A Plague Year (35 page)

I leaned forward until I could understand. He was repeating three words in a low and barely audible voice, over and over, through choking sobs. The words were “I hate drugs.”

A minute later, a big vat exploded inside Warren’s trailer. It
took out the entire kitchen area. The flames continued to lick higher, filling the dark sky with a hellish light.

It was all life and death, and water and ice, and fire and cold. When I finally took a look at my watch, I saw that it was ten minutes past midnight.

It was December 31.

The last day of the year.

 
 
Spring
 

The day after the fire, New Year’s Day, I sat down and started writing a new journal, this one. Because the old one, like everything else in Warren’s trailer, had gone up in the conflagration.

At first, I was in a panic, thinking that I couldn’t do it; that I had forgotten too much. But that was not true. I remembered everything very clearly. I wrote nonstop all day, and the next day, and for many days after, trying to get down what had happened to me, to us, to Blackwater over the last year.

In the three months since the fire, things have gotten a lot worse. But nobody has run away. We have stayed here, and we have fought.

January and February were especially bad times for the town. There was a big demand for food at the church. There was a big demand for warm clothing there, too. And there was a big demand for slabs at the morgue.

But, looking back from today, it seems like that was the worst period. It seems like things have bottomed out; like things might be slowly getting better.

Today is the first day of spring. That means that we, the people of Blackwater, have survived the long, dark winter. We have done everything we could do. Every day, every night, we have provided the zombies with food, or clothes, or shelter, or medical care, or a decent burial.

The circle of helpers has widened: The county has opened up trailers on the north spur of Caldera for homeless families. More churches have opened their basements. Kroger has joined the Food Giant in contributing its expired foods to the
needy. Everybody has pulled together, like they did back in Mrs. Cantwell’s grandmother’s day, back in the Great Depression.

Because that’s what we do in Blackwater.

I also want to update some things.

Bobby Smalls recovered from his gunshot wound without any complications. When he returned to work, Dad did make him the produce manager. It was Reg’s old job. It was also Dad’s old job.

Reg Malloy was charged with armed robbery and assault. He is being held in the Haven County Correctional Institution. Coach Malloy doesn’t talk about it. Jenny says that Coach is not returning to Haven Junior/Senior High next year.

Lilly and John have set a marriage date. It is Thursday, October 31, 2002. Halloween. They plan to send out orange-and-black invitations.

Arthur will graduate with his class, thanks to two A’s in ninth-grade English—one from Mr. Proctor and one from Mrs. Kerpinski. He has a plan. He will report for Marine Corps basic training in September. (He also has a tattoo, on his right bicep—a poker hand with four deuces and a joker, and
Deuces Wild
underneath.)

Mom still runs the food table at our zombie-support group at the church. She never misses a night. Dad still donates the food, and he still declines to prosecute shoplifters at the Food Giant.

Aunt Robin now works at Haven Junior/Senior High in the cafeteria. (Mrs. Cantwell called and offered her the job.) Jimmy is still signed up with WorkForce, doing whatever comes up.

Last but not least, Jenny is my girlfriend now. (I love to write that.)

So, finally, is the plague over?

I think it is.

Why?

In the end, it may simply have come down to this: Everybody who was going to try meth has tried it. And they have either survived the experience or they have not. (Most have not.)

The rest of the people in Blackwater have responded to the NEO and the I Hate Drugs campaigns and have kept far away from meth. And they always will stay away from meth, and crack, and weed, and whatever comes along next.

Because the people in Blackwater
truly
hate drugs.

Because the people in Blackwater have been through a plague year.

 
 
Epilogue
 

I had thought that the first day of spring was a good place to end this journal, but now something else has happened here, and I want to write about it.

It’s another national news story. It began on Wednesday night, and it continued until today. Here’s a brief summary:

Nine miners at Quecreek broke through a wall, only to discover that it was holding back an underground river. They should have drowned right then, but they were somehow able to scramble to higher ground. Still, they were trapped, and were almost certainly going to die down there. That was Wednesday. The Quecreek Mine is in Somerset County, just a few miles from where United flight 93 crashed in September.

It’s incredible. Two national stories within a year, within a few miles of each other, and within a short distance from Blackwater, where nothing ever used to happen.

The Quecreek Mine disaster began five days ago. I have been watching it on and off all that time on the news.

I took a break yesterday, though, to help Jimmy, Aunt Robin, Arthur, and Cody move. Jimmy has now been drug-free for seven months, but Arthur says he has been struggling. Memories of Warren are a definite trigger for him, so it’s good for him to move away from that place.

Jimmy rented a truck and transported the entire trailer to a lot on the north spur, about five miles away. The underground fire has been extinguished there, and families are allowed to move back in.

A crew that included Mom, Lilly, and Jenny came up to move
the small stuff. It all went smoothly. By midafternoon we had the trailer in its new location and water and electricity running into it.

By dinnertime the job was finished, and Aunt Robin went to pick up four boxes of Domino’s pizzas. We chowed down on those and drank various Coca-Cola products.

While we were eating, Lilly filled us in on a job she was hoping to get. She explained, to everybody’s surprise but mine, “A new federal program is starting up in Haven County to help teenage drug users. They’re looking for counselors, and all you need is a high school degree. So I applied.”

Mom looked puzzled, but in a good way.

Lilly continued: “I’ve had two interviews. I think they really like me.”

Mom said, “Of course they like you!”

Other people said the same. And I realized that, after all these years, I now like her, too.

Jenny, Lilly, and Mom went back home soon after that, but I stayed. Arthur and I got the TV running in the living room. The Quecreek Mine disaster was the big story, 24/7, on the local station. We were determined to stick with it, along with thousands of other people. If those miners were going to die, they would not do it alone.

Aunt Robin put Cody to bed at nine o’clock. She and Jimmy watched the news with us until eleven, when she said good night.

Jimmy stayed with us for another hour, staring straight ahead but not speaking. When he finally wandered off to bed at midnight, things looked pretty grim for the miners. They had been trapped underground, freezing and wet, with no food or water, for five days.

But then suddenly, miraculously even, the news started to change. Special equipment had arrived. Contact had been made. And within one hour, the tragic story had turned 180 degrees.

The TV screen showed a narrow yellow cylinder being lowered into a shaft. It was thin enough to fit into a drilled hole but wide enough to hold a human body.

Arthur and I sat forward on the couch. Arthur started praying, I think, in a language that only he could understand. Then, over the next two hours, his prayers were answered.

The yellow cylinder returned to the surface and was opened by the rescue crew. A coal miner, covered completely in black soot, soaked to the skin, was pulled out of it. And he was alive.

The cylinder went down again, back into the bowels of the earth. It came up again fifteen minutes later. Another shivering black body was extracted from it. Another miner was still alive.