Intimidated as I was, I continued to utter a simple prayer as I went about the task: “Please help Momma.” I repeated the words over and over again, having somehow come to believe that mere repetition would get my prayer heard. Maybe I thought the Lord responded to nagging the way my parents sometimes responded to my endless entreaties. Or maybe I just couldn’t think of another way to approach God. One sure thing, though: my prayers, muttered or not, were heartfelt, driven as they were by a mix of love and fear that threatened, almost from moment to moment, to overwhelm me.
CHAPTER 8
The house was empty when I got home, as it had been for days. I was a child, of course, eight-years-old, and I’d never known an empty house before my mother and sister contracted the flu. Never, not for one day, not for one hour.
Our house was a typical wood-frame house in Louristan: two stories, a sloped roof, wooden shutters on the windows, a low porch that ran the width of the building. The house was painted white, the shutters and the front door a dark green the color of mid-summer leaves. Momma had been after Dad to add a little trim to the porch, a few scrolls in the corners, a pattern of vines and flowers across the front, but Dad hadn’t gotten around to it.
I walked through the unlocked front door—nobody locked their doors back then; I don’t even remember seeing a key—and into our living room. I don’t have to struggle to remember the living room because it didn’t change, not for years afterward. A camelback couch and two wing chairs ordered from the Montgomery Ward’s catalog; a worn rocker with red and gold cushions; a blue Persian carpet ordered from the Sears catalog; three small tables made by a local woodworker, a Pole named Pavel Kuriansky. Our radio, a Philco, rested on one of the tables.
A sampler hung on the pale-blue wall behind the couch, a piece of needlework executed by Momma when she was a young girl in high school. On either side of a stone house, a pair of indigo birds stood erect, their beaks pointed upward. There were clouds above the house, not so white anymore, and the sampler was edged with red hearts. Just beneath the hearts at the top, Momma had stitched a homily in capital letters: MAY THIS HOUSE BE A HOUSE OF PEACE. MAY ALL WHO DWELL HEREIN KNOW ITS COMFORTS.
A painting hung on the wall to my left, as though to illustrate the basic principle. Cows, black-and-white Holsteins, grazed on a broad hillside, white clouds above, a red barn in the background. According to my dad, the painting was done by the same itinerant artist who created the portrait on the opposite wall. The man in the portrait had piercing, blue eyes, a prominent nose, and a gray beard that began two inches below his eyes and fell to the top of his chest. His small, narrow mouth was completely dominated by his beard and mustache. This was Ezekiel Taylor, my great-great-grandfather.
I was on my way to the kitchen, but I lingered for a moment before the one piece of furniture my mother treasured: a mahogany sideboard inherited from an aunt. The sideboard was made in Philadelphia decades earlier, and the swirling grain of its veneer made the whole piece seem almost to be in motion. This effect was enhanced by the sideboard’s front feet, a pair of hand-carved paws that dug in to the carpet as though ready to spring forward. A photograph in a hickory hand-carved frame rested on the sideboard, taken at my parents’ wedding. The photograph showed the newlyweds, Momma in a white dress lent to her by her mother, Dad in a plain, black suit—standing before a trellis covered with white roses. Mom looked happy. Dad was suitably grave.
Of course, it’s much easier to describe furniture than human feelings. I felt uneasy, a stranger in my own home, as if I’d somehow wandered into the wrong house. There was loneliness, too, a loneliness that would haunt me over time, and more fear than a boy should have to handle on his own. I think I might have drowned in that fear if I hadn’t wandered into the kitchen and noticed a little stack of white masks on the table where we took our meals. I knew at that moment I would go to the courthouse and find my mother. I would disobey my father. I had to do something. I couldn’t just wait and wait all on my own, with nothing but my fear to keep me company.
And even as I made this decision, which surely violated the commandment about honoring my parents, my lips continued to move: “Please help Momma, please help Momma, please help Momma.”
* * *
I followed my dad out of the house the next morning, accepted a hug, and said goodbye. We couldn’t know what Dad would find when he got to the hospital, given the hours that had passed since he had left. I’d like to say I was more hopeful than afraid. After all, many flu patients recovered, and Momma could have improved overnight. But my thoughts were as dark as the sky was bright.
Dad turned around to wave as he stepped off the lawn and onto the road. Then I watched his back until he reached the courthouse only two hundred yards away. Two days earlier, I’d walked out onto a small woodlot owned by a farmer named Earl Wegner. The woodlot ran across a small rise and I was able to sit there, lost in the shadows, and watch the flag on the courthouse flagpole, lowered to half-mast, ripple in a light breeze. The Army tents that filled the Square were lined up in neat rows, and there were men dressed in robes sitting on benches outside. Others—women for the most part—moved between the tents, carrying water and towels, or buckets held at arm’s length. I didn’t know exactly what anyone was doing, but that glimpse had been enough for me before I’d run into Joe Anderson. Now I wanted more.
Calculation was new to me, as I said, but when I fell into it, I fell all the way. First thing, I decided not to approach the hospital from the front. I’d follow the creek to the back of the courthouse, where I’d wait until nobody was looking before I crossed the lawn. Once I got between the rows of tents, I’d act like I belonged there. If anyone asked, I’d tell them I was visiting my mother and that my father was waiting for me.
I don’t exactly know how I came upon this plan. It just seemed to settle in, like I’d opened a door to find a secret room already furnished. But I’m not claiming I wasn’t scared. My heart was pounding away in my chest by the time I found a spot behind the hospital shielded by a clump of aspens.
The smell claimed me first, an ugly reek of slop buckets in need of emptying and unwashed bodies and something else I didn’t recognize but now know was blood coughed out by dying men and women. I felt these mingled odors as a solid force, like a wall that had to be climbed, and I was overwhelmed for a minute or two. Then, slowly, I became aware of people’s coughing, moaning, crying. The delirious screamed.
Something inside told me to run for home even faster than Max Flack had circled the bases in Chicago. But I stood my ground. I wanted to see for myself, wanted to see my momma alive and breathing. This was something I just had to do.
I took a mask from my pocket and pulled it over my nose and mouth, then stepped out into the Square. Once I got started, I didn’t hesitate. No, sir. I walked up and onto a pathway of brown, trampled grass that separated the tents, my heart only stopping once or twice along the way. But Joe Anderson was right. Though adults moved about, some volunteers and some family, I went unnoticed. Then I saw other children, older than me and accompanied by adults. They’d come to say their last goodbyes to those they loved every bit as much as I loved my momma. I didn’t know at the time, but their presence encouraged me. Now all I had to do was keep one eye out for my father while I searched.
I didn’t get ten feet before someone called out to me. Not one of the adults in charge, but a patient—a boy I already knew.
“Who’re ya lookin’ for, Lucas?” Petey Aberg asked.
I didn’t recognize Petey at first. He’d lost weight, a lot of weight, and his face was tinged with gray.
“I’m gettin’ better,” he told me before I said anything. “I can breathe now.”
“That’s swell, Petey. I’m trying to find my momma.”
“Did you get the flu this spring?”
“Yes, in June.”
“They’re sayin’ you can’t catch it twice.” He smiled, revealing teeth as gray as his face. Then he began to cough and didn’t stop until his hand was stained with blood. I waited until