“Look yonder,” I said, and pointed. We saw a line of folks circled around a large tent with a big red cross painted on the side. I said, “Maybe they’ll have a place we can rest. I’m thinking we’d better give up for now, and eat some of these apples. I’m beginning to feel faint from want of food, and I reckon you’re not doing much better.”
“I’m all right,” Chess said. He had a grim stoniness in his eyes. He turned away when I looked toward him.
We went toward the tent. The miraculous smell of coffee came from it.
Chess said, “Cup o’ coffee wouldn’t hurt.”
“I’d take that, too,” I said. I was worried about him. With old folks, you can’t always tell. They can look spry and fit, and then take sickly on you with no warning, like a little child. Besides the resolution I saw on his face, his movements were slowed and shaky. Chess was looking peaked, and one of his legs was almost dragging.
We moved into the crowd at the tent’s doorway. There was a post there so thick with paper messages, it appeared like a feathered board. Just inside the tent, a woman was sobbing. Another woman in a blue getup was pouring coffee into cups.
A man at the entrance was trying to calm some folks wanting to push right in. “Medical cases only,” he said three times. “Anyone with fever, come this way. Other complaints, wait right here. If you’re waiting for someone, please step to the side. Over there, sir! They are taking names. They have drinking water!”
“Chess,” I said, “maybe the coffee is just for the doctors and nurses.”
Just as he was about to answer, people shoved between us, four different adults, then a woman leading two children, all flushed and feverish. “Pardon me, so sorry,” she said. Just at that second, the littlest child slipped in the mud and fell face-first to the ground. “Help me,” the mother cried. The poor child started wailing at the top of her lungs, and the mother picked her up. The other little one slipped from her arms. I took up the child from the ground.
She saw me through the flailing arms of the little one she held. “Oh, bless you. Thank you. Me husband and me mother was both kilt. Me children been a-fever since yestidy, but we coon’t get in. Thank you, mum.” Then her face turned gray and she swayed under the load in her arms.
Chess held the woman’s arm as she clung to the child, and I carried the other babe, who was fighting and thrashing like his sister. We got them in the tent after much loud wailing, the children smearing mud on everything they touched. What a scene it was in there. It was supposed to be a hospital. Instead, it was pure bedlam. How anyone could be better off having come into the place was beyond me.
Canvases, most of them soiled beyond anything I would have wrapped a dead horse in, hung from wooden racks, separating the tent into at least fifty little cloth rooms for people. A tired-looking woman came to us and said, “This way,” then kept going without another word. We followed her until another woman in blue tapped the mother on the arm and helped her to sit. Chess and I left the sick three and started for the doorway.
We hadn’t gone ten feet when two men passed, carrying a litter between them. I called to them, “I’m looking for Harland or Melissa Prine.” The men ignored me. I turned to the main area of the tent. “Prine?” I hollered, hopping up and down, trying to call over the partition.
Someone took my arm and said, “Ma’am, you’ll have to wait outside.”
“Harland Prine?” I hollered again, though they were pushing me toward the doorway.
From out of the din, a man called, “Here!”
“Harland?” I screamed at the top of my lungs.
A handkerchief fluttered a hundred feet away. “Here!” the voice called again. Chess and I fought our way through the commotion. “Sarah! Are you here? Are you coming?” The man’s plaintive call rose above the noise, and a hush came over the room. “Sarah!”
Just beyond another partition, four grimy children sat at the foot of the cot, looking like little wooden eggs in a box. They appeared about as forlorn as any children could. Their eyes were sunken and hollow, their hair matted, faces streaked with mud.
“Harland?” I said.
The man holding the kerchief twisted around to face me. “Sarah?” he said.
I would never have known the man had it not been for my name on his lips. “Harland. Oh Harland!” I took him by the neck and hugged him to me.
He held me to him, shaking, repeating “Oh, oh.”
Really softly, I said, “I’ve brought some apples in the bag. You can feed those babes. How is our poor Melissa?” I asked.
He seemed pained. Shaking his head, he just said, “Sleeping.”
I patted her hand, but she didn’t waken. I hooked one arm through Chess’s elbow and the other through Harland’s. “This is my boys’ grandpa Chess. This here’s Harland. Lands, I can’t remember the children’s names. Tell Aunt Sarah again, won’t you?” The children turned to their father but said nothing.
Chess pulled open the carpetbag and whispered, “Are you hungry?” The children stared off into the distance, as if they were purely addled—scared out of all feelings whatsoever. The littlest one chewed on one of her braids, tattered ribbon and all.
Harland said, “The children? Yes. The boys are Truth”—he pointed to them in line—“Honor, and Story, and that’s Blessing. She’s her papa’s little dolly, aren’t you?” He patted the girl’s head.
With great ceremony, the tiny girl took the hem of her tattered and filthy skirt and made a perfect curtsy. “My name is Blessing Serafina Elizabeth Prine. Honor doesn’t talk anymore. If you need to ask him something, I’ll tell you what he means.”
Then she turned with her brothers to their first meal in any number of days. Each of them took an apple from my carpetbag, then said their thanks without smiles.
I shuddered at the dirt on their hands, fearful of what they might catch in this place. “How is Melissa? Your letter sounded—” Then I remembered the children sitting there, so in order not to frighten them, I said, “sounded as if you might need some company.”
There was a piercing hurt in Harland’s eyes. Tears dribbled from the corners, and he wiped at them, unashamed. He said, “Lord in heaven, it’s so good to see you, Sarah. I’d given up hope that you got my message.”
The oldest boy, Truth, said, “Papa, is she a nurse? Is Mother getting worse?”
“No, son,” Harland said over his shoulder. “Mother is not worse. Doctor will come back as soon as he can. He’s caring for many people who are sick and hurt.”
“Papa,” said Blessing, “Honor wants to know if this lady is an angel.”
“Yes,” Harland said. “Our own angel.”
Honor burst into tears. Blessing said, “He wants to know when she’s taking Mother away.”
Harland knelt and scooped Honor and Blessing into his arms. “Not that kind of angel. She’s going to get us all out of here. Wouldn’t you like to leave this horrible place and get Mummy to a nice clean bed where she can get well? You can have all the food you can eat. All the food in the world. Now, Truth, just keep an eye out while I talk with your aunt Sarah.”
The boy drew himself up as only small boys can, taking on his little shoulders the whole dreadful world that had recently been handed him. I saw in his face a kind of awful fear mixed with pride at his great responsibility to watch over his mother.
Chess nudged the other children from their places on the dirt floor and sat between them, saying, “I’ll just rest my bones here with you children. We’re all tired out from hunting for you. Did you know we were coming? Bet you four could eat a horse. Look what else we’ve brought for you. You, too,” he said to Truth. “You can eat and still watch. Soldiers are allowed food on guard duty, I know that for sure. There’s a brave fellow.”
The children crowded around him as he opened the carpetbag. He seemed like a little old Santa Claus, handing out cookies to them. Truth had jerky in one hand and two cookies in the other, and ate them back and forth. It made me smile, thinki
ng how I’d always liked something salty with a sweet. The marks of family, just like the conformation of a horse.
Harland said, “Poor hungry little goblins. They wanted some kind of gruel folks’re dipping out. The first couple of days, it was all right, but by yesterday it was soured, and I wouldn’t let them have it. Ask me, that’s how come everyone has got the galloping go-around, drinking that stuff that’s not cooked right. I wouldn’t let them have it, and at least their stomachs are still whole. I’ve been trying to get out of here, but I’m afraid to drag the little ones through the crowd. I can’t get to the stage, can’t get to the bank, or the train. We’re stranded. I have to get Melissa to Chicago.”
“Trains aren’t running,” I said. “Tracks are out. What’s in Chicago?”
He said, “Medical doctors. Specialists. I—I’m at my wit’s end. Any wagon still rolling is being used to cart the dead. I—I just couldn’t put them in one of those. I’d lose them all to some wretched pestilence before we got to the edge of town. People in the next cell had been trying to get a stage ticket out of here for two weeks and said they would ask for me. I gave them money for our passage, but they never came back for us. I’m out of cash, and just flat out of ideas. Out of hope, nearly, excepting that maybe you’d come.”
I smiled and patted his poor face. His grown-out whiskers made him look a pure heathen. I whispered, “Well, we’ve brought you a wagonload of hope. I’ve got a few clean clothes for you, and a little food. There’s plenty more in San Jose, but we’ll get you there.” The noise around us seemed to fade away. Harland put his hand on my shoulder and turned his face toward the ceiling. Without a word, he shook his head, hugged me again. I took Harland’s hand and said, “Is Melissa strong enough to be moved?”
“She doesn’t seem to be in a lot of pain, although she could barely walk on our way here. She’s weak.”
“Harland,” I said, “you just pull together for a little bit longer. If you want to get her to Chicago, all we have to do is get you all to the stage depot. We’ll get her to San Jose and then on the next train east. Now, business. I wired money in your name. You should be able—”
Harland shook his head. “Sarah, I have money. Nothing in my pockets, but plenty on account. A whole roomful of gold won’t buy what we need—Melissa to get well.” Then he swayed on his feet and held his hands to his head like he was bound to pull all his hair out. His eyes rolling, he sobbed, saying, “You sent more money? I’ve worked so hard for money. We had the finest of everything. And what is it worth now?”
My poor brother seemed to be headed for pure distraction. I said, “Harland, hold on just a few more hours. I’m here to help. Don’t you let go now. There’s work to do.”
He breathed like a drowning man, as if he was sucking in hope that had been lost. After a spell, he nodded and said, “How soon do we leave?”
Chess had come around the tent pole and now stood next to me. He said, “Fast as we can carry her,” and I nodded in agreement.
In the little cell where Melissa lay, Harland circled all the children in his arms, kneeling in the dirt. “Aunt Sarah’s going to fix everything. Mother’s going to a special place called Chicago, where she can be well. Will you help me take her there? I knew you would, my darling children. What do you say to Aunt Sarah?”
The children obediently mumbled something. Their mouths were full. They didn’t look convinced, but they chewed on. All of them were so dirty, I wouldn’t have known them from a pack of coyotes.
Truth, true to his name, did not look away from his guard duty. Honor punched him in the arm. Truth shook him off. Staring unflinchingly at his mother, he said, “Is Chicago another name for heaven?”
Harland’s hair was standing up almost on end. “No,” he said. “Just a hospital.” Harland leaned over Melissa and whispered to her she was going to get well. She was so pale, I reckoned she was already gone.
I said, “Don’t wake her, Harland.” I announced to the children, louder than I needed to, “Now, children, are you ready for some traveling?” Dismay clouded the faces of the older three. The youngest one just stared off.
I hunkered down so I was eye-to-eye with them, smiled, and said, “I know you are exhausted, but you only have to walk a little way. Most of it is riding.” They stared at me, wide-eyed, but not as worried as before. I said, “Harland, is anything left you need to collect?”
“My business is gone. The bank will hold my account until we return. I’ll send for the cash when we get there. I’ll return yours.”
I leaned forward and said, “Keep it until you know whether you’ll need it.”
Harland rubbed his hands through his hair, which didn’t do anything for the upstanding way of it. The poor man was haunted. I wanted to clutch him to my shoulder, and pat him like a child, tell him I’d fix everything for him.
Instead, I patted Melissa and felt her head. She was pale, drawn. A touch of fever. “Melissa, honey? If you can sit up, I’ll help you get dressed. We’ll go get you some food, and you’ll feel a lot better.” At that, she finally opened her eyes. I clapped my hands softly and said, “All right, that’s the spirit. Men and boys, out, out, out! You go see if you can beg, borrow, or steal something to carry her on. Blessing, you stay and help your Mama get her shoes on.”
Chess found a stretcher with the help of a nurse. It looked awful, but we covered it with the sheet on Melissa’s bed, then gently helped her onto it. We carried her to the stage depot, while the children marched behind, with me bringing up the drag.
The depot master said the coach would return to San Jose as soon as they changed horses. There was no knowing what time of day it would be, but I speculated late afternoon, just as when we’d arrived. To get here, we had paid twenty dollars a head. Leaving cost seventy dollars a seat. There was no clamoring crowd waiting, either. The place seemed deserted. The depot master said the line had raised the rates, and now folks were having to wait. Three other men had already bought tickets. There would not be room for all of us to travel together. We couldn’t leave that way.
Two of the men holding tickets were on the platform outside, smoking pipes and talking together. Chess and I explained our situation to them, and they grudgingly sold me their tickets—for seventy-five dollars apiece. The third man stepped around back of the building, probably to avoid having to hear me beg for his ticket. Chess followed him for fifteen minutes, telling him every aspect of how my brother’s wife was sick and that we’d come all this way to get her. All the man would say was that no one was going to put him aside, not for life or death. We’d have to go in separate coaches or take our chances waiting in the depot all night for the first stage tomorrow.
I had an idea. I said, “Chess, I’ll need your help. Lord, forgive me for what I’m about to do, but I’m going to get us a seat by hook or by crook. I’m about to jerk a knot in a snake’s tail, and have him thank me for it. The rest of you wait here. I’m going to get this family out of here.”
Chess caught my arm. “You carrying that little peashooter?”
“I don’t aim to murder for a seat on a stage. At least that’s not my first strategy.”
Chess and I ambled around the side of the building, where we caught sight of the ticket-holding man. We talked louder than we needed to about how the weather was, and the camp, and what a shame it all was.
Then I began a little speech. “Certainly those children we were carrying this morning were pretty bad sick.”
Chess stared at me like I’d lost my head, then said, “Well, yes, they were.”
“Reckon the doctor said the contagion isn’t too bad yet,” I fairly hollered.
I saw Chess’s eyes brighten, and he gave me a tiny wink when he nodded. “One of those children appeared like she wouldn’t live through the night.”
I saw that fellow step closer to us, listening, acting like he was trying to light his pipe and keep it out of the wind. “Well,” I said, “if you had to leave one here, would you leave the sickest child
or take that one to the doctor and leave the well?”
“Aw, I’d leave the healthy one to take his chances. Although any doctor would say the quarantine should apply to the lot of ’em. Nope. Take the sick. That’s my advice.”
“Leastways we did get most of the tickets.”
He said, “A person’d surely have their hands full traveling with a lot of diseased children, what with all the coughing and sneezing and vomiting.”
Now the man was staring right at us. I waited a bit, then said, “Reckon it’s spreading pretty fast. Could be cholera.”
Chess shook his head. “Children without handkerchiefs, wiping their noses on everything—it’ll be slow traveling if there have to be burials on the way.”
This conversation had taken a turn toward the truth, which was making my insides squirm. It’d be just like Providence to pay me back for this yarn spinning with some bitter truth. I felt guilty and shamed. The man started edging away. I hoped Chess could see that I was done with my terrible plot. I said, “It’ll be good to get Harland’s children to San Jose.”
Chess tried not to grin. “Specially after we carried the mother all the way here on a litter.”
I couldn’t stop my lip from quivering. “She’s not contagious. I’m sure of that.”
Chess said, “That feller has skedaddled. We can let up now.”
A few minutes later, the depot master was calling out the barred window. “Oh, sir! Madam! We’ve had a cancellation. I can give you the whole coach. Seems that last seat is free.”
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