A Plague Year (19 page)

“Oh, different stuff. They move college kids in and out of the Blackwater dorms.”

“Yeah?”

“And they do some government work, hauling pine trees.”

“For turpentine?”

“I guess so, yeah. And they sell Christmas trees down in Florida.”

“Really?”

“Uh-huh. They’ve been doing it for a few years now. They make good money. And, uh, they asked me to work for them this year.”

Dad froze in mid-spoonful.

Lilly bulged her eyes out at me and whistled softly.

I added quickly, “Just for five days, and they’ll pay me three hundred dollars. That’s sixty dollars a day. And really, two days are travel days, so that’s a hundred dollars per working day.”

Mom spoke up immediately. “No. You can’t miss school.”

“But that’s the beauty of it. I won’t! It’s just Thanksgiving and the weekend. I’ll be back in time for school.”

I smiled and looked pathetically from Mom to Dad.

But Dad just shook his head. “I can’t spare you at work, Tom. Not at Thanksgiving. It’s one of the busiest times of the year; you know that.”

Mom piled it on. “And you’d be on the road with those”—she struggled to find the right term—“drug guys.”

I thought about Warren and that box of Ziploc bags. Were they to store food, or weed? Both, probably. Still, I tried to sound offended, like that was an outrageous lie. “Drug guys?”

“Yes! You heard what your father just said. They’ve both had drug problems.”

“That was years ago! Didn’t Dad have a problem back then, too?”

“That’s not the point. You have school, you have work, and you have parents who won’t let you get in a car with just anybody and take off for just anyplace. The answer is no.”

I can’t say I was surprised. The answer is always no.

I said as evenly as I could, “Okay. Forget it. It was just an idea.” Then I took the stairs two at a time up to my room and, very calmly, got ready for school. But I was fuming inside.

Mr. Proctor began class by describing his reactions to our journal entries. “These are great! Heartfelt and well-observed. I especially liked the ones about your town, and about coal mining, and about a place called Caldera.

“They got me to thinking. We have talked about Pennsylvania as a Garden of Eden, as a paradise. It has some of the world’s most abundant farmland above, and it has some of the world’s most abundant coal veins below.

“So picture this: It is glorious, sunny, and heaven-like up top, and it’s sulfurous, burning, and hell-like down below. It’s all here in one place. It’s yin and yang. It’s
Paradise Lost
.

“And, while we are speaking of great literature …” He picked up his script for
The Roses of Eyam
. “All the roles in my play have now been assigned. I want to thank everybody who auditioned.”

He looked at Wendy. “Some of you showed great talent.”

Arthur muttered behind me, “Grape talent.”

Mr. Proctor heard him, and he called him on it. “What’s that, Arthur?”

“Uh, I was wondering, sir, if I got that village idiot job. Did I?”

“Yes. I told you that before.”

“And—I just want to double-check—if I play this part, I get an A in English?”

Mr. Proctor summarized, somewhat impatiently, “Yes. You have been assigned the part of the Bedlam, the village idiot. And if you learn that role and you play it on December thirtieth in the
school auditorium, you get an A. Why? Are you having second thoughts?”

“No! No way. Oh, but I have to tell you: I’ll be gone from November twenty-first to the twenty-fifth. Out of town on business. I won’t be able to rehearse then.”

“Okay. That won’t be a problem.”

“Cool. Then you got yourself an idiot.”

Mr. Proctor held the script high. “The original production had over fifty actors. I have managed to pare it down to a dozen speaking parts, and I’ve cut the three acts down to one. But I have preserved the essence of the play, which, in my view, is this:

“One day, in the peaceful English village of Eyam, the plague arrives in a shipment of cloth. People start to die. At first no one knows what is happening. The plague starts to spread very rapidly, geometrically—two, four, eight, sixteen bodies a day. The people realize, to their horror, what is happening to them. But they also realize that if they let the plague move beyond their village, it will continue to increase, geometrically, until half of England is dead. To prevent that ultimate catastrophe, the villagers embark on something truly heroic: They stay in their own town. They do not run away. They stay and fight.”

He stopped and looked at me, but I looked away. I had heard enough. Mr. Proctor could stay in Blackwater if he wanted, in his plague village, but I would not.

I had made up my mind. I was getting the hell out, with my parents’ permission or not.

I was going to Florida.

The counseling group started right on time, at least for us. But I could tell by Catherine Lyle’s nervous glances at the door, and
at her watch, that something was wrong. Our guest speaker, her husband, was not there.

Wendy, however, was. She was sitting in her old spot, smiling, waiting to hear her famous father speak.

Catherine Lyle improvised by saying, “I often start the meeting by introducing a topic. I know that some of you have things you want to talk about that I have
not
covered. So let’s start today with a free topic, anything you’d like to share that you have not been able to.”

Ben’s hand shot up, of course. But some other hands did, too.

Catherine Lyle pointed to Jenny, who said, quite unexpectedly, “I would like to share that I have a problem at home. My father is a recovering alcoholic. I tried to hide that fact all my life. I get all A’s on my report cards, and I’m on the Student Council, and I try really hard to act perfect, but that doesn’t change the truth. I have a problem at home, a big problem. I always have.”

Jenny stopped there.

Other kids nodded and said they understood her predicament.

I was shocked. The Weavers did seem to be the perfect family, but I guess that was Jenny’s point.

Angela spoke up next. Her topic was very different. “My cousin drank bleach to pass a urine test with her probation officer. But she drank too much, or it was too strong, and it burned out the lining of her esophagus. So now she has to eat through a tube.”

Another girl advised her, “She shoulda drank vinegar instead. Vinegar’s supposed to work.”

Lilly objected to that very strongly. “No! You shouldn’t learn how to lie better. Or cheat better. You should stop using drugs. That’s the only thing that works.”

One of the high school guys was eager to share next. He didn’t even wait to be called on. “My brother mugged an old man outside a bank, but they caught him because of his army coat.”

Arthur sounded puzzled. “What do you mean, dude?”

“They caught him because the old man remembered the name on the army coat.”

Arthur held up his hand. “Wait a minute. You’re telling us that your brother mugged somebody while wearing a coat that had his
own
name stitched on it?”

“Yeah.”

“Is he a moron?”

The guy looked offended. “No. He’s an addict.”

“That’s the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard.”

Ben agreed. “That guy’s, like, too stupid to live.”

But Angela came to his defense. “Come on! Addicts don’t think.”

The high school guy explained, “My brother was never good at anything. He even got kicked out of the army. So naturally, he’s not a good mugger, either.”

For the next ten minutes, people shared other anecdotes about the stupid, and deadly, and just plain sad things that had happened to users they knew.

All that talk stopped, though, when our guests walked in.

Catherine Lyle looked up at her husband, so we did, too. He was not alone. (Was he ever? How weird was that?) He had two students trailing him, two frat boys who were smiling very wide. They looked familiar, but I couldn’t place them. Our three visitors walked to the head of the table and stared at us like we were some kind of lab specimens.

I hadn’t seen Dr. Lyle since the Halloween party. He wasn’t
wearing blue velvet now, just jeans and an old sweater. He had long gray hair tied up in a ponytail. You don’t see a lot of that around here.

Dr. Lyle tried an opening joke. “We just saw your mascot outside, the Battlin’ Coal Miner. We were thinking they might replace him with a statue that better reflects the local economy. We came up with the Battlin’ Walmart Greeter.”

He paused to let us all laugh, but we did not. We just glared at him. His boys did manage a low snigger, though.

Catherine Lyle reacted to this awkward moment by launching quickly into an introduction. “Now we come to the main part of our meeting. We are all grateful to have Dr. Richard Lyle with us today, along with, I see, some of his graduate students.”

The frat boys exchanged a smirk. I hated those guys. We all did; I could sense it.

“Dr. Lyle has been a leader in his field for twenty years, holding professorships at the University of Southern California, the Florida Institute of Technology, and now Blackwater University. I have asked him to talk today about some exciting new treatments that are available to substance abusers. Please welcome Dr. Richard Lyle.”

Dr. Lyle nodded at his wife and smiled at Wendy. “Thank you, Catherine, for inviting me here.” He looked around at us. “Obviously, there is never a
good
time to be a substance abuser, but if you had to choose a time in history, this would be it. Psychologists and physicians and counselors have been working together throughout the last decade to develop some of the most effective and revolutionary treatments in medical history, treatments that have proven to be highly effective in their success-versus-relapse ratios.

“Substance-abuse centers in California and in Florida
now offer total-immersion programs to patients over a twenty-eight-day period. These programs include individual, group, and family therapy; relapse-prevention education; and trust building via team sports, horseback riding, rope courses, and other activities.”

He then launched into a long list of places like the Betty Ford clinic where, basically, drug users could go and listen to people like him all day, and do activities, and get cured of their addictions. After about fifteen minutes, he wrapped it up by saying, “These programs are expensive, though. So my best advice to you is this: Get a job with good health benefits, benefits that cover drug treatment should you ever need it.”

As soon as he stopped, Lilly raised her hand. She asked him, “Wouldn’t the best advice be ‘Don’t do drugs at all’?”

Dr. Lyle looked confused. Then he smiled. “Sure. It would be. But that’s not what my talk was about.”

“But aren’t all drugs bad?”

Dr. Lyle tried to explain. “Well, I would differentiate between hard drugs, which are very destructive, and milder drugs, which are purely recreational.”

Lilly sounded puzzled. “But aren’t they
all
illegal? Unless, like, you have a prescription from a doctor?”

Dr. Lyle was no longer smiling at Lilly when he replied, “Yes, true. And they are all
potentially
bad, even legal drugs such as alcohol, or, for that matter, aspirin.”

Then he didn’t say anything else.

After a long silence, Catherine Lyle spoke up. “All right! Thanks, Lilly, for that question. Are there any others?”

Ben raised his hand. “Dr. Lyle? What if you don’t have the money to go to one of those substance-abuse facilities? Where can you go?”

Dr. Lyle suggested, “You could go to your church. They generally have programs.”

“You mean like to an AA meeting?”

“Yes. Those meetings have helped people in the past. But they are amateur operations, where substance abusers try to help each other.”

Ben followed up, “So … what if you don’t have money
and
you don’t belong to a church?”

Dr. Lyle answered, “Well, there
are
free social programs out there, but not everywhere. They are mostly in big cities.”

“Yeah! I got diagnosed in Pittsburgh, by a social worker. I was eating stuff.”