White Wind Blew (19 page)

He saw a look in Big Fifteen’s eyes that he’d never seen before. Was it fear? Big Fifteen helped Wolfgang to his feet. “There’s a burnin’ cross down by the colored hospital.”

By the time they navigated the downhill to the colored hospital, the flames had been doused with water. A black, charred cross, built crudely with two planks of splintered wood, stood on the grassy rise before the hill plummeted down to the hospital. Wolfgang stopped about twenty yards away, clutching his stomach. Acrid black smoke spiraled from the burnt cross. The boards used for the cross looked like those Wolfgang had seen on the woodpile next to the maintenance shed, which supported his theory that the culprits could have been two of the Waverly patients. Or possibly employees?

Big Fifteen kicked the makeshift cross. It held together stubbornly with a few bent nails. He kicked it again and the planks dropped to the wet grass. Dozens of patients stood outside the entrance to the hospital, staring at the broken cross. Smokey leaned on his bat, his smile nonexistent.

Wolfgang attempted to straighten. “We’ll find who’s responsible.” Wind shifted the smoke away from the hospital and toward Wolfgang. He choked and slumped over in the grass. He waited there with Big Fifteen’s hand on his shoulder, fought back the dry heaves, and wiped his mouth. Only then did he realize how cold he was in his pajamas.

“Why they afta’ you?” Big Fifteen helped Wolfgang back to the footpath, gripping his elbow the entire way.

“The new Klan is radically anti-Catholic,” he said. “They’re also Prohibitionists.”

“Then why ain’t they after Lincoln?”

“Lincoln’s too clever,” said Wolfgang. “And I have the feeling he’s got pull on the outside. His family. He’s got family with muscle.”

“But so are you, Boss. Clever like Lincoln.”

“Hardly, but thank you.” Wolfgang watched for movement between the trees, but all he could see was darkness. “My attackers. I think they’re patients here.”

Big Fifteen chuckled. “Then maybe they gonna die soon.”

***

The pig’s head was still on the porch when Wolfgang returned. The wide yellowed eyes watched him go up the steps. Removing the knife lodged in its skull proved to be more difficult than he’d expected.

He yanked the note from the knife, nearly ripping it in half:

ONLY WARNING, FATHER.

NO MORE NIGGERS IN THE HOSPITAL.

“Cowards.” Wolfgang crumpled the paper and stuffed it into his pocket.

He thought of McVain. No, it wasn’t possible.

Neither attacker had been McVain’s size. But McVain did have a lot of influence in the sanatorium. They considered him a war hero. Wolfgang squatted down over the pig’s head and pondered the task before him. After a few seconds of twisting, he pried the knife free and set it aside next to the cottage wall. He lifted the head in both hands, heaved it into the brush, and watched it roll down the hill for about ten yards until it stopped against the trunk of a tree.

Then he limped inside, where he sat by the fire until his hands and feet thawed. He just needed to close his eyes and rest.

Someone knocked on the door.

His eyes shot open. His mouth felt more swollen than it had before he’d closed his eyes.

“Who is it?”

The door creaked open and Susannah’s head popped in. She stepped quickly inside and closed the door behind her. “Oh, Wolf, look at you.” She knelt beside him. “I came over as soon as I heard.” She sniffled as if she’d been crying.

“I’ll be fine.” He attempted to get up, but her hands pressed firmly against his chest and forced him back down to the cushions.

“Rest.” She raked her fingers through his hair and down the side of his beard. She leaned down and kissed his forehead. He was reminded of his mother’s kisses and he blinked, swallowing a mixture of saliva and blood. He coughed heavily. Susannah was up in a flash, her navy blue skirt swirling behind her as she turned for the kitchen. She brought a glass of water and stuffed a pillow from the bed behind his neck. The water was cold but felt good. He was sure he could have managed to hold the glass himself, but he didn’t stop her as she helped him. He swallowed two large gulps, wincing.

“Enough?”

“Yes, thank you.”

Susannah reentered the kitchen. Cabinets opened. Dishes and utensils clanked. The faucet turned on. She returned with a bowl of water and a washrag. His throat felt raw, the taste in his mouth was rancid, yet…

Susannah was taking care of him.

She dabbed the wet cloth to his chin, leaning close enough for him to see the slight imperfections in her skin—a few freckles, a tiny white scar about a half inch long above her arched left eyebrow, a couple tiny pockmarks on her right jawline. Her eyelashes were longer than he’d thought.

“Open your mouth,” she said. “Oh my, your lip is swollen.” She leaned closer to examine. He gazed into her eyes, noticing for the first time the tiny flecks of blue around her pupils. He felt the gentle pushes of breath coming from her nose, and he truly believed, despite his pain, that he could have stayed in his current position for days. “One of your teeth is missing.” She handed him the glass of water. “Wash your mouth out with this.”

Wolfgang took a mouthful and spat into the bowl. She dried his neck and then combed his hair with her fingers again. She caught him staring and looked away. Wolfgang found the spot against the wall where his piano had been. Rose’s vase rested on the floor next to a lit candle. “Thank you.”

Susannah scooted down the couch toward his feet and removed his left shoe and sock. He flinched when she began to remove his right shoe. “Please,” he said. “Leave it on.” At first she appeared hurt by his insecurity, but she gave him a quick smile and lowered his foot back down to the cushion. Rose was the only woman other than his mother who had seen his withered right foot.

He reached down and tugged the note free from the pocket of his pajamas. “They left this note.”

Susannah read it and immediately crumpled it again. She dropped it to the floor. “I assume they mean Rufus? It’s harmless, isn’t it, his playing for a few hours a night?”

Wolfgang shrugged. Susannah carefully lifted his legs, sat on the couch, and then dropped the weight of his feet on her lap. She massaged his bare left foot. “You’ll warn Rufus?”

“Of course.”

“And Barker?”

“I don’t know.”

“He’s sure to know what happened.”

Wolfgang lifted his head. “But he doesn’t have to know about that note.” He watched Susannah’s hands and slender fingers rub the top of his foot. “Perfect excuse to shut us down for sure.”

“You’ll be taking a chance, Wolf. It worries me.” She stopped rubbing.

“I’ll live.” He rested his head back on the pillow and peered down the length of the couch, where his left heel sunk slightly into the meat of her skirt-covered thigh. “I’ll leave it up to Rufus if he plays or not. He’ll be my only concern.”

“And you?”

“I’ll take my chances.” He couldn’t say this aloud yet, but in the many years of service for his faith, this new trio of musicians was the closest thing he’d ever seen to God’s intervention. Wolfgang felt as if He’d placed them all here for a purpose. “I won’t allow the threats of the weak to interfere with my plans. Perhaps it is selfish, but I want it for the three other men as much for myself. They need it.”

Susannah started to argue but stopped. Her grip on his foot became stronger. He turned on his right side to hide his arousal.

“What is it?”

“Nothing.” He hoped she would continue to touch him. She did. The rosary beads he’d tossed on the bed earlier caught his attention. Was God watching? Was this worse than wearing a white hood and beating a man? Or burning a cross? He wondered if Rose could see him. Could she hear his impure thoughts? Susannah closed her eyes and eventually fell asleep with her hands on his legs. He watched her until his eyes grew heavy, and he too succumbed to slumber.

At some point before sunrise he felt Susannah’s lips on his left cheek. “I’ll be back in a few hours,” she whispered. And then she was gone.

Wolfgang searched for footprints the next morning, but the night’s dusting of snow had already melted and the wind had scattered the leaves. In the middle of his rounds, and a third of the way through his growing request list, he took a pause on the first-floor solarium to survey the woods. His face stung from last night’s attack. With his swollen tongue, he felt the hole in his gums where his tooth should have been.

Down the hillside, next to the barn, the cows were especially agitated, mooing, some in unison.

“They actually sound quite good,” Susannah said, coming up behind him.

Wolfgang looked over his shoulder. “Who?”

“The cows.”

Wolfgang laughed. Susannah moved on.

In the chapel just before Mass, Jesse approached Wolfgang, gripped his arm, and pulled him aside. “If you want me to, I can stand outside your place at night. Like a bodyguard. I know where it is and all. Wouldn’t be no trouble.”

“Thank you, Jesse,” Wolfgang said, “but it won’t be necessary. A few prayers would suffice.”

Jesse nodded and then ushered an elderly woman to the front row near the altar.

Wolfgang waited until after Mass to see Dr. Barker, and when he did, he heard Susannah’s voice inside his office. He’d evidently called her in as well, because he doubted she would have ever gone there voluntarily. Wolfgang waited just outside the door and listened.

“I saw you last night,” Dr. Barker said to Susannah. “Entering Dr. Pike’s cottage.”

“He was assaulted,” said Susannah. “I went to check on him.”

“People will talk, Susannah.”

“Let them.”

“Wait.” He paused. His tone softened. “Wait. Perhaps when you’re finished with your book, I can be of some help in getting it published. Maybe a medical journal.”

“You would do that?”

“If the work merits it,” he said. “We can both work on it. I’m going out of town for a week, but when I get back, I’d like to see it.”

“Oh, okay. Really?”

Wolfgang stepped closer to the open doorway.

Dr. Barker sighed heavily. “What should I do with Wolfgang? He continues to defy me. Just the other night we had patients from other floors up there listening to McVain play the piano.”

“I’m not sure I’m the one you should be asking,” said Susannah. “I’m in favor of what—”

“He thinks he’s giving them hope, but it’s a mirage, Susannah. Music can’t cure disease.”

“He’s lifting their spirits. And it’s taking Wolfgang’s mind off Rose.”

“And you think that’s important?”

She paused. “I think he truly believes God has sent him those musicians. It can’t stop now, sir.”

“But this isn’t about him. It’s about the patients.”

“Exactly, Dr. Barker. The patients.” Susannah paused. “I was with Frederick this morning on the fourth floor. He’s gotten stronger. He actually opened his mouth to swallow chicken broth this morning. I think he’ll live to hold his baby soon.”

“We can only pray that he does, Susannah,” said Dr. Barker. “It’s a miracle he has not gone down that chute. I thought we’d lost him.”

“Dr. Pike plays for him every night. You know that, don’t you?”

Wolfgang waited out in the hallway through a lull in their conversation. It seemed as if Susannah had struck a chord with their boss. And then Dr. Barker said, “I’ll look forward to reading your work, Susannah, after my return.”

“Thank you.” She gave Wolfgang no time to backtrack down the hallway, leaving as abruptly as she did. So instead of pretending he hadn’t heard their conversation, he gave her a smile on her way out and then knocked on the doorframe.

Dr. Barker looked up from his desk and waved him in. He carefully placed a stack of files inside a briefcase as he eyed Wolfgang. “I’m sorry this happened. How’s your face?”

Wolfgang touched his lip and chin. “Sore.”

Dr. Barker snapped his briefcase closed. “We’d hoped the brick would be an isolated incident. I’ve contacted the police.”

“I believe the two attackers are patients here.”

“What makes you think that?”

“One of them has a TB cough.” By the light of day, Wolfgang’s decision not to risk the music by telling him about the note seemed irresponsible but irrefutable. “I’ve heard it on both occasions.”

Dr. Barker grabbed his briefcase from the desk and held it with military-type stiffness by his left side. “I doubt anyone at Waverly Hills is affiliated with the KKK.”

“We’d be naïve to think that everyone here is a saint…sir.”

“I guess McVain is a perfect example of that.” Barker walked past Wolfgang to the door. “I have to go out of town for a week. My mother is sick.”

“I’m sorry.”

“I think she’ll be okay, but she says my presence comforts her.”

“Is Anne going with you?”

“Anne? No,” he said softly. “Dr. Pike, see to it that there are no problems while I’m gone.”

***

As the day drew on, Wolfgang tended to the patients, listened to confessions, and played bedside music for those who requested it. Mary Sue was regaining her energy since the delivery, and the baby was doing very well, sleeping almost four hours at a time before needing to be fed. Wolfgang promised he would take her to see Frederick soon. She glowed when he told her of Frederick’s slight improvement.

It was a gray, freezing day, typical of late January in the valley, the type of day when all the plants, shrubbery, and grass seemed to shrink as if curling up to preserve heat. More snow flurries fell—the clouds full of uncertainty. Sometime after lunch Wolfgang got word from Lincoln that Big Fifteen had found the rest of the pig’s body in the woods, not far from where the cows were kept. The cows had evidently spotted the carcass, and they’d mooed until someone came to find out what the commotion was about.

Jesse, in Wolfgang’s medical opinion, was a month away from Making the Walk. So when he volunteered to help Susannah and Wolfgang question the rest of the patients about the attack on the hillside, Wolfgang agreed to let him roam the floors with them, especially since Dr. Barker was not around to reprimand. Wolfgang was convinced the attackers were from Waverly, but after analyzing everyone, he began to have doubts.

Except for a bearded brute on the second floor named Edward Bryne—whom everyone called “Teapot,” because his persistent cowlick on the top of his head resembled a handle—they all seemed so innocent, and sick, and he felt guilty for suspecting them in the first place. Edward Bryne wasn’t shy about his opinion of blacks; he referred to them as spearchuckers, but when Wolfgang questioned him further about his whereabouts during the attack, Bryne pulled the bed sheet away from his lower half to reveal that his right leg was missing from the knee down. He’d lost it in the war. “Unless the Klan man you saw was a cripple,” said Bryne, “it wasn’t me.” By sundown they still had no answers, so Wolfgang told Jesse to return to his room and rest.

It was time to play some music.

As Wolfgang expected, Rufus refused to let the threatening note scare him from entering the sanatorium. “I been given a dose of medicine,” he told Wolfgang, “and I need more.” Wolfgang retrieved Rufus shortly after sundown, and when they arrived McVain and Josef were already playing, McVain apparently warming up to his German chalkboard-writing enemy. Susannah listened under the warmth of a wool quilt while Wolfgang conducted at his new podium, an apparent gift from Lincoln’s uncle.

Maverly’s cries carried from her room on the rooftop, but she was mostly ignored, her voice drowned out by the music. The ensemble played for two hours—portions of Wolfgang’s evolving requiem, along with pieces from Handel and Mendelssohn—and stopped only because they were exhausted.

McVain blew into his cupped hands. “Can’t feel my damn fingers.”

Rufus lowered his flute. “And you ain’t got that many to feel.”

Wolfgang nearly gasped, staring at Rufus. McVain looked shocked. But he merely grumbled, “Well, it’s fucking cold, I know that much.”

They called it a night, and after Wolfgang escorted Rufus down the hill, he returned to the fourth floor to work on his requiem. The cold helped to numb his busted lip. He found McVain still sitting at the piano with a blanket draped over his shoulders. At first he appeared asleep, but as Wolfgang approached, McVain looked up from the keys, his eyes red. He shivered in bursts. His red hair squirmed in the breeze, and he wiped his nose on the blanket. The skin above his upper lip was red and chapped.

“It wasn’t me,” McVain said.

“What do you mean?”

“The burning cross.” McVain faced the piano again and ran his left pinkie across one of the black keys. “It wasn’t me.”

Wolfgang sat on the edge of McVain’s bed. “I never said it was.”

McVain turned to face him. “You wear your emotions on your sleeve, Wolfgang.”

It was the first time McVain had called him by name. He noticed that beneath the blanket McVain had changed into pants, a nice white shirt, and a pair of Buster Browns. “Going somewhere?”

“Take me to the colored hospital.”

“Why?”

“Because I don’t know how to get there, that’s why.” McVain stood from the piano bench and lifted a brown sack from the floor.

McVain snuck out of the sanatorium this time on his own free will, accompanied by Wolfgang instead of kidnapped, and Dr. Barker would know nothing about it. Wolfgang decided not to risk spoiling the mood by asking what McVain was carrying in the sack. McVain’s eagerness to reach the colored hospital was a pleasant shock, and he didn’t hesitate to stand beneath the lit porch and wake up whoever was sleeping above.

“Hey, Rufus!”

Wolfgang stood in the shadows and leaned against a tree. It was McVain’s business. He would give them privacy to talk unless invited.

A portly lady with caramel-colored skin pressed her face against the screen and called downward. “My lands, man, what could you possibly want this time of night?” She glanced over her shoulder and spoke to someone. “It’s a white man.”

“I’m looking for Rufus,” called McVain. “Is he there?”

“What’s in the bag there, mister?” the lady asked.

He raised the brown bag. “Beer.”

“Got one for me?”

“No.”

Crickets chirped. One minute passed, then two. McVain appeared ready to give up and return up the hill, so Wolfgang delayed him: “How’d you get the beer?”

“Lincoln.” McVain glanced over his shoulder. “Said he can get anything up the tunnel.”

“Lincoln looks up to you,” said Wolfgang.

McVain shrugged.

“Lincoln seems to have a limitless supply of giggle water.”

McVain grunted. “He’s infatuated with Al Capone. Told me Capone hangs around the Seelbach Hotel. I told him I know; I’ve played cards with him before.”

They shared a laugh, and then Wolfgang watched McVain’s face harden again. “You were serious just then? About knowing Al Capone?”

“Yeah. Is that a problem?”

Just then, Rufus stepped out in his pajamas, slippers, and a dark coat. “What do you want?”

McVain held up the brown bag and removed the two beer bottles. “Could only manage two.”

Rufus watched him for a few seconds. McVain stood only a few paces from where the cross had burned. As if he’d read his mind, McVain looked down, spotted the charred grass, and respectfully stepped farther away. Rufus took a few cautious steps forward.

McVain handed Rufus a bottle that had already been opened. “No problem keeping it cold.”

Rufus grinned, barely, and took a swig. He wiped his mouth with the sleeve of his coat. McVain walked down the slope and sat on a concrete bench next to the brick building. Rufus found room beside him. Wolfgang sat down in the grass about twenty feet away. Their voices carried.

McVain took a swig of beer. “My father hated Negroes.”

Rufus looked at McVain’s hand. “My father hated cripples.”

McVain smirked. He took a swig and coughed into his left hand, which did little to stop the mist that flew from his mouth.

Rufus lifted his pajama shirt and showed McVain a circular wound on the left side of his stomach. “I was shot at Saint Mihiel.”

Wolfgang knew that McVain had been in the war and that he’d probably lost his fingers there. It was the perfect opportunity to offer how he’d lost them, or where, but McVain said nothing. Their conversation just rolled on, and they soon invited Wolfgang over, making room for him on the bench.

Rufus was one of nearly two hundred black soldiers to receive the French Medal of Honor. He was in the 93rd Division of the United States Army, an all-black division that was kept apart from the white soldiers. They were sent to France, wearing U.S. uniforms, to fight side by side with the French troops. They’d volunteered by the thousands, their opportunity to express patriotism and bravery, Rufus said. They fought at Argonne, Chateau-Thierry, Saint Mihiel, Champagne, Vosges, and Metz.

McVain and Rufus talked about music, about the war, about buddies killed in action, and about war stories thought long buried. But every time the conversation began to approach the end of McVain’s service in Chateau-Thierry or its aftermath, he quickly changed the subject. Wolfgang was surprised McVain had opened up as much as he had, but now the bottle had been opened and he wanted to learn more.

Long after the beer was finished, Rufus wished them a good night and returned to bed. There were no handshakes involved in the departure.

Wolfgang helped McVain back uphill, and into bed. In the silence, Wolfgang said, “My foot kept me out of the draft.”

“That doesn’t surprise me,” McVain said. He mimed Uncle Sam’s stern poster expression and pointed at Wolfgang with his mangled hand. “I want
you
.” He lowered his hand. “Son of a bitch.”

Wolfgang listened to McVain’s labored breathing for a moment. “What was your wife’s name?”

“Who told you I had a wife?”

“Lincoln.”

McVain sighed. “Jane.”

“Where is she now?”

“We divorced years ago. She moved to Virginia. Remarried.” He stared down at his fingers. “I would have given both of my legs to keep my fingers.”

Wolfgang patted his shoulder. “Your playing is getting better.”

McVain said nothing.