Home by Morning

by Alexis Harrington

  Trudging along, Riley couldn’t help but wonder what the French countryside had looked like before this war started. It had to have been different from this. For miles and miles around, the earth was pockmarked with shell craters that reminded him of a photograph of the moon he’d once seen in an old periodical. This place looked just as desolate. The trees were broken, leafless, and lifeless. At night, they could easily be mistaken for men. If ever there had been rolling fields of lavender or tomatoes or grapes, any real vegetation, they were gone now. In his memory rose a picture of the home place, green, peaceful, dotted with beautiful horses. God, just to see it again…

  In the distance, a shell blew three men out of a trench.

  He put his head down and plodded on. Right now, his main goal was to keep himself and his men alive so he could return to the world that he was supposed to be improving.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Jessica unpacked in the apartment over the office and hung her freshly pressed clothes in the wardrobe. Nothing sounded better than a bath. A bathroom of her own—it would be heaven. In the rooming house where she’d lived, the bath had been down the hall and every boarder was assigned a scheduled time to use it. If she missed her slot, as she often did because of work, she’d had to sponge-bathe using the sink in the corner of her room. And the past week on the train had been even more Spartan—she’d had to make do with the most minimal of washing. She sat on the bed and looked at her surroundings. The apartment was unsophisticated, with its quilt on the bed, clean, quiet, and homey, just like all of Powell Springs. Amy had done a good job of decorating.

  She was tired from her trip and the long day. More than anything, Jess knew she was exhausted by what had happened in New York. She didn’t like to think about it, but the memories swamped her like engulfing waves of a winter-tossed Atlantic Ocean. They came to her at times when she wasn’t expecting them, or as they did today, when Amy had asked her about those years. Often her dreams were haunted by sounds and images so vivid, she’d wake with her heart galloping in her chest, expecting to find herself back in the midst of what she’d left behind in the East. Even the month she’d spent resting in Saratoga Springs had not helped. A month wasn’t long enough. It would take more time, she told herself. Time to recover, time to forgive herself. She might never forget, but as the weeks and months passed, and she settled into her new position in Seattle, surely those images would fade. She clung to that hope as a lifeline. If the wire from Seattle was any indication, she’d have an entirely new set of experiences to deal with.

  She lifted her arms to remove her hairpins when she heard a tapping at the door. It was so faint, she thought it was coming from another room down the hall, only here, in Powell Springs, there was no other room down the hall—at least not with an occupant.

  No, there it was again, and she realized it came from downstairs.

  Going to the door, she saw the silhouette of a man’s figure through the twilit lace curtain. “Who is it, please?”

  “Dr. Layton?” The question sounded more like a croak. She peeked around the edge of the curtain and discovered Eddie Cookson weaving drunkenly on the stoop. Immediately, she unlocked the door and pulled it open.

  “Eddie! What in heaven’s name are you doing here?” She took his arm, steered him into the waiting room, and pushed him into the nearest chair. He was still dressed in his uniform, but he looked far worse now than he had this morning. “I thought your father came to get you!”

  “He had to milk the cows. I told him…to go on…it’s only a couple of miles. I thought I could walk.”

  “But you left here. Where have you been all these hours?”

  “I wandered around…the truth is, I’m not sure where all I—” A fit of coughing overtook him before he could finish the sentence.

  “Dear God,” she muttered.

  Jess hurried down the hall to retrieve her stethoscope and thermometer from her bag in the office. After poking the glass tube into Eddie’s mouth, she had him unbutton the top of his wool tunic so she could listen to his heart. It beat like a labored horse’s. She went into the back and grabbed her white apron from the hook where she’d hung it earlier. Then she searched through the stoppered bottles and vials in the glass-front cabinets, hoping to find the ingredients she needed. Her throat closed when she recognized her father’s handwriting in faded brown ink on some of the labels. Others bore Cyrus Vandermeer’s scratching.

  Atropine sulphate…morphine sulphate…quinine sulphate…camphor…gum tragacanth…Yes, they were all here, thank goodness. Rummaging through other shelves, she discovered apothecaries’ weights, a mortar and pestle, a pill roller, and a pharmacopoeia for the dosages, and piled them on a work table. She’d not had to compound her own medicines for a while, but fortunately she hadn’t lost the skill.

  Meanwhile, she heard Eddie’s hacking cough in the other room and her mission increased its urgency.

  In a few minutes, she’d manufactured twenty pills and poured them into a square of paper, which she folded shut. On a corner of the packet she wrote hasty instructions.

  Take one pill every two hours.

  She came back to the waiting room and found her patient slumped down farther in the chair, the thermometer chattering between his teeth. God, he seemed to grow worse before her very eyes. Jessica had seen and experienced her share of influenza—acute onset was often a distinguishing characteristic—but she couldn’t recall anyone in robust health like Eddie fading so quickly. She tucked the packet of pills into his hand.

  Taking the thermometer from his mouth, she read 103F degrees.

  She remembered the telegram she’d received from Seattle General Hospital and her stomach dropped with a cold heaviness. “People have been ill up at Camp Lewis, haven’t they?”

  He made a feeble gesture. “Some troops came in on the train. A lot of them were sick with something. Things are pretty crowded up in camp. We’ve got lots more men than we have room. We’re practically one on top of the other. But the camp medical officer said there was nothing to worry over. I didn’t think anymore about—” Another attack of coughing interrupted him.

  Jessica wasn’t as sanguine as that medical officer. Working in public health, she had stayed up to date on epidemics going around. But she had purposely insulated herself from outside distractions since she’d left New York. In Saratoga Springs, she had not read a newspaper or even glanced at a headline. In that green and peaceful place, she’d wanted to shut out the war and the world, to forget. Now her self-imposed isolation was coming back to haunt her, and she knew she’d made a huge mistake.

  She stood and put a hand to his forehead. Fever raged in him, and her concern grew. “Take those pills I made up for you. They should help with the cough and the aches. I wrote the instructions on the packet.”

  He nodded his thanks, plainly losing what strength he had left. “How will you get home? Is your father still in his office?”

  “I don’t think so. I tried to walk back…” he repeated.

  Hiding her irritation at Horace Cookson’s lackadaisical attitude about this, she said, “I’m going to find someone to take you back your place. You wouldn’t be able to walk across the street.” She waited to see if her words registered. “You stay here,” she added sternly, then pulled open the door.

  The sun sat golden-red on the western horizon, and night would come soon. As in most small towns at this hour, people were at home eating dinner, and traffic had dwindled to a scant trickle. Even Granny Mae had closed her restaurant for the day.

  The unpaved street was dotted with the remnants of the day’s activities—bits of crepe paper and handbills, a ribbon or two, and a few tiny American flags that had gotten away from small hands. She looked around, hoping to see someone, anyone, who could give Eddie a ride. But the only place that showed any activity was Tilly’s Saloon down at the end of Main. There she saw an automobile and a few horses and wagons outside.

  She marched down to Tilly’s, past the darkened win
dows of the hardware store and Bright’s Grocery. Her white apron flapped around her skirts. Yanking open the screen door, she stepped inside. Several customers stood at the bar, a few with a foot resting on the brass rail at the bottom. She had a confused impression of various bottles lined up on the back bar interspersed with mounted antlers and stuffed trophy heads of elk. Paintings of nearby Multnomah Falls and Mount Hood, along with a photograph of Teddy Roosevelt, mingled with signs that warned No Credit—Don’t Ask, No Minors Permitted, and more of the standard Liberty Bond posters. A few small tables lined one wall where old-timers like Winks Lamont and Shaw Braddock sat sipping their whiskies. The hum of conversation and smoke hung over the scene.

  It certainly wasn’t Delmonico’s, was her wry, initial thought. That elegant New York establishment had entertained such luminaries as Mark Twain, Charles Dickens, and any number of American presidents and captains of industry. At Tilly’s, spittoons stood wherever they’d been kicked to, and the floor was covered with sawdust and peanut shells.

  From his post behind the bar, a flustered Virgil Tilly saw Jess first. He reached for the towel slung over one shoulder and wiped his hands. His expression of mild horror would have been amusing under less dire circumstances. “Um, Miss Layton, ma’am—”

  When he spoke her name, all eyes turned toward her and goggled. Conversation ceased.

  “No offense, but this really isn’t a place for a lady—”

  Not bothering with preliminary chitchat, Jess interrupted, “I need a man with a wagon or an automobile who can take Eddie Cookson back to his farm. He’s in my office, and he’s too ill to walk that far.”

  “What’s the matter with him?” Winks asked.

  “He has influenza.”

  Several customers weighed in on the situation.

  “The grippe? He was all right earlier when he rode in the parade.”

  “Yeah, he was smiling and shaking hands right and left. He didn’t look sick to me.”

  Another said darkly, “Hey, I think heard about this thing. My wife had a letter from her mother last week. She lives in Philadelphia and she said the grippe is mowing folks down like wheat under a hailstorm. They’re fine one minute and dropping over the next. The coffins are stacked up on the sidewalks, they can’t bury them fast enough. She said the dead people turned blue before they died.”

  “Blue—God almighty!”

  “Yessir, blue as ink. Some as dark as a midnight sky. She said they die gasping and gurgling like someone who’s drowned. Others dropped dead on the streetcar or on the sidewalk, just like that.” He snapped his fingers, then added in a suspicious tone, “They think it came from Spain.”

  Everyone spoke at once. “I heard about that—the black plague! It happened over in Europe.”

  “They said it was the rats.”

  “Wait a minute,” Jess tried to intervene. “That was hundreds of years ago. This is just influenza, not the plague—”

  The conversation continued as if she hadn’t said a thing.

  “I seen it.” A man sitting at the end of the bar spoke up. “I seen people, blue in the face and gasping for air.”

  “Where’d you say you was from, mister?” Shaw Braddock asked him.

  “Nowheres in particular. I spent some time over in Troutdale and Parkridge a few years back, but I been traveling since then. Then I got to hankering for this part of the country again so I come back.” The drifter wore a hat pulled low, but what Jess could see of his face she remembered well. Not that she knew him. But she’d seen scores of men just like him back East—shabby, unshaven, and as ragged as a burlap bag nailed to a post to flap in the wind. His few belongings were tied in a grimy pillowcase that sat on the floor at his feet.

  “You got folks around here?” Winks asked.

  “Maybe. I haven’t seen ’em in a long time and I’m hoping to find ’em.”

  “And you say you’ve seen this influenza?” Virgil pressed, refilling his whiskey glass.

  He nodded his thanks. “Yup. I shared a boxcar out here with a man who was sick with it. He lost enough blood from his nose to fill a gin bottle.” He bolted the drink in one gulp and wiped his mouth on the back of his hand.

  “Jesus!”

  “It sounds bad. The plague—good night, nurse! I don’t want no part of that.”

  “Neither do I. It’s catching.”

  But the man’s audience edged a bit closer, obviously eager for more gruesome details. The possibility that he himself could be contagious either didn’t cross their minds, or they were willing to risk it to hear the story.

  If ever there was a case of an exaggerated whopper, Jess figured this had to be one. Aunt Someone confided to Somebody Else about a distant cousin’s appendectomy, and by the third or fourth telling, the appendix had grown hair and teeth and turned into an undeveloped twin the cousin had carried around for thirty years. Unfounded rumor became concrete fact. Now influenza patients were turning blue-black, hemorrhaging, and dropping dead. There was cause for concern, yes, but the Seattle telegram hadn’t reported anything so sensational.

  “It’s not the plague. It’s just the grippe,” she insisted. But one point had been raised with which she agreed. “Yes, it can be contagious. Still, that doesn’t guarantee the one who gives Eddie a ride will come down with it.”

  No one jumped forward to volunteer.

  “Even so—I had it last winter and I was in bed for a week,” another man said. She didn’t recognize him, but he seemed strong and healthy enough. He must have had an exemption from military service. “I can’t afford to catch it again.”

  “You might have immunity from the case you had last winter,” she said. She wasn’t sure that was true, but she was desperate.

  “By God, doctor gal, you sure make it sound like an attractive proposition,” Shaw observed tartly. “‘You could get sick and die, but maybe not.’” He cracked a peanut, popped the nuts into his mouth, and threw the shells on the floor. “If even half of what this feller, here—what’s your name?”

  “Bert Bauer,” the ragged man answered. He signaled Tilly for a refill, complaining, “Got me a hell of a toothache.”

  “If even half of what Bert, here, says is true, I imagine we’re in for a heap of trouble. That doesn’t mean we have to go galloping up to meet it.”

  Surprised and annoyed by what she saw as their lack of compassion, Jess advanced from her spot just inside the door. The sawdust and litter crunched beneath her shoes. They had made a great fuss over Eddie as their one of their own in uniform with their patriotic posturing, but now they dithered over their drinks and muttered among themselves. She glanced at the Liberty Bond poster on the wall and an idea hit her.

  “Here this soldier came down from Camp Lewis, where he’s been training to go off to Europe to fight for America, and now that he needs you you’re turning your backs?” She knew it was hypocritical, given her opinion of the war, but she also knew how these men’s minds worked. And it wasn’t Eddie’s fault that he’d been drafted. They muttered some more and wouldn’t meet her eyes, but still no one offered to help. “What shall I tell him when I go back to my office? That his friends and neighbors wave flags for him but leave him to fend for himself? I’m only asking you to give him a ride home. I’d do it myself if I had the means.”

  No one spoke, and the silence fired her temper. “Will no one help this boy?”

  “I will.”

  Jess whirled and saw Cole standing on the other side of the screen door behind her. He pulled it open and stepped into the saloon. The whole place seemed to sizzle with his presence, and she caught a brief whiff of leather and hay that overrode the typical saloon smells.

  “I came to get the old man,” he said, nodding at his father. “But I imagine he’ll keep until we get Cookson taken care of. I’ve got the truck outside. I just have to take Amy home first.”

  Glancing beyond his shoulder, she saw her sister sitting in the front seat of the Ford parked next to the sidewalk. As much as sh
e wished to avoid him, Jess couldn’t refuse his help. He was the only one who had offered. “Thank you, Cole.”

  But he wasn’t looking at her. His hard gaze was fixed on the group in Tilly’s. “I’ll meet you back at the office,” he said at last, then turned and walked outside.

  Before she left she frowned at them, too.

  “I’m ashamed of all of you.”

  Cole jammed the truck into first gear and made a wide U-turn to take Amy to Mrs. Donaldson’s.

  “Was that Jessica I saw storming out of Tilly’s?” Amy asked, aghast. “What on earth was she doing in the saloon?”

  His chuckle was on the grim side. “Making those guys look like jackasses. She walked down here to ask someone to help Eddie Cookson. He’s sick and needs a ride home. No one would do it.”

  Amy gripped the edge of the seat as they bumped over a wheel rut and clutched her hat with her free hand. “Sick—with what?”

  “Jess says it’s influenza, and none of those men would help.”

  “Good heavens, why not?”

  Cole had stood on Tilly’s porch long enough to witness the main part of the confrontation. “They don’t want to catch it.”

  “That’s—it’s unpatriotic.”

  He told her what he’d overheard.

  “The plague! That’s not possible, is it?”

  “I don’t know—your sister said no. Of course, now that story will probably be all over town by morning. You know how those guys spread gossip. They’re worse than a bunch of old women.”

  “But—but how could they refuse to help? Eddie is a U.S. Army infantryman, a soldier.” He caught her outraged expression from the corner of his eye. “We gave him a parade,” she added, as if that said everything.

  “That’s basically what Jess told them, only she was more direct. That’s her—high-minded, outraged, plainspoken.” Yeah, that was his Jess. Then he reined in the thought. She wasn’t his anymore. She had seen to that.