June 3rd
Four days have passed.
On the first day, Mr Loomis’s condition remained about the same. I gave him the fever thermometer, and we began keeping track of his temperature. It was about 99.5 degrees in the morning, went up to 101 in the middle of the day, and fell back to 99.5 in the evening. He said that meant he was still in the “interim” period.
I thought he should take some aspirin, but he said it would not do any real good, and that we should save it—the half dozen bottles in the store being perhaps the only usable aspirin left in the world. He said it seriously, but I had a feeling he was half joking.
I had a lot to do. With him in the valley—in the house—I decided I should cook better meals than I did when I was by myself. For one thing, as I said, if he was going to be sick he ought to build up his strength. Anyway, I like to cook, but when I was alone I frequently just did not bother—it seemed silly, just for one.
So I made several trips to the store for supplies. It was ah tinned stuff, of course, or dried. There would not be anything fresh except milk and eggs until I could get the garden going again. Since it was already June, that was the most urgent thing; I wished now I had not dug it all up—I could be having fresh greens right now. Also the lettuce would have been ready. It was probably too late to start either of those again, but I decided to try anyway, and hope it stayed cool. I could at least get some to seed for next year. But I really longed for a salad, and fresh greens.
I got the spade and the hoe and went to work. Faro came up and sniffed the first few shovelfuls of earth I turned over. Then he dug a small hole of his own and lay on top of it. It was warm in the sun. He is already looking much better than he did at first.
It was easy spading, since the earth had already been turned up once; also the manure was still in it, so I did not have to haul that again. I had plenty of seeds; I had taken them up to the cave with me when I moved. But after I had dug the whole patch—in fact I had it partly planted—I realized that it was not really big enough. Because, of course, with two we would need twice as much of everything, and I wanted some left over for preserving. The tinned stuff in the store is not going to last forever. So I decided to double the size of the garden.
There was plenty of room, but for the new part I had to dig through turf, which was much harder digging. Still I was making pretty good progress when I noticed Faro standing up and wagging his tail. I looked up and there, leaning against the gate post watching me, was Mr Loomis. I had left him after lunch, still lying on David’s bed. It was now late afternoon, almost time to stop and get dinner. I was somewhat ashamed to have him see me, because working so hard I was dirty, hot and sweaty. I had intended to wash before I went into his room.
But more, I was concerned. What was he doing out here, out of bed? I walked over, still carrying the spade. I asked him: “Is something wrong?”
“Nothing wrong,” he said. “I felt bored. It’s a warm afternoon, so I came out.”
I had forgotten about being bored. There was always so much to do. But of course I had not been sick in bed. I had given him some books to read, but they were historical novels that used to be my mother’s. I suppose he did not like them much. I had some more in my bedroom upstairs, but they were mostly either school books or children’s books. We generally depended on the public library in Ogdentown.
“I’ve been digging,” I said, which of course he had already seen. “This is going to be the garden.”
“Hard work for a girl,” he said, noticing, I suppose, how messy I looked.
“I’m used to it.” I started to tell him that most of it had already been dug before and was therefore easy, but then I decided not to. I did not want him to know how afraid I had been when I first saw him coming.
He looked puzzled. “But do you have to do it all by hand? Didn’t your father have a tractor?”
“It’s in the barn.”
“You can’t run it?”
“I can, but there’s no petrol.”
“But there are two petrol pumps at the store. There must be petrol there.”
That was true. The Amish, though they did not drive cars, used plenty of tractors, reapers, balers and other machines, and bought their petrol from Mr Klein.
“I suppose there is,” I said. “But the pumps won’t work without electricity.”
“And you’ve been doing all this with a shovel. Don’t you realize it would be simple to take the motors off the pumps and work them by hand? There may be four or five thousand gallons there.” He smiled but it made me feel stupid.
“I don’t know much about electric motors and pumps,” I said.
“But I do,” he said. “At least enough to do that.”
“When you’re well again,” I said.
Without having discussed it, we both had begun going on the assumption that he would recover. The other possibility kept occurring to me at first, but now it seemed to have become remote. At least it had faded from my mind, through no effort on my part.
I was really glad to hear what he said about die petrol and the tractor, and I hoped it would work. There was enough winter pasture for the three cows, but just barely. With the tractor running I could mow the grass after it went to seed, and bring in some hay. Also, I hoped eventually to increase the herd.
We walked back to the house just as the sun was setting. Because the walls of the valley are so high, the sun always sets early and rises late; there is a long twilight and we never have real sunsets the way they are where the land is level. Still this was one of the better ones. My father used to say, “In a valley the real sunset is in the east,” and that is how it was. As the sun disappeared over the west ridge, the last of the orange light moved up the hill on the east, with the darker shadow climbing up after it. At the end only die tops of the last high trees were lit, and they looked as if they were burning. Then they faded and went out, and it was dusk.
We stopped a minute to watch it and he rested his hand on my shoulder as he had on the gate post. I felt proud to be of help to him, but when we turned to walk the rest of the way he went without help. He was obviously much stronger and standing straighter. I realized that he was quite tall.
It turned colder that night, so after we had eaten dinner I built a fire in the living room fireplace and closed the windows. Since the living room adjoins his—Joseph and David’s—room, I opened the door so the fire would warm it, too. He did not go back into the bedroom immediately, however, but sat down in a chair near the fireplace.
The living room has two big upholstered chairs and a sofa, all placed so you can see the fire, which my father and mother liked to do in winter. (This last winter I slept on the sofa to be near the fire.) The chair Mr Loomis sat in was the one my father used to use. The electric lamps are still beside the chairs—I left them there for looks, even though they will not light. Against the wall on one side of the room stands the record-player, and against the other our piano.
“Would you like me to get you a book?” I said, thinking he would be bored again. “I can put the lamp on the table by the chair.”
He said: “No, thank you. I only want to look at the fire a few minutes. Then I’ll get sleepy. The fire always does that.”
Still, for the first time it bothered me. There was absolutely nothing for him to do. When I am by myself—when I was by myself—I was always quite tired at the end of the day, and unless I had washing or sewing or something like to do, I usually went to sleep very soon after eating. Now I wished there was a radio station to tune in, or that the record-player would work. It was quite a good one, and we had a lot of records. But it would not play without electricity so I did something I would be embarrassed to do under ordinary circumstances. I said: “Would you like me to play the piano?” I added quickly: “I can’t play very well.”
To my surprise he seemed extremely pleased, almost excited. “Could you?” he said. “I haven’t heard music for more than a year.”
I felt sorry for him, because I not only can’t play too well, but I don’t have much music. I have the John Thompson “Second Year Lesson Book”, Thompson’s “Easy Pieces”, and a recital piece I once learned, “Fur Elise”. The Lesson Book is about half finger exercises.
I put the lamp near the piano and started on “Easy Pieces”. A lot of them are too babyish, but towards the end of the book there are some harder ones that are quite pretty. I played these, glancing at him now and then. He really seemed to like it, and I think because of that I played better than I usually do, and hardly made any mistakes. I mean he didn’t clap or say anything, but he sat forward in his chair and listened without moving at all. When I finished “Easy Pieces” I played “Fur Elise”, then a few things from the Lesson Book, and that was all I had, except hymns.
I can play hymns better than anything else, because I used to play them for our Sunday School singing. I opened the hymn book and played two of my favourites, “How Great Thou Art” and “In the Garden”. The melodies are good, but the arrangements are not really meant for the piano, but for choir. I played “In the Garden” very softly, and when I looked around again he had fallen asleep, still leaning forward in his chair. I was afraid he would fall, so I stopped, and when I did he woke up.
“Thank you,” he said. “That was beautiful.” He paused, and then added, “This is the best evening I have ever spent.”
I said: “Ever? You mean since the war.”
“You heard me,” he said. “I said ‘ever’.” He sounded angry. Of course, he has a fever and doesn’t feel well.
He went to bed then; I told him to leave the bedroom door open, and I put some more wood on the fire, thick logs that would last all night. Then I went upstairs to my bedroom. It had turned surprisingly cold, not like winter, but sharp just the same. I had a couple of blankets and I lay there on the bed thinking and trying to warm up.
For some reason, playing the hymns had made me feel sad, as if I were homesick even though I was at home. They made me think of Sunday School. When we went to school, regular school, we went on the bus with other children, but when we went to Sunday School we drove to Ogdentown in the car with my mother and father, dressed in our good clothes, and it was always festive. I remembered so many things about it, with David and Joseph. That is not surprising, since I started when I was five; in fact it was my kindergarten; I learned the alphabet there, from a picture book called “The Bible Letter Book”.
The first page said “A is for Adam”, and there was a picture of Adam standing near an apple tree, dressed in a long white robe—which disagrees with the Bible, but of course it was for small children. Next came “B is for Benjamin”. “C is for Christian”, and so on. The last page of all was “Z is for Zachariah”, and since I knew that Adam was the first man, for a long time I assumed that Zachariah must be the last man. I learned all the letters from that book, so that by the time I got to school I could already read a little.
Thinking about Sunday School and about Mr Loomis getting angry, I wished I were back in the cave again. It seemed cosier somehow. Finally I decided to go and sleep there (I had left some blankets and stuff up there) and come back early enough so that Mr Loomis would not know I had been away. I got up and started walking down the stairs towards the hallway and the door. As I passed the bedroom door where he was sleeping I heard a shout, and then another. He was talking loudly, but I could not hear what he was saying. He sounded troubled and I thought he might need help.
So I went back closer to the door. He was dreaming, a bad dream I could tell, a nightmare. He was talking in outbursts, sometimes quite angrily. Then he would stop, as if listening for an answer: I realized I was hearing half of a conversation. It was not all clear, but he was talking to Edward.
He said: “In charge. In charge of what?”
There was a pause.
Then he said: “Not any more, Edward. It doesn’t mean anything now.”
Another pause.
“What good can it do? We know they’re dead. There isn’t a chance. Can’t you grasp that? Mary is dead. Billy is dead. You can’t help them.”
This went on, his voice gradually growing quieter, finally dropping to a mumble that I could not hear.
Then he shouted again, a very urgent shout: “Get away. I
warn you. Get away from———” The last word I could not understand. And after that he gave a terrible groan, so painful I thought he must be hurt.
And then silence.
I crept to the door of the bedroom and listened. He was breathing regularly and quietly. Whatever the nightmare had been, it was over. Still I worried. Was it just a nightmare, or was he delirious again? I was afraid the sickness might be coming back.
I decided I had better not go to the cave after all. Suppose he should call for help?
I went back upstairs and rolled up in the blankets. A little later there was a whining outside my door. I opened it and let Faro in. He lay down next to me on the bed, and after a while I went to sleep.
June 3rd (continued)
I woke up before dawn with an inspiration: an idea how to make a salad. What brought it to me was a dream I was having of my mother carrying a wicker basket, walking across a field and into the woods. When I woke I realized what she was doing. She was getting cress, and poke greens, as she always did early in June. On the edge of the far field, beyond the pond, they grow wild; field cress looks something like water cress and mixed with dandelion leaves, it makes good green salad. The poke greens you have to cook, but when they are young they are rather like spinach (when they get too old, however, they are bitter and can be poisonous). My mother used to gather them every spring, carrying a basket to put them in, and David, Joseph and I used to go with her—and Faro, of course. I had forgotten all about that until now, which shows that dreams can be helpful, as if they come with a purpose.
I got excited about the idea, and jumped out of bed. I knew exactly where the basket was, on a shelf in the kitchen cupboard, and where the greens grew. Not only was I hungry for greens, but I thought Mr Loomis must be even hungrier, since he could not possibly have eaten anything like that for more than a year, while I at least had had last summer’s garden. I started to go to get the basket, and then I remembered his nightmare of last night, and my worry that he might be sick this morning. So I came downstairs very quietly, and listened outside his bedroom door, which was still open. He seemed to be sleeping peacefully, and his breathing was quiet and even, so I decided it was safe to go.
I would not be gone so very long anyway. I got the basket from the shelf, got a glass of milk from the cellar (where I keep it, with the eggs and butter, because it is always cold), drank it and went out. I would cook breakfast later.
It was cool, but still and pleasant, not yet very light though it was almost seven o’clock. The sun would not come over the ridge until about, eight. I walked along the road past the pond, and then turned left across the field. Faro came with me, sniffing everything. The grass was wet and my sneakers quickly got soaked through; so did the bottoms of my blue jeans, and they were clammy, so I rolled them up to my knees. Still I felt happy. Behind me in the pond I heard a big fish, a bass, jump and fall back into the water with a thump. I thought: after I get the cress and the other greens I will cook breakfast and then go fishing. With luck I will catch a bass or two, and have them for dinner with the salad. I would make a dressing of oil and vinegar, and cook some fresh biscuits.
I was getting near the far side of the field when all of a sudden Faro came to a point—tail straight, paw lifted, nose forward. I was amazed. Could it be possible that there were quail still in the valley? I could not believe it; I had heard none, and they have a call that cannot be mistaken. I inched forward behind the dog, and a rabbit went bounding away in the high grass. David used to scold Faro for pointing rabbits, but I did not. After all, there was nothing else to point, and rabbits are good to eat. So I patted him instead, and said, “Good Faro.” I knew he was disappointed that I had no gun.
I found the field cress and dandelions, and beyond, where the woods began, the poke, just out of the ground, young and edible. In half an hour I had picked enough to fill the basket; I could have filled two. Then I had an illusion. The basket of green leaves suddenly seemed to be giving off a beautiful, sweet perfume. But that was impossible, so I looked to see where the. smell was coming from. There, twenty feet ahead of me on the edge of the woods, was a crabapple tree in full bloom.
I had known the tree was there; we used to eat the apples sometimes, and my mother used them for jelly. They had a nice flavour, though they were small, hard and quite sour. (There are better eating-apple trees behind the barn.)
But I had never known the tree to look so beautiful or smell so nice. I supposed that was because the air was still, and the fragrance just hung there, concentrated instead of blowing away on the wind. And because the light was still dim, a morning twilight, the branches and all the white blossoms looked misty and delicate, an almost magic look. I walked a few steps closer and then sat down, right in the wet grass, to stare. I thought, if I ever got married, apple blossoms were what I would like to have in the church. Which meant that I would have to get married in May or early June.
I got to thinking about it. Next June I would be seventeen, and in my entire life I had only had one real date, and that was when I was thirteen, in junior high school. A boy named Howard Peterson asked me to go with him to a dance at the school. My mother took me—it was in Ogdentown—and stayed for the whole dance, sitting on the side with some other mothers. The only way you could tell it was a “date” was that Howard paid for both the tickets, fifty cents each. I have had other boyfriends, but I only saw them at school, or after school. The truth is, in high school most of the boys lived in Ogdentown, and those of us who came on the bus were regarded as outsiders—hillbillies, in fact, and not fashionable.
So to me the idea of getting married seemed like quite an enormous step. Still, I thought, when Mr Loomis recovered from his sickness, there was no reason why we could not plan to be married in a year; that is, next June, perhaps on my seventeenth birthday. I knew there could not be any minister, but the marriage ceremony was all written out in the Book of Prayer, of which there were several copies in the house. There should be a ceremony; I felt strongly about that, and it should be in the church, on a definite date, with flowers. The whole idea was thrilling. I thought I might even wear my mother’s wedding dress. I knew where it was, folded up in a box in her cupboard.
Then it occurred to me: Mr Loomis had not indicated the slightest interest in any such idea. But of course it was much too soon, and he was very sick. We would talk about it when he had finally recovered.
And I thought: what would it be like, ten years from now, to be up here gathering greens some morning with children of my own. But that thought made me feel homesick for my mother, a feeling I have tried hard to avoid. So I stood up to change the subject. I got out my pocket knife and cut a bunch of apple blossoms. Mr Loomis could have a bouquet for his sickroom.
I started back to the house. On the way back the sun appeared over the ridge, but some clouds followed it almost immediately, and the chill stayed in the air. That was good, because I still had the rest of the garden to plant, and since it was late in the season, the cooler the weather stayed the better it would do.
At the house everything was quiet. I put the flowers in a vase and the greens in the cold cellar; they would be for dinner, in the nature of a surprise. Then I cooked breakfast—eggs, tinned ham, and some pan biscuits. I really wished then that I had that wood stove moved in from the barn so that I could have a real oven, and do some proper baking. I decided that tomorrow I might try those bolts and see if I could dismantle it.
I put the breakfast and the vase of flowers on a tray and knocked on his door, which was partly open. There was no answer so I pushed it wider, looked in, and learned why the house was so quiet—he was not there.
Immediately I was worried, very worried. I realized that it was stupid of me to have left him alone, knowing that he had had the nightmare, knowing that it might have been the beginning of the high fever. He might be, right now, wandering somewhere in a delirium. In the house? I called, but there was no answer. I put the tray down, setting the breakfast near the fire where it would stay warm, and ran to the front door.
It was all right. I saw him immediately, across the road not far from Burden Creek, sitting on a large round stone. He had the Geiger counter with him, the one with the earphone; he was staring at the creek, looking upstream.
I walked over to him, and he looked up when he saw me coming. He said: “I thought you had run away.”
“Are you all right?” I was still worried.
“Yes,” he said. “In fact I woke up feeling so much better that I began to wonder about this water—whether maybe you had read the meter wrong, or whether the counter was off. So I walked over to check it with this one.”
Oh, I hoped I had read it wrong! I never hoped anything so much.
But I had not. He went on: “It was no use. Your reading was right. There’s just no way I could have got less than three hundred r’s.” He must have felt disappointed, but he said it calmly, as before; he did not sound frightened.
I said: “I wish I had been wrong.”
“It’s no worse than before,” he said. “It was just a hope.
Anyway, since you weren’t here, I sat down and started thinking about that stream.”
“Thinking what?”
“It’s radioactive, there’s no doubt about that. But that’s no reason it shouldn’t be useful. Up there”—he pointed to a place a hundred feet upstream, a rocky place where a big boulder blocked the creek and made a little waterfall—“there’s a sort of a natural dam. It looks as if somebody, sometime, even tried to add to it.”
“That’s true,” I said. “My father said that my greatgrandfather had a small mill there, a flour mill. We thought the stone you’re sitting on was part of it, it’s worn so smooth.”
“What I was thinking about was not a mill, but electricity. If I could build that dam up a few feet higher—there’s a good flow of water. It could run a small generator.”
“But we don’t have a generator. Anyway, if we tried to build a dam we’d get the water on ourselves. It’s too dangerous.”
“Not if I was wearing the safe-suit, and if I was careful. And the generator is easy. You can make one out of any electric motor—with a little tinkering.”
“But where would we get an electric motor?” Then I remembered. There were two or three of them in the barn, in my father’s workshop. One, I know, was hooked up to a grindstone, another to a circular saw. I told Mr Loomis, and he smiled.
“There are always motors around a farm. The hard part will be the water wheel. But I think I can make one. I’ll need some lumber and some kind of an axle. It won’t be fancy, but it will work.”
“Would it light the lights?”
“Yes. They might be a bit flickery, but they’d light. Mainly, it would run your refrigerator, your freezer, things like that. They don’t use much current.”
It would be nice to have a refrigerator again. And a freezer! I could freeze vegetables and fruit for the winter.
And that reminded me. His breakfast was drying up by the fire. And I had had nothing to eat yet myself, except some milk and a couple of sprigs of field cress.
After breakfast I milked the cow and planted some more of the garden: melons, beets, and several rows of beans. I had some seed potatoes left; they looked pretty dried up but I felt so optimistic and energetic I planted them anyway. They might revive.
Then I went to the house to get my fishing rod and to tell Mr Loomis (lying down) I was going to the pond.
He sat up on the side of the bed.
He said: “Do you think—” I waited. “Well, I’d like to go with you.”
“To fish?” I was torn. It would be fun to have him go but the pond is more than a quarter of a mile away. “How is your fever?”
“About the same. About a hundred, not so bad.”
“It’s chilly out.”
“I could take a blanket.”
“I’ll get you a coat.” In the hall cupboard I found an old cloth raincoat of my father’s. I thought it would not do him any harm, and it was something for him to do.
“Do you really want to fish?” I asked him.
He looked embarrassed. “I never have. I don’t know how.”
“I can show you. It’s very easy, at least the way I do it. I just put a worm on the hook and throw it in. Sometimes I use a float, sometimes not.”
“A float?” He really did not know how to fish.
“A little ball made of cork.” I pulled one out of my pocket and showed him. “It keeps the hook off the bottom.”
“Have you got an extra one?”
“Yes,” I said, “and I can get David’s rod.” It was in his cupboard.
We started out for the pond, with him wearing my father’s coat and carrying David’s fishing pole. But we did not make it. After about a hundred yards he began walking very slowly; he stumbled and dropped the rod.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I can’t go on.” He had turned extremely pale, a bluish colour. He looked terrible.
“Lean on me,” I said. “Leave the rod. We’ll go back.”
“It’s the anaemia,” he said. “I should have known. It’s the dependable part of the disease. Five to seven days after exposure. This is the sixth day.”
We started back, very slowly. He could hardly stand up.
I said: “You’d better lie down.”
“Yes.” He sank to the grass at the side of the road, lay on his back and closed his eyes. But his colour slowly got better.
“It came so suddenly,” I said.
“No. It was the walking. I knew I had it a little.”
“What should I do?”
“Nothing. Help me back to the house. Then go fishing.”
So I did that. When we got back to the house I sat beside his bed for a while, and then went on to the pond. But it was a nervous and disappointed kind of fishing. He had explained that the anaemia would not get any worse, but it meant that he would not be able to do much now until he had gone through the whole illness and recovered. Then it should gradually go away. Still I felt as if it was the beginning of the end—no, not the end, but of a bad time, and all my plans of this morning seemed thoughtless and foolish.
I fished just long enough to catch three bass, about half an hour. Fortunately they were biting. Then I went back.
He did seem better again, and even got up and sat at the table for lunch, though I noticed that he moved slowly and rather cautiously, and after he had eaten he lay down again immediately. When I looked into the bedroom a little later he was asleep. I put a fresh glass of water by his bed.
I kept thinking about the stove. So while he slept I went down to the barn, got from my father’s workshop a wrench, pliers, a screwdriver and a hammer, and went to work. To my surprise it came apart fairly easily—the oil I had put on the bolts last winter had done the trick. Even so I broke a couple of fingernails; but by sunset I had it lying in pieces on the barn floor. I found I could lift all of the pieces but one—the big cast-iron firebox; even with the grates and door removed that was too heavy. However, I could turn it end over end, and by doing that I got it on to a sheet of masonite I found in my father’s workshop. Since the masonite is slick on one side, I discovered I could drag it, using the masonite as a sled. It was slow and hard, but I thought if I backed our cart right up to the barn door I could get it aboard. If not, I would just have to wait until Mr Loomis was well, and could help. I did not actually try it, because by the time I had it ready it was time to milk the cow, then wash, and start the dinner.
In spite of everything, it was festive, with the bass, the fresh-cooked greens and the salad. It is incredible how good fresh green things can taste when you have not had any for months—or, in Mr Loomis’s case, more than a year. I set the table with the “good” china that my mother saved for Sundays, Christmas, Thanksgiving and birthdays. I did forget one thing—candles. I had some in the house but took them to the cave. There are more at the store, but I did not think of it until too late. However, the oil lamps gave a pleasant light. They just did not look as romantic. We ate all of the bass and all of the greens and salad, though there was enough for four.
After dinner, it being still cool, I built up the fire again. I had found Mr Loomis some books that interested him. They were a set of books called The Farm Mechanic, my father’s. I had discovered them on a shelf in his workshop in the barn. The book is an annual publication, like the World Almanac, and is full of diagrams of motors, wiring systems, pumps, silos, balers, and so on. He studied them (there were eight volumes) for a long time. I could tell he was working out how to build the generator, and maybe making other plans as well.