Chapter Six

“That is my child. There lies my family. Go on and get the rest of them.”

~Mr. Gilmore, who lost his wife and five children; their bodies were identifiable only by their clothing

JOHNSTOWN, PENNSYLVANIA SUNDAY, JUNE 2

Monty had never been more grateful for daylight. He, Mr. Sherman, Mr. Ramey, and the little girl had been trapped in the church attic for over twenty-four hours. Day dawned over the mountains around nine Saturday morning but hadn’t shed enough light on the valley to make traveling safe. The air was chilly, and the sky continued crying as if mourning the lives that once made the town thrive. They’d emerged through the hole where the steeple once stood proud and gazed over the destruction below, unable to leave their post for the swell of water. Hungry, thirsty, and battered, they had been forced by the darkness to spend another night in the cramped attic where, just after midnight, Ramey turned mad.

His maniacal rage echoed across the entire valley. Monty had done his best to shelter the child, who had yet to utter a single word. Sherman had comforted Ramey when he shook, pinned him to the floor when he raved, and dozed when Ramey had run out of steam.

Monty was getting off this roof with this child today if it meant he had to jump into the water and take his chances.

With barely a sliver of energy remaining, Monty crawled out of the hole, holding the sleeping child, and peered across town. A large crowd gathered at the stone bridge. Smoke rose into the air from Friday night’s explosion. The debris was so thick and saturated with flammable materials, it might burn for days. Hundreds of moving bodies lined the high hills, fortunate to have escaped yet forced to watch their neighbors, friends, and family carried downstream.

The water had finally receded enough for travel. Relief filled him. He needed to find food, if any were to be had. The child had soiled her underclothes and the sheet wrapped around her. She needed a bath, fresh clothes, and warmth, if any existed in Johnstown anymore.

Something putrid carried on the breeze, an ungodly smell unlike anything he’d ever experienced. His stomach flipped, and food dropped to the end of his priority list. Months of work lay ahead in sifting through the debris, clearing roadways and rail lines, resetting telegraph poles, rebuilding homes and businesses, and finding and burying the dead. Where would any of them find the strength?

Or would everyone leave and start afresh somewhere else?

Guilt poked him for leaving Sherman and Ramey asleep in the church, but if he didn’t set his feet on earthen ground soon, he’d be the next to turn crazy.

He roused the girl from sleep. She blinked a few times before her memory kicked in and her eyes grew wide. The way she clutched at him in unabashed fear broke his heart. “It’s all right, sweetheart. We need to get off this roof so I can help you find your family. I’ll need you to walk on your own and listen to my instructions. I’ll be with you the entire way. There’s nothing to fear.”

Except having no family, no home, and no possessions to return to, if that were the case.

Her unsteady legs made it difficult for her to balance on the steep pitch of the roof, but they got down it and then leaped across to the roof of his house. His hands throbbed from the punishment he’d given them attempting to survive.

He lowered into the attic by way of the hole he’d escaped through two days earlier. Then, bracing on a joist, he helped her onto him piggy-back style. Her thin arms nearly choked him as he leaped to the attic floor and staggered down the tilted narrow steps to the second story where every possession he owned was broken, upended, or waterlogged.

Not trusting his weight on the soft plank boards since this part of the home had been underwater much longer than the attic, he carefully descended to the first floor. The force had pushed his cookstove across the room, impaling the wall. A wagon sat in his kitchen. One of its wheels had detached and sat askew in his fireplace. All the windows were busted, and a nasty sludge coated everything. A flash of blue fabric underneath the wagon snagged his attention. He started to bend and inspect it when a hand, its flesh the gray pallor of death, caught his attention. The room swayed, and Monty fought back dry heaves. He needed to get the girl out of here before she noticed the corpse. Heaven only knew what horrors she’d see over the coming days, and if he could spare her this, he would.

The insides of his cheeks stuck to his teeth, and he craved water like he craved air, yet he didn’t want to see water again for the rest of his life. Why, Lord? The question circled his brain like a runaway carousel. Why did this happen?

A cold sweat broke out along his forehead. Now that they were on solid ground, he loosened the girl’s hold around his throat and moved her to one hip, like one might carry a toddler. Without hesitation, she wrapped legs so filthy they were almost black around his waist and locked her ankles together. She looped her arms around his neck, this time putting pressure on the side of his neck and not his Adam’s apple.

He hobbled to where his front door once opened onto a bustling street filled with commerce. Now it was packed with mud and debris. With the meager amount of strength he possessed, he kicked the few boards and broken possessions out of the way and climbed out. Chunks of houses, broken timbers, mud, metal, animals, and bodies formed a road where Macedonia Street used to run west to the stone bridge. Every inch of the landscape was changed.

Careful of stepping on nails and the deceased, he walked toward higher ground. There was no way to shelter the girl from this. His weak legs carried him past homes splintered beyond recognition, conjoined and piled upon one another like a stack of children’s blocks knocked over. Survivors combed the wreckage, looking for signs of loved ones. Of their former lives. Monty’s heart ached as much as his stomach, both numb yet throbbing with pain. He asked each person they passed if they recognized the little girl, but no one did.

Monty had been taught that God would never give a person more than they could bear. Whoever said that had obviously never listened to the screams and wailings from souls about to drown. Or burn. Had never heard the guttural cries from those who’d lost every member of their family and were truly all alone now. Had never reached out to save someone, only for them to be swept downstream.

The passage in First Corinthians was often misquoted, as it promised that God would not suffer his children to be tempted above what they could handle without making a way of escape. This was no temptation. But he wished it held an escape route all the same. It was truly more than he could bear.

The destruction grew worse the closer they got to the bridge. Nothing here was recognizable. Sections that had once divided commerce and quaint streets were now acres of splintered debris. All except for the grand piano resting on a pile of timber, not a key broken. The instrument sat proud and erect, as if waiting for someone to come by and make it sing again—not understanding the family it had once belonged to was most likely in the next world.

They passed soul after grieving soul. Everyone remaining, desperate and destitute. Monty had never seen anything like it. In his aureate upbringing, he’d experienced nothing even close to it. Intense emotion swirled inside him until he feared he’d burst from his skin. The greatest of his feelings was hunger.

On the highest point of what was once Franklin Street sat a three-story building, unscathed. Smoke curled from one of the two chimneys. The scent of something cooking turned his feet in that direction until he stood on the front porch, huffing from the exertion. An elderly lady met him in the doorway.

He coaxed the girl onto her own feet. “Ma’am, do you recognize this child?”

His voice sounded nothing like his own.

She shuffled onto the porch, lifted the bit of sheet that hid the girl’s face, and frowned. Dirt smeared the woman’s wrinkled cheeks. “Hmm, can’t say as I do. Where’d you find her?”

“Saved from the water, ma’am.”

The woman pushed the sheet completely off the girl’s head. “You look old enough to talk. Tell us your name, child.”

The girl buried her face in Monty’s leg, which caused shooting pain where the roofing nail had sliced him.

“Who are your parents?” The woman tried again.

Nothing.

Monty and Mr. Sherman had already asked those questions and more, trying to cajole the child into giving them a clue they could use to help locate her family.

“This poor, freezing child.” The woman reached for her. “I’m Mrs. Lanney. Y’ins come on in and eat a bite. I’ve salt pork and beans cooking.”

The girl fussed when Mrs. Lanney reached for her hand but then clung to the older woman who hollered into the house, “Elizabeth, fill a bucket with warm water and get this child cleaned up. Anna, you go fetch her some warm flannels from a trunk. Then we’ll get her fed and warmed by the fire.”

The salt pork and beans tasted as good as the rack of lamb his uncle’s chef used to serve at Clayton. Monty could honestly say he’d never been more grateful for a meal, even if his swollen hands could hardly hold the spoon. There were many in the house to feed with more survivors straggling in, and his limited portion left him wanting.

But he was grateful.

Cleaned and dressed in clothes that didn’t match, the girl plopped herself onto Monty’s lap by the fireplace. Her shoes, one too big and one too small, poked out from beneath her dress. The more questions folks asked her, the tighter she clamped her lips. Monty hated that she was soiling her fresh clothing by clinging to his grimy frame.

Three elderly women everyone called “the Bowser sisters” sat across from Monty, attempting to place which family the child belonged to. After going through most every family in Johnstown, the sister with eyebrows as gray as her hair slapped her knee and sat forward in her chair. “Aren’t you little Gertrude Quinn?”

Monty watched the girl for signs of recognition, but she only blinked at the woman. He searched his memory for the moments he’d spoken to James Quinn at the dry goods store right before the dam burst. Could this be the child he’d seen on his way home, splashing in the yard with the ducklings?

Yes, it well could be.

Struggling to a stand, that Bowser sister walked to the front door and yelled into the yard, “Mrs. Foster, come see if you recognize this child. She might be your niece, Gertrude Quinn.”

In no time, a middle-aged woman with blond hair burst into the room and knelt in front of Monty, studying the child. Leaping from his cross-legged position, the girl flew at the woman and wrapped her in a hug. Tears streaked down Mrs. Foster’s cheeks. “Thank God, it’s little Gertrude.” She yanked a small stick from the nest of hair at the girl’s nape, laughing. “You barely look human, but you’re alive. Oh, you sweet girl.”

Monty’s eyes burned with emotion. At least Gertrude had someone to care for her now.

Snapping to attention, Mrs. Foster pushed the girl at arm’s length and onto Monty’s lap. “Your father. I must fetch him. He thinks—oh, he’ll be so thrilled.”

She ran from the room and, twenty minutes later, returned with a man who looked like a shadow of James Quinn. Trembling and crying like a child himself, he swayed with Gertrude in his arms. “The house—I saw it go down, chimney and all. How are you here?”

Another child, five or so years older than Gertrude, ran to Mr. Quinn’s side and threw her arms around them both. “My poor little sister. I’ll never let you out of my sight again.”

Monty’s head filled with an odd pressure he couldn’t describe. So much loss, so much grief, so much joy in so short a time made it hard for him to process any one thing that had happened. Little Gertrude was safe with her family now. Praise be to God. It was time for him to let the family reunite.

He stood and moved to the door in a dense, invisible fog that seemed to weigh his every step. Time crawled, and he had no idea where he was going. He just knew he had to keep moving or perish.

When the debris beneath his feet turned brittle and the surface sprinkled with ashes, Monty walked west toward the woods. He could no longer look into his fellow man’s faces. Could no more stomach what he saw in their eyes. He simply passed by as if he were a ghost of no significance. A part of him almost wished he were.

He stepped over fallen trees but kept progressing up the incline, boots sinking in the muddy earth. The searing pain in his leg muscles matched the burning in his heart. Breaths sounded loud in his ears. His vision grew fuzzy at the edges. Sweat rolled down the sides of his face.

Someone clamped a hand on his shoulder.

Monty jerked from his stupor.

“Pastor?” Ernie Dickenson’s hand shook against Monty’s suspender. Eyes and nose red from crying or lack of drink was anyone’s guess. Monty had spent many an hour trying to help the immigrant man. Ernie wanted to escape his vice, but not enough to relinquish his hold on the bottle.

Ernie’s voice broke, and spittle leaked onto his chin. “You’ve always told me that the Lord would care for me. Will He look after me now?”

Would He? Monty was no longer certain of anything. For the first time since giving his life to Christ, God felt far out of reach.

All Monty could do was stare into Ernie’s sad, hope-filled eyes and nod. Then, without a word, he turned and continued his trek up the mountain. His feet ground pieces of porcelain tea sets into the earth. China dishes littered the grass, and a ripped silken tablecloth, presumably from one of the luxurious Pullman cars that had graced the station on that fateful afternoon, pooled against the base of a tree. The thought of anyone being trapped alive in one of those cars when the wave hit made his stomach hitch.

An open trunk half-buried in the hillside revealed the contents once neatly packed inside—lace handkerchiefs, a buttonhook, a petticoat, and the photograph of a man—that were now stained from water. Had the woman who owned this trunk survived?

He continued walking. Continued breathing. It was all he could do.

Unsure how long he’d wandered, he dropped onto a wilted patch of asparagus ferns. Hot tears rolled down his cheeks. He almost wished he’d perished in the waters. The mourning, the hunger, the cold, the uncertainty—it was all too much. Uncontrollable sobs came, unbidden.

A cat meowed beside him.

Monty swallowed and turned his blurry, puffy eyes to the feline rubbing against his leg. It was cut in several places, and its wet fur stuck out at all angles. Monty reached to comfort the creature—and himself—when it raised its head. One eye socket was void.

The cat crawled onto Monty’s lap, rubbed its face against his chest, and purred. After all this poor thing had gone through, it found solace in a stranger.

Snuggling the cat close, he wiped his own eyes with the back of his hand and winced as the action stung his raw knuckles. The forest was cold, and the gray clouds promised even more rain. Shock and hunger played tricks with his body temperature. He should have stayed next to the fire and the Bowser sisters, but the haven couldn’t hold everyone who’d survived, and others would be more in need than he was.

He stood, cradled the cat, and returned to the open trunk. He rummaged through the feminine belongings before finally yanking out the petticoat, rebuking himself the entire way to the fern patch. Lowering onto the pile of flora, he settled the cat on his lap and slipped the petticoat with its mounds of thick warm fabric over his shoulders. The feline purred beneath the mass and kneaded its front paws on his thigh. Monty gazed in every direction. Hordes of people wandered the mountainside. Homeless. Starving.

One thing was certain—he wasn’t suffering alone.