Scarlet fever

Scarlet fever struck Joe Rantz during the upheaval that followed his mother’s death, leaving him gravely ill and alone in an unfamiliar attic. The illness’s remembered symptoms and confinement make it more than a brief medical episode: it coincided with the dissolution of his childhood home and the beginning of a lasting burden of fear and doubt.

Onset and Confinement

After travelling by train and meeting the woman who said she was his aunt Alma, Joe developed a rash on his face and chest, a sore throat, and a high fever. A second doctor arrived carrying a black leather bag. Joe then spent days stretching into weeks in bed in the attic of a woman he barely knew, with the shades drawn. The room offered no light or movement; at intervals, the only sound was a train moaning in the distance.

A Childhood Broken by Illness and Separation

While Joe lay ill, the family world he had known was coming apart in Spokane. His mother had died of throat cancer, Fred Rantz had gone away to finish college, and Harry Rantz had fled to the wilds of Canada after his wife’s death. Scarlet fever therefore belongs to a wider sequence of separation: Joe was not only physically confined, but cut off from his parents and brother as the familiar places and relationships of childhood receded.

Lasting Imprint

The account links the fever’s physical ordeal to the beginnings of a persistent emotional weight. In the dark, unfamiliar room, with his chest perpetually congested, Joe felt apprehension, doubt, and fear pressing down on him. The illness is remembered through broken images rather than as a detached diagnosis: fever and rash, a shut-in attic, and the intermittent sound of a train become part of the same early experience of being alone.