“You’re in luck,” the clerk said. “I’ve got a lovely oceanfront room for you.”
Ruth gave a nod of appreciation, but Cyrus’s expression never changed.
That night they had dinner sent to the room and didn’t bother going out. Instead of dancing they sat in bed and watched the news on television. When the weatherman announced a line of severe thunderstorms passing over the western ridge of Virginia and leaving behind a number of power outages, Ruth leaned back against her pillow with a smile of contentment.
“Thank goodness we don’t have to worry about that,” she said.
The Storm
The thunderstorms that rumbled across Virginia Saturday evening were the worst the state had seen in almost fifty years. In Wyattsville alone, lightning struck three houses and knocked out electricity in the Main Street area. Every streetlamp from Main to Ridge was darkened. Reasoning that no one but a fool would venture out on a night such as this, Sidney Klaussner closed his grocery store early and most restaurants never even bothered to open.
The rain began mid-morning, but it was barely more than a drizzle. Heavy with low hanging clouds, the sky promised a storm but that was to be expected at this time of year. Chances were it would blow over and be gone in an hour or so. That’s how it generally was with spring storms, and at first this one seemed no different. The afternoon cleared and breaks of sun could be seen; then shortly after five the sky grew black as night and the first squall came through.
Pauline Crawford stood at the window and watched the rain falling in torrents.
“I can’t remember when we’ve had such a storm,” she told George.
As it turned out that first squall was only a harbinger of what was to come.
Before an hour was gone the rain let up, and Pauline gave a sign of relief. She closed the blinds and said it was a good night to be going to bed early.
The rain continued off and on for over three hours, and shortly after nine the second squall roared through. This one brought hail and a barrage of lightning strikes. The first reported strike hit the Garcia family’s house over on Claremont. It tore through the asphalt shingles on the roof and started a fire in the attic. Given the noise of the hail, it was a good fifteen minutes before Mario realized the house had been hit. When he saw smoke coming from the ceiling trapdoor, he called for the fire department.
In Wyattsville two regulars manned the fire station; the rest of the men were volunteers. Rick Malloy was on duty that night, and ten seconds after he hung up from Mario he put out a call for all available volunteers. Normally he’d get enough men for a hook and ladder truck in four to seven minutes, but road conditions weren’t normal. It was twenty-three minutes before the sixth man arrived. As the fire truck sped crosstown with its siren blaring, the third squall rolled in.
Before Rick and his team had reached the Garcia house a second call came in, this one from Matilda Abrams. She reported smoke coming through the heating vents, but where it was coming from she couldn’t say. Doc Willard, the other regular, was the only man in the station.
“Get out of the house,” he told her. “Go next door to a neighbor’s. We’ll get a truck there as soon as possible.” He put out a second call for volunteers but fewer men were now available. He eventually went as the sixth man on the truck and left the station unattended.
During the third squall, a blaze of lightning so bright it could be seen twenty miles away hit the telephone pole in front of the Dodd house and ran through the wires. It fried the cables and left the residents of Harrison Street without any telephone service. The Dodd house, being closest to the strike, was also hit by a side flash. It flared off the original strike and jumped fifteen feet to the electrical wiring inside the bedroom wall.
It was the spark from that side flash that started the fire. Had someone been there they might have smelled the smoke, but the Dodds were in Virginia Beach and the neighbors who were at home had the windows closed and blinds drawn. The fire smoldered inside the walls for over two hours then burst into flames that quickly spread from room to room. By the time the blaze could be seen from outside, almost all the residents of Harrison Street were in bed asleep.
Alma Bellingham was the sole exception. She’d eaten a large piece of cheesecake late in the evening, and the indigestion was killing her. For several hours she’d tossed and turned thinking it would pass, but it didn’t. At two-fifteen she finally decided to take her acid reflux pill and sleepily staggered into the kitchen.
Standing at the sink filling a glass with water, Alma saw flames reflected in the window. She turned toward the living room, saw the orange glow and screamed.
“Gerald! The Dodd house is on fire!”
She grabbed the telephone, but there was no dial tone. Frantic, she jiggled the button up and down several times, but the line remained dead.
“Gerald!” she yelled and went running back to the bedroom.
Despite all her shouting, Gerald was still sound asleep. She grabbed his shoulder and shook it furiously.
“Get up!” she screamed. “Do something! The house is on fire!”
He bolted up so quickly his head banged into Alma’s and sent her flying.
“We’ve got to get out of here,” he said and grabbed for Alma’s arm.
Shaking him loose, she pulled herself up. “Not our house. It’s the Dodds’ house.”
“Did you call the fire department?”
“Our phone’s dead. Go next door and use Frank’s.”
Of course Frank Blanchard’s phone was dead also, as was the Ingrams’ phone and the Crawfords’ phone. By then Gerald had roused half the neighborhood, but the best they could do was squirt pitiful streams of water from their garden hoses toward what had become a raging inferno. It was after two-thirty when Gerald finally jumped in his car and drove to the fire station.
Doc was still awake and Rick Malloy had been asleep less than twenty minutes when Gerald clanged the bell.
“What now?” Doc said with a weary groan, then swung his feet to the floor and hurried out to the front of the station. Gerald Bellingham was standing there in his pajamas.
“Come quick,” he said. “Seventeen Harrison Street. The house is on fire!”
Without a moment’s hesitation Doc turned back inside and headed for the squawk box. When the call went out, a few of the volunteer firemen were just getting home and still wheezing from the Claremont Street fire. Others were already in bed and too weary to pull themselves up. It was forty minutes before the hook and ladder truck left the station, and by then there was little left of the Dodd house.
The roof had collapsed and taken the front part of the house down with it. The rear wall of the kitchen was still standing with a window that looked out into the backyard.
A ribbon of light was filtering into the early morning sky. The storms were long gone, and almost everyone on Harrison Street was standing outside looking at the rubble and thanking God it hadn’t been their house that had gone up in flames. Pauline leaned her head against George’s chest and cried.
“Poor Ruth,” she said through tears. “This will surely break her heart.”
That Sunday morning Pauline skipped going to church. She stayed home and cleaned out the room that had once been Peter’s so Ruth and Cyrus would at least have a place to stay. Luckily she and Ruth were the same size, so she gathered some slacks, sweaters and blouses and hung them in the closet. Although it seemed almost too personal a thing to do, she also filled the top dresser drawer with a supply of clean underwear.
Once that was finished, she started thinking about Cyrus. George was six inches shorter and twenty pounds heavier, so his clothes wouldn’t work. Pauline started picturing their neighbors and comparing them in size to Cyrus Dodd. In the end she decided that Frank Blanchard was closest to Cyrus’s size, so she marched across the street and asked if he’d be willing to donate some clothes.
Frank was okay with giving some shirts and trousers but said no to the underwear.
&nbs
p; When Pauline finished hanging what would now be Cyrus’s clothes in the closet, she set a scented candle on the dresser.
Sometimes a small kindness can keep a person’s heart from breaking.
Virginia Beach
On Sunday morning the sky cleared and the sun came out. Ruth pushed back the curtains and looked out at the ocean.
“Let’s go for a stroll on the beach this morning,” she suggested. “Maybe afterward we can walk across to Atlantic Avenue and have lunch at that cute little coffee shop down the street from the Peppermint Lounge.”
“It’s the Peppermint Club, not lounge,” Cyrus said. He was wearing that discouraged look she’d come to dread.
“Club then,” she snapped. “Does it really matter?” She stood with her back to him and her face turned to the window. “I thought maybe it would cheer you up, make you forget your troubles.”
After almost thirty years of marriage Cyrus could feel her tears before she shed them. He climbed from the bed, came up behind her and wrapped his arms around her shoulders.
“I’m sorry,” he said.
She turned to face him, and he kissed her full on the mouth. It was the kind of kiss they’d shared years earlier, something she’d missed for a long while. A tear fell from her eye and rolled down her cheek.
“Don’t cry,” Cyrus whispered. “I said I’m sorry. I was wrong—”
“But I don’t want you to be sorry,” she said, her lower lip trembling. “I want you to be happy, to be the man I fell in love with all those years ago.”
Cyrus gave a weighted sigh. “Ah, yes, that would be nice wouldn’t it? Back then I had work to do and a purpose for living—”
“Am I not purpose enough for living?”
“Of course you are,” he replied defensively. “You’re the love of my life. But when I wake up in the morning, I still want to think I have a purpose for the day, some goal to achieve, something to work for—”
“Can’t you just work at being happy?” she asked.
“I wish I knew how,” he said softly. “I truly wish I knew how…” He bent and kissed her again.
Later that morning as they walked hand in hand along the beach, Cyrus thought back on the conversation. Until that day he hadn’t seen the unhappiness he’d caused. He’d been wrapped up in feeling sorry for himself and forgotten one of the few things he didn’t regret: loving Ruth. Never again, he vowed.
That afternoon he pushed thoughts of himself aside and did things to make her happy. After they’d walked to the far end of the beach and back, he squatted and drew a heart in the wet sand. In it he wrote “Cyrus loves Ruth.”
“Oh, Cyrus,” she squealed, “that’s so sweet!”
He felt her happiness and grinned. Today he was a man with a purpose. His purpose was to make Ruth happy, and he was doing a good job of it.
That afternoon Ruth changed into slacks and a sweater, and they walked across to Atlantic Avenue. They spent the remainder of the afternoon and evening there, browsing through gift shops, stopping for coffee in first one place and then another, and when the last rays of sunlight were disappearing from the horizon they stopped in the Peppermint Club. It was after ten when they arrived back at the hotel.
Cyrus snapped on the television. “Let’s see what the weather forecast for tomorrow is.”
Ruth was hanging her slacks in the closet when she heard the newscaster saying that the previous day’s storms did quite a bit of damage in some of the western Virginia towns.
“Hardest hit was the small town of Wyattsville…”
She dropped the hanger and turned back to the room. “What did he say about Wyattsville?”
“He didn’t give any particulars,” Cyrus answered. “Just that Wyattsville got the worst of the storm and had some widespread damages.”
“He didn’t say what was damaged?”
Cyrus shook his head. “Afraid not.” He noticed the look of concern tugging at Ruth’s face and added, “I’m sure it’s nothing to worry about. You know how newscasters try to sensationalize everything. It’s probably some power outages and overturned lawn chairs.”
Ruth’s expression didn’t change. “Think I’ll telephone Pauline and ask if everything’s okay.”
“It’s after ten-thirty.”
“She doesn’t go to bed until eleven.”
Ruth picked up the telephone and rattled off the number to the operator. She knew it by heart since she and Pauline called each other often, sometimes two or three times a day. She heard the click, click, click of the operator placing the call, and then there was nothing. She waited several minutes, then hung up and tried again.
“My call didn’t go through,” she told the operator.
After several attempts, the operator reached Wyattsville central and was told the line was out of order.
“Wait,” Ruth said, “I’ve got another number.” She pulled a tiny address book from her purse and gave Alma Bellingham’s number.
That also was out of order, as were the numbers for Frank Blanchard and the Wilsons. When there was no one else left to call, she tried Clara Bowman’s number. That call went through, but the telephone rang and rang with no answer.
“Something’s wrong,” she said. “I can feel it in the pit of my stomach.”
“It might be indigestion,” Cyrus suggested.
“It’s not,” she replied.
Trying not to spoil the happy mood she’d been in all day, Cyrus suggested they get a good night’s sleep. If in the morning she still couldn’t get in touch with anyone, they’d head for home. Ruth gave a reluctant shrug.
“Okay,” she said, but already she was counting the hours until morning.
That night Ruth barely closed her eyes. Throughout the night she imagined the various disasters that could have befallen their house and friends. She could almost see the basement flooded, her flowerbeds destroyed or, God forbid, the oak tree downed and lying across the back porch. As she lay there looking out at the stars scattered across the sky, the one thing she didn’t imagine was what actually happened.
KWNB Evening News
On Sunday the KWNB ten o’clock local news was filled with coverage of the storm and its aftermath. Bob Allen, the KWNB weatherman, had the lead-in spot. He pointed to a map and explained how a cold front came across the mountains during the early morning hours.
“We’re looking good for tomorrow,” he said, “but stay tuned, and I’ll be back later in the broadcast with your forecast for the coming week.”
Following him, anchorman Ken Kubrick told viewers several trees had been downed and there had been three house fires.
“Leslie, what’s it like over there on the west side?” he asked. The director cut to a young blond interviewing Mario Garcia. Mario looked at the camera wide-eyed.
“I got a hole in my roof,” he said, “and the house might’ve burned to the ground if not for the Wyattsville Fire Department.” Even though the fire was contained in the attic, he swore he owed those men for saving the lives of himself and his family.
Clara Bowman was half-listening to the news as she made telephone calls. Five people had already refused to take the job of planting and caring for the begonias on Broad Street. It had been four days since she’d heard from Ruth, and when she’d tried to call the operator said the line was out of order.
“Likely story,” Clara grumbled and dialed Maggie Spence’s number.
“You’ve got to do it,” she told Maggie. “It would be an embarrassment to the Brookside Library Committee if Broad is the only street without flowers.”
“I’m willing to make a cake for the bake sale,” Maggie said, “but flowers?”
Clara crossed Maggie’s name off the list and started dialing Sarah Jean. That’s when she heard the fireman talking about Harrison Street.
“Luckily no one was killed,” he said. “A neighbor claims the family is away on vacation.”
For a few seconds Ken Kubrick was back on camera; then it flicked over to a shot of t
he house that had been destroyed. Although there was certainly not enough left to identify it, Clara felt a vague sense of familiarity.
It couldn’t be.
She set the telephone back in its cradle and dropped down into the chair directly in front of the television.
It’s odd that Ruth hasn’t called. Not like her. Not like her at all.
She sat there with her eyes glued to the television until the newscast was over, but there was no further mention of what house it was.
After a few minutes of thinking it over, she dialed Seth Porter’s number and said, “You’ve got to drive me over to Harrison Street.”
“Now?” he asked. “I was getting ready to go to bed.”
“I need to go right now,” Clara said. “Drive me over, and tomorrow night I’ll fix you a fried chicken dinner.”
“I’ll be right down.”
Seth grabbed a jacket and hurried out the door. An offer for dinner was always welcome. He lived alone, and when he wasn’t invited somewhere it meant eating a can of Dinty Moore beef stew or Heinz baked beans.
Clara was ready to go when he rapped on the door. As they crossed the parking lot to his car he asked what the trip to Harrison Street was all about.
“You remember Ruth Dodd?” she asked.
Seth wrinkled his brow and shook his head. “Can’t say I do.”
“She works with the Brookside Library Committee. Light brown hair, petite looking…”
Seth shook his head again.
“She always did the begonias over on Broad Street.”
“Oh, yeah.” Seth grinned. “I know who you’re talking about.”
Clara told the story of how Ruth hadn’t called and then she’d heard on television that a house on Harrison Street had burned to the ground.
The Regrets of Cyrus Dodd Page 15
