Kings of Broken Things

by Theodore Wheeler

  Evie didn’t shed a tear as she told the story. She wasn’t emotional at all. To say one’s history in a clear and even voice made it almost whimsical. She was born in Kansas. Her father ran off. Her brother was dissected by the iron wheels of a train. He was drunk. He was stupid. What else? In the end, another possibility didn’t matter. There was what happened. That was all.

  Her mother was put to taking care of the remainders alone. Evie helped out some with the sewing. She learned to cut cloth precisely and stitch with a treadle machine. She went to school when her help wasn’t required. As the youngest she got more schooling than her siblings. The high school was integrated there in Topeka; it always had been. That was where she met boys, and not just those from her neighborhood. Rich and poor weren’t so segregated then either. Evie met lots of boys she wouldn’t have otherwise.

  “That’s all they wrote for me,” she tried to explain. “You know how it is. A girl is either nice or not nice. That determines everything. A nice girl sits in the parlor with a boy who visits. A not-nice girl is snuck out the back door. We didn’t have a parlor in our house. We had sewing tables and wire mannequins. We had customers. Our parlor wasn’t a frivolous place. You couldn’t even pretend it was. Not that I ever dreamt of bringing boys there to see my mother.”

  It was near morning by the time they went to stand. Half-asleep in the chair, awake only by the sheer will of talk. Jake couldn’t get up when he went to. He staggered and fell back. She had to help him make it to bed.

  Nobody would ever figure out how the Spanish flu began, or why the virus transformed the way it did, but they knew that recruits at Fort Riley, Kansas, were the first to come down sick. When Fort Riley doughboys were shipped abroad, they took the bug with them. A plague like this never would have spread around the globe if it wasn’t for the war. Americans brought it on transport ships, in their uniforms and sputum, and gave all of Europe the bug. From there to Australia, Egypt, Turkey, Siam, Russia. Nobody then knew much about what would become Spanish influenza. In the next two years over fifty million people would die of this flu that didn’t act like the flu. The young became deathly ill, while the old and frail were spared. It would take down hale men and vibrant women in their prime in a matter of days. They’d all know somebody who would have it happen like that. Starting Monday morning normal and cool, by Wednesday the same person would be burning out through their skin in an infirmary, quarantined by public order. By Friday there’d be a funeral. Not that you’d risk going. Nobody would understand how that happened. Streetcar drivers and nurses would wear white surgical masks to protect themselves from the vibrions. It would be a plague covering the earth—something biblical—and at the same time the whole world was at war.

  The way Jake moved in and out of tenements, he was bound to catch something. That March, he did. It was up to Evie to care for him. She fed him broth and brandy, left the radiator open to keep the room hot, hoping to melt out his bile. She stripped him naked because he sweat so much then covered him in blankets when he complained of the cold. He ranted and raved. Didn’t know what was going on, gripped in fever and fatigue, still half-drunk. She was half-drunk too and couldn’t figure out what to do. Should she send for help? Should she call the gamblers and ask them? His condition changed so fast she didn’t know what to say. Jake had a hacking cough and spit up blood. Then all of a sudden his skin turned blue—dark blue, like he’d been dipped in ink. She had no idea what to do about that. She didn’t know what sickness turned a man blue, as if suffocating, except he wasn’t. Jake looked like he was from another planet with his blond hair and blue complexion. Despite all outward appearances, maybe he wasn’t breathing. She worried he might die. But then his skin turned back to normal. Not normal exactly. He was a feverish red, but at least he wasn’t blue! Who would believe that?

  The spot of blood on his pillowcase was what caused Evie to seek help the next day. The blood came from his ear. Evie corralled a boy on the street and sent him to fetch Maria Eigler.

  Maria thought she was up in a palace at first, being in the district. She asked who the madam of the house was. “These are my rooms,” Evie said. “It isn’t like you think. Me and Jake. We’re friends.”

  Maria knew what it said about a woman who had rooms furnished like this down on the lower River Ward. “I don’t care who you are,” she said. “I’m here for Jake. That’s that.”

  She carried a basket with raw eggs inside. She cracked them into a glass Evie fetched and made Jake down the yolks and whites. She fed him pieces of raw onion and strung a bag of camphor around his neck. He calmed down then. He slept.

  It must have occurred to Evie that she could leave. Maria would take over—a car could be arranged to take Jake to a hospital. Evie didn’t have to suffer his illness. Yet she felt something change inside. She wanted to stay. She had to. Jake needed her.

  “I’ll take care of him,” Evie announced. Maria hesitated, thinking it over before she went. She left behind the eggs. “He must drink one every hour. Keep up his strength.”

  Word reached Tom Dennison that Jake was sick up in a girl’s room. Dennison came personally in the evening to see for himself. He brought a bottle of Irish whiskey and a physician and peeked in the bedroom to have a look. The bottle was inside the sleeve of his overcoat, his massive hands palmed around the base, as the doctor listened to Jake’s chest with a stethoscope.

  Evie hovered in the kitchen doorway to hear what Tom Dennison would say. He didn’t say anything. He waited for the doctor’s verdict then tossed the bottle to the bed, where it submerged in the blankets. Dennison was only there a moment, to see Jake for himself, to hear the doctor say Jake was going to be fine. “It’s only the flu,” the doctor said—a comment that became rare the next couple years. He left a roll of surgical gauze at the bedside for when the bleeding came back, along with a case of capsulated powders. Something to bring down the fever and a purgative.

  Dennison stopped on his way out. He took off his hat. “Some of the boys didn’t believe Jake was really sick. They said he faked so he could stay with his girl instead of working.” Dennison looked Evie up and down. “You’re the girl?”

  Evie nodded. She’d met Billy Nesselhous before but never Tom Dennison.

  He left without saying another word.

  In moments of lucidity Jake acted ashamed about being laid up. He begged Evie to not look at him. She shut the curtains and dampened the lamp until it was too dark to see much except the warmth of the sunset around the windows. Jake was embarrassed, but he needed her. When his fever grew worse, as it did in cycles, or when his throat tore raw from hacking, it did him good to see her rushing to douse a handkerchief in camphor. He drifted in and out during the worst of it. Each time he woke up the first thing he’d see was Evie in the corner. She made sure of this.

  He went into panics about footsteps from the hallway, the sounds of neighbors coming and going. In his fever people paced around him. He pleaded with her to keep his persecutors out. She had no idea what he meant. He talked about the crab louse, about pick handles and tools ripping at his body, about a child buried alive. He ranted in German half the time. She’d never heard his whispering, guttural, sometimes plaintive German voice. He relived arguments with his brother, with his father, with folks she’d never heard of. He apologized profusely, guilt ridden in two languages. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry. We buried her.”

  Tom Dennison’s doctor stopped by four times daily, although he never did much besides operate a thermometer as far as Evie was concerned. Some friends visited the third day, Joe and Ingo, but they didn’t stray in from the hallway. Jake was sleeping anyway. Evie let them see him laid up a moment then whisked them down the stairs.

  It produced such amazement to see him knocked down. She couldn’t help but flit around in helpful ways, a stern, wary smile on her face. She promised to stay until he was better. “So you won’t have to worry where I am,” she said. He’d have worried what she was up to if she left. He had no concept
of time and place and couldn’t figure why Evie was with him and not somebody else. “Why me?” he pestered her, and not Joe or Ingo or Ennis the Irishman, whoever they were.

  There were times she thought he was a goner. She’d stay with him until he was better, and in this way he’d have to get better.

  The fever lasted four days. She was an impassioned nurse. Held cool rags to his forehead. Covered and re-covered his kicking limbs in afghans. Changed his sheets if the chamber pot spilled. Kissed him incessantly. She didn’t care if she caught whatever it was he had; how extraordinary that was. She rubbed his body with alcohol. She soothed him. She promised he wouldn’t die. She pressed her head into the pillow beside him and kept it there a long time. Somehow Maria Eigler tracked down a crate of oranges—which was a miracle, given the war rations—and Jake had to drink the juice even though it burned his throat. It was a simple matter of whether or not Evie could keep up his strength. She made him take turnip broth and a beaten raw egg every hour. She didn’t let him forget for one second he was being taken care of and was going to be fine.

  And then, suddenly, he was.

  Evie sat crooked on the edge of the mattress, propped up by an arm. Jake woke and saw her.

  “Does your face hurt much?” she asked.

  “Don’t touch it,” he said, shying away, his cheeks still swollen and inflamed.

  “Would it bother you if I opened the window? The weather turned nice.” The sun shone through in a brilliant rectangular mass. The spring air was warm and lively, an alluvial bouquet blown in from the country. Once a window was open, Evie realized the room had filled with the base odor of turnips and vomit, one that strengthened as it thinned, the memory of it, because she hadn’t noticed before.

  “Do you think you could eat something? I’ll get whatever you want, some mashed potatoes or meat.”

  “I’m hungry.”

  “I bet you’d eat anything so long as it isn’t turnips and orange juice.”

  “Some chipped beef sounds good,” he said, “if you have it.”

  Sure, there were tins of meat. She went to the kitchen then came back with chipped beef over toast. Evie chatted the whole time he ate. She was taken by the feeling that Jake wouldn’t have survived without her. She saw him warm inside too, his health returning. Every note of music was profound to him. Every bit of food was gravy. Most of all he loved on Evie, and she soaked it up. She’d stayed with him. She’d made sure he saw the other side of his sickness. She could have dumped him off in an infirmary or sent him home with Maria. But she hadn’t. She stuck by him even when it meant she might be infected. She’d surprised him with the way she acted. It made him bashful. He hadn’t expected her to be like that—she hadn’t either.

  She told him how Maria stopped in with eggs then a crate of oranges. How his skin turned alien blue for three hours in the beginning. How a doctor came four times a day to listen to his insides. How even Tom Dennison made sure he was okay and brought whiskey as a gift.

  “How did everyone find out? Were you going around telling people I was sick?”

  “No,” she said. “The River Ward knows these kinds of things. You have no secrets.”

  Consider Anna Miihlstein.

  She never wanted to come to Omaha in the first place. Living in the Bowery wasn’t the greatest either, when they first arrived in America, not with the Second Avenue Elevated running right by their window and the screams from down the hall in the middle of the night, but at least she’d heard of New York City. The truth was that Anna missed being a Salzburger. Forget Omaha, forget the Bowery, forget Galizien. Anna’s desire went way back. Maybe they’d been poor in Salzburg, and they had been, six of them then trying to get by on what meager work Herr could find those days. Their mother had alienated everyone—Frau Albina Tropsch was blackballed in Salzburg because of her outbursts—but the city was nice. What Anna remembered. What Silke and Theresa had told her about. Promenading riverside along the Salzach on cobblestoned roads. Rolling around in the hills. Swells of music from the Mozarteum conservatory. Apfelstrudel and white sausages. Anna didn’t remember so well. She was only four when they left for Galizien. But she remembered the feeling distinctly. Sitting along the river in the summertime, the grass tall and clustered with clumps of satisfied folks. Women in hats and dresses. Girls who worried the hems of their dresses so the fabric didn’t stain trouncing through the grass. This was living well. Being healthy and free and fruitful. The Miihlsteins had left all that behind. And now Anna wasn’t so sure a reality still existed to match the feeling she had, not anymore. The way things were talked about, the way the dailies presented the news from Europe. Franz Josef had died. The empire would fall. This was a very sad thing to Anna. As if there could be no more white sausages and green wine and apple strudel with vanilla sauce, never again, not in Austria. There would be no more wearing white dresses and sunbathing by the Salzach.

  She’d never return to Salzburg, of course. Regardless she held on to this feeling about the way things ought to be.

  Maybe because of this Anna went to considerable lengths to care for her white straw hat, what Frau Eigler called Anna’s Sunday hat. It was the only one the girl owned, after all, and she was conscientious about keeping it clean and preserving the integrity of the brim and band, or else it would sit crooked on her head and all would be lost. Anna was sure. Otherwise, if she didn’t keep busy, Anna worried about her family: if Karel was getting in trouble at the school he attended, if Herr was doing enough business to make the move to Omaha a success, if Silke would find someone to appreciate her despite her shyness, if Theresa hadn’t made a mistake quitting school to take a job with the streetcar company. Anna, stuck in the attic, worried about many things. So she allowed herself some vanity when it came to that hat. How she washed the straw every other week in the kitchen sink. Carefully untied and removed that purple silk ribbon before sinking it in warm water, and formed deftly the straw weave, dabbed with a delicate washcloth Maria allowed her to use, careful to not dent the crown or let it sag out of shape while wet. Sometimes she had to reshape the brim with the steam from a teakettle. That was a difficult task to manage. If a girl wasn’t careful she could make things much worse, trying that. But Anna was very careful. Even if it required great diligence for an entire morning. She’d wash and shape and set it out to dry. She’d replace the purple ribbon.

  Anna daydreamed about other hats she’d someday own. If she had some money, if she didn’t rely on Herr for everything, then Anna could afford all sorts of hats. Gigantic ones with wide brims washed out in clouds of virgin white tulle. Silk turbans from the Orient topped with peacock feathers. Dapper canvas safari hats. When she was older, she’d have a job in an office, her own desk with locking drawers, a brass nameplate affixed to a wedge of stained pinewood. She’d seen such desks in New York when she followed Herr around as he looked for work. Those women behind the desks—somehow it was almost always women Herr begged a job from, in the offices he solicited, women who turned him down flat. “I’m sorry. I can’t help you,” they’d say. Anna beside her father, holding his hand, listening and staring at the nameplate on the desk. Did these women polish their brass every day? They must have.

  This was before Anna was really sick. It wasn’t until a doctor in the Bowery insisted that Anna stay in bed for an entire month that her illness took over. A month in bed, no sun, no air. Only water and Cream of Wheat. Who wouldn’t feel like dying was preferable? Herr believed what any quack told him those days and then refused to listen to any doctor thereafter, since the advice of counterfeit physicians only made things worse. Foremost among Herr’s ideas was to relocate to the hinterlands. Get some fresh air, get some sunshine. Herr was told about a job in Nebraska, and that Nebraska was in the hinterlands. Herr thought he was onto something. He didn’t know that factories and steel mills existed in Omaha too. Or the three biggest employers here were a lead mill, a soldering plant, and, of course, the stockyards. So much for fresh air.

 
Herr locked Anna up even more in Omaha. He was probably a little embarrassed about how things were turning out for her. She’d never been sick in Salzburg, after all. A healthy child, engaging and boisterous, sunbathing along the river, frolicking in the Alpine hills. Now this.

  Frau Eigler had her own remedies for what mystery plagued Anna, most of which involved eating large amounts of food. All sorts of meats and broths that would fortify a person. Fresh fruit wasn’t so easy to come by those days but was served when possible, in thin slices with granulated sugar. This seemed to work, except that Anna’s body couldn’t hold greasy food or pulpy fruit. She was prone to nausea if she overate, and to diarrhea generally. Not to be discouraged, Frau Eigler had Anna drink dandelion tea, then choke down as many spoonfuls of pureed oat straw as she could stand. After Anna refused to submit to these cures, powders made from watermelon and cucumber seeds followed, mixed with warm milk.

  “I’ll give this one week,” Anna finally said. She was tired of having to submit to every possible tonic dreamed up by those who lived in the Eigler house. “If it doesn’t work after a week, you leave me alone.”

  “Sure thing,” Maria promised. “Just try this one and see. It’ll work.”

  “What is it?”

  “Just milk, Mädel. Milk and some powders. You can’t taste the powders. Not much.”

  “That’s what you always say.”

  “This time it’s true. Believe me.”

  “Then you’ll leave me alone? No more sneaking potions into my food?”

  “This will work. Then that’s that.”

  Of course the new concoction did nothing, the cucumber seeds and milk.

  Anna wasn’t sure what she was sick with. It wasn’t polio. She could walk. It wasn’t cholera or flux, although there was the diarrhea to consider. Her bones hurt. She was knock-kneed, that was all. She was frail. There was no need to make a whole study of it. Her nose was thin and a little crooked—should they alert the Imperial Academy of Sciences about that too?