The Mourning Wave

by Gregory Funderburk

“The city fiendishly laughs at all tame attempts of words,” she said and scratched out the words on paper. “The churches, the great business houses, the elegant residences, the culture, the former opulence.” She looked out the glass, her fine eyes darting from point to point. “The modest little homes, all in splinters. It’s all more than can be absorbed.”

  “I’ve been absorbing it going on four days now and I still can’t believe it,” Will said. “Toothpicks and kindling.”

  The delicacy in her eyes emoted all the essentials contained in sadness. She seemed to have seen everything and all things attendant to it. “If the storm didn’t completely raze the city,” she said, “it did something very much like it.”

  In just a moment of watching her take it in, Will felt a complete connection to her. She exuded an almost tangible sense of good will.

  “Here,” Will said, reaching in his pocket. He believed it would make her feel better and it was all he had in lieu of dill licorice. The silver cross seemed to call out for her. It seemed to know her. “Zachary told me it was given to one of the sisters when the storm started up. She was called Sister Elizabeth Ryan. She was the bravest person I’ve ever known. It was for protection. It didn’t work, but all the same, the way she died . . .” Will realized what he was about to say sounded like something Albert would say, but the profound manner in which the old woman was inspecting the silver and the shape made it seem right. Its qualities entwined with his words. “She died into life, not from it.”

  She put down the pen again. Her hands looked useful even at rest. “Mercy, you’re from the orphanage out on the beach,” she said, turning all of her attention to him. “They thought all of you were lost.”

  “I did too for some time out there.”

  “Would you please tell me what happened?”

  As Will aged, he would go long stretches, years even, without speaking of the storm at all. However, even in these intervals, his mind still conversed with his heart about it, especially at night. Especially as his summers disappeared. It washed back and forth in his memory like the perpetual tide of his island home. When he did speak of it aloud, it was out of a sense of duty to the sisters and the children who perished. But he would never tell it in full as he did to the old woman suffering from the gripe at the desk in front of the cracked window overlooking the confounded city. He told her of little Clement Beardshy, of the Faulkies, of Maggie, and the Zarkereys. He spoke the sisters’ names and when he came to Henry, he spoke in a low voice that he thought befitted the heroic. He cursed himself inside when he couldn’t remember all ninety of the children’s names, though it would be miraculous to remember all of them at once, but the woman in black in the public parlor at the Tremont didn’t mind. She listened to Will’s story in full, as the delicacy of her heart and the severity of the events her heart received from him blended together. Her attention to him, the way she followed, entering his story silently and walking alongside, offered back to him something that felt like the leading edge of healing. She nursed his soul, listening as if he was the only one who had ever suffered.

  65

  DEAD LISTS

  Thursday, September 13

  Will set out before dawn for the Ketchum’s home again with the resolve of a complete decision, but still little in the way of a plan. He moved inland as the sun approached the horizon, thinking of the John S. Ames and what he’d seen under the water as the storm abated. He hadn’t told the old woman at the Tremont this part because it seemed so far-fetched. He tended even to doubt it himself, especially in the broad daylight, but in the pre-dawn darkness that surrounded him now, and likewise in the twilight of the early evening, his memory of what he’d seen became more persuasive. Within the moments of half-light during which night turned to day and the day turned to night, he became briefly as sure of it as he was right now. There was something in the liminal sky that told him what the truth was or at least what it might be.

  He wasn’t sure what it might mean that he’d seen the children who had perished, the trolleys, the oleanders, all inside a light suggestive of eternity under the waves, but he had seen it. He had seen the sisters, the pier, and the Pagoda in the same warm vibrancy. And, most troublingly and comforting, he had seen exactly what Albert and Frank had seen. The usually rational and sober Frank had been ready to dive through the same waves which, just a few hours before, had tried to kill him just to reach it all. Albert had almost drowned after surviving a whole night of near drowning to be with the figures under the water. He had never heard of hallucinations that were simultaneously shared. The only explanation he could derive was that this world had cracked open in the cataclysm and another sort of midway place had briefly slipped in. To untangle this notion seemed crucial to making the remainder of his life greatly more effective, though it also seemed presently beyond his best abilities of comprehension.

  In any event, the sun was up now. The lavender of the pre-dawn was burning off and what he surveyed ahead had to be addressed with a more hard-nosed pragmatism. There were check points and troops. Martial law had been declared and its evidence was now in front of him. He turned and tried another way into the neighborhood, but another string of fires and more troops blocked the way. He moved back toward to beach to see if he could make some progress west, then cut back into town, but found that wouldn’t work either. It was becoming impossible to move from ward to ward unless one’s legitimate business could be succinctly stated to professionally skeptical soldiers, and Will, despite the imperative of his mission, lacked a persuasive public case for this errand. When he turned back, retreating to the beach alone, he felt most hollow.

  Taking off his new boots and socks, Will dug his toes into the sand like he used to do in the shadow of his home. Watching the gulls float mystically still on the air above the water in front of him, his breathing slowed and his soul, too, seemed to shed velocity. A gull caught his eye as it turned, swooping down toward him, flying through the soot in the air and over the sand. It sailed over the new gray gravel gathered in piles along the beach and landed with a short hop a few feet from him, a twig in its beak, looking at him quizzically.

  Sam’s words entered Will’s mind and he recovered himself. He still moved and ate and would one day dance and love and see things the lost wouldn’t. There could be fine things ahead. Looking out at the sea, he realized it could so easily have been otherwise. It left him shaking. He blinked away tears and was overcome by a vast gratitude as the gull approached him tentatively, as if recognizing his vulnerable state. They regarded each other, remaining perfectly still for a moment. The bird had the gray markings between its eyes identical to the one that had questioned him from the top of the mast of the John S. Ames coming up on a week ago.

  “You following me?” he asked. The seabird alighted, elevating into the open sky, rejoining its brethren without reply. As it rose, out at the horizon, the sunlight angled and flashed across the ocean in a transfiguring way. Time passed. It was hard to say how much, but within it, Will felt an immense sense of well-being.

  He arose, knowing the islanders he would meet today, though remaining vulnerable like him as they clasped tightly to silver lockets, scraps of cloth, picture frames, and other small and lovely possessions, would begin to take up again the shared tasks of life. Their stories would continue to be so poignantly and powerfully rendered to Will that it would become clear to him that, although enduring loss was one of life’s most crucial themes, seeking sunlit hope in its wake was also one of its most crucial duties. He suspected that if you could simply hold both sides of this contradiction, the dark part and the light and lift them skyward together, a sort of elevation might follow. Redemption, he reckoned, resided somewhere within the interior of sorrow, or was at least on offer there.

  Leaving the beach, Will met an old Scot, named McLaren, with tremendously large ears who told him of his good wife who had saved his granddaughter from drowning. He’d been separated from the
m early in the night, but his wife swam for three miles with the granddaughter and another little girl, a stranger, clinging to her. The granddaughter and the other little girl, he told Will, were now at the customs house eating dry crackers. His wife, though, had died of injury or perhaps exhaustion, leaving him a written message attached to her own clothing, instructing him to care for both little girls. The Scot, of course, pledged to the Almighty that he would do so in accordance with his wife’s last wishes and her sacrifice.

  “Such doings can hardly be understood,” Mr. McLaren said to Will, before mentioning he had first seen his wife’s name on what he called a daid leest at the lumber mill. He mentioned also a meesing leest, but his wife’s name had been on the former not the latter.

  “At the lumber mill,” he said. Mr. McLaren presumed his wife’s body had been burned already or perhaps was burning even now. “No matter,” he told Will, pulling one of his giant ears. “These bodies are but the lees of our better beings.”

  Will didn’t know whether learning of Grace’s death from a list on a posted paper in black ink might be preferable to his eyes settling upon her small body waiting in one of the piles to be burned on the outskirts of her neighborhood. He knew only that the thought of either of these alternatives took his breath away.

  66

  THE LUMBER MILL

  It was a solemn and careful crowd evaluating the dead list at the lumber mill. Those ahead of Will scanned its length with the same trepidation that marked his own approach forward. Sometimes with a sniffle, sometimes with no demonstration at all, those reviewing the list turned and walked away after completing their reviews. Men stepped aside when a woman or child arrived. In sympathy with such civilities, those closest to the postings parted as Will approached the wall on which the postings were affixed. If any of those making way for him had looked in his eyes, they’d have seen the mix of tentativeness and tenacity that was inside him.

  The first thing Will realized was that the list’s length defended itself from being read. Secondly, while it had originally been composed in something approaching alphabetical order a few days ago, it was now as much a mess as the city from which it drew its contents. There were names inexplicably scratched out and many added, with notes of varying legibility in the margins. Some referenced proposed places to meet in case the person on the dead list surreally wandered up to find that they’d both been declared dead and that their family did not believe it. At some point, the purpose of the list had crossed over from crucial information to a confusing batch of sad memorials. Short tributes and marginalia in several languages reflecting the dates of birth and death further complicated Will’s review. Fortunately, a comprehensive review was not his aim. He nervously flipped the posted pages to almost the middle of the ‘K’s’ and worked his way downward:

  Kessler, Florence (45th & Broadway)

  Kessler, Fred (45th & Broadway)

  Kessler, Joseph

  Kessner, August

  Kessner, Emma

  Kessner, James H.

  Kessner, Lena (NS Avenue Q between 46th & 47th)

  Kilgore, Edward (3626 Avenue R½)

  Kilgore, Mrs. Edward

  Kilgore, child of Edward

  He stood in repose for a moment then turned, managing a sympathetic smile to those behind him. One of the men behind him who’d also been reviewing the list, turned with him and began moving toward the mill itself. Will’s eyes followed him in. The mill’s interior resisted the orange-pink light of the mid-morning, but he could see people walking around inside, searching with handkerchiefs over their mouths for the bodies of their loved ones. Others, with their shirts partially covering their faces, were spreading lime. Everyone inside moved slowly, for reasons known fully only to the operators of funeral parlors.

  Will followed the man inside, though even years later he couldn’t fully articulate why. It had something to do with devising a complete record of how Will’s own story might unite with those who lay inert inside. The dead stretched from wall to wall. Mostly, but not invariably, they were lying face up, staring at the rafters. The corpses here suffered the misfortune of having been identified initially. They were awaiting removal and burial by their families before it had become clear this would not be possible. When they had loaded the barges and headed out to sea earlier in the week, those commanding the workers had apparently favored taking the unidentified remains over the bodies of these poor souls. No doubt it was more difficult to take a pitchfork and a shovel to the labeled bodies than those which bore no name. Now though, they too were waiting to be burned.

  Will moved farther inside knowing, in a sense, all of them—not as friends or even acquaintances, but as people he had seen at Unger’s, at the croquet park, on the boardwalk, or along the long graceful stretches of the flat brown and golden-speckled beaches. All ages, sexes, and nationalities, sprinkled with the same disinfectant in death. Teachers, businessmen, dock workers, mothers, every realm of the city’s life seemed democratically present.

  Moving more deeply inside without any real business here began to feel profane, as the others moving with him were searching in particular grief whereas his was presently only general. All those in this pursuit walked as if there were thorns in their feet and no one spoke. Most of them were staying close to the walls, as if they might be trapped by something unspeakable if they waded out into the middle. Despite the lime, the odor was an assault. Even if compelled by a singularity of legitimate purpose, no one could remain in this fiendish place long. Soon, Will turned and tripped outside, back into the brilliant light, as his stomach lurched its contents into the mud outside. No one paid much attention to his utter foolishness, except Daisy Thorne, who helped him to his feet.

  67

  MISS THORNE

  Daisy had learned that the orphanage was destroyed and that all there were undoubtedly lost. Will was one of the only students in her class whose fate she thought she knew. So to see him tumble out of the lumber mill was akin to watching Lazarus emerge haltingly from the tomb.

  “I never thought,” she said, as she took out a handkerchief.

  “Don’t worry. Everyone says that.”

  Even disheveled, Miss Thorne, looked pretty lovely.

  “Who were you looking for?”

  “Just looking,” Will said stupidly. Gracefully, she refrained from inquiring further, but put her hand on his shoulder.

  “I’m going to the Tribune Building,” she said softly. “You’ll have to wait a long time, but the list there’s more up to date if you want to come with me. Perhaps the person for whom you are looking might be on the list there. I’ve been there the last few days trying to get a telegram to my fiancé, every day. To Joe. They’ve raised the telegraph lines now. They’re supposed to be working today.” Will remembered now that Miss Thorne was to have been married by now. At school the week before, there had been talk of little else.

  “I think I have to get back to the hospital,” Will replied. He shouldn’t have to wait in line to lose his heart. He was also afraid someone might ask what business of his it was whether the police chief’s daughter had survived. He would have to say, “I don’t know,” as he truly didn’t. It didn’t make sense why her life had become so consequentially entwined around his own, but her survival and the maintenance of his spirit had become very nearly a single thing. As such, he had also become unbearably afraid to uncover her fate.

  “I thought you were dead too, Miss Thorne. I saw what’s left of Lucas Terrace.”

  “My mother and I moved several times with our neighbors, Miss Gent and the Ammundsens. We ended up with everyone else, thirty-five or forty of us in a single flat on the third floor facing away from the ocean. We huddled there all night, drinking cold coffee and eating biscuits, every moment thinking, please stop.”

  “The whole building was caved in except for one corner,” Will said.

  “That’s where we all wer
e,” she said, refraining from telling him that she had watched a dozen of them, Miss Gussie Belle Gent, and the Ammundsens included, leave for higher ground at the height of the storm. They had not returned, nor presumably had they survived. She did not know what had become of most of her neighbors. Her own life had been saved by the narrowest of margins, she knew. “It’s where I earnestly prepared to meet my death.”

  “Frank made it, too. And another boy, Albert,” Will told her. They spoke of others in the class. Will made sure to inquire after several classmates before he asked about Grace, but Miss Thorne, smiling sympathetically at Will, told him she unfortunately hadn’t yet heard about the police chief’s family.

  “I’m so sorry about what’s happened, Will.”

  “I hope you find your boyfriend, Miss Thorne.”

  “I shall,” she said so defiantly, yet sweetly, that it seemed impossible that it could be otherwise.

  68

  AN UNSATISFYING EXCHANGE WITH DR. CLINE

  Instead of returning to the hospital, Will turned toward Unger’s Market. Along each block, there were signs posted like this:

  John Gardner

  If you see this, meet me at 12th and O Street on Friday

  Wm. R. Clay and Jetta Clay

  I am at 2002 L. Come at once.

  To: Fredrich Heidenreich

  If alive come to 24th & Church

  Your brother, Ben

  Riley Edwards

  If you read this go to where the Pagoda was

  (where we met)

  Body of Ludie Macon sought

  Five foot and four inches. Black hair, brown eyes

  No other brand or mark recollected

  People were waiting all over the city, afraid they might miss each other forever.