The Mourning Wave

by Gregory Funderburk

  “This way.”

  “Do you want to see my paper?”

  “No, Will. We were expecting you, of course.”

  He moved forward, angling through those gathered near the front as she motioned for his advancement in a refined way, with a willowy arm, drawing him to the entrance of the building without friction. She introduced herself as Sara and they began to ascend together nimbly up the exterior steps. Her figure lithely threaded through those crowded at the door. She took his hand, following closely behind her as if caught in the narrow current of a strong river. Soon they were beyond the lobby at a pair of brass inlaid doors, which opened just at the moment her presence made it necessary.

  It was somehow much cooler here. Storm sufferers were filling out simplified forms. Two little girls were eating crackers. Food and supplies were being moved in straight lines in traffic patterns which invited, but never caused collision. There was an invisible orchestration of motion here. Relative to everywhere else, the interior of this building was sparkling. Nevertheless, there were young men continuing to feverishly scrub every square inch of the already deeply glowing mahogany. The decontaminants and sanitizers had taken hold here where they had not elsewhere. There was no stench, no residue of death, no film from the sickening ooze that covered the rest of the city.

  Ahead, a spiral stairway greeted them. Will was whisked upward, his magnificent escort’s long fingers wrapped about his hand. It all made him wish he was fully grown or at least bathed. She seemed to barely touch the steps. The shining handrails were wholly superfluous. She occasionally looked back at him with magnetizing gray eyes. His clothes smelled of smoke and sweat, while she was scented of magnolias. His clothes were caked in mud, his complexion a doormat, his hair, according to Sister Xavier, looked like a hoorah’s nest. Sara was, in all respects, flawless. They passed over marble-floored corridors, through paneled hallways, and into brightly lit foyers. Each threshold they crossed was more ornate than the one they had passed before. Will had never been inside the customs house until now. He could barely comprehend how all this wondrous richness could have escaped him in his own hometown.

  “This is a gem of a building,” he said to Sara.

  She laughed lightly, moving like a ballerina through the room and toward a large set of double doors, dark in color and impressive in craftsmanship. Will looked from side to side, impressed with the detail and pace of all that was happening in this remarkable place. Again, the doors naturally opened for Sara swiftly at the instant of her arrival, revealing a bustling office inside.

  Will could not say that he was entirely surprised to see the stranger from the street standing behind a large walnut desk. He was issuing orders to a dozen people at once in the same deliberate voice with which he had instructed Will to present himself here today, at this hour. What took Will aback was the presence of the elderly woman with the gripe from the Tremont. It was equally astonishing to him that, as impressive as the distinguished stranger appeared at the center of this miraculous operation, it was she who appeared to outrank him.

  The beautiful Sara, who had delivered him there, withdrew invisibly as both the stranger and Clara Barton now locked their eyes upon Will. The man said something to the her and she said something back and everyone else in the room turned their eyes to Will, setting their collective gaze upon him, waiting to see what he would do. From deep inside, Will summoned up a voice, the resonance of which echoed throughout the chamber with the energy and clarity of a large bell that surprised even him. He sounded almost like his father as he confidently exclaimed:

  “Ike!”

  77

  THE TRADING FLOOR

  The men and women who had been scrubbing stopped. Those who had been handing out clothes and supplies set down their work. Those who were cooking meals completed their preparations. All the rest who labored inside reported to the vast trading floor on the ground level to eat a noontime meal together and listen to their ward chairman, Ike Kempner, and the famed and beloved Clara Barton from Washington, D.C.

  Will looked down on the floor from the balcony where he stood next to Ike. He expected Mr. Kempner would provide words of inspiration which would further inform the work of all those present. Instead, it was Miss Barton who moved to the balustrade and began to speak in a calm and natural voice that instantly quelled all remaining noise inside the building. She orated in a slow and deliberate, yet casual style which seemed to have the power and timbre not only to cut the atmosphere, but to bend the arc of history the way she thought it ought to go.

  “It is with deep grief that I learned what befell you here in this, your city. It is affecting far beyond what is common in the cases in which I have been called upon to serve our nation. But now, the sea, with its fury spent, has sullenly retired, my friends.”

  Here, she shifted her weight and leaned out toward all of them, with the effect of further riveting them to her words. “Sorrow comes to everyone. But the older ones among us, those who have lived through the war, those who have lived through epidemics and through the periodic quaking of the earth, have come to better weather these seasons, these moments of inevitable grief. I am anxious therefore to afford you who are younger some special alleviation of your personal distress, given that you are less accustomed to these travails.”

  She commanded her audience below so completely that it could hardly be imagined the world still spun. “You may feel that relief from your present circumstances is impossible. You may feel that you can never realize that you will ever feel better. You may feel that you can never come to understand your loss because it is so profound.”

  Clara Barton gripped the rail of the balcony in a way that matched the marble itself as she surveyed the trading floor below. Pausing not merely for effect, but so that she could look directly into individual faces, she continued. “Let me say to you that you shall be happy again. For this is only a moment. To accept this as true will make you less miserable now. I have an breadth of experience in these matters to know it is surely so. The memory of your lost loved ones, instead of an agony, will in time bring a sweetness to your heart of a purer and holier sort than you can now know.”

  Will, for one, found her faith in this expansive grace most persuasive. “And you who are volunteering at this hour, my respect is with you,” she continued. “All of you. My respect increases each day, each hour, each moment. No thought of self. No thought of self-seeking. All in settled, united purpose. No discord.”

  Will knew, in fact, that there had been discord. The members of the Galveston Sharpshooters Club and Chief Ketchum’s deputies had gone so far as to begin arresting each other. There were the burial issues, really a debacle, and now the hotly contested issue of the fires. However, if her words weren’t strictly true, to watch her mobilize power in the cause of service to the suffering was extraordinary. Will would have jumped right now from these marbled heights had she asked him to do so, confident he would be caught securely by the like-minded below.

  Clara Barton thanked each person present again and yielded to Mr. Kempner, who proceeded to recognize Will at his side.

  “This boy is from the St. Mary’s Orphan Asylum that was lost. He has a word for us,” Kempner said. “Will.”

  Will looked up, his eyes wide, and Ike nodded back, conveying that this was something that should be done.

  Will stepped forward. He knew it was critical to give thanks to Miss Barton and Mr. Kempner and all those responsible for the special excellence he’d seen flowing from this building. Even now, the customs house personnel were gathering the supplies that Will and Sister Xavier had classified as necessities. More crucially, Will knew he had to find a way to tell those whom the Fates had placed before him right now, the story of the St. Mary’s Orphan Asylum. He must give the account, in all its truth and tragedy, in such a way that its power, its weight, and its gravity would be impossible for their memories, and that of history’s, to resist.<
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  Miss Barton’s poised hands jutting from her white lace cuffs rested on his shoulders, giving him as fine an introduction as anyone could expect. Two hundred sets of eyes looked upward. Will spoke often in school, had played key parts in shows at the orphanage, and had sung in a small choir group to the Women’s Auxiliary under the demanding tutelage of Miss Winifred Ruby—but this was different. He was close to freezing up with fear when the thought of Sister Elizabeth rescued him. As the fatal surf had begun to crash against their endangered home, she had told him what to do. With eight children strung securely to her body with clothesline, two of them in her arms and an extraordinary expression of peace on her face, she had told Will to remember. Will had promised on his soul that he would. He breathed deeply, looking out over the assembly, and felt her presence. The timidity remaining inside him began to diminish and a new kind of courage encompassed his heart, the kind that arrives when it’s required to do what you must.

  “Sister Elizabeth, at the orphanage where I lived, she used to say that sharing in the suffering of others is suffering yourself.” He looked up to Miss Barton. “Thank you for suffering with us here.” Will then gripped the rail and leaned out a little, just as he had seen her do. “The fact is that the sisters believed that if you weren’t having somewhat of a hard time, you probably weren’t really living the way you ought. I don’t know but maybe you’re not likely to learn what’s what until you’re sunk low and in a state. I could be wrong.”

  Then he paused for a moment and to less of his surprise than he might have imagined, just as they appeared under the waves, the St. Mary’s children began moving within and throughout the crowd below. More real than real. And he began to remember.

  78

  REMEMBERED

  “John Toney was fourteen years old,” Will said. “His brother, Joe, was just eight. They were both from Houston. Eugene and Ronnie Grube, they were fourteen and fifteen. They were from a place called Mentz. They grew up on a farm and knew how to take care of chickens. Robert Clark was thirteen. I’m not sure where he was from, but he was one ornery cuss. We called him Robbie, but he didn’t like it one bit. Albert and Therese Boudreaux were from New Orleans. They were thirteen and fourteen and knew French, so they could talk to Sister Vincent. We could never understand what they were saying. Emma Scott was fifteen and had wavy red hair. She could play the violin, and her brother, William, was thirteen. Heck of a good baseball player.”

  Will was seeing, remembering with clarity now.

  “Maggie Campbell, of course. She was Albert’s sister. She was five. She’d get excited if you gave her some candy. Frank and James O’Neill were from around here; eleven and nine. They could walk on their hands all the way down the beach. They’d race. You should’ve seen it. Daniel O’Neill wasn’t brothers with them. Just had the same name. He was from Waco. He was ten. He moved in not long ago and was nice but couldn’t walk on his hands or anything.”

  Now he saw more of his friends below, moving with the gestures and mannerisms he knew, the kinds you notice when you share a home.

  “Peter and Katy Faulkie. Peter was nine and Katy was around six. They were from here. Peter could make a paper airplane fly forever. He used to sail them from the balcony over the beach. If he threw one from up here, it’d fly and fly.” Will couldn’t help smiling about this, though it also made him unfathomably sad. “Katy fed the cats that came around. They told her not to do it, but she couldn’t not do it. Joseph and Josephine Louis were twins from Houston. Their birthdays were on New Year’s Eve. We’d have cake. James Lambert was eleven and was from Beaumont. He was always sick.”

  The crowd below wondered why he seemed to be squinting, looking over them so carefully and around the floor. He kept going.

  “James and Claude Kerr were eleven and eight. I think they were brothers. They acted like it. They both liked roasted oysters, but they may have just been cousins. Clement Beardshy was eight. He had eyes like a deer and played marbles and made sandcastles all the time. Clement was from Waco. This other boy was named Arnold. No one knew what his last name was. He was just Arnold. He was eight.”

  Behind him, Miss Barton and Mr. Kempner exchanged looks as Will appeared to be scanning the floor. He went on with the names, sure not to miss a one.

  “Joseph McKale was nine and from Philadelphia. He boxed, even though he didn’t have any gloves. Agnes, his sister, was fourteen. She wanted to be a nurse like you, Miss Barton. Alma Fox was nine and Andrew, her brother, was seven. Henry Fox was five. They were all from Sabine Pass, all fond of fishing. Even Henry could bait his own hook. They caught a little hammerhead shark one time, but they had to let it go. Michael, Anastasia and Little May Zarkerey were from Poland. And did they ever know the Bible—practically memorized the whole thing. Front to back. Little May was just a baby, but I wouldn’t put it past her. She may’ve known a few verses too. Charlie Sharkey was five. He was Herbert Sharkey’s brother. Herbert was in the hospital when the storm came, so he’s still alive, but he’s only three.”

  Will had seen Herbert yesterday at the hospital.

  “Annie and Bessie Ryan were older, seventeen and sixteen. They were almost as old as Sister Finbar. They helped Sister Elizabeth with the lessons for the little ones. Bessie could cipher as well as a regular Rosenberg teacher. Lizzie Linstrum was ten and her sister Lulia was twelve. They got more books from the library than anyone and could both draw something fierce. Pictures and the like. Especially horses. They were from outside of town.”

  Will saw them all and said their names aloud and who they were.

  “There was another little boy who just got here last week name of Walter, and a boy named Peter Chains, who was about thirteen and always helped Henry with chores. Bennie Yard was twelve. I never knew where he was from, he wouldn’t say. I climbed up on the roof with him once. We got caught but avoided the birch somehow. Clara Cox and one named Nettie Ward. They were in my grade and helped with laundry and needlework. They might have been second cousins with the Louis twins who I mentioned some time ago. Alice Foster was a little older. She helped Sister Benignus with cooking. So, did Hazel Murphy.”

  Will closed his eyes then opened them again.

  “Opal Collins, Gertrude Anderson, Biddie and Cora. Cora Jones. She was a good egg. They’d all lost their parents to the yellow fever, like me. We’re all about the same age, a little younger, a little older, all from here. We all came, and the sisters took us in when all our folks passed on. Elmer Miller and Ida Powell, they were the tots with Sister Elizabeth. They hung on to her all night and she let them.”

  He swallowed hard and told them next about how Henry Esquior chose to stay and tried to save them, then died for them and with them. Then, slowly, with all the solemnity he could summon, he spoke each of the sisters’ names.

  “Sister Camillus Treacy was from Ireland. She was put in charge after Mother Joseph died in the summer. Y’all might recall that. And she wasn’t even that old, Sister Camillus. Sister Evangelist was from Ireland too. So was Sister Raphael and Sister Benignus, who was a great cook, and Sister Finbar, who was just twenty-one. I asked her one time her age on account of how young she looked. Sister Vincent had come from France. She was our seamstress along with Sister Genevieve, who was from Mexico. Sister Felicitas was German and Sister Catherine was from Canada. She was a nurse. And Sister Elizabeth Ryan, my friend, she was Irish. She was the bravest person I’ve ever known. Miss Barton, she’s the one who had that cross, the one I gave you at the Tremont, if you’ll recall.”

  Will exhaled. Now there were only the workers below on the trade floor again.

  “Albert Campbell and Frank Madera survived with me on the deck of the John S. Ames, stuck in some blamed trees in the water most of the night. Albert’s with his sister now in Topeka, thanks to Miss Kuhlman, and Frank’s with the Bulnavics down yonder with a mess of cousins, just a piece down the street.”

  He turned back
to Mr. Kempner and then to Miss Barton. The way Ike touched his shoulder made him think of a home he’d not yet known, but someday would.

  “And I’m Will Murney. Here with you today. Most thankful for it.”

  79

  CHURCH

  Owing to how swimmingly things had gone at the customs house, Will decided he ought to stop at the church to light a candle before he returned to the hospital. He couldn’t formulate the purpose behind this notion with any more specificity, but all that had happened with Mr. Kempner and Miss Barton seemed to be revealing to him something with a mysterious contour. The feeling drew him to church row. A sanctuary seemed the venue to take up the remaining matter of Grace, as well, as her fate continued to trouble his mind acutely.

  St. Patrick’s Catholic Church was out of the question, as it was monumentally bashed in, so he surveyed the others. Walking up and down the street he cogitated on which one might most closely align with his religious sympathies, which were growing more complicated in the aftermath of the storm. Less dance, he thought, and more wrestling.

  The other church buildings were damaged to varying degrees and it was difficult to refrain from gleaning theological significance from the differentials. Eventually, he decided that either the Presbyterians or the Episcopalians had the most to offer, given their condition, his glancing acquaintance with their liturgy, and the likelihood that, as he’d heard, the Catholics would be meeting in one or the other when it came to getting back next week.

  There was a long sweep of grass torn up along the side of the Episcopalians’ impressive limestone building and an uprooted oak broken through its stained glass and adjacent facing. Will paused at the doorway. The red door was broken off its hinges. The sign was compromised too, but he could still read it: Grace Episcopal. He went in.