Jane was asleep, her forehead and cheeks hot, her breathing slow and labored. She looked dreadfully wasted to Nick. He got a cold washcloth and wiped her face. He left her share of food on the night table, and then went down into the living room and turned on the Bakers' TV, a big console color job.
CBS didn't come on all night. NBC kept to a regular broadcast schedule, but the picture on the ABC affiliate kept going hazy, sometimes fading out to snow and then snapping back suddenly. The ABC channel showed only old syndication programs, as if its line to the network had been severed. It didn't matter. What Nick was waiting for was the news.
When it came on, he was dumbfounded. The "superflu epidemic," as it was now being called, was the lead story, but the newscasters on both stations said it was being brought under control. A flu vaccine had been developed at the Atlanta Centers for Disease Control, and you could get a shot from your, doctor by early the following week. Outbreaks were reportedly serious in New York, San Francisco, L.A., and London, but all were being contained. In some areas, the newscaster went on, public gatherings had been canceled temporarily.
In Shoyo, Nick thought, the entire town had been canceled. Who was kidding who?
The newscaster concluded by saying that travel to most of the large city areas was still restricted, but the restrictions would be lifted as soon as the vaccine was in general release. He then went on to a plane crash in Michigan and some congressional reactions to the latest Supreme Court gay-rights decision.
Nick turned off the TV and went out onto the Bakers' porch. There was a glider and he sat down in it. The back-and-forth motion was soothing, and he couldn't hear the rusty squeak that John Baker had kept forgetting to oil. He watched fireflies as they hemmed irregular seams in the dark. Lightning flashed dully inside the clouds on the horizon, making them look as if they held fireflies of their own, monster fireflies the size of dinosaurs. The night was sticky and close.
Because television was a completely visual medium for Nick, he had noticed something about the news broadcast that others might have missed. There had been no film-clips, none at all. There had been no baseball scores, maybe because no ball games had been played. A vague weather report and no weather map showing the highs and lows-it was as if the U.S. Bureau of Meteorology had closed up shop. For all Nick knew to the contrary, they had.
Both newscasters had seemed nervous and upset. One of them had a cold; he had coughed once on mike and had excused himself. Both newscasters had kept cutting their eyes to the left and right of the camera they were facing … as if someone was in the studio with them, someone who was there to make sure they got it right.
That was the night of June 24, and he slept raggedly on the Bakers' front porch, and his dreams were very bad. And now, on the afternoon of the following day, he was officiating at the death of Jane Baker, this fine woman … and he couldn't say a word to comfort her.
She was tugging at his hand. Nick looked down at her pale, drawn face. Her skin was dry now, the sweat evaporated. He took no hope or comfort in that, however. She was going. He had come to know the look.
"Nick," she said, and smiled. She clasped one of his hands in both of hers. "I wanted to thank you again. No one wants to die all alone, do they?"
He shook his head violently, and she understood this was not in agreement with her statement but rather in vehement contradiction of its premise.
"Yes I am," she contradicted. "But never mind. There's a dress in that closet, Nick. A white ode. You'll know it because of … " A fit of coughing interrupted her. When she had it under control, she finished, " … because of the lace. It's the one I wore on the train when we left for our honeymoon. It still fits … or did. I suppose it will be a little big on me now-I've lost some weight-but it doesn't really matter. I've always loved that dress. John and I went to Lake Pontchartrain. It was the happiest two weeks of my life. John always made me happy. Will you remember the dress, Nick? It's the one I want to be buried in. You wouldn't be too embarrassed to … to dress me, would you?"
He swallowed hard and shook his head, looking at the coverlet. She must have sensed his mixture of sadness and discomfort, because she didn't mention the dress again. She talked of other things instead-lightly, almost coquettishly. How she had won an elocution contest in high school, had gone on to the Arkansas state finals, and how her half-slip had fallen down and puddled around her shoes just as she reached the ringing climax of Shirley Jackson's "The Daemon Lover." About her sister, who had gone to Viet Nam as part of a Baptist mission group, and had come back with not one or two but three adopted children. About a camping trip she and John had taken three years ago, and how an ill-tempered moose in rut had forced them up a tree and kept them there all day.
"So we sat up there and spooned," she said sleepily, "like a couple of high school kids in a balcony. My goodness, he was in a state when we got down. He was … we were … in love … very much in love … love is what moves the world, I've always thought … it is the only thing which allows men and women to stand in a world where gravity always seems to want to pull them down … bring them low … and make them crawl … we were … so much in love … "
She drowsed off and slept until he wakened her into fresh delirium by moving a curtain or perhaps just by treading on a squeaky board.
"John! " she screamed now, her voice choked with phlegm. "Oh, John, I'll never get the hang of this dad-ratted stick shift! John, you got to help me! You got to help me -"
Her words trailed off in a long, rattling exhalation he could not hear but sensed all the same. A thin trickle of dark blood issued from one nostril. She fell back on the pillow, and her head snapped back and forth once, twice, three times, as if she had made some kind of vital decision and the answer was negative.
Then she was still.
Nick put his hand timidly against the side of her neck, then her inner wrist, then between her breasts. There was nothing. She was dead. The clock on her bedtable ticked importantly, unheard by either of them. He put his head against his knees for a minute, crying a little in the silent way he had. All you can do is have sort of a slow leak, Rudy had told him once, but in a soap opera world, that can come in handy.
He knew what came next and didn't want to do it. It wasn't fair, part of him cried out. It wasn't his responsibility. But since there was no one else here-maybe no one else well for miles around-he would have to shoulder it. Either that or leave her here to rot, and he couldn't do that. She had been kind to him, and there had been too many people along the way who hadn't been able to spare that, sick or well. He supposed he would have to get going. The longer he sat here and did nothing, the more he would dread the task. He knew where the Curtis Funeral Home was-three blocks down and one block west. It would be hot out there, too.
He forced himself to get up and go to the closet, half hoping that the white dress, the honeymoon dress, would turn out to have been just another part of her delirium. But it was there. A little yellowed with the years now, but he knew it, all the same. Because of the lace. He took it down and laid it across the bench at the foot of the bed. He looked at the dress, looked at the woman, and thought, It's going to be more than just a little big on her now. The disease, whatever it is, was crueler to her than she knew … and I guess that's just as well.
Unwillingly, he went around to her and began to remove the nightgown. But when it was off and she lay naked before him, the dread departed and he felt only pity-a pity lodged so deep in him that it made him ache and he began to cry again as he washed her body and then dressed it as it had been dressed when she wore it on the way to Lake Pontchartrain. And when she was dressed as she had been on that day, he took her in his arms and carried her down to the funeral home in her lace, oh, in her lace: he carried her like a bridegroom crossing an endless threshold with his beloved in his arms.
Chapter 26
Some campus group, probably either Students for a Democratic Society or the Young Maoists, had been busy with a ditto machine during the night of June 25-26. In the morning, these posters were plastered all over the University of Kentucky at Louisville campus:
ATTENTION! ATTENTION! ATTENTION! ATTENTION!
YOU ARE BEING LIED TO! THE GOVERNMENT IS LYING TO YOU! THE PRESS, WHICH HAS BEEN CO-OPTED BY THE FORCES OF THE PIG PARAMILITARY, IS LYING TO YOU! THE ADMINISTRATION OF THIS UNIVERSITY IS LYING TO YOU, AS ARE THE INFIRMARY DOCTORS UNDER THE ADMINISTRATION'S ORDERS!
1. THERE IS NO SUPERFLU VACCINE.
2. SUPERFLU IS NOT A SERIOUS DISEASE, IT IS A DEADLY DISEASE.
3. SUSCEPTIBILITY MAY RUN AS HIGH AS 75%.
4. SUPERFLU WAS DEVELOPED BY THE FORCES OF THE U.S. PIG PARAMILITARY AND DISBURSED BY ACCIDENT.
5. THE U.S. PIG PARAMILITARY NOW MEANS TO COVER UP THEIR MURDEROUS BLUNDER EVEN IF IT MEANS 75% OF THE POPULATION WILL DIE!
ALL REVOLUTIONARY PEOPLE, GREETINGS! THE TIME OF OUR STRUGGLE IS NOW! UNITE, STRIVE, CONQUER!