by Hale, Marian
I laughed. “Since when did bathing become your favorite pastime?”
His face puckered in a frown. “Since half the world’s mud ended up on Galveston Island.”
Later that night, I slid between crisp sheets, fresh off the line, and closed my eyes. If the scent of jasmine could’ve drifted through the windows right then instead of death and smoke, I might’ve imagined myself back in my own bed. I thought about Ella Rose lying with Kate in Will’s bed, just yards away under Aunt Julia’s bedroom windows, and I wondered if she ever lay awake, thinking of me.
The convent bells rang Sunday morning, but out of the dozens of churches in the city, only a few could hold services. Wind and water had swept away steeples, shattered windows, and ripped off roofs. Mama insisted that I read a few verses from the Bible before breakfast. “A little something to think about on God’s day,” she said, but I was thankful she didn’t ask us not to work. With all that needed to be done, it seemed to me that God, above all, would understand.
After breakfast, Josiah and I cobbled together a sled to pull behind Archer and headed out to find usable lumber. Ezra made us promise to stay close by and to be always watchful of the militia, but with so much wreckage around, we didn’t have to go far. The hardest part was freeing good boards from the twisted rubble. The boys let loose pitiful groans when we told them we needed more nails, but they went right to work pulling and straightening, and easily kept up with us, attacking each new load of boards as soon as it arrived.
By the end of the day, we’d hauled enough used lumber to give us a good start on the house, but it was clear we’d need lots more. The two-room building would be simple, like before, a little shotgun house sitting four feet off the ground, but if I could manage it, I planned to add a small porch under the back gable, a place where Ezra could sit in the shade and watch his new garden grow.
I glanced at the old vegetable patch, barren and crusted with salt, but I remembered well the tall stalks of okra. A big plate of fried okra would taste mighty good about now. I couldn’t recall the last time I’d had something that didn’t come out of a can. Rations of flour and lard kept plenty of biscuits and pan bread on the table, but I didn’t care if I never saw another tin of salmon or sardines.
I woke before daylight Monday morning and realized that I’d been dreaming of Zach. I’d been working with him again, side by side, drawn into that mystifying current of his. I lay perfectly still, breathing in the wonder of that, trying to hang on to the connection, that simple truth that ran like a river between us. In the end, Zach slipped away.
I finally dressed and went down to breakfast, but even while I ate and spoke with Josiah and Ezra about the house, the dream haunted me, making me feel as if I were caught between two worlds.
After breakfast, Josiah and I began work on the foundation, even though we knew we’d have to put in many more days of gathering lumber to complete the house. When Matt got home, he surprised us by rigging the sled to Archer and marshaling the boys into the job. They even managed to pry four windows loose from the wreckage next door. Ezra cleaned away the bits of broken glass, then headed out with the boys to see what else could be scavenged.
The Daily News had been reporting that an average of one hundred bodies a day were being recovered by demolition gangs dismantling the long ridge of debris encircling the city, but on Wednesday, September 19, workers uncovered 273. In the next day’s paper, I read, “It is possible, but highly improbable, that the list of storm victims will aggregate six thousand souls.”
Six thousand.
The number sank inside me, impossible, and yet I’d seen the miles of houses sitting topsy-turvy, the vast piles of debris strewn across hundreds of acres where better than three thousand homes had once stood. I’d seen the overfull morgues, the loaded barges, the smoke-filled skies.
Maybe six thousand wasn’t an impossible number after all.
Later that day, the Hodges family sent word through Ezra that a few stores in town had electric lights now and that Clara Barton, president of the American Red Cross, had arrived to offer aid to Galveston. We heard, too, that important people like Joseph Pulitzer and William Randolph Hearst were sending help and that contributions had begun arriving from people all over the country. I was thankful, but sometimes I wished we could just leave, get Aunt Julia and Ella Rose away from the massive rubble, the smoke-filled skies, and the aching loss that bled the life right out of them. Mr. Hodges said many had done just that, begging rides on the Juno, the Lawrence—anything that would float. People gathered at the docks with nothing more than the tattered garments on their backs, and the mainland took them in, fed and clothed them, and opened their homes, hotels, and boardinghouses to them.
But I knew Papa would never leave the island. Even I had come to realize I didn’t want to go. The storm that ravaged Galveston had left behind much more than wreckage and mud and death. It had left a challenge.
With all of us working, the salvaging and building went quickly. My dream about Zach stayed with me throughout the steamy days, a reminder of all that was possible, and soon, Josiah and I fell into a rhythm of our own. Words dwindled, no longer needed, and the hot hours passed without notice.
By Thursday evening, we both knew something had changed between us. We set the ridge row on Ezra’s house, then climbed down to wash up for supper. I reached for the soap and saw Josiah toss me a curious glance.
“What?” I asked.
He shrugged. “Strange is all.”
“Strange?”
He shrugged again. “Onliest time I ever worked like this, it be with Mr. Zach.”
I slowly lathered my hands. “Yeah, me too.”
Chapter
24
Early Friday morning, I climbed up to the new ridge row to set rafters and looked out over Broadway. The morning sun had cast long shadows across the street, and from one of them, Papa and Matt stepped into view.
“Papa’s home!” I shouted at Josiah. “The bridge must be finished.” A small part of me sighed with relief, though the resentment he’d stirred in me the day he left Josiah and me at the morgue always bubbled close to the surface. I scrambled back down again, hollered through the screen at Mama, then set off down the road.
Papa’s face, scruffy with almost two weeks’ growth, looked thinner but happy, and he smiled as soon as he saw me. I hesitated a moment, then finally held out my hand. He grabbed it, pulled me to him, and hugged me hard against his chest.
It startled me. I couldn’t remember the last time he’d done something like that. I pulled back, looking at him closely, and felt his weary smile working at the knot in my belly, untangling the bitterness I’d been carrying around with me.
“Tho-mas!” Mama hollered from the stairs.
She hiked her skirt immodestly high and ran down the steps and out into the road. Papa grabbed her up like they were both sixteen again, and Matt laughed out loud.
“Are you home for good?” she asked.
Papa nodded. “The rail bridge is finished, and supply trains will be arriving soon.”
Mama’s face shone with happiness. She wrapped her arm around his waist, and they turned toward home.
Matt followed behind, grinning.
Once inside, Papa hugged Kate and the boys, one by one, but Andy and Will seemed to hang on to him longer than any of them. I think Aunt Julia found it hard to watch. She quickly turned to the stove, insisting that Papa should have a hot breakfast, but I’d seen the pain in her eyes, that bittersweet look of joy and loss. I saw it in Ella Rose’s face, too.
Everyone in the house gathered around the table to watch Papa eat his first hot meal since before the storm. He looked achy-tired and empty, like the bridge had drained him of everything but his smile. Mama pulled Kate from his arms and sat her in the chair next to him, but she climbed right back onto his lap and buried her fingers in his beard. Mama fussed, but he shook his head and slowly ate his grits with one arm wrapped around Kate.
Mama hurrie
d to get a bed ready for Papa. She moved their few things from Aunt Julia’s room into Ben’s repaired room, but while she was gone, Papa stretched out on the parlor floor to play with Kate and Elliott and fell asleep. Ella Rose quietly pulled the kids upstairs to play, and Mama slipped a pillow under Papa’s head.
He was still asleep when Josiah and I came in at noon to eat. I didn’t see him again till late that afternoon when I caught him sitting on the ground near the new outhouse, freshly shaved, watching me work.
Seeing him sitting there, so very still, started an anxious flutter inside me. I couldn’t tell whether it came from fear or resentment, but I sure felt it, all prickly and worrisome.
Seems I could never tell what Papa was thinking. I tried to see Ezra’s house the way he might see it, and while I worked, questions tumbled through my head. Was the ridge row straight? Had I missed checking the crown on a rafter? I glanced at Uncle Nate’s house. Had he already looked at the roof? The front stairs?
Josiah pushed a freshly cut rafter up to me. I reached for it but fumbled my grip, and the board crashed to the ground, narrowly missing his shoulder. He gave me a puzzled look, and I cringed, furious with my carelessness. I glanced back toward the outhouse, wondering if Papa had seen, but he was gone.
Relieved, I closed my eyes, pulled in a deep breath, and waited for the flutter to settle. I remembered my dream, that easy, instinctive flow, and as natural as breathing, I looked down just as Josiah pushed the rafter back up to me. I gripped the board, slid it into place, and picked up my hammer.
Josiah and I quickly fell into that invisible rhythm again, and I rode the current, no longer mindful of the worries that Papa’s presence had stirred in me. We worked steadily till I noticed that the lumber had taken on sunset hues. Mama would be calling us in to supper soon.
I climbed down the ladder, thinking of Papa again, and saw him sitting at the top of the stairs, bare feet dangling over the back of the landing. I didn’t know how long he’d been watching, but I was surprised that I didn’t feel the way I had before. Might’ve been because the work had gone so well, despite my clumsiness, or maybe it was the easy way he swung his feet that made me feel less troubled.
Either way, Papa had helped me learn something about myself, about the fear that seemed to always sleep inside me, and about how quickly it could strangle who I was if I let it. I glanced again toward the house, and when Papa waved, I waved back.
Papa fell asleep again, right after supper, drinking in the night like a man dying of thirst. But on Saturday morning, despite his still weakened appearance, he and Matt started on a small stable for Archer.
Papa didn’t say anything to me about the repair work we’d done on Uncle Nate’s house, but over the next few days, I did notice something different about him, something thoughtful, almost serene in the way he looked at even simple things. Could’ve been the sorrow of losing Ben and Uncle Nate the way we did, and all those long days of searching and hoping that made him surrender some of his tightfisted ways. Or maybe it was losing all he owned that had humbled him. Whatever the reason, something had shifted inside him, cracked the tough shell around that tender part of himself he’d always kept locked away. You could see it if you knew what to look for, and I guess I’d been looking for it most all my life.
Now it was there.
A softness in his eyes when he spoke to me, an ear tuned to catch every word, a hand lingering on a shoulder, and to my surprise, the last of my bitterness began to unravel. It was a welcome relief, but even as that darkness slid away, another grew.
Someday soon I’d have to tell Papa my decision about college.
Josiah and I were able to continue building through the next week, thanks to Ezra and the boys. They pulled and straightened nails, took Archer out every day, and brought back enough used lumber and slate to keep us going. Papa worked slow and easy on the stable, but even so, I could see that Matt wasn’t cut out for carpentry. He hauled himself into supper every evening like he’d just been released from a chain gang, a sure candidate for college and desk work. While he moaned and groaned, Papa never fussed once. He just grinned.
We finished Ezra’s new house that Saturday evening. Josiah and I had made every cut, hammered every nail, and I closed the door behind me feeling good about the work we’d done. But while I washed up, I saw Papa walking all around the place. Slow.
He checked the windows, the roof, looked over the new porch from top to bottom, then disappeared inside.
I felt the flutter start up all over again, mean and fierce, but I held on to my grit. I was determined not to let fear best me this time. I thought of Zach’s quiet, abiding strength, the way Josiah and I had plumbed our own depths, tapped our own strengths, and the flutter settled.
My work was clean and precise.
I was a carpenter.
Chapter
25
Right after supper Saturday evening, Ezra spotted a brown hen roosting in the magnolia tree. He hollered for help, and soon every one of us was laughing and chasing that chicken all over the moonlit yard. Before long, Ezra had the thing in a small makeshift pen, and we stood there staring at it, wondering if we should keep it for eggs or Sunday dinner.
Lucas frowned. “I bet we upset her egg-laying something terrible.”
I had to agree. Chickens didn’t take kindly to being chased after bedtime by a dozen wild humans, but I could tell Lucas didn’t like the alternative. He could set a cat’s broken leg and doctor bloody gashes, but he never could bear watching something die, even chickens.
“Yeah, it’s gonna be a long time before that hen lays,” Matt said.
Andy and Will glanced at each other. “Chicken and dumplings?” they asked in unison.
We all laughed, but eagerness shone in every smile. With another meal of canned salmon staring us in the face, sentimentality didn’t stand a chance.
“Well,” Mama said, “one hen won’t go far, but if Ezra will get it ready for the pot tomorrow, I guess we’ll have chicken and dumplings for our Sunday dinner.”
“Yes-s-s-s, ma’am,” Ezra said, and everyone cheered.
That night Ezra and Josiah moved their things into the new house. Of course, there wasn’t much to move, but Aunt Julia made sure they had bedding and a change of clothes. She gave them a cast-iron skillet and a stew pot as well.
“But I insist that you take your meals with us,” she said, “right here around this table until things get better.”
Ella Rose, her face dark and tight, stood on the stairs, watching Josiah and Ezra say their good-byes. I couldn’t figure her out. She truly looked angry.
I didn’t like the idea of her turning that look on me, but I had to know what’d been bothering her. I pulled her out to the dimly lit veranda and sat across from her in a wicker chair. “Ella Rose, it’s clear something is wrong.” I leaned toward her, my forearms on my knees. “Are you mad at Josiah and Ezra about something?”
Starlight glinted in her eyes. “Why would you think that?”
I shrugged. “Then maybe it’s me. Have I done something to offend you?”
She shook her head slowly. “Nothing.”
She’d barely whispered the word, but I flinched. I’d felt the sharp edges and knew there’d be more.
“Nothing except have a mother and father, an aunt and cousins, a home and a bed.” She tossed me a bitter look. When it slid away, I saw shock, then regret. She blinked and covered her face with her hands, smothering a flood of sobs.
I didn’t know what to do. Then I realized that there wasn’t much I could do. I couldn’t bring her family back, her home, her friends. I had nothing to give her.
Except me.
I pulled her to her feet and wrapped my arms around her. “You already have what I have, Ella Rose. Right now, this minute. My father and mother—all my family—they love you like their own.”
She wiped away her tears and looked up at me. “And you, Seth?”
I nodded. “And me, too.”
She pulled in a deep breath and let it out slow. “Thank you,” she whispered, and turned to go inside.
Sunday morning Henry and Spencer surprised us with a visit, and for the first time since the storm, we took a day off from work. Papa disappeared into Uncle Nate’s study, Mama put the hen to stewing, and the boys climbed into their tree fort.
More and more, Aunt Julia had been looking after the little ones, and she did so again, urging Ella Rose to sit with me and Henry on the veranda. She insisted we do something fun. “Like you used to,” she said, pushing a Parcheesi game into my hands. We gathered outside around a small table and opened up the box, but little Spence didn’t want to leave his brother.
“He’s been like this since we lost Mama, Papa, and the girls,” Henry said. “He just doesn’t like to let me out of his sight.”
Aunt Julia nodded. “Of course he doesn’t.” She disappeared inside for a moment, then came back with paper and glue. “We’ll sit right here on the floor by the door so he can see you, and we’ll make paper chains to decorate the dining room for our big dinner.”
Kate clapped her hands, and with a little encouragement, Spence was soon smiling at Henry through the screen door.
I hadn’t seen Ella Rose this happy since before the storm, and I was finding it difficult to keep from staring at her. I thought about how we’d looked forward to swimming that weekend of the storm, how I’d hoped to take her dancing at the Garten Verein one day, and I wondered if she ever thought of me like that. After last night, I was afraid she might be thinking of me as the brother she never had. If so, I wasn’t sure a notion like that could be changed.
But even that grim worry couldn’t mar the day for long. We talked and laughed and played Parcheesi while the aroma of stewing chicken drifted from the kitchen. The veranda soon became my own private ship, and for a while, the three of us sailed away, far from the never-ending fires, the splintered homes, and the aching loss, till all I could see was the deep blue of Ella Rose’s eyes.