An hour later, Philip walked up to the Metzgers’ front door. Charles had sent him home minutes ago, after meeting with the foremen and telling them to pass on word of the mill’s closing and the quarantine’s end. Charles had stayed behind to finish some paperwork, and Philip was hoping to get a head start on the millworkers.
But he could not bring himself to pass by the Metzgers’ door, despite what Charles had said. He took off his cap, holding it as he knocked.
On the third knock, Mr. Metzger answered, still looking like he hadn’t slept.
“Philip.” He had always been a quiet man, but his voice was weaker than usual.
“Mr. Metzger, I just wanted to express my condolences for your wife.” Philip hadn’t planned out what to say. He tried to look at the man’s face but found it too difficult. “Coming by the store and hearing her tease me has always been the best part of my job, sir. I’m…really going to miss her.”
He finally dared to look back at Metzger’s face, and he didn’t like what he saw.
“Go home, Philip.”
Metzger shut the door.
Philip stood there, stunned by the abrupt dismissal. He put his cap back on and wondered if Elsie had been nearby, if she had heard Philip’s voice. He stayed by the door an extra moment, in case she might throw it open and call out to him. But the door stayed closed, and he finally headed for home.
XIX
During the meeting with the foremen, Rankle had stood there with others, nodding patiently. He had told Charles and Doc Banes of the missing soldier while Philip had gathered the foremen, but that fact seemed almost trivial compared to the enormity of the mill’s closing. Whether or not the soldier was indeed a German spy who had spread disease seemed hopelessly irrelevant now that each man had before him the task of saving the sick and protecting the healthy. The people of Commonwealth could no longer concern themselves with anything other than the flu.
Which was why Charles hadn’t even thought to tell Philip of Rankle’s discovery until hours later. The thought of leaving the mill felt as horrible to Charles as if he were abandoning a child on a city sidewalk, and the guilt and the fear that this was a terrible and irreversible mistake clung to him. He reviewed his notebooks and charts and tried to calculate the impact of a day’s closure, or a week’s, or three. Now that the quarantine was broken, perhaps Charles could contact his buyers, could invite the boats to once again wind their way down the river and begin taking the huge stockpile they’d amassed since the quarantine had begun over two weeks ago. Metzger would be able to replenish his store, and even if his mourning delayed him a few days, families who were still healthy would be able to shop for necessities in Timber Falls. Perhaps the healthy could shop for the sick, arrange deliveries to make sure those most in need of sustenance would not go without. Perhaps breaking the quarantine would actually help the town when it needed it most.
Then again, with the mill closed, there would be no workers to load the boats. And what if those other towns were still so sick that their businesses were shuttered? And how could Commonwealth’s current mood give Charles any faith that people would start delivering food to one another despite the profound risks such altruism carried? Charles sat in his office for a full three hours after everyone else had abandoned it. Finally, he stood up and gazed through the window that looked out onto the main floor, all those inert machines and the stunning silence. He turned off his lamp and put the mill behind him.
The afternoon was silent as a Sunday. There were no sounds of distant saws, no echoing thooms of heavy trunks landing on the wet earth, no persistent roar and clatter emanating from the mill. It was quiet and it was cold and it felt exactly the way weather should feel if it were trying to mimic death.
When Charles came home, Rebecca and Laura were playing cards in the parlor, as if it had been a normal day and not one on which Rebecca had announced that the school would close until further notice. Philip was in his room.
It was nearly time for supper when Charles remembered what Rankle had told him about the spy, remembered Philip’s strange and unfortunate attachment. He knocked on Philip’s door and found his son sitting on his bed reading some letter that he hurriedly placed beneath the folds of his bedsheet.
“He’s gone?” Philip said when Charles tried to explain.
Charles nodded, still perplexed by his son’s fealty to the man who surely was a spy—Charles believed it now more than ever—and told Philip what Rankle had discovered. No one knew how the man had escaped from his chains, but it didn’t matter. The soldier was no longer their problem, and they had no shortage of problems at the moment.
After Charles left, Philip sat in bed, thinking. Frank was gone, trekking through the woods to Vancouver. Philip didn’t understand how Frank had escaped, or how he could possibly make it to Canada now that it was growing so much colder. Philip had been planning to send him on his way with a bagful of food and some warmer clothes—how would he make it without them?
Philip suddenly had the thought that Frank might not have run yet—that he might have chosen to hide in someone’s cellar or closet for one last night, waiting to steal some food and clothes and then make his escape. Philip latched on to this idea, determined to see the empty prison with his own eyes.
Charles was in the parlor and saw Philip donning his jacket. “Where are you going?”
“I left something at the mill—I’ll be quick” was Philip’s terse reply. He grabbed a lamp and walked out the door before he could hear a response.
It was cold, and the evening winds had begun to fling themselves at the town’s closed doors and shuttered windows. The sky’s color was draining away, revealing the darkness that had been hiding behind the clouds, crouching in anticipation of the bitter black night to come.
Philip walked as quickly as he could, and when he reached the dead-end street, he marveled at how different the storage building looked without a guard or two standing before it. He opened the door and the lamplight led the way before him, as did the echoes of his footsteps. When he reached the top of the stairs to the cellar, he saw light coming from below.
Someone was down there.
Philip felt his heart beat harder than before, and though he tried to control his emotions, he couldn’t stop the pounding. For some reason, he didn’t call out a greeting, choosing to let his footsteps reveal his entrance and trusting that whoever was down there was no threat to him. He walked down the steps slowly, and when he reached the bottom, the light from his lamp joined with that of the other lamp, which sat in the center of the room as if it had been left behind.
But Jarred Rankle sat on the ground, leaning against the wall. “Philip,” he said, his voice calm. “What brings you here?”
“I just…wanted to take a look around,” Philip replied uncertainly.
Rankle had a sad look in his eyes, and he wasn’t wearing a mask. Rankle seemed to trust that Frank’s germs or spirit or contamination had fled along with him.
Philip felt uncomfortable—Rankle was a trusted family friend, but his presence here was a mystery. Still, Philip walked toward the post where Frank had been chained. The chains lay in limp coils as if they’d never had the strength to contain a man and had simply given up the ruse. Philip was taking it all in when something caught his eye.
It was the photo of Michelle. Philip picked it up and stood staring into her eyes as if hoping she would explain. Philip would have expected Frank to leave behind his boots before this picture. Could he have been a spy all along, and the photo no more than a prop to lend shading to his false character?
Rankle didn’t ask what Philip was looking at—he must have already picked it up himself, already had these thoughts, already dropped the photo back on the ground. Then Philip’s eyes were drawn to something else. He crouched back down and inspected the strange red stain on the floor by the wall, a darkness that seemed to bleed from the earth itself. He had actually stepped on it a moment ago, and his foot must have kicked away some of the di
rt that had apparently been brushed over it. He reached forward and swept away more of the dirt, revealing an ever larger, reddish black stain that Philip knew could be only one thing.
Philip stood up and took several steps back. He still held the picture. He looked at Rankle, who met his eyes evenly.
“I don’t know anything more than you,” Rankle said. “He was gone this morning. We saw the break in the wall upstairs, figured that’s how he got past us. Then I came back and looked around some more.”
Philip felt a quiver in his gut that he could contain only by forcing himself to breathe slowly.
“What did you do to him?”
“I just told you. I didn’t do anything.”
Philip swallowed, steadied himself.
“Who was on guard duty last night?” Philip looked at the floor when he asked this, but when no reply came, he shifted his gaze back to Rankle, who was also staring at the blood. Philip repeated his question.
“Deacon was supposed to be,” Rankle answered with apparent reluctance. “But when I showed up this morning, Graham was here instead.”
“What do you think happened?”
The gravity of Rankle’s stare was his only reply.
Philip froze, overcome. “I need to see Graham,” he finally said, although he could feel his legs shaking. He put Michelle’s picture in his pocket.
“You’ll do no such thing,” Rankle said, standing up.
Philip was surprised at the command. “I need to see him.” His voice shook with fear and rage and the tears he was barely withholding.
“If I have to carry you back to your house right now, I will. Graham’s home protecting his family, and you’ll respect that.” Philip remembered the stories about Rankle’s own lost family. Though his words were harsh, Rankle’s voice was shaking also, evidence that this was no easier for him than it was for Philip. “You’ll tell no one about this. You’ll leave Graham alone, and you’ll go home and stay with your family until this has passed.”
As badly as Philip wanted to see Graham, he was terrified of doing so, and he felt himself withering before Rankle’s orders. He nodded, anxious to escape. He felt disoriented by the same dizzying mix of nauseated fear and confusion as when he was first trapped in the prison, and again when Charles had asked him if he had any reason to suspect that Frank was a spy, and again when he had realized that the flu had come to Commonwealth.
Rankle said he was going to stay and clean up, so Philip left alone. He could have disobeyed and visited Graham, but he no longer felt the desire to do so, at least not right away. He walked home and told his family, gathering at the table, that he was not hungry and felt unwell. Knowing that any mention of sickness was alarming, he reassured them that he was just tired.
He lay in his bed for a long while, haunted by thoughts of Graham and Frank and the C.O., haunted by the sounds of coughing. And though he thought he felt as bad as he could, he was wrong. For at least he was still healthy when he closed his eyes.
I
Violet Merriwhether couldn’t look at her husband anymore. If she did not look at him—if she stayed in her room behind a locked door, the drawn curtains keeping her in darkness and protecting her from any evidence that there was a world beyond—then she could exist there quietly, alone. It would be the saddest existence possible, a woman in a dark room slowly starving to death, yet it would somehow be bearable. If, however, she looked at J.B., she would remember her husband and the love between them, would remember the existence of love, the possibility of hope, would recall mornings when the two had sat on their porch holding hands and playfully bickering over what to name their children one day. If she looked at J.B., she would remember that she had once been a mother, that she’d once had two children, that there had been a part of her that was beautiful and alive but fragile, so painfully and worryingly fragile, and that this part of her had ventured into the unforgiving world and been struck down. And this she could not accept, could not even fathom.
If she looked at J.B., she would shatter. She had already shattered at the sight of Gwen suffocating to death, and again at the sight of that telegram lying on the kitchen table. She had shattered so many times that each minuscule piece had itself shattered, her former core becoming bits of dust blown through the air. At Gwen’s wake, Violet had heard some of her friends asking one another how she was holding together, and regardless of what they thought, Violet knew that she was not held together anymore, that the pieces of her had long since dispersed. Yet she still existed—how could that be? She stayed in that room, in the dark, and whenever her husband knocked at the door she pretended not to hear him. She knew the sound of the knocks would eventually fade away, and they always did.
J.B. was sitting at the dining room table when he saw Joseph Miller park in front of his house. He sat at the table even though it reminded him of the day the telegram came, the telegram he had placed on the table unread and had stared at, message side down, for what seemed hours. It had been a Saturday afternoon and Violet was out visiting with friends, well-intentioned friends who were trying to keep her mind off the death of her daughter, however briefly. J.B. didn’t know if he should wait for her return before reading it. How do you face death, how do you face tragedy? Alone or with your beloved by your side? What can a man say when he faces things he cannot protect his wife from, cannot protect his family from? He had been the smallest man in the world, sitting at the table on that Saturday.
Every night since James had been sent to France, J.B. had prayed to God, asking that the Lord spare his son. Please protect James and keep him safe always were the words J.B. used night after night. But he had been raised to be a caring and empathetic man, and he realized how shallow it seemed to ask the Lord to protect only his son, realized it meant putting James’s life above the lives of all those other boys who had been sent into the chaos of war. So J.B. would follow those words with a plea that God spare all the other boys as well. Please keep all the boys safe, J.B. prayed. But that meant he was asking God for something impossible. This was madness, and he felt that God in heaven was shaking His head at J.B., at the smallness of a man who wants one thing but asks for a larger thing instead, a wish that he cannot have. And the Lord had punished him for it.
J.B. had slept the last two nights in the parlor, lying on the cold floor and staring at the ceiling. Above him was the bedroom where his wife was hiding. He had woken up each morning with that same awful feeling, the dawning realization that those recent horrors were not dreams, that they were real and had followed him into this next day. Each morning his son and daughter died again, Gwen in his arms, her body flailing while tears streamed down his face, and James simply disappearing before his eyes.
Gwen had been the most beautiful young woman in town; the suitors had already been lining up. J.B. would never again turn away one of those eager young men from his door, would never again see the look of disappointment in their eyes, never again hear the stammers and see the dashed hopes of young invulnerability that so reminded him of himself long ago, of young James Barrows Merriwhether knocking on the door of the beautiful Violet Casey’s parents. The Merriwhether porch would never again host such excitement, such unbridled enthusiasm.
Yet now Joseph Miller was standing on the porch. He looked at J.B. through the window, but J.B. did not rise to admit him. Miller motioned to the door as if to let himself in, and J.B. nodded.
Miller entered the dining room, and J.B. hoped that the man would not offer any condolences, but those hopes were dashed immediately. J.B. nodded and looked away, tired of seeing men appear so deeply uncomfortable in his presence. It was the way he had once felt around people like the foreman Hightower, father of the two dead sons in France. J.B. hated that he had anything in common with that man, hated that the two of them were now confined to the same circle of Hell.
Miller cleared his throat, as if the unpleasant air around them could be so easily dispelled. Then he told J.B. of his plan. He asked if J.B. would come with th
em.
J.B. nodded. “Just tell me when.”
II
When exactly Philip woke, he wasn’t sure. He knew only that the painful and fuzzy transition from sleep to wakefulness was accompanied by a striking pain in his head, starting from his temples and burrowing deep into the back of his skull. His eyes had been open for a while and his room was slowly coming into focus when he realized what this meant. He gingerly lifted his head from the pillow and propped himself into a sitting position, leaning on the cold wall behind him. This only made his head throb more. He tilted his head back to look at the ceiling and beg God that this wasn’t happening, but tipping his head that far triggered something inside and he lurched forward again, coughing violently. He leaned over the side of the bed, hoping that position would clear his throat or his lungs or whatever it was that had become so polluted while he’d slept.
He sat up again, still coughing, his eyes tearing up from the pain and the fear and from something in the back of his mouth that seemed to be drying out his throat but flooding his chest. He reached out for a glass of water but found none there. He’d retired to bed so hurriedly the night before that he hadn’t brought any water with him—hadn’t even changed out of his clothes, he now realized. Even in his flannel shirt and wool pants, he still felt cold beneath the thick blankets, and although leaning against the wall made him colder, he lacked the strength to move, or the necessary drive to force his body to rearrange itself, or the capacity for rational thought that such a decision required. So he just sat there coughing until someone opened his door.
It was Rebecca. The concern in her eyes was altogether different from the usual maternal empathy. Instead, it was a mixture of fear and denial.
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