the office past the point where there was anything to do. He was afraid of bumping into millworkers on the way home, afraid of their suspicious eyes and stares of blame, so he waited until quitting time had long passed and he figured the streets would be deserted.
“Go on ahead,” Charles had said, “I’ll be home shortly.”
Philip’s stomach had been bothering him all that day—he’d been too nervous to eat since hearing about Mrs. Metzger, and as he walked out of the mill and down the long street leading to town, he felt a bit unsteady on his feet. With his hands stuffed into his pants pockets as protection from the surprisingly cold air, he kept his eyes on his boots as he made his way toward home.
He looked up when he heard voices. Five men stood on a street corner, their heads and shoulders illuminated by the streetlamp hanging overhead. He recognized them as millworkers but didn’t know their names—none were foremen, none had ever been introduced to him. Most of them seemed somewhat older, ten years or more beyond Graham’s age, and each possessed a slight variation of the weather-worn, beaten-down look endemic to men of their station. Four sets of eyes were aimed his way, but one man stared at the ground, seemingly held captive by a vacant despair.
“’S him,” one man said. Philip had intended to nod a polite hello, but he could tell from their tone that they weren’t interested in pleasantries.
“He’s the one brought the flu here,” another said, and Philip sensed movement toward him.
One of the men was striding into his path, followed by two of his compatriots.
“You’re Philip Worthy, right?” the man in front asked. His thick beard was dark, though the hair atop his head was dusted with gray, and his ears were oddly prominent. “I’d recognize that limp anywhere.”
Philip felt his cheeks redden, and a sick feeling surged through his stomach.
The man stepped right up to him, closer than was friendly. “You’re the one got Michael’s boy sick.”
Two men stood beside the bearded one. Behind them the other two remained, one of them still looking down at the ground with glassy eyes as he leaned against the streetlight and the other standing to that man’s side as if protecting him.
“Who’s Michael’s boy?” Philip asked weakly, trying to sound interested and harmless.
“Leave it alone, Isaac,” said the man staring at the ground. He had short brown hair, and on his chin was a sprinkle of light stubble. His voice was quiet and resigned.
Philip heard other voices coming from behind—more men emerging from the mill. He had thought everyone had left already, but apparently he was wrong.
“That’s Michael,” said Isaac, pointing back to the quiet one. “His son’s so sick the doctor says he ain’t gonna make it.”
Someone mumbled into Isaac’s ear, and he nodded. His eyes were filled with a barely contained rage, and Philip was afraid that if he looked away from them, the man would bare his teeth and let loose a piercing howl while lunging for Philip’s throat. All Philip could do was keep looking at those eyes, as if he could pin the man in place with his gaze.
Isaac was a very large man.
“We should take him into the woods,” said the third man, who had a long, thin face. The other men leaving the mill were approaching.
“What I want to know from you,” Isaac said, still staring hard at his prey, “is what in the hell you think you were doing letting that man into our town.”
“Leave it alone, Isaac,” Michael repeated. He still had not moved from the streetlight, his head hanging so forlorn it looked almost like he had been tied to the pole and left there to die.
“I want to hear him answer for himself.”
Philip hoped that Charles was part of the group of approaching men, but he could tell from the voices that he was not.
Isaac was waiting. His breaths were even but loud, as if he expected Philip to try running away and was ready to give chase.
Men like this were the people Philip had been protecting when he stood guard. But they had been different before. The fear of the flu had changed everyone. It had cut off everyone’s breath, forcing their hearts to work twice as hard just to keep beating.
Philip was still afraid to look away from Isaac, but he shifted his eyes to the face of Michael and said, “I’m sorry about your son, mister.”
“Don’t even talk to him!” Isaac bellowed and stepped forward, forcing Philip to back up a step.
“What’s going on, fellas?” one of the men from the approaching group asked.
Michael and his companion remained silent, and Isaac appeared too enraged to reply. “It’s Philip Worthy,” the thin man said.
“He’s the bastard let the flu in,” the fifth man said in a faint Eastern European accent. “We’re trying to decide what to do wid ’im.”
“Leave it alone,” Michael said again, and again he was ignored.
“I ain’t getting that close to him,” one of the men from the new group announced, “and I say you’re crazy to do otherwise.”
Isaac back
ed off a step upon hearing this. These men blamed Philip and feared him all at once.
“I’m just trying to get home,” Philip said.
“I’d let him go,” another of the new men said. “It’s not too wise to breathe the air around him.”
“Get out of here,” Isaac barked at Philip. Philip obeyed, one foot almost tripping over the other, an awkward stutter step that surely betrayed his fear. “Walk away and keep walking—walk straight out of town, you hear?”
Philip walked as fast as he could without running, passing the houses with the shades drawn, behind which families hid for silent suppers. As he put more distance between himself and the confrontation, his gait slowed. The charged shivers of fear were fading, giving way to a sickening anger—he was angry at himself for being scared, angry for looking weak and being outnumbered. Angry for not being as tall or as broad as Isaac, for not knowing how to answer the man’s question in a way that would have satisfied any of them, or even himself.
The silence of the town was barely broken by his footsteps. The air smelled sweet, the fir trees seemingly more aromatic this time of year, the dirt and the earth releasing whatever spirit they had left before winter’s grip suffocated them over the next few months.
It was so quiet he could hear footsteps approaching from several blocks away, before he could even see the figure in the distance. It took him longer than it should have to recognize her, since she was walking with her head down, and when she did look up, a gauze mask covered half her face.
It was Elsie, Philip realized. They made eye contact, but she looked back down as if hoping he hadn’t noticed her, as if they weren’t seemingly the only two people left in the entire town.
He froze and said her name, and she stopped, too, ten feet away. She was off to his left, as if she’d hoped to pass him without stopping. Philip had seen the doctor wearing such a mask, but it swallowed Elsie’s smaller face, her eyes barely appearing over the top. Her hair was pulled back, though a few curls had escaped. They dangled in the faint wind.
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