Galveston: Between Wind And Water (A Historical Literary Fiction Novel Filled with Romance and Drama) (29 page)

The cab veered to the right. Following the gradual descent of the road, it slowed to a sluggish halt as the water swiftly rose up the sides and near the hub of the wheels. The horse neighed, snorted, and kicked the water.

The trap door on the roof slid open. “That’s it, folks,” the driver said, peering down at them from his perched rear seat. “Lizzie won’t go any further. Ride is on me but you’re on your own now. Best we all hightail it out for higher ground.” 

He looked up at the blackened sky. “Maybe them Cubans was right after all. Sure looks like a bad one rollin’ in.”

Bret grabbed Gabrielle’s hand and squeezed. “We’ll be fine now, darlin’. We just have to wade through it like everybody else.” He opened the door and stepped down into the flowing, knee-high water.

For a few moments there was a lull in the wind and Gabrielle felt a numb, heart-sunken silence fall between the sky and the flowing water. 

She didn’t want to move from her dry seat, hoping that Lizzie would have a change of heart and take them safely to Bret’s home. 

As Gabrielle hesitated she heard the cracking and crashing of falling wood coming from the direction of the beach.

She turned around and looked south toward the Gulf. The sky and water seemed to rumble toward them from the distance, murky and swift, in a rushing sound of flying debris and shattering planks of timber.

“Don’t be frightened,” Bret said. “It’s only small cottages right on the beach.” He waded around the cab. “Only fools and tourists build there. It never takes much to blow them down.” He held his hands up toward Gabrielle.

“Bret?” Gabrielle turned around, looking back up the street toward the center of town. “My house is north where the ground is higher. Don’t you think it would be better—”

“What are you afraid of?” He stared at her. “After the last bad one in ’86 I had the house raised twelve feet. It lasted then and it sure as hell will get through this.”

The driver disconnected the horse from the cab and was wading through the water leading Lizzie back the way they had come. He stopped and waved one last time before turning the corner. A moment later a door mat-sized piece of broken roofing bumped against the spokes of the cab’s front wheel, paused, then floated by.

Gabrielle looked anxiously around at the people struggling through the streaming water amidst the rising yells of men, women, and children calling out to each other. “I’m . . . I’m not sure.”

Bret lowered his arms and made a few playful splashes in the shifting water with his hands. “Which one is it, Gabrielle? Not sure about my house withstanding another of mother nature’s temper tantrums, or not sure about riding out a storm with a murderer alone in his house?”

Gabrielle stamped her boots on the floorboards. “I didn’t say you killed Timothy!”

“That’s right. You haven’t said a damn
thing
.” Bret turned and started trudging away from the cab through the water.

Another booming thunderbolt struck down from the sky. A more vast and dense spreading of black clouds swept over Gabrielle’ head as the water rose again up the sides of the cab’s wheels. She stood from her seat and called. “Bret?”

He kept moving through the water, shifting his shoulders and hips from side to side.

This time she took in a deep breath and raised her voice. “Bret!”

His back was still toward her, moving steadily away from the stranded cab.

“Bret McGowan!” Gabrielle screamed. “You’re the coldest, cruelest man I’ve ever known! How dare you leave a woman alone like this! Get back here this instant!”

Bret stopped and turned around. “Just testing the current, my dear.” He smiled. “I was deciding whether to carry you or let you work your way through it like everybody else.”

Gabrielle put her hands on her hips. “And?”

He shrugged. “You’re a big girl now, Gabrielle, and your riding attire will go a long way in protecting your modesty from the elements.” Bret smiled.  “And I’m sure most Galveston ladies wish they were dressed the same at this moment.”

“You bastard! Why, I never—” She looked down at her boots. The water was already covering the floorboard.

“If you’re coming, Miss Caldwell, you’d better get a move on. Storm and tide wait for no one.”

Gabrielle gritted her teeth and gripped the inside door handle. She turned around with her back to Bret and lowered her leg over the edge into the swift-moving water until she felt the crunchy top of the shell-covered road.

Summoning her courage against the dark current, and the infuriating man who stood in the middle of it, she lowered her other leg, submerging herself up to her thighs.

Still clutching the handle for support, she was afraid to let go of the only thing grounding her to that spot. “Bret . . .”

“Don’t worry, Gabrielle.” His strong, wet hand was on her shoulder, helping to guide her down. “I’ll be right here with you. I told you. It’s going to be all right, darlin’. Everything is going to work out just fine.”

In the sudden agony at the thought of changing her mind, Gabrielle held onto Bret, her cheeks flaming against the cold wind and her heart falling like a weight into the rising current.

CHAPTER 24

Saturday, September 8, 8:00 a.m.

The grandfather clock in the parlor of the McGowan home chimed at 8:00 a.m. The heavy, sweeping rains battered against the thick storm shutters and on the small, circular windowpanes for which there was no protection. 

Each torrent of water was driven on by a vicious wind, the likes of which Philip Harper could scarcely remember since the storm of ’86. The great McGowan mansion creaked and heaved on its raised foundations under the impact of the strongest gales.

Still feeling the cold damp after changing his clothes, Philip looked out once more at the barometer hanging outside a small window in the parlor.

He shivered, his breathing becoming short and uneven again at the sight of the steady fall of the red line of mercury.
Should have kept going and caught that last train for Houston. I've done my best, Lorena, but he just won
’
t listen
. 
Only old men and young fools turn back and try to fix something they can’t.

Philip rubbed his hands together, trying to knead the warmth back into his aching bones and muscles, the warmth that had disappeared with strike after strike of gale winds against his face and hands.

What did he really want to tell Bret anyway? It didn’t matter what he saw back then in the worst times of the war.
And who was going to believe dead William McGowan’s old house nigger anyway?

Philip heard the latch on the front door turn.

The door pushed open and a thick shower of rain sprayed across the hallway carpet. Bret and Miss Caldwell, drenched head to toe and shivering, stumbled into the house.

Philip took a deep breath. He stood, rushed forward and slammed the swaying door tight behind them. For a moment he stared at the shuddering, soaked couple in silence, resisting the overpowering urge to embrace them like his lost children finally returned home.

Bret’s expression was flat, his eyes pale, weathered away by more than the rain. Then . . . a twinkle of blue and a crinkle in the corner. “Miss your train?”

“Trains run every day, sir. There’s always another one tomorrow . . . or the day after that.”

Bret chuckled. “Damn it, man. You're looking at me like I’ve just risen from Davy Jones’ Locker.”

“Miss Caldwell and you keep standing there dripping in those wet clothes, then I believe that’s exactly where you’ll be headed. Now get inside here, both of you.”

Philip put his hands on their shoulders and led them toward the parlor.

Gabrielle looked up at the grandfather clock in the parlor as it chimed at noon. The storm had increased its howling intensity again, forcing Bret’s house to rasp and scrape increasingly with every passing hour.

She finished rolling up the sleeves of a workman’s torn flannel shirt, then turned up the cuffs of the groundskeeper’s worn blue jeans. “I fancy my stylish lady’s ensemble will make quite the impression at our next gala. What do you think, Bret?” 

Gabrielle stood and laughed, cinching the rawhide belt tightly against her waist. She laughed again hoping to provoke Bret into a little good-natured kidding but try as she might, she could not penetrate his detached, menacing expression.

Bret remained in his father’s old upholstered chair near the growing flames in the fireplace. He clenched and unclenched his hands with quick, jerky motions as he gnashed his teeth like a cornered animal.

Philip stirred the embers and fanned the fire.

“Are you sure?” Bret asked Philip. “Nothing at all?” He rubbed his wet hair with the towel again.

Philip sat on one of the stuffed Ottoman chairs, massaging his temples with his thumb and index finger. “Coming home I saw Colonel Hayes with his man, Oscar, leading their horse. Colonel says the wagon bridge and all three train trestles were washed out around sometime after midnight. Had to leave their buggy with the rest and wade through waist-high water just to get home . . . and the wind . . .” 

He shook his head. “That’s the worst part. Oscar said down near the water it’s rolling up tin roofs like lids off a sardine can and blowing telephone poles around like hay stalks. I tried the telephone soon as I got back but the line is dead.”

Gabrielle started for the wall telephone in the hallway. “But I have to talk to my father and tell him I’m safe.” She reached for the earpiece on the cradle.

“I told you, Miss Caldwell, I tried and it’s no use. The telephone lines are down and we’re cut off from the mainland. All of us . . . we’re going to have to wait this one out here.”

Thunder boomed, exploding across the battlefield of the sky, rocking the great house again on its raised foundations. 

Gabrielle let the silent earpiece fall limp and dangling on its cord. Through one of the portal windows, she watched the rapid plunging of the last remaining daylight into the raging darkness of the storm.

CHAPTER 25

Saturday, September 8, 6:45 p.m.

All day the winds had battered against the exterior walls, ripping storm shutters off their hinges and shattering windowpanes into the parlor. Bret’s great house shuddered, rattled, and swayed against the onslaught and still continued to retain its footings.

When the ferocity decreased for a few minutes, Gabrielle felt relieved that the worst was over until the brief reprieve gave birth to a renewed blast that shook the house and everything in it to their foundations.

“The storm will die down soon,” she said, trying to comfort herself as much as the rest. “It’s been hours. The wind can’t keep up like this.”

A sudden gust of wind shot open the shutters on the far wall. Philip ran to the open window. He pulled the swaying shutters closed and turned the latch from the inside. “Yes, Miss Caldwell, and that can’t come soon enough. We have more wood and nails in the cellar don’t we, Mr. McGowan?”

Gabrielle looked at Bret. He sat hunched, appearing to gaze into the crackling fireplace at some unseen expanse, some dark, hidden place that was meant to be seen by his eyes only. 

Bret had taken the last of his medicine hours ago. He would have to wait until the storm passed before they could return to her home and fetch Caden’s remedy. 

After everything that had happened and now being in the middle of the storm, she had almost forgotten about . . . Gabrielle gasped.
My God. Could she really trust him now?
She took a deep breath and put the idea out of her mind just as quickly as it had entered.
No. How could you think that?
Caden’s offer to help Bret had occurred days before Tim’s death.

Gabrielle brushed back her hair and thought of her wonderful lunch with Caden at the new seafood restaurant on the boardwalk. He had been sincere then and perhaps, after further reflection under the extraordinary circumstances, she had been too quick to judge his actions. 

Robberies and murders took place in Galveston just the same as any other city. Perhaps Tim resisted, they struggled, and the weapon fired.
But father said it was Bret’s derringer
and Bret says he found it on the street next to Tim’s body.
 

Gabrielle shook her head. There had to be another explanation but that would be for the police and judge to decide after the storm.

She stepped beside Bret. “How are you feeling?”

“I was hoping the scotch would stop the chills.”

“I told you it wouldn’t.” She stroked his damp hair. “ But I’m glad you stopped after two when I said so.”

Bret took her hand and kissed it. “Looks like you picked a hell of a night to try and save me from my own pig-headed self.” 

He gazed up into her eyes and smiled. “But I’ve been thinking about what you said. When this is over I want to get better and I’ll do anything I can to—” 

A crackling volley of lightning ricocheted outside from the direction of the gulf. The roaring sound passed over and rumbled off into the distance. 

The house creaked, its entire structure shifting and lurching to one side. The wind seemed to punch the house down with the storm’s fist as if it were nothing more than an old shipping crate.

Gabrielle screamed as she was thrown down on the floor by the force of the impact. Bret toppled over in the chair and fell beside her. The moment he reached out and grabbed her arm, she heard it.

The breaking sounds of snapping timber and smashing glass coming down from above. They looked up at the ceiling. Rapidly running cracks chipped off the plaster, first in a fine dust, then in large chunks, showering down upon them. 

The four walls trembled, knocking down pictures and ornaments, overturning all the corner cupboards and casework furniture.

“Get up! Get up!” Philip was yelling at them from the open cellar door. “Quick, get down to the cellar!”

Within seconds, the ceiling fractured and popped along the top of the north and east walls, and as if the hand of God was reaching down, it lifted off the timber and hurled it in pieces over the east wall. Nothing visible of the roof remained. Their only remaining protection was the partially demolished ceiling above.