She couldn’t speak English and he couldn’t speak French. They communicated with their eyes and with their hands, and when they finished eating they continued what had been started in the middle of the night. They made love to block out the sound of warfare in the distance, and he discovered every inch of her body. Under her left breast she had a small birthmark that looked like an apple. She giggled silently when he acted like he was playing the piano on her bare back.
The second night she pulled him from the bedroom and led him out into the street, where a mangy dog hurried by, chasing a squirrel. She took his hand and ran him across the street and into a stone church with heavy wood doors. It smelled of incense and candles even though it hadn’t been occupied for weeks. Their laughter echoed. She took him to the back of the church and lit a candle next to the altar. There in the shadows was a piano. She sat on the bench and played for him.
She wasn’t very good, but McVain could tell it helped to quell her fears, and the sound of the piano nearly brought tears to his eyes. She was an angel who had stolen him from the worst hell he could have imagined. He never knew why she’d stayed in town. He knew nothing about her, yet he knew enough to trust her. She patted the bench beside her and scooted over to give him room. He believed that God had answered his prayers.
At first his fingers were stiff against the keys, but they soon loosened and became familiar with the feel of them again. She was shocked at his talent, looking upon him as if he were some kind of guardian angel himself. She looked up to the arched ceiling and motioned the sign of the cross. They took breaks a few times to make love on the floor of the church as the mice watched from the corners. They drank more wine and ate until the bread was gone. He played for her much of the night and then they slept on the floor.
The next morning, the muted sunrays bled through a cracked stained-glass window. McVain awoke on the floor, slow-brained from the wine the night before. She was on the piano bench, half dressed and dabbling. No bombs sounded in the distance.
From the silence, he sensed trouble right away. He heard footsteps outside the church, and then the doors creaked open. In walked an American soldier named Cotton Meeks. Crazy son of a bitch from Mississippi. He walked up the center aisle with his eyes on McVain’s French girl. McVain watched from the floor, groggy.
Their division had been successful holding the bridge without McVain, and Meeks had returned to check out the town. He looked like a rabid scavenger. Must have heard the piano. Meeks spoke in his southern drawl, “So what do we have here? Some French cunny?”
She jumped from the bench and hurried to McVain on the floor. McVain had no idea where his gun was. He didn’t even have his pants on. Just his undershorts. Meeks pointed his gun right at McVain. “Well, if it ain’t the piano man. Missed you at the bridge.”
McVain’s hands shook as he raised them, pleading; Meeks was crazy enough to kill them both. Meeks liked to pick on McVain anyway, saying that he liked music more than bullets and that McVain had been drafted while Meeks had volunteered.
Meeks pulled the trigger, and McVain’s left hand exploded in a cloud of mist and bone.
Later, McVain opened his eyes to find Meeks’s buttocks in clear view. He’d bent the French girl over the altar and was pounding away at her with his pants around his ankles. McVain found his pistol on the floor. He stood quietly, his left hand a clotted mass of skin and bone. He approached Meeks from behind and pulled the trigger.
***
“We hid Meeks’s body in an alley behind the church,” McVain said. “Left him for the dogs. I got a medal for being wounded.” He held up his left hand. “The battle at Chateau-Thierry.”
“What happened to the girl?”
McVain wiped his nose. “Never saw her again.”
Wolfgang eyed the letter in McVain’s right hand. “That’s from her, isn’t it?”
McVain opened the envelope and pulled out a folded letter. “She’s been looking for me for years. But she didn’t even know my name. And I didn’t know hers.” He unfolded the letter to reveal a picture. “Amelie. She learned English.”
“Where is she now?”
“Here. In Louisville. She hunted me down. Wants to visit me.” McVain handed Wolfgang the picture. “It’s a few years old.”
Wolfgang took the black-and-white picture from McVain and stared at the dark-haired woman named Amelie. She was pretty, with shiny hair and sympathetic eyes. Standing in a light-colored dress that ended at the knees, her eyes dark, her face friendly, her stance one of shyness and insecurity. In the background was a small house, and behind it was a winding river spotted with trees and edged with farmland. Beside Amelie was a little boy, probably seven or eight years old. Wolfgang focused on the boy’s eyes. He wondered if his hair was red. In the face he looked like a young McVain.
McVain took the picture back and looked at it. “She thinks he’s mine.”
Or Meeks’s? No, thought Wolfgang, the resemblance was too uncanny. The boy had to be McVain’s. “Will you see her?” Wolfgang asked.
“If she comes. I don’t think I have many days left.”
Wolfgang stood slowly from the chair, his knees stiff.
“I made a choice at Chateau-Thierry,” McVain said. “I ran from the violence to avoid injuring my hands. If I’d gone to defend that bridge—”
“You could have been killed.”
“Or come back whole.” McVain studied Wolfgang. “Try living with that. Was that fate or coincidence, Doctor? Or was it a result of my actions? A punishment?”
“God doesn’t work that way.”
“You don’t really believe that, do you?”
Wolfgang looked down. “What do you believe?”
“At first I believed it was a punishment.”
“But now?”
“Now that I’ve ended up here—and met you—maybe I believe in fate.”
***
On Wolfgang’s way out he stopped by Jesse’s bed, where the boy snored annoyingly loud in the cool air. Wolfgang grabbed a spare pillow from a chair beside the bed and took a few steps toward Jesse. There were no others around. How easy it would be, Wolfgang thought. He gripped the pillow with both hands, squeezing and releasing repeatedly. Was this how his mother had felt?
Just let him die, like me, Ray had said.
“Let God play God,” Wolfgang muttered. He dropped the pillow and left the solarium.
That night, in his cottage, Wolfgang lit a fire. A letter from Saint Meinrad had arrived during the day. It was a short note from Friar Christian—all his notes had seemed to grow shorter over the years. Wolfgang sat next to the fireplace and read it.
February 7th, 1929
Dear Wolfgang,
As always it is a pleasure to hear from you, and I pray daily for the White Death to subside. I understand your intentions at the sanatorium as they relate to the Catholic Church, and I sympathize with your delicate situation, but what I initially hoped would be months of off-campus training has turned into over three years of absence. I fear that you have lost sight of your goals, and, I’m sorry to say, some of reality. I worry that the patients who call you Father truly mean it, and you can’t continue to allow that deceit, albeit unintentional, on your conscious.
The abbot has been contacted by the diocese and questioned, and I have been questioned as well. Please know that I have nothing but positive things to say about you. It has been several years since you left to be with Rose, but you continue to be one of my favorite students. Rest assured that I believe you to be doing God’s work as a doctor at Waverly, but a decision on the priesthood is long overdue. I pray for you now as I write this, and I will pray for the decision you have ahead of you.
Yours in Christ,
Friar Christian
Saint Meinrad, Abbey
Wolfgang folded the letter from Friar Christian and slid it back into the
envelope. He picked up the letter Dr. Barker had given him from the diocese and tossed it into the flames, where the edges quickly curled in the heat. He knelt beside his bed and folded his hands to heaven. “Bless me, Lord, for I, your humble servant and unworthy student, have sinned.”
Chapter 33
Wolfgang woke up shivering. His pillow was cold, his nose even colder, and his ears felt like ice. Susannah would not arrive for over an hour, but he could not fall back asleep, for the frigid air had slivered beneath the sheets and found his toes.
The windowpanes had frosted over during the night. He spotted the brown leather sack he’d left beneath the window. In it was all the cash he’d found inside his father’s instruments. He now knew exactly what he was going to do with the money.
He dressed quickly, grabbed his black bag of instruments, and sat on his couch like a statue. He waited for Susannah.
***
Forty minutes later he paced across the floor, the arch in his right foot throbbing. It was after seven. Susannah was never late. He hurried up the hill alone, his shoulders tucked into the headwind.
When he knocked on the door to the nurses’ dormitory, Nurse Marlene greeted him with a kind smile. “No hot water either, Father?”
Wolfgang noticed she was looking at his hair. He touched the top of his head with his hand and found several strands of hair sticking up. “Is Susannah in, Marlene?”
Nurse Marlene shook her head. “She left in the middle of the night.”
“Where did she go?”
“I assumed she went to…” She hesitated.
“Where?”
Marlene blushed. “Your house, Doctor.”
Wolfgang covered his embarrassment with anger. “Don’t be ridiculous.”
“Maybe she was working.”
Wolfgang left Nurse Marlene in the open doorway as he turned, fuming, up the hill to the sanatorium. Susannah never worked in the middle of the night. Perhaps she’d gone to visit Dr. Barker again? Wolfgang opened the door to the sanatorium lobby and dashed inside.
Dr. Barker stood there, as if waiting for his arrival, and then grabbed his arm. “Slow down.” He rubbed his forehead, as if lost for words. “I’m sorry, Doctor.”
“About what?”
“Third floor,” Dr. Barker said. “Room three-oh-seven. I admitted her in the middle of the night.”
Wolfgang’s face went slack. It couldn’t be. He sprinted up the stairwell, nearly knocking over several nurses and a new young doctor he’d yet to meet. He kept a hand on the brick wall to brace himself, hurdling the steps two and three at a time. Admitted last night? Patients he passed spoke out to him, but he didn’t stop to listen. None of them mattered now. Outside Room 307 was one bed. The woman on it was middle-aged with short blond hair and curious eyes.
“Doctor?” she said.
Wolfgang stepped past her bed and into Room 307, and there she was, resting beneath a thin sheet, on her back, her fingers laced together on her stomach, staring at the ceiling. Susannah leaned up from her pillow. “Wolf?”
Wolfgang hurried to her bedside, collapsed onto a wooden chair, and gripped her right hand. She didn’t look sick like the others. She looked tired, but no more than usual.
Her smile was kind, not frightened. “You had to have seen it coming.”
Wolfgang could only squeeze her hand.
“I’ve been coughing now for weeks. My temperature comes and goes.” Susannah moved her hand from his grip. Her fingers slithered away, weightless, like tethered ribbons. “I’ll still sing with the choir.”
“We’ve caught it early, then.”
“Much earlier than the rest of my family.” She spoke confidently, much like she would to another patient. “Barker met me here last night, Wolf. We ran tests. Both lungs are infected.” She stared at him for a moment, her eyes unwavering.
“Both?”
“Yes.”
“Dear God.”
“Abel doesn’t know.” This news would crush the boy. “Can you bring him here?” she asked. “I’d like to tell him myself.”
“Of course.” Wolfgang patted her hand. “Fresh air and rest. That’s what we prescribe here at Waverly Hills.” He pushed her bed out onto the solarium porch and parked her as close to the screen as possible, beside the blond woman he’d ignored on his way in. The patients were turning over too quickly. He couldn’t keep up. “How’s this?”
“Perfect.”
The longer he stared at her, the more frustrated he became.
“Wolf, remember that Rose was cured.”
“And look what happened.” Wolf looked away and started to walk off.
“The other night.” Susannah spoke softly so that no one could hear. Wolfgang froze, his back to Susannah. “It was wonderful. I pushed you away because I knew I was sick. That was the only reason, Wolf.”
Wolfgang nodded. Then another patient farther down the porch leaned forward, gasping and coughing, and he hurried away from Susannah.
***
Later, Wolfgang found a spot on the porch where shadow and wind kept patients away. He needed a small break. Suddenly he was furious. He cleared his eyes and walked up the stairs to the fourth-floor solarium, determined to confront Jesse Jacobs.
To Wolfgang’s surprise, Lincoln was standing next to Jesse’s bed with a gurney.
Lincoln looked at Wolfgang sadly. “I’m sorry, Wolf. I heard about Susannah.”
Wolfgang ignored him. Jesse’s face was pale, his lips parted but unmoving. His eyes were closed. His meaty right arm lay lifelessly off the table. Lincoln heaved Jesse onto the gurney. “He’s dead?” Wolfgang asked.
“Dr. Barker noticed him early this morning. Must have passed during the night.”
“How?”
Lincoln, his face still bruised from the attack in the chute, gave a slight chuckle and then quickly masked it. “Wolf, he had tuberculosis.”
“He wasn’t that sick.” Wolfgang paced beside the gurney, focusing on Jesse’s bloodless face. “He was due to Make the Walk soon.”
Lincoln started to push the gurney away.
“There’ll be an autopsy?”
“Not unless you do it,” Lincoln said. “No time, too many bodies, and we know how they died.” He eyed Wolfgang suspiciously. “I know you got to know him pretty well, Wolf, but what’s going on?”
Wolfgang pointed at Jesse’s body. “He killed Big Fifteen.”
Lincoln’s mouth opened. “How do you know?”
“I also know he wasn’t deathly ill last night.”
“Swift justice then.” Lincoln pushed the gurney past Wolfgang. “The Lord works in mysterious ways?”
***
Wolfgang stood in the darkened chapel. He knelt before the altar and stared at the crucifix on the wall—the stake pinning Christ’s feet to the wood, the stakes at his wrists and the crown of thorns upon his head. He spoke softly. “Last night I prayed for Jesse’s passing, and now he’s gone. My wish granted.” The candle flames flickered in the quiet chapel. “Something is granted, and then something is taken away. Is that how it works, Lord? Susannah is sick now.”
Nonsense, his mind cried. Mere coincidence. Just like when Rose was cured and then tragically died weeks after leaving Waverly Hills. Fate.
Or was this some kind of punishment?
Footsteps broke his concentration. He could tell by the footfalls that it wasn’t a woman. The nurses’ shoes had a different sound. These were hard shoes. Dr. Barker’s. He couldn’t turn to face him now.
The doctor sat a few rows behind Wolfgang. It was silent for a moment before Barker spoke in a hushed tone. “Will you hear my confession?”
Wolfgang didn’t turn around. “Yes.”
He could hear Dr. Barker’s nerves, the trembling in his voice. The rubbing of his dry hands sounded like sandpaper. “J
ealousy has blackened my heart.”
Wolfgang took a deep breath. His posture straightened as he continued to kneel. “Go on.”
More rubbing of the hands. A sniffle and a large exhale. “For months now…I’ve had improper thoughts…about another woman.” Dr. Barker exhaled again. “I love my wife. I love her more than anything.”
Wolfgang nodded, still gazing at the crucifix on the wall. “You’re forgiven. Go and sin no more, Doctor.”
He heard Dr. Barker stand. “The music has brightened Anne’s spirits…”
Wolfgang didn’t turn around until Dr. Barker’s footsteps faded.
***
Wolfgang left the sanatorium; he needed to be alone. Totally alone.
Inside his cottage, he slid to the floor, crying with his head in his hands. He’d been lied to his entire life and spent his infecting others with the same lies. Faith…what was faith? His faith was lying in a hospital bed a few hundred yards away, dying because she insisted on helping others live.
Daylight lit the floor where the piano used to stand, a rectangle striped with the grid of the window frame. Against the wall was a bottle of wine left from…he couldn’t remember. He popped the cork with his thumb, tilted, and swallowed three gulps.
He’d finished the bottle within minutes. He tossed it into the fireplace, where it shattered against the stones, and then made his way over to the closet and opened the doors. He yanked his vestments from their hangers and threw them to the floor. He kicked his Edison phonograph off the table and sent his cylinder records spinning across the floor like giant bubbles of quicksilver.
He reached inside the dark closet and pulled out a framed picture, a canvas painting that had hung over the fireplace in his home with Rose. He remembered how Rose had approached the artist to strike up a friendship. He’d asked to paint her and she’d agreed. In the painting Rose wore a yellow dress, the same one she’d had on the day she was killed. In her black hair was a rose. Wolfgang studied the curve of her full lips and the slenderness of her neck, her profile with her head turned slightly, facing the artist, curious and dignified. He loved this painting.
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