The Harvest

Matt told her about Cindy Rhee, but the story felt distant, curiously immaterial, even as he told it.

A

Poor Dr. Wheeler. We’re putting you out of business.

Maybe not better, Matt thought. Maybe sicker.

He told A

So we were keeping this from each other, Matt thought. It was like an O. Henry story. How many other people were in on this secret?

He said, “That means it’s not local.”

“No. Are you surprised?”

“No.”

“The CDC must have known about it at least as long as Jim Bix.” She sipped her Pepsi. “I guess the clamps came down hard. There hasn’t been a hint of it in the papers. I suppose the thinking is, why worry people? A disease with no symptoms, a disease with no epidemiology because everybody already has it—so why start a panic?”

“Surely they can’t keep it a secret much longer.”

“Maybe they won’t have to.”

He felt enclosed in a dome of feverish tranquility. Part of him was conducting this conversation quite reasonably; another part was encapsulated, silent, but frightened by what A

A distant, dreamy note crept into her voice. “If this infection has a purpose—and I think it does—we’ll all know pretty soon what it is.”

He gave her a sharp look. “What makes you think it has a purpose?”

“Just a feeling.” She shrugged. “Don’t you think that?”

Not a question he wanted to answer.

“A

“Yes.”

“But not now?”

Her frown deepened. “No… not now. I’m not scared now.”

“Why not?”

“I don’t know, Matt.” She regarded him solemnly across the remains of lunch. “I don’t honestly know.”

He spent the afternoon cleaning up paperwork and attending a single patient: a thirty-year-old housewife keeping an appointment to monitor her blood pressure. Yes, she was sticking to her diet. Yes, she was taking her medication.

Her pressure was a textbook-normal 120 over 80 despite a degree and a half of fever. She seemed absentminded but she smiled as she left. Thank you, Dr. Wheeler.

Matt pulled his chair to the window and watched shade and light mark time in the street beyond.

We’re being sedated.

The town was quiescent. Every motion seemed isolated, a unique event. A car crawled along the hot blacktop in slow motion. An elderly man, his collar open and his suitcoat over his shoulder, stepped out of the Bargain Cuts Uni-Sex Barber Shop and paused to run a bony hand across his stubbled head. Sunlight winked on windshields, softened road tar, and lifted haze from the blank and distant ocean.

I should be terrified, Matt thought. And I’m not. And that should be terrifying, too. But it wasn’t.

Sedation. What else to call this clinical calm? We should be screaming. We should be outraged. We should feel violated. Because this was—

Was what?

The end of the world?

Yes, Matt thought. Probably the end of the world. That was probably what this was.

At three o’clock a courier came upstairs with a folder of test results from the private med lab on the third floor. The blood results might be skewed, but apparently they could still sort out gonadotropin from a few CCs of urine. Matt gave the dossier a quick perusal. Then he phoned Lillian Bix and told her she was pregnant.

They closed the empty office at four.

“I walked to work,” A

He almost laughed. The idea was ludicrous. How was he supposed to conduct a di

A

He shook his head. “No. A

“I know.”

“Nothing to celebrate.”

“I know, Matt. Maybe we can have a drink. Watch the lights.”

“I’d like that,” Matt said.

She was right about the party, of course. Everybody had canceled—most citing the flu—except for Jim and Lillian Bix, who showed up with a bottle of wine.

The mood was not celebratory, though Lillian had a

Later, Matt switched off the air conditioning and the adults adjourned to the backyard deck. Lawn chairs in a cooling breeze, wine in stemmed glasses. Sunset faded; the first stars emerged. The breeze swayed the big Douglas fir at the back of the yard and Matt listened to the sound of its branches stirring, as gentle in the dusk as the rustling of a woman’s skirt. “My God,” he said, “it’s—quiet”

Jim looked quizzical. “What do they say in the movies? Too quiet.”

“Seriously,” Matt said. “Listen. You can hear the trees.”

Now they crooked their heads at the evening and grew attentive.

“I can hear the frogs,” A

“And that ringing sound,” Lillian said. “I know what that is! The flagpole over at the elementary school. I walk by there some mornings. The rope bangs against the staff when the wind blows. It always reminds me of a bell.”

A distant, random tolling. Matt heard it, too. Jim said, “Is all this so odd?”

“Friday night,” Matt said. “The highway runs along the river. You can usually hear the traffic. Usually nothing but. People going to the movies, guys out at the bars, maybe a lumber truck roaring by. It’s the kind of sound you can put out of your mind, but you notice it when it’s gone. There’s always some kind of noise up here, even after midnight. A train whistle. A siren once in a while. Or—”

“TV,” A

Matt glanced back at the house, where Rachel had switched off the TV and was standing at the window of her room, the light behind her, gazing moodily into the twilight.