Jeff Hirsch - The Eleventh Plague

Shadows of leaves played over Jackson’s drawn, pale face. I stared down at my lap. Something ached deep in my chest. The idea that I had never been afraid was ridiculous but I knew what Grandpa would have said. Never admit fear. Never admit weakness.

“I’m afraid all the time,” I said. “After my mom died, I couldn’t sleep. Not for months. I’d lie awake at night and think about Dad or Grandpa getting sick. One of them dying. Dad told me we’d be fine. He said nothing would ever change again, but then Grandpa died and he…”

I shut my mouth tight and closed my eyes. Saying all of that, thinking it, even, made the whole ugly mess real all over again. It was like this darkness that I could keep at bay most of the time, but if I got too close, if I touched it, it would seize up and have me.

“Hey.”

I opened my eyes with a start. Jackson had left the swing and was standing right beside me.

“You’re here now,” he said. “We both are, right? No matter what happens. Me and my folks, all of us, we won’t let anything happen to you.”

I looked away from him, along the houses and up the street. How could I tell him that it would only be a matter of time before all of this was gone and we were scattered to the wind? Did a friend say that?

“Probably time for dinner, isn’t it?” I said, slipping off the jungle gym.

Jackson lagged behind as I crossed the park and went up the stairs and into the house. The fireplace smelled smoky and warm. Timbers creaked above me. I stood by Dad’s bed, looking down at him. His chest rose and fell weakly as he breathed.

“We’ve been here five years now,” Jackson said from behind me in the hallway that led to the kitchen, half in and half out of the light. “I don’t know if it’ll be forever, but we’ve almost been wiped out by storms and droughts and bad crops and a hundred other things, and we’ve always made it. We just stuck together and never gave up.”

Later that night, when I closed my eyes and headed to sleep, it was as though I could feel all of them: Marcus and Violet and Dad and Jackson and, somewhere outside in places of their own, Derrick and Martin and Wendy and Carrie and Jenny too. I felt each of them like blooms of heat pulsing out in the night, separate but connected.

Instead of the tomblike stillness of the previous nights, the house felt warm around me, like all of us were settled underneath a thick blanket with the cold winds and the world safely outside.

Was Jackson right? Was it real? Could it last?

I didn’t know. But right then, lying there in that quiet and warmth, I hoped. For the first time, I hoped.

The next morning before school I helped Violet carry tin buckets of hot water from the fire out back to a white tub in the bathroom upstairs. She said she figured I must be dying for a bath — meaning she was dying for me to take a bath but wanted to save my feelings. It was a good effort. And a few whiffs of myself confirmed that it was probably past due.

Once we were done and she was gone, I stripped and lowered myself into the tub. The homemade lye soap Violet gave me felt like it was taking a layer of skin off with the dirt. As I scrubbed, I thought how easy it must have been when she and my dad were my age, back before the Collapse. Turn a faucet and out came hot water. Flick a switch and there was light. It must have seemed like magic.

When I was done, Violet came back in with a razor and a pair of scissors. She cut my hair and shaved the light fall of whiskers on my cheeks, then sent me off to Jenny’s room. There I found a pair of nearly new-looking jeans, a red button-up shirt, and a handmade black wool sweater. There was even a slightly scuffed pair of brown hiking boots. On the floor next to the bed were my old clothes: a dirty, heavily patched heap of greasy cloth I had been wearing almost daily for the last year or two. I knew every hole, every tear, every patch, wrinkle, and worn spot.

I lifted my old pants and turned them over. Sewn on the right knee was a rectangular scrap of red cloth with gold ducks on it. Dad had put the patch on when I’d worn through the knee a few months ago. The square of cloth had come from one of Mom’s old dresses, her favorite one. After she died, Grandpa had insisted we trade her clothes away, but Dad had kept that one dress, hiding it like I hid my books.

Standing there, I didn’t think I could do it — throw aside these old things for the new. I told myself I was being crazy. If I’d come across these new clothes on the trail, I’d have taken them. And if I’d come across my old clothes, I would’ve walked right on by.

“Stephen?” Violet called from downstairs. “You okay?”

I dressed quickly in the new clothes before heading out into the hall. When I turned to close the door, there were my old clothes, blue and black with a flash of red and gold. Dad’s knife lying on top in its sheath.

They’re just clothes, I told myself and shut the door. When I came downstairs, Violet was sitting at Dad’s side with a bowl of oatmeal in her lap. “Hey, Violet, I…”

When Violet turned back, I saw the feeding tube down Dad’s throat. He lay there, his mouth unnaturally wide, his teeth clamped down on the hard plastic. Something shuddered inside me, seeing him like that. Part of me wanted to run over and tear it out of him, to make her leave him alone, but I marshaled myself and crossed the floor slowly until I was just behind her.

“How’s he doing?”

Violet spooned the last bit of food down the tube.

“About the same,” she said. “I wish I could say more, but without tests…”

“I’ve been talking to him at night.”

“That’s good.” Violet looked back over her shoulder and smiled. “You look really great, Stephen.”

I pulled awkwardly at the new clothes. “Thanks.”

“You ready?”

Jackson had just come down the stairs and was standing behind me.

I moved to the bed and squeezed Dad’s hand tight. “Thanks,” I said again to Violet before leaving with Jackson.

“Mr. Waverly!” Jackson announced cheerily as Martin and an extremely bleary-looking Derrick joined us. Jackson clapped him on the back. “How’s it going, buddy?! Rough night last night?”

“Ugghhhh,” Derrick groaned and halfheartedly pushed Jackson away. He trudged along behind us, grumbling as we made our way to school.

“You playing today?” Martin asked me.

“I don’t know,” I shrugged. “Stunk pretty badly at the end of the game yesterday.”

“Yeah,” Derrick said. “In fact, I think he was lying when he told me he was descended from a real New York Yankee. Don’t let him play, Martin.”

“We’re not letting you play,” Jackson said.

“Why not?”

“You’re a mess.”

“Quinn, buddy, I was just kidding about how much you suck. Defend me here. Am I a mess?”

I regarded Derrick carefully. His hair was a greasy tumbleweed. All his clothes were rumpled. “Definitely. A total mess.”

“Ha!” Martin laughed and punched me in the arm. “I liked you better when you didn’t talk,” Derrick grumbled.

Carrie and Wendy mixed in with us at the bottom of the hill as we all filed in behind the mass of little ones.

“Lookin’ awful snazzy there, Steve,” Carrie said with a grin.

“Oh,” I said, looking down at my new clothes, strangely embarrassed. “Thanks. Marcus’s old things.”

Wendy reached across and drew her finger across the hair that fell just above my eyebrows. “Your hair’s out of your face too,” she said. “I can see your eyes.”

I didn’t know what to say. She was wearing a pink and white sweater and jeans, her hair loose and flowing coppery over her shoulders. I was surprised to find myself nervous as she fell into place next to me.