Your Sins and Mine: The Terrifying Fable of a World Without Faith by Taylor Caldwell
Edward tried to take Lucy in his arms, but she had begun to weep wildly, holding her children tightly in her arms. I saw now that the boys were definitely ill. Their eyes had a too brilliant glare under the tears, and there were white circles about their mouths.
“You are frightening the little ones,” my mother implored. “Do be calm for their sake, Lucy.” My father returned and announced that the doctor was on his way to our house.
Then Edward said quietly: “It can’t be the weeds. I often bend down and feel them.” He held out his hands for us to inspect, and turned his clouded glasses to us.
“You feel them—touch them?” asked my father, incredulously. “And they don’t sting or poison you?”
“No. I’ve even handled their thorns, and I’ve never been pricked. Their smell is horrible, of course, but they haven’t hurt me.”
My father was silent, staring at my brother with deep contemplation. Jean came back into the room and relief stood out on her expressive face. She shook her head at me, and I breathed a sigh of relief.
“Of course,” said my father, “they wouldn’t hurt Ed.”
We did not take the time to question him about this odd remark, for we had to quiet Lucy and help her take the children upstairs to their beds.
By the time the doctor arrived the two boys were tossing in a kind of delirium. Lucy was silent now; she sat in a chair near them hugging her body with both arms as if mortally cold. My father watched the examination; the doctor showed no surprise. He asked Jean to boil his hypodermic needle and he brought out a vial of streptomycin.
“You’ve seen this before, many times, Frank,” said my father flatly. “I can tell by your face. What is it?”
The doctor hesitated. “I don’t know,” he said finally. “You’re right; it’s all over the township, and there are many cases like this in Arbourville.” His eyes were tired and sunken, and he stood there brooding, looking at the children. Lucy seemed not to have heard him. “Bad?” whispered my father. Dr. Frank nodded. “Deaths?” My father’s whisper was charged with dread. The doctor nodded again and his lips barely moved in answer: “Eight out of ten.”
My father touched Lucy’s shoulder and she started and looked up at him with blind hopelessness. “It’s nothing peculiar; it’s all over town, dear,” he said to her. “It’s a children’s disease?” he asked Dr. Frank.
“Not always,” he replied. But we knew he was not telling the truth. The children were being stricken down.
“Malnutrition—poor milk—canned vegetables?” faltered my mother.
“Possibly, very probably,” the doctor replied, and again we knew he was lying, all but Lucy.
“They’ll get better?” she begged. “It’s nothing serious—please, please!”
“Of course, Lucy, they’ll get better,” he said, and he bent over the children with his needle. They screamed, even in their semicomatose condition. “Just keep them quiet, and as cool as possible. The heat’s terrible these days, isn’t it? Worst I can remember in years. Just bathe the little fellows, Lucy, with luke warm water, and dust them with this powder I’m leaving you, and when they—” again he hesitated, and his voice sank—“recover consciousness give them pieces of ice to suck. They’ll come to themselves in about twenty-four hours, and then you’ll have to keep them warm. They—they seem to get very cold, later.”
Jean was ashen. “Is it contagious?” she asked.
The doctor shrugged. “I don’t think so. It’s something like pellagra, I believe—the joints and gums—”
He motioned with his head to my father and me and we followed him out into the hall. “I won’t lie to you, George,” said Dr. Frank. “The rash starts to bleed. When the fever drops a sort of hemorrhage which we can’t control develops under the skin. Not in all cases, and let’s pray it won’t happen in these. For,” and he looked at us dully, “the hemorrhage is a very bad symptom. The patient usually dies. The hemorrhages occur in the brain and lungs and heart, too. We’ve found them on autopsy.”
My father had turned gray. The doctor put a hand on his shoulder. “Don’t worry too much. The boys have very high fevers. The worst cases are those with subnormal or normal temperatures.”
My father groaned. “What does the Health Department say?”
“It says nothing. We’ve already had specialists in to look at the children. George, I’ve been hearing about your prophecies. One of them, at least, has come true. There’s a plague here.”
“And nowhere else?”
The doctor regarded us steadily, and we knew he was about to lie again. “Nowhere else,” he said with firmness.
My father closed his eyes. “And all your wonder drugs mean nothing,” he said bitterly.
Dr. Frank sighed and did not answer. He started down the stairs and we followed him. I was ill with fear for my own child. We could hear Edward and my mother trying to comfort Lucy. Jean trailed in our rear. All the light had gone out of her face, and it was strained. “Could it be smallpox?” she pleaded. “The children have been vaccinated.”
“It’s not smallpox,” said the doctor, and now I heard his utter hopelessness. “It could be the stench of the weeds, or some kind of poison they give out. We don’t know.” He added: “They’ll need constant care for over two weeks. You’d better tell Margaret, George, so she can relieve Lucy.”
It was arranged that for safety’s sake Jean was not to help Lucy and my mother. As we went up to bed together I was worried, for it was not like Jean to be so haggard and silent. She undressed without speaking and when I lay down beside her she clutched me convulsively, buried her head in my shoulder and shook with soundless sobs of despair. I stroked her fine dark hair but I had no comfort for her. My whole body ached, not only with fear but with exhaustion; each day my father and I, and our tenant farmers, buried the dead bodies of the countless birds and animals which increasingly littered the land. Whether they had died of starvation or had been poisoned we did not know. We had tried burning them, but there was no open spot now and the weeds seemed invulnerable to fire.
We had moved the baby’s crib into our own room, and Jean got up several times during the night to examine the child. He slept uneasily, and he had not been gaining much weight during the past months. However, there was no sign of the rash on him. When Jean returned to bed each time it was with a dry sob of weariness and fear.
She slept after midnight, but I could not. It was a moonless night, but the stars were unusually bright. I watched them and an impotent fury rushed over me. Why were we being punished, if we were indeed being punished? If there were a merciful God, why was He showing us no mercy? My faith sank away in me like the dropping of a floor. The incident of the retreat of the weeds and the growing of the grass was meaningless, accidental. I had been a superstitious fool. I thought of my father with profound contempt. This disaster which had come to the world was not supernatural; it was some natural visitation. We had only to extend our food supplies until the scientists were able to discover some method of destroying our enemy, the weeds. They were surely working on it. I thought of the dwindling, musty hay in our barns, the dwindling corn and wheat in our silos. I wondered how the cities’ supplies of canned foods were holding out. The warehouses were emptying fast, too fast. We knew only of our own locality, of course, but we surmised that this was happening not only all over the country but all over the earth. And the rivers and streams were sinking again.
Only the weeds flourished. They seemed not to need water; their glistening, thorny leaves swelled with their green blood. When we had turned over some of them to permit the burying of the creatures of the fields and the woods, we saw how the thick white roots plunged deep into the ground, wet and fleshy and loathsome. Sometimes we saw our neighbors engaged in the same work of burial, but we did not hail them, nor did they hail us. We worked in silence, as if we were prisoners under guard.…
I lay beside Jean and clenched my fists. I thought of the scientists and shouted to them in my frantic mi
As if that were a signal, the earth shivered. I felt the bed gliding, and caught at the side of it. And then I heard the house creaking and shifting. Jean sat up. “What was that?” she asked faintly. Before I could answer the air was filled with a vast sound of groaning, like subterranean thunder. We jumped out of bed together, holding each other, staggering a little. Then we could hear my father’s voice, and Edward’s and my mother’s. Edward’s boys were crying again, feebly. Catching Jean’s hand I ran to the door of our room and met the family, all except Lucy, in the hall. Someone tried to turn on the lights, but the switch only clicked dryly.
“An earthquake?” asked my mother, fearfully. The starlight drifted into the hall from the end windows and I could see my mother’s nightgown and her tossed hair.
“Let’s go downstairs,” said my father, too quietly. “No, Jean, don’t get the baby. Here, Ed, take my arm. Margaret, go with Pete.”
The earth was still again, and the thunder had died away. My mother found a candle and lit it. Her face looked old and exhausted. She put the candle carefully on a table and stood there, watching its flickering glow.
My father went to the telephone, but the line was dead. It did not seem to surprise him. We had a battery radio set besides one regular one. My father found it in the kitchen and switched it on. It crackled emptily for several moments. I don’t know what we expected, but we stood about it in the shifting candlelight and waited. The night was hot, but Jean was trembling as if she were very cold, and I put my arm about her. Edward had found a chair and was sitting in it, his head in his hands.
Then out of the crackling background a man’s voice spoke: “Seems there’s been a slight earthquake felt here, folks. In Arbourville some people are a little excited. Nothing to get excited about. The telephone and electric companies will soon have everything back in good order. Circuits—blown fuses—well, folks, better get back to bed, if any of you are out of bed and listening. Just a little shake, but most of you didn’t know it—”
“Hum,” said my father.
My mother spoke, her voice thin: “I had made Lucy lie down for a while. We had a little lamp on, in the boys’ room. And then it went out I was just getting up to find another bulb when it happened.”
The airless parlor was unbearably hot. “Let’s go out on the porch, and be damned to the weeds,” my father said. “Even though there’s the stink outside at least there’s a little fresh air.” He paused. A great wind had come up; suddenly it battered the house and the windows rattled and the chimney moaned. We went out to the porch and the gale tore at our night clothes and rushed through our hair. We looked at the brilliant stars, hoping for clouds. The wind took away our breath, but we stood there, cooling ourselves. The cattle were lowing with sounds of distress in the barns.
Then Jean cried out and pointed at the sky. A shower of meteors illuminated the heavens, spitting and blazing like fireworks. Dumbfounded, we watched the display, which seemed endless. The earth was lit by intermittent glares, and again it groaned deep in its enormous depths. The weeds rattled all about us. Again, the earth shifted and steadied herself and the timbers of our house moaned.
We could not bear the wind and the stench and the clamor of the frightful weeds, so we went inside. We sat in the parlor, and the windows brightened and dimmed under the rain of stars. My father said: “Yet once more I shake not the earth only, but also heaven.” We must have sat there for an hour, at least, before the cataract of meteors suddenly halted, and all was dark about us.
Then the lights went on, and we looked at each other and tried to smile.
We didn’t learn until later that all the earth had trembled in that quake, and that in some parts of Europe there had been wide devastation and thousands of deaths. The newspapers did not speak of it. Every nation had quarantined herself.
Nor did we know then that the President had, since April, decreed that no foreign members of the United Nations could travel beyond the confines of Manhattan Island, and that no foreign ambassador could leave the city of Washington, except by plane and on his way home.
CHAPTER SEVEN
How many millions of us will never forget, for as long as we live, that awful summer!
The heat did not decline. The electric fans in our houses whirred ceaselessly, for we could not open the windows. We became more and more silent and we men, working to bury the animals as fast as they died, exchanged hardly a word. Between my father and myself had risen a wall of silence, mortared with my bitter thoughts. He had stopped urging me to read the Bible to discover what it was I had prayed so long ago, for I had knocked the book from his hand when he had tried to give it to me.
The children seemed to get better, and the dreaded hemorrhages did not appear. But they cried almost constantly. Lucy and my mother grew thinner and whiter as the days and nights passed. Sometimes I would see their faces at the bedroom windows as I came from the barns. They would look out over the savage ocean of weeds and at the terrible cloudless sky and at the matted hills. The food on our plates became more meager daily. When my father went into Arbourville for flour and salt and sugar and coffee he would bring back only half as much as we needed. The telephone never rang at all; we were hedged in from our fellow men by our universal despair.
Invariably we asked my father for news from town. So far, he related, only the gardens and lawns were overrun with the weeds, and the people, though obviously frightened, appeared to believe that it was “only a local manifestation,” and that the “drought” was responsible for the sudden decline in available meats and milk and sugar and flour. They were restive and sullen and talked angrily about the Government. My father called on young Mr. Herricks several times, though we no longer could attend church. He did not tell us then that Mr. Herricks had informed him, with grief, that so many children were dying that he was constantly attending funerals.
The farm journals remained bland, filled with discussions of new fertilizers, the possibility of “floors” under the price of cattle, criticisms of the Department of Agriculture, lively editorials, “women’s interests,” a humorous comment or two about “the trouble some of our farmers are having with a thistle-like weed in the fields—pesky devils!”
My father never missed watching a television session of the United Nations in action, even if he had to come sweating in from the infested fields for that purpose. He would sit, smoking his pipe, his eyes fixed on the screen. Very often I joined him. “Look at them,” he would mutter, pointing with his pipe stem. “Look at their faces. They’re haunted, every damn one of them. Look how they glance sideways at each other, wanting to know if other nations are dying as they are dying.”
Usually they talked aimlessly, and sometimes there would be a strange, halting silence in the midst of a discussion.
One day the head of the American delegation rose to announce that the President was hoping to reduce the arms budget even more during the next session of Congress, and that he was sending a message to the Communist members of the United Nations urging that they, in all sincerity, give assurance that they planned no new aggressions or conspiracies in any part of the world. This had been the signal, in the past, for the Russian delegates to display belligerence and to begin to belabor “the West” for its “imperialistic designs on the Peoples Democracies.” But on this day the Russians sat for a few long moments in their chairs, staring emptily before them. At last their leader stood up and in a mild and slightly trembling voice declared that Russia too sought only peace.
“Look at that Russian fellow,” my father said. “Remember how he was always shouting and accusing and glaring and waving his arms? He’s looking mighty sober these days, almost human. He doesn’t even sit studying his watch when someone else is speaking, the way he used to do. I wonder what he’s thinking? He looks scared half to death, and the others do, too.”
My father stopped watching the session
Lucy and Edward were inconsolable. It was bad enough to see Lucy’s white, dry face. It was infinitely more crushing to see Edward’s tears seeping down from his blind eyes. For some strange reason Edward’s tears aroused in me an incomprehensible guilt. There was no obvious reason for that guilt that I could discover. I had always loved and protected him; I loved his children as if they had been my own. Yet when I saw his tears something unbearably remorseful stabbed at my heart. Once I was on the verge of crying out to him: “Forgive me!” I caught back the words just in time. For what should he forgive me? I must, I thought, be going out of my mind. I was not the cause of his child’s death.
No one came to see us after the anguished funeral. We sat alone, hardly able to talk. Lucy tended the younger child and would not leave him for a moment. With immense gratitude we knew that he was recovering. But it was piteous to hear him call for his brother.
The September sun was wrathful, and though the trees were slowly turning to old yellow and there was a hint of crimson among the leaves of the maples, the heat mounted. No rain had fallen anywhere in the world for almost two months. Once we read a scientific account of the retreat of the polar caps. “This will enable more and more land to be cultivated for food,” exclaimed one farm journal delightedly. Food? There would never be food again, I thought; I knew that my father was right.
It was October—a burning, relentless October—when Johnny Carr came to see us with his wife, a worn and quiet woman. They came in a wallowing tractor, for no other sort of vehicle could move over the land. Johnny, not much more than fifty, seemed a decade older. “I just heard,” he said, as he shook my father’s hand, “that Ed’s boy died. Got it in a roundabout way. You didn’t know that my oldest boy’s little girl died, too, out in Missouri where he’d bought his own farm. All the kids are dying, everywhere.”