Ruth Harmon was in no hurry to go back to Springfield. The town held nothing for her now. Peter was gone. Dead at age twenty-five. Their dreams of a family gone with him. Red-headed, freckled-faced boys for him. Blue-eyed, blonde girls for her. She used to tease him that their daughters might have his red hair and the boys might be fair and blonde like her.
Peter would laugh at that and promise to love their babies even if they had no hair at all. Then he always added that he had no doubt at all their girls would be beauties like their mother. He did love her. And he loved children. He was a schoolteacher, after all, and so eager to have his own children to teach.
She felt the same. They’d been married a year, and every month she hoped to be with child. Then in May she had the first indication of that perhaps being true. Peter was so happy. He had picked pink roses out of who knows whose yard and brought them to her. They hadn’t shared the news with anyone else. It seemed better to wait until her rounding figure gave proof of a child on the way. Even so, they were dancing on air. Their dream of a family was coming true.
But cholera turned their dream into a nightmare. The disease swept into town on the summer winds. Bad air, some said. Others blamed it on the rotting vegetables and fruits people pitched out of their kitchens. She supposed garbage could cause the bad air, but no matter what the town officials did, they couldn’t stop it once the first person sickened in town. It swept through the houses, striking down young and old alike. Some lived. Many died.
The cholera wasn’t only in Springfield. All across the state—all through the country, in fact—the grim reaper came in with the scourge. People ran from cholera, leaving towns deserted and the sick to manage however they could. Doctors died along with their patients. One after another. Quickly. Sometimes only a day after the severe symptoms set in. Hardly time to properly say goodbye.
Peter insisted she leave him and escape to the Springs Hotel on the other side of the county. The air would be good there. The waters healing. He could take care of himself, he said. He’d be there, recovered, when she came back. She had to think about the baby.
She hadn’t left. Not until he went beyond her. Closed his eyes and refused to open them. Refused or couldn’t. Once his breathing stopped, she did think of their baby. Heaven forgive her, but she hitched up their little buggy to the high-stepping pony Peter was so proud of and left her beloved husband stretched out on their bed. She did not hang black crepe over the windows and have a funeral for him. She didn’t even see that he was properly buried.
She left him there and ran away to where the cholera wasn’t. For the baby. Then the baby ran away from her. Gone in the fresh hours of the morning. Perhaps there had never been a baby. Only a dream. Now grief hung heavy over Springfield as people trickled back into town once they heard the cholera had run its course.
Some of them had more to come back for than Ruth. She had nothing. Only the rooms she and Peter were renting until they could get a house. A schoolteacher didn’t make much money and often as not got paid in bartered goods. Jars of honey. A side of bacon. A sack of potatoes. The county officials sometimes made a big show of pitching in a few dollars to keep the school building in shape, but the families of the students were expected to support the teacher. Some did. Others with the means sent their boys away to schools in bigger towns and their girls to the Loretto School run by the nuns. Ruth had gone there herself. Maybe she should consider going there again. Converting to Catholicism and taking vows. But such vows were not to be taken simply because one had an empty heart.
As soon as she got back to Springfield, even before she went to their rooms, she drove her buggy out to Cemetery Hill. New mounds of dirt with grass only beginning to sprout on some of them lined the edge of the graveyard. Many more than she had expected in spite of the news reaching her at the hotel of this or that person succumbing to the cholera.
She’d also been told who had taken care of the dead. George Sanderson’s slave, Louis. He’d been untouched by the cholera, but as she stared at the dozens of graves, she doubted that was true. He might not have come down with the sickness, but no one could be unaffected after digging graves for so many.
Her heart grew heavy when she saw no markers stuck up out of the fresh mounds of dirt. How would she know where her Peter lay? She wanted to tend his grave, plant flowers to show he was loved. And now he was just one of many. She bent her head and tried to pray. Peter would want her to pray. Before the cholera, she’d found whispering prayers easy, as natural as breathing.
Thank you, Father, for your blessings. Thank you, Lord, for the food we have. Praise you, Lord, for the beauty of your world.
But now, the prayers came hard, wrenched out of her heart with desperate tears. Why, Lord, why? Peter was a good man. Why didn’t you spare him? Why?
She knew it was wrong to question the Lord. But why ran through her thoughts and would not be shut away. Surely it was better not to pray at all. Best to push aside the questions and get on with life. But she had no idea what to do next.
Her brother had a farm in Ohio. Her mother had gone to live with him after Ruth married Peter. She promised to come back after Ruth had a house, but then she had died. Everybody died.
There was still her brother. He and his wife had three children, but they would make room for her. They were family. Even so, she would be a burden. She was too young to become a burden. Better to find a job to support herself. She was capably educated. Peter once told her she would make a better teacher than he. And now that she was single, she could get a teaching position. Go west perhaps and live with first one student’s family and then another. That’s how schools were on the frontier. Or perhaps she could go to Louisville or some other big city and find a position as a clerk.
Thinking about it all made her heart hurt. Made her feel empty. She was empty. She raised her head again and looked out over the graves. None empty. Each mound covering someone’s loved one.
She was turning back to her buggy when a black man and a little girl came through the cemetery gate. The man held the child’s hand. The girl had dark curly hair, but she wasn’t black. The soft mumble of the man’s voice drifted across the graveyard to Ruth, but she couldn’t make out any words. Neither of them noticed Ruth there. The man kept his gaze locked on the child while the little girl stared straight ahead, obviously uneasy, even frightened, to be there among the dead.
A cemetery full of fresh graves was no place for a child, and a spark of anger flared inside Ruth. Where were the child’s parents to allow such a thing?
When the man looked up and saw Ruth, he bent his head quickly, but not before she recognized him as George Sanderson’s slave. The one who had buried the cholera victims when no one else could or would because they were too sick or had fled the town. Fled as she had.
The child looked up at the man when he stopped walking and turned loose of her hand. “Is this it?”
Ruth heard the distress in the words.
“No, missy, but there’s another here we don’t want to be a bother to. We’d best come back another time.”
The child looked at Ruth and then back at the man beside her. “No. Show me now. She won’t care.” The girl stepped away from the man, closer to Ruth. “Will you, ma’am? Louis is going to show me where my parents and little brother are buried. That’s important to know. Aunt Tilda says so.”
Ruth knew the little girl, but her name wasn’t coming. Poor child left alone in the world, the same as Ruth. “Yes, you should know.”
The child stared up at Ruth. “You’re the teacher’s wife.” When Ruth simply nodded, the child asked, “Did he go to glory too?”
“To glory?” Ruth said.
“That’s what Louis said. That my family went to glory.” The girl looked back at the black man. “That’s easier to hear than—” She stopped and swallowed hard before she went on. “Than other things. Glory is heaven, you know.”
“I know.” Ruth’s throat felt tight, but how could she cry in front of this child who was staring at her with dry eyes?
“Louis, he buried my parents and little brother all together. So they could stay a family. I was part of their family too, but I didn’t go to glory. I got better.”
“That’s good.” Ruth didn’t know whether that was the best thing to say or not. Peter would have known. Peter said children appreciated honesty and knew if an adult was speaking down to them.
“Louis and Aunt Tilda, they helped me.” The child looked out at the graves. “Which one belongs to Mr. Harmon?”
Ruth blinked away tears. “I don’t know. There aren’t any markers.”
Louis had moved up behind the girl. “I’m some sorry about that, mistress, but I done the best I could to give folks a proper burial. I did say words over each and ev’ry one. I knowed the Lord heard me when I asked for him to comfort the hearts of them that were left behind.”
“I understand, Louis. How many did you bury?”
“Fifty-seven, best I recall.” He looked out over the hill.
“Do you remember Peter? My husband, Peter Harmon.” Ruth couldn’t keep the quaver out of her voice.
“I do. I remember each poor soul I laid to rest here. Let me think. The schoolteacher. He was tall, a fine-looking man in his prime. It was a sorrow havin’ to put him in the ground.” Louis shook his head. “He wasn’t one of the first ones, but somewhere toward the middle.”
Louis walked a little way down the row of graves and pointed. “That one there in the second row. See how it’s some longer than them beside it. That’s where your fine husband lies.”
Ruth stepped between the graves to kneel in the grass beside the mound and couldn’t stop the tears that slipped down her cheeks. The little girl followed her and put her hand on Ruth’s shoulder.
“Aunt Tilda says it’s good to cry, but sometimes I can’t.” Then she walked away with Louis.
They were talking, comfortable with one another now that they thought she wasn’t paying any attention. The girl once more held the man’s hand. Adria, Louis had called her. An unusual name. Maybe that was why Ruth remembered Peter talking about the child once or twice. The last name was different too. Starr. That was it. Adria Starr. Peter had said she was a bright child with a gift for words. When Ruth asked if that meant she was a chatterbox, Peter had laughed.
More tears flooded her eyes. Oh, how she was going to miss that laugh. To keep from falling completely apart, Ruth thought about the girl again. She remembered Adria’s mother, a pretty woman with an easy smile. Now she was dead just like Peter. And her sweet little boy too. Just like all these others under her feet.
It would take someone with the faith of Job not to wonder why there was a disease like cholera. To rob her of her husband. To whisk that child’s whole family away and leave her an orphan. Ruth pushed up off the ground and looked around. Every mound of dirt somebody’s sorrow.
The child was standing in front of one of the mounds. Not crying. Just staring down at the dirt while Louis stood back, his hat in his hands and his head bowed. His mouth was moving, perhaps muttering a prayer. The girl didn’t seem to hear him.
Ruth eased closer to hear what Louis was saying. She needed a prayer in her ears and had no words of her own for the Lord. Peter would have been able to pray. If it had been her in the ground and him standing here, he would have prayed for her soul. He would have looked to the Lord to somehow work things for good in spite of the bad. But how could any of this be good? Orphans and widows. Why? That was her only word.
“Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I ain’t gonna be fearful. The good Lord’s rod and staff, they guide me and knock away the evil. Blessed are the meek. Bless also them that mourn and those what stand in the need of your sweet blessings.”
The man’s words were a mishmash of Scripture strung together, but somehow the words sounded right when he spoke them. A man who loved the Lord. A man who had buried all these people and said words over their graves when their families couldn’t. Slave or not, she owed him thanks for that.
When she stepped over behind him, he stopped praying and bent his head to stare at the ground again. He twisted his hat in his hands. “Me and the girl, we’ll be leavin’ now. Give you some alone time here. Come along, missy.”
“That’s all right, Louis. I’m leaving now myself. I simply wanted to thank you for what you’ve done here. For burying my husband.” Her voice caught and she had to swallow down tears. “And all the others.”
“’Tweren’t nothin’ you have to thank ol’ Louis for, ma’am. The Lord, he give me the strength to do what needed doin’. That’s all.”
The girl turned away from the grave. “Aunt Tilda says Louis could have gone across the river and found freedom, but he didn’t. ’Cause he had a job here to do.”
“What you talkin’ about, child? Aunt Tilda shouldn’t a ought to tol’ you that.” Louis frowned.
“She didn’t. I heard you talking when I was sick.”
“Best you didn’t talk about things you maybe dreamed up whilst you was feverish. Get me and Aunt Tilda in some trouble.” His eyes flashed up to Ruth’s face and quickly away. “I ain’t never thought about goin’ across the river.”
“Louis is right.” Ruth looked down at the child. She was so small. Ruth forced a smile. “Some things are better kept under our hats.”
“I don’t have on a hat.” The girl touched her curly, dark brown hair. Her eyes were a lighter brown.
Ruth’s smile came easier now. “No. No, you don’t.”
“But I can keep it under my hair.” The girl looked over at the man. “Will that be good, Louis?”
“That be fine, missy. Come on now. We’d best go see what Aunt Tilda is fixin’ us for supper.” He didn’t take the girl’s hand as he turned toward the gate, but she ran up beside him and slipped her hand in his anyway.
He cast a nervous look back toward Ruth. “She be needin’ somebody right now, you understand. What with losin’ her folks and all.”
“Yes.”
She watched the two leave and wondered what would become of the girl. She wouldn’t be able to stay with Louis. Perhaps she had relatives, or if not, some family would take her in as a servant. That seemed a hard road for such a small child. Ruth shook her head. She couldn’t worry about the little girl. She had troubles enough without adding the poor child’s to her own.
When she looked back at Peter’s grave, he seemed to nudge her. She surely could say a prayer for the child even if she couldn’t pray properly for herself.
She bent her head and whispered, “Lord, send someone to help Adria Starr. Thank you for Louis and what he did for her.” She swallowed hard and went on. “And for my Peter.”