THE WATERS

By Jo

Part Twenty-nine:

Captain lay on his side, draped over the dormer's roof, his arms and legs hanging limply down. Letty screamed, rushed toward him but Hans knew the man needed to be moved quickly from such a spot and he rested a large hand on her shoulder. "You let me take him. Follow to wagon

I have just there." He pointed beyond some bushes. He slid his arms under Captain, easily

lifting him, and began walking with him up the muddy lane. Dazed, not yet able to marshal her thoughts in any reasonable fashion, Letty trotted along behind the man, who must have been at least six foot five, the strides he took  huge in their length.

As they approached the wagon, Letty panted out, "His side. Be careful with his side. A railroad tie...."

Hans stopped, turning to look at her, Captain still in his arms. "This man, he love you. Very

big love. Good man. You know this?"

She shook her head up and down,  fresh tears in her eyes. "I know this. Thank...thank you for your help. What...what do we do now?"

He jerked his head up the mountainside. "We go to my home. You rest there. Out of rain you rest." Then he lifted Captain higher, setting him over the old plank side of the wagon, laying

him gently on its bed.  Without another word, he picked Letty up, his hands around her
waist, and set her in the wagon beside him.  Getting up in the driver's seat, he said something

to the mules in German, carefully turning the wagon and heading up the mountainside.  His

lips curved slightly as he drove.  He had been right. There was need for another trip tonight.

Letty settled beside Captain, who lay on his back, his head rocking somewhat as the wooden wagon wheels bounced over ruts and small stones.  She touched his face.  He was alive. How

was he alive?  The boxcar...? No, there was no use in thinking about that now. He was here,
had found her, had saved her and the miracle of that was too much to grasp.

She tried to lean over him a bit, to shelter his face from the rain.  His lips were somewhat

parted and she worried he might choke if too much water got in his mouth. She called his

name softly a number of times with no response.  How...how in God's name had he found her inside that room at the edge of the fire?  There seemed no explanation to it that made any

sense.

It was quite dark now and the further they got up the mountainside, the more woods between

them and the fire, the harder it was for her to see him. It was all so...unreal. How could she

be here in some wagon going someplace she didn't know and with him lying there so still?

How could the day before her wedding have gotten from its beginning to where it was now?

She shivered, cold to her bones, thinking of that last look on her father's face. And Erin? What

had become of her? Would Captain know? When he woke up could he tell her? When, yes,

when. He would wake up. Just get him someplace out of this chilling rain, get him dry, taken

care of and he'd be fine. She lay her palm on his cheek. His flesh was cold, so very cold. He'd

been wet for so many hours. Had this been a single day? It had to be more than that. A day

alone wasn't big enough to hold all that had happened, all that had been lost. A fresh chill

ran through her as she kept her hand on him. All that could yet be lost.

Hans pulled the wagon to a stop just beside his small house. Berta was coming out onto the porch, bringing soup to those huddled there when she saw him. Pulling her shawl up over her head, she ran toward him, splashing in the puddles that lay everywhere.

He jumped down beside her, giving her a quick kiss. "I have two, a young man and his wife.

They need to come inside the house."

"Oh, Hans, more have come since you went back down the mountain. I have added a family

of eight to the ones inside, two sick children. There is no more room. You'll have to take them

to the barn, though I fear there may be no room there, either."

Hans' brow knit. "This is a good man, Berta. I watched him. He was injured yet he went out

into the flood to save his wife."  He opened the rear gate of the wagon. "Do not worry," he

said to Letty. "I find room. I get your husband under a roof."

Letty made no attempt to correct him. She wanted to stay with Captain, she would stay with

him, and if people thought him her husband, then that would be all the easier for her to do.

Again she followed the big man as he carried Captain inside the barn. Quite a few people

were in there and he made his way to a stall at the very end where three middle-aged men

huddled.

"I am sorry, but I must lay this man here. You move, find another place, please, in the barn."

The men, who had not been caught in the flood, but had escaped up the mountain in time,

looked at the owner of the barn. Hanging limply in his arms was a young man, his clothes

ripped to pieces the length of his right side. Beside him stood a young woman, sopping wet,

shaking. The men stood, recognizing a need greater than their own.

Sam, a mill worker, asked, "Anything I can do to help?"

"Bale of hay there." Hans indicated with a jerk of his head the bale that Sam had just been

sitting on. "Please spread, yes?"

When the fresh hay was lain atop the older straw of the stall, Hans knelt with Captain in

his arms and laid him gently down.

"He hurt bad?" another of the men asked.

"Bad enough," Hans replied, moving to get a lantern and hanging it on a nail inside the stall.

Letty was kneeling beside Captain, looking at him in the lantern light. "I bring you warm

water, ok? You clean where he's hurt. I bring sheet for bandaging strips." Then he was gone.

The men, too, moved away to give the young couple some privacy. "There's a lotta folk like

that'un," Sam commented, "needin' themselves a doctor. Don't look like there's much chance

of that, not for a while noways."

"Oh, Captain!" Letty whispered, shaking her head. How had he done it? The way he'd held

her in that room she hadn't been able to tell how badly he was hurt. The whole right side of

his shirt was now almost completely gone. It was, she thought, the very first time she'd ever

seen his body. Tomorrow...tomorrow she would have, yes, and how different that would have

been. Her trembling fingers touched his side as lightly as she could. His flesh there was

swollen, purplish from the railroad tie. And then he'd hit the dormer roof there, too.

In a few minutes Hans returned with a big soup kettle, its lid on as he crossed the yard to keep the rain from the warm water it contained. He had several small towels and a sheet tucked under his arm. Setting the pot and towels beside Letty, he began tearing the sheet into long

strips, his eyes on Captain as he worked.

"He has courage, this one," Hans said. "I think God would be pleased for him to live."

He knelt again, lifting Captain's upper body enough that Letty could remove the remnants

of the white shirt Patrick had let him use that morning. "I find blanket for him," he said.

Letty hardly knew where to begin. She'd tended Erin's little scratches and abrasions, but

had never actually even seen anyone hurt as much as Captain was. She took the lid off the

kettle, dipped a small towel in, then wrung it out. The rain during the ride up the mountain

had washed a lot of the mud off him, but his face was still streaked and...the side of his head

above his ear. Yes, the matted blood there. She would work on that first. She turned his head

to the left, and something about the fact that she could do that, could move him and he would

simply stay as she put him because...because he was not able to move himself, clutched her

heart with an almost icy terror. Silent tears running steadily down her cheeks, she dabbed

at the blood in his hair. When the white towel was red with it, red and brown from the mud,

she didn't want to put it back in the kettle. About a yard from where she sat was a hole in

the barn wall, maybe eight inches wide, and rain from the roof streamed down the barn

wall just outside. She put her hand through it, letting the rain rinse the cloth before she

soaked it once more in the warm kettle water. Turning his head again, she washed his face,

down his neck. This was the most she'd ever touched him.

The towel rinsed again, she wiped utterly gently down his side and the more mud she removed,

the more discoloration of his flesh she could see and a large, almost square raw area appeared

where the tie had impacted. Then she moved closer to his leg. A bit of material at the cuff was

all that held the side of his pantsleg together and she pulled that apart, spreading the material

out. The full outer length of his leg was scraped, with deeper cuts here and there. He should

have some sort of medication for it, she knew, hoping as she cleaned it that the mere getting

dirt off it would at least help.

Then the big man was there again. "You do good," he said, nodding. "Now we wrap, yes,

you and me?"

She nodded back at him. "Thank you, Mr....?"

"Mueller. Hans Mueller." He squatted beside her, touching Captain's side. "Broken," he

announced. "Many ribs broken. We bind them up now."

Again he got Captain into a semi-seated position and with Letty supporting his shoulders,

Hans wrapped long strips of the sheet around and around Captain's torso. "When he wake,"

he said, "there will be much pain."  He looked at Letty, shrugging slightly. "Ribs hurt. I

know."

They laid Captain flat again and Hans rather efficiently wrapped strips of sheeting around

his leg, having to brush away straw that wanted to cling. Then his large fingers moved through

Captain's hair, finding a deep gash that still oozed blood. He made a pad of folded sheeting

and tied it into place with a thin strip. "Better," he smiled over at Letty, who was not at all

sure how much better Captain looked. He resembled all too much the picture of a mummy

she'd seen in a book.

She hadn't noticed that when Hans arrived this last time, he'd set a small pile of things to

one side. Now he produced one of his flannel shirts and together they got it on Captain.

It literally swallowed him, but at least it would help keep him warm and it covered his

torso so he looked somewhat less mummy-like. Then Hans unfolded a quilt and lay it over

Captain, not mentioning that all the blankets in his house were in use and he'd taken this

one off his own bed.

Letty's dress, except for the bottom, fuller part of her skirt, had dried on her body, and

when she was alone again, she dipped a different towel in the now-cool water, washing her

own face, neck, and hands. Then she lay beside him to his left under the quilt, tucking

the wet portion of her skirt away from him. He still felt cold to her so she pulled more of the straw up over him atop the quilt. She turned on her side toward him, burying her face against his neck, wrapping his left arm in her arms as the only part of him she felt she could hold onto

without hurting him, and she simply lay there a long time, listening to him breathe, praying

that his breaths would not cease for then she had no idea how she would continue to live.

Some while later, exhausted in every way it's possible to be exhausted, she fell asleep and

was unaware that in the wee hours of the night Hans came to check on them. The young

man was so still, Hans bent to touch his neck, sighing when he felt the pulse under his

fingers.

Before dawn Letty was awakened by some change in Captain's breathing. Even in her sleep

she'd kept some part of herself aware of it as it and it alone kept what was left of her world

in orbit. Propping herself up on her right elbow, she listened intently. The lantern had gone

out and she couldn't see him. He would breathe in, then every breath he breathed out through

his mouth was accompanied by a soft, low sound. Was it that the breathing hurt? Was that it?

Was he becoming aware enough now that pain was making itself known? Her fear had been

that he'd hurt his head again in that last fall, that he would never wake again. Now she remembered what Mr. Mueller had said, that when he woke, it would be to pain. She didn't

want that for him, either, but she did want to know that he could wake.

"Captain?" She tried his name again.

A longer, still unintelligible sound came with his next breath.

"Captain...darling? It's Letty. I'm here with you. I'm right here."

Again he made a sound and in the darkness she put her palm on his brow, finding it deeply

knit. The minutes ticked by, long and dark, and he couldn't speak. She lay beside him,

whispering into his ear, telling him she was all right, that he had saved her, telling him they

were in Mr. Mueller's barn atop the mountain ridge, that she loved him. Over and over she

told him how much she loved him, unsure if he could hear her, could understand her, but on

and on she went.

Gradually the dawn came, grey, heavy with mist and remnants of the smoke that rose from

the valley far below. She began to be able to make out his face, the dark circles under his

eyes, the large bruise on his right cheekbone, the scratches on his chin. She wanted to wrap

her arms around him, hold him, press him to her, but she could do none of that, so still she

held his left arm, kissing his hand, kissing the two marks from something on his palm.

And as gradually as the coming of the dawn, he became aware that she was there. For a while

he wanted to let her know he knew but couldn't seem to find a way to do that. She was holding

his left hand and after a time, he managed to squeeze his fingers, just a little, around hers.

"Oh, darling!" He felt her tears on his face. One was on his lower lip and the tip of his tongue

came out, touching it, then pulled it in. It was as much as he could do to take her into himself

"Love...love you." His voice was barely audible.

She began kissing his face, crying more in her relief, only stopping when he made a large

grimace of pain. "Oh...I hurt you! I'm sorry...I...."

"No...not you. Feels good. Side. Side hurts." 

"You've broken ribs, darling. Lots I think. I don't know how many."

His eyes were still closed, but he managed the barest smile. "All."

He breathed for a while longer, then lifted his lids halfway. "You...you're all right?"

"Not hurt. I don't know how, but I'm not hurt."

His eyes closed. "Good." After a few moments of breathing through the pain, he looked at

her again. "Erin?"

"You don't know?"  She bit her lip.

"After...what happened...after?"

"After the railroad tie? She called to me that you were dead. I...I was trying to figure out how

to get to her but...."

"But...?"

"A boxcar, an enormous boxcar. It...it...just came up out of the debris...up into the air. It...."

"What, Letty?"

"It fell where your raft was. I...I couldn't see you...after. You were gone, both of you...just a

scrap of her yellow dress. That's all I saw." She wiped away some of her tears. "When...when

you came...last night...when you came...I thought...hoped...you knew where she was."

He squeezed his eyes tightly shut, tears still welling out. Erin, his darling little Erin. His chin

trembled and the effort not to cry only made his body hurt worse. His mind filled with the

sight of the collapse of the hotel, of Patrick, Maureen in his arms, disappearing in a rush of

water and splintering wood. "Oh, Letty...I...."

"I know," she whispered, kissing his cheeks, "I know. But you need to rest, see if you can

sleep."

"I...can't." His eyes opened, his lashes starred with tears. "Help me sit."

"You can't...no!"

He began pushing with his hands in the straw, trying to sit on his own. "Captain, no! What

are you thinking? You can't...."

"I have to know. I...have...to." He was gasping with the pain of the effort. "Help me...please."

She got behind him, trying to lift his shoulders, and in a while he was sitting there in the stall,

his legs still covered by the quilt and the straw. His hands now were pressed to his face as he

tried to overcome the dizziness and increased level of pain.

"What have we here?" It was Hans, standing at the open end of the stall.

"Oh, Mr. Mueller, thank goodness! Captain...he...he's trying to get up."

Hans came up, squatting beside Captain. "And why, Captain, must you get up?" He didn't

ask about the name.

"Parents. I have to find my parents. Letty's. My...." He'd been going to say Letty's family, but

he knew they were his family, too. He looked over at the strong, German face with pleading

eyes. "Help me...up. Please."

"You think you will walk down this mountain, down into that valley?"

"I think...," he breathed hard, "I think I will do what I must."

Hans nodded seriously. "I, too, think you will do this. I saw you last night going out toward

the fire because you must."

"Last night? That was you, on the logs, that was you?"

"Yes, me. It was a thing I knew I must do."

"You...you understand, then? I must."

"First you eat porridge then we see about what must be done." Hans brought another bale of

hay for Captain to lean against. "Must can be done when the belly is empty, yes, but it is better

done when the belly is full. You wait. Not long. You wait."

"Who...how?" Captain looked at Letty when Hans had gone.

"Mr. Mueller. This is his barn. This, his house, are filled with refugees from the flood. He came

down the mountain in his wagon last night. He was just...there...on the logs. I don't think we

would have made it that last part if he hadn't come. Then you fell down the roof, really hard,

and he brought us up here in the wagon. He...he said you were a good man, that you loved me."

Captain took her hand, lifting it to his lips. "He was right...about that last part."

ON TO PART 30

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