Prose // Nexus_Crossings // Influenza

[alittlehinky]

It came across the land,
Like a Spanish influenza.
We were brought down to our knees.
And we sat amongst the cracks
Where the pennies all were rollin'
Falling down a rich man's sleeve.

((CW: Death of a close relative, guns, break-ins.))



There were only two doctors in Franklin county in December of 1918. There might have been more, except the Spanish Flu was so widespread, a lot of them were called to Richmond, where thousands were dying, or even further, to the military camps where the disease first started to blossom. Nurses, too, and medical assistants, were in high demand everywhere. If Aunt Winnie had been a little younger, she swore, she’d go to Richmond herself and earn that forty-dollars-a-week that was being promised. Cricket’s mother was reluctant to go so far afield, but the one doctor closest to them, in a little office in Rocky Mount, offered eighteen a week and didn’t expect a college-educated woman, and so she was in a hurry to try her luck, with barely a high-school education to her name.

It should have been a doomed mission, but the hell of it was the disease was so thick and pervasive no diploma or degree mattered, not so much as the willingness to put your life on the line.

Winnie read the letters from Mrs. Pate as they came in from Rocky Mount. Cricket was six years old and could have read them himself, but somehow hearing them come from his Great-aunt’s lips made them feel realer, made his mother feel closer. He sat by the wood stove for warmth, and she rocked in a little chair by the window, looking out at the bare trees and the frosty ground in between sentences.

Dear Aunty, and Dear little Cricket,

I have hardly any time to write you. We are very busy. Doctor Collier is a good employer but asks a lot. He is old but does not seem to sleep and I don’t know how he does it.

There were deaths in hospital today. One was a girl hardly twenty and one a man of forty. Doctor says it’s a strange thing that this flu kills people of a strong age and not so much the elderly or very young. I told him my Aunt is almost sixty and must be immune then and he laughed and said best not to tempt fate.

Please know that whether I write or not I am thinking of you both with all my love.

After the first reading, Cricket got to keep the letters, scanning them over and over again as if to memorize his mother’s handwriting. Some days he fancied he could smell the lily-of-the-valley water she used to put in her hair.

It snowed hard the second week of December, and he remembers the way the world outside the cabin whited out, remembers the sound of the wind screaming in the trees uphill.

It’s like that today, in the Nexus, as he sits on the edge of his bed and watches out the window. When there’s a lull in the snowfall, he can see the torches through the trees, a couple hundred yards away. Closer than they were yesterday. Harley is gone, working and exploring. Both Lokis, too, and he doesn’t blame them. He’s proud of them, only wishes he could have gone, too, but no matter how hard he fights against his limitations, sometimes they catch up. He can’t go walking in deep snow.

And, oh, how he wishes they were here, almost as much as he longed for his mother to come home way back then in Franklin County.

Even the Pokemon are no comfort. They’re all in their pokeballs and he’s wearing them close to his chest. Better that they miss this, but he’s lonely.

Are they out there thinking of him, he wonders of Loki and Harley, and just too busy to write? How many times has he sworn to himself not to let the people he loves go off and face danger without him? And here he is again, alone and safe in a house and god only knows what’s happening to them, or to Kinner and Palmer and Marie...

Around Mid-December, 1918, a telegram came to them. Doctor Collier himself had written to tell them Mrs. Pate had taken sick. She had pushed on through the initial symptoms, trying to do her duty and earn that all-important paycheck to send home. Eighteen a week.

The illness is moving into her lungs. If you can come to see her, it might be prudent. She is talking about her child whenever she is awake.

“Mama just misses you,” Aunt Winnie said, trying to soothe him as he started to cry.

He packed his own little bindle, stuffing things into a flour sack with every intention of walking to Rocky Mount right away, if he had to. As if he could. Winnie scolded him and shut him in his room, but promised they would see about getting a ride to town in the morning.

In the morning, ice was falling from the sky. Not just gentle feathers of snow, but sleet and rain that crystallized and encapsulated ever surface it hit. No one was going anywhere on the road. They’d be lucky if they could get someone to leave their house.

He looked out of each window of the house in turn, circling it counterclockwise, like a cat that hopes that scratching at a different door will result in better weather outside it. It was the longest day of his life. He doesn’t like the memory. He doesn’t like imagining his mother wheezing out her last breath alone, thinking of her dear little Cricket.

The weather kept them indoors for two days, unable to travel. By the time they could get a neighbor to drive them, a second telegram from Doctor Collier had come in. She was gone.

If he could have been there, at least she could have seen him at her side, holding on to her until the last. Then again, he and Aunt Winnie could have just caught the flu themselves and died, too.

Winter is loss. Winter is isolation, helplessness, having so little to hold onto and watching even what you have being snatched from your numb fingers.

The wind has quieted down, and after a moment’s thought, he rises and goes to the kitchen with the thought of making tea. The electric’s out, but they still have gas and running water, and he wonders if he should have maybe invited some of the refugees to come here. It’s not all that warm, but he can still cook.

Don’t seem right to invite people into Harley’s house while she’s not here, though. Even if she’s the kind of person who’s been known to welcome strangers with open arms.

He’s already put the kettle on the stove by the time he notices there’s no more loose tea, and a quick search through the cabinets reveals no teabags, either.

Cricket’s not prone to temper tantrums, but maybe he’s going a little stir-crazy, because this discovery prompts a barrage of swearing and a halfhearted punch delivered to the door of the refrigerator. Enough to hurt his hand but not enough to dent the appliance.

He doesn’t even like tea all that much. He’s just depressed and anxious and not sure what to do with himself.

As his own grumbling dies down, though, there is a strange echo of it from outside. Something crunches and scrapes, and it’s too quiet for it to be a branch falling, but too loud to be just a little fall of snow.

Cricket goes still, and listens. For the space of several breaths, there’s nothing, but then he hears another noise, this one coming from the side of the building, close to the greenhouse. There’s a voice: a murmur and a response. He can’t make out the words, but he doesn’t need words to guess that these are not friendly visitors.

There aren’t many places left around the edges of the Nexus with running water. A lot of them have been abandoned for safer environs. Somehow, Cricket’s just felt like it was his duty to hold down the fort here, for his sake as much as anyone else’s, but suddenly he’s acutely aware that he’s alone in the building, and there’s probably no one in the houses closest to him.

His heartbeat picks up, and everything around him is suddenly very, very clear.

He leans across the counter and cuts off the stove with a swift, silent gesture, scooping the kettle up by the handle before it can whistle. It makes a short, shrill cheep as he moves it, and he freezes, watching the steam curl in the air. Outside the greenhouse, it’s silent.

It’s all boarded up, he knows. Harley was very definite on how to properly insulate and secure it. It still probably looks like a good place to bust in, what with all the glass. Cricket steps slowly across the floor, limping, willing his braces not to make a sound. At the door between the kitchen and greenhouse he stops, worrying his lip, waiting.

He’s not at all prepared for the crash at the front door.

Every muscle in his body tenses up at the first blow, and it’s entirely possible he makes a noise, a whimper or cry, but he’s so focused on the splintering wood he couldn’t swear to it one way or the other. The images of the two men who appear in the ruined doorway is permanently seared into his brain, though. They don’t look familiar, and their faces are only slivers of pale skin and sharp eyes between the collars of their coats and the cuffs of their knit hats. He sees a knife and a crowbar, a sawed-off shotgun.

He raises the kettle in his hand and slings it full-force at the nearest head.

There’s a yell, but he doesn’t wait to see if that’s because the metal collided with the man or because the scalding water sprayed across his face. The kid hurtles across the corner of the room, almost falls over the edge of a rug and flings himself into his bedroom. His back slams against the door as he closes it, and his hands fumble frantically at the single lock. He can hear the men yelling, swearing, and as the tumblers turn and click there’s a heavy blow to the door and the sound of the doorknob being gripped and shaken and wrenched.

They already busted the front door. He doesn’t have much time to react.

A couple days from now, when he reflects back on all this, it will occur to him that he could have gone for the window, forced it open or broken it and tried to run. Maybe that’s what he should have done. In light of all the opportunities in front of them, all the things in the house they could take, they probably would have let him go.

But that’s not what he does.

His bedroom door cracks along the hinges, twists and bends. (Later he’ll wonder how these people are so goddamn strong--!) But when the first man comes into view, he gets barely a glimpse of the room around him: shelves, a workbench, a twin bed neatly made, and Cricket crouched behind it, with a revolver in his hands, aiming carefully with arms steadied on the footboard.

The gun goes off once, twice, the reports loud in the small space. One man falls with a yell, but Cricket keeps shooting through the gap in the door as the second man lunges back and scrambles out of range. Three, four, five, six, click click click…

He’s panting. The man on the floor groans and lies still. There’s no sound from the hall.

The next couple minutes are very, very long. He can’t stay here. He’s out of ammunition. Any move he makes could be fatal.

The breath of the man he’s just shot seems to get louder as his own quiets, and when he looks, there’s blood all over the floor. Is he dying? Did...did Cricket just kill a man?

The cold feeling that grips him now is different from the restless grief of earlier in the day,or the raw terror of the past several minutes.

He’s got to get help.

There’s no choice but to take the chance.

A moment later he’s on his feet, forcing himself out of the room and into the hall, groping for his coat and expecting to be grabbed from behind any second, to have his throat squeezed and twisted, but there’s no one there. The other thief must have fled.

There’s a blood trail on the doorstep. One of his wild shots must have struck flesh after all.

Cricket wastes no more time, hastening out the front door and for the Plaza at the best speed he can manage.