White Wind Blew (12 page)

She took the straps of her dress and lowered them down over her shoulders. The dress gathered in a yellow puddle around her ankles. Her breasts appeared heavy behind the cups of her bra.

Wolfgang sat up in bed. “We shouldn’t be doing this.”

“Is that you or your mother speaking?”

“God will know. We aren’t married, Rose.”

Rose stepped closer, the flat of her stomach inches from Wolfgang’s face. She bent down and kissed his lips again. “Maybe we should be.” She kissed the stubble of his beard. “This isn’t a sin.”

Her newly bobbed hair shimmered in the light of a nearby lamp. She squatted down so that her face was between Wolfgang’s knees.

“Rose…”

She put a finger to her lips. “Shhhhh.”

She surprised him by rolling down his left sock and sliding it off his foot. She looked up at him, as if asking for permission to expose the deformed foot. Wolfgang nodded. She carefully began to remove the sock from his right foot. It would be the first time anyone other than his mother had seen his deformity caused by the polio—the twisted part of his lower calf, the arched thrust of his shinbone near the top of the foot, the thickness of the flesh and bone and tightened ligaments and joints that resulted in one big skeletal mess, uncorrectable with a mere splint or brace.

Rose slid the sock off and dropped it to the floor. Wolfgang forced himself to watch as her fingers ran down his shin and across his calf. She lowered her head and kissed his shin. She kissed the top of his foot, his ankle, his calf, and the part of his foot just before the toes.

Rose stood before him again. Wolfgang leaned forward and gripped the waistline of her underwear.

“Go ahead,” she said.

Wolfgang pulled them down and felt the firm roundness of her buttocks giving the slightest resistance against the waistband. He pulled them the rest of the way down and let go, allowing them to slide down into the folds of the yellow dress around her ankles. She crawled on the bed with him.

Rose. That beautiful, stylish, brash, hedonistic young woman with short skirts and bobbed hair. She loved him. She’d told him as much every day. But was she saving him from the priesthood? Or was it the devil sending him one final test?

Wolfgang couldn’t watch a silent film without thinking of Rose. They’d seen so many together, but none as controversial as D. W. Griffith’s
The
Birth
of
a
Nation
, released in 1915 and based on the novel
The
Clansman.
He and Rose watched the film in the summer of 1918 and found the racist themes appalling and untrue—portraying the Ku Klux Klan as heroic while white actors in blackface attempted to pan blacks as stupid and sexual predators of white women. Riots broke out in Boston and Philadelphia. Widespread protests led to many cities banning the film altogether.

On the hillside, the films slanted more toward humor. Charlie Chaplin’s
The
Circus
was Waverly’s movie of the week. Wolfgang stood with his arms folded in the back of the dark theater, behind dozens of patients and a handful of staff members as they sat in rows, eyes glued to the screen. Wolfgang chewed his lower lip, eyeing the clock on the wall, his mind second-guessing his decision to wheel Mary Sue up to the fourth-floor terminal rooms to see Frederick. He couldn’t undo it now. Rose would have done the same thing.

He forced himself to watch the silent movie. One center aisle split ten rows of comfortable chairs and faced a wall where the picture was shown, and except for a few coughs and bits of contained laughter, the first-floor theater was quite silent as everyone focused on the screen. The Little Tramp was being chased by a policeman at a circus, and the ringmaster thought his antics were hilarious. Mary Sue laughed from her wheelchair near the back of the room. Wolfgang had kept his promise. Hours ago, he’d given Mary Sue another short visit with Frederick, and he’d played them a few songs on his violin. Although there was no change in Frederick, Mary Sue’s spirits had been lifted by seeing him. It was good to hear her laughing at the film.

Wolfgang couldn’t muster up that same urge to laugh. He thought of the brick crashing through his window and the note left on the altar in the chapel. Both brought back memories of Rose and watching
The
Birth
of
a
Nation
with her that summer. The movie helped inspire the second era of the Ku Klux Klan, and rumor was the Klan used it as a recruiting tool. He feared that the Klan had arrived at Waverly’s doorstep and, what was worse, that he was partly responsible.

Susannah stood beside Wolfgang, stifling her laughter with a closed fist. She looked at him. “You’re not laughing. What’s wrong?”

“Nothing.” He kept his eyes on the screen. “I’ll be back.”

“Where are you going?”

“To see Big Fifteen.” Wolfgang ducked out into the bright hallway. Someone down the hillside was playing the flute again. He could hear it more clearly as he approached the exit and stepped out into the cool air, where the sun barely lingered in the west, smearing the sky in swaths of purple and gold. He inhaled the fresh air as he entered the line of trees and hurried through the woods. It was dark amid the trees, but he knew the paths like the back of his hand. He hummed along with the flute: Mozart’s
Requiem
?

About forty yards downhill and northwest of the main sanatorium, Wolfgang stopped at a two-story clapboard building where the colored workers lived. He tossed a pebble up at a closed, grimy window. It sailed several feet from its target and bounced off into the undergrowth. He found another pebble. This one hit the edge of the window. Moments later, Big Fifteen stuck his head out. “Boss, that you?”

Wolfgang stepped into a small clearing where the ground was hard and free of grass. “You hear the flute?”

“Course I do.”

“Will you take me to it?”

Big Fifteen sighed. “Be down in a minute, Boss.” The window closed with a thwack. A few minutes later Big Fifteen stepped outside, buckling a large black belt that cinched his overalls at the waist.

The colored hospital was another thirty yards down the hillside, and the flute became louder as they neared the entrance to the two-story brick building. The entrance was little more than a slanted tin roof with sagging gutters held up by four wooden posts—a glorified lean-to. Two folding chairs flanked the double glass doors. A stray cat looked up from the chair on the right and meowed as they passed. Wolfgang ruffled the fur behind the cat’s ears. Big Fifteen opened the door and ducked inside, where the air was thick with the damp vapors of mildew. The colored hospital had taken the brunt of the rainfall. Not only had it been soaked because of the holes and crevices in the weathered roof, but the basement had quickly flooded from the rain and mud streaming down the rest of the hillside. Mud, water, and remnants of backed-up sewer gunk had stood three feet high against the basement walls. Big Fifteen led a bucket-by-bucket chain gang and had the basement emptied in two days. Much of the first floor had flooded as well, and puddles of water still remained in the lobby.

Wolfgang wanted to hold his nose, but he resisted the temptation. The colored patients breathed it in, so why shouldn’t he? If he were to close his eyes, the moaning and coughing would have sounded much like up in the main sanatorium, but seeing this awfulness made it worse. Beds in the shadows. Children sleeping in dark, musty corners while long-legged bugs skittered along the walls. The modest sleeping porches were too crowded to fit everyone at the same time, so they took turns.

Big Fifteen took it in stride as he passed through the lobby. Three children jumped up from the shadows and excitedly shouted his name. Big Fifteen smiled and waved, slapping low fives like some hero. To them, Wolfgang saw, he
was
a hero: a strong, strapping TB survivor who had come back to help. “My people,” he called them. His presence alone gave them hope while the main sanatorium loomed over the trees like an unattainable beacon of light.

Wolfgang followed Big Fifteen up a narrow stairwell, where they sidestepped a skinny man blowing his nose into the sleeve of his yellow pajamas. Wolfgang touched his shoulder and gave it an affectionate squeeze. Wolfgang had been to the colored hospital before, but not usually at night, so the patients viewed him with curiosity as he and Big Fifteen made their way upstairs.

The second-floor sleeping porch was much smaller than the porches up the hill, but at least the air was moving. Dozens of beds filled the porch. Screens kept the biggest insects out. Spit buckets sat beside each bed. The patients were either asleep or resting with their eyes open, listening to the flute, which appeared to be coming from a room about twenty yards ahead to the right.

Big Fifteen ducked inside, leaving Wolfgang next to an adolescent boy in a white T-shirt and baggy tweed trousers. He had big brown eyes and dark skin. His black hair was cut close to his scalp. The kid had a toothy grin, and he tugged on Wolfgang’s lab coat. “You like baseball, Father?”

“Well, I’m…” Wolfgang changed course and motioned toward his right foot, where the toes of his black shoe angled to the floor. “Never been much of an athlete, but yes, I do follow baseball.”

The kid lifted his right thumb and pointed to his chest. “I’m gonna play pro ball someday. Soon’s I get outta here. I’m gonna be the black Babe Ruth.”

Wolfgang knelt beside the bed and rubbed his hand over the kid’s coarse scalp. “I’ll pray that you do.” Wolfgang looked him in the eyes. “What’s your name?”

“James. Friends call me Smokey.”

Wolfgang patted the kid’s shoulder and stood up. “All right, Smokey. Perhaps one day they’ll make a Louisville Slugger with your name on it.”

Smokey smiled widely and leaned back on his pillow. The flute music stopped. Somewhere a baby wailed. Coughing mixed with the wind. Big Fifteen ducked out of the room, and beside him stood a squatty black man in blue-and-red-checkered pajamas under a brown coat. The man had short hair and a chubby face free of stubble. At a glance he appeared in his forties, although no wrinkles or age marks marred his caramel skin. He smiled, but Wolfgang sensed a twinge of reluctance behind it.

“I’m Dr. Pike.”

Big Fifteen patted Wolfgang on the back. “He likes to be called Boss.”

“I’m Rufus.” The man sat on a wooden bench and started to offer his hand but then pulled it away. “I’ve heard stories of you. You play music for the white people. They call you Mozart.”

Wolfgang sat beside him. “They call me all sorts of things.” Wolfgang spotted the flute in Rufus’s thick, callused hands. “You like Mozart?”

He nodded.

“I heard you playing his
Requiem.
”

“Seems to fit.” Rufus put the flute to his lips and played a few bars. His pudgy fingers and hard nails danced effortlessly over the keys. He slowly lowered the instrument.

“I play the piccolo,” Wolfgang said. “But not anywhere close to the perfection with which you do.”

“It’s peaceful out here on the porch.” Rufus rotated the flute in his hands. “The music carries.”

Big Fifteen sat on the edge of Smokey’s bed and yawned. Smokey was still smiling, staring up at the ceiling with his hands behind his head.

Rufus turned his head and coughed into his fist. “Excuse me.” He wiped his mouth. “Luckily I still have some power in my lungs. Don’t know what I’d do without this.”

“Perhaps it is keeping your lungs vibrant. Where…where did you learn to play?”

He chuckled and his belly shook. “Thought I’d like jazz, didn’t you? Or ragtime? My grandpappy was a slave for a family in Georgia. The owner treated them well. Taught them to read and write. Gave them this flute when they let them free.”

“Can I see it?”

Rufus hesitated. “Don’t you worry ’bout getting TB?”

“Not anymore.” Wolfgang took the flute, turned it in his hands, tried the keys, and gave it back. “Good instrument.”

“He taught my grandpappy to play. And my father when he was a boy.”

“If I call on you to play one night, will you come?”

“Where?” Rufus looked skeptically up the hillside and pointed toward the main sanatorium. “Up there? Oh, no, sir.” He shook his head.

Big Fifteen stood from Smokey’s bed. “Boss seems all proper ’cause he’s a padre. But he ain’t a stickler for no rules.”

“I don’t know. Why can’t we play here?”

Wolfgang patted his knee. “I’ve got someone I’d like you to meet. He’s a pianist.”

“Up there?”

“Will you come play with him?”

Rufus rotated the flute in his hands. “I think I’d like that.”

“That means you’ll do it?”

Rufus stood with a grunt. “It means I’ll think about it. How would you like to be the only white man in a building full of Negroes?”

“Isn’t that where I am now?”

“It isn’t the same.” Rufus turned away and disappeared into his room. Seconds later he began playing again.

***

Wolfgang wasted no time deliberating how he’d make the proposition to McVain; planning a conversation with someone completely unpredictable was an exercise in futility. He marched up to the fourth-floor solarium porch, clutching his lab coat tightly against his chest as the evening temperature continued to plummet. The purple clouds above moved quickly across the dark sky.

He found McVain sitting up in bed. Wolfgang immediately told him about Rufus and then waited for an answer he feared would never come.

“Well?”

“What?” McVain looked at him as if he truly didn’t remember what Wolfgang had just asked him.

“Would you consider playing with someone else?”

“What does he play?”

“I told— The flute, McVain. He plays the flute. I’m sure you’ve heard it.”

“Who is this guy, where is he?”

Wolfgang hesitated. “He’s on a different floor.”

McVain grunted, stretched his legs out on the bed.

“You were a concert pianist, right?”

McVain exhaled a deep breath and glanced over at Weaver, who had his eyes closed, earphones over his head, and a copy of the
Waverly
Herald
on his chest. “I wrote three symphonies before the age of twenty. And had them performed. I was a different man back then. I don’t play anymore.”

“You played the other night,” said Wolfgang.

“I was terrible.”

“But with more practice—”

“That quack Barker isn’t going to let me out those doors again.” McVain leaned forward and glared at Wolfgang. “What you did was cruel—
Father
. You dangled the carrot. You probably give drunks a spoonful of booze and then smash the bottle.” He held up his fingers. “Might as well cut the rest of them off. I’m going to die here. Neither your God or your confessions can help that.”

“I wasn’t planning to—”

McVain held up his mangled hand, palm stiff, his two fingers spread, nubs suspended. Wolfgang stood, frustrated, and turned away, disappointed but not finished. He checked Mr. Weaver’s charts.

McVain shifted toward Wolfgang. “I saw Dr. Barker walking one of the patients up and down the hill this morning.”

Wolfgang pretended to be busy with Weaver’s charts. “Is there a question somewhere in there, McVain?”

“Might have been, Dr. Pain-In-My-Ass.”

Wolfgang sighed. “They were Making the Walk. The patient you saw this morning is being released from this sanatorium tomorrow. She’s been here for eighteen months, and now she gets to go home to her family.” Wolfgang knew the woman’s family would be initially excited to have her home, and then they would begin to wonder if she’d brought some of the disease back with her. They’d wipe down everything she touched when she wasn’t looking; they’d wonder if she’d carried the Waverly wind.

Wolfgang stepped toward McVain’s bed and lightened his tone. “It’s what all the patients here are working toward, walking down and back up the hillside and not being completely out of breath. Generally, if you can Make the Walk, you go home.”

McVain let it sink in, chuckled slightly. “Make the Walk, huh?”

***

Down the solarium Wolfgang spotted Susannah hurrying into the stairwell. Children screamed from the rooftop. He took off after Susannah and caught a glimpse of her calves as she bounded up the stairs to the next platform leading to the rooftop. His eyes followed her flesh to just above the back of her knees, where the hem of her skirt fluttered in waves as she sprinted upward.