White Wind Blew (25 page)

Wolfgang stopped abruptly. The row of men in front of him wouldn’t budge. “Get lost,” said a tall man with a pencil neck, evidently not seeing Wolfgang’s cassock—or just not caring.

A woman in an orange silhouette dress pointed toward the piano. “Darling, that man only has two fingers on his left hand.”

“He’s fantastic.”

They deserved every bit of this recognition, thought Wolfgang, but he had to get them out all the same. He thought of Mr. Weaver when a fat man with heavy jowls shouted, “Play some jazz! Jazz!”

“Ragtime!” a woman yelled. Ragtime? Jazz? Wolfgang’s trio didn’t play ragtime or jazz. But during a short pause, McVain, Josef, and Rufus huddled together. The crowd hushed.

McVain looked excited and utterly exhausted at the same time. His skin was so pale. Sweat beaded along his red hairline. Suddenly the three broke from their huddle and readied their instruments. Wolfgang couldn’t help but smile with pride, although it soon melted away with a horrific thought: what these crowds didn’t know could kill them.

Josef started playing a jazzy sound and McVain chimed in. Rufus joined them a few seconds later, to the delight of the crowd, many of whom began dancing in the packed lobby. Wolfgang felt his legs moving to the beat. When he turned around he saw that Lincoln was having a ball—he’d even found a girl to dance with him.

And then a tall, slender man with jet-black hair and a finely trimmed mustache barged his way into the crowd with an exquisitely dressed woman on his arm. Wolfgang hated him before he even opened his mouth. “Those musicians!” he shouted. Everyone looked at him. “They’re diseased!” The crowd hushed. “They all have TB! They escaped from Waverly Hills!”

Rufus dropped to his knees and stuffed money into the hat. Josef grabbed his coat. McVain quickly stood from the piano. They looked around for an escape route. Wolfgang and Lincoln used the moment of stunned silence to skitter past the crowd and join their musicians.

The man was still yelling arrogantly: “They threatened me on the trolley tonight. They let the nigger sit with the decent folks!” The crowd quickly backed away from the trio, gasping. A woman fainted in a red heap to the floor.

The front doors were now blocked, some people still coming in to see the excitement, others now fleeing. Around them, the crowd’s fear soon turned to anger. “Up the stairs,” Wolfgang said. Lincoln was the first, leading them up the curved stairs. Wolfgang hurried past McVain, who smiled. “Hey, Father.”

“Come on.” Wolfgang grabbed him by the elbow and urged him along.

The crowd cursed and shouted below them. Wolfgang was afraid McVain would collapse, but adrenaline must have spurred him along. He matched Wolfgang step for hobbled step. Wolfgang yelled to McVain over the chaos. “I’m glad you’re having so much fun. You’ll probably be dead in the morning.”

McVain laughed. “Lincoln…to the Oakroom.”

From ahead, Lincoln waved them on. “This way!” He led them directly into the Oakroom, past elegant diners and stunned waiters carrying plates of lobster and pasta and steak. Wolfgang tripped over someone’s foot, stumbling into a bullish bodyguard, who then lost his balance and toppled a table of shrimp. The mob was gaining. While the guard was down on the floor, struggling to unwrap himself from a stained tablecloth, McVain moved toward a door in the back of the room. He knocked—three quick taps, a hesitation, followed by one more tap. He closed his eyes, as if willing it open, and then it did. The five of them rushed inside a small, cramped room swimming with cigar smoke. A spring-loaded door slammed behind them, locking them inside just before the guard grabbed for Josef’s shirt. Pistols cocked. Five gun barrels materialized through the haze and were pointed their way, one for each of them.

A man’s clipped Chicago accent penetrated the smoke. “Don’t move a fuckin’ muscle.”

Wolfgang stared across a poker table at five men in white button-downs and suspenders, sitting around a card table drinking bourbon and playing blackjack—or at least that’s what they
had
been doing before this unfortunate arrival. Now they pointed pistols. One of the men held an automatic weapon so big it required two hands. His nose had been broken so many times it no longer resembled any nose Wolfgang had ever seen before. “Butch let you in?”

“Who’s Butch?” asked Wolfgang.

“The man supposedly guarding the door,” the broken-nosed man said.

McVain discreetly touched Wolfgang’s arm. “Yes, Butch let us in.”

“Now, why would he do that?” The man who sat in the middle, bald with coal for eyes, yanked the wet stub of a cigar from his mouth and eyed Wolfgang. “Never killed a priest before.”

Maybe
this
was
why
I
wanted
the
priesthood
, Wolfgang thought. For the exact moment in life when he’d stumble upon a table of gangsters and his life would be spared because of his clothing. “I hope you won’t start now,” he managed to say.

A knock sounded outside the door, the same knock McVain had made. One of the gangsters started to get up, but the middle man said, “Leave him out there.”

The mob outside the door was growing louder. They began to pound on the walls. Lincoln stood beside Wolfgang, grinning like a fool. Wolfgang watched him from the corner of his eye.

“Wipe that smile off your face, you fuckin’ cake-eater.” The middle man chewed on his cigar. He locked eyes with Josef. “What’s with the violin, paleface?”

“He’s a musician,” Wolfgang said. “We’re all musicians.”

“I didn’t ask you, Father.” He pointed his gun at Josef. “Can’t you talk?”

Josef wrote on his chalkboard. NO.

“He’s got—” Lincoln started.

“Got what?”

“He’s a mute, sir,” Wolfgang said.

“This some kind of traveling circus?” The middle man gave Rufus a good once-over. Then McVain next. “This clown’s missing fingers. What instrument do you play, carrot top?”

McVain was sweating profusely. He straightened himself against the back wall. “Piano.”

Middle man laughed. On his front tooth rested a speck of brown from his cigar. “How’d you lose them fingers?”

“The war.” McVain buffed the nails of his five right fingers against his lapel. “Not that it’s any of your goddamn business.”

Only Wolfgang’s stifled groan broke the frozen silence.

Then, from outside—sirens.

“Police,” one of the men said.

“Fuckin’ bulls,” said another. They heard screaming outside the doors.

Something clanked and a whoosh of air sucked smoke from the room. The middle man was gone in a flash. A wood-paneled door opened behind the table, and he quickly disappeared down a dark staircase. One by one his men, each of them pointing their weapons at them one last time, followed him down the secret passageway until they were left alone in the smoky room staring at their reflection in the mirrored wall.

Lincoln nudged Wolfgang. “Told you.”

McVain labored around the table toward the secret passage. “Those men didn’t recognize me.”

“I assume that’s a good thing?” asked Wolfgang.

“Understatement of the year,” said McVain.

“How did you know the knock?”

“Educated guess,” said McVain. “Come on. Let’s get out of here.”

McVain pushed the secret doorway open. The door behind them nearly rattled off its hinges. “You guys gonna wait around for them?”

They funneled in behind McVain. Lincoln could barely contain his excitement. Rufus patted Wolfgang on the back and winked. “You saved us, Father.” Wolfgang didn’t feel like a hero. His outfit had only bought them time until the police arrived, which Wolfgang thought ironic. Most likely the police had been called to detain his trio of TB-infected musicians, not the hidden gangsters. Wolfgang waited for Josef to pass and then took up the rear as they all headed into the secret passage. The scent of bourbon and cigars led them down the dark staircase and into an even darker kitchen, where McVain doubled over into a coughing fit. Rufus helped McVain along.

Lincoln grabbed a biscuit from a food tray. “They went that way.” He pointed to another set of downward stairs. At the foot of the stairs was a basement full of wooden crates, old furniture, broken sinks, brooms and mops, slop buckets, and bottles of bourbon. “Real bootleggers,” Lincoln cried out to no one in particular. “This is the best.” His voice echoed off the cold, curved walls. He led them into a drainage tunnel that smelled of dirty water, mildew, and cigar smoke. Moisture had collected on the ceiling and dripped to the floor from one central spot. Lincoln inhaled the dank, coppery air. “This is probably how they make the bourbon.” He put a finger to his lips. Up ahead, the boots of the final gangster climbed up an iron ladder attached to the grimy walls of the tunnel. The Waverly group waited for a few minutes and then hurried to catch up, the manhole cover in the street still tossed aside. A faint light shone into the tunnel and snow flurries spit downward. Wolfgang was the last up the ladder, and just as he poked his head up into the fresh, cool air of some unknown street, he heard the squealing of two cars. Just like that, the men from the smoky room were gone.

McVain staggered out into the middle of the street. The lights from an oncoming car grew brighter. The car squealed and slid to a stop on the icy street and honked at them. McVain collapsed in the middle of the road.

***

They all crammed into Uncle Frank’s Cadillac, and Lincoln drove straight to the sanatorium with McVain barely breathing in the backseat, his head resting on Big Fifteen’s lap. “Don’t die on us…don’t die,” Big Fifteen said repeatedly, stroking McVain’s red hair. As soon as Lincoln skidded to a halt on the packed ice and gravel before the entrance, Big Fifteen pulled McVain from the car, cradled him in his arms, and ran into the sanatorium while Wolfgang and Lincoln held the doors.

“Take him to the operating room,” Wolfgang said. “First floor!”

“Should I get Dr. Barker?” asked Lincoln, his face near panic, his night of fun a distant memory.

Wolfgang hesitated. “Yes. Go get him.” Dr. Barker was a better surgeon, and they couldn’t risk McVain’s life to conceal the night’s events. “Go. Hurry.” Lincoln sprinted out across the road while Wolfgang led the way to the operating room.

Dr. Barker was ready within ten minutes. He didn’t ask any questions, just ordered a quick x-ray and got down to business. He said nothing of their pulling him from his slumber in the middle of the night. There was a man’s life to be saved, or at least prolonged. Dr. Barker first tried the pneumothorax procedure, inserting a needle in between the ribs that encaged McVain’s left lung. He attempted to push air through the needle and into the pleural cavity that surrounded the left lung, which in McVain’s case was the one with the largest lesions. His right lung was diseased as well, but according to the x-rays they’d taken since his arrival, the small lesion on the right lung had not grown. By introducing the air they would be able to collapse the left lung and allow it to rest.

“It’s not working,” said Dr. Barker. “His lung is sticking to the chest wall.” The doctor reached out his right hand. “We’re gonna have to open him up.”

Dr. Barker opened McVain’s chest with swift tugs of his scalpel and immediately got to work on the thoracoplasty procedure, which required the removal of some of McVain’s ribs. Wolfgang assisted the surgery and monitored McVain’s doses of ether to keep him sedated. He watched Dr. Barker work. The doctor’s face was red, his eyes intense and focused, but still he asked no questions about what had happened earlier, and for this Wolfgang was grateful. There was no need to fight over the man’s body in the middle of surgery. That would most assuredly come later.

Dr. Barker’s jaw never unclenched in ninety minutes of surgery. When he pulled his hands from the wall of McVain’s open chest, his gloves and wrists covered with blood, he shuffled away from the table in silence. Wolfgang began to stitch McVain’s chest while Dr. Barker washed his hands and then left the operating room without a word.

McVain’s breathing was shallow, but he was alive. Five ribs on the left side of his chest had been removed. The lung was now collapsed.

Wolfgang looked at the x-ray they’d taken of McVain’s chest before they’d operated. The lesion on McVain’s right lung had grown as well. And now there appeared to be two of them.

Dr. Barker stopped Wolfgang outside the chapel first thing in the morning. He slapped a folded newspaper against his open palm and then unfolded it to the front page when Wolfgang turned his way. “‘TB Patients on the Loose. Three Patients Have a Night on the Town.’ Real headlines, Dr. Pike!”

Wolfgang could hardly look at it, but then again he knew it wasn’t totally his fault. “Do you think I encouraged this, Dr. Barker?”

Barker forced the newspaper into Wolfgang’s chest. Jesse Jacobs emerged from the chapel to see what the commotion was about. When Wolfgang told him everything was okay, Jesse moved slowly down the hall. Dr. Barker waited until it was clear to continue. “Bad press. Your trio nearly started a riot.”

“A night on the town.”

“The city is already panicked. They didn’t need this. Now they think we have no discipline,” he said, eyeballs bulging. “They were highly contagious patients. You may not have known, but you’ve encouraged them by your actions. Careless actions.”

“Are you more worried about the people or your reputation?”

Dr. Barker’s nostrils flared. “How dare you.”

Wolfgang backed off. “Thank you for last night. McVain’s stabilized somewhat.”

“What else was I to do? Let him die because of the foolishness?”

Wolfgang had nothing to say.

Dr. Barker wasn’t finished. “Rehearsals are canceled until further notice.”

Wolfgang started to disagree, but stopped. It was a good idea. McVain would not be capable of playing for several weeks, if ever again. He needed rest. He didn’t need a crowd around him. Wolfgang lowered his head and started down the hallway.

“And Dr. Pike.”

Wolfgang turned toward Dr. Barker again. “Yes.”

“I’ve written a letter to the diocese.”

“Why?”

“I’m going to have them force the issue with you. Either you return to the seminary, or I’ll have you transferred.”

“Transferred?”

“To another abbey perhaps,” said Dr. Barker. “One far away from whatever distraction is keeping you here.”

***

For the rest of the day, Wolfgang could think of nothing else. Transferred? It was only a threat, he told himself. The diocese certainly wouldn’t listen. They only transferred priests. They couldn’t transfer seminary students. And after so many years of stagnancy with his studies, Wolfgang wondered, was he even a student anymore? Barker could technically fire him as a doctor, but Wolfgang knew he wouldn’t. He couldn’t afford to lose another staff member.

“Father?” Wolfgang looked down at the top of Miss Schultz’s head as he wheeled her to her room. She continued to grow stronger every day, and after her new hairdo today her face was full of life and color. “Something bothering you?”

“I’m fine. Thank you, Miss Schultz.”

She looked up at him. “You were right. Our new barber does nice work.”

Wolfgang wheeled her across the solarium porch, eyeing several of the patients as he passed. So many of them were new. He wondered if his attackers had passed away, as well. He hadn’t heard from them in a while.

“Where do you put all of them, Father?”

Wolfgang put on a fake smile to disguise his true thoughts of possibly having to leave Waverly. “They go straight to heaven, Miss Schultz.”

She waved her hand through the air, as if swatting his answer to the wind. “Always quick with your answers.” She held up her crooked index finger. “But I figured it out.”

“You have, have you?”

“You sneak them out somehow,” she said. “So we don’t see the hearse pulling up here so many times a day. That would be bad for our morale, wouldn’t it?”

“Far be it for me to contradict you, Miss Schultz.”

She looked over her shoulder. “Don’t give me that. I know I’m right.”

***

Susannah held baby Fred in the lobby while Wolfgang stepped outside with Mary Sue. Mary Sue took a deep, healthy breath of the cool air and then nodded toward Wolfgang. “I’m ready.”

They started down the winding road that cut through the wooded hillside. Mary Sue took it slow at first, but then she gained momentum on the steep downhill.

“Not too fast,” Wolfgang said.

She didn’t listen.

At the bottom of the hill Mary Sue took a few seconds to catch her breath. She was doing great, smiling, and then she broke down crying in Wolfgang’s arms.

***

Frederick had taken a turn for the worse ever since he’d learned that Mary Sue was being released. He’d been unresponsive even to her, and he’d still been unable to hold his son. Mary Sue kissed his forehead, held his cold hands, and promised him they would visit as often as they were allowed. She left Frederick’s room with tears in her eyes.

A Model T sat idling outside the sanatorium’s entrance, a relative waiting to pick up Mary Sue and the baby and take them home. Mary Sue went down the line, hugging the nurses and orderlies who’d assembled to watch her departure.

Wolfgang hugged her and then gripped her shoulders at arm’s length. “Susannah and I will keep special watch over him, Mary Sue. I’ll do my best to bring him out of this.”

She hugged Wolfgang again and backed away toward the car. Susannah took a picture of Mary Sue and baby Fred.

“Tell Frederick I will visit,” she said. “We will both visit.”

“I will,” said Wolfgang.

She grinned. “Until then, Dr. Pike.”

“Until then, Mary Sue.”

***

After sundown the temperature dropped drastically, the wind chill putting the mercury in single digits and in danger of plummeting further. Wolfgang worked with his requiem on his lap, watching McVain sleep. He hoped the freeze would finally waken McVain from his surgery. It had been nearly twenty-four hours.

McVain’s hand moved involuntarily against his bed sheets. Wolfgang scooted up in his chair, praying he would open his eyes, hoping he would live to play the piano again.
Please, God, don’t let it end like this.
They’d come so far. The concert was only twelve days away.

A neighboring patient down the solarium opened an envelope, pulled out a letter, and smiled as he began to read. In all his time at Waverly Hills, Wolfgang hadn’t seen McVain receive one piece of mail from anyone. Not a wife, a sibling, or even a friend. Had he burned that many bridges? Was he really so alone? Yet on the hillside he seemed magnetic at times, a leader of sorts.

McVain’s eyelids fluttered. His hands moved again. Wolfgang scooted closer and felt McVain’s forehead. It was warm. Perhaps the cold temperature would help to lower his fever. McVain’s eyes opened, blinked, and opened again. Wolfgang gripped his mangled left hand. McVain’s green eyes moved left, right, and then left again before settling on Wolfgang. He smiled, which was rare. His voice was low.

“They loved us,” McVain hissed.

Wolfgang nodded. “Yes, they did. Until they learned the truth.”

McVain looked past Wolfgang toward Mr. Weaver’s bed. It no longer housed Mr. Weaver. Now an older man with white hair called it home. “Where’s Weaver?”

“He died this morning.”

McVain stared at the man in Weaver’s bed. “Then the jazz we played was for him.” He made a move to sit up, but then winced deeply and settled back down. “I feel dizzy.”

“Your temperature is nearly a hundred and four,” Wolfgang said. “You were in surgery last night. Dr. Barker collapsed your left lung. Removed five ribs. I’m surprised you’re even lucid.”

McVain blinked slowly. “I don’t have much longer, do I?”

Wolfgang couldn’t lie. McVain was one patient who could handle nothing less than the blunt truth. “The lesions are growing on your right lung, as well.” Wolfgang paused to let his words sink in. “What you did last night was dangerous.”

“Barker?”

“Rehearsals are canceled for the foreseeable future,” Wolfgang said. “But don’t worry. He hasn’t canceled the concert. I think he’s afraid to let the patients down.”

McVain shook his head. His pale face showed little gratification at the news, as if his flesh wouldn’t allow it. “My father was…a bartender at the…Seelbach’s basement. The Rathskeller. Then we moved to Chicago. I liked it there…until Prohibition started. Moved back home to get away from it up there. Had it in my head that I’d start a speakeasy…downtown somewhere.” He closed his eyes as if focusing on the memories. In its day, the hotel bar was the premier watering hole in the city, one of the first air-conditioned rooms ever built, with ornate columns and terra cotta ceiling. McVain’s eyes fluttered open again. “I wanted…to go back there…one more time…”

Wolfgang could see the truth festering behind those stark green Irish eyes. “Tell me about your father, McVain.”

“Like yours…mine wanted me to be a famous…musician.”

“But you became one.”

McVain readjusted his bed sheets and pulled them up higher, wincing noticeably. “He died when I was in Europe. Went crazy…shot himself.”

McVain’s anger had probably turned further inward after his father’s suicide, thought Wolfgang. Tragedy in layers. “Barker sometimes reminds me of my father,” Wolfgang said. “This is why I have a natural inclination to disobey him.”

A brief smile from McVain again.

“You guys were responsible for a riot.”

“They loved us. They tossed money. Did Rufus get it all?”

“He still has it.” Wolfgang sighed. He couldn’t be mad at them. “Who was the man with the mustache?”

McVain tried to laugh. “We took a trolley downtown. That flat tire and his wife were sitting…near the front when…we came in.” McVain closed his eyes and took a few painful breaths. “We sat down and the guy…he said no niggers were allowed up front.”

“Poor Rufus.”

“I threatened to…bump him off, you know.” McVain licked his lips, and even that task seemed difficult. He swallowed, wincing. “‘Niggers,’ I said to him…‘how dare you call…Rufus a name like that.’” McVain sniffed. His eyes grew heavy. “The wife went hysterical. Then Josef started…writing on that…damn chalkboard.” McVain wheezed another laugh, and tears pooled in his eyes from the pain.

Wolfgang touched McVain’s shoulder. “What did he write?”

“‘We all have TB.’” McVain coughed so violently his reddened eyes bulged. “I waved my mangled hand…in the man’s face. He cringed back so hard he fell…off his seat.”

Wolfgang wanted to look stern, but he was enjoying this story too much.

“They jumped up…ran to the back of the trolley…so fast it nearly…tipped over.” McVain’s eyes wandered toward the piano at the foot of the bed. “How’d I get back?”

“Lincoln drove like mad. Fifteen carried you in all by himself.”

McVain nodded, took it in. “And the Oakroom? Was that neat or what?”

Wolfgang tried his hardest not to smile. McVain, Rufus, and Josef had all lived the horrors of war and were now dying of an incurable disease, but for Wolfgang and his deformed foot, staring into the eyes of a drunk gangster and his gun was the most danger he’d ever experienced. It was as if he were going against his mother’s wishes all over again.

McVain grinned. “He nearly shot us all…but he didn’t count on you. You and your buddies.” He pointed his left pinkie heavenward. They both burst out laughing.

***

Wolfgang paced the length of the small center aisle in Waverly’s chapel. It was the second night Susannah had left early in the past week and a half, and he didn’t have to wonder about where she was going. No, he knew. He paced in the dark, his footfalls clicking against the floor. In his hand was a wine bottle. He tipped it to his mouth, drank, then wiped the warm taste from his lips. He envisioned Susannah and Dr. Barker together. His hands touching her bare flesh. Wolfgang tilted the bottle back again, then raised it in the air. “Sacramental wine, Dr. Barker.”

Susannah had asked,
How
am
I
supposed
to
find
anyone
to
marry
on
this
hillside?
And Dr. Barker was having problems with his marriage—at least that was the rumor. Had Susannah filled the void?

Wolfgang breathed deeply, starting to feel the alcohol. It hit him like a tsunami wave. It was wrong of him to spy on Susannah, but he had to know. He placed the open wine on the altar, cracking the bottle with the force of the movement. His head was swimming. The top of the altar had been a foot higher than he thought. Glass sprinkled to the floor of the chapel, and the remaining wine dripped down the glass like blood. He left it to pool and spread.

Wearing only a thin lab coat over his cassock, he felt his skin turn to ice in the temperature outside. His feet were numb by the time he’d entered the woods and found the footpath on the far side of the main road, which was covered with frozen patches of snow. It was eleven o’clock, and the wind chill had dropped to near zero. He buried his hands in the folds of his coat, hunkered down, and plowed his way over fallen limbs and ice-smothered leaves. His nose was beginning to run. The hair inside his nostrils felt like daggers. Up ahead was Dr. Barker’s cottage. Smoke puffed up from a stone chimney. He dragged his numb right leg down the footpath and spotted the glow of a light coming from the side window of Barker’s one-floor home, which, unlike Wolfgang’s, had a narrow veranda with posts that wrapped around three walls of the structure.

Wolfgang didn’t hesitate up the side steps. He knelt down on the wood-planked porch, wetting the knees of his pants, and peered into a frost-smeared window. A fire burned on the other side of the room. In the center was a yellow couch. Behind it was a desk with a lamp. Susannah sat at the desk with two stacks of papers in front of her, and Dr. Barker stood behind her with a glass of something in his hand. Something golden brown on ice, like whiskey?

Then Dr. Barker placed his hand on Susannah’s left shoulder. Susannah looked up at the man, but Wolfgang couldn’t tell if she was smiling or unnerved. Wolfgang lowered his head. He heard Dr. Barker’s voice.

“Can I get you anything?” he asked.

“No, thank you,” said Susannah.

“Are you sure? Not a drink? I’ve got bourbon.”

There was a hesitation before Susannah answered. “I need to be getting home anyway.”