by Jaime Maddox
“Did you hear about the cemetery in Forty Fort?” His companion nodded in response.
“One of the nurses here told me they set up a makeshift delivery room at College Misericordia and they’re worried they may have switched some babies in the chaos. Apparently they gave one lady her little girl to take home and she started screaming. She’d delivered a boy.”
“Where are you from?” they asked Sandy as one of them used his cigarette to light hers. Shaking her head, she sighed and told them some of what she’d seen in the Nanticokes.
“My grandmother’s in her eighties. She’s lived here her whole life and she’s never seen anything like this,” the first man commented.
Indeed, there never had been anything like Agnes.
So many patients had flocked to the hospital that the operator couldn’t verify if Jeannie Bennett was a patient there or not. They were having trouble keeping the records up to date. She was forced to visit every floor in the hospital, and in the end her search was fruitless.
Up the road a few miles, at Wilkes-Barre General Hospital, the scene was even more chaotic. Army tents had been erected in the parking lot, and medical personel were taking care of patients right there. Everywhere she looked she saw people walking in different directions, all kinds of people—some well-dressed, some half-dressed, soldiers and doctors and nurses all scurrying about like ants on a sandhill.
Here, though, Sandy had better luck. Although Jeannie hadn’t been admitted to General Hospital, an orderly chatting with the operator in the lobby offered a tip. He was a volunteer ambulance aide, and he’d heard about the fatal accident on the night of the flood. It had happened on Route 309 in Mountaintop, and he suspected the victims had been taken to Hazleton. He was also kind enough to give Sandy directions to Hazleton General Hospital.
She was getting the hang of driving, yet it seemed that the trip to Hazleton was interminable. Though she’d been through Mountaintop just a few hours earlier, it seemed like days had passed since she’d been there. Sandy was anxious—would this be a dead end, too? She was nervous—was Jeannie badly hurt? She shook off the worry and told herself it didn’t matter. She would find Jeannie if she had to drive to Florida, and her love would be the balm to nurse Jeannie through any injuries, no matter how grave.
Compared to the others, the hospital lobby seemed eerily quiet as Sandy entered. Here in the mountains they were geographically far removed from the chaos Agnes had created, and it was evident from the empty parking lot to the barren lobby.
As she approached the information desk, ready to make her well-practiced inquiry, a hand touched her arm. Startled, she jumped back and turned to face a woman she barely recognized as Helen Bennett. Jeannie’s mother looked ten years older than Sandy remembered. The puffy, red eyes told Sandy she’d been crying, and her skin was frighteningly pale. Before Sandy could speak, she was pulled into a hug and felt sobs of anguish that petrified her. Sandy couldn’t speak, couldn’t pull away, couldn’t collapse to the floor, although her legs wanted to. She could only stand there in Mrs. Bennett’s arms as they comforted each other. For what, Sandy didn’t yet know.
An eternity later, Mrs. Bennett pulled back. Taking Sandy’s hand, she led her to a group of chairs nestled discreetly in the lobby’s corner and sat down. Sandy copied her movements, leaning forward in the chair as she stared at the woman, unable to find her voice. Her heart was pounding so loud it seemed to choke her vocal cords.
Grief marred Mrs. Bennett’s lovely face, and as she stared at Sandy her lip trembled, but she didn’t speak.
Trying not to show her anguish and anxiety, Sandy finally cleared her throat and asked, “Is Jeannie here?”
Mrs. Bennett dropped her head and her shoulders shook with sobs.
Sandy moved farther forward, all hesitation now gone. “Where is she, Mrs. Bennett? Where is Jeannie?”
Finally Mrs. Bennett raised her eyes to look at Sandy, although she couldn’t seem to find the strength to lift her shoulders or her head. “She died an hour ago.”
Sandy howled in anguish, mortally wounded, and just then Jane Bennett walked into the lobby. Jeannie’s older sister looked as awful as her mother. Relieved that there was someone to console Mrs. Bennett—for Sandy knew she couldn’t possibly be up for the task—she stood on rubbery legs and found her balance with a hand placed on the back of the chair.
She needed to get out of there. She needed to scream or punch something or bang her head against the wall. She needed to find a place where the oxygen in the air hadn’t been replaced by lead. “I have to go,” she bravely announced, and she used all of her strength to hold her body erect and make her legs move.
She didn’t remember the drive to Mount Pocono, but she would never forget the comfort of her grandmother’s arms around her as she refused to get out of bed for the next two months.
Chapter Seven
Cleaning House, May 26, 2011
Escorting her daughter and her family to their car, Sandy tried not to cry. Again. As much as she would have loved it, she didn’t want Angie to feel it necessary to stay and keep her company. Angie had spent the week before Nellie’s death with her in the Poconos, and Sandy suspected she needed to spend some time in her own house, with her husband Tom and their sleeping son. On the day after the funeral, Sandy evicted them.
“When’s Pat arriving, Mama?” Angie asked.
“Not sure. Juries are unpredictable. Maybe tonight, though.” A Brooklyn lawyer, Pat had been going into closing arguments when Nellie died and wasn’t able to make it earlier. Although Sandy hadn’t minded, now that Angie was leaving she found herself looking forward to a visit from her lover.
She hugged her daughter and son-in-law, kissed their sleeping child, and stood watching as their car disappeared around the bend in the drive. She was exhausted, and she didn’t want to think, but her mind found it hard to rest when unsettled matters were rattling around in there.
Nellie had left an unsettled matter of enormous magnitude.
As a young girl growing up on a farm near the vast expanse of Pocono Manor, Nellie Davis had loved the outdoors. She explored the woods and inspected the farm, reporting back to her father the news of broken fence boards and fallen trees. On one such mission she’d met her future husband, whose family had purchased the farm adjacent to her own.
As Nellie told it, her grandfather was hopelessly trying to catch a fish in a fast-moving stream when she first spotted him. David had claimed to be not fishing at all, just resting in the woods beside a babbling brook.
Both families had understood the value of the land. The Davises were farmers, the Parkers investors. Both sides had done what they could to keep the land in their families. They witnessed the gradual disappearance of farms in favor of other enterprises. Both tried to keep their land safe from their descendants by making complex decisions regarding the disposition of their property upon their deaths. On the Parker side, it was easy. A few generations of Parkers had only one or two children, and a few tragic deaths occurred, leaving only a few descendants of the coal baron Daniel Parker to do battle over his estate. One of her grandfather’s two brothers died during the influenza epidemic in 1918, leaving the estate to be split between only her grandfather, his brother, and a few cousins. The Pocono land had been given to her grandfather and was now in Sandy’s hands. On the Davis side, things were a bit more complicated.
Seeking to help provide for their children, and wanting to keep them close, her grandparents had offered each of their four children parcels of land on which all but her grandmother had built their homes. The land remained deeded to the parents. The terms of their will set up a winner-takes-all contest in which the last man (or woman) standing inherited the land. Two of the children had died years earlier, and in the end Nellie had outlived her beloved brother Arthur by just a few months, leaving the Davis property to Sandy as well.
On the real-estate market, nearly a thousand consecutive acres of farmland would fetch quite an asking price
, but that wasn’t what had the Davis descendants foaming at the mouth. Arthur had multiplied by four, and those by four, and now there were over fifty great-grandchildren in their twenties and thirties, some of them creating even more children. Divided, had Arthur outlived Nellie, the grand total wouldn’t have amounted to much for any one of them—perhaps thirty or forty thousand dollars each. A new variable had been thrown in, though, calling into question the true value of the land and the identity of the rightful heirs.
One of the husbands of one of the descendants of the House of Arthur had informed Sandy just a few days after Arthur’s death that his side was contesting the will. The swiftness of their action told Sandy that their plan had long been in the making. Their argument was simple: the intention of the will was always to keep the property whole, never to deny any of their children what was rightfully theirs. Now, the Arthurs weren’t debating the division of the land—they didn’t want the land—so the spirit of the will would be upheld. They wanted the mineral rights, which the will had never specifically addressed.
The value of soil in Northeastern Pennsylvania had skyrocked since it had been determined that gas trapped within the Marcellus Shale beneath it could be extracted by hydraulic fracturing. The process known as fracking was creating instant millionaires out of those who had been struggling farmers. And while it wasn’t known how much gas was beneath the Davis farm or what it was worth, the House of Arthur was taking no chances. They had lawyered up and were fighting for the right to drill for gas in the event there happened to be any there. Gas drilling would keep the parcel of land intact yet benefit all of the Davis descendants, and had they known about hydraulic fracturing in their lifetime (argued the House of Arthur), their great-great-grandparents would surely have split the mineral rights equitably among all of their children.
The filing of the lawsuit had forced Sandy to obtain legal counsel of her own. Fortunately, she was sleeping with a lawyer who was admitted to the bar in Pennsylvania. While it wasn’t her specialty, and Sandy knew she was going to have to find a representative with more expertise in wills and trusts and mineral rights, Pat offered sage advice to guide her through the preliminary battles of this war.
Sandy knew she needed to attend to another piece of unfinished business as well. The unpleasant responsibility of disposing of her grandmother’s effects rested on her shoulders. Wandering through the house, Sandy found it amazing that her grandmother had accumulated so little stuff in the time since Agnes. It was as though the loss of all material possessions—and her survival through it—had taught her how little value they held.
The clothing was donated, which was the easy part. There were documents that might be of importance, but then again how important could deeds and articles of incorporation from businesses started in the early 1900s really be? She figured she would keep the paperwork just for its historical importance. What to do with the rest of it? Furniture and appliances and artwork would need new homes. The fate of the house and the farm was in her hands.
Should she fight the Arthurs or just let them have the farm? She could walk away from this parcel, and they could hash it out while she enjoyed a cocktail on the deck of her cabin just a short drive away on the neighboring Parker land. It would be so easy! Her heart held no desire to fight them, and they had the biggest motivator of all on their side: money. Sandy didn’t need the money; she would be fighting for honor or justice or some theoretical ideal, or just to have more money. And deep down inside, she wasn’t so sure the House of Arthur was wrong.
A decisive woman of conviction, Sandy found this indecisive state unsettling. She wished she had the fortune of her grandmother’s wise counsel, but in the months preceding her death, Nellie hadn’t been in possession of the mental faculties that had been so keen in her younger days. In fact, her health at the end had been so poor that Sandy was certain Nellie would die first and she wouldn’t have had this headache to contend with.
She knew her grandmother didn’t really care what happened to the old homestead. Nellie had always lived a privileged life, yet her needs were simple. As easily as she attended balls with the governor, she cared for the sick, and she could enjoy a cocktail after a round of golf or a beer after working in the garden. Compared to the excitement she’d known in Nanticoke, Nellie lived an arguably boring life after the death of her husband. Yet she was happy on this farm where she was raised, and after her great losses, material things had ceased to matter to her.
Sandy once again found her grandmother’s lack of sentimentality at odds with her own feelings. Understanding over the past few weeks that Nellie’s end was near, Sandy had spent time thinking and decided that she didn’t want to empty the house until she’d determined the farm’s fate. There was no need to. She would leave the furniture and appliances and take the personal items such as jewelry and a few knickknacks, as well as the pictures.
After the flood, the greatest gift anyone gave either of them was pictures. They had lost all of them to the Susquehanna, but fortunately there were copies. As a child, Sandy always wondered why her grandmother bothered to send a picture of her to Aunt Claire and Uncle Bill in New York or to Uncle Arthur in Mount Pocono. Who really cared what she looked like in third grade? Fortunately, Nellie had done just that, and after the flood, Sandy understood why. The relatives had delivered so many treasures—her grandparents’ wedding photo and her father’s baptism portrait, pictures of him as a boy playing with his cousins. There was a photo Sandy had never seen, of her parents at their high-school prom. All the photos of Sandy’s mother had disappeared after she left Sandy on the Parkers’ doorstep, and Sandy knew virtually nothing about her, so the prom picture was a treasure. Having lost so much of her history in the flood, she was thrilled for the little pieces of her past, captured by the camera so she could preserve her memories long after she began to forget.
Now looking back, Sandy again felt so fortunate that these memories had been salvaged.
She walked through the farmhouse that had been her grandmother’s home, but never her own. Leaning against the door frame of what had once been her bedroom, Sandy stared across the room. Tucked into the frame of a mirror that had grown foggy with age was the only photo she had of Jeannie. It was taken at a photo booth at the Bloomsburg Fair, and the black-and-white images were a bit blurred, but even from across the room Sandy could see the big smiles on their faces. The photo had escaped the fate of her other possessions by sheer luck. Jeannie had stuck it as a bookmark into the paperback novel she had been reading and left it there. Sandy had borrowed the book from her in the days before the flood, intending to read it, and when they were packing she threw the book into her suitcase, thinking it would help her pass the time as she waited for the waters of the river to recede.
Sandy had found this hidden treasure in the book months later, when she finally had the energy to raise her arms and hold the book to read it. She’d been keeping it safe here ever since.
She surveyed the room. The furniture had been there before Sandy’s arrival and remained still. That had been a dark year and she’d done little to improve upon her barren quarters, and the room seemed almost the same as it was when she arrived, with only that one memory from her past added. The furniture was old and solid, just four pieces. There were no personal effects other than the picture, and if she decided to give up the farm, it would be easy to clear out this room. She could easily find one of Arthur’s grandchildren to take the furniture. Lord knew they’d take any handout she’d give them.
She walked back into the kitchen and poured herself a glass of iced tea, then got down to work. A few hours later, the honking of a car horn surprised her. The time had been well spent, and just about everything that would be donated was organized and ready to go—the trash cornered in one room and the personal effects packed for transfer to Sandy’s house. She walked to the window in time to see Pat climbing out of her Jeep.
“What’s the verdict?” Sandy asked by way of greeting.
A cocky grin spread across Pat’s face as she reached for her duffel. “In favor of yours truly.”
“Congratulations! Can I buy you a drink to celebrate?”
Dropping her bag at Sandy’s feet, Pat wrapped her arms around Sandy’s waist and placed a chaste kiss upon her cheek. “I can think of many ways to celebrate, but a drink’s a good start!”
Sandy encircled Pat’s waist and cringed, as she always did when she discovered Pat’s weapon. A former cop, Pat was never far from her gun. “I think you’re safe here in the mountains.”
“You never know. I might run into a bear.”
Smirking, she said, “You’re going to need a bigger gun, honey.”
Still dressed in a business suit, Pat had apparently made the trip directly from court. “You look very handsome. And formidable.” At nearly six feet tall, Pat was indeed a striking image, and Sandy knew she worked hard in the gym to maintain the firm body hidden beneath the tailored suit.
“Would you be terribly disappointed if I change into something more comfortable? I don’t want to intimidate you.”
Sandy roared, and it felt good.
“Come on, I’ll take you home.” She closed up the house and hopped into her car, leading Pat to her cabin just a few miles away.
Shortly before her birth, a fire had destroyed the Parkers’ Pocono home. They never rebuilt. Perhaps if their son hadn’t died so suddenly they would have come back to the mountains, but as it was, their life changed dramatically. Soon after David’s death they were given the responsibility of caring for his three-year-old little girl, and in their late forties at the time, it was an exhausting task. They settled Sandy into their home on Canal Street, and though they still traveled and enjoyed the local culture, their life didn’t include the outdoor activities they’d enjoyed in their younger days when they were raising their son.
When Sandy and her grandmother came to live with Arthur, he’d taken over their parents’ home. It was the original house on the property, and though quite grand in its day, it was showing its age. It had been Nellie’s childhood home, and she seemed to slip easily back into this farm life. Sandy, however, did not. Her final year of high school involved studying and playing basketball, and not much time at the farm. Just a short year after arriving there, she left for college, not giving her much time to grow attached to the place.