Quarantine: A Novel Read Online Free PDF Page A

Street, which ran alongside the Merrimack. The houses
    here were small and close together. People were doing morning
    chores, feeding animals, chopping firewood. Insects filled the
    air, and a fresh sea breeze tossed the marsh grass. It was a day that promised to be hot and humid, with perhaps a thunderstorm by
    late afternoon.
    He came to a row of clam shacks above Joppa Flats and stopped
    at his grandfather’s. The door was open and the shack was empty.
    Leander gazed out at the flats and could see that the men had
    already begun digging, though it was still a few hours before low tide. He took off his boots, leaving them on the stoop next to his grandfather’s, and then walked down the path and crossed the
    beach that was strewn with wrack lines of dried seaweed. When
    he stepped out on the flats, his feet sank down in the cold muck.
    About a hundred yards out, he found his grandfather bent
    over this morning’s trench. His legs were spread wide and he
    pulled the muck back carefully with his rake. When he gathered
    up clams with one hand he inspected each one before putting it
    in his dreener. Those that were too small he pushed back in the
    trench. He already had filled one basket.
    “My little darlings are singing and whistling to me today,” he
    said without looking up.
    Leander put down his dreeners and took his rake from his
    pocket. “Have you left me a few, Papi?”
    “Got to be fast, boy, if you want to harvest Joppa clams.”
    Coverly Minot was a lean man with a white beard that fanned
    out over his chest. His shirt sleeves were rolled up all the way to his shoulders. Leander was taller already, but he still didn’t have taut, muscular arms and shoulders like his grandfather.
    27
    j o h n s m o l e n s
    Papi said loudly, “‘Now the word of the Lord came unto Jonah
    the son of Amittai, saying—’” and here Leander joined in, for they often recited the Bible together as they dug clams—“‘Arise, go to Nineveh, that great city, and cry against it; for their wickedness is come up before me. But Jonah rose up to flee unto Tarshish
    from the presence of the Lord, and went down to Joppa; and he
    found a ship going to Tarshish: so he paid the faire thereof, and went down into it, to go with them unto Tarshish from the presence of the Lord—’” and then Papi stopped and straightened up
    to gaze out at the river.
    “Since I was your age,” he said, “I have worked these beds
    named Joppa and have often thought that this is why the clams
    here are so plentiful. This is blessed shellfish. But it makes me wonder about Jonah.”
    “How so?”
    “Why did the fool want to flee the presence of the Lord? You
    see my point?”
    “Well,” Leander paused over his trench and sat back on
    his haunches, “Jonah didn’t do as he was told. He didn’t go to
    Nineveh and cry against the wickedness there.” His grandfather
    continued to stare out at the river. “So if he had done what he was told, he wouldn’t have ended up in the belly of the fish.”
    Papi nodded his head. “Exactly.” He was staring toward the
    Miranda, which was at anchor about a half mile out in the basin.
    “That ship, it remains at anchor since arriving yesterday. And they fly the yellow flag. See those two boats drifting by her—it’s the constable’s men, standing guard to make sure the crew doesn’t
    try to come ashore.”
    “I was out there last night. Helped row Father’s boat,” Leander
    said with some pride. His grandfather regarded him for a moment.
    “Doctor Wiggins says there are men with fever on board.”
    Papi had thick eyebrows, which pulled close together, indi-
    cating that he was displeased. “I hear George Danforth rowed out and sold them some cod and mackerel.”
    28
    q u a r a n t i n e
    “How long’s it going to last, this quarantine?”
    “Who knows? The newspapers say there are epidemics in Bal-
    timore and Philadelphia. Hundreds of people dying. And there are cases of fever being reported in New