Susan Pfeffer: This World We Live In

I started by going down Howell Bridge Road, but I knew I didn’t want to end up in town. So after a couple of miles, I turned on to Bainbridge Avenue, and then I turned again and again and again. I avoided streets I knew, because every one had a memory and I didn’t dare face my memories.

I must have biked for an hour before I acknowledged I had no idea where I was and very little sense of how to get home.

I thought, Of all the stupid things I’ve ever done, this is the stupidest, because I could die here and no one will ever know what became of me.

That was when I totally lost it. It’s been hard to cry in the sunroom, because we’re together all the time, and tears are better if you shed them alone. But I’ve never been as alone as I was that moment, sweating and shivering and hungry and lost. First one tear trickled down and then another, and then I sobbed six months’ worth of sorrow and anger and fear.

I could have cried forever, except I didn’t have any tissues on me, and the only thing I had to blow my nose into was my sweatshirt. Which made me sweating and shivering and hungry and lost and really disgusting. Then I started laughing, so for a while I was laughing and crying, and then I just laughed, and then I just shook. After a few minutes of that I thought I’d be okay, but before I knew it I was sobbing again.

I told myself Mom wasn’t shedding any tears over me, but I knew she was. It was like that scene in The Wizard of Oz where Dorothy looks in the crystal ball and sees Auntie Em crying out for her. I knew Mom was crying. She was crying because she’s worried sick about Matt and Jon and now she was worried about me. Only that made me cry even harder, because I was worried about Matt and Jon, too, and I was probably a lot more worried about me than Mom was. She thought I was breaking into houses on Howell Bridge Road like a sane, disobedient daughter. I knew I was crazy and lost and cold and scared.

I knew I couldn’t stay there forever, so once I’d stopped shaking from the hysteria and resumed shaking from the cold, I got back on my bike and let my legs direct me. I favored right turns, but for the longest time I was in countryside, with nothing but unoccupied farms around.

Then, because right turns weren’t doing much for me, I made a left. I biked maybe a half a mile down the road, and in the distance I could see a mound of some sort.

At least it was something to look at. I biked toward it. When I got close enough that the dust in the air didn’t block my view, I could see it was a mound of bodies.

I got off my bike in time to throw up. Part of me said to get back on and ride in the opposite direction, but I couldn’t help looking.

The pile was about six bodies high, and it was pyramid shaped, more bodies on the bottom than the top. It wasn’t neatly formed, though, and there was more snow on some places than others, so it looked kind of lumpy. The cold had preserved things, and I could see hands and feet toward the bottom of the pile and heads sticking out higher up.

People have been dying around here since the summer, but before things got too bad, the bodies were buried. There were cremations, too, although maybe they were funeral pyres. You don’t ask about things like that. Not unless you absolutely have to.

But when the sun disappeared and the weather turned cold, more and more people died. Starvation, sickness, suicide. More bodies than people knew what to do with.

I thought, What if Mrs. Nesbitt is in the pile? I’ve known so many people who have died, but she was the only one I thought of then. Mrs. Nesbitt could be in a mound of snow-covered bodies in a field somewhere near town, and if Mom ever found that out, it would kill her. She was more than just a neighbor. She was family.

I told myself not to look but of course I did. It was hard to make out faces, between the snow and the distance, since the top of the pile was taller than me. And I didn’t see Mrs. Nesbitt, who most likely was cremated, since she’d died fairly early on. But I did see Mrs. Sanchez, my high school principal, and Michelle Webster, who I’d known since fifth grade, and the Beasley boys, two old guys without many teeth who used to sit in front of the hardware store, good weather or bad, and chatter in secret code to each other. They were descended from Jedediah Howell, the same as Mom. The same as me.

I thought I should say a prayer over these people, show them respect for the lives they led, the people they were. I don’t know a lot of prayers, and the only phrase that came right to me was “deliver us from evil,” which didn’t seem appropriate. So I said, “I’m sorry,” out loud, and then I said, “I’m sorry,” again.

It could have been us. It should have been us. We have no more right to be alive on May 11th than any of them. Why should I be alive and Michelle Webster dead? She did better in school than me. She had more friends. Yet, there I was standing by her dead body.

Deliver us from evil. Deliver us to evil is more like it.

I got on my bike, pedaled as fast as I could, and discovered I was on the back road to the high school. From there I made my way back to town, back to Howell Bridge Road, back to my home, back to the sunroom.

Mom opened the door for me. I thought she’d be loving and comforting when I got in, but she wasn’t.

“You came back,” she said. “I wasn’t sure you would.”

“I had nowhere else to go,” I said, walking toward the fire, desperately needing its warmth to heal me.

“The boys,” she said. “Will they be coming back?”

“How can they?” I asked. “They’re dead. Everybody’s dead.”

Mom turned white, and for a moment I thought she was going to collapse. “Matt and Jon are dead?” she screamed.

“No!” I cried. “Not Matt and Jon!” I pictured them on the mound, all of us on the mound, and I made a sound I can’t even describe. It came from deep within me, the place where I hide all my rage and grief, a sound no one should ever have to hear.

“Miranda,” Mom said, and she grabbed me and was shaking me. “Miranda, how did you find out? Did someone tell you?”

“I saw them!” I cried. “Oh, Mom, it was horrible. It was the worst thing I’ve ever seen.”

“Where?” she said. “Can you take me to them? Now. We have to go now.”

“All right,” I said. “But you don’t have to go there, Mom. I didn’t see Mrs. Nesbitt. I’m sure she wasn’t there.”

“Mrs. Nesbitt?” Mom said. “Why would she be at the river?”

“I didn’t go to the river,” I said. “Is that where Matt and Jon…” I couldn’t even finish the sentence.

Mom took a deep breath. “Matt and Jon,” she said. “Are they coming back?”

“How can they come back?” I asked. “You just said they…” I still couldn’t say it.

“I didn’t,” she said. “I thought you did.”

“Did what?” I asked. “Said what? I came in here, and you said Matt and Jon weren’t coming back.”

“Tell me everything you know about Matt and Jon,” she said. “Don’t leave anything out.”

“They left on Tuesday,” I said. “They went to the Delaware River to catch shad. They’re supposed to come back on Saturday. That’s all I know. What do you know?”

“Exactly the same thing,” Mom said. “Oh, Miranda. You gave me the scare of my life.”

I stared at her, and we burst out laughing. It’s funny: Horton slept through all the hysterics, but as soon as he heard us laughing (and I have to admit, our laughter was pretty hysterical), he got up and walked out of the room. Which made us laugh even more.

“What about Mrs. Nesbitt?” Mom asked. “What were you talking about, Miranda?”

I thought about Mom, how terrified she must have been that she might never see any of us again. I thought about all the people she’s lost this past year.