Though Waters Roar (40 page)

“Your mother has been working too hard. She’s overwrought.” Grandma played with a corner of the paper in front of her. She was looking through the window, not at me. I knew she was hiding something.

“You should have seen her reaction, Grandma. She went upstairs to her room, and I could hear her crying, even though the door was closed. Is she going to be all right?”

“It depends on whether or not she turns to God for help. It can be a very difficult time for a woman when her children don’t need her anymore. You’ll see, one day.”

“No I won’t because I’m never getting married, remember?” I waited, but Grandma still said nothing. I huffed in frustration. “Are you going to tell me why the newspaper made her cry or not?”

She closed her eyes. “Your mother knew the man who drowned.”

“What?” I grabbed Grandma’s copy of the newspaper, lying open on the table, and sucked in my breath when I reread his name: Daniel Carver. “Was he the same Danny who played on her rocking horse during the flood?”

Grandma’s brows lifted in surprise. “Why, yes . . . how did you know about that?”

“Mother told me the story, once.” I could tell there was a lot more to this mystery, so I waited, jiggling my foot impatiently. “Was that the only time Mother met this Danny fellow?”

She glanced at me, then quickly looked away. “I think your mother should decide whether or not to tell you about Daniel Carver.”

Now I was thoroughly intrigued. And frustrated. “But she won’t tell me! Mother never talks about anything interesting or important—just the news on the social page.”

The kettle whistled, and Grandma got up to turn it off. She didn’t pour the water into a teapot, though. “I think you should go home and talk to her, Harriet. If she’s as upset as you say she is, maybe talking about it will help.”

“You come, too, Grandma. We’ll both talk to her.”

She shook her head. “Your mother misses Alice very much. You don’t have to take Alice’s place, but you should try to spend a little more time with your mother. Get to know each other.”

I winced at the idea of spending time with my mother, especially if she was going to weep, but it seemed to be the only way I would ever hear the whole story. I hemmed and hawed until I realized that Grandma wasn’t going to change her mind, then I trudged home again.

I found Mother in her little sitting room upstairs. A pile of correspondence sat in front of her but the pen was still in the inkwell, the stationery untouched. She sat with her hands folded in her lap as she stared out of the window above her desk. The wadded handkerchief on her desktop looked very damp.

“I’m so sorry about your friend Danny Carver, Mother.”

Her eyes looked red and swollen as she turned to me. “I haven’t thought about Danny in years, and now I see his name on the front page . . . and such a tragedy.”

Her tears started again. A childhood friendship of two or three days didn’t explain so much grief. I made myself comfortable on the floor at her feet and waited to hear the story.

A brass band played a dirge in the distance as Lucy stood on a grassy rise, gazing at the river that had swept her father away when she was a child. The shimmering water appeared deceptively placid, and she had trouble imagining that it could have done so much damage eleven years ago or caused so much sorrow.

She hadn’t wanted to come to this commemorative event today, but her mother had insisted. “It wouldn’t be right if you didn’t come, Lucy. After all, they are honoring your father. Besides, Grandmother Garner might need you.”

Lucy had watched in detached silence as city officials dedicated Garner Park to her father’s memory and unveiled the newly erected monument stone. The town’s brass band played mournful music and a group of soldiers who had served in the army with Horatio saluted in tribute. Grandmother Garner, the honored guest for the ceremony, had presented a wreath in her son’s memory. Now Lucy had drifted away from all the fuss while the city’s elite soothed Grandmother Garner and Mother talked with Uncle Franklin, who had arrived by train for the event.

For the moment Lucy stood alone, trying to find the daddy she remembered in all the glowing tributes she had just heard. No one had mentioned how his eyes had sparkled when he looked at her, or how he would laugh as they sipped pretend tea together. She worried that she would forget what he looked like. She had a photograph of him in his army uniform and another of him with his arm around her mother’s shoulder, taken shortly after they were married, but neither photograph had captured the father Lucy remembered.

The brass band finished their dirge and began playing a lively march. Lucy didn’t hear the man approach until he spoke to her. “You’re Horatio Garner’s daughter, aren’t you?”

She turned to see a tall young man who was about her age. She backed up a step when she saw that he was a common laborer. “How do you know me? Who are you?”

“My name is Danny Carver. I met you once before, but you probably don’t remember.”

Lucy couldn’t imagine ever meeting him. His overalls and work shirt were stained with red clay from the brick factory. He ran his hand through his hair, which was the color of wet sand, and she saw red stains beneath his fingernails and in the creases of his knuckles.

“I came to your mansion during the flood. You let me play in your playroom and ride on your rocking horse.”

He smiled—a wry grin that laughed at the world—and Lucy did remember him suddenly. But she was too proud to admit it. “Dozens of children stayed with us during the flood,” she said primly.

“I know. And I always respected your family for that.”

Lucy didn’t respond. She had been taught to act very coolly toward young men who were attracted to her beauty, especially unsuitable strangers.

“I just wanted to tell you how sorry I was about your father—even though it happened eleven years ago. He saved my life, you know.”

“He saved many lives.”

“Yeah, but he saved me in person. He came up to my family’s apartment and warned all of us to get out. Said the dam was about to break. My grandmother was old and couldn’t walk too good, so your father carried her out to his carriage in his arms.”

Lucy watched Danny’s face as he spoke and saw that his emotion was genuine, his sneer a shield of defense. “Then your father came back for me and my brother. He put Jake on his shoulders because the water was so deep, but he said I looked like a big brave fellow, and he was sure I could get through it on my own. My mother had to carry the baby. I remember how cold the water was as I waded into it, and how your father whistled ‘Yankee Doodle’ as if we had nothing at all to worry about. He let me hang on to the back of his coat, and he lifted me up into his fancy carriage when I finally made it there. I had never ridden in a carriage before. ”

Tears came to Lucy’s eyes as Danny brought her father to life again. She had forgotten how he had loved to whistle.

“We lost everything in the flood,” Danny continued. “Not even a blanket or a tin pot was left. Our tenement and everything in it simply vanished. All that remained of our neighborhood were piles of junk and tons of mud. But at least we got out alive. Your father was a brave man.”

“Thank you. It was very kind of you to tell me your story. I miss my father. You might have been one of the last persons to see him alive.”

“I was on my way over there,” he said, pointing to the levy. “I wanted to see where our apartment used to stand. Want to walk there with me?” He had a kind face, a respectful voice, and Lucy thought that he might be nice looking if he were properly dressed. She glanced back at the crowd and saw that her mother and grandmother were still occupied.

“I would like that,” she replied. They started walking together, with Lucy carefully picking her way in her dainty shoes. He slowed his stride to match hers.

“Do you remember what The Flats used to look like before the flood?” he asked.

“No. I’m sorry, but I was only six years old at the time.”

“Yeah, and you probably weren’t allowed down in this part of town, were you? . . . No, don’t apologize,” he said as she started to. “I don’t blame your family for keeping you away from that place. You probably shouldn’t go near the new workers’ neighborhood they built to replace it, either.”

He halted a few minutes later in the middle of a bare, grassy area and pointed to the place where they stood. “Here. This is where I used to live.”

Lucy glanced around and saw nothing that made this spot of land distinguishable from the rest of the park. “How do you know that this is the place?”

“See that church steeple on the hill across the river?” he asked, pointing to it. “I used to see it from my apartment window. It was straight across the river.” He paused, closing his eyes for a moment. “My tenement was three stories tall with four apartments on each floor—packed with people of all ages, shapes, and colors. You could hear three or four languages at a time, and people yelling, laughing, cursing . . . babies crying . . . It seemed like there was always laundry hanging out, day and night, and I remember that our drinking water tasted terrible. But all the families watched out for each other, you know?” He smiled his crooked grin again. Lucy nodded, but she had no idea what he meant.

“Most of the fathers worked at the brickyard or in your tannery. None of us had very much, but it was home. We lived on the top floor, and I loved to watch the boats go by on the river. We’d go for a swim in the summer when our apartment got too hot, and my father used to take me fishing sometimes on Sunday afternoons. That was his only day off. . . . He died in the flood, too.”

Lucy stared at him in surprise. “Why didn’t he get out when you did?”

“He was at work when the alarm sounded. They shut down the brick factory and told everyone to get to higher ground, but he decided to help with the evacuation. They said he was trying to convince two elderly sisters to leave their house. It was further downstream and right on the riverbank. When the logjam at the railroad trestle broke, the river swept the house and all three of them away.”

“I’m so sorry!” Lucy rested her hand on his arm. “It seems we have something in common then, don’t we?” She had never met anyone who truly understood her loss, and she felt a kinship with him.

He raked his fingers through his sandy hair and nodded. “The word
hero
never meant much to me when I was a kid. It didn’t change the fact that my father was never coming back. I couldn’t understand why he left us. I was furious.”

“I’ve always felt the same way. I would much rather have my father back than have him applauded as a hero. To tell you the truth, I didn’t care about all the people he saved. I didn’t know any of them. I felt like they stole my daddy from me. My eighteenth birthday is coming soon, and he won’t be here to celebrate it with me. The other girls will all get roses from their fathers when we graduate from the female academy in a few months, but my father won’t be there.” She stopped, surprised by the strength of the emotions Danny had stirred. Then she realized what she had just said. “I’m sorry. You were one of those people he saved. I didn’t mean—”

“That’s okay. I know exactly how you feel. For a long time I used to hate those two stubborn old sisters who wouldn’t leave their house. I figured they’d killed my father just as surely as if they’d stabbed a knife through his heart. It probably wasn’t right to hate them, but he was dead and their stubbornness was to blame.”

“I blamed the entire town. I hated the mayor and the police and the firemen—it was their job to save and protect people, not my father’s.” Lucy didn’t say it aloud, but she also blamed her mother. It had been her fault that Daddy went up to the cabin in the first place. If he had stayed home, he never would have known about the dam. He would have been drinking his coffee in bed when the dam burst. But Lucy didn’t tell Danny that part, because if her father had lived, he and his family would have died.

The band played a lively tune in the background as they stood side by side remembering the disaster, and it seemed inappropriate. She suddenly thought of something else. “Your father’s name must be on the new memorial, too.”

“It is. That’s why I came today. I wanted to see it.”

“Well, I would like to see it, too. Will you show it to me?”

“Sure.” They walked back across the grass together, but when Lucy looked closely at the granite marker, she regretted her request. Her father’s name stood above all the others, chiseled in huge letters. She found Henry Carver’s name listed below it in much smaller letters.

“That’s not fair,” she murmured. “They died doing the very same thing.”

“Life is seldom fair, Miss Garner. And you know what else? They put the names of the two spinster sisters my father was trying to save on there, too. See?”

Lucy looked where he pointed and read their names:
Elizabeth
Dawes, Esther Dawes.
It seemed so unfair. As Lucy’s memories returned, she recalled how angry and cheated she had felt in the weeks following the flood.

“Our home was a terribly sad place after my father died,” she said. “I was planning a huge party for my seventh birthday, but I never had it. I was going to ask Daddy for a pony—a real one this time, not a wooden one like the one you rode. That probably sounds selfish and petty considering all that you lost, but I was very young and I couldn’t understand all the changes in my life.”

There must have been changes in Danny’s life, too, she realized. How had his family survived? Lucy’s family had income from the tannery, and she hadn’t lost her home. She had never given much thought to all of the people whose homes had been destroyed while hers had been spared. The differences seemed unfair to her now—like the big and little letters on the monument.

“How did you get by after your father died?” she asked. “Where did you live?”

“We managed.” He lifted one shoulder in a casual shrug, and she recalled the gesture from eleven years ago. “They set up a tent city for a while, and it developed into a sort of shantytown.”

“Who supported your family?”

When Danny didn’t answer right away, Lucy was sorry she had asked. He looked away but not before she saw his cheeks flush. “My mother found work. And I did odd jobs and things—delivering ice and newspapers, running errands. I took a job at the brickyard when I was fourteen. They thought I was much older.”