White Wind Blew

by James Markert

  “But then I showed up.”

  “You are not God.”

  Wolfgang stood up quickly. “And I don’t claim to be.”

  McVain shifted again on the bed, wincing. “I saw you the other night.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “You held a pillow too. You wanted him dead. What kept you from doing it?”

  “You know damn well…” Wolfgang turned away.

  “Exactly. So I had it done.”

  Chapter 35

  Sleep didn’t come that night.

  Wolfgang sat on the floor by the fireplace, the warmth of the flames against his back. Firelight cast shadows across the room while he dabbled with the violin. Shadowy figures danced along the far wall, wavering, floating, ducking in and out of the light. He sipped sacramental wine from a glass. Glimpses of Rose flashed across his mind’s eye. Every Valentine’s Day was the same. Her blood ran through his fingers onto the street, but he was helpless to stop it. He rocked her in his arms, but the blood continued to flow. The street had turned to chaos. What if I had not stopped to get her shoe? What if I had never let go of her hand? What if…

  He sipped more wine and pushed back the memories. He grabbed the envelope that enclosed the latest letter from Friar Christian and contemplated reading it, but he put it down without opening it. He knew what it said. The concert was less than twenty-four hours away. All his thoughts then funneled toward McVain. Could God forgive him?

  Wolfgang had prayed for Jesse’s death after Ray’s confession. He’d actually prayed for the Lord to take another man’s life. What McVain did…was Wolfgang any better? Had the Lord worked through McVain, the answer to Wolfgang’s own prayers?

  Wolfgang grabbed his coat and made his way up the hillside. He needed to see McVain’s face, though he had no notion of what to say. The woods were quiet except for his footsteps and heavy breathing, but by the time he’d entered the sanatorium he’d composed himself.

  On fourth-floor solarium Wolfgang was shocked to find McVain’s bed empty.

  “Doctor?” It was a woman’s voice. Nurse Cleary approached. “He’s gone.”

  Wolfgang pointed toward the empty bed. “Is he in the morgue?”

  “Not dead,” Nurse Cleary said. “Gone. Disappeared.”

  “How—”

  “I’ve been searching the floor for him.”

  “Father?” A man’s voice.

  Wolfgang ignored it. “How can a dying man just—”

  “Father?”

  Wolfgang’s eyes moved from the empty bed to the man. He didn’t know him. He was a new patient, brought in sometime during the night, and like most, he assumed Wolfgang was a priest. He had brown hair and a short beard. “The man who was in that bed—”

  “McVain,” Wolfgang said. “His name is McVain.”

  “He got up in the middle of the night…”

  Wolfgang’s heart jumped. “Where did he go?”

  “He couldn’t walk,” the man said. “He had something in his arms. He crawled on his hands and knees across the porch. I offered to help him, but he told me to get lost.” The man pointed across the solarium to the stairwell. “Went up them stairs.”

  Wolfgang sprinted to the stairwell. Spots of blood trailed up the steps. Wolfgang rubbed a spot with the tip of his boot and the blood spot smeared. It was fresh. On the rooftop, he saw nothing in the predawn darkness but the chairs set up. He checked over the wall; nothing lay in the shadows below. He turned around. From this angle, the piano’s silhouette looked awkward. McVain was slumped across the keyboard, unmoving.

  “No.”

  And then McVain blinked. Wolfgang let out his breath. Nurse Cleary rushed over. McVain lifted his head slightly from the keys. He clutched at some sheets of music on the piano’s rack. “Wolfgang.…”

  Wolfgang pursed his lips. He turned to Nurse Cleary. “See that he makes it back to bed.”

  Chapter 36

  Wolfgang’s fingers were shaking before he touched his feet to the floor. Instead of his vestments he dressed in a black suit and tie. His fingers settled slightly as he downed his morning coffee, pacing as he sipped, but the tremble resurfaced as he eyed Rose’s portrait leaning against the wall next to the fireplace.

  The couch was empty. He pictured his sick father stretched out on their couch so many years ago, pleading for Wolfgang to play. Wolfgang remembered fighting back tears and staring at the crucifix on the wall as he clumsily struck the keys.

  Someone knocked on his door. He immediately thought of Susannah and rushed to open it.

  Lincoln stood on the porch. “The volunteers are here with the chairs, Wolf. They’re beginning to set up.”

  “Thank you, Lincoln. I’ll be up in a few minutes.” He closed the door and inhaled deeply. He turned toward the middle of the floor and began moving his arms as if conducting. Only then did he realize the number of people who would be attending the performance—patients, family visitors, and staff—it would number in the hundreds. He took another deep breath and his focus returned to the empty couch again.

  He gathered all of his father’s string instruments and lined them up vertically on the couch, just as Charles Pike used to do, and then he headed up the hillside.

  ***

  Wolfgang found that if he kept himself busy, it helped calm his hands, so early on he’d insisted on helping with the hundreds of chairs. Lincoln had taken charge of setting up the front lawn. Lincoln wasn’t a musician and he couldn’t carry a tune, but he was helping the best way he knew how. He pointed toward one row of chairs as he talked to Nurse Beverly and then motioned toward another section and hollered to Nurse Marlene, who immediately responded by altering the rows near the back. Then he approached Wolfgang.

  “I’ve got it covered out here, Wolf.” Lincoln smiled proudly. “Go on in with your choir. Leave me to the mindless work.”

  ***

  Wolfgang did his rounds, he checked x-rays, he read charts, and he took temperatures—anything to convince himself that it was just a normal day. But nothing proved to calm his racing heart, which seemed to beat more rapidly as each hour ticked by on the clock.

  At one point, he looked out over the grounds from the third-floor solarium and spotted Dr. Barker talking to Lincoln. They spoke at length about something, and then Barker moved up the grassy slope toward the sanatorium. He stopped to straighten a row of chairs before moving on.

  ***

  In the afternoon he spotted Mary Sue Helman getting out of a black car with little Fred in her arms. She carried Fred in between the rows, rocking him and whispering in his ear. And then Lincoln approached, pushing Mary Sue’s husband, Frederick, in a wheelchair. Mary Sue’s smile was visible from Wolfgang’s spot on the solarium. She hurried to Frederick and kissed him. Frederick opened his arms, and Mary Sue placed Fred in his father’s embrace. After a few moments, Mary Sue took the baby back, and the three of them sat in the front row.

  A car rumbled nearby, the throttling engine becoming louder and louder. Wolfgang looked through the woods, and in between the trees he spotted the car climbing the road leading to Waverly. The car wasn’t alone. At least five more trailed behind it. The crowd was arriving.

  ***

  The chest pains started when he saw lines of Waverly’s ambulatory patients walking—some on their own and others aided by the staff—out to the rows of chairs facing the sanatorium. The sun was going down. The day had passed so quickly. Scattered torch lamps hung from posts around the rows of chairs. The lawn was beginning to glow.

  Wolfgang leaned down as another pain shot through his chest. His stomach felt empty. He hadn’t eaten a good meal in nearly three days, and his tongue craved the warmth of wine. Charles Pike would have never admitted it to his son, but Doris had told Wolfgang about the panic attacks his father had before auditioning for orchestras. Was this what he’d f
elt? Like someone was stabbing him in the heart with a dagger?

  Wolfgang had spoken to most of the choir members and musicians throughout the day, but only in passing. He had yet to speak to them as a group and suddenly realized he dreaded it. Seeing them early would have made him even more panicked. They were ready, of that Wolfgang felt certain. But was he? It seemed as if the day was progressing no matter what he did or didn’t do. What he’d set in motion so many weeks ago had taken on a life of its own. From his spot in the shadows of the fourth-floor solarium porch, he could see all the way down the hillside. He looked toward the colored hospital and noticed a meandering line of black patients making their way upward to sit with the white patients.

  He coughed and covered his mouth with a fist.

  And then he heard something—the sound of a piano. It traveled from the rooftop, carried by the wind. It slivered through the floor and reverberated off the walls. And then it stopped. Wolfgang began to pace, but he remained in the safe confines of the shadows. Moments later, he heard a violin tuning up. And then the clarinet. The choir was warming up too.

  Another chest pain struck him, nearly doubling him over.

  He heard Herman…then silence. Was the warm-up over?

  Even from one floor below, Wolfgang felt acute pangs of stage fright. Would the concert go well, or would they fail miserably? He closed his eyes and dreaded the worst, wondering how it had come to this, too scared to face a crowd he had assembled.

  Wolfgang opened his eyes only after he heard total silence from above. Were they waiting for him? Any minute the piano would start playing Mozart, the first piece on the list. It remained silent. He knew he had to go up, but he felt as if his feet had grown roots.

  Down below, all the seats were full.

  Wolfgang turned toward the sound of footsteps and looked up to find Dr. Barker wearing a suit and tie with no lab coat. Barker straightened his glasses, pointed toward the stairs in the distance, and grinned. “It’s showtime, Dr. Pike.”

  Wolfgang eyed him suspiciously. Was he only being kind because he’d forced Wolfgang’s hand and knew Wolfgang could be leaving Waverly in a matter of weeks? Or had his wife’s emergence changed his outlook so suddenly?

  Dr. Barker’s face grew serious. “You stood in my office weeks ago and told me that we lose one patient an hour here. I know it was an exaggeration, but I did the math. I checked the case files on the musicians. In the length of time you’ve had this choir, the sanatorium could have had a near turnover in patients. Yet not one”—he held up a finger—“not one patient from our choir has died.”

  Wolfgang felt numb. Dr. Barker was right.

  “It’s not a cure, but I believe your music is…helping,” Dr. Barker said. “That is not fate or coincidence, Dr. Pike.”

  Wolfgang stood straight.

  Dr. Barker started to turn but then stopped. “Come on. They’re waiting.”

  “Is that an order?”

  Dr. Barker didn’t smile. “Yes, Dr. Pike. That was an order.” And then he moved on.

  Wolfgang’s heart still raced, but it was at a pace he could handle. He took a few moments, breathing deeply. He heard music from above. But it wasn’t Mozart. Nor a piano. At first he might have mistaken it for the rumble of plumbing or even the bowels of the earth opening up. But it was the sound of a double bass. The deep droning of a bow pulled across tight strings shook his bones even through the floor.

  What were they playing? It sounded so familiar. Wolfgang’s ears perked. It was the opening measures of The Requiem Rose. But it wasn’t finished yet! It was just as he had imagined it sounding, but better. He could picture Rose’s coffin being lowered into the ground, the fog rising around his feet, the grass wet with so much dew, the air thick with moisture.

  Wolfgang moved along the fourth-floor solarium toward the stairwell. And then the violin sounded, softly, followed by the clarinet. In his mind, he turned the page of music to the next, following along, his body swaying to the rhythm, his arms beginning to move as if conducting. And then he heard Susannah’s voice. She was singing the introit. His pace increased. Her voice, infused with the Latin words, hovered with the wind and trickled below like a pleasant summer rainfall, soporific in its descent. She sang beautifully and with passion. And then her voice led into the sound of Rufus’s flute and Josef’s violin.

  Wolfgang ran, what Rose had referred to as his gallop. He thought of McVain as he reached the stairwell. That was what McVain had been doing last night on the rooftop. He’d crawled on his hands and knees up the stairs and across the terra-cotta to finish the requiem. But how did the musicians know it already? McVain must have met with them, secretly, perhaps individually, or in groups…but that didn’t matter now. The deed had been done.

  Wolfgang made it to the rooftop and looked down. The audience sat, poised, with smiles on their faces. A crescent moon hung like a glowing cat’s eye in the middle of the darkness. The sky was black and full of stars. The music would carry for miles. The lawn was packed with rows of patients on either side of a wide center aisle that cut down the knoll like a grassy road that would be trampled and worn by the end of the night.

  Wolfgang spun around the railing. A woman and a young boy sat ten feet away from the stairwell. She was young, with dark hair and piercing brown eyes. She wore a long red coat, a red bonnet, and black shoes. Beside her, in a suit and tie, a boy with fiery red hair turned to look at Wolfgang with eyes as green and ornery as McVain’s.

  For the first time Wolfgang faced the musicians. They had gathered about thirty feet away. The men were dressed in suits and ties and the women wore pink dresses. He didn’t know where the clothing had come from, only that they all looked stunning. He spotted Susannah in the middle of the choir, her solo completed. Now she was singing with the others. She looked beautiful in her pink dress with white lace. Her curly hair was gathered behind in a flowing plait.

  The musicians never broke stride as Wolfgang approached the podium. He picked up the baton beside his requiem’s score. McVain sat slumped over the piano keys, barely clinging to life, but yet clear, precise notes still rang out. He didn’t look at Wolfgang, but Rufus winked and Josef nodded as he played, the bow dancing with authority on his violin strings. And the double bass? It soared through the treetops. Dr. Barker stood behind Josef and Beverly with the weight of the instrument leaning against him. He drew his bow across the strings again, and a sound emerged from the instrument so deep that Wolfgang’s heart vibrated. Anne Barker stood with the choir, singing proudly.

  Wolfgang straightened his posture as if his father had been standing behind him and knocking his knees with a violin bow. He flipped through the score to catch up, clutched his baton, and began conducting them through the music of his orchestral Mass. Herman’s voice boomed over the soft ebb and flow of the violins. The big man stood ramrod straight, sweating, his hands clenched into fists although without the security of his fork.

  Near the end of the requiem, Wolfgang turned the page with a snap. It was time. This was the end. It began with a short passage of solo piano. McVain played it with passion and soul, pouring out his heart while his body, so recently put back together with stitches, continued to slouch lower and lower toward the keys. His forehead nearly rested on the music rack above the keys. Four hundred patients listened below. Torch flames lit their faces.

  As Wolfgang’s arms moved, he drifted back to the day of Rose’s burial again, her coffin resting in the wispy fog.

  He shook the thoughts away, checked the score on the podium, and nodded toward Josef. Josef delicately drew his bow over the violin strings and then held one high note for eternity, it seemed, before Rufus eased in with a smooth, relaxed whistle from his flute, the soft sounds of the two instruments intertwining, coiling like water meandering downstream, a trickle and a pull. Moments later, Dr. Barker lifted his bow to the double bass for a long passage that reverberated with its deep
, rumbling tone. McVain reclaimed the lead next with a piano interlude. Then the choir—the children and women first, followed by the deeper voices of the men, and finally Herman. Their voices carried far over the trees, hovering on unseen wings.

  And then the ending—a duo by McVain and Josef that left Wolfgang’s jaws trembling by the time the final cadence sounded. Wolfgang held on to that final chord, not wanting it to end but knowing it had to, his hands shaking by the time the requiem melted into silence. The crowd hushed. Wind rippled their clothing. McVain eased his hands from the piano keys. He looked at Wolfgang with his tired, reddened eyes.

  Wolfgang nodded.

  McVain nodded back.

  The crowd rose as one in a standing ovation. Wolfgang took a bow, his eyes panning the patients below, taking in the smiles, the warmth, the healing. He gripped the final pages tightly. He knew this handwriting. It had been McVain.

  “Perfect,” Wolfgang whispered. On the last page. At the bottom, McVain had written: For Rose.

  Rufus stepped forward and patted Wolfgang’s shoulder. “Welcome, maestro.”

  The musicians and choir all appeared eager to move on, to now tackle the concert Wolfgang had planned. The crowd below listened, and after each piece their applause invigorated the musicians and choir even more. McVain sweated profusely. His skin looked a waxy, pale shade of green in the moonlight. But he refused to stop playing. After Tchaikovsky, they played Mozart, Beethoven, and the final movement of Vivaldi’s Four Seasons. They took a brief intermission, where Wolfgang panned the crowd again in search of his mother, and after not finding her through several passes, they continued on with the concert with selections by Bach, Haydn, and Brahms.

  The patients applauded, but they weren’t the only members of the audience. Down Dixie Highway, hundreds of citizens had gathered along the street, their curiosity aroused by the music coming from the cursed castle atop the hillside. The Waverly wind, ushered in with beautiful harmony, moved their bangs and clipped their noses, but still they stood and listened.