White Wind Blew

by James Markert

Wolfgang smiled. “Surely, you’re joking?”

  “Go look for yourself,” she said. “McVain was playing cards with them when Barker arrived this morning.”

  “And how did that go?”

  “He didn’t show it in front of the patients, but he was irate.” She prodded him with her finger on his chest. “He blames you, of course. Said McVain is your patient.”

  “My patient? He barely speaks to me.”

  “Well, I just spent the past hour rolling the women back to their floors.”

  “How did the women get up there?”

  Susannah shrugged. “They wouldn’t say.”

  “Who wouldn’t say?”

  “McVain,” she said. “The women just said they all woke up on the fourth floor.”

  “I’m sure that’s half the truth,” Wolfgang muttered. He went right up to the fourth floor to see McVain and found him standing on the solarium porch, his face inches from the screen. Down below, an orderly chased two pigs across the lawn.

  “Fool. Can’t keep a pig in its pen.” McVain sat down on his bed with a dramatic sigh. “What do you want, Amadeus?”

  “How did you do it?”

  “Do what?”

  “How did you get the women up here during the night, McVain? There’s no way you could have physically rolled all of those beds.”

  “I’m very persuasive.”

  “Evidently.”

  “Am I in trouble, Your Holy Fatherness?”

  “Not from me, but possibly from—”

  “Don’t start spouting God on—”

  “From Barker, McVain. Personally, I thought it was clever. I’m more curious than anything else.”

  “Well, I ain’t talking.” He rested back on his bed and winked. “Might want to try it again. There are actually some lovely broads in this hellhole.”

  “This is the nicest sanatorium in the country, McVain.” Wolfgang motioned out toward the woods. “It’s new. It’s clean. Look at those trees. Smell the air. What you see as a hellhole, I see as beauty.” Wolfgang opened his bag, pulled out a bundle of paper, hesitated, then handed it to McVain.

  “What’s this?”

  “The requiem I’m writing.”

  McVain flipped through it carelessly and then tossed it on a chair beside the bed. He rested his head on his pillow. “I’m tired and nauseous.”

  “I’ve got a surprise for you tonight.”

  “Sending me home?”

  “No, but it should keep us both out of trouble.”

  McVain closed his eyes. “Can’t wait.”

  ***

  By mid-afternoon the sun ducked behind the clouds and the temperature dropped several degrees. Wolfgang’s hands turned numb while he searched the hillside for Big Fifteen, and after twenty minutes of wandering about, he spotted him playing with a group of kids outside the children’s pavilion. The children of Waverly loved Big Fifteen. He’d lost valuable years of his childhood in a hospital bed because of tuberculosis, so he claimed he had time to make up. Rarely a day went by that Big Fifteen couldn’t be found in his time off playing—at the colored hospital or the main playground outside the children’s pavilion—throwing a ball or pushing the children on the swings. The current game was one they called “Airplane.” Big Fifteen ran across the lawn holding Abel high above his head. Abel was stiff with his arms out like airplane wings.

  “Dat’s it,” Big Fifteen told Abel above him. “Hold out those arms! Breathe in dat good air!”

  Wolfgang watched from the line of trees, proud.

  In the fall, Big Fifteen dressed up as a scarecrow and took the kids—the ones who were healthy enough—on hay rides around the Waverly Hills property. He was the Easter Bunny in the spring, the Tooth Fairy all year round, and at Christmas, he was the big black Santa Claus.

  Big Fifteen spotted Wolfgang watching them. He slowed to a walk and lowered Abel to the ground. Abel ran toward four other boys who’d been watching, and they all slapped low fives.

  Wolfgang shook Big Fifteen’s hand. “Thank you, Fifteen, for playing with all the children.”

  Big Fifteen nodded. “The color of the child makes me no never mind, Boss. They all smile the same, don’t they?”

  “Yes, they sure do.” A deer sprinted through the growth and then jumped over a small ditch and out of sight. “Come join us for lunch, Fifteen.”

  Big Fifteen’s eyes grew large. “Probably shouldn’t, Boss.”

  “Nonsense.” Wolfgang waved him along. “I need your help with something tonight. You’re the strongest man I know. And you know every undulation of this hillside.”

  Big Fifteen followed Wolfgang into the cafeteria and nodded sheepishly toward the scattered tables, where nearly a hundred patients currently dined, although the room held twice as many. Some offered kind smiles, but others, Wolfgang could tell, wondered what the big black man was doing there. “Ignore them,” Wolfgang said. Big Fifteen sat beside Lincoln, who wore a pin-striped fedora that Wolfgang had never seen before. Wolfgang and Susannah sat across the table from them. They listened intently as Wolfgang revealed his plan. Susannah rolled her eyes throughout.

  Lincoln leaned over the table. “Sounds fun. Count me in. Your place. Midnight.”

  “Me too, Boss.”

  Dr. Barker walked by their table and eyed Big Fifteen. “Lincoln. Room two-eighteen needs prepped.” He gave Wolfgang an extra-long glare and moved on.

  Lincoln got up from the table, and Big Fifteen took that as his cue to leave as well.

  Lincoln tipped his hat. “You like it?”

  “It’s McVain’s, isn’t it?”

  “Was. He gave it to me,” Lincoln said proudly.

  “For doing his dirty work, I’m sure.”

  “Makes me look like a gangster, doesn’t it?” Lincoln and Big Fifteen moved on.

  After they’d gone, Susannah spoke up. “Moving the piano, Wolf? Really?” She dropped her ham sandwich to her plate, having eaten only two bites from it. “It’s a foolish idea. And I’m not giving you last rites if you die.”

  Wolfgang grinned. “You haven’t eaten much.”

  “I don’t have much of an appetite.”

  Wolfgang watched her. “Don’t worry, we’ll have plenty of muscle.”

  She looked away. “How much can you lift on that foot of yours?”

  Wolfgang sipped his vegetable soup. “Did you read Rita’s note? Lincoln was asking.”

  “Lincoln? Why does he want to know?”

  “I think he was sweet on her, is all.”

  Susannah wiped her mouth with a napkin. “I read it this morning. She was depressed. She felt suicide was the only way out.”

  “It seems…”

  “What?” she snapped.

  “A bit selfish.” Wolfgang wished he hadn’t finished his thought. He was out of practice reading women’s moods. “All these people here, dying. Sick people fighting until the end, freezing on the porches at night in hopes of getting well.”

  “I forgot,” she said. “You’re a man of the cloth. What she did was a mortal sin. Completely unforgivable.”

  “Susannah—”

  “She felt trapped, Wolf.”

  “We all do at times.”

  She dropped her napkin. “Then why do you stay?”

  Wolfgang looked away. “I’m needed here.”

  “Of course you are, but there’s more to it than that.”

  “Like what?”

  Susannah rubbed her eyes and sighed deeply. “Rita was pregnant.”

  Wolfgang’s heart thudded in his chest.

  “She was afraid,” Susannah said. “Having a baby on her own. And afraid for its health. She made a terrible mistake, but don’t condemn the poor girl.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  Susannah folded her napkin and
then unfolded it. Folded it, unfolded it.

  “Was Lincoln the father?” Wolfgang asked.

  Susannah pondered it, then let out a breath. “We’ll never know that, will we?”

  “No, I guess we won’t.”

  “Lincoln doesn’t need to know what was in the letter, Wolf.”

  He nodded. “You feel trapped here too, don’t you?”

  Susannah glanced to her side, where Wolfgang ran his spoon through his soup. She chuckled sarcastically. “One day I’ll get married and have a family. With a washer and a refrigerator and a Model T in the driveway.”

  “What’s stopping you?”

  “What a stupid question. How am I supposed to find a husband here, on this hillside, surrounded by death?”

  “Well, why do you stay?”

  Susannah stood up, waited for a nurse to pass, and then stepped closer. “All you do is spend time at that piano, writing something you’ll never finish. I’m sorry about your father—and for Rose. But all your life you’ve been searching for an answer you won’t get until you die. I’ll give you the answer, Wolf. No one knows what happens when we die. That’s the answer. Running to the priesthood won’t get you closer to the truth.”

  Wolfgang’s mouth dropped open. What happened since last night? “Have I said something to upset you?”

  “Everything about you is stuck in the past, Wolf.” She started to walk away but stopped to look over her shoulder. “Do be careful tonight.”

  ***

  “Mother, where do we go when we die?”

  It was the first question Wolfgang had asked his mother after his father’s funeral. They sat at the kitchen table eating bread with butter.

  She looked up, surprised. “We go to heaven.” She took a bite of her bread and wiped a spot of butter from the corner of her mouth. “To live with the Lord.”

  “So Father is in heaven?”

  “Yes.”

  She was always so confident with her answers. So sure of it all. For so many years, her confidence and her warm embrace—the smell of her nightgown—had been the welcome respite from his father’s moods. But not anymore. Since the funeral, his shoulder pushed her away until eventually she treated him in kind. The house became a cold place where they did nothing more than sleep and eat.

  Wolfgang played his music, not because she asked him to, but because his father would have wanted him to. He prayed to God, not because she wanted him to, but because God and music were his only friends. He cut the grass and did the chores because he was taking his father’s place in the household. He attended church but sat next to her in silence and refused to discuss the readings with her afterward. Ever since the Lord had failed to heal his father in time, there had been a disconnect between Wolfgang and his parents’ church, and he didn’t know how to explain that to his mother. Nor did he feel like trying. But it had something to do with how Minister Ford had said at the funeral, “The good Lord has called one of his sons home early…and now Charles Pike sleeps with the angels.” Something about the way he’d said it made Wolfgang feel sad, and the sadness came back every time he entered the Light of Christ Church with his mother.

  Wolfgang watched her chew the bread. “Can Father hear me when I talk to him at night? Even if I talk to him in my head?”

  “He hears you, Wolfgang.”

  “Then how come he never answers?”

  He saw the hesitation. For a moment, she was baffled. “He answers you, Wolfgang.” She’d attempted to touch his hand, but he pulled it away. “He hears you in ways that we just can’t understand.”

  ***

  That night, Wolfgang rushed to answer the knocking at his door. It was midnight. Right on time. Lincoln and Big Fifteen hurried inside and quickly closed the door. “Did anyone see you?”

  Lincoln moved to the left side of the piano. “Relax, it’s not like we’re stealing anything.” He squatted, lifted the side of the piano a few inches off the floor, and then dropped it with a clang.

  “Careful,” said Wolfgang.

  Lincoln straightened his gangster fedora. “This baby’s heavier than I thought.”

  “Will you take that silly hat off?”

  “Can’t.” Lincoln flexed. “Gives me strength.”

  “Good,” said Wolfgang. “You doing okay?”

  “Yes, why? Do I look like I’m not?”

  Big Fifteen took the other side of the piano. “Ready, Boss? I gots to get up b’fore the sun does.” He hunkered down, laced his thick fingers beneath the wood of the piano bottom, and lifted his end with an ease that challenged Lincoln to roll up his sleeves and try again.

  Lincoln grunted. “You are twice my size. You know that, Hercules?”

  Lincoln and Wolfgang lifted the left side while Big Fifteen handled the right, and together they walked it out the door with shuffled, strained steps. They put it down on the porch and stared up the wooded hillside.

  “This is crazy.” Lincoln leaned on the piano. An owl hooted. “What was that?”

  “A dog.” Big Fifteen looked at Wolfgang. “Or maybe a wolf.”

  “It was an owl.” Wolfgang urged them onward. For the next fifteen minutes they sidestepped, duck-walked, backpedaled, squatted, cursed, and nearly toppled in a heap as they carried the piano through the woods. Wolfgang started to think he’d set up an insurmountable task, one that would more than likely have them leaving the piano for the forest animals to play on.

  They took a brief sit-down in the middle of the woods as the breeze blew the tree limbs into a rickety song above their heads. Lincoln breathed heavily, lounging on the ground with his back against the sappy bark of a pine tree, complaining about the temperature and his aching fingers. Big Fifteen seemed ready to move again. He cleared sweat from his forehead and pushed out plumes of air.

  Lincoln mumbled from the ground. “Work smarter, not harder. Smarter, not harder. Smarter—”

  Wolfgang stared him down. “That your motto?”

  “Smarter, not harder.” Lincoln straightened his hat and popped up with a sudden burst of energy. “The chute!”

  Big Fifteen leaned against the back of the piano. The front left wheel was bent. Something groaned inside. “He got a point, Boss.”

  So they started back down the hill, and the task proved more strenuous than going uphill because of how they had to angle their backs and shuffle their steps. Big Fifteen did the bulk of the backpedaling downward and was sweating so profusely that Wolfgang feared for his health. He never complained, though, unlike Lincoln, whom Wolfgang would have liked to fit for a muzzle. At the bottom of the hill, near the opening of the chute, they rested again as a train rumbled past, shaking the piano. After the train vanished and the piano stopped vibrating, Lincoln stared across the dewy grass that sloped toward Dixie Highway. A fuzzy light approached, about forty yards away, bouncing about five feet off the ground.

  “What is that?” asked Lincoln.

  “A lantern.” Wolfgang squinted. “And it looks like a horse.”

  “Shit.” Lincoln hurried to open the doors at the bottom of the chute and then took his place at the piano. “Hurry. Into the chute. It’s a policeman.”

  Big Fifteen hoisted his side of the piano and Wolfgang did likewise. They practically ran the piano into the chute, and Lincoln quickly closed the doors. Moments later they heard the clip-clopping of horse hooves over the hardened ground next to the train tracks. An orange glow penetrated the cracks around the chute’s doors.

  They all waited, quietly.

  “Lincoln,” whispered Wolfgang. “Why would the police be sniffing around the hillside?”

  Lincoln shushed him. Outside, the horse neighed and paced, and then moments later it moved on. The glow around the doors vanished.

  “Did I go blind?” asked Big Fifteen.

  “Give it a minute,” Lincoln said. “Eyes will adjust.�
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  A minute later Wolfgang could see them both, as well as the piano and the bottom of the winch system. Thirty yards ahead, moonlight shone down through an air vent.

  “Lincoln…the police?”

  “Might have heard rumors, is all,” said Lincoln.

  “What kind of rumors?”

  “Bootlegging.”

  “Bootlegging,” Wolfgang said, flabbergasted. “That’s just great, Lincoln. Why don’t you just have the police help us get the piano up there?”

  “Don’t worry.” Lincoln tapped the piano top. “They’re Prohibition sharks. They get tipped off by someone, they’re required to check it out. They’ll circle and move on. TB is like a ring of fire around this place.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “They’ll sniff, but they won’t get closer than that.”

  “And you know about this how?”

  “They’re been sniffing on and off for years.”

  “Let me guess,” said Big Fifteen. “Ever since you been here?”

  Lincoln scratched his head. “That’s about right.”

  In total, it took them nearly three hours to get the piano from Wolfgang’s cottage to the sanatorium, but for the final leg of the journey, the winch system worked like a charm. Lincoln was especially happy to use the chute for what it had initially been designed, as a supply tunnel, instead of a slide for dead bodies. Big Fifteen had braced himself behind the piano as it ascended the chute, holding it in place in case it decided to shift or slide backward. Lincoln and Wolfgang followed beside it on the elongated steps as the system pulled the piano upward. By the time they entered the north wing of the first floor, they were all near collapse, even Big Fifteen.

  Wolfgang’s finger joints ached. His legs were sore. His wrists were scraped and his back had begun to tighten up. Lincoln was on the floor in the middle of the hallway, on his back, cursing under his breath. Big Fifteen sweated profusely as he leaned against the piano but appeared ready to move on.

  Lincoln looked up from the floor. “I hate you for this.”

  “He don’t mean that, Boss. He smilin’ when he say it.” Big Fifteen started pushing the piano down the hallway, broken wheel and all.

  “No, I meant it.” Lincoln walked beside Wolfgang, pushing along with them.