The Last Town on Earth. Thomas Mullen

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СКАЧАТЬ left the table and walked to his bedroom, in the back corner of the house, directly below Laura’s room. He opened his closet door, reached down beneath a pile of extra blankets, and lifted out the box with his baseball glove and three baseballs, revealing the contraband beneath. The one on top was called Hunt for the Baron, and the cover bore an illustration of a plane with the German flag painted on its wings, firing its silver guns and leaving supernaturally blue and pink flames in its wake.

      He handed them to her.

      “Which one’s the best?” she asked.

      He was surprised that she was interested in war stories—she was a girl, after all, and not one with a lot of tomboy traits. Philip himself had been somewhat embarrassed by reading them—wasn’t he too old for such stories? Somewhere in those European trenches, other sixteen-year-olds were fighting for their lives.

      “I haven’t read them all yet,” he said. “I’ve read the bottom four so far. I liked Attack of the Flying Circus best, I think.”

      He had bought a few of them in Timber Falls last month. They were in a stack by the front register of a general store, and the vivid covers had caught his attention, reminding him of the stories of cowboys and train robbers he had read when he was younger. He must have left dozens of those books behind in various boardinghouses during his childhood, as he and his mother always seemed to be moving unexpectedly, running from an angry landlord or a jealous boyfriend. He had reached for a couple of the war books, flipping through until the clerk politely suggested he be a good patriot and buy them.

      As soon as Philip reached the Worthy home, he ferried them into his room, temporarily hiding them under his bed. Soldiers were not viewed as heroes in this household, he well knew.

      Attack of the Flying Circus detailed the horrific exploits of the recently slain Manfred von Richthofen, the legendary Red Baron, whose so-called Flying Circus was still tearing holes through the skies above France, strafing Allied soldiers and civilians alike. It was a short book intended for somewhat younger readers, and it took Philip only forty minutes to reach the end, where brave American pilots shot down the baron and half of the Circus, chasing the dwindling armada back to German airways, from which it would surely regroup to terrify the skies another day. Philip didn’t know how much was true, but he knew the Baron had existed, knew there was real blood being spilled somewhere beyond these pages.

      Another book, Spies in the Harbor, was about German spies who tried to blow up the Statue of Liberty. This one, too, though fiction, hewed closely to the truth: before the United States joined the war, German spies had set off a bomb in a New York harbor, blowing up a munitions facility with an explosion so great it scarred the Statue of Liberty and woke up people as far away as Philadelphia. Everyone in the country had been warned about spies by alarmed government announcements, excited newspapers, and the persistent Four-Minute Men. There were so many recent German immigrants, no one knew whom they could trust. According to the papers, spies were everywhere, keeping tabs on the soldiers at the camps and the workers in the shipyards, spreading wicked rumors of lost battles in France, hoping to discourage the lionhearted American people. Columnists wrote tips on how to spot a spy, on which behaviors were sure signs of the Hun, on what things not to talk about in public. There were even reports that Germany was sending spies to mill towns, hoping to sabotage one of the industries that was keeping American troops supplied for the war. But Charles had reassured Philip that such rumors were groundless fearmongering.

      Still, Philip felt stupid for reading these kids’ books. “You can take all of them,” he said to Laura.

      She looked at him strangely. “I don’t need all of them.” Besides, how would she sneak all of them to her room without risking being discovered by their mother?

      He had offered because he didn’t feel like reading about soldiers anymore, or perhaps ever again. The mere thought of a soldier in the woods nauseated him.

      “I’m going to go read it in bed,” Laura said. “I’ll put it back tomorrow.”

      Holding the book in her right hand, she reached down through the waist of her skirt with her left. Then, in a motion so practiced Philip realized she must have done this before—and often—she passed the book from one hand to the other inside her dress. There she was, pinning the book there between her belly and the skirt.

      “That’s disgusting,” Philip said.

      “I’m wearing long johns.”

      “Still.” He shook his head. “You can keep the book.”

      She rolled her eyes at him. “I’ll put it back tomorrow.”

      They said good night and she was gone, and he was alone again. He sat down on his bed, hoping she wouldn’t think less of him when she saw how childish the books were.

      All the soldiers and pilots in those stories had girls back home, sweethearts. The doughboys wrote them letters and received perfume-scented stationery in return, and at night they’d talk among themselves about how after they beat the kaiser, they’d head back home and marry Susie or Mary Ann or Fanny.

      Philip lay down and imagined himself as a soldier with Elsie as his sweetheart. Would she write him letters? She would miss him terribly and roll bandages with the other Red Cross ladies as a way of being close to him; she’d think of him constantly. And what would she write to him? Something about how she missed him the most at night, when she was alone in the dark and the bed felt so big and empty without him. But that would mean they’d already shared the bed, and so he imagined this, too, imagined the two of them lying together, and his imagination continued to work backward, seeing himself sitting atop the bed and watching her undress before joining him. He lingered on that image for a while. Then he let her back into the bed and his imagination raced forward again, stopping at those moments any sixteen-year-old boy would fixate on and skipping past those he didn’t yet understand.

       X

      Charles was standing at the foot of his bed, looking in a small and faded mirror above his dresser as he removed his tie, when he heard the murmuring voices of his children coming from downstairs.

      “I’m glad he’s talking to Laura,” Charles said to Rebecca. “He’s barely said a word at the mill the last two days.”

      Rebecca stood up from the bed, putting down the journal she had been reading. “How is a person supposed to act after watching his friend shoot someone?”

      Charles was still, surprised by her tone. Then he walked up behind her, wanting to put his hands on her shoulders to calm her, but thought against it.

      “He never should have been out there,” Rebecca said.

      Charles waited a beat. “He volunteered.”

      She turned to face him. “You let him.”

      “I was supposed to forbid him?” His voice grew louder, but he was still enough in control to keep the children from overhearing.

      Rebecca began tidying the bed.

      “Do you blame me for this?” he asked.

      Her answer, when it came, seemed less important to him than the fact that she didn’t voice it for a full three seconds.

      “No,” СКАЧАТЬ