was glad when she and Maude left. “You could have had him,” Maude said to her while they were walking home.
“Ben?”
“Yes. He’s always had a soft spot for you.”
“But I hardly know him,” Rose said, insulted. “And besides, he knows I’m engaged.”
“Yes, he does. And I think he’s very sorry.”
“So what?” Rose said. “Why are you telling me this?”
“Why are you so angry?”
“Everybody thinks that because his family has money and he’s going to be a lawyer, that Ben Carson is a good catch,” Rose said. “To me he’s only the man you sat next to me at your dinner party to make Tom jealous, and it worked, so for that I’ll remember him.”
“I thought you’d be flattered, that’s all,” Maude said mildly.
“I’m worried about Tom. In every letter lately he mentions that he wants to go overseas. I don’t know what to do.”
“It’s not in your hands,” Maude said. “In the end, the Army will decide.”
But in the end, there was something worse than the Army.
The influenza epidemic started at Fort Riley the following winter, in 1918, when a mess cook complained of a sore throat and achiness. It spread through the troops, and to the general population, and was taken abroad to France, and then to all of Europe, by soldiers. It was said that a person could start out for work, feel ill on the streetcar, and be dead before he got to his destination. If you were not dead in three hours you were certainly dead in three days. There was no cure, unless you had a mild case and simply got well. Entire families were wiped out. The flu particularly struck young, healthy people at the prime of their lives. People were hemorrhaging, dying as literally “bags of blood,” drowning as their lungs filled with fluid. At Fort Riley the dying kept up at such a pace that finally beleaguered morticians stacked the bodies outside where they froze like cordwood. Schools, churches, and businesses closed, and a call was put out for women to nurse the sick in the barracks that had been turned into hospitals. In all, half a million Americans, and twenty million people worldwide, would die.
Tom Sainsbury, “safe” at Fort Riley, was one of them.
If it had not been for the enormity of the epidemic, and the daily evidence of it in front of her eyes, Rose thought she might not have survived the death of her beloved fiancé and the end of her dreams. But by the time she received the news that she would never see Tom again, she was already in such a state of numbed shock that she could hardly comprehend it.
“We have walked into hell,” she told Maude.
Maude, nursing her firstborn baby son, Walter Junior, only nodded. She brushed her lips across her baby’s head, grazing his soft red hair, the color of his father’s. For now, her husband was well and safe. But there would be no Tom Junior for Rose.
Rose suddenly felt old. She was eighteen years old and she had lost her youth. After Tom’s funeral she pulled into her family and withdrew from the world, like a widow. Because Celia forced her to she did her schoolwork, but like an automaton; and when she was free she played with her little half-sisters, Daisy and Harriette, and with Hugh—who tried uselessly to console her—and rocked her baby nephew, Walter Junior, as if the sight of these still living children could bring her some sort of comfort, the way soft, green spring leaves calm the spirit.
When the war was over and Rose graduated from high school, their yearbook listed as many students who had died of the Spanish flu in the Army as had been killed in the Great War itself. Rose didn’t know what she would do with her life now, and so she did nothing.
Ben Carson came back from France and came to see Rose to pay a condolence call. He was in his civilian clothes, his eyes different. He asked her to take a walk with him, but she didn’t want to, so he sat there in her family’s parlor and sipped at the lemonade Celia had offered him
“Ben?”
“Yes. He’s always had a soft spot for you.”
“But I hardly know him,” Rose said, insulted. “And besides, he knows I’m engaged.”
“Yes, he does. And I think he’s very sorry.”
“So what?” Rose said. “Why are you telling me this?”
“Why are you so angry?”
“Everybody thinks that because his family has money and he’s going to be a lawyer, that Ben Carson is a good catch,” Rose said. “To me he’s only the man you sat next to me at your dinner party to make Tom jealous, and it worked, so for that I’ll remember him.”
“I thought you’d be flattered, that’s all,” Maude said mildly.
“I’m worried about Tom. In every letter lately he mentions that he wants to go overseas. I don’t know what to do.”
“It’s not in your hands,” Maude said. “In the end, the Army will decide.”
But in the end, there was something worse than the Army.
The influenza epidemic started at Fort Riley the following winter, in 1918, when a mess cook complained of a sore throat and achiness. It spread through the troops, and to the general population, and was taken abroad to France, and then to all of Europe, by soldiers. It was said that a person could start out for work, feel ill on the streetcar, and be dead before he got to his destination. If you were not dead in three hours you were certainly dead in three days. There was no cure, unless you had a mild case and simply got well. Entire families were wiped out. The flu particularly struck young, healthy people at the prime of their lives. People were hemorrhaging, dying as literally “bags of blood,” drowning as their lungs filled with fluid. At Fort Riley the dying kept up at such a pace that finally beleaguered morticians stacked the bodies outside where they froze like cordwood. Schools, churches, and businesses closed, and a call was put out for women to nurse the sick in the barracks that had been turned into hospitals. In all, half a million Americans, and twenty million people worldwide, would die.
Tom Sainsbury, “safe” at Fort Riley, was one of them.
If it had not been for the enormity of the epidemic, and the daily evidence of it in front of her eyes, Rose thought she might not have survived the death of her beloved fiancé and the end of her dreams. But by the time she received the news that she would never see Tom again, she was already in such a state of numbed shock that she could hardly comprehend it.
“We have walked into hell,” she told Maude.
Maude, nursing her firstborn baby son, Walter Junior, only nodded. She brushed her lips across her baby’s head, grazing his soft red hair, the color of his father’s. For now, her husband was well and safe. But there would be no Tom Junior for Rose.
Rose suddenly felt old. She was eighteen years old and she had lost her youth. After Tom’s funeral she pulled into her family and withdrew from the world, like a widow. Because Celia forced her to she did her schoolwork, but like an automaton; and when she was free she played with her little half-sisters, Daisy and Harriette, and with Hugh—who tried uselessly to console her—and rocked her baby nephew, Walter Junior, as if the sight of these still living children could bring her some sort of comfort, the way soft, green spring leaves calm the spirit.
When the war was over and Rose graduated from high school, their yearbook listed as many students who had died of the Spanish flu in the Army as had been killed in the Great War itself. Rose didn’t know what she would do with her life now, and so she did nothing.
Ben Carson came back from France and came to see Rose to pay a condolence call. He was in his civilian clothes, his eyes different. He asked her to take a walk with him, but she didn’t want to, so he sat there in her family’s parlor and sipped at the lemonade Celia had offered him
Similar Books
