The Wheat Turns Black

Bill was trying to write a poem. He had written ‘Sorrow is’, but was at a loss for what to write next. He closed his eyes and breathed slowly, inhaling and exhaling with luxurious swells of his chest. He focused on his heartbeat, hoping to find inspiration in his body’s own inherent rhythm.
         tha-dum, tha-dum, tha-dum
         It was 1:15 on a Wednesday morning. Aside from an aspiring poet, Bill was a chronic insomniac, and still dressed as he sat at his desk in the lonesome deadness of night in rural Illinois. He wore a white collared shirt tinted gray with dust and missing its top button, and a red and yellow striped tie tied in a sloppy half-windsor knot that was loosened around his neck, allowing his exaggerated Adam’s apple to slide up and down his thin throat with each breath. The sharp knees of his fence-post legs knocked against the side of his improvised desk, a slab of unstained wood laid across two columns of apple crates stacked three high.          
         A wind kicked up and buzzed through the walls. It was a misty night in early April and speckles of condensation shivered on the window. Bill was a published poet of some renown in certain circles. But he considered poetry little more than a serious hobby, and made his living as a physician. He’d moved from Chicago to the desolate prairies of rural Illinois to provide his services after the area had been hit hard by the Blackwheat Plague. The community was very poor, many families didn’t have electricity or running water, and the nearest hospital was very far away.
         His telephone rang. He answered it. “This is Bill speaking, how may I help you? . . . Yes, this is Dr. Whilholm, but I’d like it if you called me Bill . . . Oh, don’t bother yourself with that, I’m available 24 hours . . . Why, certainly I can . . . No, no, it’s no trouble at all, I swear to you.” He pulled a small pad of paper out of his breast pocket. “Let me get your address.” He scribbled down some numbers. “What seems to be the matter? . . . Twins? . . . fraternal twins, age nine . . . serious fatigue, coughing fits. Is there any discharge, like mucus or phlegm? . . . How long has this been going on? . . . I see, okay Mr. Perkins, I’m out the door right now.” He stood up with his neck crooked, cradling the phone against his shoulder as he grabbed his moth-eaten tweed jacket off the back of his chair. “Don’t trouble yourself with that sir, we can work something out later . . . I’ll have to examine the children before I can make a diagnosis . . . It’s no trouble at all, I can assure you Mr. Perkins. We can work something out later . . . I’m hanging up now.” He hung up, put on his coat, and grabbed his black leather medical bag with the silver clasp and accordion pleated opening. 
         The Blackwheat Plague first appeared in a tenement on Chicago’s South side ten years ago, and since then had spread to Indiana, Michigan, and central Illinois, claiming and estimated 12,000 souls. The medical community was struggling to catch up to the disease, and making no progress. They didn’t know what caused it and they didn’t know how to cure it. The horror was it affected children exclusively, most cases appearing between the ages of 6 and 16. It attacked the respiratory system, filling the victims’ lungs with a thick mucus the color and consistency of tar, and caused violent coughing fits with black brackish expectorate that stained teeth coal black. As the condition worsened, it made the skin as pale and powdery as chalk, with gray and blue circles under the eyes. Death inevitably came within 8 to 12 weeks.
         Bill knew the disease well. He had seen dozens of cases, including his son and only child, Peter Whilholm, 7 years old at the time of his death. Peter’s passing sent his mother and Bill’s wife of 17 years into unending hysterics and deep depression. She ate nothing by chicken broth and saltine crackers, and spent her waking hours sitting in corners, clutching her knees to her chest, sobbing wretchedly. Without fail she screamed “Murderer! Murderer! You killed him! You killed my son!” at the sight of her husband, prompting Bill to commit her to a sanitarium shortly before moving his practice. After Bill had diagnosed dozens of cases of the Blackwheat Plauge, after he had stood in dozens of front parlors and sitting rooms, holding his gangly body slumped in shame as he told sad-eyed siblings, and parents, and grandparents, “there’s nothing you can do. Try to make the children comfortable. Treasure the little time you have left together.” After all of that, Bill almost believed there was some merit in his wife’s accusations.
         The Perkins’ house was a wood box with no windows, raised half a foot off the ground by bricks stacked underneath the four corners. The flat roof was corrugated steel with a round tin chimney in the corner that whistled out a sooty black line of smoke. The shack was surrounded by a hard dirt yard littered with dented paint buckets and rusted tools. Mr. Perkins was sitting on an apple crate outside the front door. There was a murmuring propane lamp at his feet, and its dusty yellow light cast half his body in shadow and lit the other half with a beat-down milky glow. He was rolling a cigarette with brittle flecks of tobacco so sparse they were barely worth bothering with.
         Bill was rather adolescent looking despite his 34 years of age. His bean-pole physique and tanned almond face had an approachable, rough-and-tumble quality that made the locals trust him on sight. His speech patterns were slow and oily, and his tone slid down to a lower register as it neared the end of sentences, allowing the words to fall easily on the ears of patient humble farmers. Simon Perkins looked up when he heard Bill’s footsteps crunch on the ground. He quickly licked the paper and rolled the cigarette with one swift slide of thumb across forefinger before he stood up to speak. “Dr. Whilholm? Are you Dr. Whilholm?”
         “Yes, but I’d like it if you called me Bill.” He extended his hand.
         Simon Perkins lit his cigarette, tossed the match, then reached out to shake it. Simon’s thick fingers were rock hard with calluses. His grip was strong, but he shook with two shallow pumps that revealed a hidden acceptance of fear and defeat. “I’m glad I made it back before ya. Hadta walk two miles jus’ta use a phone.” A few days worth of sharp black stubble surrounded his chapped lips. He was wearing a brimmed wool cap with the earflaps folded up underneath the hat. In the wispy propane light, his bloodshot eyes were lacquered with half tears.
         Bill kept his demeanor brisk, but not unfriendly. “I suppose I should step in to see the children.” He made a move to the door, but was stopped when Simon gently grabbed his elbow.”
         “About the payment Dr. Whil-, er, I mean Bill.”
         “I told you we’ll work something out later. I won’t hear anymore on the matter and I mean it.”
         “I’ll make it right by ya, I swear.”
         “I have every confidence in you.”
         “But sumptin’ else, ‘bout the children. They ain’t like regular kids. Not touched exactly, but a little strange.”
         “Perhaps that’s just the illness in them.”
         “No. They always been strange. Got too much of their mother in’em. She was always givin’em books an’ teachin’em the pianna at church. They’re good kids mind ya, polite an’ hard workin’, but strange. They’re lible to look at’cha like their mind’s somewhere else. Or they’re just as lible ta look at’cha like they can see right through ya.”
         “I’m sure they’re very nice children and you and their mother are very proud.”
         “She would be, that’s ta say she was. Kilt herself a year ago come May.” A crow cackled in the distance. “It’s been hard Dr. Whilholm. Those two littil’uns is all I got.”
         “Please Mr. Perkins, call me Bill.”
         Inside the house was just one room. It was divided in half by a bed sheet draped over a rope spanning the length of the room. From behind the sheet Bill heard the chirp of rusty bedsprings, a rustle of little bodies moving under sheets, and a wind-up music box twinkling out the melody to ‘Happy Days are Here Again’. The few furnishing in the house were shoved into corners or pushed against the walls. In one corner was a table surrounded by three milking stools and a shelf filled with chipped ceramic mugs nailed into the wall above it. In the opposite corner were two cots with an apple crate between them serving as a makeshift night stand. On top of it was a stack of three books, their spines creased from multiple readings, the top book a collection of poetry that included some of Bill’s work.
         Simon Perkins stepped forward and pulled back the bed sheet. There was an unintended theatrical flare in his movement, as if he were an emcee pulling back the curtain to reveal the most enchantingly morose scene Bill had ever witnessed.
         The two children were sitting up very straight in the wrought iron bed with their backs resting against the bars of the headboard. In one corner was a pot-bellied stove, in the other was an apple crate night stand with a music box and burning candle. The quivering light from its fat orange flame made the children’s grayish skin glow like dying embers. They were wearing sack-like cotton nightshirts and had their legs under a lumpy, moth eaten quilt. Bill was so struck by the eeriness of the scene that he didn’t know how to proceed. He gripped the handles of his medical bag and blinked, trying to catch his breath.
         Simon Perkins spoke sharply to his children. “Now I told ya ta turn off that music when the Doctor’s here.”
         The children didn’t say anything. Their hair was midnight black with an oily sheen that came from lack of bathing. They stared at Bill with their strange green eyes and allowed the corner of their thin white lips to curl up in a barely perceptible half smile. The melody from the music box ran its course and wound to a stop.
         Bill set his medical bag on the foot of the bed. A bead of sweat rolled down the bridge of his nose and hung from the peak between his nostrils. “Hello children. My name is Bill.” He kept his head down as he rummaged through the medical kit. “What are your names?”
          The children were staring at him with green intensity. Their smiles were fuller now, but they remained silent.
         “Go on now,” their father said. “The doctor asked ya a question.”
         The girl spoke first. “Father, this room feels awfully close.”
         The boy piped in as soon as she was finished. “Could you please let us alone with Bill?”
         The girl continued with, “it would make us feel more comfortable during the examination.” The sentences were fired one after another in a flow so seamless they could have been spoken by one person.
         Simon Perkins looked to Bill. “Here they are, a’coughin’ an’ a’hackin’ mornin’, noon, an’ night, but givin’ orders an’ actin’ like sum god damn blue-bloods all the same.”
         Bill felt uncomfortable placed in the family crossfire. He had developed a nervous infatuation with the children on sight, and was eager to do anything to please them. “The examination will only take a moment, Mr. Perkins.”
         Simon looked from his children to Bill, then back to his children again. With a tone that was more resignation than defeat, he said, “I’ll be outside. Jus’ holla if ya need anythin’,” and muttered something to himself on his way out.
         Only after hearing the door close did Bill continue. “Now, you two still haven’t told me what your names are.” He pulled a stethoscope out of his bag and draped it around it neck.
         The children didn’t say anything for a few moments. Their smiles were gone, but their eyes stared at Bill with an intense, green, studiousness. Finally the girl spoke up. It was quickly becoming clear that she was the leader of the two, and her twin brother followed her lead without missing a beat. “We like to read,” the girl said.
         “We’ve read your work,” the boy said.
         “We’ve enjoyed it very much.”
         Bill cleared his throat and blushed. “That’s surprising. Yes, I have written some, but it’s just a hobby, albeit a rather serious one. Anyway, I’m glad you enjoyed it. I didn’t think anyone had seen it, let alone read it.”
         “My brother’s name is Ian Perkins.”
         “And my sister’s name is Abigail Perkins.”
         “Well, Ian, Abigail. It’s a pleasure to meet you. Now why don’t you two open your mouths big and wide so I can see what’s causing all this coughing.”
         He examined Ian’s mouth first, then Abigail’s, finding all the symptoms of the Blackwheat Plague in its advanced stages: gray bumps on the tongue and the back of the throat with a black slime coating the gum line and the roof of the mouth.
         After it was clear that portion of the examination was finished, Abigail said, “Ian and I want to be poets too.”
         “But performing poets.”
         “Orators.”
         “As soon as we get old enough,”
         “we’re moving to the city.”
         “To do recitations on stage.”
         “A duo act.”
         “Would you like to hear one?”
         Bill tried to swallow a hot lump of sadness that was rapidly forming in his throat. “I would like that very much.”
         Abigail started off. “This one is called ‘In the Illinois Twilight’ by Abigail and Ian Perkins.” She paused. Both her and her brother moved with subconscious synchronicity, clearing their throats, straightening the backs, and jutting out their chins primly before proceeding. Abigail started off, “‘In the Illinois twilight,’”
         “‘in our warm orange shack.’”
         “‘The crickets click the sun away,’”
         “‘and the wheat turns black.’”
         Bill could feel his eyes misting up. “I think that’s very nice.” He bit his lower lip and reverted to his well-rehearsed, brisk, bedside manner. He asked the children to scoot forward a little bit so he could listen to their breathing. He walked to Ian’s side of the bed, slid the end of the stethoscope under the young boy’s shirt, and held it at three separate places on Ian’s back, instructing him to breathe deeply. After Ian, he walked around the foot of the bed and repeated the process with Abigail. Bill listened to the rush of air the children let in and out of their bodies. The inhales and exhales were dominated by a laborious rasp and a muddy gurgling sound caused by the tar like mucus the Blackwheat Plague had deposited on their little lungs. But underneath that, resonating through the spine and ribcage, Bill could hear their beating hearts.
         tha-dum, tha-dum, tha-dum 
         “Bill,” Abigail asked as he removed his stethoscope and put it in his medical kit.
         “Yes.”
         “Do you really mean it?”
         Her brother continued with, “do you really think our poem is nice?”
         “Of course I do. Nicer than any one I’ve heard.”
         “Thank you,” Abigail said.
         “That means a lot coming from you.”
         Bill collected his things and walked outside. The sky was black with a line of cool pink so thin along the horizon that it was only visible to those who really looked for it. Simon Perkins was sitting on his apple crate, but stood up when he heard the front door open. The propane lamp was turned off.
         Bill, just like he had done dozens of times before, held his gangly body slumped in shame as he told a sad-eyed Mr. Perkins, “there’s nothing you can do. Try to make them comfortable. Treasure the little time you have.”
         It was just after dawn when Bill returned home. He sat at his desk and picked up his pen. The morning was overcast and cold gray light spilled in his room. Bill closed his eyes and listened to the rhythm of his heartbeat.
         tha-dum, tha-dum, tha-dum 
         He opened his eyes and moved his pen across the paper in three quick jabs, completing his poem.