Streams of Mercy (32 page)

“Then let me shovel for a while.”

“Here!” Gilbert handed his brother the shovel handle and wiped his forehead with the back of his arm. He glanced at his mother and shrugged.

Anji shook her head. She looked around. They had dug three rows, she had hoed three, and Lissa’s basket was full again. What were they doing out here at the hottest part of the day? “We’ll come back to this after supper, when it is cooler. I think we need some of that lemonade from the icebox and cookies.”

“And play dominoes?”

“Lissa, you help me in the kitchen, and boys, you set up the game.”

“Ma?” Annika stood on the porch, rubbing her eyes.

“Coming.” They stopped at the pan of sun-warmed water on the bench by the house. “Wash first.”

They were well into their domino game and had refills on the lemonade, the cookie plate with not even a crumb when the telephone rang. She counted the rings and got to her feet. “I’ll be back, but just skip my plays.”

“I heard you all outside,” Rebecca said after their greetings. “Benny wanted to come over so bad.”

“He could have joined in the argument between the boys. I decided to work it out of them, but we didn’t last long. Too hot out there.”

“I know. I might close the soda shop since hardly anyone comes to buy sodas. If you want some ice cream, it is in the freezer.”

“Business will pick up as soon as the quarantine is lifted.”

“I know, and I am so grateful no one else has come down with it, but it seems like forever.”

“I know.” Anji wiped her neck and face again. The house was only a bit cooler than outside. Since there was no breeze inside, the back porch was the best place to be.

“Have you heard from Mr. Devlin?”

“No.”

“He’s in quarantine, you know.”

Anji dropped her voice. “But what if he has it?”

“Oh, my right foot. Surely Astrid would tell you if he was in the hospital.”

“I don’t think Astrid has much time to make phone calls, not after the news this morning.”

“I can’t believe Elizabeth is really gone. And poor Thorliff. He lost his wife and now he has it too.” She stared up at the wall to keep from crying. And here she’d been fretting about Thomas acting so strange. Such a petty thing when friends were
suffering and dying. Just four blocks away. How could she be so shallow? She, who knew what the grief of losing a mate felt like? “Have you heard how Ingeborg is doing?”

“No, not many phone calls going through either. Gerald says maybe people are afraid they’ll get it through the phone lines.”

Anji glanced down to see Gilbert waiting to talk with her. “Hold on a minute. What, son?”

“Can we have more cookies? Er, may we?”

“Of course. I need to go, Becca. If you hear anything, please let me know.” She hung up and returned to the kitchen. How could she help Thorliff? Of course she was praying. Everyone was. But there must be something more.
Please don’t let him die too.
Just the thought twisted and squeezed her heart.

C
HAPTER 25

E
h, Devlin, a sorry mess ye’ve made of yer life.
Thomas Devlin stared at the gaudy ceiling of his little cabin aboard the train. He was going to have to get up now. And then he would wander the aisles of this accursed train, carrying out the dead, cajoling the living, changing bedding, managing bedpans, and doing all the other tasks more fitting for devotees of Florence Nightingale than a humble priest.

Priest? A priest without a parish, a cleric without a church. If he were any sort of priest at all, he would be serving a flock somewhere, not wandering about in this alien land. He should give up the silly notion of being a priest, throw away his clerical collar, and find good work as a carpenter or craftsman. Or even a teacher. ’Twas not so hard. You had only to know more about a subject than your pupils did, and you could pass something on to them.

This headache had persisted for several days, and still it raged, worse than ever. He’d never had a headache this persistent or this fierce. Surely any hour now the sore throat would begin, and he would fall to diphtheria, giving lie to the notion that surviving
the disease conferred immunity. He completed the necessaries and walked next door to the kitchen car for breakfast.

The cook grinned as he entered. “Dobry den, Mizzer Devlin!”

“And the top of the morning to yerself.” Devlin settled on a stool at the long table.

The cook plopped a plate of eggs and sausages in front of him. The fellow did not know English, but he did indeed know good food well seasoned. Devlin paused to thank God, crossed himself, and dug in.

Far from making the priesthood his life’s work, he had failed. True, it was not his fault exactly, but that unfortunate tangle with the Archbishop of Canterbury had left him little choice save to emigrate. He should not have insisted so strongly upon his position when the bishop said otherwise. But he had, and he was banished. Well, not officially, but
de facto.
And he was still convinced he had been right and the archbishop wrong. Sadly, no one on this side of the water seemed to want a priest such as himself.

Carpentry? He had been paid very little for his work as a carpenter and woodcarver in Blessing, but then no one else was paid much either. And some of the supervisors even worked without pay. Still, that could hardly be called success. Master woodcarver Grinling Gibbons had earned fat pay and worldwide renown; Thomas Devlin got a free meal at Ingeborg Bjorklund’s occasionally.

He had quite enjoyed teaching, but school was out, the children sequestered until this hideous plague abated. It was, in a sense, seasonal work. However, if he managed to find a position as a schoolmaster, he could work as a harvester during summer.

But what truly plunged his sorry heart into the depths was Anji. One way or another he could support himself in this town,
but there was Anji. The look on her face when last he saw her said it all. She was not about to have anything to do with a worthless slug such as himself.

And he didn’t blame her.

He finished breakfast, thanked the cook profusely, and started in on his rounds. For the first time since he’d come to the train, he had not found one person dead by the time he reached the far end of the train. He went outside to the tent. Glorious day today, shimmering opaline sky, the slightest whiff of a breeze. And it was quite warm already.

No other medical people were in the tent. As Devlin moved from cot to cot, speaking with this patient and that, his spirits lifted. No overnight deaths here either. He would check with Dr. Elizabeth or Dr. Astrid, of course, but it appeared to him that four or five of those in the tent could go back to their quarters. And the ill who were still on the train would be up and about soon. Perhaps the worst was over for the train’s denizens. Now if the populace of Blessing all escaped, the crisis would be done. What a wonderful thing that would be.

He left the tent, staying in the shadow of the mill as much as possible to avoid the heat, and entered the back door of the hospital.

There was coughing, of course, much coughing. And yet, he immediately felt a heavy stillness. Unnatural quiet. Something was massively, hideously wrong here. One of the things that had swayed him toward the priesthood was his ability to sense the spirit of a place. The spirit of this place was the most oppressive he’d ever known. He rapped quietly on Dr. Astrid’s office door and pushed it open. Her chair sat vacant. The heavy silence in this room was so palpable it whispered in his ear.

He stepped back into the hall and closed the door. The student nurse who wore her hair in a bun was approaching. He asked her, “Who died?”

She looked at him for a moment as if to say,
Don’t you know?
“Dr. Elizabeth.” She continued on.

He stood stunned. Just stood there. The pillars of the hospital could not fall ill. They could not! They got pregnant, perhaps, but not sick. Surely the young lady was wrong. She had just arrived, she did not know all the people here yet. She must have . . . Dr. Elizabeth.
Dear God in heaven . . .
Slowly, painfully he crossed himself. Dr. Elizabeth.

Where . . . ?

He entered room one. Not Thorliff also! The man was sleeping fitfully on the side bed. He coughed in his sleep. Yes, Thorliff. The other bed, where patients lie, was empty, stripped of its bedding. The children leapt to mind. What about the children?

Devlin hastened to the kitchen. There was Dr. Astrid seated at the table. Nurse Deborah sat across from her, clasping Astrid’s hands in hers. Should he intervene? Yes.

He flopped into a chair beside Dr. Astrid and covered the women’s hands with his. “Words and platitudes will not serve here. Has she received the appropriate rites?”

“Yes.” Astrid’s voice was stricken.

“Has she a proper coffin?”

“John was going to make one.”

“I shall go assist him.” He squeezed their hands in his. “Me very deepest condolences, lady.”

He left the hospital, the scene of death and misery, for the first time since he’d destroyed his relationship with Anji. That headache was pounding his skull with rubber mallets.

Where would John build a coffin? The outbuilding behind the Jeffers’ home? He ran to that shed, trying to escape the enormity of this nightmare. No one there.

More to the point,
how
would John build a coffin? The man knew a little something about woodcraft, but not enough to
make a solid coffin in a day, and with this heat they would have to bury her soon.

Trygve had built himself quite a nice shop behind his new house. Devlin jogged to that building, sweating profusely. He heard the clatter of falling lumber even before he got there.

The door stood open. Inside, John Solberg, in shirtsleeves, had just dropped a pile of boards. Devlin stepped in beside him and knelt to scoop up the boards.

Tears were running down John’s face.

They said nothing. Devlin helped him put the boards on a side bench. He snatched up a couple of sawhorses stacked in the corner and set them out. John chose one of the boards and laid it on the sawhorses as Devlin picked out another. Devlin paused long enough to strip off his shirt. It was soaked now. John did as well. Did Trygve have a carpenter’s rule? He did, right there on the shelf. Devlin unfolded it open and measured. Devlin measured to his chin, about the height Dr. Elizabeth had stood. He measured and marked a board with a pencil stub. Solberg nodded.

There were no boards broad enough to build a bottom of one piece, and there was no time to glue up an appropriate bottom board. So Devlin cut three one-by-two cross pieces. Solberg drilled holes and set the screws as Devlin held it all in place. They flipped it over so that the cross braces were on the bottom.

Devlin calculated briefly—this particular job was not new for him—and drew two angled lines. They measured, truing them up. Solberg began sawing as Devlin began to shape the sides. An hour later they had a box, more specifically an anthropoid irregular hexagon. He had learned that as he was finding information for the geometry class he had taught. Quite highbrow, knowing what an anthropoid irregular hexagon was, and completely useless.

Solberg started measuring for the lid, but Devlin was not interested in building lids. He had set himself to a different task. He spent some minutes digging through the odd lumber to choose exactly the right piece of wood. He sawed the right length, braced it into clamps, and rapidly sketched guidelines on its face.

What kind of wood chisels did Trygve own? And adzes? A hand adze would make it go faster. In a drawer he found good chisels, even a veiner. He chose what he needed, honed them on the whetstone and strop in the corner, and set to work.

Almost two hours later when Solberg finished the lid and hinged it into place, Devlin had his own masterpiece close to completion. Solberg watched in silence as Devlin put the finishing touches on the feathered wings at the top of a pole, the two snakes intertwined around it. Devlin laid the bas relief caduceus on the coffin lid. Perfect.

They paused briefly to admire it. Solberg whispered, “Thank you.”

Devlin held the carving in place on the lid as Solberg drilled and screwed it down tight from the back.

The reverend walked over to the side and shook out his shirt. “I’ll go tell Astrid this is ready.”

Devlin nodded and tugged into his own shirt. He was still wet with sweat. He stepped outside into exquisite heat. In the depths of winter, when your spit freezes before it reaches the ground, you forget about the heat of summer. He walked to the hospital and continued on beyond it. He walked past the mill, past the tent, past the train. Past responsibilities that he was supposed to be shouldering right now. He continued down to the river shore.

Peace.

Manny was not there with his elephants just now, but their
tracks and droppings were everywhere. The streamside willows all looked mangled and shaved. The cattails were growing nicely, with fresh green spears—the ones on the far shore, that is. On this shore they had become elephant fodder.

He heard a rustle off to the side. And another. The dogs! He knew a little something about dog packs. These mangy curs were stalking him! He opened his pocket knife and cut himself a stout willow withe from the mangled grove. He slapped it a couple times into the open palm of his left hand. Good. Good! Let the straggly beasts try something now!

He turned quickly and started walking firmly toward the nearest dog, the alpha bitch. She snarled and wheeled away. He turned immediately toward another mutt. The dog disappeared beyond the mangled remains of the willow thicket. Devlin walked back to the train without being challenged or stalked.

But what if he had been a defenseless child?

His weapon was still in his hand when he was passing the train and Stetler was stepping down out of his personal car. The man stopped and froze, wide-eyed, staring at the branch in Devlin’s hand.

A thousand thoughts raced about in Devlin’s mind, chasing each other through his brain. How imbued with the spirit of Jesus Christ was he, really? His seminary training never mentioned situations like this.