Watermarks

by Jarvis, J. L.

  Along riverbank, and then the railroad tracks, the scene grew brighter as sun tried to shine on unspeakable sights he would wish to forget. The unlikely sound of laughter crackled through the air. Gathered around a half dozen barrels, were some men, perhaps a dozen, drinking from pails, tin cans and cupped hands. Their eyes glowed with pickled contentment as they drank whiskey from barrels that the flood had fortuitously washed up.

  A ruddy-faced man squinted at Jake and eyed his bruised face and stooped posture. "Where you from?"

  Jake took a proffered drink. "Johnstown."

  The man eyed Jake and said, "Carried all the way down here, were you?"

  Jake gave a somber nod and took another gulp. The whiskey warmed his chilled body and dulled the pain. He could have stayed here, warm and numb, but he willed himself to stand. After another drink, he walked on, through the pain and fatigue, thinking only of taking each step that would bring him to Maggie. She had to be there. He refused to think otherwise. She would be there, and he would find her.

  He walked. A breath, a step, a stabbing pain. The rhythm repeated. Mud soaked all that had not washed away. It filled the water and covered the land and everything on it. Downed telegraph lines and splintered poles blocked his path, but he climbed and stumbled and trudged through the brown sludge and over debris until he found his way to the railroad tracks that had been cleared of obstructions left by the flood. From far down the tracks a train whistle sounded. He flinched at the sound--the same sound he had heard just before the flood hit. But the storm was over. This was only a train.

  Maggie sat at her train window seat and stared at the valley that was no longer her home. Home was now refuse, washed away into piles of oozing filth, mired in the mud with the lives now gone. She observed people bending to scrounge for remnants of their own or other people's lives, salvaging what objects they could. How could they toil in the bleak world before them when she could barely move?

  Another survivor plodded alongside the tracks back toward Johnstown. Maggie was weary of seeing them, destitute souls in their ragged clothing. She wanted to be in a world where the flood had not happened. She wanted to cry out to him, "There is nothing back there!" Then she was passing beside him. He lifted his eyes to the train. Unshaven and beaten as it was, one glimpse was enough.

  "Jake?" she whispered, pulse racing, and repeated it until she was on her feet, leaning against the window and pounding. She ran back through the car, leaning over passengers, pounding on windows, trying to see him and call out to him. The door to the next car stuck at first, and then opened. Rushing to an open window, she leaned her head out and screamed back to him, but she could scarcely hear her own voice above the clattering train as it rumbled away. The wind whipped loose strands of hair against her face.

  "Miss," said the porter.

  Maggie whipped her head toward him. Her eyes were wild. "Stop the train!"

  He spoke gently, as if to a child. "We can't do that Miss."

  "But you must? Please!"

  "What seems to be the problem here?" asked a stout conductor who joined them.

  "You've got to stop the train!"

  The two men just stared.

  Maggie looked from one to the other. One pitied, one patronized. Maggie's world was caving in around her.

  "Please. Let me off," but her voice faded along with her hope.

  The conductor led her to her seat. "That's a good girl. You can get off at the next station and take a train back to Johnstown, alright, Miss?" Maggie nodded docilely. She would have wept if only she could, but her despair was too deep and her emotions long since spent. Instead, she watched the world go by her window and tried not to hope that Jake was alive. But she recalled is brash smile, which used to both charm and annoy her. How she missed that smile and the rough hands with the touch that thrilled. She tried to imagine his hands on her and his sturdy arms around her, but all she felt round her was the void the flood had left in place of her life. And still tears refused to relieve her.

  Jake took in the sight of the ravaged valley. This was not the town of his youth. Much of the town lay beneath water and muck, buried and crushed. He climbed over pathways of wreckage as rain fell and washed the mud from his face. He sought out familiar buildings and landmarks to bring to his heart a suggestion of home that would ease his desolate his spirit. What place was this? This muck-coated valley was not his. His world was gone.

  Days ago, people did ordinary things in ordinary places. Simple, good people led simple, good lives. Now the places and people were gone. Some might never be found. In his mind, his house was still there, and his mother in it. His brothers and sisters playing and fighting in the grass. Grass. Any grass that remained was smothered in mud. People, too. His people? He could not think of it. He would find them. He would look and he would find them, and Maggie. She was safe in a building when he last saw her. "Please God, let her be here."

  Jake walked on. An old man ahead stooped to pry open a waterlogged trunk he had just unburied. He rummaged through it and stuffed trinkets into his pockets. As Jake neared him, he looked up, possessively glaring until Jake passed by. Then he completed his task and hobbled with haste to the next promise of treasure.

  Jake wandered on, without finding family or friends. A shell remained of the general store where he and Maggie used to meet, but there was no alley. Like a funeral dirge, a church bell rang out each hour, marking the passing of a time now lost.

  Jake stood before the remains of St. John Gualbert Roman Catholic Cathedral. He'd brought his family here to be safe. Now all but the convent chapel lay crumbled and charred.

  "Did you have folks in there?" asked a stranger.

  Jake nodded.

  "I lost my wife and four children," said the man.

  Jake's voice, gripped with grief, would not sound at first. "The others--did anyone survive?"

  The man shook his head.

  Jake stared at the building. He climbed through the wet rubble and pulled at boards and bricks. There was no on to say goodbye to. He knelt on an unhinged door in what remained of the church, but instead of goodbye, he could only ask why. He did not wonder why he could not feel grief. His heart was dead, and the dead cannot feel.

  Temporary hospitals and morgues housed survivors and victims. Jake walked through them all. He saw coworkers and neighbors, but no family and no Maggie. There were people who needed to talk without end, while others would--or could--not. None of them offered the one thing he needed. Hope.

  The Red Cross had set up a hospital to tend to the injured. He did not find the faces he so longed to see there. As he was leaving, he leaned on the doorway to brace himself to go on. A young Red Cross nurse noticed him and insisted on seeing to his injuries.

  "I don't know how you managed to walk here," she said, gently shaking her head as she bandaged his ribs.

  Jake glanced at her, but said nothing. The old Jake would have laughed it off with some charming remark. She did not talk any more than she had to, which Jake liked. But she watched him. She was pretty and kind and not Maggie. His ribs now in bandages, and his arm in a sling, Jake thanked her and started to leave, but she stopped him. "Check the Registry. They're taking names for a list of survivors."

  Jake thanked her and left. At the Registry, he read through the list. He knew his family had been at the ruined St. John's, but he looked for their names anyway. He would not find them there. Once more, he read through the list, pointing with dirt-caked fingers as he read for fear he would miss Maggie's name.

  A young woman beside Jake was signing the list. She was in the family way, and alone. With the softest of sighs, she swooned beside him. He reached out to catch her, but his injured body could not bear the weight. While he broke her fall, some other men caught her and tended to her. Jake moved to make way as the woman was lifted and carried to the hospital. Jake followed them outside in case he could help, and then he left without signing the registry. Behind, in the Registry office, Maggie's name was on the next page,
smudged with mud. He had missed it. Her note lay jammed in the drawer of a waterlogged desk, unread and forgotten.

  Jake walked outside, aimless, but compelled to keep moving as if moving would prove that he was alive, but he would not feel alive without Maggie MacLaren in his arms.

  Two men in suits were busy in a field of drying debris. One adjusted a camera, while the other stepped about and positioned items. Jake then noticed a third lying casually on the ground with his chin propped on his palm, watching the other two.

  "Take off your boots," said the man without the camera to the man on the ground. He sat up from a pile of bricks, pulled off his boots, and tossed them out of the way.

  "Good. Now lie face down. Stretch out your arms--like this. That's it." The man without the camera smiled. He enjoyed his work.

  "That looks good," said the man without the camera.

  "But we need something to frame the shot," said the photographer.

  Jake looked on in amazement as the men gathered items from nearby and placed them about the subject: a broken barrel, an overturned chair, and a table. Then, as an afterthought, they placed a two-by-four over the man for effect.

  "There's something missing...You know what we need? A doll. Or a toy!"

  "Or muddy clothes," muttered Jake.

  "Yes, but we don't want him to blend in so well we can't see him," said the photographer.

  Noticing Jake for the first time, his companion asked Jake, "Say, what's your story?"

  Jake shook his head and walked away.

  "Were you in the flood? Did you lose any folks?"

  "Who didn't?" said Jake, still walking.

  The reporter kept up with him as he pulled a notebook and pencil from his pocket.

  "How does it feel?"

  Jake stopped so abruptly the journalist nearly bumped into him. "How does it feel?"

  "Yes--you said you lost people. But you've survived the worst disaster of the century. How does it feel?"

  Jake looked at him, and at everything around them. He thought for a moment. With his one good arm, he swung a punch that knocked the reporter down.

  "How does that feel?"

  Without waiting for an answer, Jake walked away. His temper had cost him. Now he paid with each breath. Stabbing pains shot through his chest, sides and back. His broken arm throbbed, and his good hand was smarting. It was worth every bit of pain.

  Charles Adair stormed into Andrew's office and tossed a newspaper on his desk.

  "Have you seen this? Cyrus Elder is practically confessing the club's guilt to the world."

  Andrew finished reading and looked over at his father, now seated in a chair across from his desk.

  "They have to find someone to blame," said Charles.

  "Perhaps with good cause, in this case," said Andrew.

  "I don't want to hear that kind of talk--not even to me, understand?"

  With a blank expression, Andrew nodded, and then gazed at his desk.

  "They're trying to say the club was negligent. They're even going after the railroad."

  "Well, that's what a good lawyer does, isn't it? Sues everyone in sight, and then sorts it out later," said Andrew.

  "Of course, the club has no assets, other than the lake property itself. But they'll try to find personal negligence. They haven't got a case, but still, we're club members. If anyone approaches you--"

  "I know. Of course I'll say nothing. Father, I wish you'd give me more credit." Andrew knew the game. He watched his father speaking as though he were listening.

  His father continued. "This will blow over. After the suits are filed, our best tactic will be delay. We'll drown them in paper, filing motions--Change of venue, for starters. It'll be a long time before these cases come to trial."

  "Suppose there was, in fact, negligence," said Andrew.

  "How could we possibly have known what went on with that dam before we signed on? And don't forget; we didn't build it. We just bought it."

  "And maintained it." Andrew looked at his father and considered whether to continue. "Don't you find it peculiar that the dam broke in the same spot that the club had repaired? Now that I think of it, Samuel commented not long ago on the road. It was sagging. He looked up some club records--old repairs, engineering, that sort of thing. I dismissed it at the time, but he was asking about the old spillway. He said the pipes were removed and a screen was installed to keep the stocked fish in. I should have listened."

  "It's in the past, now, and you need to forget it. Son, a good memory is a two-edged sword. Don't fall on yours."

  "The fact remains that, if the damaged pipes had been replaced instead of removed, the water level could have been kept low enough to be safe, instead of spilling over the dam like it did just before it broke."

  "And how do you know that?" demanded Charles. "How do you know that would have made a difference?"

  Andrew's face reddened as he fought to speak with a controlled tone of voice. "But what if it had? What about all of those people who died? What about Samuel?" He spit out the final word with disgust.

  Charles's eyes widened. His chest heaved. "Samuel was dead to me the moment I found out about him and your sister. There was nothing that flood could have done to make anything worse."

  With a pointed look, Andrew said, "Allison might disagree with you."

  He gave Andrew a chilling look. "She's gone. I'll not have her name spoken again."

  Andrew looked at his father, who now seemed a stranger. Charles continued as though nothing had been said of his only daughter. "Besides, even if the dam were poorly engineered, the proximate cause of that flood was the storm. It was an act of God, pure and simple."

  "Perhaps," said Andrew. Yet he thought of the acts of men, and wondered how any act of God could be worse.

  Charles said, "Oh, there'll be a few ambitious lawyers who might try to reach beyond the club to the pockets of its members, but they'll lose."

  Andrew looked at his father's smug face and felt sick, for he knew that his father was right. And he knew that he was no better than his father. The club had been set up as a separate corporate identity. A winning plaintiff could not take what a defendant did not have to give. The only way they could get to an individual club member would be to show that an individual had committed some negligent act. Without that, the only money at risk was club money, and Andrew felt sure there was little of that left in the coffer. No one who sued the club would prevail--and if they prevailed, they would not collect.

  Charles said, "What kind of lawyer do you think those people would find to take their case?"

  Andrew saw the faces of Maggie, her family, and her friends and neighbors, whose homes and lives were gone.

  Charles finished lighting his cigar. "A damn fool, that's who; some penny-ante lawyer who's in it for the settlement. Reed will throw him a bone and be done with it."

  The people of Johnstown did not stand a chance against Knox and Reed, the powerful Pittsburgh law firm that represented the South Fork Fishing and Hunting Club.

  "I'm sure you're right," said Andrew.

  "Of course I am. Let's be realistic. Years from now, when people hear names like Carnegie, Mellon and Frick, they will think of their great accomplishments and generous philanthropy. No one will remember the South Fork Fishing and Hunting Club, let alone the names of its members."

  He chuckled and pulled out his pocket watch. "I'm going to lunch. Care to join me?"

  "No thank you. I've got some work to do."

  "That's my boy," said Charles as he rose with a grunt and left.

  Andrew stared at the closing door and listened to his father's footsteps retreat down the hallway. His eyes fell to a small stack of mail on a pile of papers with files beneath. He glanced and tossed his way through the envelopes, then tossed them aside and pulled one from his coat pocket. He settled back in his desk chair and began to read it again.

  Dearest Andrew,

  It has been a difficult time. You said I have courage. I was uns
ure of how to respond, for in truth, I don't feel it. I happened on love. And all that was good and right came into my life and filled my heart.

  There are so many things I don't understand--things that break my heart. But I know this: I have been loved, and my life now has a purpose.

  I am enclosing a portrait a traveling photographer took of us a few weeks ago. When you look at it, think of us and know that I miss you. May I hope for a visit someday?

  Please give my love to Mother and Father. I know they do not wish to hear it now. Perhaps they will understand someday.

  I will write when we get to our new home.

  Your loving sister,

  Allison

  Andrew looked at the sepia photograph until tears covered his vision. He could not do this now, so he opened his drawer and set down the photograph beside another that stared up at him. He and Maggie stood arm in arm, he in black, she in white. Less than a year ago, they had posed together beside the lake. He would never be that happy again.

  Allison stood at the rail and let the fine mist settle on her. The dangerous beauty of Niagara Falls was staggering. Sunlight shone through the thick, watery mass in an unearthly, shimmering green as it seemed to pause for an instant, then pound into a shower of spray and rising mist.

  "Oh, Samuel, look! A rainbow!"

  The infant cooed, oblivious.

  "All the colors are so vivid!"

  Allison stroked her child's cheek as he lay in the perambulator, then rested her hand on the blanket beside him. As she watched the water, it almost seemed still as it neared the edge. A small hand gripped her finger. She looked down at her son and smiled.