Chapter Fifty-One

JUNE 1948

Joe could never remember which came first —the whiff of smoke or the screamed alarm from someone sitting at a table nearest the barn. He dropped the bowl he’d stood to refill.

Once the cry went up, a riot broke loose. Women screamed, running over the yard and gardens, rounding up youngsters, counting heads. Men rolled out the garden hose, hunted madly for rugs and rakes —some on unsteady feet —pulled tablecloths off the sawhorse tables, and charged the barn. The first one there flung open the big double doors to a wall of flames.

“Get back! Get back!” Reverend Pierce opened his arms to herd the women and children toward the house.

Marshall was at his side in a moment. “Anybody in the barn?”

“No idea,” Reverend Pierce answered. “None that I know of, but —”

“I saw two boys go in, maybe twenty minutes ago. Don’t know where they are now,” a woman called out.

“It was Ruby Lynne’s little boy and Billy Chatham!” Gladys Percy called. “Did anybody see them come out?”

“Billy? My Billy?” Mrs. Chatham pushed to breach the barrier.

Ruby Lynne ran out the kitchen door. “Kenny! Where’s Kenny?”

“Oh my —they’re in the barn!” Mrs. Chatham screamed. “Help! Help them!”

Rhoan Wishon headed straight for the flames, but Marshall was ahead of him. Joe hung back, fighting images he’d long pushed from his mind of his father and mother, burning in the apartment explosion. Images, more recent, of the rain of fire on Omaha Beach —men cut down in machine-gun fire, men engulfed in flames —flashed through his mind in rapid succession.

“Kenny! Billy! You in here?” Marshall called out.

“Kenny, answer me, son! Where are you?” Rhoan choked against the smoke.

“Up here, Mr. Wishon! We’re up here! There’s somethin’ the matter with Kenny. I can’t get him to wake up.”

“Billy! Get down here, now!”

“I’m afraid. There’s fire!”

Joe’s chest tight, he forced himself to follow Marshall into the barn, one foot in front of the other. He saw what Billy saw, fire already creeping up the ladder. Threat to human life spurred Joe into action. “Jump, Billy! I’ll catch you.”

“Roll Kenny out first, to the edge —I’ll catch him!” Rhoan called, but it was too late. Billy had already jumped into Joe’s arms.

“Kenny! Kenny!” Rhoan beat against the flames shooting up the ladder, stepped above them. But his weight was too great for the half-burned ladder and it broke, sending Rhoan to the floor of the barn in a scream of agony.

“Get Billy out of here, then come help me get Rhoan,” Marshall ordered.

Joe did as he was told, rushing Billy back to the barn entrance. Reverends Willard and Pierce grabbed the boy between them, carrying him toward his mother. Joe pushed back into the flames, covering his face as best he could.

Marshall had dragged Rhoan halfway to the barn door, while Rhoan, coughing and crying for Kenny, beat against his chest, shouting to let him go back for his grandson, though he couldn’t stand.

“Broken leg —gotta get him out,” Marshall choked.

They made it out just as the front beam of the barn collapsed.

“Daddy —Daddy, where’s Kenny? Kenny!” Ruby Lynne cradled her daddy’s head, screaming all the while for her son.

Marshall headed back in, but Joe pulled him from the flames and they both ended up in the dirt together. “You can’t go back in there —it’s an inferno!” Joe wasn’t about to lose his friend. “There’s no way in!”

But Marshall pushed Joe off him, pulled himself up and ran behind the barn.

Joe struggled to his knees and followed. “Where —” He stopped, not believing what he saw. Marshall had hoisted himself up a tree nearly strangled in honeysuckle vines —strong ones, old ones —and was jerking them free, pulling hard, blood running from his hands as the vines cut into flesh. “Marshall, what —”

“Stand back!” Marshall yelled and, pulling back as far as he dared, swung toward the open door of the barn’s second story. He came short of reaching the upper floor but kicked hard against the barn’s side, swung back, and repeated the attempt. Three times he tried and failed.

Marshall gritted his teeth and set his jaw, pumping his legs for one strong push, and just made the upper floor’s edge. Hooking one elbow over the floor, he pulled himself up, hanging on to the vine as best he could, then crawled into the smoke.

“Marshall!” Joe yelled again and again as flames shot into the upper story. Olney and Chester appeared, Reverend Willard limping just behind them. They could still hear Ruby Lynne screaming for her son on the other side of the barn.

A minute passed. Three. Men, dead sober now if they weren’t before, and frantic women beat the flames outside the barn, but it was a lost cause.

“The place is tinder with all that hay,” Reverend Willard lamented. “Dear God, help! Please help Marshall and Kenny!”

Joe felt the sickness come up from his stomach at the image of his friend burning. The faces of his parents and the shores of France shot through his mind again.

And in that moment when nothing could walk out of that fire alive, Marshall appeared at the top of the barn, his shirt in flames, struggling to stand, but holding a limp child in his arms. “Joe,” he barely whispered.

Joe and Chester locked arms and stood beneath the burning building, as close as they dared. “Let him go!”

Marshall did, and Kenny, dishrag limp, fell into the human basket they’d made.

“Marshall! Son —get outta there!” Olney called to his nephew, tears streaming down his face. “Dear God, please help him —help him, Lord!”

But Marshall was too far gone to hear. He stood unsteadily, leaning, nodded as if to some unseen force, and fell, as the barn’s upper floor collapsed beneath him.

Joe shoved Kenny into Chester’s arms. He and Olney rushed into the burning shreds of the barn and dragged Marshall from the flames. Once clear, Joe pounded the fire from Marshall’s shirt as Celia, who’d appeared from he didn’t know where, pounded flames from his.

“Is he —”

But Joe couldn’t answer Celia. He ripped Marshall’s shirt open at the neck to get his fingers against his carotid artery, searching for a pulse. At first, he didn’t feel a thing, but he closed his eyes to concentrate, pressing a little harder until he felt a faint beat against his fingers. “He’s alive, but it’s weak.”

“His leg.” Celia pointed.

Marshall’s right leg was twisted at an odd angle. Worse, Joe knew, Marshall needed help for the amount of smoke he’d surely taken into his lungs and the third-degree burns over his face and upper torso. No telling what internal injuries there might be from the fall.

“Where’s Doc Vishnevsky?”

“With Kenny and Mr. Wishon.”

“What do you need, son?” Reverend Pierce was at Joe’s side.

“We’ve got to get him to a hospital. He’s going to need oxygen —and treatment for these burns.”

“Doc Vishy’s car,” Celia offered.

“We need a truck bed —for Marshall and Kenny both.”

“Rhoan will let us use his,” Reverend Willard said. “I’ll get a pallet made up in the back. We’ll drive it around back here. Hold on.”

Reverend Willard disappeared. Joe prayed like he’d never prayed before. Dear God, save him. He’s come all this way, all this time, and now this —because he risked his life to save somebody else’s child. His own little girl needs him alive and well.

It wasn’t five minutes till Rhoan’s engine roared to life and Reverend Willard drove around the still-burning barn. Kenny already lay on the truck bed’s pallet, his head in his mother’s lap. Joe nodded. Good. Good to keep the boy’s head elevated. Reverend Willard limped out of the truck. “Doc’s setting Rhoan’s leg and treating burns some of the men got battling the fire. He said to get Kenny to the hospital as fast as we can. I told him about Marshall, and he said to take him in first . . . and hurry.”

Joe nodded. “Help me lift him. It’s going to hurt worse than bullets, but he’s out so cold he’ll never know.”

Reverend Willard, Reverend Pierce, and Olney helped Joe lift Marshall as gently as they could, but even so, skin peeled off in their hands. “Dear God, please help,” Reverend Willard prayed aloud, his voice cracking.

Chester and Celia had jumped into the back of the truck, lifting a quilt to Marshall’s back so when the men set him in, they could pull him into the truck bed.

“Careful! Gentle!” Joe admonished, though he saw they were. Marshall groaned. A good sign.

“I’ll drive, Joe. I know the way.” Reverend Willard grabbed the wheel and pulled himself up into the cab. “You stay with Marshall and Kenny.”

Joe didn’t need a second invitation. He hopped up in the truck bed beside Ruby Lynne, carefully lifting Marshall’s head to his knee. Celia and Lilliana filled the cab.

“Should I come?” Chester asked, uncertainty in his eyes.

“I could use your help getting them out,” Joe spoke up, though there was clearly no room in the truck bed.

In a heartbeat Lilliana and Celia vacated the cab. Chester climbed in, saying, “Olney, you come, too.”

Joe was sorry he hadn’t said that, but he could barely think. What more could he do to keep the two alive until they reached the hospital? Where was the doc?

As if he could read minds, Olney said, “Doc said you’ll know more about burns than he will, and he’s needed here.”

Joe wasn’t so sure, but there wasn’t time to argue. The truck engine sputtered, sounded as if it might flood, then finally roared to life. Reverend Willard drove as fast as Joe knew he dared, spewing gravel and swerving to avoid potholes. Joe held a flashlight above Kenny. The boy was still but breathing a little better than when he and Chester had first caught him. “Good. That’s good.”

Tears streaked Ruby Lynne’s face. “Is he gonna make it?”

“Kenny will be fine. He’s inhaled a lot of smoke, but he’s going to make it. They’ll treat his burns, check that arm. I don’t think he has other injuries.”

“What about Marshall?”

Joe couldn’t see the worry in Ruby Lynne’s eyes but heard it in her voice. He shook his head. He was a doctor and he could barely bring himself to look into the burned face of his friend. “I hope it’s not far to the hospital.”

“Next town over. It won’t be long.”

“The sooner the better,” Joe whispered. Ruby Lynne’s familiarity with the area gave him hope, but hope, he knew, was a fragile thing.

Twenty minutes later they pulled into the pitch-dark parking lot of a small hospital, or what looked more like a rural medical clinic to Joe. A single faint light burned through the front door.

“At last,” Ruby Lynne sighed.

Olney hopped out of the truck and ran up the steps to the front door. Joe heard him jiggle the door handle, then frantically beat on the door. No one came. Joe leaned around the cab. Olney knocked again, framing his eyes with his palms to better see through the glass.

Who locks a hospital?

“I’m gonna run around back, see who I can find.” Joe could hear Olney coming down the steps when the door finally opened.

“Who’s there?” A woman in white peered into the dark.

“We’ve two burn victims, ma’am,” Chester called, climbing out of the cab. “They’re real bad off —a barn caught fire with them in it.”

“Land sakes! I’ll get the doctor. Can you carry them in? Do you need a stretcher?”

“A stretcher would be good, ma’am. They hurt real bad.” Olney was back in a flash, pulling his hat from his head.

The woman, frowning at Olney, hesitated, but looked back toward Chester. “I’ll get the doctor,” she repeated.

“What about the —” But Chester was cut off when the woman closed the door.

“Let’s get them inside,” Joe insisted, frustrated that time was wasting. Marshall’s breathing came shallow.

Reverend Willard was out of the cab, pulling down the tailgate, drawing the quilt Kenny rested on toward himself. Ruby Lynne, already on her knees, kept her son’s head elevated. Kenny was coming to, moaning but very much alive.

“Let me take him, Reverend Willard.” Chester pushed between them. It was just as well. Joe knew that with Reverend Willard’s bum leg it would be too easy to stumble in the dark.

By the time Chester made the front stoop, the door opened. The nurse led Chester to a room off the side of the hallway.

“Olney, Reverend Willard,” Joe instructed, “help me carry Marshall.”

Without a word the men worked together. By the time they’d gingerly pulled Marshall’s quilt to the edge of the tailgate, Chester was back. Each man took a corner, holding the quilt’s hem at intervals, doing their best not to rub against Marshall’s already peeling skin.

They were up the stairs and through the doorway when the nurse gasped. “You can’t bring him in here!”

“He’s in worse shape than the boy. He needs the doctor right away,” Joe ordered.

“Not here. Didn’t you see the sign?” She sounded exasperated but Joe didn’t know what she was talking about.

Reverend Willard intervened. “He needs help. Joe, here, is a doctor and said he might not live if we don’t get more help for him.”

“Smoke inhalation.” Joe couldn’t believe he needed to explain. “His lungs —”

“I’m sorry. I can’t help who you are or what he needs; this is a whites-only clinic.” She was firm —all the while they held Marshall by the quilt, all the while his breathing labored, shallow and short.

Joe wanted to smash the woman’s face. What didn’t she understand? “He could die.” He said it slowly and deliberately, eyes boring into hers.

She lifted her chin. “Don’t take that tone with me. I don’t make the rules. If you want that boy to live, you’d best get him to a hospital that treats his kind. We have laws, you know, and rules.”

“Where?” Olney begged. “We’re losing precious time, Joe. We can’t be standin’ here arguing.”

A man in a white coat stepped out of the room Kenny and Ruby Lynne had disappeared into. He took a look at Marshall’s face and winced. “Try Kate Bitting Reynolds Memorial. They take colored.”

“Where’s that?” Olney was the only one ready to go.

“Winston-Salem.”

“Winston-Salem?” Reverend Willard gasped. “That’s sixty miles! He won’t make it. We’re in a truck over back roads.”

The doctor shook his head. He walked back into the examining room and shut the door.

Joe stood frozen. “I can’t believe —”

“Joe, we’re wasting time. Get my boy in the truck. Now.” Olney was not to be ignored.

It was all Joe could do to turn, to keep his footing sure and the sting in his eyes from blinding his vision.

They laid Marshall back in the truck bed. Olney and Joe climbed in and pulled the quilt deep into the bed as gently as they could. It hardly mattered. He’s unconscious —a mercy and a curse. The two settled down on either side of Marshall, watching that he didn’t roll, making sure his head was elevated and his airway open.

Reverend Willard drove.

“Do you know where this hospital is?” Joe asked Olney. “Will they take him?”

“Only one that close that will. I should have known, should have thought. But we had to take Kenny first anyway.”

“He didn’t need to come first,” Joe bit back. “He’s not as bad off.”

Olney was quiet for a moment and Joe couldn’t see his face in the dark. “Wouldn’t matter.”

Joe’s heart hammered so hard he feared it might explode in his chest. It should matter. Marshall’s life is just as important as Kenny’s. He’s a veteran and a doctor and a good man —a human being! What more can they want?

The minutes and miles piled on, one after another, stretching past the hour, nearing two before they reached the outer city limits of Winston-Salem. Joe prayed Reverend Willard knew the way to the hospital. He kept track of Marshall’s vital signs, kept his head elevated, but there was little else he could do.

At last Chester called out, “Kate Bitting Reynolds Memorial Hospital! Just ahead!”

It was smaller than Joe would have expected in a city the size of Winston-Salem. Please, God, let them have what he needs. Take care of Marshall.

Olney was out of the truck before it fully stopped, running toward the faintly lit emergency entrance, then through the back door. In two minutes, a man appeared with a gurney. Joe breathed. At last something was happening.

Olney and the colored man dressed in white edged the gurney against the truck’s tailgate. Chester clambered up to help Joe lift the quilt, keeping Marshall’s head steady. The other three men edged the quilt down, sliding it onto the gurney.

The man who’d brought the gurney hadn’t spoken a word, but when he saw Marshall’s face, he gave a low whistle. “Mmm, mmm. Doctor’s on his way. Y’all stand back now. Let me get him inside. You’ll need to fill out paperwork at the desk.” Swiftly, expertly, the man maneuvered the gurney up the ramp and through the doors, Olney, Joe, and Chester at his heels.

“I’ll park the truck and be right in,” Reverend Willard called.

The emergency room was nearly empty, but every eye followed the black and white trio trailing the man with the gurney.

When they came to the No Admittance sign, a nurse bustled through, standing between the gurney and the men from No Creek. “That’s as far as you go now, gentlemen. Doctor will see to him.” She lifted her chin, a crease between her eyes.

“Marshall’s my family,” Olney insisted.

“And I suppose this is your family, too.” The nurse raised her eyebrows.

“Friends —like brothers,” Joe insisted, not about to be turned away.

“Not in this town, young man. This is the colored waiting room. You’ll have to go to the white waiting room. By the looks of things, this is gonna take a while. Y’all might want to go on home and come back during visiting hours tomorrow. We’ll see how he is.”

“I’m staying,” Olney said. “I’m not going anywhere till my boy’s outta the woods.”

“We don’t want trouble.” She looked directly at Joe, until seeing Reverend Willard rush in. Her eyes went wide. “Another one.”

“The reverend drove us here, ma’am. We’re all friends of Marshall,” Chester’s voice soothed.

“Like I said, you need to find the white waiting room.” She disappeared, closing the door behind her.

“Y’all best go on back now, Reverend Willard. I appreciate you bringing us all this way, but —”

“I’m not going anywhere until we know Marshall’s getting the help and care he needs.” Joe stood his ground, though the room had begun to sway just a little.

“Joe, you look like you gonna fall over any minute. Reverend Willard, you know that truck belongs to Rhoan Wishon. He’s gonna want it back. And Ruby Lynne . . .”

Reverend Willard pushed his fingers through hair grown a little too long, frustration etched in his face.

“I’m staying,” Joe insisted.

“They not gonna let you wait in here. You heard the nurse.”

“I saw burns aplenty during the war. I can help him, if I have the right equipment. I’m going to talk to the woman at the desk, see if she’ll contact the doctor, ask him to let me help.” Joe was on his way before he’d finished speaking and poured out his plea to the woman behind the desk.

No matter how he tried to persuade her, she refused to budge. “I’m sorry, but I can’t let you back there. I’ll send a message that you’re here, that you have medical training, but I can’t let you in. Sir, you need to trust the doctors here to treat him. We have the best colored doctors here, and they’ll do all they can for your friend.” She wasn’t without compassion, but she wasn’t moved.

Olney pulled him away. “Joe, you’ve got to let it be. Let them do their jobs.”

But Joe couldn’t. It should be me in there. I’m the one who should have gone in that barn for Kenny —not Marshall. And to save Rhoan Wishon’s grandson of all people —the family that tried to hang him. Joe plunked into the nearest chair, dropped his head between his elbows, and covered his face with his hands. He felt so helpless —as helpless as he’d felt in the face of Ivy’s death.

“Reverend Willard, you best go on now. We don’t need trouble here. I appreciate what you’ve done, bringing us all this way, but —” Olney nodded toward the two big men standing at the door —“you need to take Chester and Joe and go on home now. Mr. Wishon’s gonna want his truck back, gonna need to know what’s happened with Ruby Lynne and his grandson.”

“Surely she will have phoned home by now. I don’t think we need to wo —”

“Just the same. It’s time you all went home.”

Joe looked up. Olney really wanted them to leave. He looked around the waiting room. The few people who were there eyed them all suspiciously, warily, as if they weren’t to be trusted. For the first time Joe sensed something of what Marshall must have felt at every turn in England, every day in the US, and it didn’t feel good.

“That’s what you want, Olney?” Reverend Willard stepped closer to Olney, spoke low.

“It is. I’ll telephone if I need you.”

“We can come back at any time. I know Doctor Vishnevsky will let us borrow his car.”

“That be fine, real fine. We’ll need somebody to come get us when Marshall’s ready to go home.”

Joe groaned inside. They don’t realize how bad this is, how unlikely it is that Marshall will —

“Joe, you, too. I want you to go on now.”

“No, Mr. Tate, please. I want —”

“I need you to go on, let me do this alone. I need you to go on home and pray like you never prayed before.”

Joe stared, trying to weigh every reason why Olney insisted they go. Reverend Willard pulled him to his feet, and Chester took his arm, guiding him away. “I’ll be back tomorrow. Tomorrow I’ll be here. If Marshall wakes up —” But Joe couldn’t finish.

Olney nodded. “I’ll tell him. I know what to tell him.”

Joe wasn’t sure when they got into the truck, or how long the drive toward the mountains took, or if he slept against the cab’s door or was awake in a stupor the whole time. His insides ached. His back burned. His heart bore a hole —a family-size hole. First Nonni, then Ivy, and now Marshall. Do You need them all? What about Violet? She’s so close to coming. Dear God, please. Please. Please. It was all he knew to pray.