The Last Town on Earth (20 page)

XIV

T
he alarm spread quickly.

Charles had been sitting in his office at eleven in the morning, trying to determine how long the town could survive under quarantine. If it really was true that cities and towns across the country had closed down their meeting places and shuttered all their businesses, then the mill’s circumstances were not unique. Of course, if Philip or the soldier became sick and somehow passed the flu on to others in town, then Commonwealth would lose its reason for remaining closed off to the world. But Charles did his best not to consider that. That night, at six o’clock, Banes would go into the storage room and perform checkups. Assuming Philip and the soldier were still healthy, Philip would sleep that night in his bed at home.

Charles’s thoughts were interrupted by a knock on his office door. When he looked up, he saw Mo walking in uninvited.

“Yes?” Charles asked, putting down his thick reading glasses.

“There are men from Timber Falls trying to get into town,” Mo said urgently. “They say they won’t leave unless they’ve spoken to you.”

Mo explained that he and Graham had been at the post that morning and had refused entry to the men, who had driven to town in two autos. Mo said they seemed polite so far but were firm about not leaving until they saw Charles Worthy. The recent misadventure with the second soldier had led the guards to keep a horse at the post, and the sweat on Mo’s brow suggested he’d galloped the whole way here.

Charles hurried to his carriage and rode behind Mo, who sped on his horse.

It had rained earlier that morning, and tree boughs hung heavy under the weight of the water. The carriage wheels left deep impressions in the wet earth as Charles rolled past the last of the houses and around the final bend.

Mo had already dismounted and was standing beside Graham at the post; both of them held their rifles pointed at the sky. Standing about twenty yards away were five men. The man in front wore a derby and a dark suit, not an expensive one but still fine enough to make him appear out of place in the woods. Charles recognized him but could not recall his name. Standing a bit behind was Lionel Winslow, scion of the mill-owning Winslows who all but ran Timber Falls. Lionel was young but quickly becoming the public face for the family firm as his old man retreated into senescence. His suit was dirty at the knees, most likely from his climb over the tree that blocked the road. Beside Winslow was J. B. Merriwhether, a quiet banker the Worthy mill had employed until they decided his obsequiousness did not rival his brains. J.B. looked uncomfortable, shifting on his feet. The two other men Charles did not recognize: one had a round, well-shaven, incarnadine face, and the other, a taller man with an equally red beard, was obviously a jack or millworker. These two looked more truculent than the others, closer to anger.

As Charles descended from his carriage, he remembered the advice Banes had given him regarding strangers—advice that Graham and Mo had apparently forgotten. He reached into his pocket and took out a gauze mask, fitting it over his nose and mouth. Upon seeing this, Graham and Mo each tied a handkerchief around their nose and mouth, taking turns so they wouldn’t have to lower their rifles at the same time.

Graham had scanned every man in search of firearms and concluded that no one had anything on display but that any and all of them could be carrying something.

“You have a cold way of greeting people, Mr. Worthy,” the man in front said. “Doesn’t make a gentleman feel too welcome.”

“I apologize if it seems rude to you, Mr.—”

“Joseph Miller.” The man touched the brim of his cap.

“Mr. Miller, but times being what they are, we need to protect our town.”

Miller introduced the two men Charles did not know as Skip Bartrum, Timber Falls sheriff, and the foreman Nathan Hightower. He added, “We’re not accustomed to having guns pointed at us.”

Charles smiled slightly. “They’re not pointed at you.”

“But your man there tells me if we were to walk much closer, they would be.”

“Unfortunately, that’s the case. The sign you passed explained things—this town is unaffected by the influenza, and it’s our intention to keep it that way. We mean no disrespect to you gentlemen, but we know how many people in Timber Falls and the surrounding towns have the Spanish flu and are dying from it. Until the epidemic has passed, no one can enter this town.”

“Well, it is a free country.” Miller spoke calmly, almost playfully.

“But it’s private property. In fact, you’ve been standing on private property ever since you turned around the bend there. I and my fellows here own everything you’re looking at, and it’s our right to determine who can enter and who cannot. In ordinary times, I’d be honored to give you a tour of Commonwealth, but circumstances are what they are.”

“The hell kind of a town is this?” Hightower said angrily.

Charles felt Graham and Mo stiffen beside him, but he paid the remark no heed. If he’d cared about the opinions other men held about him or about Commonwealth, he never would have made it this far.

“And why exactly have you gentlemen decided to venture out here?” Charles asked.

“We thought the fine people of this town might like to buy some Liberty Bonds,” Miller said. “It seems you’ve been overlooked by the past drives.”

“Well, regrettably, we won’t be able to get close enough to conduct such transactions. In better times, perhaps,” Charles replied. “But you seem a rather large group to be selling Liberty Bonds. I would think one or two salesmen would have sufficed.”

“Maybe we’re just curious citizens, heard about the strange way you were conducting yourselves out here,” Miller continued in a soft tone. Charles couldn’t tell if Miller was trying to defuse the situation or if he was being patronizing. “These are troubling times, Mr. Worthy, and we like to know what’s happening in our backyards.”

“This is not your backyard.”

“Well, we are neighbors, in a sense. Far as I know, Timber Falls is the closest town to this one, so we see it as our job to keep informed about what’s transpiring here.”

“We’re only trying to stay healthy, Mr. Miller, so that we can keep working. We’ve heard that Timber Falls and others have been hit so hard that you’ve had to close businesses. If we had to do something like that, as a new mill with little margin for error, we would fall on hard times indeed.”

“We’ve heard some things about your mill,” Winslow spoke up. “Heard you have some mighty strange ways of doing business out here.”

“I haven’t offered any opinion on how your family runs its mills, Mr. Winslow,” Charles snapped back.

Miller gave Winslow a quick look, apparently considering such a remark off the subject.

“But walling yourselves off from the rest of the world at a time like this—that’s not very Christian, is it?” Miller asked.

“Don’t talk to me about Christian,” Charles said. “Christian has nothing to do with this. The flu does not discriminate. It’s taking everyone in its path, and that’s why we aim to keep you off ours.”

Charles’s nerves were at attention. With his gauze mask and his arms folded before him, he knew he must look strange, knew that Graham and Mo with their handkerchiefs and rifles looked more like train robbers than noble protectors. Ruefully, he realized that to an uninformed observer, the visitors would seem the more benevolent group.

Miller fixed his gaze on Graham. “You look like a healthy young man. I don’t suppose you’ve enlisted?”

Graham rewarded him with no reply other than a steely-eyed stare.

“There are no slackers in this town,” Charles answered for Graham. “All the young men have enlisted.”

“It would be a shame if we found out anyone in this town was dodging the draft, Mr. Worthy,” Miller said. “You want to be law-abiding in a time like this.”

Graham’s fingers dug into the rifle’s handle.

“We are law-abiding,” Charles replied. “And you also know, gentlemen, that the draft has been suspended on account of the flu. The same reason why we’re closing our doors to you, and to anyone else, until such time as it’s safe to greet strangers again. Once that’s occurred and the draft is back on, then anyone in this town who’s come of age in the meantime will show up at the enlistment office bright and early. You have my word.”

“That’s not worth much,” Winslow scoffed, quietly enough to seem offhand but loud enough to be heard.

“You got something to say, you step to the front and say it, buddy,” Graham challenged him.

“I’ll say this,” Hightower said. “My sons didn’t die in France so you slackers could hole yourselves up and live off the fat of the land.”

“‘Fat of the land’?” Charles uttered a short laugh, then spoke in even tones. “We’ve taken the worst plot anyone could have asked for and are making it work through the sweat of our labor.”

Hightower was unconvinced. “My sons didn’t die so you could—”

“We didn’t kill your sons,” Graham interrupted. “German army did. You got a quarrel with them, you can head over there yourself. Leave us out of it.”

Enraged, Hightower took a step forward. Bartrum placed a stern hand on his shoulder and muttered something in his ear, restraining him. But barely. Hightower stood there and seethed, his eyes boring into Graham’s.

“Funny you should mention Germans, young man,” Miller said. “You see, all the right-thinking towns in this area have been awfully stirred up by what happened at Fort Jenkins a few days ago.”

He let that dangle until Charles admitted, “We haven’t been reading the papers.”

“Three soldiers were killed by German spies,” Miller said. “The spies got away, and they’re probably looking for a safe place to hide until the search is off.” He made a show of looking from left to right, slowly, at the thick woods surrounding them. “I wonder where Heinie spies might hide.”

Charles was knocked off guard, and his thoughts raced: was Philip locked up with a German agent? There had been much discussion about spies in the newspapers and magazines over the past few months; the Metzgers had closed their shop in Everett and moved to Commonwealth in part because they had tired of the harassment over their German surname, the increasingly dangerous suspicions. But this was the first time Charles had heard an accusation about an honest-to-God spy in their midst, and it chilled him. After a couple of breaths, he shook his head, hoping to show Miller he would not be swayed by strangers spreading rumors. “First we’re not buying enough Liberty Bonds, and then we’re not enlisting, and now we’re harboring spies? I suppose we’re also responsible for the assassination of Ferdinand?”

Miller was cool, keeping his eyes on Charles. “My question is a fair one, Mr. Worthy. This is an isolated community. If I were looking to hide from the army, this would be an awfully attractive destination. And you do seem to be hiding something.”

“We’re only protecting our health, Mr. Miller—I do apologize if that offends your sensibilities, but we’re doing what we have to do. If a German spy were to come up this road, we would be just as inhospitable to him as we’re being to you.”

“Only more so, I would hope.” Miller smiled thinly.

“Of course.”

Miller appeared willing to leave it at that, as Charles thought he saw the man turn as if to leave. But Hightower refused to let them off that easy.

“Look, we know you’re all just a bunch of damn agitators and reds anyway,” he said. “And I don’t like knowing you’re out here hiding while the rest of us are doing our part.”

“The only one agitating is you,” Charles said. “We’re minding our own business here, on our own land, and you’re trespassing.”

Graham took a step forward.

“Is that why you’re really here, Mr. Miller?” Charles asked. “You don’t care for the way we go about our lives, so you’ve taken it upon yourselves to frighten us out of it?”

“The way I feel about your town, Mr. Worthy, is irrelevant.” For the first time, Miller’s voice lost its finely polished veneer. “What is important is that we’re at war, and all the right-thinking people of this country are standing together.”

“We’re all proud Americans in this town,” Charles replied. “And I resent any implication otherwise.”

“You’re Americans standing alone, and you’re behaving quite suspiciously. We will be watching you, Mr. Worthy. We’ll protect our country and our families from any threat we find.”

“And we ours.”

Without bidding good day, Miller turned around and started walking down the hill, toward the autos they had stopped in front of the fallen tree. Winslow and Merriwhether followed, but Hightower and Bartrum seemed reluctant to do the same. They took a couple of steps backward but kept their eyes on Graham and Mo.

“If we ever come back, you better hope you have more than two guns out here,” Hightower said.

Graham shook his head. “Next time you won’t get this close.”

They glared at each other.

“Go back home, gentlemen,” Charles said. “Nurse your families. Get Timber Falls back on its feet. After the plague has passed, you’ll see that this has all been a misunderstanding.”

Miller was nearly in one of the autos by the time Hightower and Bartrum started descending the hill. Finally, there were the echoes of the doors slamming shut, the engines roaring to mechanical life, and the autos pulled away.

Charles, Graham, and Mo were silent as they listened to the sound of the tires on gravel receding slowly into the distance, until it had been displaced by the gentle sound of water falling from the heavy branches around them. Charles removed his gauze mask, the fresh air feeling colder on his damp cheeks.

He turned to the watchmen, their eyes showing concern above their handkerchiefs.

“You think those soldiers were spies?” Graham asked.

XV

T
he mill hummed beneath them and around them as they stood in Charles’s office. There weren’t enough chairs to seat them all, so they stood, the small room quickly growing warm.

Charles had called an emergency meeting of the town’s magistrates, the men who had been appointed to oversee any disputes in the town. There were a dozen in total, but they were short a few, the jacks stationed too far from the mill to be called in on short notice. It was only an hour after the confrontation. There were ten people in the room and the open doorway, among them Banes, Rankle, and Graham, who had sent someone else to stand watch with Mo so he could attend.

Rebecca was the only woman in the room. She had seen Charles and Mo hurrying into town moments ago through the school’s windows, right as she was dismissing her charges for the day. Although she was not a magistrate, she wasn’t about to be told to wait outside, not by Charles or anyone else foolish enough to try.

“A German spy?” she said incredulously after Charles had relayed Miller’s story to everyone in the room.

“That’s what they said,” Charles replied.

“If there’d been some kinda fight at the camp, that might explain why all these soldiers keep wandering out here,” someone said. “Maybe they were on the run from somebody?”

“I thought of that, too,” Charles said pensively. “But if that was the case, wouldn’t the second soldier have told us all that? He said there was a naval accident, that he was shipwrecked.”

“Maybe spies set off a bomb on the boat,” Banes said. “We haven’t exactly interrogated the soldier as to what happened. Did Miller say specifically how the men had been killed?”

Charles shook his head.

“We need to find out who this soldier is,” Rebecca said. She was standing in the middle of the crowd, not by Charles’s side. Rebecca felt particularly on edge, her jaw muscles tight, her limbs ready to lash out. “And we need to get Philip away from him.”

Charles held up a hand as if to calm her. Everyone else shifted on their feet. Most avoided looking at either husband or wife, not wanting to take sides. But Rankle glanced at Charles, then met Rebecca’s eyes. She had not spoken with him since the night she unburdened herself, confessing that she did not agree with her husband. His eyes looked sympathetic.

“I’m not inclined to believe anything Miller says,” Rankle said.

“Do you know him?” Charles asked.

“I know of him.” Rankle explained that Miller, though a resident of Timber Falls, had come to the aid of his fellow business leaders in Everett during the strike, when Rankle was with the Wobblies. The strikers had added Miller to their list of foes, as he had lent money and forgiven debts to some of the mill owners during their troubles, had rallied support for the Commercial Club and spoken out against agitators and reds.

“I don’t see why they would lie about this,” Charles said. “And why would they come so far if not for something serious? I think they do believe there’s a spy out here.”

“Has anyone else heard anything about spies?” someone asked. “Or sabotage at the army base?”

“No one’s heard anything about anything since the quarantine started,” Rebecca said sharply. She realized when she said it that she sounded critical of Charles, and was embarrassed. She told herself to be more cautious, to trust that the magistrates would make the right decisions, but her faith in them was dwindling.

Some of the men in that room had themselves committed acts of sabotage in the past, at Everett and elsewhere, destroying mill equipment during strikes. But when America had joined the war and the newspapers started warning of sabotage on the home front, the thought of German agents stealing into the country had seemed incomprehensible to them.

Not anymore. A spy could somehow break into a factory or mill, Rebecca supposed, and cause havoc there, hindering America’s ability to produce new fighter planes, new ships. Neither Charles nor the doctor had said anything about the soldier having an accent, but plenty of Americans were against the war. Their voices were silenced by the Sedition Act, but that only made their muzzled emotions burn more intensely. Perhaps this was someone who had family in Germany, Rebecca thought, or a more radical pacifist than herself.

“Didn’t you say the flu started at army bases, Doc?” another man asked. “Maybe spies brought it there. Maybe this guy has something to do with that.”

After an awkward pause, Banes said he didn’t see how something like the flu could be used as a weapon, not unless German scientists had made discoveries their American counterparts had not. It sounded as if Banes couldn’t decide whether he was being stubborn to ignore such possibilities or was allowing himself to be swept away with public hysteria by considering them.

“Philip hasn’t said anything that would lead us to believe he’s suspicious of the soldier, has he?” Banes asked.

“How could he?” Rebecca asked. “Even if he did think the man was a spy, he can’t shout that out to us without risking his safety. And we told him not to write us any notes.”

A few seconds passed in silence. Rebecca felt more words pressing at her tongue. She tried to resist, but she had held back her opinions before and seen the result.

So she said flatly, “We need to get Philip out of there.”

“Doc said forty-eight hours,” Graham reminded her. “Still got two hours to go.”

Rebecca looked at Graham, surprised. He was obviously tired, his eyes red and his face strangely puffy. But she couldn’t understand his obstinacy, his apparent lack of concern for Philip. And how could Charles not want to free Philip immediately? Was he so afraid of appearing to go back on his word to the rest of the town? Was he confusing being stubborn with being noble?

“I think letting anyone out before forty-eight hours would be a mistake,” Banes said, adding his voice to the chorus.

Rebecca saw that they took comfort in the doctor’s advice. They didn’t want to do anything that would endanger them, endanger
their
families. Philip would just be an unfortunate casualty.

Rankle looked down at his boots, as if shamed by the accusation in her eyes.

“At six o’clock I’m going in to examine them,” Banes continued. “As per our plan.”

“But what if this fellow
is
a spy?” someone asked.

“I have no quarrel with Germany,” Rankle replied.

“If this man has been running around the country killing American soldiers and doing God knows what, then I do have a quarrel with him,” Charles countered.

Rankle paused. “He hasn’t tried to break out of there,” he said, “so he probably doesn’t have a gun or anything. I don’t see why he’d try and hurt Philip.”

His attempts at reassurance only angered Rebecca more. Hadn’t he felt this way when his family had disappeared, when no one in the world could offer any clues or theories on what had happened to his wife and son? There could be no lonelier feeling than when evil befell you and the world turned its back.

“There’s one thing we haven’t considered,” Charles said. “If he is a spy, then holding on to him implicates us. If the army is tracking him, what if his trail leads them here?”

“Then the men from Timber Falls will come back,” Rankle said.

“They can’t force their way in,” Graham said. “They have no right.”

Rankle tried to reason with his friend: “Graham, I think Miller’s part of the American Protective League. The APL’s deputized by the federal government, so they can come and go wherever they please, even arrest people. They’re the ones who helped round up most of the local Wobblies. And they’ve organized slacker raids, rounding up men who haven’t enlisted. I haven’t heard of any raids in Washington, but they’ve been happening all over.”

Silence for a moment.

“Maybe the soldier’s a deserter?” Banes ventured.

“If he was a deserter, Miller would have said so,” Charles said. “He wouldn’t need to make up some story about spies on top of that.”

“Unless this is just some other guy,” someone said. “Maybe there
is
a spy crawling around the woods, but it doesn’t mean this guy’s him.”

That hadn’t occurred to some of them, Rebecca could see. Suddenly, the men in the room were making more sustained eye contact with one another, as if realizing for the first time that there could be another intruder in the town. What if someone were plotting to break into Commonwealth, either to spread flu or to tamper with the mill? The guards were a perfectly good deterrent to anyone who tried to wander into the town, but surely they couldn’t repel someone who was determined.

“We’re putting an awful lot of stock in what Miller said,” Rankle pointed out. “The Protective League is rotten. They watch everybody: their neighbors, their so-called friends, their family.
They’re
the spies.”

“And what about the other soldier—the one from last week?” Banes asked. He avoided Graham’s eyes when he said it.

Charles ran his fingers through his hair, exhaled, and looked at his watch. “Here’s what I think we should do.” And he laid out his plan.

Rebecca did not agree with the plan, but most of the men in the room seemed to, so she did not speak out. She had been outvoted once again, succeeding only in revealing to everyone how alienated she had become from her own husband, her own town. She stood there, arms crossed, staring hard at the floor as the men filed out of the room.

The last to leave was Jarred Rankle, who paused to look back at her.

“It’ll all be over in a couple of hours,” he said. “I’m sure everything will be fine.”

“Then you share my husband’s certainty,” she replied ruefully. She looked up at him, this massive man filling the doorway. When he stood up against a wall, it looked like the wall was leaning on him for support. “Certainty doesn’t make one strong.”

“But having everyone stand together does.”

“Is this what togetherness feels like? It seems rather different, from where I’m standing.”

“Your family will be together soon.”

She wondered if she only imagined the faint stress on the word
your,
wondered if he was contrasting her plight with his. For a moment she thought he might step toward her, but instead he nodded and walked off.

It was dark as Graham approached the storage building, rifle in hand.

The doctor’s mention of the first soldier had not unnerved him—Graham had already thought of the dead man, but the memory now lacked its stinging effect. Because there was a new threat, he felt all the more focused on protecting the town, on assuring the magistrates didn’t make any foolish decisions. He’d made it clear that he would have preferred they just keep Philip and the soldier or spy locked away for a while longer. He felt bad for Philip, and he saw that the boy would be made a victim of the unusual circumstances, but it was the safest option for the town. Nonetheless, he could see that Rebecca would never allow that, and Banes seemed to be sticking to his story about the forty-eight hours. Graham had noticed a tremor in the doctor’s voice, however: uncertainty that the others had missed. All week Graham had alternated between being so tired he feared the world was racing past him, but then suddenly so alert and aware that he thought he could see the detail of every single branch in the forest before him, as if all the world’s secrets had been laid bare. It was the lack of sleep, he knew, causing his brain to work in fits and starts. Keep focusing, he told himself. After all those hours standing and seeing nothing, he felt in his bones that something was about to happen, something of dire importance.