Fervent Charity (26 page)

“No, I…” Lena turned to look at the house. The second story was gone, neatly sliced off. She turned back to the woman. If she wasn’t dead she must be having a very bad dream. “What is all…this?”

“Shadrack’s Circus and Novelty Acts. What’s left. I’m Maizie.”

“Oh!” She wasn’t crazy. She wasn’t dead. Lena remembered now an ad in the paper for the circus that was coming through Stone County all the way from somewhere in the south like Louisiana or Tennessee. At the bottom of the ad, in bolder type had been
Maizie Boggs and Her Amazing Dogs.
It looked like their chief attractions, the tiger and the lion and the dog act were gone.

“These your dogs?” asked Lena.

“What’s left of ’em,” Maizie said dully.

Lena’s fear about Gracia suddenly rose like a wave, held back behind her eyes by the thinnest transparency of will. A rivulet of that fear broke through, ran down her throat and swirled inside her chest. It wouldn’t do to lose herself to hysterics here. Not now. She had to think. If this was Cleremont she should be able to find her way to the telegraph office, if it was still standing. Ahead of her there was rubble of blue and red striped canvas and splintered wood where tents and wagons had been destroyed. Beyond that, the flax fields looked serenely blue, glittering with fresh rain under a sunny new sky.

Lena walked around the Sauer house and saw where Main Street began, and still was, all three blocks of it, intact. If she remembered correctly, the telegraph was in the post office and that was the last building on the west side. She picked up her skirts and forced her legs to run. She passed a man sweeping up the glass from a store window. He said “hello” but Lena was too full of fear to answer. She kept running.

The door to the post office was open. Behind the counter, an elderly man sorted mail as though nothing had happened. In here, not a piece of paper looked disturbed. He peered over his glasses and hooked a thumb under one of his suspenders.

Lena’s knees felt as if they would give way and she held on to the edge of the counter. “My name is Lena Kaiser,” she panted. “I have no money with me. You see I was carried here, just now…” she pointed south. “I was carried here from Charity in a house by the tornado. I landed in the middle of the circus. I need to telegraph home and find out if my little girl…tell them I’m all right. I’ll see that you get your money back. My two sisters live in Wheat Lake and my husband and his family live in Charity. My people started here. We were the Halversons. My pa—”

The man held up his hand and said, “I’ll send your telegram, Missus. Just tell me what and to who.”

“I’ll get your money to you, don’t worry.”

“I’m not worried.” He unhooked his thumb, reached for a pencil and licked the tip, and leaned on the counter with his elbows, pencil ready to write.

“Let’s see.” Lena trembled from head to foot. “What should I say? Oh, say…say…Oh…send it to Alvinia Torgerson in Charity.” She didn’t want to send it to Will. If he was sober, he’d come and get her, but she never knew, any more, if he was going to be sober. “Say, ‘Blown to Cleremont. Is Gracia all right? Waiting answer. Lena.’ Does that sound all right?”

“That should do it. Glass of water or some coffee while you wait?”

“No.”

Lena staggered outside and collapsed on the edge of the wooden sidewalk. She heard his keys tapping out her message. Then, quiet.

The fear and panic that rode high in her chest began to spin like a ball. She had to contain it. She almost fainted from it. She put her head down on her knees and encircled them with her arms. She didn’t care about anybody or anything except Gracia. She didn’t care about Will. The whole town of Charity could be just a smudge on the way to the Rockies if only Gracia was still alive. She herself could explode and die and it didn’t matter as long as she knew Gracia was well.
Don’t you dare take my child and leave me! Don’t you dare! Please God
, she prayed and threatened and made promises till her mind was exhausted. Finally when she was certain she couldn’t bear another moment, the telegraph clicked.

She jumped up and ran back inside. The man was scribbling on a small piece of paper. When he finished, he handed the paper to her.
Gracia well. We are all well. Stop. Only house and outhouse gone. How are you? Stop. Alvinia.
She nodded her thanks, took it outside, resumed her seat on the sidewalk and wept. As she dried her eyes on her skirt she thought for the first time with annoyance,
Wait till I see Percy, the big dumb cluck. ‘No hail, no twister.’
She found a handkerchief in her pocket and wiped her face and blew her nose.
I hope the house didn’t land on anybody. Oh! Ethel! Poor Ethel! Her whole house cut in two and gone.

Lena remembered now the crying circus people, the blood on Maizie’s head. She spotted an old straw hat lying on the ground. She picked it up. “Is this anybody’s?” There was no one to hear her question except the telegraph operator and he didn’t answer.
There’s no use in getting
a sunburn on top of everything else.
She put it on and went to make herself useful.

If Gracia had been killed, there would have been no reason to go home. No reason at all. But knowing she was well and safe in Alvinia’s care, Lena could take her time. She wasn’t one to leave a mess.

She tucked her precious message into her pocket and walked briskly back to the scene of the circus carnage. She was grateful for the hat. With the haze swept away, the sun was beating down strongly. She found Maizie where she had left her. “Here, let’s find something to clean you up with and see how bad your head is. Cleremont doesn’t have a doctor. Someone would have sent to Wheat Lake for one by now.” No, she reminded herself. Dr. Llewellyn was in Charity. They would have to send to Ft. Gifford.

One man in a blue outfit that looked like dyed long underwear was crying over the bodies of the big cats. She felt sorry for him and them. As Lena took charge of Maizie Boggs, she noticed others were coming out to help the circus folk.

The townspeople were gathering or carrying those who were hurt into the church. Lena took Maizie by the elbow and followed along. The inside of the square, one-room church already hummed with low moaning and weeping, and other quiet, soothing voices.

Lena found Maizie a place to sit at the end of a middle pew and told her to wait. Blankets, bandages, food, and buckets of water were appearing in the back of the church and Lena collected what she needed. She draped a blanket around Maizie’s shoulders and put a cup of hot coffee in her hands. Then she bathed her head. Maizie accepted Lena’s help numbly. The wound didn’t look bad, but you couldn’t tell with head wounds. Lena said, “When a doctor gets here, you’ll have to have him look at this. Are you hungry? There’s a lot of food here. Let me bring you something.”

Maizie shook her head and began to weep copiously. “My dogs! My dogs!”

“They’re not all dead.” Lena patted her shoulder. “Let’s go take care of them. Can you stand up all right?”

Maizie nodded, and Lena walked her to the back of the church.

At the door, they were met by the tallest man Lena had ever seen. Seven feet tall, at least, she estimated. “Amos!” Maizie cried. “My dogs! My dogs!”

“It’s all right, Maizie. I was looking for you.” He had a foreign accent Lena couldn’t place. “I got them rounded up.”

Maizie went to him and he took her hand tenderly. She stopped and looked back at Lena. “I hope you get home all right.”

Lena waved and thought,
I hope so too.

There now seemed to be as many people from Cleremont in the church as there were injured. Everyone was being looked after. Lena was hungry. She hadn’t had anything all day except a piece of candy and a cup of coffee. From the food stuffs being brought into the church, Lena took for herself the heel of a loaf of bread and dipped a bowl into a shiny pail of milk still warm and frothy from the cow. In a corner seat out of the way she sopped the bread in the milk and ate it hungrily, then she drank what was left. She left her bowl in a basket of dirty dishes and looked around for the minister. He wasn’t hard to spot—a roly-poly, thin-haired man in a worn black suit and clerical collar. He was hauling out a bucket of dirty water and she caught up to him just outside the church. “Excuse me, Reverend…”

“Mickelson.” He put his bucket down, wiped his brow with a handkerchief and smiled. “Are you with the circus?”

“Oh, no. I was blown here from Charity. See that house over there? What’s left of it? I rode in on that.”

He stared at the bottom half of the house and back at Lena in her blue dress and battered straw hat. His amazement dissolved into a chuckle. “My my my. So you need to get home, then.”

“Yes, pastor, I do. But I only need to get to Wheat Lake from here. I have people there.”

“Well, now, let’s see.” He mopped his face all over again, appearing glad for a moment to catch his breath. “Come with me,” he said. He left the bucket where it stood.

He took her along Main Street to the same windowless store she had passed on her way to the telegraph office. The Rev. Mickelson said, “Wait here now. Don’t worry.” He went inside and in a few minutes was out again, accompanied by the man who had been sweeping glass off the sidewalk. “Mrs…”

“Kaiser. Lena Kaiser.”

“Mrs. Kaiser, this is Otto Ditmanson. He owns our general store.”

“Hello there.” Lena adjusted her hat. “I’m sorry I ran by you before. I was worried about my little girl, you see, and I had to get to the telegraph…”

Otto Ditmanson just smiled and waved away her apology.

The minister’s brow wrinkled in concern. “Is your child all right?”

“Yes.” Lena nodded for emphasis.

“Thank heaven for that.”

Otto Ditmanson said, “My boy can take you in his wagon.”

She heard a harness jingle and shifted her gaze to see a pretty gray pony come around the corner pulling a big-wheeled cart. There was just room for two people on the seat, Lena was small and the boy driving the pony wasn’t too big either.

“Thanks a million. And you take care of these poor circus folks, now.”

“We sure will,” said the minister.

Lena thanked them both again and climbed up into the seat of the cart.

The boy grinned broadly. His hair was red. His face was freckled. “I’m Rusty,” he said.

“You must take after your mother.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“I’m Lena Kaiser. You can call me Lena.”

His father said, “Get her to where she wants to go now and come right back. No dawdling.”

“Right, Pa.” Rusty seemed pleased with his responsibility and his unexpected adventure. He clucked loudly and the pony started forward, his head high.

“So, Pa said you were carried here in the twister!”

“That’s right.”

“Jiminy! What was that like?”

Lena thought for a minute. “It was like having a train run over you. Very loud. And hard to breathe.”

“Jiminy! And it sawed that house right in half and you’re okay?”

“Not a scratch.”

“Jiminy!”

“Yes, that about covers it. That’s a real nice pony you got there, Rusty.”

“Yes ma’am,” the boy said with some pride. “Pa and Ma gave him to me for my birthday.”

“What’s his name?”

“Bob. Bobby.”

“Good name for a pony,” Lena said.

Rusty was a talkative young man and Lena listened, interposing a brief question here and there. She learned that he was thirteen years old. He went to school and helped out in his father’s store. He had one younger sister and his mother kept chickens out back of the store so they sold eggs in addition to their other goods. Lena put her head back and breathed in the fresh air. The atmosphere had been scoured clean. The few trees around Cleremont had bent and broken branches. The crops still leaned. Rusty worked in his father’s store now but he didn’t plan to do that forever. When he was old enough he wanted to go west or east, he didn’t care which, to see an ocean. The birds were coming out singing up a storm—little bird
glory hallelujahs
that they survived. Where do the poor birds go, she wondered, when the wind and hail come? Somehow, they survive, or most of them do, anyway. She saw a snake slither off the road into the grass, and a ground squirrel disappeared into the roadside wildflowers. A hawk circled overhead, getting a bead on some small animal whose misfortune meant the hawk and his family lived another day. God’s world was not kind, but somehow it worked. Rusty continued to muse on how he would get the money to go to an ocean, maybe he would work his way along.

With her fear lifted, Lena enjoyed herself. She felt bad for the people in the circus. She felt sorry for the animals and for Ethel Sauer. But she and those she loved were unscathed. It was a glorious day to be riding in a cart with a strapping lad named Rusty behind a pony named Bob.

As they rolled past a field, Lena checked the corn.
Knee high by the Fourth of July
. Right on schedule. The twister had cut a narrow swath. She was out of its track now and didn’t see any damage anywhere.

“I really appreciate your giving me a lift, Rusty. You know, I know somebody who has seen the ocean.”

“Yeah? Which one?” Rusty asked eagerly.

“She’s from the east.”

“That would be the Atlantic then, Ma’am.”

“She could tell you a lot about it and how to get there, too, I’ll bet.”

“Really?”

“Oh, yes. I’ll have her write to you. It won’t be right away because she is away visiting. But when she gets back, I’ll ask her to write you a letter and you can take it from there.”

“Gee, Mrs. Kaiser, that would be swell! Jiminy!”

The cart rolled along. The sun was lowering itself in the west. Lena pulled the brim of her straw hat down in the front to keep the sun out of her eyes. She was lulled by the rhythm of the cart, the repetitive jingle of the harness and felt more relaxed and at ease than she had for months. Rusty broke the spell.

“Here we are, Missus.” He was about to turn them to the left to go into Wheat Lake when Lena put her hand on his arm. He pulled Bob to a stop. “Town’s up that way, Ma’am.”