by John Jakes
Well back from the dripping eaves, an oil lamp had been set on a wooden bench. The lamp cast long, distorted shadows of the tired men who continued to bring the living and the dead to the house. The living were taken inside, the dead put on the wet lawn beyond the end of the porch. Fifteen or twenty corpses were already laid in rows out there. Eleanor heard one man say bodies kept surfacing down at the water’s edge. Perhaps she’d find Leo before the night was over.
From the porch she could look down on the panorama of the Conemaugh Valley. The waters hadn’t receded very far. A vast, debris-filled lake remained behind the stone bridge. Throughout that debris fires burned. She still found it difficult to accept the reality of all she saw.
A few courageous men had located and launched some rowboats. She could see the boats moving near halfsubmerged rooftops as the search for survivors continued. Many people saved themselves, working their way ashore as she and the Rasmussens had done.
The firelight revealed a few buildings still intact downtown. One was a substantial structure with three stories visible above the water. She asked about the building. A man told her it was called Alma Hall, and was located on Main Street. From the building’s dark interior, mournful cries drifted through the downpour.
Gradually, those arriving with the injured added small pieces of information to create a crude mosaic of the disaster. Johnstown was cut off from the outside world. The telegraph lines were down. Railroad tracks had been swept away, though for how great a distance in either direction, no one could say.
Of more than thirty doctors who practiced in the city, five to ten couldn’t be located; the exact number depended on who was talking. But it was a certainty that most of the medical supplies and blankets in the boroughs along the river had been swept away.
The police force had ceased to exist. The gas and electric plants were in ruins, leaving Johnstown dark except for candlelight or the light from the burning debris. One man claimed two or three thousand survivors had gathered on another hill nearby. But it seemed clear that as many, or more, had been trapped in the city and drowned. The valley at which Eleanor gazed was quite literally a valley of the dead and those who grieved for the dead. The rain continued to fall. The fires kept burning. The screaming never stopped.
ii
About three in the morning, she steeled herself to go down to the side lawn. The rain had let up a little. By the light of the lamp on the porch, she examined the bodies covered by pieces of sodden bedding. She knew the search was almost certainly futile. Yet she lifted the sheets or comforters one by one, hunting for Leo.
She didn’t find him.
As she turned back toward the house, she felt something wet and warm on her left leg. She paid little attention. The sight of so many white, lifeless faces had unnerved her. Hysteria was threatening her again.
She fought it, pushed it away as though it were an enemy with a tangible form. She climbed to the porch. Another half dozen men arrived. Three carried children in their arms. The rest supported exhausted adults. Eleanor thought she recognized one of the men but he had gone into the house before she could be sure.
She leaned against a porch pillar. Behind her, through an open window of the music room, candlelight showed a toothless old man praying on his knees. Further back in the house, a woman began to sing “Rock of Ages” in a weak soprano voice.
The grief and guilt and anger lapped at her mind like rising water. She rested her forehead against the pillar, clenched her fist, whispered, “Leo. Leo—”
She reminded herself that they needed her inside. She mustn’t break down. She would not—
She turned sharply, aware that someone had spoken to her. But her attention was concentrated on the way her leg felt under layers of damp clothing. Her leg was wet and all at once she understood why. Tonight, on top of everything else, her own body had betrayed her.
“Dear God—not that too,” she said half-aloud, pressing her palms against her skirt as if to hide any telltale sign. There was none. No one would have taken much notice if there were. But to Eleanor it was the final cruelty of whatever malignant power had arranged the events of the last twenty-four hours—a cruelty her battered mind could barely accept.
A shadow bent across her line of sight. The man who’d spoken. A tall man with mud on his cheeks. Rain shone in his curly hair. There was concern in his pale gray eyes as he said, “Mrs. Goldman? It is you, isn’t it? I thought I recognized you when I brought that youngster into the house.”
The man pulled up the red bandanna, wiped his chin and his mouth. The neckerchief triggered her lagging memory.
“Mr. Martin—“
“Are you all right?”
“Yes.”
“And your husband—?”
“No.” She turned toward the red-lit smoke billowing in the valley. “I lost him down there.”
“My God. How?”
“Drowned. We were crossing to shore and we met a man we’d had trouble with the night before. He knocked Leo into the water.”
“Why?”
“Because Leo was a Jew.”
“A—?”
“Jew, Mr. Martin. The word is Jew.”
“I can’t believe one man would kill another just because he was Jewish.”
“Especially not in this wonderful country—is that what you’re trying to say? This country’s a mire for pigs.”
Seldom in his life had Rafe Martin heard a voice so poisoned by bitterness. It hurt him. That and his tiredness made his shoulders slump.
“I’m truly sorry, Mrs. Goldman.” With hardly a conscious thought, he took hold of her forearm gently. “If there’s anything at all that I can do—”
The touch of his hand—a man’s hand—was enough to set memories exploding like long-buried mines, to shatter her already-weakened defenses.
“Leave me alone!”
She turned and dashed to the end of the porch. She stepped off without realizing there was a two-foot drop to the ground. She landed hard on a sheet-covered mound, unhurt but momentarily stunned.
Her cry had brought people running from the house. Martin ignored them, just as he ignored her plea to be left alone. He jumped off the porch to help her. She was floundering atop the covered body. Somehow her hand tangled in the wet sheet, pulling it away.
Six inches from her eyes lay the head of a blond child; a girl of six or seven whose cheeks had been horribly cut before she died. For a moment Eleanor stared at the deep, crusted wounds. Then she leaped to her feet and ran up the hill, screaming.
iii
Afterward, Eleanor had only fragmentary memories of the next few minutes. The coldness of the rain, harder suddenly and beating against her face. The feel of the secret flow soiling her, draining what little of her strength remained. The brick house, seen from higher on the hill and silhouetted against the fires of Johnstown—
And the terrifying sight of an unknown man loping after her. “Mrs. Goldman,” he called. “Come back inside!”
No longer rational, she turned to confront him. She dropped into a crouch, her hands held in front of her. She clenched those hands, as if rage could somehow change what she railed against.
“Why did Leo have to die before I told him? I never told him—”
The words were shrill, punctuated by her gasps for breath. Martin stopped and stayed motionless while trying to decide how to deal with her.
Softly, he said, “What do you mean, Mrs. Goldman? Never told him what?”
She beat the air with her fists to emphasize each spat-out word. “That it—wasn’t his fault—I couldn’t—love him—the right way—I was—raped in my own house—in New York— the men—took turns with me—”
A flicker of sanity lit the chaos of her thoughts. Her eyes registered horror as she realized that the dark door, kept closed at such great cost for so long, was open.
“Oh—my God—”
The words began to dissolve into sobbing. “My God, what a—foul mess—I’ve made of—every
thing—”
She fell against him, crying uncontrollably and trying not to think of what she’d confessed to a stranger.
Martin put his arms around her, supporting her as best he could. One of his callused hands came up behind her head. He knew it would afford her no real protection from the rain. But he wanted to keep it there because she was so hurt, and because of the way he felt about her.
In a moment, the abrupt limpness of her body told him she’d fainted.
He picked her up so that she lay horizontally across his arms. Her hair trailed down behind her head; her cheek pressed against his worn jacket. He could hardly believe what he’d heard her say. And yet it must have been the truth, because it had come pouring out with such unmistakable pain.
Martin moved down the hill with steady steps. Eleanor was no burden at all. But he experienced guilt because of the emotions churning inside him. There was sweet enjoyment in holding her so close.
What a damned, shameful way to feel with her husband no more than a few hours dead! Yet he couldn’t help himself. He was an incurable romantic, though he usually tried to hide it because the world scoffed at romantics, and often punished them. Nevertheless he’d conceived an instantaneous passion for Eleanor Goldman when he’d seen her perform at the Opera House. Now, despite his conscience, he was glad that chance and the events of the night had thrown them together.
But could he ever look her in the eye after what she’d told him? he wondered.
A gray-haired woman with a massive bosom barred the front door of the brick house. “Another one? We’ve no more room.”
“This is the lady who’s been helping you.”
The woman bent for a closer look. “Lord, yes—so it is. Put her down here on the porch. I’ll bring some flour sacks to cover her. What happened?”
“She collapsed. Probably from exhaustion.”
“I heard her cry out. Then someone said she’d run off.”
“Can’t say I blame her,” Martin replied. “Her husband’s missing.”
A moment later, he carefully laid Eleanor close to the house, well out of the rain. When the older woman returned, he covered Eleanor with three coarse pieces of burlap she’d brought.
He knelt beside Eleanor, studied her dirt-streaked face. Unconsciousness smoothed away its agony. God, how beautiful she was.
Of course it was ridiculous, not to say sinful for him to entertain such a thought at such a time. Yet he was powerless to deny his feelings; they were too strong.
He rested the fingers of his right hand against her cheek. What were the exact words she’d used? I was raped in my own house. The men took turns with me.
His lips barely moved as he whispered, “Poor thing. Poor thing.”
He jerked his hand back, noticing the gray-haired woman watching from the front doorway. He stood up, walked to the steps leading down from the porch. He told the woman, “I’ll come back early tomorrow to see how she is.”
But he never did.
iv
When Eleanor woke, the rain had stopped. A balmy wind blew against her face. The sun shone above the dark summits of the hills to the east.
She sat up, drowsy and almost smiling despite the soreness of her body and the soiled feel of her skin and clothing. Then, in an instant, memories returned. Memories of Leo vanishing in the water. Memories of the man responsible for his death. Memories of what she’d admitted to that stranger, Martin.
She could recall few of the circumstances of that revelation, and none of the words. Yet she knew she’d opened the secret door and let its horrors spew forth. Martin knew something known to no other human being.
For a moment she experienced a sudden, overwhelming sense of relief. Then a curious longing began to sweep over her. A longing for Martin to come back, speak to her, simply be with her. Except for the Rasmussens, he was the only person she knew in what was left of Johnstown. She felt guilty craving his company, yet the craving persisted.
But as she stood on the porch, shielding her eyes and gazing down at the sunlit smoke and floating wreckage, shame returned, and the longing was banished. Martin was a kind and decent man. But how could she even speak to him again? He knew.
But no one else would. Ever.
The scene below soon disappeared, replaced by an image on which she concentrated with an almost crazed intensity. A new door. Stronger than the old one—thicker, too. She imagined elaborate bolts, chains, extra padlocks. It was an impregnable door—one whose integrity she would guard and defend with her whole being.
As for Martin—she hoped she never set eyes on the man again.
v
Now it was Saturday, and the sun shone. In the valley of the Conemaugh, a flotilla of small boats continued to search the smoke-covered water for survivors. Many of the fires were finally out. The waters began to recede slowly. Large numbers of people were visible on the heights. Life was returning.
The first word of the disaster had gone out late Friday, transmitted in a telegraph message from Sang Hollow to Pittsburgh. After that, details reaching the outside world were few, though it was soon known from coast to coast that a great flood had devastated Johnstown. By the end of that sunny Saturday, many people in other parts of the state and nation were making plans to descend on the town as soon as rail service was restored. The people included the Pennsylvania militia, journalists and photographers, and relief workers from numerous organizations. Hundreds of ordinary citizens were preparing to travel to Johnstown, too. Some would bring food and medicines, some just their morbid curiosity and greed.
Rafe Martin spent the day doing rescue work. It was an exhausting job, using a hammer and crowbar to open jammed doors in order to liberate those trapped in houses that had been spared. The work had its infuriating aspects, too. Four times, in four different attics, Rafe and his fellow workers came across women who initially refused help because their torn clothing revealed too much of their bodies.
Rafe quickly developed a technique for dealing with such women. He’d walk away from the door through which he’d been speaking to them, making certain they heard his voice fade.
“All right, ladies—whatever you say. The moment we locate an all-female rescue group, we’ll send it along. May take a few days, though.”
In every case, false modesty was immediately replaced by pleas that the men break the door down.
The corpses revealed after the waters fell weren’t pretty. The warm sunshine created a fearful stench from the mud, the smoke, and the putrefying flesh. Among the men with whom Rafe worked, there was anxious talk of the possibility of disease, especially typhoid.
Hour after hour, he thought of returning to the brick house to check on Eleanor. But every available man was needed down in the city, so he delayed. Around noon he was approached about going to work professionally.
A Colonel William Connolly of Pittsburgh sought him out. Connolly identified himself as the agent for the Associated Press in Western Pennsylvania. He wanted Rafe to help with telegraphy once three new wires were strung to connect the valley with the outside world. He said one wire would be used by the Pennsylvania militia who would soon be policing the area. Another would link Johnstown with the capital in Harrisburg. He’d secured the third wire for exclusive use by the A.P.
Connolly didn’t bother to explain how he’d pulled that off. But the wages he offered Rafe were handsome. Rafe told him making money had to wait until his present work was finished. The A.P. agent urged Rafe to look him up as soon as it was.
At twilight Rafe was tramping alone through the mud of Napoleon Street, near the downtown. He had a crowbar tilted over his shoulder. He could hear some of his fellow workers a block or two behind.
He approached a small house—one of the few private homes left intact near the main flood path. All at once he stopped, swallowing down revulsion. Above the thick mud covering the front yard, a flag still drooped at half staff— a flag raised but never taken down on Memorial Day. Close to the base of the pole, a singl
e human hand jutted from the mud like some grotesque piece of statuary.
A man’s hand, he judged. A drowning hand reaching for help it had never found—
Shaking his head, Rafe crossed the yard. This will be the last one, he said to himself as he moved into the heavily silted entrance hall. Then by heaven I’m going back to see her.
He heard a peculiar grunting in the darkness at the rear of the house. A rat came scurrying toward him from behind a half-buried umbrella stand. Sensing his presence, the rat stopped, then ran the other way.
Rafe moved farther down the hall, glanced into a parlor, and nearly dropped the crowbar. Silt covered the parlor floor. Just above it, brown eyes looked at him. The lifeless eyes of a boy of ten or eleven.
How had he died? There was no way to tell. Maybe he’d been trapped in the cellar just before the water rushed in, and had managed to chop a hole in the floor of the room above, only to drown while he tried to climb to safety. Just the upper half of the boy’s head showed above the mud. His nose rested in it.
“Jesus,” Rafe whispered. He heard the grunting again, and a faint voice.
“Come on, you old bastard. Give.”
The intruder was in the kitchen, he thought. Who was he? No one should be in the house except someone trapped there, or rescue workers. The gruff voice didn’t fit either circumstance.
Rafe walked forward quickly, making no effort to conceal his approach; the thick, wet silt made that virtually impossible anyway. He stepped into the kitchen and saw an unkempt man struggling to open a back door jammed shut by the mud.
Footprints clearly showed the intruder’s path of entry. He’d climbed through an open window Rafe could see in an adjoining pantry. On the kitchen floor, partially buried in mud, a second man lay on his back.
Near the man’s shoulder lay a discarded knife, the blade smeared reddish-brown. Overlapping footprints and deep furrows in the mud showed the body had been moved. A stick held the dead man’s jaws apart. Judging from the slashed and bloodied gums Rafe glimpsed, the intruder had been trying to cut gold teeth from the mouth of the corpse.