In the Shadow of Blackbirds(21)

A man in a derby hat with a sandwich board slung over his shoulders crossed the street on the other side of the intersection. “Sin is the root of all evil in the world,” he yelled to no one in particular. “God is punishing us with pestilence, war, famine, and death.” The sign around his neck read THE FOUR HORSEMEN OF THE APOCALYPSE HAVE ARRIVED! YE WHO HAVE SINNED SHALL BE STRICKEN DOWN.

I watched him with horror and realized, We’re all simply waiting to be killed. All that’s left is blinding sorrow and a painful death by drowning in our own fluids. What’s the point of being alive?

I couldn’t breathe. I turned to face a sandstone wall, removed my mask, and gasped for air. I gulped and gulped until I swallowed as much of the tuna-scented breeze as possible, even though the odor made me sick. Everything made me sick. Why wasn’t I the one to get killed by germs or bombs? Why was I standing alone in the middle of a deserted city? Why did a bright and talented boy have to go and do a stupid thing like enlist?

Unable to divine any answers from my empty street corner, I trudged on like a sleepwalker, my feet as thick as sandbags. My erratic breathing mutated into hiccups that stabbed my sides.

In the residential district I spied—and smelled—from across the street an undertaker’s clapboard house with a grisly scene in the front yard: stacks of pine caskets, piled two to three high. Even worse, four little boys climbed over the coffins as if they were playing in a wooden fortress. They chanted a rhyme I’d heard at the beginning of the school year, when the flu first raised its monstrous head:





I had a little bird,

Its name was Enza,

I opened the window,

And in-flu-enza.




“Hey, get off there!” I yelled at the children. “You’re climbing over dead bodies. Can’t you see the flies? You’re going to get sick.”

The leader of the group—a brown-haired boy in knee pants—balanced his feet on the teetering wood and called out, “It’s the Germans, boys. Shoot ’em!”

The other chubby-cheeked kids leaned over the caskets and fired rounds at me from invisible rifles.

“Where are your parents?” I asked.

“Keep firing, men. Show the filthy Boche what you’ve got.”

They continued to attack me with pretend ammunition, with no sign of leaving their disgusting playground. A rumble of thunder in the purpling sky to the west set off a series of delighted oohs and wows from the boys.

“That’s the blast of our cannon, Boche,” said the leader. “You’re going to die.”

“You’re going die if you keep playing there, you stupid kids. Get out of there.” I marched up the low slope of the yard, into the thick of the stench and the flies, and grabbed the brown-haired boy by the arms. “I said get out of here.”

“Let go of me.”

“No.” I gripped him with viselike strength and dragged his flailing body off the undertaker’s property.

“Let me go!”

“Go back home to your mother.” I pushed him away down the sidewalk. “I don’t want to hear about any more dead boys.”

“You’re crazy, you know that?” He glared at me over his shoulder and wandered away. His friends fell into place behind him, snickering.

Before I could get to the end of the block, the brown-haired boy shouted from down the street, “For your information, my mother’s lying in the hospital with the flu. I can’t go home to her.”

I rubbed away tears with the back of my hand and kept walking.

Three blocks later I arrived at Aunt Eva’s yellow house and discovered someone had parked a bicycle next to her roses. A lanky boy no more than twelve, in an official-looking cap and black tie, waited on the front porch with an envelope and a clipboard. He saw me making my way up the path and came toward me at a brisk gait. I braced for more bad news.

“Hello, miss.” The boy’s voice sounded muffled inside his mask, which looked as if it were tied tight enough to hurt. “Are you Mrs. Wilfred Ottinger or Miss Mary Shelley Black?”

“I’m Miss Black.”

“Please sign here.”

The words he directed my way on the clipboard blurred together in my tired eyes. All I could make out was WESTERN UNION at the top. Someone had sent us a telegram.

“Oh no.” I shoved the clipboard back at him. “I can’t take another death today. Don’t give it to me. Don’t tell me my father’s dead.”

“I don’t read the messages, miss.” He pushed the board my way. “Please sign it. I can’t leave without delivering the telegram if someone’s home.”

I wobbled and had to clutch the boy’s arm to avoid passing out.

“Please, miss. It’ll be all right.”

He steadied me, and with shaking fingers I scratched a sloppy version of my signature. I took the tan envelope, tore it open, and read a short message from Uncle Lars in Portland:

THEY’RE HOLDING HIM WITHOUT BAIL.

TRIAL SET FOR DECEMBER.

POSSIBLE 20-YEAR SENTENCE.

KEEP M.S. WITH YOU.



L.




Twenty years.

If a jury decided that fate for my father, he’d be sixty-five at his release. I’d be thirty-six. And all because Dad hated war.