Isaac's Storm (19 page)

Louisa
sewed
to
raise
extra
cash,
and
took
in
more
and
more
work.
Was
it
too
much
work,
she
wondered
forever
after
—
too
much
for
a
woman
pregnant
with
her
first
child?

Peter
August
was
born
April
8,1888,
months
too
soon.
"He
was
just
like
a
little
doll
and
his
little
hand
would
lay
in
my
hand."
Her
doctor
told
her
to
nurse
the
baby
every
two
hours,
but
she
could
not.
She
was
sick
and
weak
and
Peter
August
refused
to
nurse.
"I
did
not
have
any
experience,
maybe
he
could
have
been
saved
if
I
had
Mother
near
me."

Her
son
lived
seventeen
days.

For
the
funeral,
Mrs.
Voelker
placed
tiny
white
rosebuds
over
Peter's
body
and
one
rose
in
his
hand.
Louisa
was
too
sick
to
accompany
her
baby
to
the
cemetery.
She
watched
as
August
placed
the
boy
in
a
tiny
white
coffin
and
carried
him
to
a
carriage
parked
out
front.
It
was
days
before
Louisa
could
go
to
the
cemetery.
"When
I
came
the
first
time
they
had
his
full
name
laid
out
with
little
white
shells,
and
planted
violets,
and
they
were
growing,
for
they
came
every
day
and
watered
them."
August
ordered
the
construction
of
a
small
wooden
cross,
then
painted
it
himself.
With
ever
so
much
care
he
painted
his
son's
name
and
the
dates
of
his
life
on
the
cross-spar,
in
gold
letters.

"Now
we
had
a
place
to
go,"
Louisa
remembered,
many
many
years
later.
"It
was
our
first
sorrow."

She
could
not
imagine
loving
her
husband
more.

Another
child
followed,
"our
little
Helen,"
born
fifteen
months
later.
Louisa
was
fiercely
proud
and
thought
the
child
the
most
beautiful
creature
on
earth,
although
in
fact
the
baby
was
quite
plump.
"I
can't
see
any
nose,''''
August
teased.
Louisa
was
furious.
At
night
she
placed
Helen
in
a
baby
buggy
under
a
big,
loosely
draped
mosquito
net.
"She
looked
like
a
little
fat
angel."

Two
years
later,
another
baby
arrived,
this
one
August
Otto.
The
couple's
landlady,
a
Mrs.
Carville,
came
to
visit
the
new
baby,
and
saw
for
the
first
time
all
that
Louisa
and
August
had
done
with
the
house.
She
promptly
raised
the
rent.
August
was
irate.

They
moved.
Then
moved
again,
had
another
baby
—
Adanta
Anna,
or
simply
"Lanta"
—
and
moved
again.
One
thing
after
another
forced
them
to
leave
houses
into
which
Louisa
had
poured
her
soul.
But
the
sixth
house
made
it
all
seem
worth
it.
"We
found
a
very
nice
small
two-story
at
such
a
reasonable
price,
that
I
could
hardly
believe
it."
Again
she
fixed
it
up,
to
the
point
where
one
Sunday
afternoon
an
elderly
couple,
guests
for
dinner,
arrived
and
wound
up
hopelessly
confused,
thinking
they
had
come
to
the
home
of
rich
people,
until
Louisa,
who
had
watched
from
the
parlor
window,
gaily
opened
the
front
door
and
announced,
"It
is
the
right
place!"

But
it
was
not.
Something
was
wrong.
Someone
else
apparently
had
poured
a
soul
into
this
house,
but
this
soul
had
not
yet
departed.
Evenings,
after
Louisa
had
put
the
children
to
bed,
she
sat
alone
until
about
ten
o'clock,
the
time
when
August
usually
returned
from
rehearsing
the
amateur
musicals
in
which
he
sang
(sang,
perhaps,
alongside
Isaac
Cline,
another
tenor).
She
would
setde
in
the
living
room
to
sew
or
read,
but
always
she
was
seized
by
the
same
strange
feeling.
"It
always
felt
as
if
something
was
looking
over
my
shoulder;
when
I
looked
around
there
wasn't
anything."

One
night
August
felt
it
too.
"I
was
alone,"
he
said,
"and
still
wasn't
alone;
there
was
something
creepy
around
me."

They
resolved
to
move
yet
again.
"I
was
awfully
disappointed,"
Louisa
said.
"Everything
was
so
pretty
and
I
was
tired
of
cleaning
and
fixing."

They
found
another
little
two-story
house,
at
18th
and
O1/2,
about
ten
blocks
from
Isaac's
house
and
only
two
and
a
half
blocks
from
the
beach.

That
summer
—
the
summer
of
1900
—
little
August
disappeared.
It
was
a
Sunday
afternoon.
The
children
were
out
playing.
Louisa
called
them
in
for
dinner.
Helen
and
Lanta
came,
but
not
August.
They
had
dinner,
and
still
August
did
not
come,
and
Louisa
and
her
husband
began
to
worry.
The
beach
had
always
been
an
anxiety
for
Louisa,
as
it
was
for
most
parents
in
Galveston's
beach
neighorhoods.
"I
went
east
and
August
went
west,"
she
wrote.
She
walked
the
sand
until
exhausted,
but
did
not
find
the
boy.
When
she
turned
the
corner
onto
her
street,
she
saw
that
a
crowd
of
children
had
gathered
on
the
sidewalk
in
front
of
her
house.
She
knew
the
worst
had
happened.
She
wanted
to
run
to
die
house,
but
could
not.
Her
limbs
felt
so
heavy.
She
could
hardly
move.

She
saw
no
one
on
the
first
floor.
She
climbed
to
the
second
and
there
found
her
husband.
She
said
nothing,
asked
nothing.
Soon
her
husband
told
the
story
—
how
little
August
and
a
friend
had
wandered
to
the
beach,
and
walked
and
walked
without
realizing
the
distance.
The
walk
back
had
taken
forever.

Louisa
served
her
son
his
dinner.
Then
the
rest
of
the
family,
including
young
August,
set
out
for
an
evening
stroll.
Louisa
stayed
back
for
a
little
while,
in
the
warm
light
of
dusk.
She
cried.
And
when
she
was
done,
she
too
walked
to
the
beach
and
caught
up
with
her
family.
It
was
a
lovely
evening,
the
sea
so
peaceful
and
edged
in
the
gold
of
the
setting
sun,
the
mist
blending
all
the
blues
and
golds
and
the
black
and
white
of
the
hundreds
of
people
who
strolled
also
along
the
beach,
none
aware
that
for
a
few
moments
that
afternoon
she
believed
her
heart
broken
for
all
time.

On
Saturday,
September
1,
August
made
that
last
payment
on
the
piano.
Next,
he
resolved,
he
would
find
a
piano
teacher
for
Helen.

"If
we
had
known
what
the
future
had
in
store,"
Louisa
wrote,
"we
would
not
have
had
any
pleasure
in
anything
we
did
enjoy
so."

AT
THREE
O'CLOCK
in
the
morning,
Tuesday,
September
4,
a
lightning
strike
knocked
out
the
incandescent-lamp
dynamo
at
the
Brush
Electric
Power
plant
in
Galveston
and
cast
the
city's
public
buildings
into
darkness.
The
blackout
showed
how
quickly
people
had
grown
dependent
on
electric
lights,
how
willingly
they
abandoned
the
bad
old
days
of
gas
jets,
lamp
oil,
and
kerosene.

At
the
police
station,
officers
scrambled
to
find
some
means
of
lighting
the
station
and
its
jail
cells.
A
witness
found
an
eerie
scene:
"A
large
assortment
of
miscellaneous
lamps
and
lanterns
shed
faint
gleams
of
light
that
were
distressing
to
behold."
The
police
had
scavenged
two
calcium-carbide
bicycle
lights
from
the
department's
two
patrol
bicycles.
Two
old
"bull's-eye"
lamps
dating
to
the
1870s
"cast
a
flickering
yellow
ray
of
light
within
a
radius
of
about
eight
inches."
The
police
found
and
deployed
three
old
railroad
lanterns,
which
burned
bright
for
ten
minutes,
then
began
to
waver.
The
art
of
trimming
and
coaxing
such
lamps
had
been
lost.
The
officers
located
the
station's
old
gas
jets,
but
these
were
in
such
poor
shape
they
dared
not
light
them.
They
did
not
possess
any
candles.

Isaac
heard
the
first
clap
of
thunder
at
3:48
A.M.,
and
later
noted
the
time
in
the
station's
daily
journal.
He
stayed
up
to
listen,
partly
out
of
professional
responsibility,
partly
because,
like
all
meteorologists
ever
born,
he
loved
thunderstorms.
He
walked
onto
his
second-floor
porch
and
there
noted
the
occurrence
of
each
electric
burst,
and
how
different
the
lightning
was
from
that
in
Tennessee.
In
the
knob
country
of
his
childhood
it
writhed
across
the
sky
in
ruptured
webs.
Here
it
came
in
blue-white
shafts,
each
spasm
like
the
flare
of
flash
powder
from
a
photographer's
trowel.
In
that
instant,
Galveston
became
an
Arctic
city
of
silver
and
black,
a
dying
mariner's
dream.

The
loudest
thunder
occurred
at
4:57
A.M.,
Isaac
noted,
the
last
at
5:20.
The
storm
had
come
from
the
southeast,
the
direction
of
Cuba.

After
breakfast,
Isaac
walked
to
the
office.
High
above
the
warehouses
along
the
wharf
he
saw
thickets
of
masts
and
spars
and
the
tall
funnels
of
steamships.
Some
mornings,
the
varnish
and
brass
caught
the
sun
and
made
this
tangle
of
line
and
wood
gleam
as
if
glazed
by
an
ice
storm.
When
the
breezes
were
sluggish,
smoke
from
coal-fueled
steamships
drifted
over
the
streets
in
fat
indigo
plumes
until
the
entire
wharf
seemed
to
smolder.
One
of
the
newest
arrivals
was
the
big
British
Roma,
which
had
docked
Sunday
after
a
passage
from
New
York.
Its
captain
had
the
improbable
name
Storms.

Isaac's
walk
on
Tuesday
morning
was
especially
pleasant,
because
the
thunderstorm
had
dropped
the
temperature
by
a
full
seven
degrees.

AT
THE
OFFICE,
Isaac
examined
the
8:00
A.M.
Washington
weather
map
composed
that
morning
by
Theodore
C.
Bornkessell,
the
station's
printer,
using
details
telegraphed
from
headquarters.
Bornkessell's
graphic
version
included
loopy
isobars
that
linked
areas
of
equal
atmospheric
pressure
and
dotted
isotherms
that
did
the
same
for
temperature.
Isaac
sent
a
man
to
the
Cotton
Exchange
to
compose
its
large-scale
version
of
the
map.
He
might
have
sent
his
brother,
Joseph,
or
Bornkessell,
or
a
new
man
named
John
D.
Blagden,
on
loan
to
ease
the
station's
workload
since
the
recent
departure,
in
disgrace,
of
an
assistant
observer
named
Harrison
McP.
Baldwin.
Baldwin,
the
Fort
Myer
clown,
had
come
to
work
for
Isaac
a
year
earlier
and
quickly
tarnished
the
station's
reputation
for
accuracy.
Throughout
July
and
the
first
weeks
of
August
1900,
error
messages
flowed
from
Washington
to
Galveston
citing
mistakes
that
Baldwin
had
made,
and
that
Isaac
was
obligated
to
acknowledge
and
correct.
The
errors
pained
Isaac
deeply.
Chief
Moore
suspected
Baldwin
of
far
greater
sins.
He
told
Secretary
of
Agriculture
Wilson
he
believed
Baldwin
had
"fabricated"
barometric
readings
—
the
highest
of
crimes.
In
mid-August,
Moore
put
Baldwin
on
mandatory
furlough,
without
pay.
Baldwin
left
Galveston
at
5:30
P.M.,
Monday,
August
27.