Maggie stepped down from the train and, having no luggage to carry, set off in haste. For the length of the train ride back to Johnstown she had thought only of Jake and how she would find him. It had happened so fast that she couldn't be sure. She could only hope and search.
She went to the registry, but his name was not there. She banished disappointed thoughts and forced herself to believe that he had not had a chance to sign the list yet. But he would have arrived here by now.
The day wore on as methodically she went from one place to the next. By the time Maggie walked out of the last hospital, she had been to the Catholic Church, the remains of the O'Neill house, the morgues and the relief stations. She had walked through communities of lean-to shanties that had sprung up since the flood had abated.
She saw library patrons and friends from church. She talked to men who had worked with Jake. No one had seen him. No one could help her. They had children to feed, lives to salvage, and little to offer but simply spoken sorrow. With each shake of the head and each negative answer, her doubts festered until she began to wonder if she had seen him at all. The train had passed by so quickly. She'd caught only a glimpse. It could have been someone who merely resembled Jake. Had she wanted to see him so much that she had imagined him? If only she could imagine him now. All around her were people who had lost their loved ones. What made her think she should be more fortunate? What had she ever done to deserve such a blessing?
The afternoon sun hovered on the horizon. All feelings of comfort and safety must have dwelt within the walls that were no longer standing, for her loneliness seemed as vast and unimpeded as the landscape around her. Only the mountains remained to wall in her grief.
The sun was halfway behind the mountain. Before her was a pile of bricks and mud-caked books, and her heart sank. She approached the closest thing to home that still remained. In the crumbled shell of the library building, she knelt to touch the spine of a book. The leather and leaves were soaked in mud and stuck together. As she rubbed away mud from the pages of the book, at last the tears came. Eyes that had been dry for days were finally washed with tears that, once begun, could not be stopped. She sank to her knees and wept. She wept for the sights and sounds that haunted her dreams, and she wept for the dreams that lay dead in her heart.
Chapter 28
Lost without Maggie, Jake wandered along planks and piles of bricks and splintered wood, and looked for memories. He tried to recall her that day in the library, how her hair felt so soft and her skin was so warm. How he'd wanted to taste her and feel her beneath him. They made love behind the library desk. Reckless and laughing, they owned the world in the way only lovers do. Then the laughter dissolved as they lay in each other's arms and vowed to be together always. Always turned out to be days.
Someone was crying. It had become too familiar a sound. But it hindered his thoughts, the unwelcome intruder. He had no more room for sorrow. He turned and started to walk away, but the weeping went with him. He looked back through the smoky dusk and regarded the woman who wept alone softly. Wrapped in a thin paisley shawl she looked forlorn. This was no place to be with night falling and no streetlights to light her way home over unsteady debris. There were hazards about. Who could say whether strangers lurked near, or which souls half mad with grief might do her harm? He could not leave her here. He had to help her back to one of the camps.
He walked back toward the woman and circled around to face her, staying far enough away so he would not frighten her. She lifted her head from her hands and Jake stopped. His voice caught in his throat. "Maggie?"
A thin cry escaped as she tried to stand, and faltered.
Jake ran and caught her with one arm around her waist. "Maggie."
She threw her arms about him and held him so tightly his broken ribs hurt, but he did not care.
When she heard an involuntary moan, she said, "Are you hurt?"
"Just my ribs. It's nothing."
With a sympathetic look for his ribs, she let go and instead held his face in her trembling hands. She tried not to cry, but failed.
He pulled her forehead to his lips and kissed her skin and hair and held her again.
"Maggie." He could not hold her close enough, or feel enough of her warmth against him.
She clung and spoke softly into his neck. "I've imagined you so many times, I was afraid I'd conjured you."
"I'm here, darlin'."
For a long time they held one other, unwilling to let go. They were together again, but the darkness was falling. They had to find shelter and safety for the night. Jake took Maggie's hand and the two walked toward the closest shelter.
"Oh Jake, I'm so ashamed," she whispered.
"Of what?"
"So many are gone. Lives have been ruined. But all I could think of was my fear."
"Maggie, darlin'--"
"I was afraid to be lonely."
He held her closer. "I know."
Jake stopped walking and pulled Maggie close to him. Amid the shattered walls of ruined homes. Together they stood.
"Listen," said Maggie.
"What is it?"
"Shh. Listen."
Then Jake heard it, too. "What is it, a dog?"
Maggie stood and turned her ear toward the noise. She took a few steps.
"No."
Beneath the arched remains of a roof a young boy crouched and wept. Maggie reached in and coaxed him out. His body was unharmed but for some bruises and scrapes.
She crouched down to his height and held his shoulders. "What are you doing out here all alone?" When he did not answer, she reached out to brush his hair back from his forehead, and he flung himself into her arms. Maggie rocked him and held him until he relaxed in her arms. He could not have been older than four. For days he had lived out here, scrounging for food, with no family or friends.
On the way to the Registry office, they coaxed a name from him.
"Will," he told them.
Maggie looked at Jake.
Jake smiled at the boy and said, "Will's a good name."
"It's a very good name," said Maggie.
Jake and Maggie went to the Registry and added little Will's name, along with Jake's. The boy's parents were not on the list.
Maggie knelt down and held the child's face in her hands. He looked at her with big, empty eyes from which no tears would fall. "We'll keep looking." She put her arms around him and held him.
Jake went down the list one last time.
"Maggie!" Jake pointed to the list.
"Beth and Robin" she nodded. "I've seen their names there, but I've looked everywhere and no one has seen them. I left word for them. But I'm afraid it might have been some sort of horrible mistake.
"They'll turn up," Jake said, though he had doubts.
Jake and Maggie worked long hours at the relief station that had been set up at the Pennsylvania Railroad Depot. Jake's arm was now in a plaster cast, and his ribs were still bandaged. He should have been resting, but he insisted on doing something. He was useless for the heavy hauling, but he could at least hand out food and clothing.
Young Will was an eager and happy assistant, for they had found his mother at the hospital. Until she recovered from her injuries, Jake and Maggie were pleased to care for him. The yard was filled with boxes and crates of bread, crackers, clothing and blankets. Policemen kept order among the sometimes desperate and frantic people. After three days, Maggie was efficient at her duties, but wearing down. The town's tragic state was sinking into the minds and hearts of the people as they faced the daunting task of rebuilding their hometown. Toward the end of an exhausting afternoon, Maggie was handing out loaves of bread, when she glanced out into the crowd and froze. She clutched for Jake's arm as he walked by. Before he could turn, Maggie let go and walked into the crowd, first tentatively, then frantically pushing her way through. With a sob, she threw her arms about Beth and knelt to hold Robin. Jake joined them soon after. They were a family.
The minister stood h
is ground and said, "No." He looked at Maggie and Jake with unyielding resolve. "You cannot be married in the church."
"We don't need the church building. You could marry us outside," said Maggie.
"Not to a Catholic. You're unequally yoked."
"But we love each other. How can you--"
"Maggie." Jake put his hand on her arm. They had already heard this from the Catholic priest.
When she made no move to leave, the minister said, "I will not perform a mixed marriage."
Jake leaned closer to Maggie and quietly said, "C'mon, let's go."
Maggie stared pleadingly at the reverend, searching for reason or logic. He turned and shuffled some books and papers on his desk.
They closed the door behind them. Maggie was shaken.
Jake took hold of her shoulders and looked her straight in the eye. "Now you listen to me, Maggie MacLaren."
She turned her face away but he gently turned it back. His angular cheeks were flushed, and his eyes flashed with anger. "Look at me? We will get married. Maybe not by a minister or a priest, but I will be your husband."
Maggie's lips parted in stunned silence. She looked at Jake's face. His eyes were ablaze, and his hands felt strong on her shoulders. For once in her life she had no words, but she knew that she believed him. A tentative nod bloomed into a smile. "Okay."
"Okay, then," said Jake. They laughed. Nothing mattered except being together. "But I'll kiss the bride now, if it's alright with you."
Maggie did not object as he kissed her until her knees weakened.
Beth stood at Hank's graveside with Maggie, while Robin picked wild flowers from the field nearby.
"He never had a chance, locked up in that jail cell." There crept into Beth's mind pangs of regret, for Hank's sake, for the life he had wasted and the lives he had damaged.
"You're allowed to cry, Beth," said Maggie.
"I did all my crying when he was alive."
Robin brought a bouquet of wildflowers and set it upon her father's grave. Then Maggie slipped her arm around Beth's shoulder and they all walked together to the buckboard where Jake waited.
Beth sat in the buckboard and looked down at Maggie.
"It's not like we won't be together," said Maggie.
"I know, but Pittsburgh is a big city."
"But think of the exciting things that lay ahead: a new home, and your new job at the Heinz factory."
"I know. We'll have a good life, won't we?" Beth smiled down at Robin. Beth knew that their lives would never be the same.
"I'll see you in a few days," said Maggie. "You'll be alright until then?"
Beth smiled shyly. Mr. Wakefield offered to help us get settled.
"Well good, then," said Maggie, not failing to notice a new light in her sister's eyes.
Beth and Robin waved back as their buckboard drove off.
The sun was still warm from the afternoon, but it was getting ready to set. Maggie walked along the boardwalk by the lake that used to be. Her view no longer obstructed, she saw no effortless sailing or congruous rowing across a picturesque lake. There was no lake and no dam. The majesty once fashioned by man was gone. Now a small stream of water trickled through a bed of cracked, dried earth.
Jake tarried behind as Maggie surveyed the site where memories lay encrusted in the ground that once held Lake Conemaugh. She remembered the magical wonder of a life beyond the valley, a life she had touched in the height of its splendor. It had been glorious. But its glory had been a façade, no stronger than the dam above the valley in the Allegheny Mountains. Sturdy and packed with earth, it looked like part of a hillside that was God's creation. But it held back a force of nature that not even wealth could withstand. Human nature could not be contained. The lake had been a rich man's playground, owned by people who coveted power like a child's toy, and they such cunning children. But their toy was left unattended for too long.
Maggie stood at the edge of the broken road that used to cross the dam. Here a wall of wealth once tumbled down. Whether it was an act of God, man, or a combination of both, would be debated in years to come by those who remained to pick up the pieces. More than two thousand people lost their lives. Families were gone, children were orphaned, and lovers were lost.
Forsaken cottages stood like bleak apparitions of splendor. She paused before the Adair house and listened to the echoes fade in her memory. Behind it, the hills hovered untouched by the tragedy of the summer, ablaze with the fires of autumn. Life's natural progression from season to season moved forward.
Jake's hand slipped into Maggie's. Love's indelible impression, like a watermark on paper, was not easily seen, but was there just the same.
"Let's go home, Mrs. O'Neill."
A breeze tossed brittle leaves across the abandoned boardwalk as they walked away from the site of the South Fork Fishing and Hunting Club. Together they found a safe place, where beauty burrows beneath wrinkled skin, where hearts hurt and heal one another, a place where they would grow stronger from being together. The pieces of their lives would settle into a neatly ordered pattern, one not of their own design.
###
Author's Notes
On November 7, 2000, Alabama was the last state in the union to repeal a ban on interracial marriages from its state constitution. The law remained on the books thirty-three years after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that such laws were invalid.
Johnstown was a regular stop on the Underground Railroad.
In 1870, the first African American graduated from Harvard.
The Poem in Chapter 15 was Foreign Lands, from Robert Louis Stevenson's, A Child's Garden of Verses.
The Bible verse quoted in Chapter 25 was Isaiah 43:2 (King James Version).
Maggie MacLaren is a fictional character. The real librarian, Mrs. Hirst, was found beneath the crumbled remains of the library. A new library was built with funds donated by Andrew Carnegie, a member of the South Fork Fishing and Hunting Club.
More than 2,000 people died in the Johnstown Flood. While suits were filed against the South Fork Fishing and Hunting Club, no money was ever collected.
Also by J.L. Jarvis
Ana Martin
On the eve of revolution
a young woman fights for land, liberty,
and the man she loves.
A stranger appears on Ana Martin's Galveston doorstep, summoned by her father before his untimely death. When Ana boards a train bound for her uncle's vast hacienda, Eduardo is there to see her safely to her new home in the stark desert landscape of northern Mexico.
Eduardo's passionate ideals set him at odds with the corrupt Mexican government as his writings fuel a revolution and draw Ana closer. But it is Carlos, the dashing rodeo rider and freedom fighter who touches her soul, setting Ana Martin on a journey that will test her strength and forge her destiny.
jljarvis.com
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