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.
Chapter Ten
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?”
