June 3rd (continued)
The next morning, amazingly enough, I got the tractor running. That was a direct result of The Farm Mechanic.
When I had finished cooking breakfast I found Mr Loomis on his bed, up on his elbow, reading one of the volumes, and he showed it to me. It was a set of diagram-drawings of the inside mechanism of a petrol pump—approximately identical to the ones at Mr Klein’s store. When I thought about it, that was not surprising; a great many farms, especially big ones, have their own petrol pumps; I remembered that three or four of the Amish farms did, for example. So it was natural that farmers would need to know how to repair them.
“Look at this,” Mr Loomis said, pointing to one of the drawings. It showed a small electric motor connected by a belt to a larger wheel. “That wheel runs the actual pump,” he said, “and look at this.” In the diagram an arrow pointed to a small circular hole near the rim of the larger wheel. At the non-pointed end of the arrow was the number “7” with a circle around it.
“Now look at number seven in the table.” Below the drawing there were printed instructions, and instruction number seven said: “Attach handle ‘H’ here for manual operation in case of power failure or in areas where electricity is unavailable. Remove V belt.”
“What’s ‘handle H’?” I said.
He showed me another drawing across the page. “Handle H” turned out to be a knob, rather like a doorknob, with a pin on the end to fit into “Hole 7” in the wheel. It seemed simple enough. That would convert the wheel into a sort of crank.
I said: “And if I turn it, petrol will come out?”
“Say a prayer first. Petrol should come out. Be sure to take off the belt.”
“How?”
“Pry it off with a screwdriver.”
“I could just cut it.”
“No.” He sounded most emphatic. “V belts are useful, and we have nowhere to buy any more.”
I went to the store and examined (for the first time!) the petrol pumps that stood in front of it, ordinary red-and-white things I had walked past a thousand times, one Super, one Regular. The front, I now saw, was made like a door, with hinges on one side but screwed shut. I got a screwdriver from the store and took out the screw; I pried a bit and the door came open rather squeakily. Inside all was as the diagram showed—the motor, the belt, the wheel, some pipes leading down. And there, clipped to the door in a spring-clamp, was “Handle H”.
I tried to pry the belt loose from the wheels, but it was made of heavy, stiff rubber, very tight. Finally I had to take out some screws and remove the wheel from the motor. I took off the belt, replaced the wheel and hung the belt on it. It would be there when we needed it.
Quite excited, I took Handle H from its clamp and inserted it into the slot on the big wheel (about fourteen inches in diameter). I unhooked the hose from the petrol pump, and holding the nozzle in one hand and the knob in the other, I was ready to turn it. Which way? An arrow on the wheel pointed counter-clockwise. I turned and in ten seconds liquid was splashing on the gravel at my feet. The smell could not be mistaken—it was petrol.
I stopped pumping and got a five gallon container from the store and filled it. With the can bumping my leg every step, I carried it to the barn and rilled the tractor’s petrol tank. I checked the oil—it was all right. There was a self starter but the battery was dead, of course. That had happened many times before, however, and I knew how to start it with the crank. First I primed the carburettor as my father had showed me (we all used to drive the tractor, starting at about age eight); then, saying the prayer I had forgotten to say at the petrol pump, I cranked hard. The motor started immediately, with a loud sputtering roar, and I felt like patting it on the hood. In fact, I did. The noise seemed incredibly loud. You forget how noisy machines are after a year.
That was partly because it was still in the barn. I climbed up to the seat, put it in reverse, and backed it out. It was a bit less deafening; now the noise filled the whole valley. Though I was sure Mr Loomis had heard it, I wanted him to see it, too, so I drove the tractor to the house and parked it outside his window. I almost laughed, remembering how I had hated to drive it several years ago; the girls who lived in Ogdentown didn’t drive tractors. Now I could rejoice over the time and labour it would save us, and I hurried into the house to share the triumph.
He was sitting on the edge of the bed and was surprisingly matter-of-fact.
“You found Handle H,” he said.
“And the petrol came out on the first turn,” I said. “I think that tank must be full.”
“If it is, we have three thousand gallons. At least that’s what The Farm Mechanic says—for a standard underground tank.”
And in my excitement I had not even tried the other pump. There might be six thousand!
I took the tractor back down to the barn and hitched on the plough. I had already decided what I was going to do. As you head back from the house to the barn, the pasture, the far field, the pond and the brook all lie on your right. To the left there are a few fruit trees and then, further left, another small field of about an acre and a half. This was a field my father used for a few years to grow melons, pumpkins, squash, things like that—to sell in Ogdentown. However, he gave that up, as he said, because it did not make enough money to be worth the time it took. That was about five years ago; since then he had merely kept the field mowed but not planted it.
I had decided, if I got the tractor running, to plough that field and plant it with sweetcorn, with maybe a few rows of soy beans and pea beans. These were all staples which would take up too much room for the small vegetable garden near the house. Sweetcorn could be eaten by us, by the chickens, and, if there was any left over, by the cows—husks and all.
The truth was, now that the tractor was running I could face a fact that I had previously tried to keep out of my mind, it being too depressing to dwell on: The store was an illusion.
It seemed, especially at first, like an endless supply of almost everything I needed. But in fact I knew it was not. In it there were sacks of flour, meal, corn, sugar, salt, and cases of tinned food. But most of these things, except perhaps the salt and sugar, would not keep forever, even though I did not use them up. They were already a year old; in five years or so, I estimated, most would be spoiled (though some of the tinned stuff might keep longer; I’m not sure).
There were also in the store seeds of all kinds: corn, wheat, oats, barley and most kinds of vegetables and fruit—almost everything that will grow here. Also flowers, which I had not even had time to think about. But again, although most of the seeds would germinate after one year, after two years the percentage would decline, and after three or four they would not do well at all.
So before Mr Loomis came I had already been wrestling with the idea that I would just have to tackle that acre and a half with the shovel. It would have been extremely hard, since it is all covered with a five-year turf. So it is not surprising I was really excited about the tractor, and eager to get started ploughing.
I had decided to plant sweetcorn as my grain rather than wheat, oats or barley. I would have liked to grow wheat for the flour to bake with, but I had no way of processing those grains—no thresher, no mill. But there was, in the barn, an old hand-cranked machine called a sheller for making corn meal and hominy. And, of course, we could eat corn “as is”; the same was true of the beans.
The sun came out—finally—as I started ploughing, and was pleasant and warm on my back. Faro had followed me to the field, looking astonishingly healthy; even his hair was growing back. He raced in circles around the tractor, a habit he had picked up years ago when my father would plough or mow and sometimes flush quail or partridge hidden in the field. There were none of those now, but Faro seemed happy anyway, and so was I. I felt like singing, but that is hopeless in a tractor; you can’t hear yourself. So instead, as I sometimes do, I began remembering a poem. I am very fond of poetry, and this one, one of my favourites, was a sonnet. It began:
Oh earth, unhappy planet born to die,
Might I your scribe or your confessor be…
I had thought of that poem many times since the war, and of myself, by default, as “scribe and confessor”. But now I was neither of those. I was the one, or one of the two, who might keep it from dying, for a while at least. When I thought of that, and how my idea of my own future had been changed in the past week, I could not stop smiling.
Then, as I ploughed, I thought I heard, over the noise of the tractor, a high squawking sound overhead. I stopped, turned the engine down to idle, and looked up. There were crows, sharp and black against the sky, wheeling in a circle over the field. I counted eleven of them, and I realized they had remembered the sound of ploughing; they knew there would be seeds to follow. My father used to call them pests, but I was glad to see them. They were probably the only wild birds left anywhere.
I had half the field ploughed by lunchtime. I finished it in the afternoon, and planned to harrow it in the morning, and then seed it. But as it turned out, I had to change my plans.
That night Mr Loomis’s fever went up to one hundred and four degrees.
June 3rd (continued)
That is why, after three days of being too busy, I now have time to write down all that has happened.
I do not dare to leave the house for more than a few minutes at a time. This morning I did. I ran down to the barn to milk the cow, and though I hurried as fast as I could, I was gone about fifteen minutes. When I came back he was sitting up in bed, his bedclothes on the floor; he was shivering and blue with cold. He was calling me, and had become frightened when I did not answer. The fever makes him afraid to be alone. I got him to lie down again, re-made the bed and put some extra blankets on it. I had some hot water in the kettle; I filled the hot water bottle and put it under the blankets. I am afraid he will get pneumonia.
It began last night at dinner time. He discovered it himself; I did not know at first what was happening. We sat at the table, and he ate about two bites. Then he said, in a strange voice:
“I don’t want to eat. I’m not hungry.”
I thought perhaps he did not like what I had cooked. It was boiled chiken, gravy, biscuits and peas.
So I said: “Could I get you something else? Some soup?”
But in the same voice he just said, “No,” and pushed his chair back from the table. I noticed then that his eyes looked strange and confused. He went and sat in the chair by the fire.
“The fire is almost out,” he said.
“It has turned warm again,” I said. “I was letting it die down.”
He said: “I’m cold.”
He got up and went to the bedroom. I sat at the table continuing to eat (I was hungry after the ploughing and other things). Of course it should have occurred to me immediately what was wrong, but it did not, and a few minutes later he called from the bedroom.
“Ann Burden.”
That was the first time he had ever called me by name, and he used both names. I went to the bedroom. He was sitting and looking at the thermometer. He handed it to me and I read it.
“It’s started,” he said.
Poor Mr Loomis; his shoulders were slumped and he looked very tired and frail. I realized that in spite of his calmness he was now really afraid. I suppose he had been hoping for a miracle.
“It will be all right,” I said. “One hundred and four is not so terrible. But you will have to stay in bed now, and covered. No wonder you felt cold.”
A strange thing occurred. Though we had both known the fever was coming, and I had dreaded it more than he had (or more than he had seemed to), now that it was here, and he was visibly distressed, my own fear seemed to vanish, and I felt calm—almost as if I were the older one. As if when he got weaker, I got stronger. I suppose that is why doctors and nurses can last through terrible epidemics.
Doctors and nurses! At least they know what they are doing. My own training is a one-term course in high school, “Health and Hygiene”. I wish they had taught us more. But I tried to think calmly and get organized. He had said the fever would last at least a week, and maybe two. I did not know, during that time, how weak he was likely to get. But at the moment he was still able to move around, and I thought I should take advantage of that.
The first thing was to keep him warm. I stirred the fire and added some wood. Then I went upstairs to my parents’ bedroom, and from my father’s chest of drawers got a pair of flannel pyjamas. They were soft and thick; my father used them only on cold winter nights. There were two more pairs in the drawer, and, I was reasonably sure, more still at Mr Klein’s store. The pair I took were red and white plaid.
I carried them to his room and put them on his bed.
“You should put these on,” I said. “They’re warm. And I’ve built the fire up again. I’m boiling some milk, and when it cools a little, I think you should drink it.”
“Now you’re sounding like a nurse.” He smiled. He seemed less afraid, or he was hiding it better.
“I wish I were,” I said. “I don’t know enough.”
“Poor Ann Burden,” he said. “You’re going to wish I had never come.”
I could not bring myself to tell him what I really wished. How could I tell him about the apple tree, about what I had thought that morning while I picked the flowers and the poke greens? How I felt when I ploughed the field? It all seemed remote now, and out of place; it made me sad to think about it. So I mentioned something else, something that had been worrying me.
“What I wish—”
“Yes?”
“I wish I had warned you when you… went swimming in that creek.”
“Could you have? Where were you?”
“Up on the hillside.” I still, for some reason, did not mention the cave. “I don’t know if I could have or not. I could have tried.”
“But you didn’t know the water was radioactive.”
“No. But I knew something was wrong with it.”
“I should have known, too. Don’t you see? I had two
Geiger counters. But I didn’t even look. It was my own fault.”
But I worried about it anyway, and I still do.
That was last night. He put on the pyjamas, and after the milk had boiled and cooled he drank a cup of it, warm; I had boiled the cup, too. I will boil everything pertaining to food from now on, or bake it.
He even consented to take two aspirin tablets. Then he fell asleep. I put the lamp away from the bedside, and turned it down low. I thought I should leave it burning, but I did not want him knocking it over. I sat there, in a chair by the window, for about an hour, not doing anything except thinking.
Finally I went to my room and fell asleep. But I got up every hour or so to see how he was, and to check the fire. He slept quietly all night; I wish I could say the same for Faro, who kept dreaming and whining in his sleep. He knows something is wrong.
This morning, as I have said, I went out to the barn to milk the cow, and when I came back I heard him calling before I reached the house. I think he had been having a bad dream just before he woke up, but he did not say anything about it. His eyes looked odd and unfocused, and at first I thought he did not know who I was, he stared at me so hard.
After I got him back in the bed and covered up he stopped shivering and said: “You went away.”
I said: “I was milking the cow.”
“While you were gone,” he said, “I thought———”
“You thought what?”
“Nothing,” he said. “It’s the fever. It makes me imagine things.” But he would not say what he had imagined. I took his temperature, and it had gone up—it was a hundred and five. It looked strange to see the mercury stretched all die way to the wrong end of the thermometer, as if I were holding it backwards. It only goes to 106 degrees.
He watched me read it. “How is it?” he said.
“Well,” I said, “it’s a little higher.”
“How much higher?”
I told him. “Bad,” he said.
“Don’t think about it. I’ll get you some breakfast.”
“I’m not hungry.”
“But you must eat anyway.”
“I know,” he said. “I’ll try.”
And he did; propped up in bed, he ate most of a boiled egg, some more milk, and a bit of toasted biscuit. When he finished he said:
“You know what I would like? Some iced tea. With sugar in it.”
I thought he must be joking, but he was not. Poor Mr Loomis. I said: “I haven’t got any ice.”
He said: “I know. We didn’t get the generator going in time.”
A few minutes later he fell asleep again, and I decided to try, at least. I could not make iced tea but I could make cool tea, and I thought that what he really wanted was a sweet drink. People with fevers get hungry for odd things—with me it is always chocolate ice cream. There was a tin box half full of tea bags in the pantry—my mother’s, not exactly fresh, but they smelled all right. I boiled some water, poured it into a pitcher and put in two bags. After it had steeped a while I took out the bags, added quite a lot of sugar and put the pitcher in the basement. It will cool in a few hours, and I will give it to him as a surprise.
But now I face a problem. I have to go to the brook for more water, and some time soon I am going to have to go to the store, since I am running out of several things including flour and sugar. But how can I go when he is afraid to be left alone? And I ought to milk the cow again.
This morning I went while he was still asleep. Maybe if I go in broad daylight, and tell him while he is awake where I am going, he will be all right if I do not stay too long. I will have to try that. There is nothing else I can do.
I went, both to the brook and to the store, and it was a bad business, but I could not help it. At least I do not have to go again for a few days. But I can see that I have a very troubled time coming.
I am writing this in the living room; it is night, and I have a lamp lit. Everything is quiet now, at least for the moment.
This is what happened: At about four o’clock this afternoon I knocked on his door and went in. He was asleep (he sleeps about ninety per cent of the time now), but woke up and seemed calm enough. I explained that I had to go out, and he did not seem at all bothered or upset; in fact he was surprised that I was worried about it. (He had not asked me to stay at the house, of course; it was I who was afraid of going, after what happened this morning—which I think, in fact, he does not even remember.) So I felt a little bit silly, as if I had made too much of it. Still I said:
“I will take the tractor and the cart, so I can go faster and carry more.”
“A waste of petrol,” he said.
I had thought of that, but I decided to do it anyway. It was an emergency, and one that was not likely to happen again, after he had recovered.
Despite his reassurance, I rushed to the barn and hitched the cart to the tractor as quickly as I could; fortunately it is an easy hitch, with just a single six-inch pin to slide through the shaft. The cart is a two-wheeled steel trailer, square, and has a capacity of one ton. When I had it hitched I put on to it three fifteen-gallon milk cans; I had not used these when I
carried water by hand, since they are too heavy, but with the tractor that did not matter, and they would hold enough for two weeks or more. I put the tractor into high gear (it can go about fifteen miles an hour in top gear) and headed first for the brook. The empty milk cans rattled very loudly, the pasture being bumpy.
I filled them (or nearly—about two-thirds full is all I can lift), went on to the store, and loaded a lot of food supplies, including tinned stuff, dehydrated soup, sugar, flour, cornmeal, dog food and chicken corn. Before leaving I also refilled the tractor’s petrol tank from the pump. After all this, including the ploughing, it had only used about two and a half gallons, not too bad. As I started back up the road towards the house I looked at my watch. I had been gone forty minutes.
I was hurrying towards the house, still in high gear, and was perhaps a hundred and fifty yards away when I saw it. The front door flew open and Mr Loomis came out, trying to run but staggering. I could not see his face but the red and white pyjamas were unmistakable. He crossed the porch, stopped at the railing and held on a few seconds, then stumbled down the steps and across the yard towards the tent and the wagon. Faro ran up, tail wagging, and then backed off, staring at him doubtfully.
By this time I had reached the driveway;’! turned in and shut off the motor. Mr Loomis, running in a groping kind of way, as if he could not see well, had not gone to the tent but to the wagon. He opened the end, reached inside, and when his hands came out, to my horror, he was holding the gun, the big carbine. I jumped down and ran towards him, but before I reached him he had fired three shots. He aimed them at the second floor of the house, at my father and mother’s bedroom, and I could see puffs of white paint and splintered wood fly off where the bullets hit. The gun made a terrible noise, much louder than the .22.
I shouted—I may have shrieked; I cannot remember—and he turned towards me, swinging the gun round so it was aimed at me. To my own surprise I stayed calm.
“Mr Loomis,” I said, “you’re sick. You’re dreaming. Put the gun away.” His face suddenly looked incredibly distressed and twisted up, as if he might cry, and his eyes were very blurred. But he recognized me and lowered the rifle.
“You went away,” he said.
Just as before.
“I told you,” I said. “I had to go. Don’t you remember?”
“I went to sleep,” he said. “When I woke up I heard—” He did not want to tell me what he had heard.
“Heard what?”
“I thought I heard… somebody in the house. I called you. He was upstairs.”
“Who was upstairs?”
But he was being evasive. “Someone moving.”
“Mr Loomis, there was no one in the house. It’s the fever again. You must stay in bed.” It was terrible—standing outside in pyjamas with a fever of a hundred and five. I took the gun from his hands and put it back in the wagon. He did not resist, but began to shiver violently, and I saw that both he and the plaid pyjamas were soaked with sweat. I got him back into the house and on to the bed. I pulled the blankets over him and went upstairs to get him some dry pyjamas.
In my father and mother’s room I saw where the bullets had gone. Fortunately except for knocking plaster all over the floor they had done no real damage; they had gone through the wall and almost straight up into the ceiling, and hit nothing on the way. I would have to plug the holes up somehow, and sweep the floor.
I got the clean pyjamas and gave them to him to change. He can still do that himself; I suppose if he gets so he cannot I will have to do it. Also I will have to get him a basin to use as a bed pan since he should no longer get up to go to the bathroom.
It was after he had changed pyjamas that I realized that he had still not quite lost his illusion. I went into his room to get the wet pyjamas, to take them to the laundry room. He was lying in bed with his eyes closed, but when he heard me he opened them and said, sounding very tired:
“Is he gone?”
I said: “Is who gone?”
“Edward,” he said.
“You were dreaming again.”
He shook his head, and then he said: “Yes. I forgot. Edward is dead. He couldn’t have come all this way.”
So it was Edward again. But I am worried. If he is dreaming about Edward, who was, I suppose, a friend of his, why does he want to shoot him?
I think I had better sleep in here, on the sofa. He sleeps very restlessly, muttering and groaning.
I forgot all about giving him his tea, but it will still be good in the morning.