Of Better Blood

by Moger, Susan;

  “They took us to see the The Shriek in Boston. Private showing at the theater. A bus with curtained windows.”

  “Why curtains?”

  “To protect us from ‘staring eyes and unpleasant comments,’ Dr. Pynchon said. Then she told us the real reason. ‘No one at a movie theater wants to see crippled children in the audience.’”

  “She sounds as bad as Vera,” Dorchy says. “Did you think Valentino was handsome?”

  “No, I was bored. But the other girls shrieked so I guess that’s how the movie got its name.”

  “It’s The Sheik, not The Shriek. I saw it with the Ogress and…”

  “Getting back to Tom.” I rest on my crutch.

  “He likes you,” Dorchy says.

  “He trusts Reuben,” I say, “and I don’t.”

  We come out of the woods and look down a steep hill onto scattered granite boulders and smaller rocks. Rusting machinery. This is an abandoned quarry without a lake. A road winds down next to a steep granite wall. At the end of the road stands a huge, gray-green tent, as big as the sideshow tent at the Expo. A faded red cross on a white background is painted on the side facing us. The ropes holding the tent in place are weighted down with piles of rocks. Six small windows are evenly spaced along the side of the tent. At the midway point, an outhouse-size structure sticks out. The tent canvas ripples in the wind like a horse’s flank.

  At the ocean end of the quarry, a low rock wall protects the mouth of the quarry. Skeleton pilings are all that’s left of a dock where barges were once loaded with granite. Spray from waves breaking against the wall occasionally splashes over it, leaving puddles.

  We hide our bags at the edge of the woods, and I hand Dorchy the letter. Then we use our fingers to comb each other’s hair before we start downhill to the tent. When we’re ready to go, I grab Dorchy’s hand. “Can you do it?” I ask her. “Walk in the front entrance and convince whoever is in there that you’re Miss Latigue’s assistant?”

  “Piece of cake,” Dorchy says.

  Relief floods through me. I touch my camera hanging on its strap around my neck. I have a plan.

  “What are you going to do?”

  “As soon as you go inside, I’ll walk over to that part that sticks out and crawl under like we did at the sideshow. You keep them distracted in the front of the tent.”

  “If you can’t get underneath, go around to the back entrance,” she says, all business. “If you meet anyone…”

  “I’m Miss Latigue’s agent.”

  She grins at me. We’re a team again. I grin back. “We’ll meet in these bushes. I’ll wait for you. You wait for me.”

  She nods and gives me a thumbs-up. Then she walks across the quarry to the front entrance of the tent and disappears inside.

  Chapter 38

  Crossing to the tent on the slippery, wet granite slabs of the quarry floor, I feel my boots and crutch slipping out from under me. The rain is light, but the wind coming straight off the ocean shoves me along. I refuse to fall. As I get closer to the tent, the fresh salt air is drowned by the odor of musty canvas. I examine the structure attached like a pilot fish to the side of the tent. At the bottom there’s a space big enough for me to crawl under. But what will I find inside?

  I get down on my hands and knees and crawl in, pushing my camera and crutch ahead of me. Inside is pitch-dark and smells of disinfectant and something sour. I manage to stand and reach out my hand. A curtain. I open it a crack.

  A rattling metallic sound stops me. “Wait,” a woman says. “I have to put this in Supply.” I hold my breath and step back from the curtain. Not here. Don’t let them come in here.

  A clash of metal on metal, like a galvanized bucket clattering down a fire escape, makes me jump. For a split second I consider crawling back out and limping for the woods. But I’m more curious than scared.

  “Darn it,” the same woman says in a loud voice. “Give me a hand, will you, Hazel?”

  “Fine. But hurry up,” says a woman I guess is Hazel. “Blunt isn’t here yet.”

  The first woman says, “I tell you, I’m of a mind to quit. Extra pay or not.”

  “Why is that?”

  “It just seems wrong.”

  “You know they’re not people, not really,” says Hazel. “Not like my little Veronica, dead of the flu in four hours on November 5, 1918. Hale and hearty at breakfast. Dead by noon.”

  “They are people, and they suffer just like your poor daughter did.”

  “I’ve seen their like in asylums and you haven’t, Theta. They eat their bodily wastes. I say thank god for Dr. Jellicoe and Miss Van, and the old lady too.”

  “I don’t say anything against you or the doctors,” says Theta. “But I have to live with myself. And lying to that lady who came here day before yesterday asking questions goes against the grain.”

  So they lied to Miss Latigue!

  “Well, you can’t quit,” Hazel says, “and I’ll tell you why. There’s a storm coming and we’re done on Sunday. We go home with our pockets full and forget this summer ever happened.” Their voices and footsteps move away.

  I ease open the curtain and move forward. What did happen this summer? Light from a small window shines on a glass-fronted metal cabinet with a white enamel basin on top. A bucket and mop stand to one side. This must be Supply. Another curtain. I pull it back and listen. Footsteps on wooden boards move away from me. I take a chance and peek out. To my right, two women in white uniforms and caps walk toward the front of the tent. Nurse Hazel and Nurse Theta. I’ll remember them. One shouts, “We’re coming.” I assume they’re talking to Dorchy.

  I go the opposite way down a hallway lit only at intervals by watery light from the small windows. Wooden slats creak underfoot, offset by sharp smells of disinfectant, a boy shouting, scuffling sounds, and a high wailing cry that must be Lolly or Dolly.

  “…crawling with bugs, Doctor,” Vera says from behind a canvas curtain. I stop.

  “Where is a nurse when you need one?” Dr. Jellicoe whines.

  “Get on with this, or so help me…” Vera says.

  I peek into the cubicle. An oil lamp hangs over a metal examining table. Vera stands on one side of it, Dr. Jellicoe on the other. One of the boys, I can’t tell which, lies on the table on his stomach violently kicking his legs. The table sways and lets out a metallic shriek. Vera jumps back.

  The boy kicks again.

  “I’ll have to sedate him,” the doctor shouts. “If you can’t hold him still.”

  “We’re out of sedatives, as you well know,” Vera says. “Give me the needle.” She grabs for it, the boy rears up, and the doctor jerks his hand back. Without thinking, I push through the opening, hold the camera to my eye, and click the shutter.

  The doctor yells and stumbles backward against the tent wall. The boy starts to climb off the table. It’s Christophe. Vera shouts, “Nurse! Dr. Ritter!” and pushes Christophe back down. He knocks the oil lamp, which swings wildly.

  The hypodermic needle in Dr. Jellicoe’s hand flashes.

  He stabs it at me. I step back and click the shutter again.

  “Stop!” Vera is purple with anger. “Hiram, get hold of yourself.” Her razor-sharp voice makes the doctor back away from me.

  I retreat to the doorway and lift the camera again. I manage to wind the film and click the shutter before Vera snatches it, breaking the strap.

  “Get out.” Vera opens the camera and dumps the film out. “You’re just like your goody-goody sister and too-pure-for-this-world father. I hate you Colliers.”

  How can she lump me with Father and Julia? I start to argue, but Dr. Jellicoe catches my eye. Vera doesn’t see him smirk and jab the needle in my direction again.

  “Go,” Vera says, “and if you tell my mother the doctor threatened you, we’ll say you’re a liar not worthy of her protection.�
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  “Your friend here won’t be so lucky.” Dr. Jellicoe grabs Christophe and jerks his arm up behind his back.

  I hurry down the hall to the back of the tent. This is an open space divided in two parts by a canvas curtain. Boys are on one side, girls on the other. I go to the girls’ side where Posy and the twins sit on a cot. Posy looks desperate, and the twins look sick, dark circles like bruises under their eyes. Magdalena crouches next to another cot where Elsa lies under a blanket. Her face is blue-tinged with dark-brown streaks on her cheekbones. Blood drips from her nose.

  Empty cots have a neatly folded white sheet at the foot and a dark stain across the top, where a patient’s head would go. A bleeding patient. The back entrance flaps are tied shut, but the wind shaking the tent finds openings.

  “Come on, Posy.” I gesture toward the entrance. “Bring the twins. Magdalena, you come too.”

  Posy shakes her head. “You have to come now, Posy.” Desperation washes over me.

  “They said me and the twins will be fine if we stay here.”

  “That’s not true,” I say. “Look at Elsa. She’s sick. They probably said the same thing to her.”

  Magdalena, her hands over her mouth, runs past us, unties the entrance flaps, and keeps going.

  “See that, Posy?” I want to get down on my knees and beg her to come. “Please. Magdalena went. We’ll all go. Tom has a place we can hide.”

  Elsa groans and the twins grab Posy’s arms. She shakes her head.

  If I try to take her without the twins, or the twins without her, they’ll scream the tent down.

  I go to the boys’ side of the curtain. “Jack, Snout, Lester, follow me,” I say.

  Jack jumps up. “I’ve been trying to get them to leave since they took Christophe,” he says.

  “Come on.” I’m crying now. “I can’t get Posy to come, but Magdalena already left. We have to go now.”

  “Ich fand das verlorene im Wald,” Dr. Ritter yells from the front of the tent. “I found the lost one in the woods! He’s dead.”

  Ratty.

  “Jack, go,” I beg. He grabs a blanket and runs through the back flap.

  “Lester, you too, follow Jack now.” Lester gives a raspy cough and lies back on his cot.

  “Ritter, put the body in a cubicle,” yells Vera, “and go get the other Italian.”

  I grab Snout’s arm, but he pulls away from me.

  “He’s deaf,” says Lester. “And he already got the shot.”

  As I run out of the tent, a huge sadness, like a black rain cloud, swells inside me. If it splits open, I’ll be washed away. I clench my fist and stab my crutch against the rocky quarry floor. Smells of blood and bodily waste and the sound of coughing follow me back into the woods.

  What have I done?

  Posy. The twins. Lester. I didn’t save them.

  Hale and hearty at breakfast, dead by noon.

  Blue kills.

  Ratty’s dead.

  The dam inside me breaks, and tears pour down my face. We’re flies caught in a spiderweb spun by Cecily, Vera, Dr. Jellicoe, and Dr. Ritter. Doctors who don’t heal but kill. Who believe they’re making the world better by killing. I hate them, hate them, hate them.

  From the front of the tent comes Dorchy, wearing a black rubber raincoat and carrying a cardboard file box. She almost drops it when a wind gust blows her sideways. She gives me a thumbs-up and starts to run toward me.

  And just like that, my despair lifts. I make a promise to myself, to Tom, to Dorchy: we will stop them.

  Chapter 39

  Now from the back of the tent comes Snout, bent over and running fast. He joins Dorchy and me at the edge of the woods. We work our way up to the road, collecting Magdalena and Jack along the way. And there is Tom, right where he said he would meet Dorchy and me. Behind him in the bushes he’s hidden blankets from the boys’ tents.

  “What happened?” Dorchy asks me as we follow Tom and the others down a trail that leads away from the quarries. “When Ritter came in with Ratty, I thought he was going to catch you.”

  “It was a close call. Before that, I tried to stop Dr. Jellicoe and Vera from giving Christophe a shot.” I shudder, thinking about the needle. “Then I tried to get everybody to leave.” My breath catches in my throat. “Posy and the twins and Lester wouldn’t come with me, and Vera and Jellicoe have Christophe. Elsa was too sick.”

  Feeling sick myself, I describe what she looked like. “She was fine yesterday. They killed her, like Ratty said. And he said they’ll kill all of us, unless…” Hysteria seizes me and suddenly I can’t stop shaking and crying. Dorchy slaps my face, not hard, but it’s such a surprise that I stop crying.

  “Listen to me, Rowan. You saved them.” She waves her hand at Magdalena, Jack, and Snout. “You probably saved Christophe too.”

  “And what did you do?” I say.

  “Well, I kept them away from you, and”—she pats the box of files—“I got this. A nice nurse gave me a raincoat and sandwiches. She really likes Miss Latigue.”

  Half an hour later, Tom stops in front of a wall of brush. “We’re here.”

  We push blankets and bags ahead of us through the scratchy branches and come out in front of the open mouth of a cave.

  “Bats,” Dorchy says and covers her head with her arms. Magdalena does the same. They stay outside in the rain until we give them the all clear.

  Then we divide the sandwiches the nurse gave Dorchy.

  By late afternoon, it’s still raining steadily and no one has come to look for us. Tom says we need more food. He explains we can take food from Reuben’s cabin back in the woods. “He showed me where he keeps food in the cabin and said I should help myself in an emergency.”

  “Come on.” He gestures to Jack. “This is an emergency.”

  “I’ll go too,” says Dorchy. “Three can carry more than two.”

  After they leave, Magdalena curls up in a blanket on the cave floor. Snout is asleep farther back. I sit in the opening and stare out at the rain dripping through the leaves. A high-pitched whining note in the wind makes Reuben’s storm prediction seem more likely. For just a moment I wish I were back in the darkroom at Cecily’s—sloshing photographic paper in the developer until the image appears, rushing to submerge the print in the “stop” solution and then in the “fix.” Then rinsing and hanging it to dry. All those motions and decisions I learned working next to Father. A great aching space opens in my chest. We could die here.

  Tom, Jack, and Dorchy come back laughing and joking, the boys soaked to the skin. They empty a canvas bag of canned food, three canteens of water, a can opener, three spoons, and a knife.

  We can’t heat the food—it’s too dangerous to light a fire, Tom says—so we eat it cold from the cans: stew, corn, tomatoes, and hash. It’s dark by the time we finish. Jack and Snout roll up in blankets at the back of the cave. Magdalena wraps hers around her shoulders and sits close to Dorchy and me.

  I pull the candle and matches out of my bag, and Tom nods. I light a match and melt wax on the bottom of the candle, then Tom sets it on a rock and I light the wick. The glow fills the cave. Dorchy’s eyes sparkle. “How homey,” she says.

  Magdalena smiles too.

  “How do you know they’ll look for us?” Dorchy asks. She likes challenging Tom.

  “Because we’re a threat,” Tom says. “We know too much. And we stole their patients from the tent. They’ll figure out that both of you were there. They’ll tear the island apart, but the storm, and Reuben, will get in their way.”

  “I think we should find a boat and leave,” I say.

  Tom snorts. “There isn’t a boat here that’s big enough to weather this storm. If they had a boat that size, they wouldn’t need the ferry. Vera’s sailboat would be suicide in this weather. But maybe we can radio for help.” He looks at me hopefully.


  “No telegraph, no radio. Cecily told Miss Latigue the island has no communication with the mainland.”

  “Except for the lighthouse,” says Dorchy. “But in a storm, no one on the mainland could get here. I say we stay here in the cave and wait. They can’t kill us if they can’t find us.”

  Tom asks me to repeat everything Ratty told me. He and Dorchy agree with me that it sounds as though the inoculation infects campers with the flu. It’s a “blue” flu that kills in hours or days. I also tell them what I overheard the nurses saying about lying to Miss Latigue.

  “My first thought was to get off the island,” I tell them. “But I’ve changed my mind. Now, I want to stop them, not hide but attack the tent and chase the doctors and Vera into the woods. What do you think?”

  Tom nods. “I agree. Tomorrow, or even tonight, they’ll be out looking for us. Probably Dr. Ritter and Reuben will come in the truck.”

  “Did you ever hear the saying about influenza?” Dorchy says. She doesn’t wait for an answer. “I had a little bird, his name was Enza. I opened up the window and in flew Enza.”

  “Never heard it,” Tom says. But he smiles at her.

  I feel a rush of irritation. “Everybody knows that,” I say. “But you wouldn’t be reciting it now, if you’d seen Ratty lying in a pile of leaves coughing up blood. Or Elsa…” Tears sting my eyes.

  “Look,” Tom says. “Put Ratty out of your mind. That’s what I’m trying to do.” He holds my gaze. “As I see it, we have to do three things. See if you agree. First”—he holds up one finger—“find a safe place. We did that.”

  He holds up a second finger. “Second, protect as many as we can. That means the ones here and—”

  “Wait a minute! First”—Dorchy waves a mocking finger at Tom—“I’m protecting myself and second, Rowan. You can run around protecting the others, but that’s what I plan to do.”

  “We have to protect the weaker ones,” Tom says stubbornly. “If we don’t, we’re as bad as they are, with their labels about who’s ‘unfit’ and who can and can’t have children. I should know.” His voice shakes with emotion, and he stops abruptly.