Compromise with Sin

by Leanna Englert

  “The Twister would have claimed more souls had it not been for Dr. Foster’s lifesaving efforts and the assistance of these two civic-minded women,” J.D. said. “No sooner had the furious storm left town than the good doctor appeared on these premises and set up his infirmary. Moreover in the weeks following the storm he provided treatment without a fee to the injured. Dr. Foster, for the generous gift of your expertise and medical supplies, the citizens of Riverbend thank you.”

  J.D. presented plaques and shook hands with the honorees, who took a moment to acknowledge the applause. Then they turned to file back to their seats. Conscious of Doc’s looming presence behind her, Louise was still tense, her head still aching, but at least she had been spared from speaking.

  J.D. then read an account of the storm that he had written for the newspaper. He allowed that his writing represented only a fraction of the story, that many a citizen of Riverbend had a story worthy of being told. He invited people to share their experiences. Louise only half-listened, her mind taken over by her own story.

  8

  May 1894

  When swaying trees blocked Louise’s view of the black cloud slab skidding closer, she dragged a chair over to where the balcony railing abutted the wall. She had been seduced onto the balcony—the roof of the porte cochère─by the ghostly green sky that brought welcome but uneasy relief from stifling afternoon heat. With one hand hoisting her skirt and the other pressed against the wall for balance, she stepped onto the chair and from there onto the railing where she teetered for a moment, then steadied herself.

  She stood transfixed by the advancing black cloud that thrust and retracted little twister fingers, teasing the way a bully jabs his victim’s chest before striking the blows that will flatten him. Louise had grown up in Nebraska where talk of twisters and tornadoes and funnel clouds heralded spring, but in her thirty-one years she had never witnessed one of the magnificent storms. And now she had a front-row balcony vantage point. “Come on!”

  No sooner had the words escaped than she clapped a hand over her mouth to censor herself. Perish the thought.

  A downward glance. Her body stiffened. A misstep and she would end up splattered on the brick drive two stories below. Gone was the exhilaration of climbing up. Coming down left her quaking.

  Then came rain. She lifted her face and threw her arms wide. She remembered the old-timers who seemed wise in the vagaries of weather always said tornadoes did not strike when it was raining.

  Soon the sting of wind-whipped rain on her face forced her inside where she peered through the French doors, unable to see anything beyond a shimmering curtain of rain. From a distance came a rumbling like a train derailing, except the Burlington tracks lay to the north, and this sound came from the southwest.

  “Louise! Louise!” Frank’s alarmed voice came from the kitchen. He raced toward her, his eyes blazing. “Are you addled, woman? We got everyone to the basement, and here you are!”

  She knew her husband scolded out of fear, not anger. “It’s raining,” she protested. “Tornadoes don’t hit when it’s raining.” But he acted with such conviction that what she thought she knew about tornadoes vanished, and she chided herself for a ridiculous display of bravado which she hoped no one had witnessed.

  When he grabbed her hand, she tensed with the fear communicated through his grip. He led her on a frantic dash through the kitchen to the back stairway.

  Hissing from the stove caused Louise to turn around and see boiling water cascading from a pot. “Potatoes!” She darted to the stove and turned off the fire under the pot Henryetta had abandoned.

  She followed her husband down the stairs in darkness relieved only by the greenish-gray light from the window at the first floor landing. Animated voices drifted from the basement storm shelter.

  Suddenly the building shuddered and windowpanes rattled against a thunderous roar. Terror, Louise discovered, is textured with little hollows of pure calm. Out of one of those hollows came a fit of insight and clarity. The phrase her mind had labored many times to knit together, never to her satisfaction, now presented itself wholly constructed. “Devoted Wife and Civic Leader.” The perfect epitaph.

  Frank turned and pressed her into a crouch against the stairs. His chest heaving against her back, the scent of his sweat and bay rum aftershave, his breath on her neck, calmed her. Sheltered in this strange bubble, a place where the storm seemed of no consequence, she succumbed to the intimacy of the moment, a respite from the state of loneliness that had come to define her marriage.

  The roar swelled, and Frank’s arms around her tightened. Louise curled her body against the stairs and braced for the storm, imagining a shower of glass. But the roar faded and passed.

  “Straight line winds.” Frank released her and continued down the stairs.

  How he knew the tornado had missed them Louise didn’t know. She could hear him assuring Inn guests that the storm had passed. So had the illusion of intimacy.

  Louise comforted guests, some of whom were most agitated, and invited them to the dining room for coffee and kolaches. Meanwhile, Frank, Yonder, and Buster, the Inn’s building superintendent, boarded up the half dozen windows that had been broken.

  It was assumed that the high school gymnasium would serve as an infirmary, so Yonder hitched a team and carriage and Louise and Frank joined him. Their drive to the high school was interrupted several times by the need to stop and remove tree limbs and other debris that littered the streets. By the time they arrived at the high school, the afternoon sun cast a benign light from a washed-out blue sky. Louise marveled at the capriciousness of Nature, behaving like a two-year-old who kicks his sister one minute and blows kisses the next.

  Frank halted the wagon, and Louise stepped down and followed a path strewn with fallen branches, puddles, and tangles of nightcrawlers flushed from the earth. Wailing and moaning drifted from the gymnasium’s open windows. Nature’s tantrum had been anything but innocent.

  From behind Louise came a man’s voice. “Beg your pardon, ma’am.”

  She moved aside to let a rain-drenched trio—two men supporting the underarms of a stumbling and bleeding woman—precede her up the steps.

  Inside, the floor was littered with the badly injured covered with mud and debris. Their cries reverberated off the concrete block walls. A few souls milled about, navigating the maze of victims.

  The gymnasium smell of ancient sweat mingled with other human odors to foul the hot, still air. Louise took the arm of a staggering, glassy-eyed woman and guided her to an area where people were scattered like driftwood. “Sit here, and someone will attend to you soon.” But would she get noticed, with so many seriously injured people needing care?

  “Out of the way, lady,” a man called from behind.

  Louise stepped aside and watched as he and another man rushed by carrying folded-up cots. She looked about for a canteen area where most likely Mrs. Graves would have an assignment for her. She spotted the woman on the far side of a badminton net, appearing to be barking orders to a crew setting up tables and chairs and unpacking food.

  The path to Mrs. Graves led past a kneeling woman sponging mud and blood from a man’s head, and toward a table where a woman lay screaming while above her a man’s hand moved in and out of the shadow of a railroad lantern hanging from a nearby stand. Louise recognized the tall and commanding presence of Doc Foster.

  As Louise came closer, she cupped a hand over her nose and mouth to block the stench of burning flesh. The woman bucked against the hands of a burly man and straps that secured her to the table while Dr. Foster held a cauterizing iron against her partial leg. His sleeves rolled up, his brow furrowed, the doctor appeared far different from the smartly dressed man who occasionally visited the library.

  Nearby some rescuers gestured wildly and argued over which streets had already been searched.

  Like an officer in charge of the infirmary, Doc called out commands, all the while working on the woman’s leg. “You with the
beard, you be the dispatcher.”

  The man nodded.

  “You, make a map for these men,” said Doc.

  Louise passed by him without looking.

  “Mrs. Morrissey, I mean you!” He waved the cauterizing iron in her direction. “Do you know Cindertown?”

  “Yes.” She looked sideways at him so as to avoid seeing his patient’s bloody leg.

  His voice moderated. “Make a map so these men can keep track of the areas that have been searched.”

  Mrs. Graves could wait. Louise dashed from the gymnasium to a classroom to find poster paper and something to write with. No luck in the first classroom. From a drawer in the second classroom she grabbed three pieces of colored chalk and hastened back to the gymnasium without wasting time looking for paper.

  Louise scrawled a map with green chalk directly on the wall and planned to color in the blocks in red as they were searched. Above the background noise of victims’ moans and volunteers’ verbal exchanges, a shrill voice called over and over, “Where’s my dog?”

  “No point writing street names,” the dispatcher said.

  “Of course.” With that she drew crosses where the two churches were located, and indicated Cindertown’s half dozen taverns, such as the Caboose and the Wild Boar, which were easy to represent as they had been named with signs in mind so a thirsty man did not have to know his letters to find his friends.

  “Did the tornado hit anywhere but Cindertown?” Louise asked as she wrote.

  The dispatcher, who looked like a railroad man himself, shook his head. “Ain’t that always the way? Poor people can’t win for losing.”

  Louise hoped Henryetta’s house had been spared. Most likely her husband and grown daughter had been safe at work when the storm hit. “Was the Dempseys’ house hit?”

  “Don’t know.”

  She looked up as she completed the map, and Doc seemed to sense her readiness. “Get a bucket of water, soap, and sponge!”

  She handed off the chalk to the dispatcher, then located the custodian’s closet and retrieved a bucket, soap, water, and sponges which she set on the floor within Doc’s reach. She turned to leave, intending to go help out in the canteen.

  “Mrs. Morrissey, I need you here.” Doc pointed to a sobbing child lying on her stomach. “Clean her up.”

  She wanted to protest that surely there were others more qualified. But Doc had turned away, and the little girl, about four or five years old, needed help. Louise rolled up her sleeves and knelt beside the small body from which shards of glass protruded like pins in a pincushion. She reached for a piece of glass, reluctant to grip it for fear of causing the child even greater pain as glass was moving this way and that with the undulating sobs. Louise gritted her teeth, and when she yanked out the shard the girl shrieked. Louise patted her shoulder. “Shh, shh. We have to do this. We’re going to play a little game. I will count to three, then you hold your breath and get still as a mouse, and I’ll pull out the glass. If you’re very still, it won’t hurt so bad.”

  The girl sniffled, turned her head to look at Louise, and nodded.

  “Now, one, two, three.” The child lay still, and Louise yanked out a piece of glass. “You can breathe now.” To Louise’s surprise and relief, this time the child let out a gasp, not a shriek. They played the “game” until the last piece was removed.

  Louise sat on the floor and scooped the child into her lap, never mind the blood stains. She rocked her from side to side. “There, there, now. Hush, little baby, don’t you cry,” she sang softly. She wanted to hold the girl and comfort her until parents came looking for her, wanted to be assured that the parents survived, but Doc called out an order to help another victim. Reluctantly she placed the child back on the floor.

  From then on Louise moved from one victim to another. Just when she thought the worst must be over, rescuers brought in workers who had been cleaning and gutting chickens when the tornado cut a swath through the poultry processing plant. The influx of these badly injured workers strained the ability of volunteers to keep up.

  “More water,” she shouted, but no one responded. Plunging the sponge into bloody water where chicken flesh and feathers floated set her stomach churning. I’ve got to get out of here. But she could not leave the wretched man lying at her knees. With one hand he lifted his other arm. A bloody rag had come undone, revealing two dangling fingers, nearly severed. Louise looked for help, knowing the futility of it, that surrounding her were more people needing care and others like herself working at capacity. She ripped the man’s work shirt to make a fresh rag and, fighting back vomit that rose in her throat, wrapped his mangled hand tightly.

  Louise noticed Frank and Yonder carrying a woman into the gymnasium on a screen door turned makeshift stretcher. Yonder happened to look in her direction, and they exchanged weary glances.

  Another movement caught her eye, and Louise saw Irina stand and heard her tell a screaming patient she would get some morphine. She dashed over to Doc who handed her several glass ampoules of morphine, showed her how to inject it, and gave her a look which might have been appreciative, but then again could have been an admiring look a married man gives a woman only furtively. Following Irina’s lead, Louise asked Doc for morphine for her patient, watched carefully as he demonstrated how to inject it, and scolded herself for not thinking of it sooner.

  Later when the flow of wounded into the gymnasium subsided, Doc summoned Louise to relieve his assistant.

  “Scrub your hands over there.” He nodded toward a basin.

  After washing up she stood across from Doc and held a woman’s hand while he sutured a gash on her chin. Doc’s brown eyes, so bright earlier, looked dull. Blood splatters dotted his expensive shirt and vest. He smelled of pipe smoke, a sweet fragrance, something like maple syrup.

  She knew him only casually. She had never gone to a doctor, and the Fosters and Morrisseys traveled in different social circles. He always said hello when they passed in the hallway as he went to his surgery and she to the Riverbend Ladies Lending Library. An occasional library patron, he dressed in the finest tailored suits that complemented a cosmopolitan air seldom seen in small-town Nebraska. What distinguished him most was his deep, resonant voice. He was always courteous but not particularly communicative. If Louise had to sum him up in one word, she would say he had “presence.”

  “Scissors, Mrs. Morrissey,” he said without looking at her.

  His voice conveyed fatigue. She realized exhaustion had taken a toll on her as well. As she handed him the scissors, they slipped from her hand. She lunged to catch them and set a lantern swinging.

  Doc jerked the suture. “Damnation!”

  His patient screamed.

  Louise hurried to stabilize the lantern. She steeled herself against a thorough bawling out, but Doc said nothing more. She waited, scissors in her trembling hand, until he reached for them. He carried on without remarking, and she exhaled her held breath.

  The incident gave her a second wind. She began to pay close attention, not just to Doc’s instructions but also to his every move. Eventually she felt surprisingly confident acting as another set of hands for Dr. Foster.

  Something strange happened as they worked through the night. They spoke sparingly. But they eased into a rhythm so that meanings passed between them without words. She sensed whether to clean an instrument or hold onto it until he needed it again. Emboldened, she ignored her own censoring thoughts and took to mopping perspiration from his brow as he worked. She wondered if he thought her brazen.

  They finished with the first light of dawn seeping through the windows. His parting words would nourish her for days: “You performed your duties as skillfully as a trained nurse.”

  The night following the storm, Louise, in spite of being overcome with fatigue, slept fitfully. When the grandfather clock struck four, she remembered that at this hour the night before she had been standing across from Doc. Thoughts unfit for a respectable married woman surfaced again, thoughts
she had tried to push down all day. But Doc would not go away.

  Her reality was here in this bed, lying back to back with Frank. How long since they’d been intimate? Since they’d given up hope of having a child? Was she to blame for his impotence?

  Finally daylight jarred her out of reverie and into action. Victims of the storm would be needing relief. She got up and began planning. She enlisted Henryetta, whose house had been spared, to help pack up boxes of food, clothing, and other supplies which they later delivered to storm victims.

  That night she slept undisturbed until morning. Undisturbed except for a dream in which she stood on a seaside cliff watching Doc and Irina hand in hand, laughing and twirling, carefree as tumbleweeds. With each rotation, the woman with the blue-violet eyes danced closer to the edge. Doc let go of her hand, sending her still-twirling body slowly to the sea. Louise felt a surge of delight that intensified when Doc turned and gave her the admiring look he’d given Irina in the infirmary.

  Louise awakened. Little ripples of desire collided with Frank’s cheery “Time to get up” and swelled to giant waves of guilt.

  Once the immediate needs of The Twister victims passed and relief efforts slowed down, Louise willed herself to resume her normal life. But in spite of good intentions, she faltered, unable to inhabit the routine that once had been second nature. Responding to the emergency in the infirmary had challenged her to perform beyond her own expectations. She had risen to the occasion and never felt more alive. By contrast her everyday life left her numb, there being nothing to excite her senses or test her mettle.

  Two weeks later, a Thursday, Louise was working her regular library shift when the door opened. It was nearly closing time. From her position on the ladder where she stood dusting shelves, she saw it was Doc who had entered. Being alone with him set her skin tingling and cheeks burning. She ran her dustcloth over the same shelf repeatedly, lingering there in order to avoid him as he browsed in the fiction stacks.