Wolfgang pulled the lapels of his robe together. “Do you hear the music?” He pointed down the hill where portions of the colored hospital were visible through the naked trees. “It’s a flute.”
Susannah folded her arms. “Someone’s been playing for an hour now. Come on. We’re going to be late. Get dressed. And please do something with that hair.”
***
Outside, near the tree line, the combination of wind and damp hair made Wolfgang’s skull feel like an icy ball, but his brain was full of optimism. The sound of the flute reminded him of Dr. Waters, and specifically what he’d said days before his death, something about never seeing where Wolfgang’s music would take him. Wolfgang’s pace quickened. Susannah had to hurry to keep up with him, and then suddenly Wolfgang stopped.
“What would you think if I formed an orchestra here?”
She looked up through the trees. “At Waverly?”
“We have a theater,” he said. “Why not a music program?”
“Anyone can pretend to act, Wolf, but unskilled music is just painful noise.”
“Maybe not a full orchestra…” He continued walking. “Never mind.”
“No, tell me.”
“What if I taught the patients to play? And sing?”
Susannah looked amused. “A choir and an orchestra, here? This isn’t Carnegie Hall. They’re too tired, Wolf. They lack the energy.”
“Not all. And some of them already know how,” he said.
Susannah sidestepped a narrow dip in the ground where water had collected in a puddle. “Is this because of McVain?”
“No.” He walked for a moment in silence, staring at his shoes, and then his chin popped up again. “But watching McVain last night, it sparked ideas.”
“I like the idea,” she said, “but Barker won’t.”
“At Saint Meinrad, the only instrument we had during Mass was the organ. All that room up in the choir lofts and only one organist. I convinced the monks to allow me to play the violin, and they allowed it.”
“But this is a hospital, Wolf, not an abbey.”
“A few months later another student volunteered to play the clarinet with us. And then another with the flute. Soon the choir loft was alive with music. I want to do the same here. I’ll handle Barker. I just need to get McVain.”
Big Fifteen made his way toward them, maneuvering his cart while he popped something into his mouth. He chewed. He passed right through the steam wafting up from his covered food, inhaling it as he angled the cart downward. “We got sausage this morning, Boss. Want one?”
Wolfgang waved. “I’ll wait, thank you.”
Susannah stepped away from them. “I’ll meet you inside.”
Wolfgang nodded and then approached Big Fifteen. “I heard music coming from the colored hospital this morning. A flute.”
Big Fifteen eyed Susannah as she reached the entrance portico and entered the sanatorium. “Heard it m’self, Boss.”
“Who is it?”
“New patient, I reckon. Group of ’em come in yesterday.”
“Could you get a name for me?”
“Sure could try.”
Wolfgang patted his shoulder, lifted the towel from the cart, and grabbed a piece of sausage. He half jogged up the lawn toward the sanatorium, crazy notions flirting with his mind.
Only eleven patients attended Wolfgang’s early Mass that morning, and he even found himself pushing his own heart to focus on the homily. He couldn’t get the flute out of his head.
***
After Mass, he was summoned to Dr. Barker’s office. Nurse Marlene, of all people, had been sent by Dr. Barker into the chapel to get Wolfgang. He’d managed to avoid looking directly at her when she’d spoken to him. Foolishly he’d stared at her white shoes and shapely calves, and then her bare knees just below the bottom of her skirt. Finally he turned away, as if something else had caught his attention. He’d thanked her and she’d moved on.
Wolfgang knocked on the large pane of frosted glass inside Dr. Barker’s office door. After knocking a third time, Barker invited him in.
Dr. Barker’s gaze remained on a set of files spread out atop his cluttered desk. A toothpick danced across his teeth. He looked up at Wolfgang and said nothing. He just sat there, gnawing on the toothpick. Then he said, “I warned you, Doctor.”
“Sir?”
Dr. Barker leaned forward. “I know what you did last night. You took a patient out of this hospital. A highly contagious patient. You deliberately—”
“I brought him back, sir.”
“This isn’t a joke.” He took the toothpick from his lips and tossed it into the trash can. “What kind of doctor acts this way?” He smirked. “Or is this the action of a priest? Deception?”
Wolfgang moved closer, placed his black bag of instruments on the corner of Dr. Barker’s desk, and sat down in a chair opposite Barker’s. “I’d call it more of a revelation. McVain’s speaking to me now.”
Dr. Barker pursed his lips, ran his hands through his hair, and sighed. “He’s been speaking to the rest of the patients for days now. They love him because he was in the war. It’s not as if you had a sudden breakthrough.”
Wolfgang remained silent.
“They need rest,” Dr. Barker said, his tone rising a bit. “They need fresh air. They don’t need to be walking through the woods in the middle of the night in the dead of winter.” He stood from his chair and leaned with splayed fingers on his desk. “You’re too friendly with the patients. Too lax with our rules.”
Wolfgang stood with him, eye to eye. “This isn’t a prison. And I’m searching for other options besides our medicine. I’m sorry if you don’t understand—”
“I understand music, Wolfgang.” Dr. Barker lifted Wolfgang’s bag of instruments and tossed them into Wolfgang’s lap. “Don’t tell me—”
“Then why do you keep fighting me?” Wolfgang leaned forward. “Henry believed in what I’m doing.”
“Henry is no longer with us.” Dr. Barker walked around his desk. “This disease is killing more people than we lost in Europe during the Great War. Five years ago Waverly Hills was a two-story wooden building. The overflow slept in tents. And now we have this grand place. But even still, half of our schools have vacant seats. Churches are empty.” He pointed out the window, in the vague direction of Louisville. “People are afraid to leave their homes. They think the white wind is going to come down and infect them. My wife is afraid to be around me.”
“Music can be contagious too. It—”
Barker rubbed his eyes impatiently. “Don’t speak to me of music, Wolfgang. Not until you can speak to me of a cure.”
“I’m closer to a cure than you, sir.” Wolfgang spun away and stepped out into the hallway, where he found Susannah, most assuredly listening to the entire conversation.
“I’m on my way upstairs,” she said softly because Barker’s door was still open.
“To check on Herman?”
“And the others.”
“I’m going with you.”
“It’s not necessary, Wolf.”
The bruise on her wrist was lurid in the morning light. “Yes, it is.”
***
At times, the wind on the rooftop was enough to knock over a well-balanced man. Wolfgang and his deformed foot managed to stay righted as he followed Susannah. His lab coat rippled in loud snaps. Susannah held on to her cap as she walked across the graveled roof and then onto the terra cotta tiles where most of the heliotherapy patients spent their time in the sun. Farther down the rooftop, inside the nurses’ station and bell tower, Herman’s bellow carried from the open windows of Room 502.
“I want my cakes! Give me my cakes!”
“I wonder what’s got him wound up.” Susannah approached a group of men lying on lounge chairs. Three of them, despite the th
irty-degree temperature, sat with their sleeves rolled up to their shoulders, their skin absorbing the sun’s rays, which, at the moment, remained hidden behind a cluster of puffy white clouds. The men looked up politely. A thin man with sunburned shoulders nodded toward Wolfgang. “Morning, Father.” He tipped an imaginary cap toward Susannah and smiled. “Miss.” Three of his front teeth were missing. Wolfgang studied how the men all looked at Susannah—she was clearly flattered.
The doctors prescribed sun treatment for TB of the glands, bones, joints, skin, eyes…there was really no stop to where the white death could spread after it entered the lungs. The heliotherapy patients spent nearly every sunny day on the roof, and when it rained, some were treated with radiation by means of mercury lamps. Today, the men were in the middle of a game of cards, but they were struggling to keep the cards and chips on the table.
“Little windy for cards, Geoffrey.” Wolfgang bent down, picked one up off the floor, and handed it to Geoffrey’s buddy, a chubby man with a sunburned forehead named Cletus Janks, who, for whatever reason, winked at Wolfgang before he began to shuffle the deck. The wink was followed by a nodding of his head in Susannah’s direction, as if the man was trying to tell him something.
Wolfgang glanced at Susannah.
Herman screamed again. “My cakes! Who stole my cakes?”
In the background, over the ornately capped rooftop wall, the treetops danced with the wind. Susannah and Wolfgang stepped into the shadows of the bell tower and opened the door to the nurses’ station. What had once been a sleeping station for the nurses now held a handful of mentally ill, and Herman was the worst of them all.
“Susannah!” Herman screamed as she entered, as if he could smell her. Nurse Rita sat pale and very still behind the main desk, her eyes frozen in a daze across the room toward 502. Wolfgang touched Rita’s shoulder. “Rita…Rita!” Nurse Rita didn’t respond.
“I hear the music!” Herman shouted from behind the closed door, locked in but not restrained.
Susannah turned toward her fellow nurse. “Rita…?”
Slowly Rita turned toward Susannah.
The two young nurses stood silently for a moment, one calm and unflappable, the other completely on edge, too frightened to even talk. “Are you okay, dear?” Susannah asked again.
Rita looked back at Room 502 but said nothing.
Wolfgang lifted the food tray from the counter, but Susannah snatched it from him. “I’ll get it.” She walked toward Herman’s room, balanced the tray on one knee, and unlocked the door. Wolfgang followed behind her. The room had two beds and a large screened window. It smelled of urine and feces. Herman sat naked on the floor, slapping his belly and hairy chest repeatedly with the palms of his hands, which appeared to be smeared with excrement. His clothes rested in a bundle at the foot of the bed. He stood, fully exposing himself to Wolfgang and Susannah. Wolfgang wanted to cover Susannah’s eyes, but she remained calm. Her eyes didn’t waver as she pointed at Herman. “It’s time to eat, Herman. Put your clothes on.”
Herman looked toward the door for a split second, just long enough for Wolfgang to catch a glimpse of his dark eyes; it reminded him a little of a rat he’d seen scurrying across his porch early in the fall. Herman’s tangled hair and scraggly beard hung down toward his hairy chest in one matted plait. Somewhere within was a mouth that, when he spoke, caused the entire hairy contraption to move.
“Can you hear the train coming? Rita can hear it.” Herman hunkered down again, moaning with his right hand between his legs, the flesh around his eyes turning red. “The train’s a-coming.” He moaned, stopped abruptly, and then slumped over toward his bed.
Susannah remained calm but finally did look away. The fact that she wasn’t completely unnerved by the entire episode interested Wolfgang in a way he couldn’t truly explain. Herman wiped his hands on his bed sheets, coughed, and spat at the window. Yellow phlegm dripped slowly down the screen, filling the tiny holes with pockets of his saliva. He sat up with his back against the pea-green wall and faced them, smiling.
Susannah had her stern face back on. “Clean yourself, Herman. And put your clothes on now. You’re going to wake up Benson.”
Something moved beneath the covers on the other bed, and a high-pitched voice emerged from the tangle. “Shut up…shut up…shut up…shut up…No, I cannot hear the train. I do not hear it coming down the tracks…I love my dog…I would never hurt him…her…hurt her…so shut up, Herman. Shut up—”
“I want cake for my birthday!” Herman screamed.
Maverly Simms joined in on the madness from Room 504, shouting as if in competition. “Maverly at Waverly. Maverly at Waverly. Maverly at Waverly…”
“It’s not your birthday, Herman,” said Susannah.
“When is his birthday?” Wolfgang asked. “And why do they never use the toilet? There’s a bathroom right over there.”
Benson stuck his bald head out from the covers and then quickly ducked back under. His words faded to a whisper. “Shut up…I let the dog out…shut up…”
“Maverly at Waverly…Maverly at Waverly…”
Herman was a huge man with a thick chest and a deep, powerful voice. His hands and feet were huge, probably second only to Big Fifteen’s on the entire hillside. Although fat hung in rolls beneath his droopy chest, he could easily pick up Susannah or Rita and throw her, or worse. Tuberculosis hadn’t seemed to deplete his strength.
Susannah stepped farther into the room with Herman’s tray of food. Wolfgang grabbed her arm. “What are you doing?”
“I’m taking him his food.”
“Just leave it there on the floor.”
“He won’t eat it unless I bring it to him.” Susannah carried the tray to the bed and placed it where the covers weren’t rumpled. Herman’s beady eyes watched her like a jackal. She kicked his clothes toward him. “Get cleaned up and get dressed, Herman. Don’t disgrace yourself.”
“No one listens.”
Susannah moved toward the door. “I listen plenty, Herman.”
“But you don’t hear me.” Herman looked directly at Wolfgang. “I’m like you, Father. I have secrets.” A laugh emerged from Herman’s mass of hair and lips.
What odd words. Wolfgang turned away from Room 502, wondering what Herman could have meant. When the other patients called Wolfgang “Father,” he never minded, but hearing Herman utter the word made his skin crawl. When Wolfgang looked back over his shoulder before exiting the nurses’ station, Rita’s eyes were following him.
***
The cafeteria at dinnertime echoed with the sound of silverware clanking off plates piled high with meatloaf, mashed potatoes, and green beans. Wolfgang sat with Susannah, Abel, and Lincoln at a table near the back of the cafeteria, where most of the staff preferred to eat. Fifty tables with six chairs per table, but easily expandable to over four hundred seats if needed. A quarter of the chairs were occupied by patients mobile enough to be there, and the rest were currently empty. The staff was supposed to eat during the downtime. The cafeteria was a picture of cleanliness, white and bright and optimistic. The walls were decorated with paintings and drawings made by the patients during workshop and occupational therapy. Proper diet was essential to beating tuberculosis, and when the current building was completed in October 1926, they’d designed the cafeteria to be as welcoming as possible. It was open at all times, and more than two thousand meals were served daily. In an average meal, the cooks went through 140 pounds of bacon, one hundred dozen eggs, thirty pounds of cottage cheese, thirty gallons of ice cream, 140 pounds of ground beef, and 190 pounds of liver.
Abel attacked his food as if he hadn’t eaten in days. Susannah watched him proudly, knowing that a healthy appetite often meant improved health. His exuberance was starting to show more every day. His color was better. If only the adults had the same success rate as the children, Wolfgang thought. One day it would happ
en.
Between bites of meatloaf, Lincoln puckered his face and furrowed his brow in a crude imitation of their boss. “Stop wasting your time on tunes, Wolfgang.”
Susannah laughed and then gave Abel a quick glance. He laughed as well. Dr. Barker had yelled at Abel a few times in the past for being up too late.
Lincoln ratcheted it up a notch. “I bet his wife is a stiff too.”
“She’s a nice woman,” said Susannah. “They’re in a rough patch, though.”
Lincoln took a bite of potatoes. “Shocking.”
“Barker is a decent man,” Wolfgang said. “He has a stressful job here.”
“He took my bird. It’s my job to get the birds.” Lincoln put his fork down and wiped his mouth with a napkin. He looked over his shoulder and then leaned forward over the table toward Susannah. “Brought some hooch up the chute.”
Susannah rolled her eyes. “How on earth do you get this whiskey?”
“I got my ways.”
“That he does,” said Wolfgang. “He got roses to bloom in the dead of winter.”
“But don’t tell Barker, Susannah,” Lincoln said. “He doesn’t know we borrowed his stuff.”
“You scare me, Lincoln.” Susannah leaned back in her chair and folded her arms. “Somehow, Prohibition doesn’t affect you, and I don’t care to know the reason why.”
“Prohibition doesn’t affect you either, does it, Father?” Lincoln winked at Wolfgang. “I got plenty of ciggies too.”
Abel put on a miniature man-of-the-world face. “That’s not illegal.”
“That’s all we need,” Wolfgang said. “One of our staff smoking in a TB hospital.”
“What’s that got to do with anything?” asked Lincoln.
“Wolf thinks those cigarettes you smoke kill your lungs,” Susannah said.
Lincoln waved a hand at them. “Horsefeathers.” He leaned forward with his elbows on the table. “I heard Al Capone and some of his gangster friends frequent the Seelbach downtown. They’ve been pushed out of Chicago, so they do their bootlegging down here. Chicago of the South.”
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