Whisper | BO LEWIS

Whisper

BO LEWIS | VERMONT In the first year of the plague we built a chicken coop, dug a root cellar, and watched our son grow four inches. When we’d drunk up all the wine, Mitch consulted the homesteading book on mead. When Adam’s clothes burst at the seams, I made him culottes from the drapes, smocks from the percale bedsheets. “Is that Maria von Trapp?” my husband said, and kissed my hairline. “Is that my very own Mrs. Wilder?” It was no sacrifice, making do. It was part of the adventure.

We’d left the city in the second wave, when a handful of doctors broke the gag order and confirmed everyone’s fear: the vaccine wasn’t working. The president went on claiming total victory, but the leaked photos told another story: there were the cadavers, their limbs swollen from the virus, their shoulders bearing the vaccine’s telltale crescent of scar tissue. Bodies photographed just before the soldiers trucked them off to the incinerators. By dawn the next day, we’d loaded what we could into the station wagon and split. Mitch’s parents kept a fishing shack in a holler off the Shenandoah River—“Gun country!”—where we could monk ourselves away. “It’ll be like camping,” we told Adam, “only better.” Mitch promised the running of trotlines, the chopping of firewood, the growing of vegetables—everything we hoped the book would cover. In the little town we bought a maul, a rifle, a dozen kinds of seed. For a good long while it really was as we’d described it. A summer of fishing and grilling and watching things grow. An autumn that smelled of hickory fire and venison roasts. But winter fell, and Adam’s nightmares began. A whimper that rose to screaming, to thrashing—and never the faintest memory of what he’d dreamt. At first we chalked it up to so much darkness— nights so black you wondered if the earth had slipped its orbit. Then came full moons, then spring, and no change. Now it is June. The days are long and there is much to do, but the nights leave us tired. Still, Mitch says, tired is no excuse. I rise at first light, scoop extra coffee into the percolator. Mitch paddles out to set his trotline. Adam resumes his war against leaf-eating beetles, picking tenderly through the vegetable patch like a school nurse checking scalps. We’re low on salt, propane, and hen feed, but Mitch says to hold off on supply runs. He was in town last week and overheard two locals, a few aisles over, talking about us.

It seems our nearest neighbors—a pair of empty-nesters called McKay— have both fallen ill. No one in the area has been infected since the first wave. “Makes you wonder,” Mitch heard one of them saying, “who could of made them sick.” Mitch rounded the aisle and found them: the store’s owner and another man he’d seen before, leaning against the gun counter. They looked up. “Yeah,” the owner said, his eyes fixed on Mitch, “. . . who.” As a parent, you learn how to soothe, to turn your voice into pure velvet, even as the nerves rattle in your spine. I used my art on Mitch; and he, I’m sure, on me. All is well. An accident of awkward timing, nothing more. Just as we evolved to detect eyes in mere patterns of shadow, so we can’t help but invent hidden meaning in benign words. It is only logical. And yet. The other day Mitch ran up from the riverbank, shouting that someone had cut the trotline. When Adam came around front, we explained that it must have been a boat’s propeller. But Mitch sets the line too deep for that. “And anyway,” he later whispered to me, “look how clean it’s severed. Nothing like the dull slashing of a prop blade.” Then, yesterday, Adam found all the corn pulled out at the roots, the stalks arranged in a neat line on the grass. “Those damn deer!” Mitch said, glancing my way. He decided we needed handguns and drove into town. “No can do,” the store owner told him, one elbow on the glass display case. He claimed they were fresh out of forms. “Forms?” my husband asked. “State law,” he was told. “If I don’t file everything just so, I’m in it deep.” Mitch asked if the man really didn’t have a single copy of the paperwork, if he was really going to turn down a nice fat sale. “How about I pay cash?” he pleaded. The man clucked his tongue. “You wouldn’t want me to break the law, would you?” Today, nothing. The heat wakes us before dawn. I find the hens still sleeping in their roost. Mitch compliments my coffee, gives me a flirty pinch. I smack his hand away, smiling. It is like we’re newlyweds again—before Adam, before the plague. We take turns fawning over Adam, teaching him lessons in our haphazard way. Mitch takes a leg of venison from the deep freeze and, while trimming it into smaller cuts, explains how the ancient Greeks would disguise their sacrifices to the gods: how they would wrap the thighbones in strands of fat, keeping the meat for themselves. When it is my turn, I ask Adam if he’s in the mood for French. Nous sommes heureux, I tell him: We are happy. Tu es heureux. Papa, il est heureux. Moi, je suis très heureuse. Dusk waits. The solstice is just a few days off. We read to Adam—a chapter book with illustrations on every other page. Our hero rides into the

long-suffering town, his armor glinting in the sun. Where has everyone gone, he asks. Why is there no one at market? A withered old man—a charcoalburner, covered with soot—scrabbles out from his hovel. It is the dragon, my lord, the dragon has laid waste to our once-prosperous town. All our men of fighting age have perished in his nighttime raids. Where is this contemptible beast, our hero wants to know. Up yon mountain, says the charcoal-burner. In his lair, curled atop the riches he has plundered from us. Our hero sets off at once, climbing by hand and foot once the crags grow too steep for his courser. At last he reaches the mouth of the cave. Drawing his sword, he peers inside . . . But it is time for bed. As we kiss our son goodnight, his eyes begin to glisten. “I promise,” he says, “I swear I’ll try not to scream.” In our room, Mitch tosses his shirt over the lampshade. We swig from a bottle of mead, wincing at the tartness. We whisper, giggle, try to have sex. It is late now. The trill of katydids floods in through the windows. Mitch checks the rifle, leans it against his nightstand. I click off the lamp, and for long minutes we are completely blind. We do not sigh; we do not fluff our pillows. In the dark, we listen.