Night Winds Page 23

  The best that they could hope for was an old white two-story, which jutted like a lighthouse above the floodwaters. Despite the porch trim breaking to pieces with the wind, it looked well-made and solid. Its windows were lit gold with the possibility of human comforts. He turned the horses’ heads toward the potential shelter.

  Once they reached the house front, Phillip reluctantly decided to release the sorrel mares, just as he had the gray. He hated to do it, for they were fine animals who had given their all for him. But penning them would only result in their certain drowning. He owed them at least the chance of escape to higher ground.

  Pulling Shae off her horse, he was surprised to find that even though he’d lost both his wallet and revolver, she still clutched the wooden box. He patted each mare and then swatted the first hard on the rump. The second followed, and he was chagrined to notice that they staggered in the wrong direction, toward the gulf. He could only hope they would regain their senses and turn toward Villa Rosa on Lee Boulevard.

  Two men waded out the house’s front door and helped him carry Shae onto the flooded porch and then inside. Dressed in oilskins, they worked with such grim determination that Phillip wondered if they’d been dragging in waterlogged folks all afternoon. The house’s crowded interior proved his suspicion. Though knee-high water had invaded, at least a dozen people splashed about the lower story. Many were carrying candlesticks and crockery up to the second floor. Two youths were hauling an overstuffed chair. Its base dripped as they hoisted it toward the stairway.

  Though it was much quieter inside, the rush of wind and rain overwhelmed the sounds of conversations, all but the voice of the woman closest to where they stood.

  A plump matron whose brown chignon was shot with silver shook her head at the boys. “Don’t bother. It’s already ruined, and there’s no room anyway.”

  The chair splashed back into the water when they lowered it too quickly.

  A loud shattering attracted all of their attention as a chunk of masonry, made a missile by the wind, smashed through a side window. Several men scrambled to turn a table up on end. Then one produced a hammer and began nailing it over the breach to stop the water already pouring in over the sill.

  Turning back toward Phillip, the woman raised her voice, as if in defiance of the storm’s assault. “I’m Mrs. Henry Jennings. This is my house, but you’re welcome. You take her upstairs. My daughter’s making hot coffee and cornbread as long as we can keep the stove dry. I’ll send her up with some. You all look like you can use it.”

  She turned her back on Phillip’s thanks and continued shouting directions to other guests for saving whatever belongings she deemed both salvageable and worthy.

  “I can walk,” Shae insisted. “Just tired, that’s all.”

  Phillip carried her to the stairs, then lowered her feet onto the landing, which stood above the water’s level. She touched his cheek, and he noticed her hand quivering with weariness. “Thank you for that, but it’s not as if either of us could get wetter.”

  He took her cool fingers and squeezed them, then led her to the second floor. As with the lower story, this was populated by a great variety of people. Two families, with no less than eight children between them, were crowded in one bedroom. One of the two men adjusted a pair of wire-framed glasses around the curved backs of his ears. Cracks formed spider webs across both lenses. A bedraggled, dripping woman tore strips from an old bed sheet while a second, hugely pregnant, struggled to look into a screaming toddler’s ear.

  They walked further down a hall lit by old-fashioned oil wall lamps. In the next room, a bedridden old woman had a cotton blanket pulled to her chin, as if she feared the four old men who’d pulled up chairs might somehow molest her. One white-haired man’s arm hung in a sling, bent at an unnatural angle. Nonetheless, he listened to the old woman intently, though his eyes watered with apparent pain.

  They passed up both rooms as too crowded and glanced into another. In it, a Negro woman huddled uncomfortably against a wall; two dark, half-grown boys flanked her. The three of them glanced nervously toward Phillip.

  Shae broke from his grasp and knelt on the wood floor. She embraced the woman tightly, though the slight, dark figure seemed disinclined to raise her arms. “Eva, I’m so glad to see you found a place to where’s your other boy?”

  When Eva merely continued staring, the taller of the two boys answered for her. “Jeremiahhe be gone. Them waves” His voice fractured, like a rock might if one threw it at another, harder sort. Then he shrugged, as if no further explanation were needed.

  The crest of a huge wave slapped the cramped room’s only window. Water trickled down the leaking wall beside it to soak a braided rug that had been wadded up against the growing puddle.

  The boy swallowed back his grief and sat up straighter, as if circumstances had conferred manhood upon him. “My mama say they throw us outta here if more white folk keep comin’. She help you when you need it, Miss Shae. You gonna help us now?”

  “Abraham you’re Abraham, aren’t you?” Shae asked him. When he nodded, she continued. “I’ve known your mother since I was a child. I will never let them turn you out. You have my word on it.”

  Eva looked away, a gesture that plainly declared her opinions on the promises of white folk. “You say that now, but when this house be full, we’ll see.”

  Phillip saw Shae’s expression change from hurt to puzzled; then she shrugged her shoulders and reached out for both boys’ hands. They seemed unsure, but finally accepted. The younger of the two stared at the sodden bandage around Shae’s wounded palm. Spots of blood had seeped through, top and bottom.

  “Do right by us,” Abraham whispered.

  Shae nodded solemnly, then slid down against the opposite wall. Phillip pushed aside a sewing chair and joined her. He knew that he should change the dressing on her hand, but right now, when he closed his eyes, he felt as if the whole gray world were surging, then subsiding, like the waves they’d fought so long.

  The younger boy’s snuffling roused him before he’d fully fallen to an exhausted doze. In the center of the small room, some unseen saint had placed a silver tea tray. Shae passed out thin, bone china teacups filled with coffee. She offered the first to Eva and the youngest boy.

  “This must be some day, when you servin’ me,” the small woman remarked. Glancing toward the window, she added, “Maybe God be turnin’ all creation inside out.”

  The next cups went to Abraham and Phillip. Then Shae took one, leaving an extra to steam within the shallow puddle of spilled liquid. Beside the last cup, a plate held crumbly squares of cornbread, and the two scents wove a welcome: sweet yellow and rich brown.

  The youngest boy turned his flowered cup around and around, carefully scrutinizing what Phillip guessed might be the finest thing he’d ever held. Abraham was first to take a piece of cornbread. He opened his mouth to bite into the square.

  “I might be grievin’ today, I mighta got fired by this gal’s aunt, I mighta seen our house fold up, but I’m no corpse yet, boy. You hear?” Eva admonished him.

  “Yes, Mama.” Abraham quickly bowed his head. “For this here food, we thanks you. Help all a us be real safe in this house. And keep a special eye on Jeremiah fo’ us. He a real good boy most times. We we gonna miss him somethin’ awful. Lord’s name we pray, amen.”

  “Amen,” they echoed, and Phillip wondered if he’d ever again hear a prayer so sacred, even if he journeyed to the Holy Land someday. Though the words were humble, there hadn’t been a single syllable that didn’t resonate with feeling. How different from his father’s hypocritical mutterings over his family’s evening meals. How much truer, even, than his own.

  After they finished the cornbread, Shae introduced him to Eva and the boys. They tried to talk, but the storm noise and the circumstances made all words inadequate. Soon, Phillip excused himself to locate dry material. Shae’s wound, as well as his cut shoulder, needed tending if they were to avoid infection. />
  But when he peered into the room crowded with old people, he could not pass without stopping. The white-haired man cradled his clearly broken arm. He rocked and closed his eyes, his face a mask of agony.

  “Let me take a look at that,” Phillip told him.

  And with no further thought than to ease one old man’s pain, Phillip took up medicine again.

  *

  Max Cullen was far too shaken to pay attention to Ethan’s politely outstretched hand. Instead, he staggered inside, herding his thin wife and their two daughters, tow-headed girls of six and ten. Once Mrs. Cullen crossed the threshold, she sank to the Persian rug and wept into that blue and ivory tribute to civility. Her mud-stained green dress dripped its dye onto the wool.

  Ethan’s mother swept past him and helped Mrs. Cullen to her feet. “There, there, Mildred. Hush. There, there.”

  Despite the lack of meaning in the words, the woman allowed herself to be pulled upright. Looking like a fledgling fallen from its nest, she stared about the solid marble and stamped ceilings, then once again attempted to fall into a swoon.

  Ethan caught her elbow and helped his mother lead her and her bewildered daughters to a sitting room. When he returned, Max Cullen was standing by the parlor window, staring out into the street. A bay horse, its ears laid flat against its neck, struggled to drag a covered phaeton through water that had risen past the axles.

  “Water’s nearly at your doorstep. The flood will be inside soon,” he predicted. Max removed his ruined hat, exposing a pale head fringed with graying hair. “Best get your valuables upstairs and prepare for the worst.”

  How like Cullen to immediately dispense advice, thought Ethan. No wonder his father found the man so tiresome.

  “Fairweather Manor is a rock,” Ethan assured him. “This hurricane won’t touch it.”

  Max shook his head. “That’s what the Tisdales thought before their house went. They came to our home, and we thought it was safe as well. That was before the south wall collapsed and killed our old houseman. This storm’s like nothing else we’ve seen before. The Tisdales’ carriage was right behind ours. Can you see them yet?”

  Once again, Ethan peered out into the rain. The phaeton pulled through the front gates, and at last he recognized it. Rachel! He rushed toward the oversized front doors to watch the family’s progress.

  As the carriage neared the house, a gust of wind blasted both doors open and nearly blew Ethan off his feet. Narrowing his eyes against the blast, he watched in horror as the west wing’s chimney collapsed and sent a hail of bricks flying through the air.

  The horse went down as though shot when several missiles struck it, and despite the howl of wind and water, Ethan thought he heard screams from the direction of the carriage. Heedless of debris and flooding, he rushed outside toward the Tisdales, Max Cullen right beside him.

  Bricks had smashed the phaeton’s cover, but the two men tore it open quickly. The inside of the waxed lining was slick with blood and gore. A man’s hands flopped, and he screamed desperately. The two women, washed in scarlet, did not move.

  “My wife! My daughter!” Mr. Tisdale sobbed.

  “Oh, God!” Ethan cried out, staring into the pulpy mass of Rachel’s forehead. A brick still partly jutted from it. As he stared, the rain washed away enough blood to see her eyes were open, gazing into his.

  He couldn’t move, couldn’t think, couldn’t do a thing except return his fiancée’s dead stare. The wind roared words into his ear, but he couldn’t understand them, couldn’t quite make out . . .

  The roar turned to an insistent buzzing. The scene before him lost its focus, began to darken like the eclipsed sun. Then something clouted him hard on the ear.

  His father. The old man raised his fist as if to strike again. Ethan put up his hand to indicate that he had come back to himself.

  Somehow, he managed to help Cullen and his father move Raymond Tisdale and two bodies, wrapped in blankets that dripped red, into the house.

  *

  King quickly realized he’d been a fool to set out in this mess. Goddamned rain was blowing slantwise in his face, and streetcars had quit running. Left with a choice between one lame horse and another that had refused to move from his second floor for fear of thunder, he chose the only alternative: his feet.

  But that impulse had been rash. He’d barely struck out for the Payton’s Villa Rosa when he ran into high water that stretched across the road and reached right past his waist. Worse yet was the howl of it, the wind that bellowed at him, that drove raindrops like silver nails. Around him, trees bowed before the onslaught. Chunks of wood disassembled themselves and flew before it; blades of slate flipped wildly and then sliced off the tops of waves.

  Go home. He recognized the voice as terror, a sound he’d not heard since he was a young lieutenant in the War with Mexico. But he hadn’t allowed himself to run then, though his superiors sent wave after wave breaking against the Mexicans on their hard-won hill. Wave after wave, cut down by bullets, cresting, foaming with young men’s blood.

  Yet he hadn’t run. He’d charged, though he recognized the uselessness in his action. He’d been surprised as anyone he didn’t die, surprised to hear, by blind luck, the blessed bugle call: Retreat.

  Though they had won the day, King counted his own charge as his first real victory. Because he’d done what he’d signed on for; he hadn’t cut and run. Years later when he’d served the Union, that determination had stood him in good stead against the Rebels. Only that time, as often as not, he’d been the one ordering young men to their deaths.

  If he hadn’t lost that steadfast quality between the two wars, surely he still had some measure of it now. Enough, at least, to find Mary Shae. He’d take her home to safety, no matter what the cost. And if that meant he’d have to go through Lamar Payton’s weakling heir to do it, so be it. He’d damned sure faced tougher foes.

  *

  Mrs. Jennings poked her head into the sewing room. “Room in here to stow some china?”

  Eva stiffened and glared suspiciously.

  “Let me help,” Shae volunteered. Stepping into the hall with the older woman, she spoke to her of Eva’s lost son and of her fear of being cast out with her surviving boys to drown. “I assured Eva that would never happen.”

  Mrs. Jennings’s eyes welled with tears, and she rushed into the room, then knelt before the bedraggled family. Their poor clothes were damp and torn, and her own, though finely made, looked little better.

  “I will stack folks up like cordwood before I leave one soul outside to drown,” she vowed. “I am a Christian woman, madam, and as such I give my oath. I would sooner set myself out in this maelstrom than a grieving mother and her sons.”

  Eva stared at her, as if measuring her words’ weight, then nodded stiffly. “Me and my boys, we strong enough to do whatever needs doin’ with all these folks about.”

  Below something slammed the house, and Shae would swear she felt it shudder.

  “Oh, dear.” Mrs. Jennings turned toward the stairwell, then in a moment shook her head at Eva. “You don’t need to do a thing for me. You’ve suffered quite a loss.”

  Eva stood and brushed at her damp dress. “Seem to me that workin’ for a fine lady like yourself would be somethin’ like one of them holidays I hear tell of. Besides, workin’s what I knows. It give me somethin’ else t’do but think on what happened to my boy.”

  Mrs. Jennings nodded and said, “That I understand. Come with me then, Eva. You can help me with this furniture.”

  “Let me check on what’s keeping Phillip,” Shae said. Now that she’d rested and had a bit to eat and drink, her wounded hand throbbed relentlessly.

  She took the last cup of coffee from the tray and began peering into bedrooms. She found Phillip in the room crowded with two families. Standing in the doorway, she watched him help a pregnant woman who held a tiny boy with dark brown curls. The child struggled and screamed until his face turned beet red. Phillip, who held what appear
ed to be a broken fountain pen, took the toddler in his arms and walked him toward the window.

  In her fascination, she nearly forgot about the deep ache of her hand.

  “There,” Phillip sighted along a pointed finger. “See the boat.”

  From Shae’s vantage, she saw only another lonely house, leaning impossibly before the wind.

  The boy stopped crying, pointed, and repeated, “Boat! See boat!”

  “That’s right.” Phillip turned as if to allow both himself and the toddler to watch it carried past. “A boat out in the street.”

  “Not street.” The boy wiped tears from his eyes and shook his dark curls. “Big water.”

  He placed his chubby hand over his right ear and frowned. His lips trembled, foreshadowing a cry.

  “Yes,” Phillip forestalled the onslaught with his words. “Big water now. I’m going to put a little water in your ear so we can float the bad boat out. Then it won’t hurt you anymore.”

  “Bad boat?”

  “Do you want to see the bad boat from your ear?”

  The child gazed into Phillip’s dark eyes, then nodded solemnly.

  Phillip lifted the broken fountain pen and tilted the boy’s small head. When Phillip removed his thumb from the pen’s back, the child flinched, and a few drops of liquid dribbled from his ear. Then, after a bit of repositioning, Phillip grasped something Shae could not make out between his fingers.

  He smiled and showed it to the child.

  “Not boat,” the boy laughed. “Bug buggie.”

  “I guess he was trying to keep dry.” Phillip wiped his hand on a dry cloth and handed the toddler to his mother.

  “He not dry now!” the little boy laughed.

  “I’ve been trying for an hour to get him to let me help,” the pregnant woman exclaimed. “Thank you, Doctor.”

  Phillip shook his head and offered some denial Shae couldn’t hear. As he stepped out of the crowded confines of the room, she handed him the coffee, even though she’d sipped from the same cup while she’d watched.