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The passengers grew quiet, perhaps remembering broken noses and cut eyebrows suffered at the hands of McRae’s men, or similar assailants in some other town, different faces but always the same fists. The passengers who had knives in their pockets let their hands slip down and finger the steel as they watched the scene unfold before them. Waiting.
The songs started up again, this time even louder than before. “We meet today in freedom’s cause and raise our voices high! We’ll join our hands in union strong to battle or to die!” Hearts beat faster as the singers looked one another in the eye, trying to keep themselves from being intimidated by some two-bit thugs with a bottle of whiskey in one pocket and a .38 in the other.
Graham put an arm around Tamara and held her hip with his good hand. They were toward the bow, on the port side—the side that was lining up against that dock swarming with men. Graham couldn’t see any knives or clubs or shovels or guns on the dock, but that didn’t mean they weren’t there.
The boat pulled alongside the dock and one of the Wobblies reached across to tie it down, but an angry-looking man with dizzy eyes stepped out from the crowd. It was Sheriff McRae, Graham recognized, and the stories about him seemed to be true, as he walked with the slightly staggered shuffle of the raging and belligerent drunk.
“Who’s your leader?” McRae demanded.
“We’re all leaders!” a handful shouted back, voicing one of the IWW slogans.
Graham leaned down toward Tamaras ear to tell her they should take a few steps back, but before he could speak, McRae raised his voice.
“I’m sheriff of this town, and I’m enforcin’ our laws. You can’t dock here, so head on back to—”
“The hell we can’t!” someone shouted back.
Then a gunshot. It tore through the air and bounced off the still water, echoing throughout the harbor, off distant islands and near inlets. Everyone on the boat tried to move, but there was nowhere to go. People screamed and ducked for cover, tried to turn around, to escape. The shot echoed endlessly. But it wasn’t an echo—it was more shots, some coming from the dock and some coming from the boat. Who had fired first was as impossible to determine as it was irrelevant. Between the popping sounds of shots and ricochets were the hard slaps of limp bodies hitting the water, men disappearing into the depths below.
Graham slipped, whacking his knee on the deck and sliding forward, since no one was between him and the rail anymore. Everyone was running to the opposite side of the boat. Men on the dock were pointing and shouting and screaming and some of them were brandishing guns and firing still.
He realized he wasn’t holding Tamara—he must have lost his grip on her in the initial turmoil. He looked behind him at the Wobblies running to the starboard side, looked for long hair, for those black coils, for anything remotely female.
The boat started tipping. All the weight had shifted to starboard, and now the port side, where Graham stood, was lifting into the air. Two vigilantes who’d had clear shots at him missed when the deck beneath him rose, but Graham lost his footing again and stumbled back, sliding on the wet deck and tumbling back toward the cowering bodies on the far side.
The boat’s captain, who didn’t give much of a damn for either unions or mill owners, started hollering at them to disperse around the boat or it’d go under. He turned the wheel and hit the engines with a force he’d never before dared, and the Verona lurched away from the dock, a lopsided and badly wounded animal retreating from predators. The only people who obeyed the captain’s orders despite the bullets were Graham and a small handful of others hoping to get a closer look at the water.
The guns were still firing but were more distant now, less threatening. Graham leaned over the railing and screamed for Tamara. Was she in the water? Was she back on the other side of the boat?
Bodies floated beneath the dock, but none looked female. The water was so dark that the blood was completely absorbed into its deep indigo.
There. Over there, by the dock’s farthest pylon. Long dark hair, soot-black. Hair Graham had twisted his fingers in the night before. But no, it could be a woman who’d been on the dock, could be anyone.
Then a wave from the wake of the Verona’s quick retreat hit the body, roughly lifting it and turning its head. Graham screamed when he saw her face.
He pulled at the rail so tightly he nearly tore it from the ship’s deck. His scream echoed over the bay, over the Sound, over every island and with more force than the earlier anthems. Folks from Everett who were blocks away from the water heard that scream, marveled about it for days. He screamed so loudly the dead surely heard him, Tamara surely heard him, screamed so loudly he wouldn’t have been able to hear her answer even if she’d had one.
Then her face exploded. Two goons atop the dock were laughing themselves hysterical, hooting and hollering and stomping with glee as they fired round after round at the bodies floating in the water. They shot indiscriminately at every floating thing in human form, shooting the bodies of Wobblies but also shooting the occasional body of an Everett cop or vigilante, a body who only moments ago had been a man filled with pride for his town and hatred for these foulmouthed agitators and their foreign ideas about how the world should be run. One or two of those bodies had actually still been alive, but most had already been dead, and still the men fired as if they could somehow make them more dead.
Graham’s scream was cut off by this sight. His breath too fled—he stood there gripping the rail, watching in mute shock and rage.
The Verona pulled away with merciful speed and the scene dissolved into washes of gray and blue with streaks of red, blurring with the distance and with Graham’s tears. The sound of the engine soon overpowered that of the gunshots, of the bullets slamming into flesh and water. Graham crumpled to the deck.
Their safety ensured by distance, the passengers on the Verona began to fan out again as the boat headed back toward Seattle. Wounded men were tended, though the death toll would increase by the time they made landfall. There were men with broken bones, men who’d slipped or been crushed as they’d fled the path of the bullets. And there were men, their eyes still wide, who had seen their comrades fall.
Yet they all seemed to know that no one had lost as much as the man who lay in a heap by the front of the boat. His arms were wrapped around himself, his nine fingers digging into the thick muscles of his shoulders. The rest of the men kept a respectful distance, a wide circle of emptiness surrounding him.
I will never again permit myself to be in so powerless a position, Graham had long vowed.
Ain’t nothing a man has can’t be taken away.
He knew that then, knew how easy it would be for home and family and love to vanish forever. He thought of the dead soldier and he pitied him, pitied the randomness of fate that had placed him on that path in front of Graham, pitied him the way he had once pitied himself. But Graham had done what was necessary to protect Amelia and Millie. He lifted his head from his hands and wiped the tears from his eyes. No one and nothing would come into this town, into his home, to do harm to his family. And even if the devil himself should ride into town on a flaming beast breathing pestilence and death, then Graham would stand at that post, look him in the eye, and shoot him down.
VIII (#uca71b0af-35fc-54fc-ac82-640faf717bce)
“You know what I heard?”
What’s that?”
“I heard that maybe the reason Mr. Worthy wanted us to close off the town is to stop workers from moving on to other jobs.”
“What other jobs?”
“I hear they got lotsa jobs on the coast, on account of the war. Hear they’ll pay fucking shipbuilders more than we’re making here.”
“Nobody’s making more than we’re making here. They give you your own goddamn house at the shipyards?”
“How do we know they don’t?”
“I’m just saying I heard—”
“And we heard you just fine. Hell, didn’t we all vote on this? I didn’t see you raising any ruckus that night.”
“Just ‘cause I voted for something doesn’t mean I can’t change my mind. Ain’t a man free to do that?”
“Ain’t much free right now.”
“That’s my point. We ain’t free to move around and look for—”
“Goddammit, enough. If that’s the way you’re thinking, then as soon as the fucking quarantine’s over, you can take your goddamn self out to those shipyards and see how much those military folk’ll pay you. I for one don’t buy any of that.”
“I wasn’t saying I’m buying it. I just said I heard.”
“Elton’s been coughin’ a lot lately.”
“Elton’s always been coughin’.”
“But how do we know it ain’t from the flu?”
“Because he was coughing last year and there wasn’t any flu, and the year before that, and the year before that.”
“But how come that—”
“It ain’t the flu. He’s just a sick bastard.”
“Hey, Yolen. You been by the gen’ral store this week?”
“No. Jeanine’s fixing to go today, though.”
“Well, get this—there ain’t no alcohol left.”
“What?”
“The store’s all out.”
“Hell Jesus. You sure?”
“Otto said they’d just bought as much food an’ supplies as they thought they could handle before the quarantine, but they mustn’t’ve ordered much hooch.”
“Shit, Leonard. I only got one fucking bottle left at home.”
“I got less’n that.”
“Shit. You really sure there’s none left?”
“You ever have the flu?”
“Yeah, when I was ten. Kept me in bed more ‘n a month.”
“Damn. It killed all four of my grandparents in the same winter.”
“Kills everybody’s grandparents, if they’re lucky. Better’n wasting away slow with something else.”
“Don’t think flu is lucky.”
“How do you think that girl a yours in Timber Falls is doing?”
“Wasn’t sick last time I saw her. But some of her friends were.”
“Sure she’ll be fine.”
“You’re a lucky man, with your girl already here in town. This quarantine lasts much longer, I’m gonna go outta my goddamn head.”
“Can’t last much longer.”
“What the hell kind of man does this make me look like to her, hiding away because I’m scared of getting sick?”
“Don’t worry about that. She ain’t thinking down on you—she’s probably worried enough trying to stay healthy herself.”
“That’s supposed to make me feel better?”
“Sorry … She’ll be fine.”
“Yeah … I get tired of waiting sometimes, you know?”
IX (#uca71b0af-35fc-54fc-ac82-640faf717bce)
“I heard someone say it came in a black cloud over the Atlantic,” Laura said as she and Philip ate some of the cake she’d made. It was the evening after Philip’s visit to Graham and Amelia.
“A black cloud?”
“Like a mustard gas cloud, only dark. Something the Germans released from a battleship, and the wind brought it to Boston. That’s why it started there.”
“Do you really think the Germans made it?”
“Maybe. I don’t know. Why not?”
“Then wouldn’t they all be sick, too?”
Laura shrugged. “Maybe they don’t get the flu.”
“Then I guess Elsie’s family has nothing to worry about.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“I just mean they’re German.”
“But they’re American now, Philip.” She paused. “You sure do bring her up a lot.”
That shut him up for a moment.
“Maybe it wasn’t from Germany,” she said. “I don’t know. It’s an idea, is all.”
Two weeks ago, just before the quarantine, they had journeyed to Timber Falls to see a moving picture at the new theater. Philip had been only a handful of times, and already he was anxious to get back to the theater and see whatever was playing. He loved the feel of the place, the plush carpets up the aisles and the sleepy usher not much older than he, wearing the funny hat and tearing their tickets as they walked in. The picture they had seen, The Phantom Operative, had been about the war, in a way. There were no soldiers in it, but plenty of spies: the plot centered on two American businessmen who had developed a secret serum that could counteract any disease within two hours of the patient’s ingesting it. But it turned out German operatives had developed the exact opposite—an odorless, colorless poison that could kill anyone who even came too close to it. The Germans had some crazy scheme to put the poison on the feet of houseflies and send the flies to the American heartland, where they would multiply and spread their lethal freight.
When the reels were changed, there was a message on the screen asking everyone to stay in their seats; a representative of the government was going to deliver an important message. Up on the stage jumped an older man, late forties or so, and before he even started, Philip realized he must be one of the so-called Four-Minute Men. The speaker looked snappy in his dark suit, and without introducing himself, he launched into his speech, starting out dark and sinister as he painted a picture of the Hun army and its senseless wrath. People say the war’s already swinging in our favor, he said, but that’s no reason for us to be letting our guard down. The German army is still a mighty force, and without all the efforts of the fine and hardworking American people, the Hun would have claimed Paris by now, would have pillaged all of France and would be aiming his Big Berthas at Big Ben.
Philip didn’t much mind these speeches, but he knew how Rebecca loathed them, so he viewed the man with a skeptical eye. Toward the end of the speech, the man reminded them of the importance of registration for all men between the ages of eighteen and forty-five, saying how it was a great honor to fight for their country and defend their women and children from the fierce Hun. Philip looked down at his missing foot, ashamed—even if the war continued until he turned eighteen, he would never be admitted. The Four-Minute Man closed by telling the crowd about the Fourth Liberty Loan and exhorted them to buy more Liberty Bonds, then walked off at a hurried pace, his footsteps chased by hearty applause.
Then the picture continued, and the virulent houseflies were let loose on the German operatives after a climactic fight scene, and all was right with the world.
“Where do you think the flu came from?” Laura asked Philip now. She almost never asked him questions like that, never wanted to defer to his opinion. Proud of her own intelligence and too acutely aware of the fact that he was older, she didn’t want him to start thinking that his age made him any brighter than she. It had stunned him a few months ago when she’d asked him to help her with some of the math problems, and soon they had developed a regular tutoring schedule. But for math only: it was understood that Laura was still smarter in other matters. Philip simply had the edge here thanks to his financial tutelage under Charles.
“I don’t know. Hadn’t really thought about it like that. It just is.”
“Have you ever had the flu?”
He thought. “Don’t think so. I was pretty healthy until the accident. My mom always said I had the constitution of a rhino.”
“A rhino?”
“I think she liked the way that sounded.”
“I think she was making fun of your nose.”
He touched his nose. “What?”
“I was kidding. Rhino.”
