Looking below, she saw a dark opening and a ladder. “Come on down,” Jimmy said with a grin, and went in before her. “Don’t worry, this here lever will lift the tractor up if it gets closed. Got gears and ever’thing.”
Jill followed, and soon found herself on a dirt floor in another, separate stone-walled basement. Jimmy reached for a flashlight and turned it on. The space was small, but boasted a triple bunk bed, and what looked like food and water for a few days. Other supplies – a lantern, fuel, books, linens – rested on shelves along one wall. A tiny plastic portable toilet sat in a corner.
“This place has been here since the days of the War,” Jimmy said.
“War?”
“Civil War, you’d say.”
Jill gaped. “That’s…”
“More’n a century and a half, I know.” Jimmy turned to look Jill in the face, shining the flashlight against the floor. It gave him a devilish look, even more so when he grinned. “We McConleys is Abolitionists from way back. This here’s a gen-u-wine piece of the Underground Railroad. ’Course, the supplies and furniture’s newer.”
“My God…”
“When all that stuff happened, and you showed up, well, we figgered we might have to revive some of the old ways. We ain’t had nobody to stow yet, but if’n things keep gettin’ worse, mebbe we’ll be hidin’ Eden people. So now you know about this place, and you kin hop in here if’n you have to.”
Impulsively she threw her arms around Jimmy, who reciprocated after a moment. “Thank you, Jimmy. You’re…you and your family…”
“Mm. I’ll have to take you here more often, I think,” he chuckled in her ear.
Jill pulled her head back to look at him. What the hell. She kissed him gently. “Yeah, maybe,” she breathed.
“All right you two, break it up,” Big Jim called from up above, laughter in his voice. “Any courtin’s gonna be done up here in the light o’ day.”
They broke their clinch with embarrassment, then climbed back up the ladder and watched as Big Jim closed up the hide. Jimmy and Jill swept dust and hay back to remove their traces while the older man walked out of the barn ahead of them, leaving them alone.
“Listen, Jimmy,” Jill began. “I like you, but that was just something I did on impulse. I don’t know how you do things around here, so I just want to speak plainly: I’m not sure what it was, all right?”
Jimmy smiled gently. “It’s all right, Miss Jill. I’m twenty-two. I kissed a few girls in my time. Even done a couple other things with ’em I don’t never tell my ma about. You ain’t gotta worry about no shotgun weddin’.” He stepped toward her, stopping within easy arm’s length. “On the other hand, I do like you. If’n you stay, well…reckon I ain’t against it.”
“Okay, Jimmy. That’s fair.” Jill nervously pushed her lengthening hair behind her ears. “You’re a real gentleman, you know that?”
“Yes ma’am. I’m from Tennessee. We’re –”
“– all gentlemen till we get riled, right?” They laughed together, and walked out of the barn toward the lunch waiting on the porch.
***
A week later Jill’s nervous idyll took another unexpected turn.
As Jimmy finished a plate of pork with cracklins, courtesy of one of the young hogs, he remarked, “I shore do have an appetite lately.”
Jill and Big Jim glanced sharply at the younger man, then at each other. Jill’s face whitened.
Big Jim leaned over to lift up the sleeve on his son’s t-shirt. “Scar’s fadin’,” he said.
Jimmy pulled the sleeve back and craned his head to look at the outside of his shoulder. “Well I’ll be doggoned. Why…” Then the color drained from his face as well. “I got it, don’t I?”
“Imagine so.” Big Jim pushed his own plate away and began to pack his pipe.
“Oh, I am so sorry,” Jill exclaimed, heartfelt.
“What did you do?” Sarah asked sharply.
“Simmer down, Sarah love,” Big Jim interjected. “They just been courtin’ a bit, the way young folk do.”
“That’s what the radio said – the disease is passed by close contact,” sister Jane remarked. “So Jimmy,” her eyes lit with a sibling’s joy in another’s discomfiture, “you been smoochin’?”
“Just that once, and it was all my fault,” Jill broke in, glaring at Jane. “My fault,” she repeated. “We haven’t done anything like that since.”
Sarah took a breath and seemed about to explode when Big Jim spoke. “What’s done is done. We knew a day like this had to come sometime, though I’d hoped to delay it a fair bit.”
“What do you mean it had to come?” Sarah asked, unable to contain herself. “She should have been more careful!”
“I mean,” Big Jim said heavily, “that eventually we’d have to give it to Owen, don’t you think?”
That stopped Sarah in her tracks. She turned to look at her youngest son as his eyes roamed here and there, and she breathed, “Oh dear Jesus I pray, you’re right, James. It could fix him. He could be normal!”
Big Jim lit his pipe and puffed. “Cain’t do it now. Not with things the way they are. It’s one thing for Jimmy’s scar to go away, but if Owen got cured and someone saw him…they’d round us all up.”
“Then we go on as before. We just be careful,” Jimmy declared. “I’ll taper off going to the meetings. I’ll tell ’em I gotta work the farm. We just got to buy enough time…” He abruptly stopped, as if he’d said too much.
Jill looked from Jimmy to Big Jim and back. The elder was imperturbable as usual, but Jimmy seemed embarrassed. “What?” she asked.
“Well, I figgered once your feet got better, you’d be moving along, goin’ to Los Angeles to find your family.” Jimmy eyed his empty plate, and reached for another slice of bread and butter, not meeting Jill’s eyes.
“I…I hadn’t thought that far. I suppose you’re right, that’s what I should do. I’ll go, just as soon as I can.” Stupid, Jill, she scolded herself. Every day you’re here, you put these people in danger. Now you’ve infected one of them, and that can’t be undone. At least with you gone they can blend back in to their own society, or run for the deep-woods mountains like their cousins.
***
UNIONISTS TAKE POWER IN STUNNING MASS PARTY DEFECTIONS read the headline on the newspaper Big Jim dropped on the porch table. “Found that in a trash can when I went into town,” he rumbled.
Jane snatched it up, skimming the headlines and then summarizing, “It says elected officials are changing parties all over in the middle of their terms.” Jill noticed the girl’s accent and dialect faded as she read. Perhaps this was her school persona coming out.
She went on, “It says the new party has gained a bare majority in the House and Senate, and if the President doesn’t switch too, he’ll still be voted out next election. Says the whole country is turning against the infected people.” Jane glanced at her brother and Jill. “It also says that the same thing is starting to happen in Canada and Mexico. There’s a column here where the writer believes there might even be some kind of co-governmental arrangement.”
“Mexico and Canada’d be damn fools to join the US in anything like that,” Jimmy declared. “They have their own ways of doing things.”
“Might be good for Mexico,” Big Jim said. “Might clean up some o’ that corruption.”
“Yes, like the Nazis made the trains run on time,” Jill muttered darkly.
“Oh, don’t get me wrong, girl. I’m jus’ sayin’, there’s a little good in most bad, and the other way ’round too. This country is too big and there’s too many ornery people for the crazies to take over for long.”
“Long enough, James,” Sarah said. “You always see the bright side of things; that’s why I married you. This time…things are really getting worse. Them Hastings boys have taken to wearin’ that Unionist uniform all the time, runnin’ around and scarin’ people, makin’ them give ‘political contributions.’ I heard they burnt out some po
or black folks on the other side of Shandy that wouldn’t pay.”
“Like to see ’em try that here,” Jimmy growled.
“Rather they didn’t, son,” Big Jim disagreed. “Rather if trouble jes’ passed us by.”
“But Pa, we need to do something!”
Big Jim nodded. “And we will, son, but not with violence, unless we got no choice. No, the best thing we can do is stay out the way, help who we can, keep our eyes open and our mouths shut. That goes for everyone. When Jill gets her feet back, when she’s able to get up and run for the hills, then mebbe we can take a few risks. Y’hear?” He stabbed his pipe stem at Jimmy. “You want this fine young lady to get taken away?”
“No, Pa,” Jimmy said miserably, suddenly looking twelve instead of twenty-two under his father’s stare.
“How are your legs now, Jill?” Jane asked, changing the subject.
Jill had showed her just last night, but she answered, thankful for the diversion. “It looks almost like I have baby feet, and I can’t put my weight on them at all. It’s a good thing that I have this,” she went on, slapping her palms on the wheels of the chair they had built for her. “I figure another two weeks and I may be able to walk, three or four and I may be almost normal.” And then I’ll go, she heard the unspoken subtext.
Klutz stood up and pointed with his nose, his ears cocked, then barked once.
“Pa?” Jimmy stood up, looking out toward the valley below. “Someone comin’ up the road.” Now that he pointed it out, they could all see a plume of dust as a vehicle made its way up the gravel-dirt track that led up to their farm.
“Jill, get in the special hide. Jimmy, run her over there and toss her things in after her. Everybody keep your guns handy. Jane, run and get a coupl’a jars o’ corn squeezins out of the larder, put ’em on the table there, and then go get a whole case from the cellar and put it in the kitchen. Sarah, see what kinda grub you can rustle up quick. Hop to now.” Big Jim stood up, reaching for his shotgun he kept leaning in the corner on the porch.
“Don’t see why I’m getting’ food for some fool flatlanders comin’ up uninvited,” Sarah muttered as she went inside.
“Come on, Jill,” Jimmy said as he wheeled her down the ramp and off the porch, racing for the barn. She held on tight, and assisted as much as she could when he lifted the tractor and helped her down the ladder. A moment later her duffel bag and bedding tumbled down into the hole as Jimmy made sure nothing incriminating remained in the loft. Then the tractor came down, sealing her in, and Jill sat down quietly in the dark.
For the first time since the trucker tried to rape her she felt afraid. She imagined some runaway slave of so long ago doing the same, longing for freedom, relying on the kindness of strangers, fearing a return to hell on Earth. Why couldn’t people let each other have the gift of the Eden Plague, its healing and its promise, if they chose to?
Jill knew the answer already. She’d seen it in the Corps, and in the gangs before that. Power itself, to those who had it, was more important than anything else, or anyone. It didn’t matter whether the wielder was a slave owner, a pigheaded officer or a politician. As soon as they got power, and felt afraid of losing it, then they would abuse it, and to hell with the people that got hurt.
She saw now that the Eden Plague would take away their power by taking away an enormous source of dependency. If no one needed medical care, and everyone had their head screwed on straight, how could they be made to fear? How could they be manipulated? Of course the ones on top right now would resist, by whipping up that fear before it was too late, to drive out the infection, even kill those who had it.
But what could she do here? Obviously she would have to leave. Somehow she had to help fight this thing, this situation. Like she wished people had fought the Nazis when they took over, or the Bolsheviks, or McCarthy, or…she ran out of examples. But where could she go? She’d only read a few obviously censored newspapers, and listened to one radio station, for the last several months. No internet, nobody to talk to except the McConleys. Once she got out, she’d have to find somewhere in the world that Eden Plague people were accepted as normal. Then…then she’d find a new gang, or a new Corps, to join.
Thinking about that drove a dagger through her heart. The Marine Corps was her family…except for the Repeths back in Los Angeles, if they even lived. Except for the McConleys, too. It seemed she was doomed to keep losing her families, and the tears began again.
Some warrior you are, Jill, sitting here sobbing like a little girl. She felt so helpless, with useless feet. It would have almost been better to live with the prosthetics for the rest of her life; to have never gotten the Eden Plague. Then, as during all tough times, she reminded herself that this would be over with soon, and she would come back stronger, faster, better, like she always did.
Someday soon.
***
Jimmy took one last look around the loft and barn before sprinting back to the house to rejoin his family. He saw that Jane had her Ruger .22 across her lap, hidden a bit by the porch rail. Two quart jars of white lightning sat on the dinner table, along with a plate of yesterday’s persimmon cookies and a big bowl of apples.
Pa had his Remington under his arm, standing on the porch steps, and he could see Ma had her Smith and Wesson .38 long barrel visibly tucked into her waistband. For a God-fearing woman she was a dead shot with that thing, he knew. Jimmy retrieved his pride and joy, a .308 Browning lever-action rifle, from inside the front door. With a magazine that held ten of the heavy rounds, he knew he could knock down an equal number of targets in quick succession.
Around the last bend came a truck, and not a mere pickup; he saw a flatbed two-ton fitted with slatted sides, a dozen men packed into it. All of them wore the deep-blue Unionist shirts with black armbands, those points-down red tridents emblazoned upon them. As soon as the truck stopped in a cloud of dust, the men jumped out, one of them with chevrons yelling orders as if they were all in the Army. He took three men with him and headed for the barn without asking permission. Klutz ran over to them, capering and barking with delight to have visitors.
Jimmy could see they carried a variety of weapons comparable to his family’s – shotguns, rifles, handguns. He recognized several from the meetings he had attended, especially their leader, who hopped out of the passenger seat. That one wore the double bars of a captain, though the last time he saw the man he had been a sergeant recently discharged from the National Guard. Guess he gave hisself a promotion, he chuckled to himself.
“Harry Whitcomb,” Jimmy said as the man walked forward hitching up his pants. “How you doin’ ol’ son?” He tucked his rifle in under his arm, but knew he could have it up and aimed in a flash.
Harry’s belly fell down over his waist despite being no more than thirty, and two .45 automatics depended from his gun belt, one on each side. He hooked his thumbs just inside the holsters with his palms resting on the closed flaps in implied threat.
“Don’t how-you-doin’ me, Jimmy. This here ain’t a social call.”
“I kin see that, Mister Whitcomb,” called Big Jim from the porch step. “What cause you got bringin’ all these armed fellers onto my land? Might wonder whether you’d done forgotten ’bout the arrangement me an’ yer pa have.”
“Now settle down, Big Jim. This here’s just precautionary, you might say.”
“P’cautionary about what?” Big Jim reached over a casual left hand to pick up a quart jar. Popping the top, he took a sip and smiled. “Drink?”
Harry licked his lips and shook his head. “We got orders to search the place.”
Big Jim shrugged and put the jar back down on the table. “Yer loss.”
“Whose orders?” Jimmy demanded, his temperature rising at the highhanded treatment of his father. Pa had called Harry “Mister” and the man had come back with “Big Jim,” as if Pa warn’t twelve years older and a respected man in these parts.
“Unionist party orders. We gotta check every place for Sickos
and traitors hidin’ out.”
“Well, son,” Big Jim said with a frown – no more “Mister” – “your men kin check the farm all they want, long as they don’t mess with nothin’. Then you kin come inside and check the house. Then, since there ain’t nobody here that don’t belong, once you do that you can all have a nice drink and some cookies and be on your way.”
“I’ll check in my own way and in my own time, thank you,” Harry blustered.
A moment later he found himself frozen, staring at the wrong end of Big Jim’s 12-guage from a range of about six inches. Jimmy had never seen his pa move that fast. He raised his own rifle, jacking a round into the chamber with an audible clack, and aimed at the nearest of the bully-boys. Beside him, he sensed Jane and Sarah doing the same.
“You best tell your friends to keep them hands away from them firearms if’n you don’t want your brains spattered all over that truck o’ yours, Captain Whitcomb.” The way Pa said it made the word a sneer. “And ever’ one’ a us kin pick the eye out of a fly at fifty yards. I’ll bet you dollars to damnation ever’ one’ a y’all is down with a bullet in him before any o’ my family is even winged.” Stone-cold menace dripped from Pa’s every word, and a shiver ran down Jimmy’s spine.
“Stand down, boys, stand down,” Harry said, his voice squeaking. Those who held long guns made sure to point them at the ground; those with handguns holstered them, some with dropped jaws and nervous hands. Whitcomb himself showed a stain on his crotch that spread slowly down his trouser leg.
Big Jim continued, “Now each one’ a you boys is gonna walk over and put them weapons down in the truck bed, then go over there by the pear tree where I kin see y’all. And you,” he called loudly, “with the three men in the barn. The first shot and your boss is dead, y’hear? Come on outta there and nobody’s gonna get hurt.”
“Do it!” screamed Harry over his shoulder. His face ran with sweat.
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