Fever 1793 by Laurie Halse Anderson

dressFrench, of course. Perhaps I could hire Susannah to do the washing up. That would be a way of helping.
    I broke off my daydream to take in our surroundings. Grandfather and the driver had stopped swapping stories. He turned to look back at me anxiously. We were in the center of a dying city.
    It was night in the middle of the day. Heat from the brick houses filled the street like a bake oven. Clouds shielded the sun, colors were overshot with gray. No one was about; businesses were closed and houses shuttered. I could hear a woman weeping. Some houses were barred against intruders. Yellow rags fluttered from railings and door knockers-pus yellow, fear yellow-to mark the homes of the sick and the dying. I caught sight of a few men walking, but they fled down alleys at the sound of the wagon.
    "What's that?" I asked, pointing to something on the marble steps of a three-story house.
    "Don't look, Matilda," said Grandfather. "Turn your head and say a prayer."
    I looked. It appeared to be a bundle of bed linens that had been cast out of an upper window, but then I saw a leg and an arm.
    "It's a man. Stop the wagon, we must help him!"
    "He is past helping, Miss," the driver said as he urged on the horses. "I checked him on the way out to
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    fetch you this morning. He were too far gone to go to the hospital. His family tossed him out so as they wouldn't catch the fever. The death cart will get him soon for burying."
    I couldn't help but stare as the wagon rolled by the stoop. He looked about seventeen and wore well-tailored clothes stained with the effects of the fever. Only his polished boots remained clean. His yellow eyes stared lifelessly at the clouds, and flies collected on his open mouth.
    "Won't there be a burial, a church service?" I asked as the driver turned east onto Walnut Street.
    "Most preachers are sick or too exhausted to rise from their beds. A few stay in the square during the day, that takes care of the praying."
    How could the city have changed so much? Yellow fever was wrestling the life out of Philadelphia, infecting the cobblestones, the trees, the nature of the people. Was I living through another nightmare?
    "What date is this?" I asked Mrs. Bowles.
    "Today is September the twenty-fourth," she answered.
    "The twenty-fourth? That's not possible." I counted on my fingers. We fled on the eighth. "When we left, there were reports of a thousand dead. Do you know what the total is now?"
    "It's double that at least," she said. "It slowed down those few cool days, but as soon as the temperature rose again, so did the number of corpses."
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    The driver pulled on his reins to stop the horses. The road was blocked by a line of slow-moving carts, each pushed by a man with a rag tied over his face, each holding a corpse.
    "The Potter's Field is ahead," Mrs. Bowles said as she pointed to the front of the line. "That's where they're burying most of the dead. The preachers say a prayer, and someone throws a layer of dirt on top."
    Along one side of the square stretched a long row of mounded earth. The grave diggers had dug trenches as deeply as they could, then planted layer after layer of fever victims. Some of the dead were decently sewn into their winding sheets, but most were buried in the clothes they died in.
    "A field plowed by the devil," I murmured. "They're not even using coffins."
    "I haven't seen a coffin for four, five days now," the driver answered. He flicked the reins and urged the horses on. At Fifth Street, the wagon stopped.
    "Here's the orphan house," said Mrs. Bowles. "We've taken over the home of William Ralston, though we'll soon need more room."
    It was an ordinary-looking house, more expensive than some, but typical of Philadelphia: brick front, windows trimmed in white paint, metal ratlings, and a thick oaken door. The driver helped down Mrs. Bowles and Susannah, then each of the children. Mrs. Bowles put Susannah in charge of shepherding three of the children
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    inside, and stayed