Evan Hunter - Sons

It has been terrible here in the States. We were very lucky up to now in Eau Fraiche. It’s like a regular plague, Bert, nobody can understand it. Apparently, you get sick all at once, with pains in your eyes and ears (all over your head in fact) and your back and belly, and with a very high fever of 101 or 102 that can last for up to a week or so. A lot of people have been dying from it. Bert, they turn bluer than a whetstone when they die! It’s really ghastly! Nobody seems to know whether they die from the flu itself (that’s another word for it) or from pneumonia, which can be one of the complications.

Anyway, the Record had a headline in this morning’s paper, and also a story about the four bona fide cases that were discovered in town yesterday. I don’t know any of the people who were stricken. Two of them live over on Mechanic Street, and one is over on Beaufleuve near the furniture factory, and the last one (the name sounds familiar, do you know anybody named Victor Meining?) is out toward the peninsula (but nowhere near your house, Bert). I guess they must have had some wind of this as early ago as last week, because that was when Mr. Humphries, the county health officer, ordered all the theaters and saloons shut down. (Quite unfortunate, too, because the Dolly Sisters were supposed to be coming to The Wisconsin.) Apparently crowds are very dangerous, and enclosed places are to be avoided, though I can’t understand how this fits with what the Record said we should do, namely Stay Home And Close All The Windows. There’s a poem we were reciting here in Eau Fraiche even before these four cases were reported, and it goes like this, Bert—

(Do you get it? It’s influenza.)

I do hope this docs not become an epidemic like in other parts of the country. But most of all, I hope it does not reach you, my darling, because you have enough on your mind, and you must stay strong and well and come back home to me when this terrible war is over.

You are of more value to me than many sparrows, so please be careful.

October 4, 1918

Dearest Bert,

I have not had any mail from you since your letter of September 21st. I know you are not permitted to tell me where you are (and they do a very nice job, I must say, of making your letters almost unreadable) but I got the feeling from your last letter that you were in training again someplace, and now I don’t know what to think. Please do be careful, wherever you are, and tell your buddy Timothy that my prayers go up for him as well.

Did you get the candy I sent? Clara and I made it one Saturday morning, and then went downtown to the Red Cross center on Fifth Street, where we rolled bandages all day. Bert, I hate to tell you this, but Montgomery Ambrose was killed in France two weeks ago, his mother still doesn’t know where or how, all she got was notification, poor woman. You remember him, he was always doing imitations of Eddie Foy, he was a nice sweet person. Oh Bert, I worry all the time about you. Please, please, please be careful.

Things have not been too good here in Eau Fraiche, though we still hope and pray the flu will pass over us quickly, the way it has in some other towns. There were seven new cases in the past two days, Bert. The Board of Health has taken over the row of empty stores on Buffalo Street, where my father used to have the agency, do you remember? (There is talk, by the way, of changing the name of the street to Pershing Street. I think it comes up at the town meeting next Thursday.) Anyway, they are going to use those buildings, which were supposed to be condemned for the new mall and town administration offices, as an emergency hospital until the flu is gone. Dr. Wheeler has been appointed the whole team and the little dog under the wagon, which is pretty good since he’s an eye, ear, nose and throat man, who has had a lot of experience with bronchitis, laryngitis, and the like. The first thing he did was to ask the Town Board to pass an ordinance against expectoration (which is spitting — I didn’t know myself until I looked it up!) with a fine of fifteen dollars if you’re caught doing it.

In addition, Mr. Larsen, the superintendent of schools, has ordered the elementary school and also Juneau High closed until further notice, and nobody will be going to church this Sunday because all the churches have been shut down, too. This “preparedness” may sound silly, Bert (we were “prepared” for the war you’re now lighting, too, and yet you’re thousands of miles away from me today) but the situation could become very serious. In Chicago last week, according to the Record, ninety-two people died of the flu. And at Camp Grant in Rockford, more than ten thousand soldiers are supposed to be sick with it. As you can see, this is not just a tempest in a glass of water.

Please write to me soon. I am forever,

October 6, 1918

Bert darling,

What excitement!

We caught a spy!

Last night, Mr. Breier was making his rounds at the rubber plant when he came upon this small man carrying a satchel. Well, he challenged him, and the man ran pell-mell for a cat race. Mr. Breier, who’s got very weak eyes, fired two shots after him and miraculously hit him in the leg. It turns out that the man’s name is Heinrich Schumann, and he was carrying bombs in the satchel, Bert, obviously to sabotage the plant! And what’s more, they say he was also carrying influenza germs in that bag of his, probably in little bottles or something! Can you beat that!

Actually, and thank God for this, the flu seems to have quieted down here in Eau Fraiche. We have had only two deaths from it, and luckily only three new cases in the entire county. They had put signs up all over the city telling us to keep our bedroom windows OPEN (!) now, to prevent influenza, pneumonia and tuberculosis, but I guess the new advice is working because, as I say, we seem to be over the worst part of it. We have been quite fortunate, Bert. The rest of the country is just devastated by this germ or whatever it is, God forgive me for gloating over our own good luck.

Guess what? Your sister came home from Arizona with her husband yesterday, and he’s not half so bad as everyone made him out to be. Actually, he’s sort of handsome (though not as handsome as you) in a dark mysterious way. There’s no doubt he’s an Indian, Bert; in fact, Kate seems quite proud of his Apache background. She had her little boy with her, and he’s a good-looking child with Kate’s good nose and mouth, and his father’s brooding eyes. She is pregnant again, I don’t know whether you knew that or not. We all had a marvelous supper at your house last night. Your father was a little surly toward Oscar at first, but he came around after a few drinks, and they began swapping stories about lumber camps. Oscar used to sell harnesses on the road, so he naturally got to visit a lot of the camps, including those in Eau Fraiche. Your father is in the best of health, by the way. He told me he gained seventeen pounds in the past three months, which I can believe because your mother is such a marvelous cook! Oscar and Kate and their little boy were staying at the United in town, and they dropped me off on their way in. Oscar has a brand-new Reo, so I guess selling tractor parts is very good business these days.

Bert, are you writing to me? I have not received a single letter since yrs of September 21. I love you with all my heart. Do be very careful.

Tuesday, October 8

Dearest Bert,

You may drive out nature with a pitchfork, yet she will come back.

The epidemic is full upon us. Since I wrote you Sunday there have been six hundred cases reported, with thirty deaths in the last twenty-four hours alone. The furniture factory has been closed, and there is talk of shutting down the rubber plant as well, even though everyone knows how important it is to the war effort. A new emergency hospital has been opened at the empty McIver mansion on the peninsula, and Mayor Hutcheson has ordered ten big Army tents set up on the lawn outside. There are seven Eau Fraiche policemen riding horses around town, Bert, to keep people away from the saloons, where the fools have been trying to sneak in through the back doors. Everyone in town must wear a gauze mask over the nose and mouth, and you can be lined fifty dollars if you’re caught without one in public. Everything is closed, my dearest, schools, churches, saloons, theaters, even most of the restaurants. (Claude Rabillon died Sunday night, and the county health officer ordered the Lorraine to shut its doors at once.) Even the library is closed because it’s feared the flu can be spread by the public circulation of books. We do not know what it is, Bert, and we do not know what to do.