The DMZ protocol

The DMZ protocol is an improvised rule of separation between Hig and the Mennonite community, established amid fear of a blood disease that followed the flu. At fifteen feet, it turns an uncertain medical risk into a visible, mutually observed boundary. The rule offers reassurance and helps structure cautious aid, but its power depends less on proven transmission than on shared fear—and that same distance makes trust, contact, and care things that must be consciously negotiated.

Origins and Purpose

After the flu, a blood disease weakened the Mennonites living south of Hig’s position. Hig understood the community to number about thirty people and believed the illness affected children as well as adults, with some dying each year. He could not identify its cause or transmission with confidence; he compared it to AIDS while wondering whether it might be more contagious. In that setting, distance became a practical precaution where reliable medical knowledge was absent.

The arrangement took the form of a fifteen-foot gap across the muddy yard. Hig likens it to a standoff in a Western: two groups facing one another across a space where words might pass, but violence remained possible. The analogy captures the protocol’s double purpose. It was meant to keep people apart for health, yet it also made each meeting legible as a confrontation whose participants had to respect the line. Hig says the distance had become familiar, though it had felt awkward at first.

How the Boundary Worked

The distance was not presented as a scientifically established safe threshold. Hig and the family had settled on it without discussion or medical evidence, reasoning that infection was unlikely at that range and perhaps even at five feet or through casual touch. The fifteen feet therefore functioned as a buffer against uncertainty, rather than a measurement known to prevent transmission. Its usefulness lay partly in helping everyone feel safer.

The boundary did not prohibit all exchange. When an item needed to cross, they could place it in the middle for the other party to retrieve. That procedure preserved separation while allowing practical assistance. Hig’s visits had already involved support for the community, including bringing a fuse for its solar water pump after it failed. On a later visit, Reba handed him a cracked plastic bucket filled with baby lettuce, making this the first time they had passed something directly from hand to hand. The ordinary exchange marks a change in practice: familiarity had begun to loosen the rule’s physical form without erasing the caution behind it.

Contact, Trust, and Medical Revision

Hig’s contact with a little girl makes the shift more intimate. With her mother’s permission, he reached out, and the child placed her dirt-smudged hand in his. He held her fingers for a long moment. The scene crosses the boundary not through a formal announcement but through a small, permitted gesture. It shows that the protocol’s force depended on people’s decisions as well as on distance: the gap could be maintained, bridged by an object, or crossed through touch when trust allowed it.

Later, a doctor examining the family explained that the danger had been misunderstood. She wore gloves while treating them, sewing cuts, dressing wounds, and attending to other needs; she told Hig that ordinary mingling was acceptable and described transmission as involving blood or other bodily fluids, rather than casual proximity. Her account reframes the earlier fifteen-foot rule as more restrictive than the medical facts supported. Yet the misconception had also helped protect the family: the warning signs reading THE BLOOD frightened attackers away, even as the illness visibly weakened those they were meant to deter.

Consequences and Significance

The protocol thus carries two different consequences. Within the visits, it supplies a workable convention for approaching a sick community when Hig and the family lack dependable medical guidance. Beyond those encounters, fear of the disease and the warning signs contribute to the community’s isolation, but also help preserve its lives from attack. The same public fear that constrains contact can function as a shield.

The rule’s eventual correction does not make its earlier role meaningless. It reveals the difference between a precaution that feels necessary and one supported by medical evidence, while showing how a mistaken belief can produce both social distance and protection. Its changing boundary—from measured separation, to objects passed between people, to direct touch, and finally to the doctor’s clarification—records a gradual renegotiation of risk. The DMZ is not merely a line on the ground: it is a fragile agreement through which Hig and the Mennonites manage fear, aid, and the possibility of trust.