The Last Town on Earth. Thomas Mullen

had invited him along hunting one afternoon, teaching Philip, despite his weak arms, how to hold a rifle, how to load it, what to expect when he pulled the trigger. Back when new buildings were seemingly sprouting from the earth in Commonwealth, Graham also showed him how to work on the frame of a house. Although Philip worried about being a drag on Graham’s time, Graham seemed to enjoy teaching him all that he had been forced to learn from strangers on trains and in timber camps.

      It had seemed perfectly natural to volunteer as a guard alongside Graham. But Philip wasn’t sure it had been the right decision—not anymore.

      Which was why, after supper on the day they had buried the soldier, Philip walked the four blocks to Graham’s house. He needed to tell Graham his fear that standing guard had been a mistake. He had been dreading the thought of going back out to the guard post for his next shift, but he wasn’t sure if that was because standing guard was wrong or because he was simply scared of another conflict. All day long, the only thing Philip had thought about was the dead soldier, and as bedtime approached he found himself dreading sleep and the haunted dreams it would bring.

      True to the town’s mission, the Stone and Worthy houses were nearly identical despite the gaping differences in the men’s backgrounds. Both houses were two stories tall, with tiny cellars and roofs that pointed skyward like fingertips in prayer. Their chimneys exhaled smoke barely visible in the night sky. Charles’s home was only somewhat larger, either a minor oversight in the town’s egalitarian vision or a utilitarian acknowledgment of the fact that Charles and Rebecca had adolescent children.

      The windows on the first floor were illuminated. Philip knocked gently in case the baby was asleep.

      Amelia smiled when she opened the door. A few strands of her brown hair had escaped her bun and were hanging before her blue eyes. She was thin and not tall, with the light skin of a lifelong Washingtonian. Cradled in her mother’s arms, the tiny head barely visible through the billows of blanket, was Millie.

      “You here to get my husband involved in some kind of trouble?”

      Philip hadn’t quite lived down the time he and Graham had gone hunting and had temporarily lost a couple of friends’ horses by failing to tie them down properly. The horses had panicked and fled after Philip fired his first shot. Of course, it was Graham who had taught Philip such troublemaking skills as firing a rifle and playing poker.

      “Yeah, I was thinking of taking him by the saloon, maybe seeing if he wanted to rustle up some women.”

      “What saloon would that be?”

      “It’s a secret,” he said, following her in. “Only the millworkers know about it. They said if I told any of the wives about it, they’d feed me to the machines.”

      “Um-hm.” The baby started crying. “And why would you want to rustle up any women? I thought you only had eyes for Elsie Metzger.”

      “Boy, can’t a guy talk to a girl without the whole town gossiping?”

      “Can’t a housewife gossip?”

      Beyond the small parlor and the dining room, Philip could see that the kitchen was filled with jars—jars on the table, on the cutting board, jars crammed on the floor, leaving only a narrow path to walk through. Amelia was in the midst of the autumn canning frenzy, particularly important this year.

      “Looks like you’ve been busy,” Philip said.

      “Oh, no more so than usual,” she said, blowing a few strands of hair from her face. Amelia always seemed to be working on several projects at once—she was in charge of the town’s community gardens, in addition to the impressive one in her own backyard, and whenever Philip stopped by, she was making preserves, sewing or knitting clothes for her family, or tackling the type of home repair work that many women reserved for their husbands. Amelia had lost her mother when she was seven years old and had inherited early the homemaker role in her family, which had included three younger brothers. The immense amount of work necessary for sustaining her new family in a frontier town perhaps seemed, in contrast, quite manageable.

      “Aren’t you happy to see your uncle Philip?” Amelia asked the baby, who was still crying.

      “Doesn’t sound too happy.”

      Amelia walked toward Philip and, too quickly for him to refuse, put the baby in his arms. “Cheer her up.”

      In his arms, Millie stopped crying, gazing at him wide-eyed, her forehead furrowed.

      “You did it again,” Amelia marveled. “You’re like magic. Quite an effect on the young females.”

      “Last time she spit up on me.”

      Amelia laughed. “I forgot about that. Anyway, Graham’s upstairs. I’ll go get him.” She stopped on the second stair and turned. “Oh, and no poker tonight. I don’t want him losing any more of our money to you.”

      Philip smiled. Though a novice, he had picked up the game quickly. “We’ve only bet with real money once. I think we used walnuts last time.”

      “That explains why I couldn’t find any when I was baking last weekend.”

      As Amelia went upstairs, Philip walked the baby in small circles. Millie was five months now, still impossibly small to Philip’s eyes, but she felt heavy, as if a baby were somehow denser than other human beings. Her eyes were huge, and Philip wondered if the rest of her would grow into them or if she’d always have large eyes like her mother. She stared at him intently.

      “So what are you looking at, exactly?” he said to her softly. Did she even recognize him, or had the event with the soldier changed him so much that even a baby could see the difference? He tried to laugh at himself when he realized he was reading too much into an infant’s blank expression, but the laughter wouldn’t come.

      She was warm against his chest. His fingers had regained their feeling a few hours after burying the body, but they began to tingle slightly beneath the cotton enveloping the baby. It was with a disquieting chill that Philip realized he had held that day first a dead body and now a smiling infant.

      He looked up, rocking the baby softly, and his eyes as usual were drawn to a crooked stair at the bottom of the staircase, which always reminded him of the days after Amelia’s stillbirth. At the time, the Stones had been living in a smaller house with two other families, as Commonwealth still hadn’t enough buildings. Whenever Graham wasn’t working at the mill, he was helping construct new houses, and he had encouraged Philip to join in. Graham taught him the basics, and Philip spent many hours that summer helping the older men build the town. After the stillbirth, Amelia was bedridden for days, and Graham barely spoke, his face a downturned mask of silent grief. He also barely slept, working late into the night on the new house, desperate to complete the job so he and his wife could move in and begin to grapple with the world that had just turned on them.

      Every night for two weeks he was joined by Philip, who came after dinner and silently worked with Graham until his arms were too sore to continue. Philip’s inexperience was the reason one of the steps was crooked, but Graham had insisted it was fine, after issuing a short laugh. It was his first laugh since the loss of his baby. Other men in the town had seemed uncertain in Graham’s presence, never knowing what to say to a grieving man, but Philip had simply shown up and worked, usually in silence, as it was clear that Graham didn’t want to talk. Philip suspected Graham’s refusal to fix the stair was his way of thanking him for helping when no one else had known how.

      Philip was stirred from his memories when Amelia and Graham descended those stairs. Graham looked groggy, but he was holding a pipe and smelled strongly of tobacco, so he obviously hadn’t been sleeping.

      “I’ve been forbidden from playing poker with you,” Graham said as Amelia took the baby from Philip and laid her in the crib.

      “Me, too. Maybe you need to teach me a new game.”

      “You’ll just start beating him at that one, too,” Amelia said.

      “I can hold my own, thank