A Flickering Light Page 9

  “Quickly, quickly! Hang on to the porch banisters,” he shouted when they reached the studio. He patted his vest for his key, found it, opened the door, and let the now sopping-wet crowd into the reception room.

  The largest young man with them pushed against the door and slammed it shut. “Into the darkroom,” FJ told them. The girls led the way through the double doors and into the interior of the studio. The day was as night, and Miss Gaebele pushed the lights on using the button on the wall.

  “Wouldn’t we be safer in the basement?” the young man asked.

  “What kind of storm is this?” one of the others asked.

  His answer was drowned out by the sound of a train, and the house shuddered like a runaway wagon on a hard-rutted road.

  Jessie shook. She’d never liked storms. The root cellar was the place they’d gathered whenever the storm clouds stalked the valley near Cream. They kept extra water there and jerked venison, which enabled them to stay a few days if they needed to. Her father would make light of things, have them tell stories, say prayers, but his reassurances were never quite enough to relieve Jessie of her fears. This storm had come up so quickly, and she’d felt near panic at watching the others run off without her and Clara. The wind had swirled and pressed against her, and she thought she might be lifted and tossed aside.

  She’d never been with people other than her family during a storm; she hoped her parents and sisters and Roy were safe, hoped she was safe here. Were the others as frightened as she was? She looked at their wet, dripping faces. A loud pop sounded and the room went black.

  “The electric lights have gone out. Not to worry,” Mr. Bauer reassured them.

  “Jumping Jehoshaphat, you’d think the trains couldn’t run in a wind like this,” Jerome Kopp said. Jessie thought his voice was higher pitched than usual, and it lacked the cocky tone.

  “That sound isn’t a train,” Mr. Bauer said. “More likely a tornado. And the lights… I suspect a tree has just taken out the lines.”

  “Tornado! My pa says Winona doesn’t get them. Must be just a strong wind,” Jerome argued. “Tornado. Pawh!”

  Jessie wondered if they ought to have tried for the basement, but they were here now. She huddled close to Voe, swiped rain from her face. No one spoke for a time, listening to the wind. Her ears hurt. She swallowed and thought about Lilly and Roy and Selma, about her parents. They had to be safe.

  After a time, they heard no more sounds but their own breaths. “I’d like to get out where there’s light,” Voe said.

  “Is it safe?” Jessie asked. Her teeth chattered.

  Mr. Bauer patted her shoulder. “Why, you’re cold,” he said. “And shivering. Well, of course. You all must be. Cold and wet. Let me step out and see if the studio still stands. I’ll start a fire in the fireplace so you can dry out before going on your way to let your parents know you’re all right. I’m sure the phone lines will be down.”

  “My pa won’t be that worried about us,” Jerome said. “He knows I can take care of me and my sister. I can take care of you too, missy,” he said, groping for Jessie’s shoulder. His fingers got caught in her bun, and she slapped at him, glaring, though she supposed he couldn’t see her in the dark. She stiffened.

  When Mr. Bauer opened the door and let the natural light into the room, Jerome was still shaking his hand as though he’d touched something hot.

  Jessie turned toward Mr. Bauer. “I am cold. But I need to go home to see if everything is all right.”

  “Let’s all get out of here,” Jerome said. He’d made himself the leader. “No sense waiting for a fire to dry us out. Let’s see what damage has been done.” He said it with a gleeful curiosity in his voice that saddened Jessie. A wind such as this could have easily harmed a great many people. She hoped her family had taken refuge in the basement.

  Mr. Bauer went out into the reception room and called to them. “The worst is passed. Lots of puddles. Nearly a stream washing down that street, so be careful as you go. Watch for roots that have been lifted up; the trees could be unstable.”

  The group stepped gingerly down the steps, gazing at the changed world. They pushed aside broken and blown branches, their green leaves clinging to them the way a deer leaves bits of hair against a fence: evidence of damage. Voe turned around slowly.

  “All the trees are naked,” Jessie said. “There’s hardly a leaf left on them. It looks almost like…winter.” We should take some pictures, Jessie thought, the idea bringing a level of calm to her.

  “We should photograph this,” she said aloud to Mr. Bauer, who had walked to the far side of the yard and looked up, to see if there was damage to the roof, Jessie supposed.

  “What? I’m sorry, I didn’t hear you.”

  Jessie hurried beside him now. The others had headed out, and she’d motioned to them that she’d catch up. “We ought to take photographs. For the paper.” His look said he must think her unfeeling. She should be worried about her family, not trying to take pictures of disasters.

  “The Republican-Herald rarely uses photographs, even half tones. Just those cartoons and drawn ads. It’s too expensive to make the lithographs of them.”

  “It was just a thought. I mean, look at the trees, all bare. That’s something you won’t likely see again anytime soon.”

  “Why would you want to photograph something so sad?” Mr. Bauer said. He stared at her.

  “People remember tragedy,” Jessie said. “They take photographs of infants in their grave clothes. You said that yourself.”

  He looked pained when she said that. “Yes, yes, but people must grieve.” He turned away and began gathering branches to clear a path back to the studio. He picked up pieces of the plaster fountain, dropped them onto the pile of branches.

  Jessie looked around. What had been there before—trees full of foliage, dahlias in late summer bloom, gardens with fountains sprouting—it was all changed now. The town would be mourning too, and they might want to remember what they’d survived. “People will be grieving here too,” she said, “and maybe a photograph could help.”

  “It’s not a healing art, Miss Gaebele.” He said it like her father might, teaching, warning her. “I wouldn’t try to make it into one. You’d best hurry along and catch your friends, check on your family. I’ll lock up and go home to see if everything is all right at South Baker.”

  “You live on South Baker?” she said. “You have to walk within a few blocks of our house on Broadway to get there. If it’s all right, I mean, if you don’t mind, I’ll wait for you to lock up, and we can walk out together.”

  “Yes. Of course. I can walk you to your door and reassure your parents.”

  She was surprised at the relief she felt knowing he would be with her when she found out if her own family was all right. They moved without words through the cluttered path. The twister had cut a swath through the city, and they could see just the edge of it. The wind had caused roofs to be peeled of their shingles. Broken glass lay everywhere. People stood in small clusters, telling stories of what had just happened to them. They’d had a close call. Everyone still whole knew it, and there was a kind of grateful surprise in their faces at having escaped.

  A gray and white mourning butterfly flitted past them as though it knew what people would begin doing now, putting the pieces back together. Maybe photographs didn’t have a place in the midst of raw grief.

  At home, Selma and Lilly competed with each other to tell their story of racing to the basement and described how bottles of preserves fell off the shelves and how loud the rumble and rage of the wind had been. “I-I-I w-w-was s-s-scared,” Roy got out before their mother interrupted to thank Mr. Bauer for escorting Jessie home. She sent Jessie in to change her wet clothes while Mr. Bauer described to Jessie’s father what they’d seen.

  The Gaebele house had lost some shingles from the roof, and an oak tree had fallen so close to the house that when Jessie looked out the window, all she could see was green, but otherwise they were f
ine. Jessie hoped Mr. Bauer would find the same good news when he got home too. She frowned. She hadn’t told him thank you or good-bye.

  In the morning, the paper reported that the tornado was one of three reported in the region, the first to touch down in Winona in the past fifty years. Two storm fronts, one from the southwest and the other from the northwest, had converged right over the city, and damage would have been worse if not for the bluffs on either side of the river to counter the storm’s fury. At least that’s what the old-timers all said. They reported its being one of the few tornadoes in their collective memory, and Jessie knew it would feed the mill workers’ talks for weeks.

  No deaths were reported in Winona proper, but considerable damage had befallen the many trees that lined Winona’s streets and the houses that the trees chose to fall on. Several days later the paper did report the discovery of a missing woman’s arm, identified by the ring still on a finger. The authorities returned it to the grieving husband, widowed in a nearby town by the twister. Three cars of the Green Bay and Western Railroad had been blown off the tracks. Local pastors preached that the storm was the wrath of God against those who turned a deaf ear to His ways and refused to heed the temperance movement.

  No photographs appeared to record the amazing storm, but several days later Jessie saw postcards for sale with a picture of the grain storage down by the railroad tracks. The roof had spilled in on itself, and boards were driven into the side of the wooden structure along with pieces of iron that must have been lying nearby.

  People did want to memorialize tragedy with pictures. Mr. Bauer could have made some money, Jessie thought.

  But what Jessie wanted to remember most about the day couldn’t be photographed. After finding her family safe, she most treasured an awareness of Mr. Bauer’s kindness, his protection of her when the others ran off. And then there was that gentle touch. Men offered all kinds of help to a woman in distress. Jerome, though, abandoned her and Clara in the storm’s rising fury, then groped her when the storm passed. Fortunately he’d only gotten his hands caught in her hair combs. He’d misjudged her height in the darkness or he would have gotten his face well slapped.

  Mr. Bauer’s touch was tender on her arm as he guided her and Clara to safety in his studio. His touch reassured; it was a listening touch that heard she was shivering and cold. He’d acted protective in the way he patted her shoulder and when he said he would see her safely home. His actions had so reminded her of her father’s caring ways that she’d nearly cried then with relief. Her fear had passed, swept away by the safety of her family and this good man.

  As he’d swung his cane toward his own home, Jessie watched from her upstairs window. In the future, that’s what she’d look for in any serious suitor. Kindness and compassion, sturdiness in a storm. These were the qualities that truly marked a man.

  Doors of Opportunity

  IT MIGHT HAVE BEEN THE unseasonable cold or the early rains, maybe the soaking he’d taken on the day of the storm, or maybe just the change in routines brought by autumn’s prelude, but in mid-September, FJ came down with what the doctors said was pneumonia. His skin turned a vapid yellow color, and they added jaundice and told Mrs. Bauer that he would need to be kept down until he recovered. She was to feed him meals of greens.

  Mrs. Bauer had been through this before. As a patient, her husband made few demands on her other than to assist him to the water closet and to help him settle himself when she brought the tray of food. In some ways, it was easier having him ill: he was home; she knew where he was. The boys—she started the thought, then amended it—Russell could spend time sitting on his bed and sharing his stories. He had done that that the last time FJ became so ill, and the two had seemed to grow closer to each other. Mrs. Bauer felt, well, almost excluded as she stood at the door watching the two of them, and yet she appreciated that FJ engaged the child without her having to entertain. She had other things to do.

  Winnie needed tending. And while the child might bring her white Steiff bear in to her father to play, pointing out its little brown nose and rubbing the soft fur, while she might carry on little girl conversations with her father and tell him what the bear was thinking, FJ tired easily. Mrs. Bauer still needed to occupy Winnie and continue to tend to household duties as well.

  And then there was the studio.

  “I believe,” FJ said haltingly, “the girls can keep it going.” Mrs. Bauer had expressed concern after one of the doctor’s weekly visits. FJ coughed and she handed him a cloth to spit in, then took it carefully from him and put it in the antiseptic wicker basket beside the bed.

  “They’re quite young, and you’ve had only these six months to train them,” she reminded him. Her fingers fluttered at her collar. I need to wash my hands.

  “True.” He coughed, got it under control. “But you could go there. Offer assistance to them.” She hadn’t responded. “Phone messages as needed,” he’d finished before another coughing bout began. “I’ll be well. Soon. With your good care.”

  He’d coughed then so hard that he held his stomach, and she realized how little he really understood his own illness or the impact it had on her. On the family. He didn’t realize how weakened he’d become, how susceptible, working long hours, spending time at the lodge or stopping at the YMCA, which he also considered “part of the commerce.” He’d catch some bug there and go down. She’d have to carry the load now, never knowing if he really would get better and certainly not when. The last bout of coughs ended with him falling exhausted back onto the bed. She noticed a yellow scum on the linen. She’d have to change the pillow slip. Again.

  They could afford help at the studio, but not here in their own home. At least she assumed as much, though she’d never come right out and asked him for a live-in girl to help with the children. Still, he should have noticed. Especially now. Maybe she’d use this opportunity to broach the subject. A live-in girl would not only help her but would raise their status among members of their set. All the other successful businesspeople had hired girls, one of the Irish ones maybe, or those sturdy Norwegians. But there was the money…

  She took the tea tray from his room and walked to the kitchen, hating that she was irritated with him, especially when he was so ill. What kind of a wife am I that I’m annoyed at an ailing man?

  Winnie napped, thank goodness; Russell, still in school. She could indulge herself. She sank onto the kitchen chair and let her mind go into that wasteland of the future. Her breath came faster. Her fingers began to tingle. Now I’m getting ill? Her mind raced toward the vast cavern of uncertainty that formed like a must around his illnesses.

  When FJ was well, he was predictable and reliable. She knew in her heart that his veterans meetings and the chamber time helped the business and therefore the family. But these illnesses. She felt another flash of anger directed toward her husband. He minimized her concerns. He always had, patting her on her head and telling her she could handle things, that all would be well. It might not all be well. They’d had financial strain in the past because he overextended their risk. That ranch, for one.

  She dropped a cup and watched it shatter on the linoleum flooring. She must not think of that ranch.

  She bent to pick up the broken china. Why had he been out in that August storm in the first place? That’s what had caused this. He could take the streetcar for most of the way. He just never liked to use it except to take them all to church. He had to walk nearly fifteen blocks to the studio, a journey he said was good for his heart, but not when the weather could turn as it had. Wind blowing every which way.

  She’d been terrified at home alone with Winnie, screaming at the way the pressure hurt her head. Winnie patted her arm, saying, “Mama, sick? Mama, sick?” She tried to stop her own shouting, knew that was her role, but her head pounded.

  Russell rushed in then, and he took Winnie and urged her and Mrs. Bauer to go to the basement. “Until Papa gets here,” he said. “The storm won’t hurt us there.” They huddled f
or what seemed days, but it was only an hour. The day darkened as though night, and the thunder was right above them, rolling like dozens of croquet balls being cracked by the mallet right next to her head.

  FJ finally came home and told her of his rescue of some young people, of turning back to the studio and waiting out the storm with them. But his coat was dampened clear to his undershirt, and he was chilled even standing in front of the fire. He’d gone to the studio the rest of the week, seemed to do well through the month, but this morning, after attending Second Congregational, he’d collapsed in the water closet and called out to her in a croaking voice. She’d seen then the yellow in his eyes and the cast to his skin, and heard the rasping cough. She’d heard it the night before but hadn’t wanted to admit it.

  At least there’d been no damage to their studio or their home from the storm, just some tree branches spread like pickup sticks around the yard. Russell picked up what he could. FJ got someone with a saw to take care of the larger branches. They’d have wood for the winter to supplement the coal. A garden statue had taken a tumble, but it was plaster. They’d find another. Overall, the cut of the twister had bypassed South Baker Street, and she was grateful. But now there was this storm: his illness. Again.

  She heard her husband cough though she was way down here in the kitchen. She put her hands to her ears, pressed until she felt the pain. “Perhaps the storm didn’t bypass us at all,” she said out loud. Do something. Don’t sit here and think.

  She stood to wash the few dishes and put them into the cupboard. FJ was ill. It was the way it was. She’d have to go down to the studio and meet these girls. She probably should have done it before, but she hadn’t wanted to. Her place was in the home, and that was work enough for her. More than enough. FJ had no idea.

  At least the doctor was optimistic, and they’d been through this before. Perhaps these girls were bright and quick studies and could carry on the business. It was just a matter of time, and he’d be well. That’s what she’d tell herself. She’d take Winnie to her mother’s and go to the studio tomorrow. She’d have to take the streetcar. FJ had said that a motorcar was being readied for sale, but it wouldn’t likely be anything they could afford, nor would he teach her how to drive it anyway. Not that she’d want to learn. If he hadn’t built the studio so far from the house, this wouldn’t be a problem. Where did he keep the key? There was so much she’d have to remember.