The Quilter's Legacy (30 page)

T
he following morning, more than thirty people reported to Dr. Cullen's clinic fearing they might have contracted the Spanish flu before the quarantine was enacted, but after examining them, the doctor declared that not one suffered from anything worse than a bad case of nerves and a head cold. The next day, half their number appeared and were sent home with the same diagnosis. On the third day, only a handful came, and on the fourth, none. Two mask slackers were fined fifty dollars apiece. The newsstand parted with its last out-of-town newspaper. A week passed, and it seemed that thanks to the foresight of the Health Committee, Waterford might be spared.

The next time Eleanor went into town, the streets seemed unusually quiet, the shops nearly empty, filling her with a sense of unease that the beautifully mild October day could not dispel. She completed her errands and, ignoring the inner voice that urged her to hurry home to baby Claudia, she found herself wandering through town. Before long she realized she had been searching for news, only there were few passersby and little conversation to overhear, and that much muffled by masks. Some people wore gauze masks like her own, given to her by Dr. Granger, others wore bright scarves or fine white handkerchiefs. Eleanor's mask moved as she breathed and made her feel as if she could not fill her lungs completely.

She wandered down by the riverfront. The wharf was almost deserted, and the few boats tied up at the docks looked as if they had been there a while. She walked to the end of the nearest dock and read the sign nailed to a piling:
WARNING! THE TOWN OF WATER FORD IS QUARANTINED. ENTRY FORBIDDEN BY ORDER OF THE MAYOR
.

She walked on, leaving the riverfront and the downtown behind until she had reached the only road bearing east out of Waterford. The heaviness in her breasts warned her she had been gone too long; Claudia needed her. Yet she continued until she found the sign posted by the road, identical to the one on the dock but for the additional line printed in smaller letters:
FOR PITTSBURGH AND PARTS WEST, TAKE DETOUR FROM GRANGERVILLE 5 MILES BACK
.

A westbound automobile or carriage would have little choice but to turn around and take the detour, for two overturned wagons blocked the road in a spot bordered by deep ditches. A traveler on horseback could circumvent the barrier if he were a skilled rider, and a man on foot would encounter no difficulty at all. The people of Waterford would have to pray that the word quarantine would be interpreted to their advantage, and that all who read the sign would assume that the sickness was worse within the town than without.

Eleanor stared at the sign, catching her breath, her hand on her heart. On other days she could have hoped for a ride back into town, but no one passed now.

The signs were working.

B
y mid-October, churches resumed Sunday services in defiance of the law. Masks disappeared. Merchants and their customers wondered when the quarantine would be lifted; how would they know when the danger had passed if they did not? Someone should venture out to Grangerville and investigate. Everyone thought so, but no one wanted to be the envoy in case he would not be allowed to return home.

Eleanor hungered for news, news of the sickness, of the war, of Fred. The Bergstroms resumed their normal activities out of necessity, but they rarely left the farm and had few callers. Sometimes their nearest neighbors would come to see if the Bergstroms had any news, bringing little of their own to report, and twice Gloria Schaeffer had shown up in tears to beg Elizabeth to allow the quilting guild to meet at Elm Creek Manor. The Health Committee had banned gathering in public places, not private homes; the Bergstroms had room enough to comfortably accommodate the whole guild and they were unlikely to attract attention here on the outskirts of town. Gloria argued that they needed to work on the charity quilt, but Eleanor suspected Gloria was simply desperate for something to distract her thoughts. She was frantic with worry for her husband, who had been delivering the town's mail to Grangerville when the quarantine signs went up.

The Bergstroms needed no such distractions, for the farm and Bergstrom Thoroughbreds kept them so busy they rarely had time to think of anything but the tasks before them. Sales had dropped off with the start of the war, but with his oldest sons gone, David needed the help of everyone else in the family just to take care of the horses. Eleanor spent most of her days rushing from the nursery to the stable and back, so that at night when she finally crawled into bed, she was too exhausted to lie awake worrying. She ached for Fred every moment she was awake, so sleep was a blessing.

She and Clara were weeding the garden while Elizabeth played with Claudia on a blanket nearby when she heard a horse coming up the road. She sat back on her heels and shaded her eyes with her hand.

“Who is it?” asked Elizabeth.

“I don't know,” said Eleanor, and then suddenly she recognized him. “It's Frank. Merciful God, it's Frank! It's over!”

She scrambled to her feet and ran toward him, laughing and shouting his name. He pulled up and grinned down at her. “I knew I'd get a warm welcome here, but I didn't think it would be this warm.”

“I can't tell you how good it is to see you,” she gasped, trying to catch her breath. “When did you return?”

“Just this morning.” He reached into his bag and pulled out a letter. “This is my first stop. I haven't even been to the post office yet.”

“Thank you, Frank. God bless you for this.” She took it from his hand with a laugh, her joy dimming only slightly when she read the New York postmark. Now that mail had resumed, she would surely hear from Freddy soon. “When did they lift the quarantine?”

“You mean those signs? They're still up. I guess we won't be seeing any strangers in town any time soon.”

Eleanor went cold. “The quarantine is still in force?”

“Well, sure, as far as Gloria knows, anyhow. She hasn't left the farm much. Says there hasn't been any reason.” He studied her, puzzled. “Those signs aren't for me, Eleanor. They're for strangers.”

“They're for anyone who wasn't in Waterford at the time.”

“But I live here,” he protested. “And I was in Grangerville all that time and didn't have so much as a sniffle.”

“Frank, please don't go into town.”

He laughed as if she had told a joke, but when he realized she was in earnest, he spoke to her as if she were a child awakened by nightmares. They were safe in Waterford, he assured her, as safe as any place on earth.

F
rank Schaeffer was the first to fall ill. Gloria was the next, and then the other postal clerks, and then, it seemed, nearly everyone.

Soon every bed in Dr. Cullen's clinic was occupied by a feverish, coughing man or woman who only hours before had seemed whole and strong. Dr. Granger raced from house to house, caring for those too sick to come to the clinic. His father came out of retirement at eighty-five to assist him on his rounds, though neither man had any remedy to offer their patients. There was no cure for influenza.

Rumors spread, ignited by fear. A father of six had ridden for help when his oldest child could not be roused from unconsciousness; he returned home with a nurse to find all six children and his wife dead. An ailing husband and wife had tried to drive into town to the clinic; their horse arrived pulling the wagon bearing their corpses. Everywhere Professor Johnson went, the people of Waterford begged him to lift the quarantine so that doctors from the cities might aid them, bring them medicine. “Every doctor who can hold a thermometer is already in service to the sick elsewhere,” he told them. “And there are no medicines for anyone to bring.”

But there had to be something; the alternative was unthinkable. In the absence of medicine from the doctors, the people of Waterford developed their own: plasters made of mustard and turpentine. Quinine and aspirin. Vinegar scrubs. Tobacco smoke. Poultices of every description. None worked. Nothing prevented Spanish influenza from sweeping through Waterford like fire through straw.

When every chair and even the hallway floors of Dr. Cullen's clinic overflowed with the sick and the dying, Professor Johnson turned the primary school into a makeshift hospital. Lucinda and Eleanor were among the volunteers who set up cots and sewed muslin partitions from old sheets. Then, at Dr. Cullen's request, they joined the teachers working in the kitchen preparing meals to be delivered to the bedridden. They worked late into the night before returning home to Elm Creek Manor, almost too exhausted to eat the meal Maude had kept warm for them, and too drained to describe the horrors they had witnessed passing by the sickrooms throughout the day.

The following morning, Eleanor could hardly bear to leave Claudia in the care of Elizabeth and Maude as she and Lucinda returned to the school. They took the wagon, leaving the strongest horses for David and William, who at Elizabeth's urging spent the days helping their stricken neighbors. They rode from one farmhouse to the next, calling out from a safe distance to ask whether the people inside needed anything. Sometimes their neighbors needed food; often David and William heard a weak voice call out that the cows needed to be milked and the livestock fed. They returned home after dark as exhausted as Lucinda and Eleanor, reluctant to report which of their neighbors had died overnight.

On their fourth day in the kitchens, Dr. Granger strode in; later Eleanor learned that he had just returned from the Waterford College infirmary where he had found more than fifty students, the doctor, and the two nurses all dead from influenza.

His mouth set in a grim line, his eyes shadowed and glittering, he tore into the cupboards and pulled out a large stockpot. “Mrs. Bergstrom,” he called, without looking in her direction. “To me, please.”

Eleanor quickly washed her hands and dried them on her apron as she joined him. “How can I help?”

“Find me herbs that will smell and taste like medicine when mixed with this.” His voice was low as he withdrew four tall bottles of liquor from his overcoat. He set the bottles on the counter and filled the pot with water. “I have some bottles in the clinic. They will need to be brought here and boiled.”

Eleanor nodded and sent Lucinda for them. By the time Lucinda returned, Eleanor and Dr. Granger had cooked up a dark, vile-smelling brew that resembled the worst medicine Eleanor had ever seen. “But it is not medicine,” she said as they poured the mixture into bottles. The other women were studiously ignoring them, but she kept her voice to a murmur nonetheless.

“If they believe it is medicine, it may help them.” He raked his hair out of his face, and only then did she see that his eyes were feverish, his face flushed. “You are wasted in the kitchen, Eleanor. You and Lucinda will be more useful tending to the sick.”

“But we are not nurses,” said Eleanor faintly.

“You are the closest thing we have to them.” He corked the last of the bottles and carefully filled his pockets with them. The rest he placed in the cupboard. “Ask for Dolores Tibbs in the clinic. She is in charge of the nurses now.”

Eleanor nodded. She knew Dolores well; the librarian was the fourth founding member of the Waterford Quilting Guild. Dr. Granger rushed off without another word, and Eleanor watched him go, her hand on her heart.