My father, after expressing his regret for Johnny’s own grief, turned to my mother and said gently: “You see, Margaret, it wasn’t that our neighbors and friends didn’t care about us. They didn’t know; it’s all being kept from them.”
Johnny had always been a sure source of news of our community. He told us of the many young deaths in the township and all over the country. “And there’s another thing,” he said. “Another kind of disease, hitting men and women. Like dysentery. No wonder, with no fresh food anywhere. Deaths? Sure, thousands of them. I hear from my friends about it. Maybe it’s right here around us, too.” He patted his stomach uneasily. “Sometimes I think I’ve got appendicitis, it hurts so bad.”
“Don’t go imagining things, Johnny Carr,” said his wife. She began to cry. “I never saw Jim’s little girl, though we’d planned to go out there this summer.” My mother went to her and they wept together. Lucy sat apart, stony, rigid, staring straight before her. She would not permit even Edward to touch her.
“Pete, you remember that prayer yet?” asked Johnny. He looked ill and very tired.
I replied angrily: “For God’s sake, don’t talk about it! There wasn’t any prayer. It just happened. Maybe my machine did it, after all. Why doesn’t the damn Government call out all the bulldozers all over the country and put the Army in charge of them to plow up the weeds?”
“Didn’t you know?” said Johnny, his rough voice almost pitying. “The Government’s been doing just that, Pete, and it’s no use. They come back faster than ever. They’ve been trying everything—fire, weed-killers, gasoline. You’ll never read about it in the papers, but the Government isn’t sitting on its—” He glanced at the women and continued—“rear end. A couple of fellows I know in Texas and another in Kansas tell me the scientists are working night and day. Now they’re scared. They did some things and the weeds went back a little, but then in a day or two there they were again, thicker and stronger. In some places they reach to the second floors of houses. Funny, they don’t strangle the trees, but they kill off everything else.”
My father nodded. “Are you boiling the water for yourselves and your stock as the papers advised us to?”
“No, George. Never boiled water in my life. No typhoid around here; never has been. A lot of—” again he caught himself—“foolishness.” He put his hand to his stomach again and winced. “Incidentally, there’s no fruit coming out of Florida, no oranges, lemons or anything. And the cattle there are dying off as fast as they are here.”
Mrs. Carr had brought with her a big basket of home-canned fruit and vegetables for the children. “I got a whole cellar full, enough for a couple of years for us. Margaret, you just call me when you want more. I’ve got tomatoes here, and beans and corn and peas and fruit, and my own tomato juice.”
We, like Johnny, had slaughtered many of our lean pigs ahead of time and had smoked them. We had killed off much of our remaining cattle and had stored the meat in our huge freezers before the cattle could die.
“Shouldn’t wonder if the Government started asking around among the farmers how much food they got on hand for themselves,” said Johnny with a weak grin. “Did the Grange fellows come snooping around here a couple of weeks ago like they did with us? Oh, it was all smooth; they said they were just making a survey to see if the farm women were putting up canned goods like they used to, or were they depending on the stores for commercial goods. What goods? They know as well as we do that there aren’t any.”
My father and I knew all about the Grange agents, for they had been at our house, too. “The stocks in the cities must be getting dangerously low,” my father said. “I shouldn’t be surprised if very soon the Government issues orders against hoarding and tries to confiscate as much food as possible from the farmers to feed the town people. For if the cities get out of hand—”
They did, but that was later.
After Johnny and his wife had left we went to the barns and met our tenant farmers there. One of them had obviously been crying; he was a silent young man as a rule, and even when my father prodded him for an explanation it was some time before he confessed that he had, that very morning, buried two of his children. “Mr. George,” he asked in despair, “what in hell is happening to us?”
I was afraid my father would begin one of his jeremiads, and I tensed myself for enraged rebuttal, but he only said, with compassion: “I don’t know, son.”
I turned away from him in the barns and went to console our last young bull, who always greeted me with searching and pleading eyes. I had almost reached him when he threw up his head, glared at me, tossed his horns and uttered what was almost a scream. He threshed in his stall, rolling his eyes madly, trying to tear himself loose. “Boy, boy,” I said, alarmed. “I’m not going to hurt you.” My father and our tenants came up quickly. I tried to pat the poor beast and he glared at me again with frenzy. “He’s never acted this way before,” I began. But one of the men shouted and started back, pointing. A loathsome creature about ten inches long, resembling a scorpion, was scuttling away in the straw of the stall. The bull’s ankles were bleeding.
My father, who was a man of great courage, acted quickly. He seized a pitchfork and routed out this new horror. It was a dark red color, and it was not a scorpion. With paralyzed fascination we watched it as it fought against the prongs of the pitchfork. We had never seen such a creature before. It lashed with a dozen venomous legs; it stared up at us with tiny black eyes. From its elongated mouth there dripped blood and poison. My father stabbed at it repeatedly; it died very hard and very slowly, its armored body writhing.
The bull was sinking to his knees now, rolling in a death agony, and the other cattle began threshing in their stalls. My father rushed about the barn, whipping aside straw, plunging his pitchfork in every direction. He killed three more of the monstrous things, stamping, thrusting. And we just stood there, appalled.
My father, gasping and panting, swung to us. “What’s the matter with you imbeciles?” he shouted. “Get more forks. Go all through the barns! Hurry!”
We recovered ourselves, trembling. We picked up forks and hammers and heavy wrenches. We went through every building including that which housed our dwindled flocks of chickens. We killed ten of the creatures in the next hour. We were covered with sweat and shaking with dread when we finally gathered together again. “Not scorpions,” said my father in a hushed voice. “I don’t know what they are. Watch yourselves when you walk through the weeds. They must be full of them.”
We had been keeping the barn doors ajar so that our animals could have some air. Now we shut them tightly. In absolute hopelessness we parted. I followed my father into the house fighting waves of nausea. My father, who was ashen, calmly went through all the rooms, examining every corner, the ceilings, moving furniture to peer behind it, sharply shutting any slightly opened window, lifting the edges of rugs, and shaking curtains. My mother trailed him asking anxious questions. But he did not answer her until he had toured the house and satisfied himself. Then he turned to my mother and took her in his arms. “Margaret, there’s something else. Our last bull just died; he was bitten by something like a scorpion. Don’t cry, this is too important. You and the girls must never put your bare feet down on the floors. You must never go to bed without examining everything in the room. Keep looking in the clothes at least twice a day. Our lives depend upon it. This is no time to panic.”
But my mother was already in a panic. I called for Jean and she came down. She listened to my explanation, her dark eyes widening with fear. But she merely nodded at me, without speaking, and tried to comfort my mother while my father went to the telephone and called the Grange offices. And then he was yelling into the mouthpiece: “Don’t sound so damned incredulous! If they’re here, right on our farm, they’re all over and you know it! Don’t you think it’s about time we admitted to each other what’s happening everywhere? What’s this infernal conspiracy of silence? D’you think it’s going to keep us and our stoc
k alive?”
He listened, panting savagely. And then he laughed loudly and bitterly. “Panic? What of it? Is it better for us all to die? Oh, you’ve been getting reports, have you? Nothing to be alarmed about, is it? Put poison around? That’s nice, that’s very nice, Bill. And what about our stock eating the poison, too? Oh, you’ve thought of that! Keep them tied up? You’re a wonderful help. Where’s Lester?” There was a silence. Father repeated, in a slower voice: “In Washington. So Grange presidents are in Washington. And what good will that do?” He slammed down the receiver.
He turned to me and said: “Pete, we’re fighting for our lives now. We’re up against more than the prospects of starvation sometime in the future. There’s death all around us.” He put his hand on my shoulder, and there were tears in his eyes. “Pete, Pete,” he said. “You’ve been avoiding me; you’ve begun almost to hate me. That’s because you’re frightened, I know. But we’ve got to stand together now.”
My mother was crying violently, and the sound of her anguish brought even Lucy down the stairs. When Jean, as quietly as possible, explained, Lucy screamed loudly just once and then flew up the stairs to her boy’s room. We could hear her running about, opening closet doors, banging them shut, wrenching draperies across windows. She had been shaken out of her apathy of sorrow, and we listened to her as she prepared again to fight for her son’s life. We heard the boy sobbing in his bed, and then her soothing voice as she gathered him to her.
My father sighed. “Poor girl, poor girl,” he murmured. He smiled at Jean, who had succeeded in calming my mother a little. “How’s your boy, Jean? Better keep him in his crib every minute, and never let him stand on the floor even though he’s begun to walk.” He fanned himself with his damp handkerchief.
His voice was like a strength in the hot room, and I forgot all my antagonism for him. Then I remembered Edward. Where was he? My father and I stared at each other in consternation. We had forgotten him in our terror, or he had not been in any of the buildings. We jostled each other as we ran to the door, and rushed out on to the porch. Edward was walking slowly through the weeds, feeling his way with his cane. His head was bent and the implacable sun was gleaming on his glasses. I wanted to call to him to hurry, and even took a step towards him, but my father held me back. It wasn’t until Edward mounted the porch steps that my father took his arm.
My brother listened to what my father told him, shaking his head in mute disbelief. Then he said: “You must be right, Dad. I heard things rustling in the weeds. But they were rustling away from me. I thought they were mice or rabbits.”
My father was very still. “They rustled away from you, Ed?”
He nodded. “When I think of it it seems to me that they were trying to get away from me, and not to get near me. They—clattered. I thought it was a funny sound at the time.” He started. “Where’s Lucy?” He walked with the rapidity and sureness of a seeing man into the house, calling for his wife.
My father and I stood and looked at each other. “Could it be,” he asked at last, “that the thorns don’t prick Ed, or tear at him, and the—things—run away from him because God is merciful and knows that he has suffered enough, and isn’t guilty of anything?”
I wanted to scoff, and then I couldn’t speak. Something was stirring in my mind, something which seemed of the most urgent importance. Not guilty of anything? It was a clue to something I desperately needed to remember. “What is it, Pete?” asked Father softly. But I could only shake my head.
My father went to the telephone again, and, begging my mother to stop crying, called Johnny Carr’s house. There was no answer for a long time, and then finally Mrs. Carr answered, choking with tears. Johnny had died only an hour before, suddenly, in a kind of collapse, after complaining all morning of his stomach. My father sat down and covered his face with his hands.
CHAPTER EIGHT
In the days that followed, the impossible days, we found more than a score of the new and living plague, but not before they had killed most of our livestock. Life had been hard enough before; now it was intolerable. My father took to calling his farmer friends, who were frantic. Their wives or sons or parents were ill with the mysterious dysentery, their children were dying, their cattle were being killed, their chickens were found dead every morning. Now it was out in the open, the whole nightmare, and no longer a secret kept by one man from another. We all besieged our local newspapers to publish the facts. The editors said quietly: “We can’t. We’ve got our orders.”
We tried poison bait. The bait disappeared, and there were no signs of any corpses. We hunted out the creatures at least twice a day, and crushed or stabbed them to death after incredible effort Once my father found one in his own bedroom; he killed it, and showed it to me without speaking. We did not tell my mother and the girls.
In the meantime, though it was full October, the heat did not slacken. In fact, it became worse. We should have had frost by now.
Our work was so prodigious these days that it was some time before we became fully aware of what we had been subconsciously seeing for many days. The sky, during the day, was an unchanging, brassy yellow, in which the sun shone murkily. And a new stench was added to that of the weeds; a curious odor like sulphur. We began to cough in it. The night did not dissipate it. When the moon shone its disk was large and golden, and seemed very close to the earth.
I began to feel myself giving up in spite of my efforts. I began to join my father in the sitting room, and I took the Bible from him silently and read verses to which he pointed. “The abomination of desolation” was on us. Even I became convinced, as the days passed, that our earth was destroying us upon a command, that she received our bodies reluctantly, that she gave her air to us grudingly and with hatred.
My father’s fatal calm returned to him. He would watch the meetings of the United Nations and he would make no comment. I saw the faces of the delegates growing more and more haggard every day, their voices more and more dull and abstracted. Then one day a Russian delegate rose to his feet and in a diminished tone without triumph announced that his country had developed a bomb far superior to the hydrogen bomb, “capable of destroying a huge city with one blow.” The other delegates listened, listlessly. They made no reply. The Russian looked at them imploringly, and they looked back at him, their shoulders sagging. The Russian sat down. Now he covered his eyes with his hand, and the television commentator announced that the session was closing early that day. We saw papers and briefcases being lifted; we saw seeking and desperate eyes. The delegates moved slowly away from their tables, not exchanging a single word. The picture faded.
The first of November came and brought no relief. I think we had all been waiting for frost, in the faint hope that it would kill off the weeds. But they flourished more energetically. They were heaped about the house; they had invaded our porch. Now they mounted like ivy over the walls of the house and thrust their tendrils at the sills of our upper windows. We dared not attempt to cut them away. When the moon shone it was as if snakes waved beyond the glass, searching for us.
Our food supplies sank steadily. There was no longer any milk for the children. We adults ate moldy potatoes and smoked or frozen meat. There were still the canned vegetables and fruits for the children, but they, too, were dwindling dangerously. There was no more coffee or sugar or flour in the stores, and butter was becoming scarce. My father found an old grinding mill in one of our barns and my mother and the girls ground up corn for bread for us. Our wheat was gone.
Now our local Grange issued a plea to those farmers who had a plentiful supply of canned goods from the past summer to share it with their neighbors who had children. The women looked over their supplies and filled baskets for the children, and tractors picked them up and distributed them. So long as a child remained alive we were prepared to try to save it. However, the children continued to die throughout the township. Schools and colleges did not reopen throughout the country and we no longer went to town.
The radio spoke of the “countrywide” heat. It would be good for the late crops. This was a blessing, said the gaunt-faced commentators, because the season had been late in starting. “Farmers are confident,” said one of the young men, and he gazed out of the screen with haunted eyes.
“It’s coming close now,” said my father. We did not ask for an explanation.
The United Nations called an indefinite recess. “So they’ve all been summoned home,” said my father with renewed grimness. On the day that the recess was called a Dutch delegate rose, leaned on the table, and slowly looked about him. He began to plead, in an exhausted voice, for the ancient dream of a united Europe. “Not for wars, but for peace,” he said. “Not for aggression, but for cooperation.” The delegates rubbed their chins absently, and moved restlessly in their seats. “If we don’t cooperate, we shall die,” said the Hollander wearily. The delegates refused to meet each other’s eyes. Our farm journals did not arrive for the month of November, and our daily newspapers were issued only twice a week. They carried very few death notices.
And the yellow skies became more sulphurous and the plague of venomous creatures increased in the weeds, and the heat intensified, and there were “earthquakes in divers places.” Sometimes we would awaken to the trembling of the earth, and more often showers of meteors flared through our night skies.
On the day before Thanksgiving, on a particularly hot day, my mother suddenly sickened and had to be carried to her bed.
We knew then the most complete despair. She had been our gentle hope and our confidence, soothing our fears with silent smiles and eyes full of love. We sat about in the house, in the reflection of the fearful yellow light at our windows, and we could not speak. If mother died, then we would indeed give up.
Lucy and Jean sat with her constantly, their children in their arms. Mother became delirious, our doctor did not reply to our frenzied calls. We pleaded with other doctors to come, but they could take no more patients. Besides, they assured us, nothing could be done; only careful nursing held out any hope for those stricken. We did not find our until much later that our own doctor had died on the day my mother became ill.
Your Sins and Mine Page 6
