The Last Town on Earth

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He smiled at her warily, hoping it really was a joke and that he hadn’t been walking around all this time, unbeknownst to himself, with a pointy nose. He couldn’t help looking at her nose more closely than usual, and at the rest of her face. This person is my sister now, he thought, yet we weren’t born of the same people. I don’t have her father’s nose, and she doesn’t have my mother’s eyes. Are related people more likely to catch the flu from each other? Would it come for both of us, or just one? How tightly connected are we? And I wish my hair was as blond as hers.

They sat there in silence, then Laura leaned forward a bit. She lowered her voice. “I wanted to ask you … if you would let me look at one of your books.”

“One of what books?” Philip too lowered his voice, though he wasn’t sure why.

“Your fighter-pilot books.”

A quizzical look. “I don’t have any fighter-pilot books.”

She rolled her eyes. “They’re in your closet. Under the box with your baseball glove.”

“… What were you doing in my closet?”

“Look, I could have just taken them and read them if I’d wanted to, but I’m being good enough to ask permission.”

“If Rebecca knew about them—”

“I know. I can keep secrets.”

“If she catches you, they’re yours.”

“Deal. But she won’t catch me.”

They left the table and walked to his bedroom, in the back corner of the house, directly below Laura’s room. He opened his closet door, reached down beneath a pile of extra blankets, and lifted out the box with his baseball glove and three baseballs, revealing the contraband beneath. The one on top was called Hunt for the Baron, and the cover bore an illustration of a plane with the German flag painted on its wings, firing its silver guns and leaving supernaturally blue and pink flames in its wake.

He handed them to her.

“Which one’s the best?” she asked.

He was surprised that she was interested in war stories—she was a girl, after all, and not one with a lot of tomboy traits. Philip himself had been somewhat embarrassed by reading them—wasn’t he too old for such stories? Somewhere in those European trenches, other sixteen-year-olds were fighting for their lives.

“I haven’t read them all yet,” he said. “I’ve read the bottom four so far. I liked Attack of the Flying Circus best, I think.”

He had bought a few of them in Timber Falls last month. They were in a stack by the front register of a general store, and the vivid covers had caught his attention, reminding him of the stories of cowboys and train robbers he had read when he was younger. He must have left dozens of those books behind in various boardinghouses during his childhood, as he and his mother always seemed to be moving unexpectedly, running from an angry landlord or a jealous boyfriend. He had reached for a couple of the war books, flipping through until the clerk politely suggested he be a good patriot and buy them.

As soon as Philip reached the Worthy home, he ferried them into his room, temporarily hiding them under his bed. Soldiers were not viewed as heroes in this household, he well knew.

Attack of the Flying Circus detailed the horrific exploits of the recently slain Manfred von Richthofen, the legendary Red Baron, whose so-called Flying Circus was still tearing holes through the skies above France, strafing Allied soldiers and civilians alike. It was a short book intended for somewhat younger readers, and it took Philip only forty minutes to reach the end, where brave American pilots shot down the baron and half of the Circus, chasing the dwindling armada back to German airways, from which it would surely regroup to terrify the skies another day. Philip didn’t know how much was true, but he knew the Baron had existed, knew there was real blood being spilled somewhere beyond these pages.

Another book, Spies in the Harbor, was about German spies who tried to blow up the Statue of Liberty. This one, too, though fiction, hewed closely to the truth: before the United States joined the war, German spies had set off a bomb in a New York harbor, blowing up a munitions facility with an explosion so great it scarred the Statue of Liberty and woke up people as far away as Philadelphia. Everyone in the country had been warned about spies by alarmed government announcements, excited newspapers, and the persistent Four-Minute Men. There were so many recent German immigrants, no one knew whom they could trust. According to the papers, spies were everywhere, keeping tabs on the soldiers at the camps and the workers in the shipyards, spreading wicked rumors of lost battles in France, hoping to discourage the lionhearted American people. Columnists wrote tips on how to spot a spy, on which behaviors were sure signs of the Hun, on what things not to talk about in public. There were even reports that Germany was sending spies to mill towns, hoping to sabotage one of the industries that was keeping American troops supplied for the war. But Charles had reassured Philip that such rumors were groundless fearmongering.

Still, Philip felt stupid for reading these kids’ books. “You can take all of them,” he said to Laura.

She looked at him strangely. “I don’t need all of them.” Besides, how would she sneak all of them to her room without risking being discovered by their mother?

He had offered because he didn’t feel like reading about soldiers anymore, or perhaps ever again. The mere thought of a soldier in the woods nauseated him.

“I’m going to go read it in bed,” Laura said. “I’ll put it back tomorrow.”

Holding the book in her right hand, she reached down through the waist of her skirt with her left. Then, in a motion so practiced Philip realized she must have done this before—and often—she passed the book from one hand to the other inside her dress. There she was, pinning the book there between her belly and the skirt.

“That’s disgusting,” Philip said.

“I’m wearing long johns.”

“Still.” He shook his head. “You can keep the book.”

She rolled her eyes at him. “I’ll put it back tomorrow.”

They said good night and she was gone, and he was alone again. He sat down on his bed, hoping she wouldn’t think less of him when she saw how childish the books were.

All the soldiers and pilots in those stories had girls back home, sweethearts. The doughboys wrote them letters and received perfume-scented stationery in return, and at night they’d talk among themselves about how after they beat the kaiser, they’d head back home and marry Susie or Mary Ann or Fanny.

Philip lay down and imagined himself as a soldier with Elsie as his sweetheart. Would she write him letters? She would miss him terribly and roll bandages with the other Red Cross ladies as a way of being close to him; she’d think of him constantly. And what would she write to him? Something about how she missed him the most at night, when she was alone in the dark and the bed felt so big and empty without him. But that would mean they’d already shared the bed, and so he imagined this, too, imagined the two of them lying together, and his imagination continued to work backward, seeing himself sitting atop the bed and watching her undress before joining him. He lingered on that image for a while. Then he let her back into the bed and his imagination raced forward again, stopping at those moments any sixteen-year-old boy would fixate on and skipping past those he didn’t yet understand.

X (#uca71b0af-35fc-54fc-ac82-640faf717bce)

Charles was standing at the foot of his bed, looking in a small and faded mirror above his dresser as he removed his tie, when he heard the murmuring voices of his children coming from downstairs.

“I’m glad he’s talking to Laura,” Charles said to Rebecca. “He’s barely said a word at the mill the last two days.”

Rebecca stood up from the bed, putting down the journal she had been reading. “How is a person supposed to act after watching his friend shoot someone?”

Charles was still, surprised by her tone. Then he walked up behind her, wanting to put his hands on her shoulders to calm her, but thought against it.

“He never should have been out there,” Rebecca said.

Charles waited a beat. “He volunteered.”

She turned to face him. “You let him.”

“I was supposed to forbid him?” His voice grew louder, but he was still enough in control to keep the children from overhearing.

Rebecca began tidying the bed.

“Do you blame me for this?” he asked.

Her answer, when it came, seemed less important to him than the fact that she didn’t voice it for a full three seconds.

“No,” she said. “I know you didn’t want this to happen. I’m sorry. I’m just …” She shook her head. “I’m just angry that it happened.” She sat down on the bed again, her hands clasped in her lap.

Charles didn’t want any more arguments, any more debates. They had been arguing for months about the war, as his opinions were more moderate than hers. He had reminded her recently that the price of lumber was up thanks to the army’s need of spruce for fighter planes and Douglas fir for constructing cantonments, and then Rebecca had all but accused him of war profiteering. Have we moved deep into the woods and paid workers a better wage just so they could help the army kill more Germans?

“I’ll tell him he’s not to serve as a guard again,” Charles said. “It was a mistake to let him, you’re right.”

“I’ve already talked to him about that,” Rebecca replied, “and he doesn’t want to stop. He’s afraid he’d be letting Graham down if he did. And I think he really means that he’d be letting us down, too.”

That seems to make this argument moot, Charles thought. “So what do you want me to do?”

Maybe all she wanted was to hear that Charles did indeed have Philip’s pain on his conscience, have the death of the soldier on his conscience. Even so, he wasn’t sure he could say it, wasn’t sure he could give voice to all the pressures bearing down on him. He had that one life on his conscience, yes, but he also had the lives of every person in the town. Every man and woman he had encouraged to leave their previous jobs and homes, to whom he had promised a better way of life, for whom he had vowed a stronger community, a land of safety and hope. He had to remember that.

The town was bigger than Charles, bigger than his paternal instincts for Philip’s protection, bigger than his need to please his wife. He thought of his selfish brothers, how they had always used their families’ needs to justify their own petty actions—that was why the workers were badly paid, why the strikebreakers could knock heads. He would not allow himself to fall into that trap, to use his love for his family to justify a moral failing. It didn’t mean he didn’t love Philip, Rebecca, and Laura any less—it meant that he loved them so much he would not compromise his vision of love for all.

That this was so incredibly difficult to do only convinced him that it was right.

Rebecca said, “I don’t want you to do anything.”

Charles sat on the bed beside Rebecca, who was gazing ahead at the wall rather than at her husband’s large blue eyes. He put an arm around her and she did the same, and they sat there in a half embrace.

“I don’t blame you,” she said, hoping it was true.

Twenty minutes later, Charles had gone to pay a quick visit to Dr. Banes, and Rebecca was downstairs making tea. The pot was not yet whistling when there was a knock on the door.

Rebecca pulled the curtain aside to get a glimpse of the visitor: Jarred Rankle. She smiled and opened the door.

“Good evening, Jarred.” She backed away and left the door open. “You’re just in time for some tea.”

Rankle held a hat in his hands, as well as some papers. His heavy jacket only added to the thickness of his muscular frame, and the floor seemed to creak a bit more loudly when he walked on it than when Charles did.

“I’m finally getting around to returning these journals,” he told her. “They were very interesting—thank you.”

“Better start reading more slowly,” Rebecca said. “We’ll have to make every printed word last until the quarantine ends.”

“Is Charles in?”

“He’s visiting Doc Banes.”

Rankle blanched. “Is he all right?”

She smiled. “Not that kind of visit. Just to talk.”

He nodded.

“Join me for some tea. You look chilled.”

He paused, torn between decorum and perhaps something else. His heavy granite eyebrows shifted a bit, then he sat down at the table. “Thank you,” he said. “So how are your little charges at the school?”

She smiled as she carried two cups to the table and sat across from him. “They’re fine. I think I may have miscalculated, though. I thought the inactivity of having the town closed would bore them and lead to trouble, idle hands and all that. So I’ve been even stricter than usual lately, giving them extra work, but I wonder if I’ve gone a bit overboard. The more I give them, the more distracted they seem. I’m beginning to feel a bit guilty about it.”

“Ah, it’s good for ‘em.” He smiled. “I never did well at school, and look what became of me. Drive the little ones into the ground; they’ll thank you for it.”

They talked for a bit about one of the journal articles Rankle had read, something about the recent trial of the Wobbly leadership. Dozens had been sentenced to long jail terms for the crime of speaking out against the war.

“Wilson’s just using the war as an excuse to jail all the Wobblies,” Rankle said. “He’s in a panic about what happened to Russia—afraid of having his own Bolshevik Revolution on his hands.”

“Did you see some Democrats are calling the IWW ‘Imperial Wilhelms Warriors’?”

He smirked. “I saw it. I’d heard it before, too. They’ll blame ‘em for the war, blame ‘em for not fighting the war, blame ‘em after the war. It’s nothing new.”

He coughed then, a hoarse and forceful shudder that rocked the table. Rebecca didn’t worry, as she was used to his coughing. Like many men in town, Rankle had the asthmatic cough of the shingle weaver, his lungs scoured by years of sawdust.

Jarred Rankle had been a young husband and father living outside Missoula when the lack of jobs forced him to take a six-month stint felling timber three hundred miles from home. He had missed his family terribly during those months, reading letters filled with news of their two-year-old son’s progress. After four months, his wife’s letters stopped reaching him, and Rankle blamed the timber town’s crooked postmaster, to whom he had refused to pay kickbacks. After the job was finished, it was time to see if the situation back in Missoula had improved, but when he reached his house he found it empty. Some of their scant possessions had been left behind, but not many. He asked around but no one knew where his wife was, or his son. He contacted family but they didn’t know, either. Rankles wife and child had lived there only one year and had few acquaintances, so no one had noticed their sudden absence. The winter had been long and cold, and weeks had passed when people never saw their neighbors. He spent the next six months and every last penny he owned trying to find them, but there was no trail and no leads. He never saw them again.

After drinking away a couple of years and living in and out of small town prisons, Rankle made a friend, a Wobbly by the name of Rubinski. When he heard Rankle’s sob story, he both empathized and told him the story was all too common. You think you’re the only bum’s dragged himself to the ends of the earth to find a job to feed your family and come home to find ‘em gone? You think you’re the only one to wonder if they was killed by Injuns or horse thieves, or maybe they found a richer man and ran off with him, or maybe they died of the cold in the snow? You think you’re the only one who’s played by the rules and still had everything taken from him? A thousand invisible and brokenhearted men walked alongside him, kicking their empty bottles and holding on to old love letters with blistered, work-weary fingers. Rankle applied for his red card that week and never drank again.

Rankle spent the next ten years following jobs in the Northwest and organizing for the Wobblies. He had been in Everett for the general strike, where his position made him a marked man. He’d been outnumbered by thugs and beaten up at the Beverly Park ambush, and was in the hospital recovering when the ferries had taken their ill-fated voyage, though he lost two friends that day. Tired of the violence and overwhelmed by the disappearance of more loved ones, he had parted ways with the Wobblies after that. He left Everett and bounced from job to job until he heard about what Charles Worthy was doing in Commonwealth.

After a brief silence, he saw a preoccupied look take hold of Rebecca. “Are you all right?”

She placed her cup on its saucer. “Worried.”

“Once the war’s over, the unions’ll be back.”

She smiled. “Not about that. About Philip. About the quarantine.”

Rankle felt a bit uncomfortable, stepping into a family situation. “He won a lot of guys’ respect, volunteering as a guard.”

“I’m not much interested in him winning respect. I think some men around here overvalue that.”

Rankle’s heavy eyebrows shifted in acquiescence. “If it helps to know, he does seem to be in good spirits around the mill,” he said. “And people like working with him. He’s a good kid. I keep my eye on him.” He felt another cough coming but stifled it with a sip of hot tea. He could feel the sweat at his hairline.

“Thank you. He is a good young man. That’s why I worry—about him and Laura.”

“I’ll say this: if I could raise a family in any town in America, it would be in Commonwealth.”

She looked down for a short while, her brows knit.

“I voted against the quarantine,” she finally said. “I think it’s wrong. I don’t think we should shut the world out, cut ourselves off.” She stared at her hands, folded into a tense knot.

It was the first time she had confided in him this way. But she felt herself becoming as cut off as she feared the town had become; she was telling him because she had to tell someone.

“Things will work out,” he told her after a silence. An expression as confident as it was simple.

She shook her head again. “I wish I had done more to stop it—” Her voice broke, her eyes watering.

After a moment’s hesitation, he reached out and put one of his massive hands atop hers, squeezing it a bit. His palm felt warm on Rebecca’s fingers.

She looked up at him. He was a handsome man, the sharp edges of his jawline and cheekbone intimidating, perhaps, but the calmness of those gray eyes more than compensating. Surely he could have remarried, Rebecca figured—he probably could have had his pick of wives, even in towns where available women were greatly outnumbered by loggers. She didn’t know if he had ever stopped mourning his family or if he had never stopped believing they were alive. Perhaps he had allowed himself to become married to a cause, first to the Wobblies and now to Commonwealth. If so, it was not a complete marriage, for Rebecca still sensed the loneliness inside him.