Z for Zachariah

Chapter Seven

June 3rd

Four days have passed.

On the first day, Mr Loomis’s condition remained about the same. I gave him the fever thermometer, and we began keeping track of his temperature. It was about 99.5 degrees in the morning, went up to 101 in the middle of the day, and fell back to 99.5 in the evening. He said that meant he was still in the “interim” period.

I thought he should take some aspirin, but he said it would not do any real good, and that we should save it—the half dozen bottles in the store being perhaps the only usable aspirin left in the world. He said it seriously, but I had a feeling he was half joking.

I had a lot to do. With him in the valley—in the house—I decided I should cook better meals than I did when I was by myself. For one thing, as I said, if he was going to be sick he ought to build up his strength. Anyway, I like to cook, but when I was alone I frequently just did not bother—it seemed silly, just for one.

So I made several trips to the store for supplies. It was a tinned stuff, of course, or dried. There would not be anything fresh except milk and eggs until I could get the garden going again. Since it was already June, that was the most urgent thing; I wished now I had not dug it all up—I could be having fresh greens right now. Also the lettuce would have been ready. It was probably too late to start either of those again, but I decided to try anyway, and hope it stayed cool. I could at least get some to seed for next year. But I really longed for a salad, and fresh greens.

I got the spade and the hoe and went to work. Faro came up and sniffed the first few shovelfuls of earth I turned over. Then he dug a small hole of his own and lay on top of it. It was warm in the sun. He is already looking much better than he did at first.

It was easy spading, since the earth had already been turned up once; also the manure was still in it, so I did not have to haul that again. I had plenty of seeds; I had taken them up to the cave with me when I moved. But after I had dug the whole patch—in fact I had it partly planted—I realized that it was not really big enough. Because, of course, with two we would need twice as much of everything, and I wanted some left over for preserving. The tinned stuff in the store is not going to last forever. So I decided to double the size of the garden.

There was plenty of room, but for the new part I had to dig through turf, which was much harder digging. Still I was making pretty good progress when I noticed Faro standing up and wagging his tail. I looked up and there, leaning against the gate post watching me, was Mr Loomis. I had left him after lunch, still lying on David’s bed. It was now late afternoon, almost time to stop and get dinner. I was somewhat ashamed to have him see me, because working so hard I was dirty, hot and sweaty. I had intended to wash before I went into his room.

But more, I was concerned. What was he doing out here, out of bed? I walked over, still carrying the spade. I asked him: “Is something wrong?”

“Nothing wrong,” he said. “I felt bored. It’s a warm afternoon, so I came out.”

I had forgotten about being bored. There was always so much to do. But of course I had not been sick in bed. I had given him some books to read, but they were historical novels that used to be my mother’s. I suppose he did not like them much. I had some more in my bedroom upstairs, but they were mostly either school books or children’s books. We generally depended on the public library in Ogdentown.

“I’ve been digging,” I said, which of course he had already seen. “This is going to be the garden.”

“Hard work for a girl,” he said, noticing, I suppose, how messy I looked.

“I’m used to it.” I started to tell him that most of it had already been dug before and was therefore easy, but then I decided not to. I did not want him to know how afraid I had been when I first saw him coming.

He looked puzzled. “But do you have to do it all by hand? Didn’t your father have a tractor?”

“It’s in the barn.”

“You can’t run it?”

“I can, but there’s no petrol.”

“But there are two petrol pumps at the store. There must be petrol there.”

That was true. The Amish, though they did not drive cars, used plenty of tractors, reapers, balers and other machines, and bought their petrol from Mr Klein.

“I suppose there is,” I said. “But the pumps won’t work without electricity.”

“And you’ve been doing all this with a shovel. Don’t you realize it would be simple to take the motors off the pumps and work them by hand? There may be four or five thousand gallons there.” He smiled but it made me feel stupid.

“I don’t know much about electric motors and pumps,” I said.

“But I do,” he said. “At least enough to do that.”

“When you’re well again,” I said.

Without having discussed it, we both had begun going on the assumption that he would recover. The other possibility kept occurring to me at first, but now it seemed to have become remote. At least it had faded from my mind, through no effort on my part.

I was really glad to hear what he said about the petrol and the tractor, and I hoped it would work. There was enough winter pasture for the three cows, but just barely. With the tractor running I could mow the grass after it went to seed, and bring in some hay. Also, I hoped eventually to increase the herd.

We walked back to the house just as the sun was setting. Because the walls of the valley are so high, the sun always sets early and rises late; there is a long twilight and we never have real sunsets the way they are where the land is level. Still this was one of the better ones. My father used to say, “In a valley the real sunset is in the east,” and that is how it was. As the sun disappeared over the west ridge, the last of the orange light moved up the hill on the east, with the darker shadow climbing up after it. At the end only the tops of the last high trees were lit, and they looked as if they were burning. Then they faded and went out, and it was dusk.

We stopped a minute to watch it and he rested his hand on my shoulder as he had on the gate post. I felt proud to be of help to him, but when we turned to walk the rest of the way he went without help. He was obviously much stronger and standing straighter. I realized that he was quite tall.

It turned colder that night, so after we had eaten dinner I built a fire in the living room fireplace and closed the windows. Since the living room adjoins his—Joseph and David’s—room, I opened the door so the fire would warm it, too. He did not go back into the bedroom immediately, however, but sat down in a chair near the fireplace.

The living room has two big upholstered chairs and a sofa, all placed so you can see the fire, which my father and mother liked to do in winter. (This last winter I slept on the sofa to be near the fire.) The chair Mr Loomis sat in was the one my father used to use. The electric lamps are still beside the chairs—I left them there for looks, even though they will not light. Against the wall on one side of the room stands the record-player, and against the other our piano.

“Would you like me to get you a book?” I said, thinking he would be bored again. “I can put the lamp on the table by the chair.”

He said: “No, thank you. I only want to look at the fire a few minutes. Then I’ll get sleepy. The fire always does that.”

Still, for the first time it bothered me. There was absolutely nothing for him to do. When I am by myself—when I was by myself—I was always quite tired at the end of the day, and unless I had washing or sewing or something like to do, I usually went to sleep very soon after eating. Now I wished there was a radio station to tune in, or that the record-player would work. It was quite a good one, and we had a lot of records. But it would not play without electricity so I did something I would be embarrassed to do under ordinary circumstances. I said: “Would you like me to play the piano?” I added quickly: “I can’t play very well.”

To my surprise he seemed extremely pleased, almost excited. “Could you?” he said. “I haven’t heard music for more than a year.”

I felt sorry for him, because I not only can’t play too well, but I don’t have much music. I have the John Thompson “Second Year Lesson Book”, Thompson’s “Easy Pieces”, and a recital piece I once learned, “Fur Elise”. The Lesson Book is about half finger exercises.

I put the lamp near the piano and started on “Easy Pieces”. A lot of them are too babyish, but towards the end of the book there are some harder ones that are quite pretty. I played these, glancing at him now and then. He really seemed to like it, and I think because of that I played better than I usually do, and hardly made any mistakes. I mean he didn’t clap or say anything, but he sat forward in his chair and listened without moving at all. When I finished “Easy Pieces” I played “Fur Elise”, then a few things from the Lesson Book, and that was all I had, except hymns.

I can play hymns better than anything else, because I used to play them for our Sunday School singing. I opened the hymn book and played two of my favourites, “How Great Thou Art” and “In the Garden”. The melodies are good, but the arrangements are not really meant for the piano, but for choir. I played “In the Garden” very softly, and when I looked around again he had fallen asleep, still leaning forward in his chair. I was afraid he would fall, so I stopped, and when I did he woke up.

“Thank you,” he said. “That was beautiful.” He paused, and then added, “This is the best evening I have ever spent.”

I said: “Ever? You mean since the war.”

“You heard me,” he said. “I said ’ever’.” He sounded angry. Of course, he has a fever and doesn’t feel well.

He went to bed then; I told him to leave the bedroom door open, and I put some more wood on the fire, thick logs that would last all night. Then I went upstairs to my bedroom. It had turned surprisingly cold, not like winter, but sharp just the same. I had a couple of blankets and I lay there on the bed thinking and trying to warm up.

For some reason, playing the hymns had made me feel sad, as if I were homesick even though I was at home. They made me think of Sunday School. When we went to school, regular school, we went on the bus with other children, but when we went to Sunday School we drove to Ogdentown in the car with my mother and father, dressed in our good clothes, and it was always festive. I remembered so many things about it, with David and Joseph. That is not surprising, since I started when I was five; in fact it was my kindergarten; I learned the alphabet there, from a picture book called “The Bible Letter Book”.

The first page said “A is for Adam”, and there was a picture of Adam standing near an apple tree, dressed in a long white robe—which disagrees with the Bible, but of course it was for small children. Next came “B is for Benjamin”. “C is for Christian”, and so on. The last page of all was “Z is for Zachariah”, and since I knew that Adam was the first man, for a long time I assumed that Zachariah must be the last man. I learned all the letters from that book, so that by the time I got to school I could already read a little.

Thinking about Sunday School and about Mr Loomis getting angry, I wished I were back in the cave again. It seemed cosier somehow. Finally I decided to go and sleep there (I had left some blankets and stuff up there) and come back early enough so that Mr Loomis would not know I had been away. I got up and started walking down the stairs towards the hallway and the door. As I passed the bedroom door where he was sleeping I heard a shout, and then another. He was talking loudly, but I could not hear what he was saying. He sounded troubled and I thought he might need help.

So I went back closer to the door. He was dreaming, a bad dream I could tell, a nightmare. He was talking in outbursts, sometimes quite angrily. Then he would stop, as if listening for an answer: I realized I was hearing half of a conversation. It was not all clear, but he was talking to Edward.

He said: “In charge. In charge of what?”

There was a pause.

Then he said: “Not any more, Edward. It doesn’t mean anything now.”

Another pause.

“What good can it do? We know they’re dead. There isn’t a chance. Can’t you grasp that? Mary is dead. Billy is dead. You can’t help them.”

This went on, his voice gradually growing quieter, finally dropping to a mumble that I could not hear.

Then he shouted again, a very urgent shout: “Get away. I warn you. Get away from—" The last word I could not understand. And after that he gave a terrible groan, so painful I thought he must be hurt.

And then silence.

I crept to the door of the bedroom and listened. He was breathing regularly and quietly. Whatever the nightmare had been, it was over. Still I worried. Was it just a nightmare, or was he delirious again? I was afraid the sickness might be coming back.

I decided I had better not go to the cave after all. Suppose he should call for help?

I went back upstairs and rolled up in the blankets. A little later there was a whining outside my door. I opened it and let Faro in. He lay down next to me on the bed, and after a while I went to sleep.