Secret Hearts
Page 28
He walked back toward the woman and circled around to face her, staying far enough away so he wouldn't frighten her. She lifted her head from her hands and Jake stopped. His voice caught in his throat. “Maggie?”
A thin cry escaped as she tried to stand, and faltered.
Jake ran and caught her with one arm around her waist. “Maggie.”
She threw her arms about him and held him so tightly his broken ribs hurt, but he didn't care.
When she heard an involuntary moan, she said, “Are you hurt?”
“Just my ribs. It’s nothing.”
With a sympathetic look for his ribs, she let go and instead held his face in her trembling hands. She tried not to cry but failed.
He pulled her forehead to his lips and kissed her skin and hair and held her again.
“Maggie.” He couldn't hold her close enough, or feel enough of her warmth against him.
She clung and spoke softly into his neck. “I’ve imagined you so many times, I was afraid I’d conjured you.”
“I’m here, darlin’.”
For a long time they held one other, unwilling to let go. They were together again, but the darkness was falling. They had to find shelter and safety for the night. Jake took Maggie’s hand and the two walked toward the closest shelter.
“Oh, Jake, I’m so ashamed,” she whispered.
“Of what?”
“So many are gone. Lives have been ruined. But all I could think of was my fear.”
“Maggie, darlin’—”
“I was afraid to be lonely.”
He held her closer. “I know.”
Jake stopped walking and pulled Maggie close to him. Amid the shattered walls of ruined homes. Together they stood.
“Listen,” said Maggie.
“What is it?”
“Shh. Listen.”
Then Jake heard it, too. “What is it, a dog?”
Maggie stood and turned her ear toward the noise. She took a few steps.
“No.”
Beneath the arched remains of a roof, a young boy crouched and wept. Maggie reached in and coaxed him out. His body was unharmed but for some bruises and scrapes.
She crouched down to his height and held his shoulders. “What are you doing out here all alone?” When he didn't answer, she reached out to brush his hair back from his forehead, and he flung himself into her arms. Maggie rocked him and held him until he relaxed in her arms. He couldn't have been older than four. For days he had lived out here, scrounging for food, with no family or friends.
On the way to the Registry office, they coaxed a name from him.
“Will,” he told them.
Maggie looked at Jake.
Jake smiled at the boy and said, “Will’s a good name.”
“It’s a very good name,” said Maggie.
Jake and Maggie went to the Registry and added little Will’s name, along with Jake’s. The boy’s parents weren't on the list.
Maggie knelt down and held the child’s face in her hands. He looked at her with big, empty eyes from which no tears would fall. “We’ll keep looking.” She put her arms around him and held him.
Jake went down the list one last time.
“Maggie!” Jake pointed to the list.
“Beth and Robin.” She nodded. “I’ve seen their names there, but I’ve looked everywhere, and no one has seen them. I left word for them. But I’m afraid it might have been some sort of horrible mistake.”
“They’ll turn up,” Jake said, though he had doubts.
Jake and Maggie worked long hours at the relief station that had been set up at the Pennsylvania Railroad Depot. Jake’s arm was now in a plaster cast, and his ribs were still bandaged. He should have been resting, but he insisted on doing something. He was useless for the heavy hauling, but he could at least hand out food and clothing.
Young Will was an eager and happy assistant, for they had found his mother at the hospital. Until she recovered from her injuries, Jake and Maggie were pleased to care for him. The yard was filled with boxes and crates of bread, crackers, clothing and blankets. Policemen kept order among the sometimes desperate and frantic people. After three days, Maggie was efficient at her duties but wearing down. The town’s tragic state was sinking into the minds and hearts of the people as they faced the daunting task of rebuilding their hometown.
Toward the end of an exhausting afternoon, Maggie was handing out loaves of bread, when she glanced out into the crowd and froze. She clutched for Jake’s arm as he walked by. Before he could turn, Maggie let go and walked into the crowd, first tentatively, then frantically pushing her way through. With a sob, she threw her arms about Beth and knelt to hold Robin. Jake joined them soon after. They were a family.
The minister stood his ground and said, “No.” He looked at Maggie and Jake with unyielding resolve. “You can't be married in the church.”
“We don’t need the church building. You could marry us outside,” said Maggie.
“Not to a Catholic. You’re unequally yoked.”
“But we love each other. How can you—”
“Maggie.” Jake put his hand on her arm. They had already heard this from the Catholic priest.
When she made no move to leave, the minister said, “I will not perform a mixed marriage.”
Jake leaned closer to Maggie and quietly said, “C’mon, let’s go.”
Maggie stared pleadingly at the reverend, searching for reason or logic. He turned and shuffled some books and papers on his desk.
They closed the door behind them. Maggie was shaken.
Jake took hold of her shoulders and looked her straight in the eye. “Now you listen to me, Maggie MacLaren.”
She turned her face away, but he gently turned it back. His angular cheeks were flushed, and his eyes flashed with anger. “Look at me? We will get married. Maybe not by a minister or a priest, but I will be your husband.”
Maggie’s lips parted in stunned silence. She looked at Jake’s face. His eyes were ablaze, and his hands felt strong on her shoulders. For once in her life she had no words, but she believed him. A tentative nod bloomed into a smile. “Okay.”
“Okay, then,” said Jake. They laughed. Nothing mattered except being together. “But I’ll kiss the bride now, if it’s alright with you.”
Maggie didn't object as he kissed her until her knees weakened.
Beth stood at Hank’s graveside with Maggie, while Robin picked wildflowers from the field nearby.
“He never had a chance, locked up in that jail cell.” There crept into Beth’s mind pangs of regret, for Hank’s sake, for the life he had wasted and the lives he had damaged.
“You’re allowed to cry, Beth,” said Maggie.
“I did all my crying when he was alive.”
Robin brought a bouquet of wildflowers and set it upon her father’s grave. Then Maggie slipped her arm around Beth’s shoulder and they all walked together to the buckboard where Jake waited.
Beth sat in the buckboard and looked down at Maggie.
“It’s not like we won’t be together,” said Maggie.
“I know, but Pittsburgh is a big city.”
“But think of the exciting things that lay ahead: a new home, and your new job at the Heinz factory.”
“I know. We’ll have a good life, won’t we?” Beth smiled down at Robin. Beth knew that their lives would never be the same.
“I’ll see you in a few days,” said Maggie. “You’ll be alright until then?”
Beth smiled shyly. “Mr. Wakefield offered to help us get settled.”
“Well, good, then,” said Maggie, not failing to notice a new light in her sister’s eyes.
Beth and Robin waved back as their buckboard drove off.
The sun was still warm from the afternoon, but it was getting ready to set. Maggie walked along the boardwalk by the lake that used to be. Her view no longer obstructed, she saw no effortless sailing or congruous rowing across a picturesque lake. There was no lake and no
dam. The majesty once fashioned by man was gone. Now a small stream of water trickled through a bed of cracked, dried earth.
Jake tarried behind as Maggie surveyed the site where memories lay encrusted in the ground that once held Lake Conemaugh. She remembered the magical wonder of a life beyond the valley, a life she had touched in the height of its splendor. It had been glorious. But its glory had been a façade, no stronger than the dam above the valley in the Allegheny Mountains. Sturdy and packed with earth, it looked like part of a hillside that was God’s creation. But it held back a force of nature that not even wealth could withstand. Human nature could not be contained. The lake had been a rich man’s playground, owned by people who coveted power like a child’s toy, and they such cunning children. But their toy was left unattended for too long.
Maggie stood at the edge of the broken road that used to cross the dam. Here a wall of wealth once tumbled down. Whether it was an act of God, man, or a combination of both, would be debated in years to come by those who remained to pick up the pieces. More than two thousand people lost their lives. Families were gone, children were orphaned, and lovers were lost.
Forsaken cottages stood like bleak apparitions of splendor. She paused before the Adair house and listened to the echoes fade in her memory. Behind it, the hills hovered untouched by the tragedy of the summer, ablaze with the fires of autumn. Life’s natural progression from season to season moved forward.
Jake’s hand slipped into Maggie’s. Love’s indelible impression, like a watermark on paper, wasn't easily seen but was there just the same.
“Let’s go home, Mrs. O’Neill.”
A breeze tossed brittle leaves across the abandoned boardwalk as they walked away from the site of the South Fork Fishing and Hunting Club. Together they found a safe place, where beauty burrows beneath wrinkled skin, where hearts hurt and heal one another, a place where they would grow stronger from being together. The pieces of their lives would settle into a neatly ordered pattern, one not of their own design.
Author’s Note
On November 7, 2000, Alabama was the last state in the union to repeal a ban on interracial marriages from its state constitution. The law remained on the books thirty-three years after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that such laws were invalid.
Johnstown was a regular stop on the Underground Railroad.
In 1870, the first African American graduated from Harvard.
The Poem in Chapter 15 was Foreign Lands, from Robert Louis Stevenson’s A Child’s Garden of Verses.
The Bible verse quoted in Chapter 25 was Isaiah 43:2 (King James Version).
Maggie MacLaren is a fictional character. The real librarian, Mrs. Hirst, was found beneath the crumbled remains of the library. A new library was built with funds donated by Andrew Carnegie, a member of the South Fork Fishing and Hunting Club.
More than 2,000 people died in the Johnstown Flood. While suits were filed against the South Fork Fishing and Hunting Club, no money was ever collected.
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About the Author
J.L. Jarvis is a left-handed opera singer/teacher/lawyer who writes books. She received her undergraduate training from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and a doctorate from the University of Houston. She now lives and writes in New York.
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