Yesterday's Dead

by Pat Bourke

  “You saved him,” Maggie said to Tommy.

  Tommy ran his hand through his hair, leaving it sticking up like a rooster’s comb. “I hope you won’t mind me saying, miss, but Mam—” his voice caught, “my mama was sick just like that. He needs to be in hospital.”

  “I know that,” Maggie said shakily. “I’ve said that all along, but a taxi won’t take someone who’s sick, so we’ve been waiting for Forrest—”

  “Except we think something must have happened to Forrest,” Meredith broke in. “We need another plan.”

  “Begging your pardon, miss,” Tommy said, but including Meredith in his gaze, “you can’t wait any longer. You need to take him now.”

  That started Harry wailing. Jack began another scraping breath, pulling Meredith’s eyes to him as she hugged Harry close.

  “I know that!” Maggie cried. “I know all of that, but I don’t know how to get him there.” She looked utterly spent.

  Tommy’s eyes traveled from Maggie to her brother. “Then I’ll take him,” Tommy declared. “I’ll get him to the hospital, miss, even if I have to carry him there myself.”

  To Meredith, it was as if Tommy’s words had pushed aside the heavy velvet curtains at the window and sunlight was flooding in. “But you don’t have to carry him!” she cried. “You can use the wagon.”

  She turned to Maggie. “Tommy brought his sister here in a wagon.”

  “Did you hear that, Jack?” Maggie asked, her face brightening. “We’re taking you to the hospital! In a wagon!”

  Between them, Tommy and Meredith carried Jack downstairs, Maggie hovering beside them carrying blankets, Harry trailing behind. It was heavy going, and Meredith’s arms ached from the strain. Once they reached the back hall, Harry rushed to Mrs. Butters’ side to tell her the news. She put an arm around him as Bernie watched from the end of the settee, big-eyed and silent.

  As they maneuvered him outside to the waiting wagon, Jack cried out if they jostled him too much. Meredith wondered if he knew what was happening as Maggie and Tommy wedged him into the wagon, his feet tucked inside the front edge, his knees sticking straight up. Maggie swathed him in the blankets she’d ferried outside as she gave Tommy instructions about what to say when he reached the hospital.

  Tommy hauled on the handle and the wagon lurched behind him. “He’s a lot heavier than Bernie,” he said.

  “It’s Toronto City Hospital, remember. Ask for Dr. Waterton,” Maggie reminded him.

  Meredith hugged her arms against the cold as she and Maggie stood watching the wagon’s progress down the path. Jack began to gasp and splutter even before the wagon reached the street. Tommy dropped the handle and immediately began thumping him on the back as Maggie raced down the steps, Meredith close behind her. They held Jack upright, not daring to look at each other, while Tommy worked to clear the mucus from his lungs.

  “It’s no use,” Maggie said, despairing, once Jack quieted again. “It’s three miles to the hospital at least. How long will it take if you have to stop every five minutes because he can’t breathe?”

  “I’ll stop every two minutes if need be,” Tommy declared. “I told you I’d take him to the hospital, and that’s what I’m going to do.”

  “He won’t have to stop, Miss Maggie,” Meredith said, “not if you go with him. I can manage here.”

  The sound of an approaching automobile made them all turn their heads. Meredith prayed it was Forrest, prayed the car would turn into the driveway, even though she knew she’d be disappointed like all the other times she’d hoped it was him. She’d given up hoping for miracles.

  But this automobile turned in at the gate and jolted to a sudden stop. The driver flung the door open and hurried around the front of the car.

  “Papa!” Maggie cried.

  “Jack!” Dr. Waterton raced to the wagon.

  Chapter 29

  Maggie threw her arms around her father as he bent over Jack. Tears streamed down her face as she babbled a confused account of Jack’s illness. Meredith could hardly believe it was really the doctor at last. Maggie jabbered on about Parker, along with the good news about Harry and Mrs. Butters.

  After a quick examination, the doctor beckoned to Tommy, and they bundled Jack into a sitting position in the back seat of the car. Maggie tried to slide in beside her brother.

  Dr. Waterton held her back. “No, Maggie,” he said firmly.

  “But I can help—”

  “No ‘buts,’” he said. “There isn’t time to argue. I’ll see to Jack. Harry needs you here.” He turned to Meredith. “Can Parker wait until I return?”

  “I think so, sir. He’s not so bad as—”

  Just then, Jack erupted in a fit of choking. Tommy slid onto the back seat of the car and began pounding his back.

  “Stay right there,” Dr. Waterton said to Tommy. “I’ll take you with me.”

  “No!” Maggie shrieked as the doctor slammed the car door and hurried around to the driver’s seat. “Take me, Papa!”

  The engine growled to life. The long, black automobile started down the driveway and pulled out through the gateposts into the street, trailing a cloud of exhaust.

  The back door banged behind Maggie as Meredith stood shivering in the driveway watching the car get smaller and smaller until it finally disappeared around a corner.

  “You’re supposed to attack, Bernie!” Harry’s exasperated voice came from the pantry. “That’s what armies do!” Harry’s soldiers were keeping him and Bernie busy while Mrs. Butters napped.

  Meredith was sweeping the kitchen floor as vigorously as if she were one of Harry’s soldiers attacking it. It had been several hours since Dr. Waterton had taken Jack to the hospital and there’d been no word yet. She’d knocked on the closed door of Maggie’s bedroom before supper, but all she received in reply was a muffled “Go away!” She hadn’t seen Maggie since, but she imagined that Maggie was praying just as hard as she was for Jack to pull through.

  “Meredith!” Mrs. Butters called.

  Meredith set the broom down and hurried to the back hall where she found Mrs. Butters standing beside the settee, clutching a blanket around her and smiling broadly at Meredith’s surprise. “Help me to my chair,” she said breathlessly.

  “You should be resting,” Meredith scolded. Nevertheless, she held her arm out for the cook to lean on.

  “All I’ve done is rest,” Mrs. Butters said with some of her old spark, clutching Meredith’s arm, “and lying there worrying isn’t doing me any good. Any word about Jack?”

  “Not yet.” Meredith matched her steps to Mrs. Butters’ halting shuffle.

  “Poor lad,” Mrs. Butters said, leaning more heavily on Meredith as they entered the kitchen.

  Meredith tried not to mind the sour smell wafting from Mrs. Butters’ clothing. She hadn’t had a bath or even a proper wash since she’d fallen ill. Meredith hugged the cook’s arm close, grateful for her solid warmth.

  Mrs. Butters was panting by the time she sank into her usual chair at one end of the kitchen table, her cheeks flushed.

  “It’s as good as a holiday to be out of that dreary hall!” she exclaimed between wheezy breaths as Meredith hurried to the sink for some water.

  “Come on, Bernie.” Harry towed the little girl behind him out of the pantry. He stopped, eyes round, at the sight of Mrs. Butters in her chair.

  “Are you better now?” he asked. He seemed shy, as if this Mrs. Butters, wrapped in a blanket with her hair undone down her back, would take some getting used to.

  “Much better,” Mrs. Butters replied. “But Bernadette looks tired.”

  “Bernie says her soldiers are tired.” Harry pouted. “I told her soldiers don’t get tired.”

  “Everyone gets tired,” Mrs. Butters said solemnly, although Meredith could see a smile threaten
ing. “Soldiering is hard work.”

  “I’m not tired,” Harry said.

  “You’re not a soldier,” said a small voice.

  “Good gracious!” Mrs. Butters clapped her hands together. “Was that Miss Bernadette O’Hagan?”

  Bernie nodded, trying to hide a smile.

  “Then you must be feeling better,” Mrs. Butters said to her. “That’s very good news.”

  Bernie ducked behind Harry. “Let’s go,” she said. “My soldiers are rested now.”

  Harry wheeled and raced for the pantry. “Atta-a-a-ck!” he cried.

  Meredith and Mrs. Butters laughed as Bernie trailed after him.

  “Are you sure you should be sitting up like this?” Meredith asked when they could hear the battle underway once more.

  “I’m fine,” Mrs. Butters assured her. “Hadn’t you better check on Parker?”

  Parker lay on the narrow bed, his face turned toward the wall, the blue coverlet tidily pulled up over his chest. Meredith filled the wash basin with fresh water, and then set it on the floor beside the bed. She dragged the wooden chair closer to the bed and sat down, pulling her sweater around her against the draft from the open window. She took a cloth from the basin, wrung the water out of it and lifted it toward Parker’s forehead.

  Parker’s half-open eyes stared unblinking at the ivy twining up the wallpaper. His jaw hung slack. His chest was still.

  Meredith’s heart pounded. She grabbed the edge of the mattress to steady herself.

  Dead.

  Parker was dead. Not a person anymore; a carcass to be hauled away like one of Uncle Dan’s dead hogs.

  He hadn’t been as sick as the others. She’d left him alone all day.

  Now he’d died.

  The floor seemed to fall away beneath her. She swayed and collapsed against the back of Parker’s chair. As the woozy feeling began to ebb and the edges of the room came back into focus, Meredith’s eyes fastened on the small black Bible on the table by his bed. Had Parker ever turned to it for comfort, the way she did sometimes? Were there passages he’d known by heart? Had it been a gift from the family in the silver frame on the dresser? From a sweetheart whose picture he’d tucked in behind?

  She hadn’t known the first thing about him. She hadn’t cared to know. Now she never would.

  “You’re not sick, are you?” Maggie’s voice came from the doorway. “Mrs. Butters was worried.”

  “No. It’s just—”

  “Just what?”

  Meredith rose unsteadily from the chair. Her foot upended the wash basin. Water sloshed over her battered leather shoes and across the bare wooden floor.

  “Parker is dead,” she said carefully, the words strange in her mouth.

  “Oh no!” Maggie backed into the hallway.

  Meredith followed, minding very much that her shoes were wet, thinking at the same time that it wasn’t right to be worrying about something as ordinary as wet shoes. She leaned against the wall, grateful for something to hold her up. “I thought he was sleeping,” she said slowly.

  “I didn’t think of him at all,” Maggie whispered. The thin light from the electric fixture overhead gave her pale face a papery look. Blank-eyed, she leaned against the wall beside Meredith. “I was supposed to be in charge.”

  Meredith wondered if Maggie’s heart was racing as fast as her own. “Listen to me,” She said. She groped for Maggie’s hand, for the comfort of someone to hold on to, surprised when Maggie’s fingers gripped hers fiercely. “Your brother might have died if you hadn’t been with him. You kept him safe until your father got here. That’s the honest-to-goodness truth.”

  “None of that helped Parker,” Maggie whispered.

  “Yesterday you asked me what would happen if Parker got worse,” Meredith said, working it out as she said it, plowing ahead to find the meaning in it. “Well, that’s what happened. He got worse. Parker—” her mouth stumbled over the awfulness of what had happened to Parker. She paused so she’d get the words just right.

  “We did the best we could,” she said at last.

  After a long moment, Maggie drew a deep, shuddering breath. She nodded.

  From where they stood, Meredith could see the waning moon suspended in the square of blue-black sky framed by the window at the end of the hall. She pointed, and Maggie turned her face toward it. They stood like that, hands clasped together in the silent hallway, looking at the moon until the ringing of the telephone sent them running down the stairs.

  Meredith could hear Bernie reading haltingly to Harry, the two of them snug under a blanket on the settee in the back hall. She quietly relayed to Mrs. Butters Dr. Waterton’s telephone message that Jack was now under the care of nurses at the hospital, and then explained about Parker. Maggie stood beside her, stone-faced. She hadn’t spoken since talking to her father.

  “Oh, my stars!” Mrs. Butters sat in her chair looking from one girl to the other, her hand fanning her face. “The poor man. Such a sad, sad thing.”

  She reached for Maggie’s hand, and then Meredith’s. “We’ll mourn Parker, of course we will, but we can be thankful, too, that Mr. Jack has every chance of getting better now.”

  Meredith saw Maggie relax a little at Mrs. Butters’ words.

  Thankful was only one part of what Meredith was feeling. Parker hadn’t been the enemy she’d painted him. He’d just been a man with a family and sorrows in his past, his life cut off before he’d finished it.

  She wished she’d known it would turn out like that.

  Chapter 30

  Something had happened to Forrest, just as Meredith had suspected. He’d fallen ill while helping transport patients and had been taken to one of the hotels that the city had commandeered as makeshift hospitals. In the confusion with so many people sick and dying, no one made the connection between him and Dr. Waterton until several days had passed.

  Both Forrest and Jack had remained in hospital for weeks, but now it was late November and they were back at Glenwaring. The long job of convalescence had begun. Mrs. Butters had returned home, taking Bernie and Tommy to stay with her, but she came to Glenwaring every day to supervise a thorough cleaning of the house, determined to banish any lingering germs.

  “I was just telling Tommy to start on the library today,” Mrs. Butters announced one morning when she and Tommy arrived after delivering Bernie at school. She unpinned her hat and surveyed the kitchen.

  Meredith was finishing up the breakfast dishes as Forrest read aloud snippets from the newspaper. Peace had been declared only the week before and Forrest liked to read out accounts of what that meant in Europe and at home.

  Although seventeen hundred people in Toronto had died from the Spanish Flu, the worst of the outbreak was over and the city was slowly returning to normal. The illness was creeping westward across Canada, but Forrest wouldn’t read aloud accounts of the continuing devastation. He’d told Meredith the newspaper wasn’t going to tell them anything they didn’t already know about the Spanish Flu, and that they should focus on the future instead.

  “More dusting,” Tommy said cheerfully as he and Meredith made their way to the library, carrying a broom, dustpan, and a bag of dusting cloths. Over weeks of working together, Meredith’s admiration for Tommy had grown. She knew it must be difficult for him to be here where his mother had been employed for so many years, but he never complained, even with all he’d lost, and he always found some way to make their chores fun. Harry adored him and was much easier to manage when Tommy was around. Meredith didn’t even mind the endless dishwashing because Tommy made her laugh so hard as he dried them.

  They found Jack sprawled glumly in the big leather chair behind the desk in the library. Harry and Bernie had eagerly returned to their reopened schools; a subdued Maggie had been less enthusiastic, but she faithfully collected Jack’s
assignments from his school since he wasn’t yet well enough to return to classes. Jack was staring into space, a large book open on his lap.

  “We’re to air out the library,” Meredith announced.

  Jack made a face. “I’ll move then,” he said, although he didn’t budge.

  “No need,” Tommy said. “We can work around you. We get pretty tired of our own company.”

  “At least you have company,” Jack muttered. Meredith thought he must feel rootless rattling around the house all day on his own.

  “I do,” Tommy said, “but I can always use more.” He positioned the wooden library stool in front of one of the bookcases that flanked the fireplace. He stuffed a couple of dusting cloths in his pocket and stepped up onto the stool.

  “I’m not good company today.” Jack’s eyes were on the book in his lap. One leg kicked at the desk, while the fingers of one hand traced the edge of the book.

  Meredith had started removing books from the lower shelf of the bookcase on the other side of the fireplace and piling them on the floor. She glanced at Jack, troubled, but he was scowling and she thought it best to leave him to his own thoughts.

  Tommy began whistling “Alexander’s Ragtime Band” as he pulled books off the top shelf and dusted them. Meredith eagerly joined in, trying to harmonize to his melody, but she kept losing her place and they were soon laughing at the awful combination of sounds they made.

  “I’m sorry,” Meredith said, turning to Jack, “You must think we’ve gone crazy. And we’re keeping you from reading.”

  Jack shook his head. “It’s good to hear someone having fun. This isn’t very interesting anyway.” He closed the book with a bang and dropped it onto the desk.

  “Aeroplane Construction and Operation,” Meredith read the title out loud and then looked up at Jack, puzzled. “But you want to be a pilot. Isn’t this just the sort of book you’d love?”

  Tommy hopped down from the stool and leaned across the desk to read the secondary title, “A Comprehensive Illustrated Manual of Instruction for Aeroplane Constructors, Aviators, Aero-Mechanics, Flight Officers and Students.” He ran his hand through his hair. “Whew! That’s impressive.”