Maude Brown's Baby (36 page)

“Cheaper than Luckies in a pack,” Jake countered.

Jake creased a single square of cigarette paper in half, then unfolded it to form a v-shaped trough between the fingers of his left hand. With his right hand, he dipped a pinch of tobacco from the pouch in his lap and sprinkled enough onto the paper for one smoke. He folded over the top of the pouch, rolled the paper back and forth between his fingers to form a neat cylinder, then licked the edge to seal it closed.

“You sure, Clarence?”

“Too much bother,” Clarence repeated as Jake struck a match.

Naomi and Donald sat at the far end of the bench, watching the
empty lumber truck rumble onto Wharf Road. As the noise faded in the distance, Naomi could again talk without shouting. She kept her voice low so Jake and Clarence wouldn’t hear.

“Donny, I like Clara
. I admire the way she smiles and how she looked me straight in the eye when she shook my hand.”

“Thanks,
Ma. Clara’s had a rough time, losing her dad in the storm, then her mom passing suddenly last year. She worries about her brother in France, but she manages the house well enough on her own.”

“She told you all that?”

“Clara never complains; she just talks about nursing and what she wants to do with her life
, and how nice it will be when her brother comes home.”

“I see.” Naomi looked away from Donald to where Clara stood in a group of student nurses, listening to a doctor who seemed to be in charge. Naomi shaded her eyes from the sun
light, which had just found its way under the edge of the warehouse roof.

Medical personnel had gathered on the dock. Near them, six military ambulances, their drivers and perhaps two dozen uniformed soldiers stood by with stretchers. A short distance away, to the left of where Donald and Naomi sat, family members were just beginning to gather behind a length of rope that soldiers had erected to keep visitors back. Two of the early arrivals compared the time on their pocket watches.

“I see the ship,” Naomi said. Donald looked to Naomi’s lap, where she had twisted her handkerchief about as tight as it would go.

Naomi, Donald, Clarence and Jake walked over and were among the first standing behind the rope barrier, which Naomi gripped with her gloves as if it were a lifeline. Donald looked back. Within minutes, a small crowd had gathered and more were on the way. He suspected that many of the wounded soldiers’ relatives and friends did not live close enough to Galveston to come. For those men, homecoming would be delayed.

A woman near Jake was first in the crowd to shout.

“Look
! There, near the rail. Billy! Billy!” The woman waved furiously. A soldier on deck waved back with his good hand.

Docking took another ten minutes. A narrow steel walkway was lowered to the wharf. Finally, a sailor at the top of the gangway lifted a temporary iron rail from its pins and motioned that it was safe to go down. Nurses and assistants helped some of the soldiers, but most in the first group walked on their own. Some had visible wounds, with bandages on their heads or arms. Others were missing limbs. Some were sullen and withdrawn, but most of them
frantically searched the crowd for familiar faces. Everyone looked unsteady on dry land after nearly two weeks at sea.

One by one, the wounded either found their loved ones or realized that no one had come to welcome them home. Clara and the other
volunteers watched for those, and did their best to fill in. One arriving soldier broke from a nurse who was leading him to the receiving tent. He walked instead, using crutches to compensate for a missing foot, into the arms of a couple just a few feet from Naomi and Clarence. The three of them clutched each other desperately. Naomi watched, but didn’t speak. Her Cletus had not yet appeared.

The halting parade down the gangway continued for another half
hour. A short line of soldiers—those who could stand—formed at the registration desk. Several early arrivals were seen briefly by medical staff and released. One ran to a young woman who ducked under the rope to greet him halfway.

“I see him,” Clarence said. “There, about twenty feet back from the gangway.”

“Yes!” Naomi began waving, then remembered that Cletus couldn’t see. He gripped the rail with his left hand; his right hand rested on the shoulder of the man in front of him. Someone else’s hand held Cletus by the shoulder and so on down the line. Only the leader in front could see.

“Papa, he’s so thin!” Naomi said, squeezing her husband’s arm.

There were at least a dozen men in line with Cletus, all inching forward one shuffling step at a time. Some still had bandages over their eyes, but others, like Cletus, wore dark spectacles.

“Cletus!” Naomi shouted. Donald and Jake did the same.

Clarence cupped his hands around his mouth. “Over here, son!”

On the ship, Cletus cocked his head to one side, then lifted his hand from the rail and waved in the direction of the voices. If he smiled at all, it was faint.

Clara reached Cletus first at the foot of the gangplank, while her classmates helped other men in the line.

“Cletus Stokes?”

Cletus squinted at Clara through his dark lenses, surprise showing in the lines of his face. He could see shapes at least, and that was an improvement from the week before.

“Yes?”

“I’m Clara Barnes, one of the student nurses and a friend of your brother.”

“Oh?” Even the short walk down the gangway had left Cletus short of breath. Clara pulled him from the line, taking a moment to set the hand of the person behind on the shoulder of the man in front.

“I’m so happy to meet you, Cletus. Welcome home.”

As Clara led him slowly toward the registration tent, she looked closely for clues to the hidden damage Cletus might have suffered behind his sightless eyes.
             

“Donald talks about you a lot.”

“Nothing terrible, I hope.”

Clara was encouraged that Cletus could walk without hesitation, and relieved to see him smile.

“Nothing terrible at all.”

Clara stayed with Cletus through registration, then escorted him across the dock to his family. Instead of leading Cletus by the hand as the other volunteers were doing with their blind patients, Clara looped her arm through his and pressed it close to her side. Walking toward Naomi and Clarence, they looked like any young couple taking a stroll. Jake and Donald lifted the rope to let them through. Naomi couldn’t hold back tears as Clara put his hand in hers.

“My boy!” Naomi sobbed—relieved, happy and sad all at once.

Clarence wrapped his arms around them both, resting his forehead against the side of his son’s head, while Donald patted his adoptive brother’s shoulder and rubbed his back. Naomi’s hand, clutching her son’s
head, knocked off his uniform cap, which Jake picked up and held at his side.

Clara turned away, but Donald reached for her hand and drew her close. “Thank you.”

She squeezed his hand in return. “I need to assist the others. Can you wait for me?”             

“I’m going to help my folks to the car. I’ll be back.”

It was nearly two o’clock by the time Jake had the Stokes loaded in their car and ready to return to Houston. Everyone spoke at once.

“It’s so good to have you home!”

“Thanks, Mom.”

“We got your letters.”

“Sorry I can’t write for myself anymore.”

“Shush, now, you’ll be writing again before long.”

“I can see things, but the light still hurts my eyes.”

“Your room is all ready.”

“Can’t wait to be home.”

“We can pull down the shades.”

“Sure, Mom. How’s Bosco?”

“Fine, dear.”

“Nice car, Dad. When did you get it?”

“Tell you the whole story later, son.”

Cletus wheezed, and everyone held their breath. He recovered in a moment, trying to ignore the burning in his lungs.

“Hey, Don, I like your lady friend.”

“She’s not my lady friend,” Donald protested with little conviction.

Cletus laughed. “Well, Don, if she’s not your lady friend, then I want her.”

“I guess we can talk about that later, too.”

“Everybody set?” Jake called from the front of the car, one hand on the fender and the other on the crank.

“Ready,” Clarence called from the front seat.

“Ready,” Naomi and Cletus echoed cheerfully from the back.

Jake gripped the outer edge of the right fender and rotated the crank handle down toward the ground. He pulled up and hard to the right. The engine sputtered and died. He tried again. The second time it caught.

“Nothi
ng to it,” Jake said as he climbed behind the wheel and adjusted the spark advance. The engine smoothed into a noisy idle.

“Just the right touch,” Clarence said over the clatter. He glanced back at his son and wife holding hands in the back seat. Donald, standing by the driver’s door, leaned over and spoke quietly to Jake.

“Thanks for bringing them in the car. It means a lot to Pa.”

“I know,” Jake said. “All this,” he pointed over his shoulder with his thumb, “means a lot to me, too. You coming back to Houston tonight?”

“I plan to.”

“I’ll stop by your house tomorrow.”

Jake started to put the car in gear, but Donald touched Jake’s forearm, which was resting on top of the door. He felt the engine vibrating through the fabric of Jake’s coat as easily as if he’d put his hand directly on the car.

“Jake?”

“Yeah?”

“We met someone who knew my mother.”

“Knew your mother?”

“Clara found him. He was in Galveston all this time. He brought my mother here from England.”

“Clarence mentioned it. So your folks were poor immigrants?”

An image of the ride home in Geoffrey Payne’s Rolls Royce made Donald smile. He stepped back from the running board and raised his hand goodbye.
             

“They were immigrants all right, but not exactly poor.”

The most severely injured were last off the ship. Stretcher bearers took them directly to waiting Red Cross ambulances. Each vehicle carried four men. As soon as one ambulance pulled away for the short drive to Sealy Hospital, another took its place. Donald spotted Clara walking alongside one stretcher, talking to a soldier with bandages on both arms. Nearby, a doctor suddenly fell to his knees.

Clara rushed to his side, gently easing the young physician onto his back. His eyes were half closed and his face pale. She drew a small cloth from the pocket of her smock and placed it under his head, then borrowed a soldier’s duffel to raise the doctor’s feet. She briefly held her cheek near his mouth and nose to check his breathing. She pressed her fingers against the side of his neck. Donald lifted the barrier rope and started toward them, but one of the medical staff reached Clara
first. Donald stopped short, just close enough to hear their conversation.

“What happened?” said a balding man in a white coat.

“Doctor Lewis fainted,” Clara said. She turned and asked an approaching nurse’s aide to bring a cup of water. People flowed around them, with steady rows of wounded and medical staff moving to and from the hospital ship.

The man
on the ground began to stir. Clara stroked his forehead. The doctor—no older than Clara herself—looked up and tried to gain his bearings. He finally recognized Clara as one of the student nurses. He sat up, but Clara put her hand on his shoulder and asked him not to stand.

“Did you see that man’s face?”

“Whose?” Clara said.

“A wounded soldier.” The doctor pointed feebly in the general direction of a stretcher team sliding its charge into one of the ambulance bunks.

“I lifted the cloth from his head. He had no face.” The doctor began shaking quietly, hands covering his eyes. Clara wrapped one arm around his shoulder. The older doctor moved on to other patients, just as the nurse’s aide rushed over with the water that Clara had requested.

“Here, d
rink this.”

“I’m sorry. I should be more professional.”

“You’re only being human,” Clara said. “Nothing to be sorry about.” She helped him to his feet and led him to an empty chair behind the medical tent.

“Wait he
re until you feel better, Doctor Lewis. We’re almost through with the patients.”

Donald watched, taking care to stay back from the moving line of stretchers. There were fewer of them now, and finally, the parade of wounded stopped. Most family members and friends had either retrieved the men they’d come to meet, or followed them to the hospital.

Clara joined Donald after the last ambulance had gone.

“Did your parents leave?”

“They couldn’t wait to get Cletus home.”

Clara waved goodbye to several colleagues and classmates. She led Donald toward the registration tent, which two soldiers were now helping to dismantle. She pointed to one battered duffel left behind.