by Laura Briggs
It seemed to comfort the girl, though, her mood improving as she talked again of her family’s livelihood, the church in Jefferson County she regarded as a second home.
When Mariah’s tea had grown cold, she took up her bag for making another house call.
The Stroud residence had three members battling the disease inside its walls, one of them suffering from a high fever.
No tea was offered at this place, the mistress of the house far too frazzled. She did press a jar of preserves into her hand, saying, “For the herbs, and the liniment you gave me father last month. I’ve not forgotten it. You see, I had nothing to give in return at the time.”
Walking home, the sight of smoke climbing above the treetops told her that others continued to stoke the bonfires for purging the air. Bits of ash floated down, coating her hair and clothes as she tried to brush them away. Absorbed in this, she failed to notice the shape that loomed before her in the path.
Charley Hinkle’s dog, its coat matted with burrs. She half-feared the animal sensed some predator lurking in the foliage around her, given the speed of its approach. But he passed her without a glance, bounding over the low wall that ran alongside the wooded burial ground.
Without slowing, the dog made its way to the north side of the yard, where mounded dirt showed the most recent burials from the plague. Lying beside one of only two headstones planted in the section, he crossed his paws and took up guard.
Mariah came beside him, knowing already what name would be inscribed on the tomb. Directly above, chiseled where none could miss seeing it, was a shape that made her throat tighten: the half-moon and broken arrow of the ancient Celts.
An omen of death for this community’s ancestors, eerily precise in its predictions.
“This is not right,” she said, voice emerging shakily from her lips. “You deserve a better remembrance than this, Charley.”
The dog’s ears pricked up at the sound of its former owner’s name. Releasing a low whine, it nudged Mariah’s hand in a plea for sympathy.
She stroked the fur, rough and tangled with no one to care if its burrs were removed anymore. “Poor Charley,” she murmured, still looking at the grave marker. “I am sorry—so sorry that I couldn’t—” The rest of her apology was lost as coughing filled her lungs. Struggling for breath, she braced her hands against the stone, feeling its cold exterior. Her gaze landed hazily on the symbol carved along the top as panicked thoughts flew through her head. She closed her eyes to block out the sight of it while she gradually calmed again and waited for the moment to pass.
21
The envelope was postmarked November 8th, its return address from a hospital near Bridgeport.
Mariah tore the flap open, ignoring those who brushed past her to the post office door. A single sheet of stationary was tucked inside, its front and back filled with handwriting she knew as well as her own. The words, however, might as well have come from a stranger, her lips forming each one soundlessly only to part in shock the further she read.
My faith is gone, Arthur confided at one point, hidden from me in this madness that colors my every thought. Sleeping or waking, a field of death stretches always before me, the memory of smoke and blood and water. It is the water I wish to forget the most, along with the faces swallowed to its murky depths.
I can feel the river choking their lungs, the heavy weight dragging their chests. The doctors say it is because the injury has weakened my lungs, but I feel as if this sensation will never again leave me. Neither will the memory of seeing one I loved as a brother—one who did more for me than any real brother could have been expected to do—curled alongside the others at the bottom of that muddy grave.
His features, so admired by all who knew him in life, are swollen and mottled. By now, the decay of the grave is claiming him, beneath waves instead of earth. Eyes empty of their former depth stare at nothing, turned away even from the light above. What light is there for those of us who grieve here below?
The Scripture that used to give me comfort seems hollow now, and the promise of heavenly reunion no match for the pain I feel day after day in this wretched place. My one hope—the only reason I’m alive, perhaps—is the thought of seeing you again, Mariah. I will be with you soon as may be possible in this terrible world. I cling to the belief that this letter will not be long in preceding that happy moment, if there is any way that such happiness can be.
She stared at the lines, re-reading the final paragraphs as if seeking to erase the despair in them. One of her hands clutched the porch banister for support, the other trembling as it held the paper with its painful lines.
Arthur was wounded—dying for all she knew. Broken in body and soul, his one hope the possibility of coming back to her, to the life they knew in his boyhood home. A home he wouldn’t recognize if he saw it now, smoke rising in clouds of gray, the doors and windows of its homesteads shut tight against the omen of death.
Would he be safe here? The risk of infection seemed greater even than that of a hospital ward. She wanted to warn him from it even as she wanted to care for him with her own two hands. She had saved his life once before, but the thought of facing such a task again amidst everything she was already struggling with seemed overwhelming.
Lost in thought, her feet moved without direction. The street was nearly deserted, the few people who passed her giving just a brief nod in greeting. Some glanced with curiosity at the piece of mail she held, but the fear of infection was too strong these days for anyone to linger in the street for gossip.
Up ahead, the sharp ping! of the blacksmith’s hammer told her another headstone was being readied. She wondered how many would bear that awful mark still painted across the town’s doorways in crimson hue. A children’s prank turned almost to prophecy, the hands that placed it there no doubt shaking with fear somewhere by now, if not stilled by the same illness that took so many others.
A woman, gray-haired and heavyset, was drawing water from the well into wooden buckets. She cast a sideways glance as the doctor grew closer, a frown lining her aged features.
Mariah’s steps wavered as she passed the aged figure, glancing back at the woman for reasons she couldn’t explain. Cart wheels clattered from a nearby lane. She staggered to the side as the breeze from its motion fanned her skirt. Someone shouted at her—the blacksmith, possibly—but their voice was more like a pounding inside her head.
Dizzy, she continued on, hand reaching for a hitching post when she began to sway. Her fingers missed, barely scraping the wood surface as she lost her balance, hands pressing soft, cool earth as she fell helpless to the ground.
Someone was reading aloud from the Psalms. A voice thin and girlish, but not that of her mother’s, as Mariah first imagined in her sleep-fogged state.
Instead, it was Nell Darrow who occupied the chair beside the doctor’s bed. She stopped reading mid-Scripture as the figure before her began to stir. “Thank goodness,” she said. “I’ve been worried. Your color looks so poor, and you slept so restless, talking under your breath.”
Mariah didn’t answer, pulling herself up slowly from the stack of pillows. She remembered now, being helped to the house, her arm slung around the blacksmith’s shoulder. The family had laid her on top of the covers, wrapping her in a shawl for warmth against the growing chill. On the table beside her, a candle was lit, the light of day fading behind the muslin curtains.
“How long have I been this way?” she asked.
“Three hours,” the girl replied, shutting the heavy Bible she had taken from Mariah’s shelf. “Papa said you must be worn out from traveling so many miles these past days.”
“Yes,” she agreed, knowing this was only partly true. “There is a tiredness on me. It must have been too much, the extra miles I walked today.”
Had the girl noticed the rash that crept just above her dress collar? She pulled the shawl closer around her, saying, “I should be able to care for myself now. Please tell your father I�
��m grateful for his help. It was only exhaustion, as he said, and shouldn’t trouble me again if I rest.”
“Yes, of course.” Hesitating a moment, the younger woman pulled an envelope from beneath the book in her lap. “You dropped this—when you fell,” she said, a blush spreading over her cheeks. “I hope that nothing in it was the cause for your fainting.”
The way she bit her lip in quiet suspense told Mariah that she hadn’t read its contents. Such restraint deserved no small amount of admiration and trust, considering her obvious devotion to the man who penned the words. She must have been in terrible suspense, having the news of his fate right before her, yet unable to grasp it without another’s permission.
Taking it from her, Mariah stroked the paper gently between her fingers. “He’s been wounded,” she told her. “Shot during the skirmish a few weeks ago. Now, he writes the doctors’ fear he may catch an infection from the other patients—” Her voice broke, her gaze lifting to meet Nell’s eyes, already wide with fear. Swallowing, Mariah cleared her throat to regain some of her control. “I’m afraid for him,” she said. “Afraid he may die there or even if he does come home, that I won’t be able to help him.”
Across from her, Nell’s face had turned pale. Her hands trembled against the leather volume she still held, lips opened for a long time before any words came out. “Thank you for telling me,” she said, at last. “Now I can pray for him with more understanding of the danger he faces. He’s always been strong of faith.”
Mariah shook her head. “Even that has been taken from him. The things he’s seen…there’s little to give him faith, he says. I don’t blame him for thinking so,” she added, bitterness lacing the tone.
“Neither do I,” said Nell with surprising bluntness. “Although,” she added in a gentler tone, “I hope it is only a temporary doubt that makes him feel this way. Perhaps he will come through this with a faith stronger than before.”
She had not read the letter, of course. Mariah supposed her naivety was partly due to her youth, as well as her relative inexperience with life’s hardships. “You can’t understand,” she told her. “He’s seen men torn apart by artillery’s blaze. Consumed by wildfires and waters deep. There’s no healing for such a grief.”
Across from her, Nell’s gaze drifted down to the book in her hands. “I can understand a little. What happened to poor Charley, when he died…” She paused, voice faltering with the memory.
Neither of them had spoken of that night before, avoiding the subject for both their sakes. Now the doctor realized how terrifying it must have been for a girl who admitted to never witnessing a death before. A child’s death, then, must have been especially shocking to behold.
“I had never seen anyone suffer that way,” Nell continued, fingers stroking the Bible absently. “He was so desperate and scared. His hands reached out like they were trying to grasp the air and pull it inside him.” Tears escaped her eyes. “I can only imagine how much worse the memory is that haunts Arthur’s thoughts,” she said. “It will take him a while—months perhaps—before he can feel the Savior’s hand guiding him again.”
“What makes you think he ever will?” Mariah wondered. “There is so much death and pain—even we’ve seen it around us for days now. How do you explain God’s presence in all this? If He hears your pleas, He doesn’t answer them.”
“I think He provided for us in different ways. One way in particular.” Looking up again, she said, “No one believed we would find a doctor—not a place this poor. Yet our need was met by one in equal want of a helping hand. He led us to you that day, something I believe this crisis proves more than ever.”
“You think God uses me to accomplish His work?” Mariah laughed, breath threatening to turn into a cough. “An unbeliever to save the believing,” she murmured. “That is not something I expected to hear from a person of your kind of faith.”
The girl nodded, hand reaching to grasp Mariah’s on the bedspread. “He must have known this trial would come to us and made sure we found the right person to see us through it. There was a reason He sent you to us, and I think it was for your sake as well as ours. There’s a plan for you in this, I’m sure of it.” When Mariah said nothing, Nell closed the Bible and set it on the bedside table. “You should take some water,” she advised, studying the doctor with concern. “Or some tea. Let me bring some from the kitchen—”
“This will do fine,” Mariah replied, indicating the half-empty tumbler on the bedside table. “I won’t be taking any supper tonight but will try and rest instead. If anyone calls to see me or asks for medicine, you may come and wake me.”
The girl rose and went to the door. Pausing, she turned and said, “Call out to me if you start feeling poorly. I’ll be awake for several hours more in case any of our neighbors should need my help.” She waited.
Mariah nodded.
Nell slipped out, shutting the door behind her.
Mariah stayed seated on the bed, the letter clasped between her hands. Its words came back to her with a heavy feeling, the weight in her chest growing the same as Arthur described in his own misery. Reaching to the bedside table, she found the vial of medicine she’d been dosing herself with these last few days. The bitter smell drifted from its depths when she uncorked it, bringing to mind the image of another sick chamber long ago. For this reason, she drank its dose as quickly as possible, coughing some of it back onto her sleeve. The vial was returned to the table, where it clinked softly against the tumbler. Beside them, placed there by Nell during their conversation, was the worn Bible.
The feel of its coarse leather inspired memories of a different sort from her childhood. She pulled it slowly into her lap, rustling the pages, as she thought of nights spent looking through it with her mother in the house where she grew up. “This is my greatest possession,” her mother had told her. “Not the book itself, but the faith it stands for. I have it with me always, right here,” she said, rocking the child in her arms closer to press their hand over the place where her heart beat.
Confusion wrinkled the young Mariah’s brow as she studied the verses she couldn’t yet read. “I thought faith was a feeling,” she said, tracing the letters with a stubby finger. “You can’t use feelings for anything real—can’t make medicine with them,” she added, thinking of her father’s supply of vials and powders in the room below.
“Faith is stronger than any medicine,” her mother said. “If we put our faith in God, He can use it to do anything. He can save people who are lost to all else.”
Mariah frowned. “But Papa saves people, not God. I’ve seen him do it lots of times.”
Sighing, her mother pressed a kiss to the braided hair. “Your papa helps many people,” she agreed, “but his kind of medicine only makes them better for a little while. God’s kind of healing lasts forever. It takes away the power of death by writing our names in the Book of Life.”
“Your name’s in this book,” Mariah cried, eager to show off some of the only words she’d learned to recognize in her new school lessons. Flipping to the Bible’s first page, she looked for the familiar name among the list of ancestral signatures. That of Jemima Harriet Moore came near the bottom, the most recent of the family to inherit the Holy volume. “See?” she said, jabbing excitedly at the signature. “Here’s your name.”
“Yes.” Jemima laughed, squeezing her daughter affectionately. “My name is in this book, too—so is yours, and one day, your children’s names will be there as well. An earthly sign of our devotion to the One who makes a place for us above.”
They would read that way for many a night, until her mother could read no more. In her final weeks, her lips had struggled to form even a smile for Mariah, who sat at her bedside. Her mother’s mind went somewhere else, concentrated on the pain that racked her body at all times.
Grown-up Mariah opened the volume’s cover, seeing the same name inscribed there on the page, a little faded and smudged with the passage of time. She touched it, trailing finger
s over her mother’s handwriting, loops that dipped and curved in elegant formation.
Tears welled in her eyes, body trembling as she lowered her forehead to meet the words on the page. Her breath came harsh and loud against it, her words only a murmur. “Please…” she trailed off, struggling for more, some faint connection between her and this God who gave her mother such hope. “If You hear me…if You care at all—” She let out a sob, regaining her voice enough to say, “I need You to help me; show me what to do. There is nothing left to me, nowhere to turn. Please hear me, Lord. Tell me what I should do.”
Exhaustion overtook her as she lay beside the open volume. Her thoughts grew faint and incoherent beneath the medicine’s effect until at last she fell into a restless sort of sleep.
Water, deep and wide, stretched away from her to an embankment surrounded by trees. It wasn’t the spring in Crooked Wood, though, or any other place she’d been before in her life. A river stained murky green, cold and vast. Mariah stood in it up to her knees, shivering through her work dress and shawl.
She wasn’t alone. Something rippled the water. A figure hunkered on the shore across from her. Gray hair straggled in long locks to curtain the face, a thick, squat form that was dressed in tattered garments. Their hands were submerged in the river, rising to the surface to wring out a soiled garment.
Crimson dotted the water, traveling in different directions like tentacles. She watched as a streak came towards her, winding snake-like through the water.
Slowly, the woman on shore raised her head, revealing a face of deep crevices, warts, and pock marks, eyes sad but wild-looking, when she glanced into the river’s depths.
Mariah followed her gaze, saw plants crawling and dirt clouding beneath her pale reflection. A blink, and her features gave way to those of a stranger. A man, eyes bulging and face swollen as he looked up from the bottom of the river. There were more around him, their features puffy and turning blue. Bloodstained coats, brass buttons catching the light above. As if pulled by her gaze, they turned upwards, stiff fingers reaching blindly towards the surface.
