Z for Zachariah

Chapter Fourteen

June 15th

A week has passed, one of the best of weeks.

Today is my birthday. I am sixteen, and for dinner we had a roast chicken and a cake, both cooked in my new oven. I will not say it is the first cake I have ever baked; I have done it before, but always under my mother’s supervision. So I will say it is the first I have baked alone, and the first in this oven, and it came out perfect. I made a white cream frosting, and it was perfect, too.

We were celebrating not only my birthday, but Mr Loomis’s recovery, which has been astonishing, though it is still not complete. He still cannot walk; his legs are weak and buckle under him. As I suspected, they were not getting proper circulation. I think they will be all right eventually, but it is slow.

So we had a birthday dinner on a folding card table which I set beside his bed. I put a white linen cloth on it and set it with the good china; I even polished the silver, and this time I remembered to get candles (not birthday-cake candles, however; I could find none of those in Mr Klein’s store).

The best thing about getting it ready was that Mr Loomis slept through the preparations, and then woke up just at the right time. The table was all set, and candles shining on the silver. He opened his eyes, looked at it, closed them and opened them again. He said: “It seems like a miracle.” And in a way it really did, when I considered that a week ago he was nearly dead, and I had almost given up hope. But I think he was talking about the table.

His recovery had already begun when his breathing slowed down, though I was not sure of that at the time. I felt surer the next day, late in the afternoon, when he finally woke up. I had just walked into the room, and apparently he heard me; his eyes opened, focused, and I could tell he saw me. To my amazement, he spoke, very faintly, and the first thing he said was:

“You played the piano.”

I wanted to hug him, but instead I sat down in the chair by the bed. I said: “Yes. I didn’t know if you could hear.”

“I heard. It faded away…” His eyes closed, and he did not finish the sentence. He was asleep again already.

It was not much, and yet it seemed momentous. He could see, he could talk again! I let him sleep on for half an hour; then I got some soup I had made and sat down to feed it to him as I had been doing with the custard. He woke up again immediately. He did not talk any more at first, but swallowed the soup spoon by spoon—I could even say hungrily, because he did seem to like it. I had brought a cupful. He ate it all. Then he said:

“I was… away.” His voice was a little stronger. “I heard you playing… So faint. I tried to listen…” He had lost his breath and he stopped. “It faded… but I tried, and it came back…”

I said: “You’re too weak to talk. Don’t try. But I’m glad you heard it.” Poor Mr Loomis. I think he was saying that my playing had helped him. I wondered if he had heard my reading, too.

He had. The next day he seemed twice as strong. His temperature was only a hundred and one, and I had not even done the alcohol rub. He could move a little, though not enough to feed himself. But he kept his eyes open longer, and looked at things in the room. When he spoke again he was not so vague and breathless; but he was still remembering back to the bad days, as before.

“I thought I was a long way from—from everything. Somewhere cold. Floating away. It was hard to breathe. But I heard you talking, and then the floating stopped as long as I listened. And the same with the music.”

“You’re much better now.”

“I know. Not so cold any more.”

I fed him more of the custard and the soup, about every two hours, and he seemed to be hungrier each time. In fact his appetite became very good, and on the third day I switched to solid food. He was making up, of course, for all the days he had eaten nothing. I would guess he had lost fifteen pounds or more.

On the fourth day, another milestone. I went in with his lunch, prepared to feed it to him as before. He was on his side, propped up on one elbow, and I noticed that the colour in his face was much better: up from blue to white to almost normal skin tone. He said:

“If you’ll help me up, I think I can do it myself.”

“Do what?”

“Eat.”

I hesitated and he said, quite urgently: “Let me try, at least.”

So I got some more pillows and put an arm under his shoulders to help him up. He sat with the lunch in his lap and fed himself; he was rather shaky but obviously determined to do it, and satisfied with himself when he could. I suppose he had felt like a baby being spoon-fed. Fortunately the lunch was stew, and easy to eat; just the same, he had turned a shade paler before he was finished, and seemed glad to lie down again. But he ate it all himself.

My worry over him grew less each day, and as always with worries (mine at least) when a big one fades away the smaller ones start creeping in. I went out to the garden I had been neglecting—I had scarcely looked at it for two weeks—and the field I had ploughed but never planted. They are, as I said, smaller worries, but real ones. We can live through next winter on what is in the store, and so can the cows and chickens. But there is a danger point beyond that, because the seeds I wanted to plant were already two years old, and next year they would be three, and each year fewer of them would germinate. So I really needed to get some in the ground, if only to harvest the new seeds.

I regarded this worry as entirely my own, and of course did not intend to say anything to Mr Loomis about it, sick as he still was. In any case it was not as bad as it might have been. I walked through the rows of the garden and saw that everything had come up; the earth had grown somewhat too hard and caked, but that had done no damage yet. I could fix it quickly with a hoe and a hand cultivator—both were leaning against the fence near the gate where I had left them two weeks ago. Everything was a month late, which meant the peas would not do much if it turned hot—not many to eat, but surely enough for seeds next spring. We would have lettuce, radishes and mustard greens starting in two more weeks. Even the potatoes had small but healthy looking green vines coming.

I walked down to the field. It still lay in furrows, looking rather desolate, and a few weeds had come up. I had not yet harrowed it, however, and that would take care of these if I did it carefully. The important thing was to get the corn planted; it, at least, would do all right this late, though it would not ripen until late September or October—and then all at once instead of staggered the way my father used to grow it. That would not matter to the cows and chickens, however; it only meant less corn on the cob for us. Still I could cut some off and can it, and also grind corn meal. Mainly I would have plenty of new seed for next year.

I am not too sure about the soy beans. I have never grown them and cannot remember when my father used to plant them. I think they should have been sown earlier. Still I will try—again, I should get at least a seed crop.

All of these were important problems, serious, but I could solve them if I got to work quickly. So I had not intended even to mention them to Mr Loomis, more than just to say I had planting to do. But on the fifth day he did two surprising things, one connected with the ploughing and planting, the other not.

The first one I could almost call a scolding. When I brought him his breakfast tray, he said:

“Is the tractor still running?”

“Well,” I said, “it is, though I haven’t used it much.”

“How is the planting? Has the garden come up? And the corn?”

His tone was nervous, almost suspicious. I thought I had heard it before—then I remembered—when he had first come, how nervous he had been. I confessed.

“The garden is all right. It needs hoeing. But the corn…”

“Yes?” Very impatiently.

“I haven’t planted it yet. Nor the beans.”

At that he acted very disturbed. He raised himself on his elbow—in fact he almost sat up. He was much stronger.

“Not planted it? Why not?”

“You were so sick,” I said. “I was too worried—"

He interrupted. “What has that to do with planting?”

“When your fever was high and you were delirious, I didn’t dare leave. I didn’t want—"

“You mean you never left the house?”

“Not at first. Except a few minutes to milk the cow.”

Then I made a mistake.

I said: “In the end, I did go to the church.”

“To church?” He sounded as if he could not believe it. “To churchl” He lay back in the bed. “How long did that take?”

I said: “I’m not sure. I went three times.” I realized that I should not have mentioned it at all. It seemed to irritate him so.

“Three times to church, and the field not planted.”

I wanted to explain how I had felt, how important it had seemed when I thought he was dying, but I realized it would only make him more upset.

So instead I said: “It’s not really so bad. We often planted corn this late—even in July. It does very well.”

“When does the frost begin?” He sounded sceptical.

“Never until November. And the corn will be ready in October—maybe September.”

“If you plant it now?”

I said: “I was planning to start today. I went yesterday and looked at the field. I have to run the harrow over it first.”

“How long does that take?”

“Half a day. I can plant some this afternoon. Maybe all of it.”

He seemed mollified. In a way, he even tried to explain. “I worry about food. I even dream about it.”

Yet I was startled. He had sounded annoyed and did not understand why I had gone to church and how much I had wanted him to live. I might still try to explain, but later. After the planting was done, it would not be such a sore subject.

But there was more to it than that, when I got to thinking about it. I had been regarding the field, the tractor—the valley—and the planting and garden, all as things of mine, to do or to worry about. But he had begun thinking about them as his, too. I thought I could figure out why. It was because, all of the time until now, he had been sick. It had been his sickness that first made me let him know I was here. And now, for the first time, that was over. He was not completely recovered yet, but he had realized that he was going to be, that he was going to live. That was the change. And now he considered the valley as much his as mine. I would have to get used to the idea.

The other thing he did was not so serious. In fact, it would have seemed funny except that it was rather pathetic.

I spent the morning running the harrow, a job I have always enjoyed. Even though the soil had set for two weeks—which it is not supposed to do—it broke up easily, and I watched the ugly corkscrew hummocks of the plough change into smooth, narrow ridges, looking the way a field ought to look. Faro bounded around the tractor, his feet stirring up small sprays of dirt with each bound. He knows not to go near the wheels.

In the afternoon I planted, getting the corn about three-fourths done before it was time to go in and start the supper. As I planted I began thinking about the fact that my birthday was coming in two days.

That made the stove even more of a joy than it had been, because as I got the fire going I realized that I could have a real birthday cake, layers and all. I was just starting to cook when I heard a loud thud from Mr Loomis’s bedroom, and then a series of smaller thumping noises. It sounded like a struggle going on.

And so it was—a solitary one. I ran to his door and saw him: he was on the floor, sprawled in an awkward heap, holding to the bed and trying to get up.

I ran to him. “Did you fall?”

He said: “Not exactly. I was stupid. I tried to get up.” He raised himself to his knees and then, with a really painful effort, tried to get back on the bed. He almost succeeded but at the very end he rested his weight on his legs and his knees buckled in a rubbery way, just like a comedian I once saw trying to act drunk. He fell to the floor again.

I said: “Let me help you up.”

“No,” he said, quite fiercely. “I can do it. Just don’t stand and watch.” He felt foolish—I could understand that, so I went and stood outside the door. In a minute I heard him try again, and this time I heard the bed creak as he pulled himself back on to it. I went back to the kitchen and cooked the dinner. When I took him his tray he seemed cheerful enough. He did not mention the incident at all, but asked me if I could bring him the following things: some pencils, plain white paper, a ruler, a protractor, and a drawing compass.

As it happened, I had them all in my desk upstairs, left over from geometry. I brought them to him after dinner, and then began planning my birthday cake.