A Plague Year

“Do you know him?”

“A little. He’s not a bad guy. He had a drug problem, I guess. And some legal problems.”

“Do you know his brother?”

“Warren? Yeah. Real smart guy. He was a pharmacy tech at Kroger.”

“No!”

“Yeah. During college.”

“He went to college?”

“He did, up at Bloomsburg, but I don’t think he finished. He had some problem at Kroger—stealing pills, or underreporting pills, or misreporting. I’m not sure what.”

Dad finally gave me my opening when he asked, “What are those guys doing now?”

“Oh, different stuff. They move college kids in and out of the Blackwater dorms.”

“Yeah?”

“And they do some government work, hauling pine trees.”

“For turpentine?”

“I guess so, yeah. And they sell Christmas trees down in Florida.”

“Really?”

“Uh-huh. They’ve been doing it for a few years now. They make good money. And, uh, they asked me to work for them this year.”

Dad froze in mid-spoonful.

Lilly bulged her eyes out at me and whistled softly.

I added quickly, “Just for five days, and they’ll pay me three hundred dollars. That’s sixty dollars a day. And really, two days are travel days, so that’s a hundred dollars per working day.”

Mom spoke up immediately. “No. You can’t miss school.”

“But that’s the beauty of it. I won’t! It’s just Thanksgiving and the weekend. I’ll be back in time for school.”

I smiled and looked pathetically from Mom to Dad.

But Dad just shook his head. “I can’t spare you at work, Tom. Not at Thanksgiving. It’s one of the busiest times of the year; you know that.”

Mom piled it on. “And you’d be on the road with those”—she struggled to find the right term—“drug guys.”

I thought about Warren and that box of Ziploc bags. Were they to store food, or weed? Both, probably. Still, I tried to sound offended, like that was an outrageous lie. “Drug guys?”

“Yes! You heard what your father just said. They’ve both had drug problems.”

“That was years ago! Didn’t Dad have a problem back then, too?”

“That’s not the point. You have school, you have work, and you have parents who won’t let you get in a car with just anybody and take off for just anyplace. The answer is no.”

I can’t say I was surprised. The answer is always no.

I said as evenly as I could, “Okay. Forget it. It was just an idea.” Then I took the stairs two at a time up to my room and, very calmly, got ready for school. But I was fuming inside.

Mr. Proctor began class by describing his reactions to our journal entries. “These are great! Heartfelt and well-observed. I especially liked the ones about your town, and about coal mining, and about a place called Caldera.

“They got me to thinking. We have talked about Pennsylvania as a Garden of Eden, as a paradise. It has some of the world’s most abundant farmland above, and it has some of the world’s most abundant coal veins below.

“So picture this: It is glorious, sunny, and heaven-like up top, and it’s sulfurous, burning, and hell-like down below. It’s all here in one place. It’s yin and yang. It’s Paradise Lost.

“And, while we are speaking of great literature …” He picked up his script for The Roses of Eyam. “All the roles in my play have now been assigned. I want to thank everybody who auditioned.”

He looked at Wendy. “Some of you showed great talent.”

Arthur muttered behind me, “Grape talent.”

Mr. Proctor heard him, and he called him on it. “What’s that, Arthur?”

“Uh, I was wondering, sir, if I got that village idiot job. Did I?”

“Yes. I told you that before.”

“And—I just want to double-check—if I play this part, I get an A in English?”

Mr. Proctor summarized, somewhat impatiently, “Yes. You have been assigned the part of the Bedlam, the village idiot. And if you learn that role and you play it on December thirtieth in the school auditorium, you get an A. Why? Are you having second thoughts?”

“No! No way. Oh, but I have to tell you: I’ll be gone from November twenty-first to the twenty-fifth. Out of town on business. I won’t be able to rehearse then.”

“Okay. That won’t be a problem.”

“Cool. Then you got yourself an idiot.”

Mr. Proctor held the script high. “The original production had over fifty actors. I have managed to pare it down to a dozen speaking parts, and I’ve cut the three acts down to one. But I have preserved the essence of the play, which, in my view, is this:

“One day, in the peaceful English village of Eyam, the plague arrives in a shipment of cloth. People start to die. At first no one knows what is happening. The plague starts to spread very rapidly, geometrically—two, four, eight, sixteen bodies a day. The people realize, to their horror, what is happening to them. But they also realize that if they let the plague move beyond their village, it will continue to increase, geometrically, until half of England is dead. To prevent that ultimate catastrophe, the villagers embark on something truly heroic: They stay in their own town. They do not run away. They stay and fight.”

He stopped and looked at me, but I looked away. I had heard enough. Mr. Proctor could stay in Blackwater if he wanted, in his plague village, but I would not.

I had made up my mind. I was getting the hell out, with my parents’ permission or not.

I was going to Florida.

The counseling group started right on time, at least for us. But I could tell by Catherine Lyle’s nervous glances at the door, and at her watch, that something was wrong. Our guest speaker, her husband, was not there.

Wendy, however, was. She was sitting in her old spot, smiling, waiting to hear her famous father speak.

Catherine Lyle improvised by saying, “I often start the meeting by introducing a topic. I know that some of you have things you want to talk about that I have not covered. So let’s start today with a free topic, anything you’d like to share that you have not been able to.”

Ben’s hand shot up, of course. But some other hands did, too.

Catherine Lyle pointed to Jenny, who said, quite unexpectedly, “I would like to share that I have a problem at home. My father is a recovering alcoholic. I tried to hide that fact all my life. I get all A’s on my report cards, and I’m on the Student Council, and I try really hard to act perfect, but that doesn’t change the truth. I have a problem at home, a big problem. I always have.”

Jenny stopped there.

Other kids nodded and said they understood her predicament.

I was shocked. The Weavers did seem to be the perfect family, but I guess that was Jenny’s point.

Angela spoke up next. Her topic was very different. “My cousin drank bleach to pass a urine test with her probation officer. But she drank too much, or it was too strong, and it burned out the lining of her esophagus. So now she has to eat through a tube.”

Another girl advised her, “She shoulda drank vinegar instead. Vinegar’s supposed to work.”

Lilly objected to that very strongly. “No! You shouldn’t learn how to lie better. Or cheat better. You should