American Anthem

by BJ Hoff

  The girl’s condition concerned him, however, for she was a slight little thing and clearly exhausted. When he listened to her heart, he knew at once the coughing was overtaxing it. He needed to get that cough under control, and at once.

  Without turning, he asked Susanna Fallon to bring him a bowl of boiling water and a funnel. While she was gone, he gave the child a dose of quinine mixed with a little sugar. The quinine would do nothing for the cough, of course, but it would help to support her strength.

  The girl’s father stood beside the bed in silence, his hands knotted in fists at his sides. Reminding himself of the man’s blindness, Andrew commenced to explain what he was doing. Emmanuel seemed eager to understand.

  As soon as Susanna Fallon returned with the boiling water, Andrew mixed a tincture of benzoin in it and helped the child inhale it through the tin funnel. “We’re going to repeat this in a few minutes,” he told them. “I should caution you that she might throw up at any time, but it’s just as well if she does, so don’t be alarmed.”

  Over the next hour, Andrew applied the benzoin treatment twice more, but saw scarce evidence of relief. Since Miss Fallon had already administered a steam tent, there was little else to try. The child was already much too weak; he wished he could have treated her sooner. He knew that to let this go on much longer would involve real risk to her heart and lungs.

  There was only one other remedy left to him. In itself it contained an element of risk, but at this point he had no choice but to try.

  He waited a few more minutes after the last inhalation of benzoin. Finally, when no relief seemed imminent, he stood. “All right, then,” he said. “Let’s wrap her in blankets. I’m going to take her outside.”

  The girl’s father took on a look of horror, as if Andrew had threatened to drive a stake through his daughter’s heart. “Outside?” he repeated, his voice strangled.

  Susanna Fallon also went pale and opened her mouth as if to object.

  Andrew understood their inevitable protests but tried to ignore their shock. There was really nothing else to do.

  “It’s a perfect night,” he said by way of explanation. “The rain has stopped, but the air will still be moist. And this close to the river, we’ll have fog. Those are excellent conditions. Just what we need right now.”

  He took in their faces, still frozen in doubt. “In extreme cases, such as Caterina’s,” he said carefully, “when nothing else works, quite often the night air will help. Now, there’s no sign as yet of bronchitis or pneumonia, you see, so I think the risk is minimal. I strongly suggest we give this a go, Mr. Emmanuel. Quite frankly, there’s little else left to do.”

  The girl’s father seemed to be waiting for something more, while Susanna Fallon was studying Andrew closely. He met her gaze straight on, but gave a lift of his hands to show that he could not promise anything.

  Meanwhile, the child took up another seizure of coughing.

  Miss Fallon finally broke the silence. “Michael, we should at least try, don’t you think? We can trust Dr. Carmichael.”

  At last the man nodded. But Andrew had the distinct feeling that if this didn’t work, Michael Emmanuel—in spite of his blindness—would somehow make him pay. And it would not be a pleasant experience.

  Outside, the night had grown calm. The rain seemed to be over, at least for the moment, and, just as Dr. Carmichael had predicted, a heavy fog was moving in.

  The physician carried Caterina, bundled securely in blankets, onto the front lawn, where he stood, holding her and speaking softly of the beauty of her home and the night around them.

  “I hope this is not a madman you have brought to our house,” Michael said under his breath.

  Susanna looked at him, but he didn’t appear angry, merely skeptical.

  “If you think about it,” she said, “it makes perfect sense. The moist air, the fog—”

  “Please, God, it will work,” he said quietly.

  Susanna heard the tremor in his voice and knew that he was trying his best to conceal his fear.

  They stood that way, in silence, for what seemed a very long time, engulfed by the cool damp air. They could smell the river. The fog, acrid to the throat but somehow calming, drifted in and out among them and the trees. There was no sound except the faint rustle of leaves and the steady panting of the wolfhound, who stood at Michael’s side, alert and seemingly poised for action.

  It was a lonely, forsaken kind of silence, and Susanna shivered a little, not from the night air, but more from the sense of isolation that sometimes seemed to hang over Bantry Hill and this entire Hudson River Valley.

  Andrew Carmichael had grown quiet now, too. Watching him as he stood with Caterina bundled securely against him, Susanna could see his lips moving only slightly.

  She couldn’t be sure, but she thought he was praying.

  She had seen enough of the Scottish physician’s interaction with the Moodys and the Sankeys to know that he was a deeply devout man. Still, it both surprised and comforted her to realize that a man of science and medicine looked to a higher power for the ultimate healing.

  She seemed to lose all track of time. They might have been standing there for minutes or hours when she realized that Caterina had finally stopped coughing. Indeed, the child had grown completely silent.

  Panic overtook Susanna. She heard Michael’s sharp intake of breath and took his arm, as much to steady herself as him. But then she saw Andrew Carmichael’s face in the flickering glow from the lantern, the slow smile breaking over his features as he studied Caterina.

  After a moment, he lifted his face to the night sky and whispered something Susanna couldn’t quite make out.

  Suddenly the night no longer seemed lonely or forsaken. “She’s all right, Michael,” Susanna said, hurrying to reassure him. “Caterina is going to be all right.”

  He was trembling, and for a moment Susanna feared that he, too, had taken ill. But then she saw the dampness on his cheeks.

  Moved, she reached for his hand, and when she did, he wrapped it securely between both his own, bringing it to his lips just for an instant. Taken completely off guard, Susanna would have yanked her hand away, but he restrained her with a gentle, firm clasp as he murmured something in Italian, then in English.

  “You are a gift to us, Susanna. A gift of God. And I could not be more thankful for your presence in our lives.”

  Susanna swallowed hard. Her resolve to dislike—and distrust—this man began to bend like a slender reed in a windstorm. Even as her old emotions rose up in protest, she felt an unaccountable desire stir within her, a longing for things to be different between them.

  For one yearning moment, she found herself wishing she could simply give up her suspicion, surrender her doubts, and put all the old questions to rest for once and for all.

  Carefully then, he lowered her hand, loosening his grasp so that Susanna could move away if she chose. Instead, she lightly pressed his fingers with her own, took a deep breath, and led him across the grass to Dr. Carmichael and Caterina.

  22

  FAITH IN THE FACE OF FEAR

  Our feet on the torrent’s brink,

  Our eyes on the cloud afar,

  We fear the things we think,

  Instead of the things that are.

  JOHN BOYLE O’REILLY

  Aboard the Jonathan Nye on the way to America

  Am I going to die, Mum?”

  Vangie MacGovern dabbed the forehead of her fevered son with a damp cloth, forcing a smile for his benefit. “Ah, James, and what kind of talk is that, now? Of course you’re not going to die! You’ve a cold in your chest, is all. Why, no doubt you’ll be the first among us to see the shores of America. Here, now,” she said, laying the cloth aside, “take a bit more of this broth.”

  She put the cup of barley water to his lips, but the boy turned his head away. “I don’t like it, Mum. It smells.”

  Tears stung Vangie’s eyes. “Please, James. You must take it. I know you don’t
like the taste, but just take a bit for Mother, won’t you?”

  He made no response to Vangie’s coaxing, but simply closed his eyes. The boy had taken nothing since yesterday morning except a few sips of broth, and Vangie was at her wit’s end. She had no enticements to offer him, no choice victuals that might tempt him. What with the dampness and lack of ventilation, even their basic provisions had spoiled long before they should have.

  Grieved by her own helplessness, she turned to Nell Grace, who sat holding the sleeping Baby Emma in her arms. “Put the baby in her cradle and go and find your da,” she told her daughter. “I can’t think where he’s wandered off to this time, but I’ll wager if you follow the music, you’ll find him.”

  The strains of a fiddle and a squeezebox could be heard coming from the dank compartment some called the galley. This was where many of their foodstuffs were stored, and where the women, disgusted with the foul fare served by the ship’s cook, occasionally cooked their own meals over the fireplace. It was also where some of the steerage passengers had taken to gathering during the long days of the voyage to make their music and tell their tales in an attempt to ease the monotony of the journey and the growing despair that hung over them like a fetid cloud.

  Some felt the merrymaking out of place, woefully inappropriate among the dark shadows and putrid stench of the ship’s bowels. Conn, however, contended that the people must find their own escape from the relentless distress of the crossing, or else many would go mad.

  Vangie agreed with him, but at the moment she felt as if she might be going mad herself.

  She watched Nell Grace wind her way through the crowded passages between the bunks. A body could hardly navigate from one berth to the other without either bumping into a stranger or tripping over a protruding foot on the way.

  It occurred to her that she had lost track of time. Their quarters were always dark, with nothing but a few flickering lanterns to scatter the shadows. Without a change in light to mark the hours, it was easy to become disoriented.

  Here, too, Conn took the brighter side. They were fortunate, he said, to be among those sailing on an American ship rather than aboard one of the disgraceful British vessels. “At least our bunks won’t be falling off the wall, and the water closets won’t collapse with the first high wind.”

  He often compared their lot to that of the poor souls who made the crossing during the Great Hunger in the forties. “They were half-dead already when they boarded, but even if they hadn’t been, the infernal British coffin ships would have finished them off. It is our good fortune, don’t you see, to be making the journey in our full strength.”

  No doubt he knew whereof he spoke—and of course he meant well, trying to keep their spirits up. But at the moment, Vangie was feeling anything but fortunate. During the first week aboard ship, both she and Nell Grace had suffered fiercely with the seasickness; even Baby Emma had not been able to keep much in her stomach. Not long after, Conn and the twins had come down with colds and dysentery, along with half of the other steerage passengers. Now James had been taken with a fever.

  It seemed as if the busker girl, Renny Magee, was the only one of them to escape the ravages of sea travel. Conn claimed the girl’s devilry kept sickness at bay.

  Lately, Vangie paid little heed to her husband’s crankiness when it came to Renny Magee. Hadn’t she seen the way his mouth twitched when the girl went barreling across the hold to retrieve the baby’s rattle, or the faint creasing about his eyes when he came upon the lass entertaining the twins with one of the old tales about magic pigs or the great hound of Cuchullin?

  The girl amused him, Vangie could tell. For her own part, she had to say that she was growing fond of Renny Magee. The busker girl had been as good as her word, not causing a bit of trouble, in fact bringing more help than harm to this odious voyage. She was especially good with the twins and Baby Emma.

  Of course, Conn never much cared for admitting he was wrong, so it wasn’t likely he would willingly concede any real virtue to the girl, certainly not until more time had passed. Even Vangie couldn’t help but wonder what Renny might do once they left the ship. Would she keep her pledge to stay and work for them as they’d agreed, or would she simply disappear into the city, having accomplished the adventure she’d contrived for herself?

  Vangie sighed and wrung the cloth in the basin. Only time would reveal the girl’s true mettle. They wouldn’t know what to expect from her until they arrived in America—which, according to some of the crew members, ought to be soon now. Within days.

  There were things she ought to be doing in preparation, but she couldn’t bring herself to leave James’s side, sick as he was. She looked at her ailing boy, his face so thin and pale that even the band of freckles across his nose appeared to have faded. Drenched in perspiration, he jerked once, then again, in his troubled sleep.

  Vangie shook her head as if to free herself of the panic clawing at her and began to sponge the boy’s brow with renewed determination. “You must be getting well now, son,” she murmured, speaking for her own benefit as much as for her son.

  “You must be strong and fit for your first sight of America. Soon we will be leaving this terrible ship for our new life, and you’d not want to be missing a minute of that, would you? You must be brave and not give in to the fever, love. Our Lord will be taking the sickness away from you; I’m sure of it. God’s healing hands are upon you at this very minute. You will be well, James. You will…”

  Merciful Savior…I’ve already lost my firstborn son. Not another of my boys, please… not another…

  Vangie knew she dared not give in to the ever-present fear that nagged her day and night. From the time she was a child, fear and its ugly accomplice, worry, had circled over her like buzzards waiting for their prey to drop. Only her faith had kept her a step beyond this plague of the spirit.

  Even now, and her a woman with children grown, she could still fall victim to an entire host of fears that, unchecked, would all too easily freeze her spirit and paralyze her soul. Her husband credited her with far more grit than she actually possessed. Not for the world and everything in it would she have Conn or the children know that she was less than they thought her. In their eyes, her faith was unshakable, her strength inexhaustible.

  And that’s what she wanted them to believe, what she needed them to believe. Her only defense against this hidden weakness was her faith in the Almighty and the strength her family thought her to possess. As long as she could cling to God, and as long as her loved ones continued to confer on her the qualities she only wished she possessed, then Vangie could go on being everything they believed her to be, everything they needed her to be.

  But God help her—and perhaps her family as well—if they should ever discover how slender was the thread that held her strength and faith intact.

  Earlier, Conn had wandered across to the small galley next to steerage, where a few of the more able-bodied men had taken to making their music at night.

  He was not a musician himself, but he could never resist the sound of a happy fiddle or a good Irish song. There had been a time when he and Vangie had danced with the other young people at the crossroads, and he had no doubt at all but what his wife could still outstep the best of them.

  Shea Sullivan was fiddling a set of jigs when Conn ducked his head to pass through the doorway. One of the young McCormick lads was doing his best to keep up on the squeezebox, and in spite of the heaviness in Conn’s chest, he couldn’t stop his foot from taking up a tapping to the lively rhythm.

  Except for two or three of the children, no one was dancing tonight. No surprise, that. Conn figured few had the energy or the heart left in them to dance.

  His gaze traveled to the far end of the room, where Renny Magee sat, amusing a circle of youngsters. With her worn old cap crushed atop her head and a bit of flour dusting her features, the busker girl was giving forth the nonsensical lyrics and motions to a song about a constable and a goat that was smarter than th
e law.

  More truth than lie in that particular song, Conn thought with a wry grin.

  The lass was a natural mime. Indeed, Conn would concede that Renny Magee was likely adept at most any amusement, be it rendering a song or dancing a jig or playing a ditty on the tarnished tin whistle she carried around in her pocket. The girl was as cunning as a gombeen man and had as many tricks as a cart of monkeys, and that was the truth.

  He knew the children—his own and the others aboard as well—did fancy the girl. And nothing would do Vangie but to defend the young hoyden. So, in order to avoid his wife’s barbed remarks about his being such a hardhead, Conn had learned to restrain his sharp tongue about the little busker. Most of the time.

  Besides, despite his misgivings about bringing her along, Renny Magee had proven to be quite a lot of help, not only to Vangie and their own brood, but to the other children in steerage as well. The girl was a constant source of entertainment. Her mercurial mind seemed to hold a limitless supply of diversions, and her energy was as boundless as her imagination.

  Too bad, Conn told himself with grim amusement as he watched her, that the young scamp’s code of honor was not honed nearly so fine as her inclination toward mischief.

  He turned just then, catching sight of Nell Grace as she appeared in the doorway. In that moment, Conn was seized by an unexpected thought of Vangie at the same age. His daughter’s hair was the same dark red, though easier tamed, and she had the same finely molded, sharply chiseled features as her mother. Though her loveliness was quieter, more subdued, than Vangie’s fiery good looks, at seventeen the lass already carried herself with the same grace and lissome movements. As she stood there, her hand lifted to beckon him, she might have been Vangie herself, twenty years past.

  Of all his children, this sweet daughter evoked in Conn a tenderness, a fierce protectiveness that almost bordered on the obsessive. He loved them all, but he feared most for Nell Grace. Her delicate beauty, her gentle nature, the innate goodness and innocence he had seen in her since childhood would make her easy prey for the vultures and despoilers of the world. Sometimes he wished he could shut her inside the fortress of her family’s love and keep her there forever.