Enza 1918

By Paul Swearingen

16-year-old Mary Alice is in trouble with her parents because she has been concentrating more on her social life than her schoolwork, and she has until the semester to bring up her marks to at least 80% in all subjects. She vows to improve, and then goes Christmas shopping with her best friend Lil. All is well until her brother, returning from fetching the mail, falls outside the house, gasping for breath. The dreaded influenza plague of 1918 has struck her family and will strike down others until it runs its course. Mary Alice finds that she has to be able to face the terrors of the disease to help her family survive.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Paul Swearingen
• Release date: Oct 5, 2015
• ISBN: 9781311354174

Paul Swearingen

Paul Swearingen is a retired English/journalism/Spanish teacher who managed to survive 34+ years in public, private, and government schools. He also was a radio newsman and disk jockey, a newspaper editor and photographer, a personnel manager for a large retail store (now defunct), and a long-time publisher of the National Radio Club's magazine, "DX News". He lives in Topeka, Kansas, where his main current duty is to keep his garden under close control.

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Enza 1918

By Paul Swearingen

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Copyright 2015 by Paul Swearingen

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Enza 1918- is a work of fiction, and all characters in this book are fictitious. Any resemblances to real events, locations, or people, living or dead, are coincidental.

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Enza 1918

Chapter One

I’m in big trouble.

That’s all Mary Alice could think as she watched her father’s face across the kitchen table when he removed her report card from the grey envelope, opened it, held it up to the kerosene lamp, and read, his lips moving silently. Or maybe they were twitching from anger.

No absences.

She nodded.

Six tardies.

She didn’t move.

Chemistry. Seventy-one percent. World History, sixty-two percent. Home Economics, eighty-five percent. Good lord, I’d hope so. Grammar and Language, sixty percent. Public Speaking, sixty percent. Geometry … He frowned at the card. Fifty-two percent?

She gazed steadily at her mother’s back as she scrubbed something in the sink while her father recited.

Suddenly, he banged the card hard enough on the kitchen table to make her mother start and turn.

Allie, if this is all the better you can do, I’m wasting my money paying your room and board in town. I might as well re-injure my back by riding in the buggy and taking you in every day myself and follow you around to make sure you get to class on time. Two trips a day. Each time me feeling as if someone is stabbing me in the back with a rusty pitchfork.

Her fists clenched in her lap under the table. Behind her father’s back, she could see her mother frown before she turned back to the sink.

You begged me to allow you to continue in high school, even after your brother had to drop out so he could help out on the farm, AND help pay for your education, I might add. Now I see that you’ve been wasting our time and effort. What in the world have you been doing every day?

Oh! I’ve been working. Those courses are hard. Even the seniors say that the eleventh-grade courses are harder this year, with the new teachers and all.

Her father shook his head slowly. I don’t think so. Today, I rode into town. It hurt like hell, even with the extra pillows I packed around my back. But I did it because I had to get supplies. I didn’t complain that it was too hard. Do you understand?

She nodded and blinked back the tears that she felt springing to her eyes.

You’ll never guess who I had a chance to talk to. Don’t bother – his name was Chen. He’s the foreman on the Chinese construction crew building a new railroad spur to the rolling mill north of town. I just happened to run into him in the hardware store, and although I could barely understand him, he made it a point to tell me how proud he was of his daughter, whose name is the same as yours. Mary.

She started. Her father actually took the time to speak to a Chinese laborer? And Mary Chen’s accent was bad enough. How could Father understand her father?

He says the schools are excellent here. And to prove it, he showed me Mary Chen’s report card. Do I have to tell you what her marks were like, Allie?

She shook her head slowly. Mary was enrolled in two of her classes, Public Speaking and Grammar and Language, and she’d seen the marks on her papers as they were passed down the rows. Nearly all above ninety percent, sometimes one-hundred percent.

And then I talked to Carroll Bishop. You know, John Bishop’s father. He seemed to think it was funny that some of the girls in Home Economics managed to blow up an oven in class. I don’t remember your mentioning that little incident, do I?

Oh! No …

I can’t imagine why not. He felt that you had something to do with it.

Her mother dried her hands on a tea towel, shot a warning look at her, and walked into the living room. Mary Alice was now completely on her own.

And he mentioned the flivver that someone disassembled and put on the roof of the high school building Hallowe’en night. The principal’s car, I understand. I don’t suppose you stayed at Mrs. Odense’s all that evening, did you? Maybe you did a little trick-or-treating? More trick than treat?

She shook her head again. Okay, she just happened to be in the area when the senior boys rolled the principal’s machine down the street, and she actually saw them jimmy a side door of the building while she was with her best friend, Lillian, but she found it convenient to return to her landlady’s house at that point. Really, she had nothing to do with that prank. Nothing. The boys did it all on their own.

Allie, I’m very disappointed with your marks.

Oh! I can do better, Father. Really, I can.

He stared at her and then continued in a low voice. You can. And you will. Either all of your grades go up to eighty percent or better by the end of the semester, or you’ll be moving back here to the farm where we can keep an eye on you and make sure you’re busy and not playing around. And then maybe I’ll have you take Ted’s place so he can be a doughboy like he says he wants to be and get shot at in some godforsaken place in Europe. Do you understand?

Her breath caught for a moment while tears spilled down her cheeks.

Yes, Father.

Eighty percent. All of them. Or above.

She dabbed at her eyes. I understand.

He took a deep breath and drummed his fingers on the table. All right. Now, let’s see if you can put your eighty-five-percent-level expertise in Home Economics to work. Go see if your mother needs some help with mending or darning or something. If she doesn’t have anything for you to do, you could go check with Ted and see if he could use some help with his chores tonight, or give the dog some fresh water. And after supper I expect to see you working on homework that you brought with you today. You did bring some, didn’t you?

She nodded. She needed to write a paper in her grammar class, and she had remembered to bring the textbook with her. Maybe she should have brought her History text home, too, but she knew the teacher would be talking about the Great War in Europe during most of the class, so usually she didn’t bother to read the assignments he gave the class. Chemistry was mostly lecture, note taking, and lab work, speech was … ha! … talking, and she rarely bothered to study for her other classes.

She realized that he was waiting for her to say something.

Yes, Father. We have an assignment in grammar class, to write a paper. I’ll start on that tonight right after I wash the dishes for Mother. I … don’t have homework this weekend for other classes. We … do all the work in class.

He shook his head. Allie. Next weekend, you’ll bring every one of your books home. You will show me what assignments the teacher expects you to accomplish for the following week. I will help you prioritize your time for each class. I will keep your little brother away from you so you can have some quiet time. Carey probably has his own homework to do. However, from the looks of his report card, he is doing well enough, although he’ll need to work on his penmanship more.

Her little brother’s handwriting was barely legible. Not that her own was perfect. But her father’s penmanship was an almost exact match for what she remembered from her Spenserian penmanship book she’d used at the country grade school.

I expect better from you, Allie. Much better, from now on. Now, go help your mother. Ted’s in the milk shed if your mother doesn’t find anything for you to do.

She stood and moved past her father, around the corner, and up the stairs, rubbing her cheeks dry as she went. Maybe she could uncover something to be mended, fold clothes, help her find a pattern for an apron or a frock or something – anything to escape having to deal with pig or cow manure stinking up her clothes, even if it was the last day of the school week.

Well, her life was over. She wasn’t going to get a chance to see Lee again until he and Tom picked her up Monday morning for her regular ride to school. She’d probably die a spinster and of a heart attack while slopping the hogs. She’d never get asked to a Saturday dance by a town boy, because she’d be slaving away over a textbook until midnight every Saturday. Not to mention Friday and Sunday. That is if she wasn’t darning socks, mending shirts, sewing something together, or pretending that she could bake a cake or pie or something else that her slave-driver father demanded.

She stood at the head of the stairs and called softly. Mother? Where are you? Oops – no answer. Maybe she’d just go see if she could find Old Shep and give him some water. The pigs and cows and Ted could wait.

Chapter Two

The child lies quietly in the single bed, only his face and neck visible above the coverlet that rises and falls with each strained breath he draws. His mother sits next to his bed and listens helplessly as the rate of his breathing increases, his chest rattling each time he inhales and exhales. The room slowly darkens. She doesn’t want to light the gas lamp on the wall, so she rises from her chair and sweeps open the pair of gauze curtains and peers outside through the frost-rimmed windowpane. The setting sun tinges the edges of the few clouds in the west with an orange glow that contrasts with their dark centers, and she notices the silhouette of a single large bird headed south.

A cough from the boy prompts her to turn around. His arm is flung across his pillow from under the coverlet, and she realizes that his face and neck are covered with perspiration. His cheeks, which had been flushed earlier, are now a dark purple hue, almost mahogany. She reaches into the basin on the stand next to his bed to pull a washcloth from it, and she carefully wrings it out and wipes his forehead first, then under his chin, and finally around his mouth and nose, being careful not to block his breathing. She doesn’t notice the smear of blood on the washcloth until she turns to dip it into the basin again.

She stares at the stain on the cloth and turns towards her son. Again he coughs, more violently this time, and blood spurts from his nose and mouth across the coverlet. She quickly squeezes the cloth and applies it around his mouth and nose and dabs at the coverlet, and then she drops it into the basin, falls back onto the chair, and puts her hands over her eyes in despair.

The silence grows. She forces herself to pull her hands from her face, and now she sees that the coverlet no longer rises and falls.

* * *

The wind had an extra edge to it as it lifted leaves from the sidewalk and street, flung them against Mary Alice’s stockings, and swirled them around her face. The setting sun offered no warmth whatsoever to either her or Lillian, who plodded along beside her.

Lil, we are complete simpletons for going out without wearing hats and scarves. Mary Alice shivered and pushed her hands deeper in her coat pockets.

Well, it was your idea to go Christmas shopping tonight, Allie, not mine.

I wasn’t going to take a chance with asking Father for permission to come into town to go shopping Saturday. I even told Mrs. Odense that I had to get some school supplies just in case he called her to check up on me. Through her mitten, she could feel the hard-edged coins and crinkly bills she’d saved up.

Another girl with dark, glossy hair covered with a heavy scarf except for her bangs passed them going the other way. Her eyes lingered on the two girls for a moment. She did not speak, and Mary Alice glanced at her and looked away. She waited a few seconds, turned to make sure that the girl was out of earshot, and giggled. There goes that Mary Chen. I wonder why she’s not at home with her nose in a book and in front of a warm fire? Do Chinese people even celebrate Christmas?

Lillian shot a glance over her shoulder and shook her head. Who knows? Maybe we should have invited her to go with us so we could find out.

Who? Her?

It was just a thought. Lillian hunched her shoulders so that almost nothing of her face showed but her ruddy nose and dark, round-rimmed spectacles. I’ve got an exam tomorrow in history class and should be curled up in front of a stove myself instead of wandering around in the cold. Gee, I hope those poor soldier boys overseas are staying warm.

Mary Alice turned to tell Lillian to stop talking about homework and the cold and the war, but another blast from the west made her gasp and scrunch up her eyes. Before she could open them she felt her face impact into the rough fabric of someone’s coat.

Oh! Sorry! She opened one eye and realized that she was looking at the out-of-focus image of an anchor on a black button sewed to a pea coat. She tilted her head up and realized that the round face of John Bishop was just inches away from hers. He must have come around the corner just as she had reached it, and now he took a step back.

Ah … hello. Sorry. Didn’t see you … two … coming down the sidewalk.

Mary Alice rubbed her face and opened the other eye. Well, don’t you think you should watch where you’re going?

"I said I’m