“Deaths?!”
“Yes! Young men in the prime of life and remember they have been conditioned as fit soldiers—are dying as fast as exhausted personnel can strip the sheets, make up a cot to receive still another. And on top of that, they are shipping out a thousand men a week. It’s a nightmare here! Fritz, I have a feeling whatever this is, it may spread to the other camps—perhaps, even God forbid, into the cities … be careful—tell Hannah to get out her trusty barrel of vinegar and wash down everything!”
“Ah, come on! You talk like it’s the Black Death …”
Ebbely interrupted him by yelling, “Very, very like it! I warn you! Have the women be extra careful. Especially watch the children—this horror seems to target the young and healthy. I am leaving here tonight for Louisiana …”
“Ebberhardt—you’re okay?”
“For now, yes. Don’t worry for me. Just do as I say. And, Fritz! Watch for the signs! Have Hannah tell Jane and the others. First it appears like a bad grippe. High fever, sweating and so on. Then very, very quickly it’s like serious pneumonia, only worse. The lungs seem to drown in their own phlegm and then … Death! It can take only hours! It’s unbelievable, Fritz—it’s bedlam here! Warn everybody—I’ll telephone again when I reach New Orleans.”
Half certain that Ebbely had exaggerated as was his style, Fritz returned the earpiece onto its hook, cranked the handle, wondered how much to tell Hannah.
Within weeks the killing rampage of what was now thought to be a previously unknown virulent strain of influenza was in full bloom. Cities were under siege, their populations sickening and dying at an alarming rate. Wherever people gathered—churches, schools, those factories not involved in war production—were shut down, those left in production replacing their stricken workforce whenever and from wherever possible. In the first months of what was quickly an acknowledged epidemic—Ford’s Highland Park plant needed to replace ten thousand men.
No one ventured into the streets without a homemade face mask—firemen, policemen, conductors, shopkeepers, clergy—by October, every man, woman and child wore this protection that couldn’t begin to protect them.
Philadelphia, out of coffins, had to instruct its citizens to leave their shrouded dead on the front steps for collection by the city’s roaming death carts. Undertakers overwhelmed, no longer able to perform their expected duties, stored their overflow in makeshift sheds.
Those cities hardest hit made do with communal graves, their trenchlike appearance a macabre reminder of another war being fought far away, where thousands of already infected American troops were arriving daily—soon the death count from influenza would outstrip that of war on all fronts.
As no medicine seemed to exist that could hold out any hope, desperate people began to concoct their own. Turpentine was sucked on sugar cubes, a brew of kerosene flavored with garlic and honey was tried. The more potent the smell, the more vile the taste, the more medicinal was the popular consensus, but nothing helped. One either died or for some inexplicable reason lived. There seemed to be no middle ground. In Chicago, a man claiming that he had found the cure cut the throats of his wife and children before slashing his own.
Many believed that with their use of mustard gas in war, Germans had already proven themselves to be monsters—it followed they were certainly capable of unleashing disease across the sea in order to destroy America on its home ground. Some barricaded themselves within what they mistakenly believed was the safety of their homes, others faced the inevitable, helped to nurse those in need—most did battle with death within their immediate families.
Her sodden lungs no longer able to cope, Carl’s Rosie died two hours before their child. As by now coffins were hard to come by, Carl buried his wife and daughter as one. At the age of only three, his Violet was small enough to fit snugly by her mother’s side. Quite lost without her twin, little Rose cried incessantly. At just thirty-three, a widower left with a small daughter to raise, Carl felt quite lost himself.
Zoltan buried his mother without ceremony—by October funerals as a whole were so numerous that the sheer necessity to get the dead underground took precedence over sanctified occasion.
With schools closed and adults too sick or too busy nursing, unsupervised, still healthy children played. Michael and his best friend, Gregory, thought climbing on caskets stacked on the latest sidewalk waiting for transport a lot of fun, until Jane, on her way to nurse Mrs. Nussbaum and her eldest daughter, scolded them—then they switched to the latest activity for children in many neighborhoods—a simple game, its rules requiring only the search and counting of front doors hung with crepe. Black crepe meant a grown-up had died within, white crepe—a child. As it was the hardest, whoever could find a crepe-less door won.
A light rain had made the white crepe limp the morning John took Michael to pay their respects to his best friend’s parents. Laid out in the parlor, his Sunday sailor suit making him appear quite smart, Gregory posed by the living, slept as though he could wake. Never having smelled death, Michael now had its fetid odor of warmed wax and formaldehyde imprinted onto memory. While Jane’s stirred to a time and place never forgotten, rarely revisited, mostly shunned.
Michael stayed properly attentive until the Gregorian chants had faded and the procession for viewing of the corpse was about to begin, then plucked at his father’s sleeve and urgently asked permission to leave. Holding hands, Jane and her son walked home in the rain.