Widow's Tears Page 6

  Chapter Three

  Galveston

  Midday, September 8, 1900

  Many persons now took receivers off the hooks of the wall telephones, rang the operator, and asked for 214—the number of the Weather Bureau office. The weatherman had only a word of advice for those in the low areas: get to higher ground.

  A Weekend in September

  John Edward Weems

  As far as the Blackwood children were concerned, it was the most wonderful of mornings. After breakfast, the three boys and even Ida, who was usually a perfect little lady, had begged to put on their oldest clothes and go out and play in the warm rain. They were so excited that their mother felt she had to let them go, even though she was increasingly uneasy about the threatening weather.

  Rachel had lived in Galveston only since her marriage to Mr. Blackwood some nine years before. She had little experience of tropical storms. But her cook-housekeeper, Mrs. Colleen O’Reilly, was one of the survivors of the hurricane of 1886, which had roared ashore a hundred miles to the south, turning the thriving port of Indianola—a rival of Galveston—into a ghost town. This morning, she was visibly apprehensive, which gave Rachel another reason for concern. Mrs. O’Reilly, who was not yet thirty, red-haired and with a generous sprinkling of freckles across her cheeks, had a touch of the second sight.

  Rachel might not have believed this if she hadn’t witnessed it for herself. One bright summer afternoon, the two of them had been in the drawing room, laying out tea for the Ladies’ Guild. Mrs. O’Reilly had glanced out the drawing room window and seen Mrs. Neville, the Blackwoods’ next-door neighbor, crossing Q Avenue in front of the house. And then Mrs. Neville suddenly vanished from view—simply vanished, as if she had never been.

  Mrs. O’Reilly had burst into tears and turned to tell this to Rachel, crying out in her rich Irish brogue that she feared for Mrs. Neville’s life. Scoffing to herself (she wasn’t in the least superstitious), Rachel had soothed her and sent her back to the kitchen. But two days later, Mrs. Neville was struck down in the street by a runaway horse. She died on the very spot where Mrs. O’Reilly had seen her vanish.

  When Rachel told Augustus what had happened, he had shrugged, then smiled indulgently. “Another reason to canonize our Colleen,” he’d replied mildly. Like Rachel, he had a special fondness for Mrs. O’Reilly, who had become a mainstay in their home. Not only was she an extraordinarily competent cook-housekeeper who could (as Augustus said) work miracles with the loaves and fishes, but she loved the children in the same warmly protective way that she loved her own young daughter, Annie, whom she often brought to play with the Blackwood children.

  This morning, visibly anxious, Mrs. O’Reilly had hurried through the preparations for the noon meal: meatloaf and mashed potatoes with green beans and cabbage and carrot slaw. That done, she hurriedly frosted Matthew’s birthday cake, added ten candles, and made sandwiches for the afternoon birthday party.

  Then—even though it was not yet eleven, with the rest of the day’s work yet to be done—she took off her apron and announced that she was going home.

  “Sure ’n this storm is goin’ to be a bad ’un,” she said. “I will be takin’ me mother an’ Annie to the Ursulines.” The convent was a strong building just a few blocks from the small frame house where Mrs. O’Reilly lived with her mother and three-year-old daughter. She tilted her head with an oddly intent and listening look. After a moment, she added urgently, “Ye must come, too, an’ the children, Mrs. Blackwood. We’ll be safe with the sisters.” She paused, fixed her gray-green eyes on Rachel’s face, and repeated: “Truly, ye must. I know it.”

  A little frightened by the young woman’s intensity, Rachel hesitated. But the rain had stopped, and the wind—that peculiar keening wind that whistled so eerily in the eaves—had abated somewhat. She summoned her courage and smiled. “Thank you for your concern, Mrs. O’Reilly, but Mr. Blackwood will be home for lunch. I shouldn’t like him to find an empty house.”

  Pulling on her waterproof, Mrs. O’Reilly had nodded gravely. “Mayhap ye’ll change yer mind. If ye do, come. The sisters will give ye shelter.” There was something in her eyes that frightened Rachel. She added, with an emphasis she had never used, “Please come.”

  When she had gone, Rachel’s courage began to fade. Mrs. O’Reilly had known of Mrs. Neville’s accidental death, which could not have been foreseen. What if she was right about the storm, too? Rachel went to the telephone, rang the operator, and asked for 214, the number of the Weather Bureau. Mr. Cline was the bureau chief and her neighbor—he would be honest with her. There was a lengthy wait, but when at last he came on the line, he assured her that there was no need for worry.

  “Your house and mine,” he said confidently, “are built well above any possible overflow. People in low-lying areas should go to higher ground, yes. But you need not trouble yourself, Mrs. Blackwood. You’ll be fine.” She was not quite reassured, but she thanked him before she hung up.

  The other mothers in the neighborhood did not seem to share Rachel’s concern. The children were out in force, splashing joyfully through the water that was surging up from the beach. The heavy brown waves were laden with fascinating flotsam and jetsam—shells and seaweed, jagged scraps of signboards, a bundle of rags, a broken beach chair. A salvaged wooden pallet made a fine raft for Matthew with a broom handle for a mast and a handkerchief for a pennant. There was even a curiously woven basket that Ida rescued and took to her mother, to be used in the garden.

  And the toads, oh those toads! The tiny, brown freshwater creatures were everywhere by the thousands, the millions, hopping frantically for higher ground, away from the salty sea water. Ida and the twins caught a bucketful and then got bored with the effort and let them all go free, turning instead to collect the hermit crabs that were being tossed up by the waves. When the storm was over, they promised their mother, they would return the little creatures to their homes on the beach.

  For other observers, there were even more interesting sights to be seen at the Midway, a ten-block stretch of souvenir peddlers, grimy shacks, boardwalk shops, and food stands selling boiled shrimp and beer, all just a few yards from the sandy beach. A large crowd of onlookers had gathered, muttering at the sight of the giant swells as they thundered like great brown dragons, mounting higher and higher on the shore. The watchers had come mostly by the electric streetcar, although the conductor had stopped the car several blocks away. He’d had to, for the street railway trestle that ran along the beach was being battered by the waves. It might have been demolished at any moment.

  Some of the watchers had come to be amazed, for word of the mammoth waves, greater than any that had ever been seen, was spreading around the city. Others had come for fun and were dressed in bathing costumes to enjoy the surf. But no one now dared venture into the water, for the waves had become too powerful. The rain was coming harder, like shotgun pellets flung by the wind, and the dragon-breakers were beginning to swallow the Midway shops and splinter the flimsy bathhouses. As the spectators gawked, the waves destroyed even the giant Pagoda Company Bath House with its twin octagonal, pagoda-roofed pavilions, built at the end of a nearly four-hundred-foot boardwalk that rose sixteen feet above the beach. Hastily retreating to safer ground, the spectators found themselves wading through surging water up to their knees.

  On Strand Street at Ninth, in the narrow upper part of the island, stood John Sealy Hospital, an imposing stone-and-brick edifice only ten years old, studded with picturesque Victorian towers, turrets, and chimney pots exuberantly rendered in shape, color, texture, and detail. The hospital was the architectural work of Nicholas J. Clayton, who was responsible for many of the grand Victorian flights of fancy that Galvestonians loved so much—so many, in fact, and so grand (or grandiose) that the period was known as the “Clayton Era.” He was “excessively fond,” one critic later said, of decorative brick and ironwork.

  At the hospital that morning, someone—a nurse, an aide—glanced out of a w
est-facing window toward the bay, a hundred yards away. She described the scene in a letter she was writing at that moment: “It does not require a great stretch of imagination to imagine this structure a shaky old boat out at sea, the whole thing rocking,” she wrote in her spidery hand. “…Like a reef, surrounded by water…water growing closer, ever closer. Have my hands full quieting nervous, hysterical women.” An hour later, more anxious now, she added another paragraph: “The scenes about here are distressing. Everything washed away. Poor people, trying to save their bedding and clothing…It is a sight. Our beautiful bay a raging torrent.”

  Galveston Bay—the usually placid harbor where the big ships rode at anchor—was indeed a torrent. The north wind, which seemed to become more violent by the minute, pushed the bay water over the wharves and sent it, thick as molasses with bay mud and debris, sloshing across the Strand. More than a dozen large steamers lay in the harbor that weekend, including the three-year-old, 3,900-ton British vessel Kendal Castle. Almost all the ships were working their engines to ease the strain on their anchor lines, their crews tending frantically to the moorings. The tide was extremely high, and the waves lifted the ships ten, fifteen, twenty feet above the warehouses along the piers, stretching the taut hawsers and anchor chains to the breaking point. Onlookers watched from the safety of the Strand, fascinated but fearful that the waves would rip the ships loose and fling them like so many toys onto the shore.

  A few blocks away, downtown, it was a different story. Augustus Blackwood, like most of Galveston’s businessmen, had more important things to do than worry about a tropical storm. To be sure, there were reports of flooding in the lower-lying areas and some intermittent power outages and news of damage to the Midway and the beach streetcar trestle. It was even said that the streetcars had stopped running at the eastern end of Broadway, where Gulf waters had pushed inland as far as Twelfth Street. But the electricity had stayed on at the bank, there was the usual pressing business to transact, and the morning had been very much like any other stormy Saturday morning. Quite naturally, financial matters took precedence over the weather any day of the week.

  By the time Augustus Blackwood prepared to go home for his dinner, however, the rain was much heavier. He looked out of his window, debating whether to stay downtown and have lunch or endure a thorough soaking on his walk home. His mind was made up when a man with whom he had done some personal business—a man from Beaumont, Texas, from whom he had bought some land in Fayette County, as well as some highly speculative mineral rights—dropped in. Augustus suggested that the two of them take a table at Ritter’s Café and Saloon, just two blocks from the bank. He telephoned his home and spoke briefly to his wife, informing her that he would be lunching downtown. He was surprised at Rachel’s response: she begged him to come home immediately.

  “The water is in the yard, Augustus!” she cried frantically. “It’s flowing all around the house! And it’s not rainwater, either. I tasted it—it’s salt water!”

  He was surprised at this news and somewhat concerned, since he had never seen the Gulf send waves so high as their street. But his client was an important man and he had already made his plans. “Surely you’re not afraid of a little water, are you, my dear?” he teased. “I’ll tell you what. I’ll be at Ritter’s for the next hour or so. If the storm doesn’t let up by the time I’ve eaten, I’ll come straight home. The bank can manage without me for one afternoon. And tomorrow, when the storm is over, we will all go down to the beach and see what the tide has left for us. The children will enjoy that.” His voice softened. “And we’ll take a picnic, my dear. What do you say to that?”

  It was much more difficult to get to the restaurant than Augustus had thought, for the streets were running full to the gutters, the rain was coming down in sheets, and the gale-force wind turned his umbrella inside out and tore it from his hands before he was fairly out the door. By the time he and his client arrived at the restaurant, they were wet through.

  But Ritter’s was warm and bright and bustling and the two men arrived just in time to be shown to seats at a table near the front window of the large, high-ceilinged room. The restaurant, which occupied the ground floor of a brick building that housed a second-floor printing shop, was popular with the men who represented the city’s increasingly powerful financial interests. They came to discuss business over drinks and good food in congenial company. Today’s storm might have made them a little jumpy, but they enjoyed a lighthearted moment when someone pointed out that there were thirteen diners in the room and wondered if it was bad luck. Stanley Spencer, a steamship agent for the Elder-Dempster and North German Lloyd lines, replied loudly, “You can’t frighten me. I’m not superstitious.”

  Joining the general laughter, Augustus and his companion ordered cocktails from the bar, as well as a large platter of fresh oysters and fried shrimp, to be followed by the house specialty, steaks as big as a dinner plate with sides of fried onions.

  “Rare,” Augustus said in a jocular tone to the white-jacketed waiter. “I want to hear it moo.”

  But the men did not get their steaks. Before the waiter could turn in the order, the gusting wind muscled off the building’s roof. The brick walls of the second-story print shop gave way. The floor joists, fastened to headers with twenty-penny nails, snapped loose with the gun-shot sounds of cracking wood. Only a few men had time to scramble for safety under the bar before the print shop collapsed and a torrent of bricks, desks, chairs, printing equipment, and two massive printing presses cascaded into the dining room.

  Five men died, including the unsuperstitious Stanley Spencer. Five others were badly injured. The café’s owner sent one of the waiters for a doctor, whose office was located in the nearby Strand. On his way, the waiter was swept off his feet by a surging wave from the bay. He was drowned.

  Augustus Blackwood was among the dead. By the time his body was pulled from the wreckage and someone thought to call his wife with the tragic news, the telephone exchange was flooded. The telephones were no longer working anywhere in the city.

  But there was worse to come. Much worse.

  Chapter Four

  The genus name Vinca comes from the Latin vincire “to bind, fetter.” The plant is a fast-growing perennial groundcover with blue-violet flowers and evergreen or variegated foliage, native to Europe, Africa, and Asia. Interplanting with other plants is not a good idea, for this highly invasive plant produces stems that root along their length, so that the bed quickly becomes a hard-to-manage tangle of binding vines.

  In England, vinca is called periwinkle; in Italy, the Flower of Death. In the ancient world, the flowering vines were used to garland human sacrifices. The tradition persisted into the Middle Ages, when criminals were hung wearing crowns of vinca. The association with death was preserved in the tradition of weaving vinca wreaths to decorate the graves of infants. In Europe, the plant was known as the Sorcerer’s violet and was believed to have the power of exorcizing evil spirits and demons.

  In the language of flowers, vinca or periwinkle is an emblem of affection and friendship, binding even to death.

  China Bayles

  “Herbs and Flowers That Tell a Story”

  Pecan Springs Enterprise

  Ruby left her small suitcase in the car and walked up the back path, the potted mugwort in one hand, the pie box in the other, and her purse over her shoulder. The house, gaunt and misshapen, leaned toward her, watching her as if it, too, like the woman with the roses, had been waiting for her and was glad she had come at last. She ducked her head, shivering.

  And they all lived together in a little crooked house.

  “Ruby!”

  It was Claire, apparently alerted by Rawlings, waiting eagerly on the back porch, which wrapped itself like a gallery around the back of the house. “Ruby!” she cried. “Oh Ruby, I’m so glad you’ve come!” And with that, she held out her arms and burst into a storm of sobs.

  Immediately touched, Ruby pushed her apprehensions away, put e
verything down, and held her friend close. “Well, golly,” she murmured against Claire’s hair, “if you’re so glad, how come you’re crying, huh?”

  Claire stepped back and wiped the tears away with the back of her hand. She was wearing denim cutoffs, a pink boat-necked shirt with a coffee stain on the front, and sneakers. Her usually neat chestnut hair was disheveled, and the skin around her caramel-colored eyes was swollen and bruised-looking. Ruby was taken aback to see how much weight she had lost since the last time they’d been together, at Brad’s memorial service. She looked just plain awful.

  “I’m crying because…Well, damn it, Ruby, you’re one of my oldest friends and I haven’t seen you in forever. I can cry if I want to, can’t I?” Claire stage-managed a smile, but Ruby, looking closely, thought that she looked exhausted, as if she hadn’t been sleeping well.

  “Cry as much as you want to, it’s okay.” Ruby spoke in a comforting tone, although she had the uneasy feeling that it really wasn’t okay. There was something very fragile about Claire. “I’m here to rescue you. From whatever.” She hoisted the boxed pie. “See? I even brought dessert. Pie to die for, straight from Royers Cafe. Oh, and a plant from China Bayles. Mugwort. Not much to look at, but it has other good qualities.”

  That brought a real smile. “Ruby, you are a saint.” Claire led the way through the back door and into the old-fashioned kitchen.

  “What? For a little pie and some mugwort, I’ve been canonized? What would I get if I—” Ruby put her bag and the mugwort on the table and looked around in wide-eyed dismay. “Wow,” she whispered. “Like…just, wow.”

  On her first visit, Ruby had missed the kitchen. It was huge, with one long wall of ceiling-high glass-fronted cupboards filled with china and crystal. A mammoth black iron cookstove stood against one wall with a small four-burner gas stove beside it, and next to that, a pine-topped worktable and a hanging rack of pots and pans, old and well used. Beside the pot rack was a small blackboard with a piece of chalk and an eraser in the chalk tray. Menus was printed at the top in old-fashioned script. Below was what looked like Claire’s shopping list: bread, milk, yogurt, coffee.