It Happened at the Fair: A Novel

by Deeanne Gist

  She needed to speak with her director. There was no question the school and other deaf advocates had the children’s best interests at heart. The problem was, those who supported sign language accepted difference, while those who supported lip-reading sought equality. What she’d just begun to grasp was the deaf were not one or the other; they were both different and equal.

  ENTRANCE TO THE WOMAN’S BUILDING

  “A chattering group of women entered the building, a gust of wind filling their skirts like bells until the large wooden door clicked shut behind them.”

  CHAPTER

  36

  Cullen paced outside an infirmary just off the vestibule in the Woman’s Building, then sat on a bench provided by the Board of Lady Managers, then went back to pacing. The intricate tapestry draping one of the soaring walls depicted episodes in William the Conqueror’s rule. It seemed oddly out of place in this building until he read a plaque stating the original had been fashioned by William’s wife. Still, the piece held his interest for no more than a moment before his concern for Della returned.

  WOMAN’S BUILDING

  “Is everything all right, sir?”

  A Columbian Guard approached. He looked much like the others Cullen had seen—tall, fit, and serious. Except this one wore cowpuncher boots.

  “You’ve been circling this foyer like a squirrel in a cage,” the man said. “Is there somethin’ I can help you with?”

  “No, I’m sorry. I have a . . .” A what? A tutor? A friend? Neither of those came close to what Della had become to him. “The lady I’m with is in the infirmary.”

  The guard smiled—not a polite smile but a full-fledged grin. “Is that right? Well, don’t you worry about a thing. The doc in there’s the best of the best.”

  “He is?” Cullen glanced at the door. “He’s trained, then?”

  “Graduated cum laude from the University of Michigan.” The man puffed up as if he’d been the one to receive the diploma. “And it’s a she, not a he.”

  Cullen frowned. “Who’s a she?”

  “The doc.”

  He took a step back. “He’s a she? Do you mean to tell me my lady isn’t seeing a real doctor?”

  The guard narrowed his eyes. “She’s real. And before you say anything else, you probably ought to know she’s my woman.” He looked at the door, pride and affection replacing his irritation.

  Cullen tried to process the idea of a female doctor. The guard didn’t seem to notice, though. He simply clapped Cullen’s shoulder and told him again not to worry.

  Cullen wasn’t sure that was possible. Della had been weak as a babe. He hoped her distress in the Ferris wheel had been just that—distress. If it was anything more serious, he figured the doc would know. Still, a lady doctor. That was going to take some getting used to.

  The guard disappeared around the corner, leaving Cullen alone with his thoughts. He called himself ten kinds of a fool for taking Della to the wheel to begin with. He’d seen what happened in the elevator. The wheel was a hundred times worse. He didn’t know what he’d been thinking.

  But he did know that when she turned from white to gray to white, his heart had dropped to his stomach. Every protective instinct he had kicked in. He wanted to shield her from the intrusive eyes of others, from the terror she was experiencing, from the helplessness she felt at not being able to capture enough air. And he wanted to do it for the rest of his life.

  A chattering group of women entered the building, a gust of wind filling their skirts like bells until the large wooden door clicked shut behind them.

  “I want to be sure to go to the Violet Booth,” one of them said, fluffing her skirt. “It has a little booklet called The Story of the Woman’s Building, but it’s been adapted from Three Girls in a Flat.”

  “Has it? How very clever.”

  Cullen stopped his pacing and let the women pass, then sought out the bench once more. He stared at the door of the infirmary, his mind finally accepting what his heart had been screaming these last three months. He wasn’t ever going to fall in love with Wanda. And he wasn’t doing her or himself any good by promising to marry her when he was in love with someone else.

  Didn’t matter that they’d set a date. Didn’t matter that everyone expected it. What mattered was, he wanted to spend the rest of his life with Della.

  He’d waited for those exact same feelings to surface with Wanda and had fully expected them to come. But now he knew better. If they hadn’t shown up by now, they weren’t going to show up at all.

  If he and Wanda had already been married, that would be different. But they weren’t. And after the scare of losing Della, he knew beyond a shadow of a doubt. It was time to be honest about his love for her and his sorrow for having tied Wanda up when he shouldn’t have.

  Wanda would be heartbroken. Her mother would be livid. Her father . . . he didn’t even want to think about her father. His own family would be shocked as well. Should he write a letter? Wait until he returned home?

  But he didn’t want to wait. He wanted to express his feelings now. He wanted to have the freedom to love without guilt.

  Della stepped out of the infirmary and into the vestibule.

  Leaping off the bench, he strode to her. “What did the doc say? Are you all right?”

  She pulled on her gloves. “The doctor was a woman.”

  “So I heard.”

  “There wasn’t a single man in there at all. Everyone, from the secretary to the nurses to the doctor, is female.”

  He glanced at the door, still a bit befuddled.

  She touched his arm. “I liked her, Cullen. She was, well, she was wonderful.”

  He rubbed his eyes. “So, what was the diagnosis, then?”

  “I’m fine. Embarrassed, but fine.”

  “You’ve no call to be embarrassed. Did the . . . the doctor say anything else?”

  “I’m to stay away from closed-in spaces that soar high above the ground.”

  He grimaced. “I’m sorry, Della. I can’t believe I took you up there.”

  “It’s not your fault. Neither one of us expected that to happen.” She dusted nonexistent dirt from her skirt. “And I am embarrassed. While we were up there, I made my brain tell my body to quit being ridiculous, but it refused to listen. It just went right ahead and did whatever it pleased.”

  “Well, I suggest we heed its warnings. In the meanwhile, I say we call it an early night.” He offered his elbow.

  And though they usually talked nonstop, they headed toward Harvell House in silence, both caught up in their own thoughts.

  CHAPTER

  37

  Della hovered at the threshold of her director’s office on the second floor of the Children’s Building. Seascapes decorated the walls, while a smattering of chairs from different centuries sat about the floor in a haphazard arrangement, no two together or facing one another.

  “May I come in?” she asked, tapping her knuckles on the door.

  Miss Garrett sat at an oak table, papers spread out, her hair in a tight bun. “Certainly. Come, have a seat.”

  Crossing the room, Della joined her at the table.

  “Is everything all right?” Miss Garrett asked, setting down her pencil. “You’ve not been your typical sunny self.”

  Della forced a smile. “I’ve been a bit troubled, I’m afraid.”

  All night she’d wrestled with herself. Sympathizing with someone who was “different” was not at all the same as experiencing it herself. And now that she had, she could no longer sit still and say nothing. At the same time, advocating sign language was heresy within these walls. Questioning the exclusion of it could very well put her job in jeopardy. And if she lost her job, she’d never see Kitty or any of her other students again. And how could she help them if she never saw them?

  “What is it that’s troubling you, dear?” Miss Garrett asked, threading her hands and setting them on the table.

  Della moistened her lips. “Yes. Well, I was wonderin
g if there is a particular reason we don’t teach both lip-reading and sign language?”

  Miss Garrett sat back in her chair, studying her. “You’re upset about the Krugers.”

  “I am.”

  She nodded. “It was an awful scene. Very insensitive of Kitty’s parents to put her through that.”

  Della blinked. It wasn’t the Krugers who were being insensitive. But she’d best tackle only one thing at a time.

  Miss Garrett tilted her head. “And now you’re trying to figure out a way to work around the visitation rules. You think the most logical thing would be to teach sign language. Then there would be no reason the children couldn’t go home on holidays. Am I correct?”

  “Partly. It’s more than that, though. It’s also the exclusivity of teaching lip-reading only. What will happen when our students leave school and try to interact with other deaf people who know only sign language?” She shook her head. “The more I think on it, the more convinced I become. They should be taught both.”

  Miss Garrett’s jaw began to tick. “The use of sign language sets the children apart, Miss Wentworth. You know that. It makes them the target of scorn. Why would you willingly set them up for that when they can function as readily as hearing children if they read lips?”

  “I’m not sure they can function exactly like hearing children. Have you ever noticed our students don’t chatter before class starts or during mealtimes? Don’t you think that’s unnatural?“

  Miss Garrett straightened. “Of all the ridiculous things. We are doing everything we can to make these children as normal as possible. We treat them as if they could hear. We speak to them as we would hearing children. We avoid unnatural movements of the mouth or anything else that would single them out as different.” She gripped the armrests of her chair. “As a matter of fact, we even try to forget that they are deaf at all. Now how, might I ask, is that unnatural?”

  Della rubbed her watch pin between her fingers. Nothing she could say would persuade Miss Garrett, or Dr. Bell for that matter, to think any differently than they already did. If she didn’t like it, then she was teaching at the wrong school.

  Letting out a slow breath, Miss Garrett placed a hand on Della’s arm. “If it were your loved one who was deaf, what would you want for him?”

  “I’d want whatever was best.”

  “Exactly.” She sat back, a satisfied look on her face. “Now we’d best wrap this up. I have an appointment in a few minutes.”

  GOVERNMENT BUILDING

  “Finding a spot on the front steps of the Government Building, Cullen opened the letter and sat down.”

  CHAPTER

  38

  Almost a week had passed since Cullen posted a letter to Wanda ending their engagement, but he’d yet to hear back. The only letter waiting for him this morning was from his dad. Finding a spot on the front steps of the Government Building, he opened the letter and sat down. He used to look forward to hearing from home, but now he dreaded it.

  GOVERNMENT BUILDING AND WOODED ISLAND

  Every day he’d kept up with the headlines, each newspaper report worse than the day before. Bank reserves had fallen $20 million last month and $21 million the month before. Even the banks in New York were struggling. He only hoped their own Building and Loan still had its doors open.

  He skimmed Dad’s letter with a sinking heart, then went back and read it more slowly. Dad couldn’t afford to pay the Dewey boys, so he took on a sharecropper. The bank was quick to point out, however, that it’s against the law to give a sharecropper part of the harvest’s profit since the crop was now mortgaged, along with the farm buildings, the horses, the milk cows, the oxen, the cattle, the sheep, and the pigs. Dad had to let the sharecropper go. Which left no one to help him bring in the harvest.

  He said there wasn’t any point in Cullen coming home to help, though, because he now owed the merchants seven hundred dollars. And because of the thousand dollars he’d borrowed, their mortgage payment had doubled. The Building and Loan wouldn’t lend him any more since he didn’t have the collateral, and even if he had, the run on the banks had dried them up and they didn’t have money to lend.

  Cullen felt his throat begin to close. Even if he were to sell six hundred dollars worth of sprinklers, it wouldn’t be enough. With the doubled mortgage, the merchant debt, the interest, and the bank refusing to lend, there wouldn’t be enough money to pay down the debt, much less buy next year’s seed.

  Come the end of the year, the two hundred fifty acres his grandparents bought in 1847 when they’d left Ireland on a coffin ship, the farm that had been raided and burned during the War, then put back together with blood and sweat, would be taken by a bank. A bank that, in this economic climate, wouldn’t be able to find an investor and would end up with land, animals, and buildings that weren’t worth any more to them than a pail of hot spit.

  But they meant something to his dad. And they meant something to Cullen. They might play havoc with his lungs and his skin, but they were home. And this downhill spiral had all started when Dad gambled three hundred dollars on Cullen’s invention.

  He had to do something. He had to make it work. His demonstration was set for tomorrow. The shed he planned to burn sat assembled behind Terminal Station, ready to go. All that remained was putting it to flame and letting his sprinklers do the rest.

  Cullen’s display in Machinery Hall lay at an awkward angle on the ground, its latticed roof ripped off, its pipes knocked askew, and one of its spigots snapped in half. He’d arrived well before the noise started and well before other exhibitors. All except for Bulenberg, that is, who usually didn’t saunter in until a good thirty minutes after the gates opened.

  Slowly turning toward him, Cullen drilled Bulenberg with his gaze. “What do you know about this?”

  With a smug expression, Bulenberg lifted a scrawny shoulder. “Can’t say I know anythng. It was like that when I arrived.”

  “Well, it didn’t just fall over by itself. Something or somebody knocked it over.”

  “Like I said, it was already on its side when I got here.”

  In four long strides, Cullen crossed to Bulenberg’s booth. “What about last night?”

  “What about it?”

  “Was it still standing when you left?”

  “I can’t say that I take much notice of your exhibit, McNamara.” He crossed his arms. “Of course, nobody else takes notice either, do they? Who knows, maybe this will be just the thing to draw some attention to your pathetic little display. Heaven knows your demonstration won’t.”

  Cullen opened and closed his fists. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  Dropping his pose, Bulenberg thrust his chin forward. “If you think you’re going to steal my customers with some pitiful little sideshow, well think again. Nobody’s interested in risking his money on a contraption that hasn’t been proven. And putting out a fire in something hardly bigger than an outhouse is far from indisputable proof of reliability.”

  “You know nothing about it.” He forced himself to take a deep breath. “And I’m not trying to steal your customers or anyone else’s. I’m simply giving them a glimpse of what’s next on the horizon. Some will pass, others will hop on board.”

  “We’ll see abut tht,” he mumbled.

  Cullen cocked his left ear toward Bulenberg. “What’s that?”

  “Nothing.” He made a jerky gesture toward Cullen’s booth. “Go clean up your mess. It’s bad enough for the rest of us to be seen with your poor excuse for a display. The least you can do is make it presentable.”

  It took every bit of restraint he had to walk away, but walk away he did. Bulenberg wasn’t worth the trouble it would cause were Cullen to retaliate. Besides, he had no proof Bulenberg was behind the deliberate destruction of his exhibit, only suspicion. A mighty big dose of suspicion.

  But steal his customers? Bulenberg thought he was stealing customers? Cullen shook his head. What absurdity. Bending over, he picked up his hinged wall a
nd began to repair the damage as best he could.

  As the day progressed and Cullen cooled off a bit, he considered Bulenberg’s fear. And the more he did, the more encouraged he felt. If Bulenberg was worried about tomorrow’s success, then maybe this demonstration would be his golden egg after all.

  MACHINERY HALL, NORTH ENTRANCE

  “Della scurried past the east entrance of Machinery Hall.”

  CHAPTER

  39

  Della hurried in the direction of Terminal Station, past the broad pediment over the east entrance of Machinery Hall. Fire, Water, Air, and Earth stood side by side. Fire grasped lightning in one hand, a torch in the other. Water held a dolphin spurting like a fountain. Cullen’s invention encompassed both.

  TERMINAL STATION

  Rounding the corner, she circumvented the building, then passed its annex and a blacksmith’s shop before reaching an open area beside the incoming railroad tracks. A large crowd of men and a few women gathered about a wooden shed. A white and gold fire carriage stood to its right. Though the engine could be outfitted with parade reels and wheels, it held more serviceable ones today.

  A dozen members of Company Eight stood at attention in red shirts and black trousers. An oversized numeral eight emblazoned on each black helmet and each silver belt buckle reflected off the sunlight.

  She leaned to the left to see better. Cullen’s hair had been carefully brilliantined beneath his jaunty derby hat, his gray suit showed off his physique, and his silk bow tie drooped against his shirt with the artful indifference so many men were now affecting. Smiling, he laughed at something one of the men in the front row said, giving no sign of nervousness or concern.

  It was good to see him in his element. Something had changed since her episode on the Ferris wheel. She couldn’t put her finger on it exactly, but Cullen was different somehow. His moods were more intense, his concentration more keen.