“The storm won’t come back. I’ve already thought of that. And I’ve been checking the boat every half hour. We ought to stay afloat till morning though it’ll be close.” Will was the oldest. He thought of Sister Elizabeth. “And you know what else?”
“What?”
“If not, we’re still not giving up.”
Frank nodded his head in agreement. Will wasn’t sure if Frank really agreed or was just trying to agree, but his marginal support cleared Will’s head just enough. “Here’s what’s going to happen. The sun’s going to rise. Right over. . . there.” Will continued as if he was sealing a contract, putting a deal to bed. “We’re going to paddle ourselves in and the very first thing we’re going to do, Frank, is get you some britches. Then, we’re going to look and we’re going to find who we can find. The sisters—I don’t know. Henry—I don’t know. We’ll find who we can find, Frank. Then we’ll go into town and tell everybody what happened.”
Frank’s shoulders moved forward slightly in a way which told Will his plan, though rudimentary, was now something they shared, and he nodded his assent.
“Find who we can find,” he repeated.
“The island’s that way,” Will said, pointing, though he wasn’t positive. “At dawn, we’ll see just how far. It’s going to be a clear day.”
Will wasn’t sure how they’d survived this far. Whether it was by grace or by chance. Maybe this was the only question there was. Maybe both could happen at the same time.
“How’s Albert?” Will asked.
“Should we wake him up?”
Albert was breathing steadily and strong, without real labor.
“Let him sleep. You get some too,” Will told him.
Frank, obedient, closed his eyes. Alone for a few minutes, Will felt his place in a vast body of water, on an enormous globe spinning, revolving in endless black chaos. Starlight bounced off the sea, blurred, and multiplied in the salty welling of his eyes, tears threatening to roll down his face. The ineffable light made him think of angels.
“Fear not,” he said. It was what the sisters told the smaller children like Maggie angels always say. At the edge of the sea, the barest suggestion of light readied to appear, he was sure. His gaze fixed in both hope and fear at the horizon’s line, his mind softly noting how the water and sky met. The night, the stars, the ocean. They all seemed to dissolve, or perhaps unify into the present moment in the most captivating way. The rhythm of his breath fell, or perhaps it was led into a closer sympathy with the flow of the remaining wind, his heartbeat with the tide. And as he rocked in these primordial waters, Will felt such a strange peace descend upon him that he closed his eyes and he too fell asleep.
18
FROM THE SEA
Sunday, September 9
He was awakened by a seabird. It looked down at him with an expression bearing many questions from the top of the surviving mast of the John S. Ames. Will squinted upwards into a lavender-gray sky, unsure where he was. The gull had unusual, curved, gray markings on its head, like question marks.
“Yeah. Me neither. Don’t ask me. I don’t know,” Will said, touching his bruised head. He closed his eyes. When he opened them again, the bird alighted into the air. Hovering for a moment, it banked into the wind and soared away.
Will tried to think of what had happened all at once, but his thoughts were like a dark field of clouds. Rain, velocity, loss, angels. He thought of Sister Elizabeth and then the police chief’s daughter, surprised that his mind would go to her so quickly. Grace. Will looked around for the shore.
The hazy outline of Fort Crockett was visible in the distance, awarding him his bearings. The boys had been pushed eastward. The John S. Ames was now more debris than vessel, seawater washing over the deck. It had been close. Will took a deep breath and tried to sort his thoughts out again. He reached around his neck. Sister Elizabeth’s rosary beads were gone. His curses made him feel the loss more acutely. The gray sea continued to tumble and curl around the dying vessel.
He reached down into the ocean and splashed his face. Blinking the sting of saltwater away from his eyes, he remembered, though it all seemed so implausible. Trolleys and people beneath the water cast in orange light. Frank, still asleep beside him—tangled in clothesline, salt crusting his hair—had seen it. Albert, also asleep, his head badly gashed, had seen it.
Fully awake, Will now felt the weight in his chest again, the wages of survival. He felt the pain of his body too. A new ballast seemed dispersed throughout his torso and limbs. He ached inside, knowing this was the place from which he would have to start again.
The shoreline to the west where the orphanage’s two dormitory buildings had stood was barren, barely recognizable in the gathering daylight. He crawled to Frank and untangled him.
“Much obliged,” Frank said, slowly sitting up. He looked down at Albert, wincing at the cut above his eye, then over the water and inland. He saw where Will’s eyes were locked. “Fort Crockett.”
Albert stirred now too, leaned forward and looked toward the beach. Under the vibrant red cut, his left eye was swollen almost shut. “Is that the fort?” he asked.
The three boys watched the sunrise and haze burn off the Gulf of Mexico as the world revolved obliviously into full daylight.
“You’re still bleeding, Albert,” Frank said. “How do you feel?”
“Born to sorrow,” Albert said quietly, touching the swell of his forehead, then reading the life preserver ring floating in the water nearby. “Who in tarnation is John S. Ames anyway?”
“He’s the one who saved you from being drowned last night,” Frank said.
“Some little schooner,” Will said, pulling up a broken board, testing its buoyancy with his foot. “It was probably tied up somewhere and got loose. Got wedged here in the trees.” He ran his tongue across his salty lips and motioned for Frank and Albert to get into the water. “Ready?”
They hated to be wet again, but they could see land now and were ready to endure it. Albert stretched nervously and reminded them about Campbells and swimming. Frank helped him to the side of their little raft, next to Will. Then, into the salt tide, they each lowered themselves.
“This stings,” Albert said, touching his wound.
“Here we go,” Frank said.
Against the pain and cold, movement toward shore was a tonic.
“Goodbye, John S. Ames, whoever you are,” Albert said, as they began to kick in unison.
Though exhausted, the three boys churned the water with conviction. Seeing figures moving on the shore near the fort added a rhythm to their pace. A half dozen soldiers, who looked as if they had recently fought a battle and lost decisively, soon spotted them. Three of them waded into the tide and pulled Will, Frank, and Albert from the breaking waves as if they were miracles.
The bedraggled boys, cut and bruised, their clothing torn or missing, had but one shoe among the three of them. They had been in the sea almost twelve hours since the St. Mary’s Orphan Asylum building had moved off of its foundations, floated out to sea, and, buffeted by the force of rotating winds and heavy rains, fallen into the ocean. Sister Elizabeth, Sister Camillus, and the other Sisters of Charity of the Incarnate Word, along with Henry Esquior, had done all that was possible to save the ninety-three children. Their failure, except for these three, was complete.
19
THE BEACH
“Can you walk?” a soldier asked.
“We haven’t tried in some time,” Frank replied.
Will felt heavy on land, but also as he should, again on the firm foundation of the terrestrial ball. Frank found his footing, too. Another soldier, one with a sympathetic bearing, helped Albert up, then raised him up and over his shoulders. Albert’s little body looked as frail and thin as a wishbone. He stared back at the Gulf with a baffled look on his face.
Before moving, Will announced his in
tentions. “We feel obliged to insist you take us to St. Mary’s Hospital and Infirmary in the city proper. We aim to tell Mother Superior Gabriel we’re alive.”
No one responded.
“We’re from the orphanage,” he added, conferring further heft to his position.
“Expect they know what happened,” the soldier carrying Albert said.
“They don’t know the part about us,” Will said, standing solid on the beach. The soldier barely shrugged. Frank looked at Will and then at the departing soldiers. He shrugged too and followed the soldiers. Will turned squarely west toward where the orphanage had stood. He saw a dozen, perhaps a score of dark bumps, dreadfully still, scattered on the beach in that direction. Other similarly dark objects were washing back and forth on the tide, some tangled in seaweed. Fearful of being alone, he relented and caught up to the soldiers.
“Same thing liked to happen to them in town,” the soldier said, shifting Albert above him. “All the buildings are down.”
As they walked, Will looked inland. There were pools of water in the low areas with dead animals in them. More bumps in the water. A third soldier, who moved skittishly, kept insisting that they not cast their eyes about—but he gave this instruction so frequently that his remarks became alarming on their own. Will tried to obey because the soldier was a soldier. But Will was fourteen, and he couldn’t fully do it. The dark bumps on the beach, were, it turned out, everywhere. After realizing their pervasiveness along the shore, he redoubled his efforts to refrain from casting his eyes about.
Fettered by pain, their young bodies moved awkwardly along the shore. After a quarter mile, Frank said he had to stop, but the soldier carrying Albert told him to keep going. It was good advice. The clumsiness in their steps worked itself out over distance.
The wind spun a burning campfire upwards near the entrance of the fort. Occasionally, a cry of anguish was heard from far away between the sounds of the waves crashing. At every hard gust, the soldiers’ eyes darted about. They deposited the boys with a bullet-headed officer who was tending the hissing flames with a branding iron.
“This is Teague,” the sympathetic one told Will, setting Albert down. “Do what he says.”
Teague didn’t look up, but nudged at the edges of his fire with the iron.
“Where’d you boys come from?” he asked.
“From the sea,” Albert told him.
“The orphanage,” Frank said, elaborating. “It fell. Can I get some britches?”
Teague looked at Will, pointing with the iron at Albert. “What’s wrong with him?”
“He’s weary,” Will explained.
“And a bit broke up,” Frank said. “He lost his sister.”
“Well,” Teague announced as if this decided something. Then he stood up, motioning that they follow him inside.
20
THE CAPTAIN
The captain in charge was a slight, olive-skinned man, somber in disposition, his deportment full of crucial intangibles, surely descended from a long line of soldiers. He was standing over a table, studying a stack of papers with several men watching him by the light of a kerosene lamp. The shadows danced as he touched his cropped beard and gave a succinct order. Two soldiers quickly exited. Will was about to announce again that they must be taken to the hospital, but the captain’s command of expression in dispatching the soldiers captivated him. The captain then looked up at Teague, as if to say, what’s next?
“Captain Benson, sir, these boys say the storm carried them away from the orphanage.”
“We weren’t carried away,” Frank corrected. “The whole orphan asylum was carried away. Then it fell into the sea. Have you found any more of us?”
The captain moved to Albert and took one knee in the darkness, motioning for Teague to bring the lamp so he could examine Albert’s head. He answered Frank’s question with a subtle shake of his head, “No.” Will inferred from the finesse with which he did, that they were being shielded. The captain glanced at Will, confirming it without saying anything. He then looked into Albert’s weary eyes.
“This boy,” he said, shaking his head and pushing a steady stream of air through his teeth. There was forbearance in his face implying he loved mercy though his vocation was at odds with its practice. “This boy,” he said again as he inspected the gash in the orange light. Will gathered quickly that the captain was one who saw terrible things rightly.
“Have you seen Maggie?” Albert asked him.
“Just who is Maggie, son?” the captain replied in a tender voice.
“She’s my sister,” Albert said. “She can’t swim.”
The captain put his hand on Albert’s shoulder, then brought him closer in a tender embrace that surprised everyone present.
Will found himself instantly devoted. Frank mentioned aloud how he still considered trousers a chief imperative.
The captain turned and said something quietly to Teague, nodding to Frank. He pointed to their feet also. Teague saluted more crisply than it might have been imagined he was capable of up to now and stepped out. Captain Benson turned to Will, instinctively seeing he was the one to be addressed, knowing he was the one who would act. “You boys received a severe blow. This one needs more care than we can provide here.”
21
LEAVING FORT CROCKETT
Teague told Frank to stand up straight. The soldier took the boy’s measurements in a glance and began his business, removing a pair of regulation trousers from the shelf, then addressing them decisively with a Bowie knife. He occasionally looked up as if interested in some sort of exactitude.
“Try these.”
“Thank you,” Frank said to Teague, slipping them on, before turning to Albert. “Look, Albert, new britches.”
“Congratulations,” Albert said, weakly.
Frank smiled, almost overcome with emotion. “Thank you,” he said again to Teague.
Will inspected Albert’s head, imitating the precision the captain had exhibited, sure that Albert had been concussed, as Teague found the boys each a pair of old Army boots. The soldier stuffed old socks down in the toes to tailor them for size.
“You soldiers must be properly shod,” he said, in inflections which matched those of the captain they had just left. Teague took more time and care than they’d expected to arrive at the proper fit for all three of them, but his sartorial aim was true in each case. Will, with his boots on, acknowledged to himself that he liked being thought of as a soldier by someone like Teague.
“Let’s get him some air,” Teague continued, motioning to Albert and grabbing more supplies off the shelf. “It’s gamey in here. I’ll rewrap his head outside. Your bean, son, got conked awful good.”
With a canteen of water, a dark green canvas sack with a short sleeve of crackers, and three apples, they emerged outside where Teague swabbed Albert’s forehead and prepared to administer an ointment along the deep laceration above his brow.
“Hold him down. This’ll smart. It’s angry stuff.”
“You don’t have to hold me down, sir,” Albert said, and they didn’t. Although Will and Frank were taken aback at the depth of the cut, Albert didn’t move at all except for a small ball of muscle at the base of his jaw which appeared and disappeared intermittently as Teague worked. Teague wrapped the boy’s head with a gauzy material and secured it. He handed the rest of the bandages and a small green jar of the angry antiseptic to Frank who put it in the oversized pockets of his new pants. “Change him out with that.”
“How often?” Frank asked.
“As often as you ought,” Teague answered. “Wait here a piece. This afternoon, I’ll take you into town myself. We’ve no one to spare presently.” With this, Teague retrieved the iron from near the fire and disappeared back into the barracks. Will walked to the entrance and looked into the dark, following him a few steps before coming back out.
&nbs
p; He returned to Frank and Albert and re-tied Albert’s boots as tightly as he could.
“Frank, I’ve got the gunny sack. You carry the canteen.” Will helped Albert up. “We need to keep drinking every hour.”
An hour later, when Teague told him the boys were gone, the captain sent no one after them. However, he did go outside and look to the east, relieved that during the earlier reconnoiter of the area, the soldiers had discovered the body of Sister Elizabeth Ryan before the boys could stumble upon her. The soldiers had identified her by a laundry tag in her undershirt. She was face down, her short auburn hair free, her body half-buried in the wet sand. When his men removed her remains, they found a length of clothesline tied around her waist. Pulling the line from the sand revealed a smaller body completely buried in the sand, then another, and then another—eight children in all. The last was a little girl, her pockets filled with hard candy, the clothesline which extended beyond her little body ripped raggedly at its end. One of the soldiers had announced right there that he had lost his faith.
“Lord God,” the captain had said when he had been taken to the bodies. “Lord God.”
He ordered the bodies buried where they lay. The soldiers, some moved to tears, constructed and placed a single wooden cross made of driftwood to mark the seven graves.
“Should we go after them, sir?” Teague asked the captain at the entrance to the barracks.
“No, son. We can’t do anything for those boys. The older one with the sandy hair seems capable. He’s intent on getting the little one to the sisters.” The captain’s eyes narrowed; his bearing unchanged. He turned to the soldier who had lost his faith and handed him written orders and instructed him to start for the mainland by horseback. The captain told him the bridges would be out, but to try to find a steamer to get across. His last order was for the soldier to be resourceful.
The Mourning Wave Page 5