The Last Town on Earth (18 page)

The trail seemed darker as she walked back home.

XI

“I
see your two twigs,” Philip said, eying Frank carefully, “and raise you three.”

After requesting playing cards from the morning guard, the two prisoners had scoured the building in search of something they could bet with. They found plenty of twigs—enough so it would probably take many hours for either of them to bankrupt the other. They’d started playing at least two hours ago.

Philip was beginning to enjoy Frank’s company, but Charles’s warning about the guns still left him unsettled. Which was why, the next time Frank wandered downstairs to “use the facilities,” as he called it, Philip had gathered the rifle and pistol, carried them to the front of the vast room, quickly opened the door, and placed the weapons right outside.

They’d been playing for hours when they heard the midmorning whistle, just as Philip was raising Frank three twigs. Frank took the bait, then each player traded in two cards. Philip took a three of hearts and a seven of clubs, which gave him absolutely nothing.

Frank bet a twig. Philip raised him three more.

Frank scrutinized his foe. Then he dropped his cards. “Fold.”

Philip raked the twigs into his stash, dropped his cards facedown, and started shuffling.

“At least tell me what you had,” Frank said. “I had two kings.”

“Do I have to tell you?”

“Not technically. A gentleman would.”

“Do gentlemen play poker?”

“Of course.”

Philip kept shuffling. “I had nothing.”

Frank slapped his thighs angrily. But he was smiling. “You’re a hell of a bluffer. I thought you had a royal flush or something.”

Three hands later, two of which Philip won, they were interrupted by a knock on the door.

“I was just thinking it was time for dinner,” Frank said.

Philip put down the cards and walked over to the door.

“You’re a regular ringer, kid. After the war, you and me should tour the West, take on some high rollers.”

Philip put his hand on the doorknob. He was already tired of opening the door, quickly picking up the tray of food and bringing it inside, then closing the door. This time he took an extra moment to look down the street, squinting at the brightness of the outside world. In the distance, closer to the second storage building, was one of the guards. First he was just a silhouette before the glare of the sun, then Philip recognized Graham’s face. And his scowl.

Philip closed the door, the image lingering.

“Everything all right?” Frank asked.

“Yeah,” Philip said, then carried over the tray. He sat down and took his first good look at the tray, which held two chicken sandwiches, apples, cups of water, more cornbread, and an envelope addressed to Philip in Rebecca’s handwriting. Philip put the envelope in his pocket.

“So how long have you folks been keeping people out of the town?” Frank asked.

“Almost two weeks now.”

“You going to run out of food eventually?” Frank took a bite of his sandwich.

“They say we can go at least a couple months if we need to. But the doctor doesn’t think we’ll have to.”

Frank’s eyebrows shifted and he seemed to almost say something, but he opted for silence and another bite. Philip put one of the pieces of cornbread next to Frank’s plate. Frank, his mouth full, nodded in appreciation.

After they finished their meals, they looked at the cards, somewhat disappointed. Poker had been a welcome diversion for a couple of hours, but the long day stretched before them.

Philip swallowed. His throat was not sore. He did not have a headache. He was neither feverish nor chilled. He had no cough and no sneeze. All seemed well.

“Your sister makes good cornbread,” Frank said. “She pretty?”

Philip shrugged. “Yeah.”

“How old is she?”

Philip saw where this was going. “Too young for you.”

Frank smiled. “Relax, kid. I’m just teasing. I’m not interested.”

“You got a sweetheart back in Missoula?”

“I do.”

“What’s her name?”

“Michelle.”

A pretty name, Philip thought. He himself had once nurtured a crush on a Michelle in Portland—or was it Eugene? Those years were a geographic blur in his mind, but he remembered Michelle, the red dress she always wore, and the way she laughed at his jokes more than at anyone else’s.

“When was the last time you saw her?”

“Two months ago. Two months, one week, and four days.” Frank grinned ruefully.

“What’s she look like?”

“As a matter of fact—” Frank reached into one of his pockets and pulled out a thin leather strap that looked like a billfold. He removed a small photograph and handed it to Philip. Staring back at him was an attractive brunette, closer in age to Philip than to Frank, with large brown eyes and hair almost as straight as that of the Chinook Indians who lived outside Everett. It was just one picture, but if that was how she really looked, she would have been one of the prettiest girls in Commonwealth, Philip thought.

“She’s sweet,” Philip said, handing it back.

“It was tough to leave her for this.”

“You’ll see her again soon,” Philip said. “They say the war’s almost over.”

“Yeah,” Frank said, his eyes clouding.

“Why didn’t you marry her? You wouldn’t have been drafted then.”

“Yeah, I would have. They changed that law—anyone who gets married after the war started is treated like a single man as far as the draft is concerned. Too many fellas had gotten out of the first draft that way, so Uncle Sam got wise. Marrying her would only mean there was a chance I could make her a widow. I didn’t want to do that.” Frank looked at the picture again. His eyes were hard.

“So what’s she doing now?” Philip asked, hoping to dispel the black cloud that suddenly hung around his companion.

“Rolling bandages with the Red Cross ladies. Saving peach pits.” Pits were collected by the government so their carbon could be used in the production of gas masks. “Same as everyone else.” Frank put the photo back in his pocket. “So after forty-eight hours of this, they’ll let us go?”

Philip nodded. “Sure.”

“They’re not going to change their minds? Decide to leave us in here for a week? Or a month?”

There were so many other things for Philip to worry about that he hadn’t even considered this possibility. He found Frank’s question too horrible to ponder. “No. Just till tomorrow night. Unless one of us gets sick, I guess.”

“Well, I don’t aim to get sick.”

“Me, neither.”

They looked at each other, knowing their fate was bound together. I could feel fine tomorrow, Philip thought, but if he starts coughing and shivering, we’re in here to stay.

Philip rushed to break the uncomfortable silence. “Want to play another hand?”

They played and Philip won again, his ace-high full house beating Frank’s two pairs. He raked ten more twigs into his pile.

As Philip shuffled the cards for the next hand, he thought he heard something. He looked at Frank’s hands, one of which was in his pile of twigs, which had diminished noticeably after Philip’s last few victories. Frank’s hand twitched a bit when he realized he was being watched.

Philip dropped his cards. “I saw that.”

“What?” Frank feigned innocence.

“You snapped one of your twigs!”

“What?”

“You snapped one of your twigs to make it two twigs—you’re sitting over there minting yourself more money!”

Frank decided to give up his act. “Okay, so I snapped one of ’em. You got me. It was too long anyway.” He grabbed a twig and flung it across the room, as if this would make up for his embezzlement.

Philip was unsure how big a deal he should make of the fact that his opponent was a confirmed cheater. “I have to watch you like a hawk, I guess.”

Frank sighed. “I won’t do it again. C’mon, deal the hand.”

Philip taunted him: “I thought this was a gentleman’s game.”

“Just deal the damn cards.”

After another hour in which Philip’s collection of twigs grew, Frank announced he wanted to lie down. He pillowed his head on a folded blanket and shut his eyes; soon he was breathing so heavily that Philip figured he was asleep. Frank certainly seemed to be enjoying his reprieve from military drills and push-ups, or whatever it was they did over at Fort Jenkins.

Philip walked toward the fireplace and threw more wood on the fire. It was warm enough during the day, but the previous night had been cold, and Philip wasn’t looking forward to another struggle with sleep.

He sat down and read Rebecca’s letter. It seemed to have been written the night before; she mentioned how difficult it would be to go to school the next day and said that both she and Laura were worried about him. But this short time would pass quickly, she assured him, and tomorrow night they would have supper as a family again.

Philip was about to read the letter a second time when there was a knock on the door. He stood up hesitantly—it was too early for another meal—and walked toward it. After the requisite wait, he opened the door. There in the light of day, just on the threshold, was an envelope with his name written on it. He grabbed it and stole a brief glance farther outside, hoping to confirm whether the guard was indeed Graham. But out in the distance the solitary figure had turned his back, and because Philip knew he shouldn’t stand there with the door open, he looked back down and closed the door, the room falling prey to the darkness once more. The back could have been Graham’s, Philip figured, but maybe not.

The handwriting on the envelope was a mystery. It looked feminine, though—certainly it wasn’t from Graham or Charles. Philip paused, then opened it. The one-page letter on plain white paper was signed
Elsie.

A letter from Elsie! He had tried not to think of her that day, had tried to focus on making it through those forty-eight hours, to concentrate on the soldier, to lose himself in the card game. But it had been all but impossible to keep her completely out of his mind, impossible not to wonder what she was doing, whether she was thinking of him.

He sat down beside the lamp. Embarrassed, he looked back to make sure Frank wasn’t watching, then he unfolded the letter again.

Dear Philip,

I couldn’t believe it when Laura told me this morning what has happened. It was so hard to have to sit in class for the rest of the day and pretend to concentrate on what Mrs. Worthy was saying. She never called on Laura all day—she must have decided to go easy on her—but twice I was called on and both times I hadn’t been listening. I had been so preoccupied.

Everyone at the school has been talking about you and everyone is hoping you come out soon. I think this whole quarantine thing is so rotten and wrong, and now that they’ve done this to you I can’t believe that no one else sees it but me. I know you must feel the same way, though.

I heard some kids at school wondering aloud why you let the soldier in, but I can imagine why. I know that standing guard out there must be so difficult and to be confronted with someone wanting to come in must have been unbearably hard. I know you feel bad about what happened a few days ago—I still have not told anyone what I know—but I do think you and Graham did the right thing. I also think you did the right thing by letting the new person in yesterday. I know that sounds contradictory, but I don’t think it is. I think you had your reasons and I want you to know that even though it might feel that you are alone, you aren’t.

We’ll see you soon,

Elsie

Philip placed the letter back in the envelope. Elsie had been thinking of him all day; he couldn’t believe it. He had wondered if she’d felt the same way, had hoped, but this was his first strong piece of evidence. Unless Philip was misreading her words. So he opened the letter once more and read them a third time, his heart still beating fast.

Elsie’s reference to other people talking brought back his fears that the townspeople would blame him for betraying their trust. She seemed to have faith in him; hopefully, the others would, too.

He lay down on his blankets and stared at the ceiling, thinking of Elsie. If he had been anxious to be released from this prison before, now he was positively desperate.

“So, what exactly do you do at Fort Jenkins?”

After supper, they had played poker for another hour, then had taken a break to collect more wood for the fire. To preserve lamp oil, they had decided to kill the lamp for the night, and the fire cast an orange and ever-shifting glow on their faces. They had already talked plenty—Philip had learned that Frank was a carpenter who worked with his father, that his father had built most of the houses on one side of the river in Missoula, that Frank had a younger sister who was blind, that Frank loved to fish and that his idea of happiness was climbing to the top of Mount Sentinel and watching the sun set over the hay-colored peaks to the west. But Frank had spoken barely a word about his military service.

“What do I do?”

“Yeah. Practice shooting, marching, digging trenches? How does it work?”

Frank thought for a moment. “Believe it or not, we haven’t been able to practice shooting yet because we don’t have any guns.”

“No guns?”

“I guess they’re running short, and the first priority is obviously the guys in France, so they haven’t gotten around to giving my company real firearms yet. We practice marching with broom handles.”

“Really?”

“And we practice bayoneting with broom handles.”

“You must be a dangerous man with a broom. How about a mop?”

“I could stab you through the heart with a mop. Don’t let me anywhere near the broom closet or I’ll go off on a rampage.”

When Philip looked back at Frank he saw a different face, that of a man miles away, slogging through mud or staring into an unimaginably vast sea. The face made Philip deeply uncomfortable.

“So after this is all over, you’re going to marry Michelle?”

Frank looked down, then at the fire. “Yeah.”

“You tell her about that, or is it a surprise?”

“She knows. She might think I was just saying it, though—a lot of guys just said it before they left so they could get their girls to loosen up with ’em. They brag about that at the camp. But I didn’t just say it; I meant it.”