Dark Water Rising Page 7

  Like the cold, fear crawled along my skin and soaked right through to my bones. I shivered so hard my teeth rattled. Josiah moved closer and I leaned into him, grateful to share his small portion of warmth.

  I think I might’ve dozed some then, but if so, it was a brief and fretful escape with the wind howling and the house rocking so. Then voices—close voices—cut through my weariness and brought me to my feet.

  “It’s coming from the west side,” Mr. Mason said.

  Josiah and I hurried after him into the windy west bedroom, crawling through water and across an overturned bureau and spilled drawers. A light shone through a broken window, and I stared at the pale glow, unable to fathom its meaning at first. A full moon stared back at me, a lantern suspended in a black sky, and the sweet realization sunk in. Even though the wind still howled like wolves, its teeth, exposed by moonlight, didn’t look quite as sharp as they had.

  Waves crashed against the wall and in through the second-story window, drenching us badly but bringing the voices even closer.

  “How many?” I asked, blinking from the salt spray.

  Mr. Mason leaned across the sill. “Four, I think.” He stretched out his arm. “Here! Quick, give me your hand!” he shouted.

  He pulled Mr. and Mrs. Collum from an upturned roof and dragged them through the window. Then Mrs. Longineau shoved her six-week-old son into my arms while she and her husband scrambled from their wind-tossed raft just in time. It scraped against the house and was swept away.

  “Was there anyone else?” Mr. Mason asked.

  Mr. Longineau shook his head and pulled the back of his wife’s skirt up over her bare shoulders. Wind and debris had shredded much of their clothing and the poor woman shivered from the cold.

  Sobs poured from Mrs. Collum as she told us how their house had broken apart and their cherished pets had to be abandoned.

  “The parrots kept calling, ‘Mama, Mama,’ and we couldn’t do a thing to save them.”

  Mr. Mason tried to comfort her, but it was the baby that troubled me most. He was soaked through and lay limp in my arms. I wrapped his cold hands in mine, shook him a bit, and studied him in the pale moonlight. He didn’t stir. Hugging him close, I led the way back down the hall to the bathroom.

  Mrs. Vedder must’ve recognized the voices, for she stood in the doorway, waiting, faint candlelight sputtering behind her, arms held wide in welcome.

  Full of dread, I handed the baby back to his mother. She checked him tenderly, then hugged him close while tears rolled down her face.

  “Oh, Florence,” she whispered to Mrs. Vedder, “he’s gone.” She slowly rocked back and forth. “My sweet little Tom is gone.”

  Mrs. Vedder grabbed a shaving mirror and held it close to the baby’s nose. We watched and waited.

  A tiny moist circle formed on the glass, and I heard Mrs. Longineau suck in a surprised breath. Grateful tears flooded her cheeks.

  “He’s going to be fine, darlin’, you’ll see.” Mrs. Vedder patted her shoulder. “We just need something warm to wrap him in.”

  She squeezed past the crowd that had gathered around the door, dropped to her knees, and crawled into the battered west bedroom. She returned shortly, her hair blown askew, and in her hand she gripped a cracked bottle of cordial. Under her arm, she’d tucked a knitted woolen petticoat taken from the overturned bureau. She quickly stripped the baby of his wet clothing, wrapped him in the dry petticoat, and placed Katherine’s purring kitten beside him for added warmth. Then she handed the baby back to Mrs. Longineau and promptly poured the cordial into an empty shaving mug.

  “Strain it through your teeth in case there’s any broken glass and put it drop by drop into little Tom’s mouth.”

  Mrs. Longineau nodded, and while she did as she was told, we waited.

  When I sat back down in the hall with the other men, I noticed that the water had receded. It was too dark to tell by how much, but the floor no longer sloshed beneath me.

  I rested my hand on Matt’s baseball bulging in my pocket, and Josiah and I leaned against the soaked and crumbling plaster. My thoughts drifted from little Tom to Thirty-fifth Street, from the faces of my family to Ella Rose, but they always ended up in the alley behind Butcher Miller’s house, reaching for the woman and her child.

  Chapter

  13

  A sound stirred me from my sleep, a soft cry that finally hit such a demanding note, I jerked upright. I heard relieved laughter coming from the bathroom, then from the men around me. Little Tom was awake and hungry.

  I laughed then, too, and for the first time noticed that Tom’s howls were the only ones I heard. The wind had died. Someone forced open the swollen doors in the hallway, and through the missing roof in the sloping east bedrooms, I saw faint, purple signs of coming daybreak.

  The storm was over.

  All around me I felt men rise in the dark hall—soldiers from Fort Crockett, neighbors I barely knew, and some whose faces I’d never seen before yesterday. As if Tom’s cry had been the final call back to the real world, we pushed ourselves up from the buckled floor, then pulled up our neighbor beside us. Women slowly crept from the bathroom, a few with candles, some with children hugged against their legs, but not a word was spoken.

  Josiah helped me to my feet, and in the flickering candlelight, I could see the relief in his face. I straightened the makeshift bandage on his head, stretched my stiff back and sore legs, and heard a hoarse voice calling from outside.

  “Anybody in there?”

  Surprise crackled around me. We hurried down the stairs, waded through several feet of foul-smelling muddy water, and ripped away what was left of the closet doors we’d nailed up.

  There must’ve been a dozen of us crowded around the splintered doorway, staring in shocked silence at a man standing in the gloom, stark naked except for a piece of mattress ticking.

  “It’s me,” the man said. “Munn.”

  When we finally came to our senses, Mr. Mason drew Captain Munn up the stairs, out of the muddy water, and into the candlelight.

  The poor man collapsed on the upper landing, telling us how his house had broken apart all around him and how he’d clung to a mattress all night in the raging waves and rain. Then he looked at us with eyes dark and bottomless, swimming with the deepest sorrow I’d ever beheld.

  “They’re gone,” he said quietly.

  His words betrayed no emotion, and yet tears rolled down his face.

  “My wife, her mother, my house.” He slowly shook his head. “Everyone, everything. Gone.”

  I’d never seen such desolation in a man’s face, and a wave of fear for what I might find at Uncle Nate’s rose inside me.

  Mrs. Mason brought a rag and tried to clean mud from the captain’s cuts, and Mrs. Vedder, who’d found a spare shirt and pants, squeezed around the crowd on the landing and set the small stack of clothing beside him.

  He stared at it for a long moment, then offered a simple “Thank you kindly.”

  It was then that I saw his bleak situation fully. That stack of clothing was all he had in this world. I looked around me, from face to face, and saw the same fear in almost every eye. Maybe none of us would end up with any more than the clothes on our backs, but what tore at my heart most was the misery our lives would become if we had no family left, either.

  Mr. Mason gave the captain a pat on the shoulder, squeezed past him, and headed back down the stairs. Though it still wasn’t light enough to see much, he was determined to climb through a north window to see how his house had fared. While he was gone, others decided to leave, too, wading into the dim, battered landscape, anxious to know the fate of battalions, friends, and family. I wanted to go, too, but Josiah hesitated.

  “Best we wait till we got us some light ’fore we gets into all that mud.”

  He was right, of course. Water was still draining back into the gulf. It would be much easier and safer if we waited just a while longer.

  When Mr. Mason got back, faces tur
ned toward him, eager for news of what he’d seen. He handed Mrs. Mason a tin of sardines and a bottle of beer.

  “They were in the only corner left standing of our brick storeroom, sitting on a shelf like God himself had put his hand over them.” He laughed at the absurdity of it. “Imagine that, Virginia. Sardines and beer.”

  Mrs. Mason reached for her husband’s hand and waited to hear the rest.

  “It’s all gone,” he whispered, “like Captain Munn said. Everything, Virginia. Just gone.”

  She slowly shook her head. “Not everything, Kearny. We’re all still here.” She pulled the key off the sardine can. “And now we’ve got sardines and beer, too.”

  Uneasy laughter skittered around the hallway while she opened the tin and the bottle of beer and passed them to what was left of our group. I took a small portion, just enough to make me realize how hungry and thirsty I really was.

  “The water in the cistern is salty,” Mr. Mason said. “We’ll have to do without until we can get back to town.”

  Heads nodded around me, but worry showed in every face. I couldn’t even guess what we might find as we headed toward town. Every cistern left standing could very well be ruined.

  When the darkness over the east bedrooms had brightened, we eased back down the stairs and sloshed through the stinking mud to see for ourselves what the storm had done.

  Under a soft Sunday-morning sky, I stood in knee-deep water, staring. The Vedder house, swept off its foundation and listing to the north, was one of only three houses left standing. I looked toward Avenue R where our rental had been and saw only more debris and muddy water.

  Wreckage spread in every direction. I saw piles of broken chairs and cooking pots, baby buggies and shredded bedding, soaked books and photographs, and all of it lay half-buried in the foulest mud I’d ever smelled. A sickening sludge, churned up from the bowels of the gulf, had painted most everything dark gray. I turned slowly, trying to take in the dismal landscape, already yearning for something green, but not a leaf or a blade of grass could be seen anywhere.

  “Papa!” Jacob called. “Where are the Peeks?”

  We all looked to the west where the Peeks’ house had been, but there was nothing left, not even the foundation. Mr. and Mrs. Peek, six children, and two servants were gone.

  Just gone.

  “And it was to their house,” Mr. Vedder whispered, “that I would’ve taken you all for refuge.”

  The staggering truth of what might’ve been hit us all.

  I saw Josiah staring past me, a wretched look on his face, and turned, trying to see what had caught his attention. A big black retriever lay almost buried in mud. Flies buzzed around his eyes and gaping mouth, but it appeared to be the piece of blue gingham floating next to the dog that had carved the painful look on Josiah’s face. Puzzled, I looked closer, and finally understood. A battered, muddy arm protruded from a sleeve. What once must’ve been sunshine hair now lay matted and strewn across a porcelain face, partially concealing glassy blue eyes and pale lips.

  Josiah stepped back, but I couldn’t move. I couldn’t stop staring at that tangled, yellow hair.

  “It ain’t her,” Josiah whispered.

  I pulled in a ragged breath. I knew it wasn’t, even if my heart didn’t, but having seen one body, now I saw them everywhere. I counted three more, and while others checked them, trying to figure out who they were, Josiah pulled me back into the house.

  “We needs to wait a bit longer,” he said softly, “for the water to go on down.”

  I nodded again, too sick to speak, and crawled up the stairs, out of the greasy dark mud to wait. We could do nothing else. It was impossible to bury a single soul with so much muddy water around.

  With each hour that passed, the day grew warmer and the smell grew worse. The mud pushed ashore from the bottom of the gulf had its own unbearable stench, but with such intense heat, I feared something even less tolerable would soon drift in through the broken windows.

  I buried my face in my hands, unable to get the picture of the girl in blue gingham out of my head. Every time I thought of her, I saw only Ella Rose.

  Chapter

  14

  By midmorning, sweat crawled all over me, trickling down my scalp and back. The children whined for water, and fear pulled at every face. We couldn’t stay in this battered house any longer. Like everyone else, I was thirsty, too, but it was the worry that pushed me back outside. I needed to know if my family was safe.

  The sun had risen in a bright sky like nothing had happened, but stifling odors from mud and death said otherwise. I tried to remember the scent of fresh-cut lumber, or clover, or jasmine, or Mama’s bread browning in the oven—anything that might cut through the sick air that coated my throat and the back of my tongue.

  Nothing helped.

  I avoided looking at the lifeless limbs and faces, the animals that would soon be swelling in the heat, and concentrated on getting my bearings. Not a single street or landmark was visible above the ruin that lay around us.

  From the Vedders’ second-floor window, I’d seen a wide ridge of debris off to the east. It looked to be several stories high, as if a great broom had swept up everything in its path and left it there in a twisted heap. I’d wondered then how many people had huddled in those shattered houses last night, and now I wondered how many might still be there, twined inside the wreckage.

  Though the water had receded somewhat, we finally decided that making our way to the beach might be best, where the rubble wasn’t quite so high and the salt air sweeter. Farther down, we might see an easier path through the ridge of debris that lay between us and town.

  We must’ve been a strange-looking bunch, slowly moving over the muddy gray remains of what was left of so many lives. Captain Munn had gathered up his pants with a piece of cording, like a kid in his big brother’s hand-me-downs, and Mrs. Longineau, holding little Tom, walked beside her husband with the back of her dress pulled up over her bare shoulders, shredded underskirts rustling behind her in the breeze. All the Vedders still wore their woolen bathing suits, except for Jacob. He didn’t complain, but he’d developed a permanent scowl at having to face the world in his sister’s petticoat. The rest of us—the Masons and Collums, Private Billings, Josiah and I—took turns carrying Francesca, Katherine, and her kitten, following along in our tattered and grimy clothing.

  The beach appeared torn and uneven, and we quickly realized that the wet sand we were walking on had once held homes. Pounding waves had eaten away at the island, pulling several hundred feet of shoreline into the gulf. I remembered Saint Mary’s Orphanage and the ten sisters who took care of more than ninety children there. I glanced behind me, hoping to see the two large dormitories that housed them all still standing beyond the dunes, but they were gone.

  When we passed what was left of Fort Crockett, we found several dead soldiers from Battery O who must’ve been caught in the barracks when they fell. Private Billings laid them out, side by side, to wait for the burial parties that were sure to come. “If not for some all-wise providence that directed me to your house last night,” he told Mr. Vedder, “this would’ve been me.”

  We carried the smaller kids on our shoulders while we picked our way over piles of splintered wood. Sometimes we sidestepped the deep, water-filled holes washed out by the storm, and sometimes we had no choice but to wade through them, pushing aside dead chickens and dogs, broken toys and furniture.

  I tried like everything to not look into the eyes of the dead, though I could feel them tugging at me. I didn’t want to think about what they’d suffered. I didn’t want to consider that Mama, Papa, and the kids might’ve met the same fate. It was too much misery to carry with me.

  Instead, I fixed my attention on watching my step, and I was doing okay till we came upon a nun from Saint Mary’s Orphanage. She lay facedown, half-buried in the muddy beach, her torn black habit billowing above her in the wind like death’s own flag.

  Mr. Mason dropped to his knee
s, digging with his hands to free her, and the rest of us men fell around him. We pulled the wet sand away and turned her over. Slender fingers gripped cording that had been tied around her waist, but the other end still lay buried. We dug harder and found a small child tethered to her. Then another. And another.

  I heard gasps behind us, whispered prayers and muffled weeping. We laid them out, ten bodies strung together like pearls at the edge of the sea.

  I tried to turn away, but I couldn’t seem to tear my eyes from the child closest to me. She was small, like Kate. I brushed damp sand from her cheeks and dark lashes and fought hard to choke back the despair knotting in my throat and stinging at my eyes.

  I finally turned to Josiah, who sat with his elbows on his knees, his gritty hands around his head, and I was gratefully lost for a moment in the sight of white sand glistening in his black hair. It didn’t seem possible that such simple beauty could exist side by side with the mind-numbing sorrow around us.

  Mrs. Mason pulled her husband to his feet. “We’ll have to leave them,” she said.

  Everyone nodded except for Captain Munn. He slowly turned, squinting at the wreckage, searching. There’d been no sign of his wife or her mother, and I could see the longing in his eyes, the questions, the ache of not knowing.

  I moved closer. “We’ll help you watch for them,” I whispered.

  He nodded, ducked his head, and continued picking his way down the debris-strewn beach.

  I turned my back on the nun and her nine charges, set Francesca on my shoulders, and followed, wading through ankle-deep muddy water and big holes washed out by the current.

  Death lay everywhere. I feared that hundreds, maybe thousands, of lives might’ve been taken by the storm. Flies swarmed, and buzzards circled high over horses and cows already swelling in the heat, over men and women half-buried in mud or tangled in barbed wire and splintered timber. Many lay near naked, rocking back and forth in the surf, their clothing shredded, ripped from their bodies by all the debris. Some still grasped the hands of small children, but I knew better than to look into their eyes.