“Until I light the lamp,” I say. Then I yell up the stairs, “I’m on my way.”
From above comes a small voice, barely recognizable as Dorchy’s. “Use your arms to pull yourself up the ladder.”
The higher we climb, the more the building narrows. The walls seem to be embracing us.
My legs ache with the effort of climbing the stairs. Twice I stop to rest.
At the foot of the ladder Tom puts his lantern down. Now I just have to get up ten rungs, light the lamp, help Dorchy get down, and get down myself.
I can’t wells up inside me. The words drain my strength. I fight a sudden sting of tears.
“You coming up or not?” Dorchy asks in her familiar voice. “The view is great.”
Inside me, midway lights snap on, banks of them, spinning, flashing, spelling out I can. “Hold your horses,” I say.
Tom holds up the lantern, and Dorchy’s face beams in the opening above us.
The ladder dangles sideways on the wall.
“I’ll use this board to brace it,” Tom says, demonstrating. “Go slowly, no sudden moves. If the bolt gives way, we’ll both fall.” I look behind him down the stairs to the lower landing and shudder.
“Coming up,” I say.
“Remember, pull with your arms,” Dorchy says. Her face is close, only a few feet above me.
I step on the first rung with my right foot and Tom positions my left. Then he braces the ladder in a vertical position. I use my arms to pull myself up, as Dorchy ordered. Tom helps me as far as rung four. There are six more. The ladder sways every time I pull on it, dragging my left leg up. Half the time my left foot isn’t even on the rung. Once both feet slip off, and the ladder lurches to the side. My full weight hangs from my arms until I get my right foot in position again.
Tom says, “You’re fine.”
This is so far from the truth that I choke back a laugh that is half a sob.
My arms start trembling. I use my right leg to push off the rung I’m on, and my hands slip again.
“Take a rest,” Dorchy says. “What’s the rush?”
“Don’t make me laugh,” I gasp.
“Two more,” Dorchy says. “Piece of…” She starts to cough.
Somehow I manage the next two rungs and crawl out onto the floor. My eyes adjust to the starlight filling the round, windowed room. Dorchy crouches by the lamp, head hanging down. Blood drips on her sweater. “We have to light the lamp,” she says, standing up, all business. “I figured out what to do.” She takes a ragged breath. “Unscrew this cap.” She points to the base of the lamp.
I try but it doesn’t budge. “Open,” I command and twist the cap again. Nothing. I try again. My hand slips.
“What are you doing?” Tom calls from the landing.
“Opening the lamp,” I say. This time when I twist the cap it opens. I feel a rush of pure joy.
“Now the kerosene,” Dorchy says. “Here’s the funnel.” I fit the funnel in the hole in the lamp and open the kerosene can. It’s almost empty, and the sharp fumes sting my eyes and make Dorchy cough.
I pour the kerosene in, cap it, and remove the funnel. Then I cap the lamp.
Dorchy wipes her mouth. “Matches,” she says and hands me a long match.
“Where do I light it?”
“The wick. It’s just a big oil lamp,” Dorchy says. “Easy as pie.”
I can see the huge wick under the glass lamp with its hundreds of faceted pieces.
“How do we get this off?” I tap the glass.
Tom calls up the stairs. “There’s a handle. Reuben’s father invented it to raise the glass to light the wick. His motto was, ‘Easy enough for a child.’”
“Well, this child needs to know where it is.”
Dorchy sits on the floor, head resting on her knees. “Help me, Dorchy,” I say finally. “I found the handle. I need you to hold it while I light the wick.”
She comes over and takes the handle, moving so slowly that my breath catches in my throat. I strike the match and hold it close to the wick. Nothing happens. The match burns almost to my fingers.
“Any ideas about lighting the wick, Tom?” I say.
“It’s dried out,” he says. “Wind it down into the kerosene.”
I try that. Then I light a new match and hold my breath until the wick starts to burn. The flame trembles in the wind from the opening to the walkway.
I take the handle from Dorchy and lower the glass over the wick. Rich golden light, magnified by hundreds of angled pieces of glass, sends our message out across the rough waves. It’s the most beautiful light I’ve ever seen.
I clap my hands and yell, “We did it, Dorchy. Bravo!” Then I say, “Please, please, please let people on the mainland see the light and come to help us.”
Dorchy covers her eyes. “Bright,” she says and starts coughing again.
When she stops and says, “Now help me climb down,” she sounds almost like herself. The light—warm, golden, all-encompassing—will heal her.
“You have to kneel at the top of the ladder and hold my hands,” she goes on, “while I get my feet on the rungs. It’s only three rungs until Tom can catch me.”
But miraculously, once her feet are on the ladder, she tells me she can hold on.
“I didn’t think I could do it, but I can,” she says. “After all, you did.”
While Tom makes her comfortable on the landing, I take a minute to go out on the walkway. The wind is still blowing, but the storm has moved on. The light behind me is so bright I can’t see the stars, but I can tell the sky is clear. Looking down the path of light reflected in the ocean, I almost miss a curve of white sail, moving fast, away from the island, across the white-topped waves. Vera’s sailboat. Cecily said Vera could sail anything in any weather from the time she was ten. Well, there she goes. And with her the doctor and the twins probably. I’m glad the adults are gone, but how will Lolly and Dolly, sick as they were on the ferry, survive in a sailboat tonight?
Tom calls my name and steadies the ladder for me. Going down takes longer than climbing up. My arms give out just before the bottom rung, and I fall in a heap. Tom helps Dorchy down the stairs. She does some of it on her own, but when we reach the bottom, she sags against him.
He carries her out of the lighthouse and all the way to the truck.
When I get there, I hug Dorchy. “You’re so brave,” I say.
She shakes me off. “You climbed up there with one leg.”
We look back at the lighthouse sending our golden message over eight miles of ocean.
Dorchy says what I’m thinking, gasping after each word. “They’ll see the light, won’t they?”
Tom starts the truck. “They’ll see it and they’ll come.”
“But the storm,” she says.
“Lobstermen go out in all weather,” he says. “This is nothing to them.”
“I saw a sailboat from the walkway,” I say, “before I came down. It had to be Vera’s. Heading southwest like a bat out of hell.”
“No one else sails,” Tom says. “Maybe the doctor is with her.”
“They took the twins, I bet,” Dorchy says.
Tom lets out a long breath. “Reuben will be on our side now that Vera and the doctor are gone. He knows who butters his bread.”
“And which way the wind blows,” I say.
Dorchy manages a laugh. She rests her head on my shoulder as Tom drives to the house. When we get out, she takes hold of my free arm for support.
By the time we reach the door, my heart has turned from featherlight to stone.
Chapter 43
Tom drives off, heading for the cave by another trail. Louise opens the door. She puts her arm around Dorchy’s shoulder, keeping her upright. In the lamplight, I see the dark patches on Dorchy’s cheeks. Her bloody nose. She sink
s to the floor, head down.
And doesn’t say a word.
I’m falling down a long shaft with no hope of landing. We got her back, but not in time. I failed my best friend.
I help Louise get Dorchy out of her oilskin coat and into the sitting room where an oil lamp glows on top of the bookcase. We spread sheets on the couch and prop Dorchy up with pillows. I tuck the blanket around her, and Louise puts a warm towel over her chest. Then she brings a steaming cup of herbal tea.
Dorchy tries to swallow the tea and chokes. More blood. I sit on an ottoman next to her and take her cold hands in mine.
“Here’s what you taught me,” I say. “Even away from the midway, a carny’s a carny for life.”
A soft pressure on my fingers, barely there.
I tell her then how she saved us today, not just by climbing the lighthouse or keeping Posy from drowning. I look into her eyes, “Thank you for dropping out of the tree in front of Vera.”
Her lips stretch into a smile. She opens her eyes. “Almost got away,” she whispers and coughs for a long time.
You saved us. I should have saved you.
We sit in silence for long minutes. My throat clogs with grief.
I smooth her damp hair, look into her eyes, and drink in her face. “Thank you for telling me the rowan is a magical tree.”
I fall asleep and wake up with a start, ice-cold. Dorchy struggles to breathe, seconds passing between each ragged breath. Her hands claw the towel. Her ears and nose and lips are blue.
I hold her hands in mine. “I’ll see you on the midway, Wave Rider,” I say.
She makes the smallest sound. It might be good-bye. I let her have that last word.
Her fingers go slack.
I hold on.
A long time later Tom comes in. I shake my head.
“Her spirit is free now,” Tom says. “Where will it go?”
“To the midway.” I’m crying now. To midways everywhere, forever.
Chapter 44
I can’t leave her. I sit there feeling as empty as I did onstage as Ruthie. Tom’s eyes bore into mine. “Are you all right?”
I shake my head, and he puts his hands on my shoulders. “Those bastards got away with everything.”
“They didn’t get us.” I take no joy in saying it.
He puts his hands over his face and stumbles out of the room.
A long time later I leave the sitting room so Tom and Louise can move Dorchy’s body. I go to the kitchen, suddenly hungry. Louise comes back and dishes out a bowl of stew and a thick piece of bread and butter.
“What about Cecily?” I ask. And then, “Dorchy and I lit the lamp. People will come by boat tomorrow.”
“Mrs. Van Giesen wants to talk to you, when you’re ready,” Louise says. “I explained what happened and that Vera’s gone. She wants to stay up there. ‘Let them who need it most have the run of the house,’ she said. And, ‘I bear you no malice for locking me in.’”
“I’ll talk to her in the morning.” I’m so sleepy I can’t hold my head up.
Louise carries a candle to light my way upstairs to the bedroom Magdalena and I will share. She brings me a nightgown and slippers, another warm sweater.
“Where’s Posy?”
Louise shakes her head. “Posy has to be quarantined with the three boys. They all have influenza.”
“I was exposed to it. I could have it too.”
“Stay here with Magdalena,” Louise says. “She’s had a shock. Snout died in the cave, and she spent hours with his body.”
When I lie down, I rub my aching left leg. Five years ago in the hospital, Dr. Friedlander taught me how to massage the muscles. We sat together in the solarium at Bellevue. “Your fingers need to gently remind your leg it’s alive and still useful,” he said, sucking on a peppermint. “If you believe it, in time your leg will too.”
Magdalena watches me work on my leg. “Tomorrow is better,” she says finally. “The storm blows away.”
Chapter 45
In the morning I go to see Posy. Her room is small and sunny. Someone gave her a flannel nightgown, and she looks much better than when we got her out of the tent yesterday.
She is sitting up in bed, her breakfast tray across her knees. Magdalena follows me in and takes the tray away. “I feel fine,” Posy says. “I don’t even have a fever.”
I smile and speak to her from inside my ice cave.
“Dorchy had it bad,” she says. “She told me she was going to die. I said, ‘No, you aren’t.’” She wipes away a tear.
“She died.” I can’t say anything more.
“I know.” She plucks at the sheet. “What happened to the twins?”
She looks so worried that I tell her only part of the truth. “They aren’t sick.”
“I liked them,” Posy says wistfully. She looks at me the way I used to look at Dorchy, searching for answers.
I squeeze her hand and tell her she’ll be fine.
Next I go to see Cecily in her bedroom overlooking the ocean. Big swells but no whitecaps today.
“I’m so sorry about Dorchy,” she says, holding out her hand to me. “But I must say, you girls brought this trouble down on yourselves.”
I ball my fists and stand rigid.
“God is my witness,” she says. “I was against it all from the first time Vera told me about it.”
“Don’t bother with excuses,” I say. “I know all about ‘blue.’ I have the letter.”
“I backed out right then,” she says fervently. “Just as your father did. You have to believe me. But it was too late. Nothing could stop Vera. I tried to save as many as I could.”
I feel like a visitor. I’m here, but I am also at home with Father, tearing down the house I grew up in. I feel the light from the window. I have stepped into a new place, a new body, a new strength.
“Then why did you lie to Miss Latigue?” My voice is calm. I am in the right and she is not. My friend was killed by her inaction, but I don’t feel rage, just an intense curiosity. “You could have told her, and she would have ‘saved’ the ones who came here with me. All you had to do was tell her.”
“I told her we had deaths.” Cecily’s voice shakes. “You know, I always admired your father’s passion on this issue. You share it, I see.”
“I share nothing of my father’s,” I say, still calm.
Cecily stands up and paces from her chair to the window and back. “I was a prisoner in this house long before Louise locked me in yesterday. I’m eager to help you prosecute Vera and Hiram Jellicoe. They should be locked up.” She looks at me, appealing with her eyes. “Can’t we be allies, Rowan? Let’s work together to get justice for those who died.”
I stare her down. “No. I’ll get them justice on my own.”
She holds out her hands to me. “I have documents, minutes from meetings. I have charts and photographs. Vera took very little with her, according to Louise. I’ll open everything to the authorities. Will they come today?” She touches her hair. “I hope I’ll have time to make myself presentable before they do.”
“I don’t know when anyone will come, but I’m sure the police will want to talk to you. I assume the ferry will be here tomorrow as scheduled.”
She nods.
We stare at each other across a divide so deep it steals my breath.
Her face changes from soft and appealing to hard and sly. “It’s not at all what it looks like, you know.” She goes to her dresser and pulls out a leather notebook. “My journal,” she says reverently. “Let me read you what I wrote in here last night. Louise, with your approval I’m sure, gave me an opportunity to reflect, but please listen objectively. I think I’ve earned that courtesy.”
A part of my mind sits apart from this scene commenting drily. Look how her true nature surfaces. Listen and learn. This is
where Vera got her ideas. Not from that soft woman trying to save her own skin, but from this calculating one.
“I’m listening,” I say, forcing a polite note in my voice. Thinking, Go ahead and hang yourself.
Cecily remains standing, holding the journal. But instead of reading from it, she starts talking. “Sterilization is a stopgap, not a solution. Sterilization has its place—I know Julia and your father advocate it. But what we perfected here on Loup Island provides a fast, easy, and permanent solution to the burden of the unfit for the first time in history.”
I keep my face blank.
“Rowan, look at what we’ve accomplished.” Cecily smiles warmly.
I hear in her voice and see in the way she stands—relaxed, open, eager—that this is what she’s been dying to say, and couldn’t, in front of Miss Latigue.
“We give the unfit a chance to help society. Even you must admit that. Each inoculation adds to our understanding of influenza, the strain we call blue. That is a contribution to all of mankind.”
I can’t let this pass. “You cause terrible suffering,” I say. “As does sterilization.” I’m thinking of Minnie and Tom.
“No one suffers here!” Cecily laughs. “The medical experts on our board are unanimous that our solution to solving the problem of the unfit is quick and painless.”
“Don’t insult me!” I say coldly. “You inject people and they die. Slowly and painfully.”
“It takes more than three days to understand our process,” Mrs. Van Giesen says as she tucks the journal back in the dresser drawer.
“Do you inform the campers when you inoculate them? The unfit are human beings, despite what you believe.”
Cecily snaps, “The unfit can’t handle information like that. We’re dealing with what our German colleagues Hoche and Binding call ‘lebensunwerten Lebens.’”
“‘Life unworthy of life,’” I say. Dorchy? Elsa? Ratty?
She nods approvingly. “Your father taught you well. But you have to understand that our mission goes far beyond this summer, this island. When we perfect our methods, they will be embraced by every state.”
Of Better Blood Page 21