Cinders to Satin. Fern Michaels
scooted back and forth between the anchored ships. Peddlers and merchants manned these small rivercraft, selling their goods to the passengers. Ready-made clothes, fresh bread, God blessed milk!
“Tis the American way!” Patrick beamed. “Free enterprise! And wonderful it is!”
Callie didn’t think it wonderful that half-starved people should be charged prices they could scarcely afford. Nine shillings for a pint of milk, she had heard, seven for a loaf of bread. More than a month’s salary for her labors at the mill in Dublin.
A pilot boat putted toward the Yorkshire, several officious looking gentlemen with stern expressions on their faces standing in the stem—the doctor and the government health officials. As expected, a line was thrown to the pilot boat, and a Jacob’s ladder thrown over the side of the Yorkshire. Everyone watched dourly, silently; their futures depended upon these men.
Within minutes word spread that the Yorkshire was to be held in quarantine. Loud curses and hopeless wails went up among the people. They had traveled thousands of miles and were within sight of their destination only to be held back and denied entrance. They were to complete an orderly disembarkation to the beach where they were to await further medical examination. Typhus was said to be aboard the Yorkshire..
As ordered, pokes and baggage were brought from below. Patrick carried Paddy and steadied Beth through the crowd. Shouts and cries filled the air; defeat and havoc prevailed. “Don’t become separated!” Patrick shouted above the din, warning Callie.
Even as Patrick warned her, rough hands seized Callie’s shoulders, propelling her toward the Yorkshire’s rail, wresting her baggage from her and tossing it to a boat below. “Over the side, girlie,” the shipmate growled. Callie was half-lifted, half-thrown over the rail to grab hold of one of the many rope ladders leading down to the skiffs that hugged the Yorkshire’s side. She hung there, like a spider in a web, too terrified to move, too muddled with confusion and the horror of the murky waters far below. “Go on with you! First your feet, then your hands!” the shipmate instructed, already tossing someone else’s poke down to the boat.
The ladder swayed; the skiff seemed miles below her, but move she must, for a man was climbing down the same ladder as she. She felt first with one foot and then the other, holding on for dear life. Hands were reaching up for her, steadying her last few steps. Even when she sat in the bobbing skiff, Callie’s panic would not subside. All around her were shouts and terrified cries. Children and babies were lowered by ropes; many fell into the water to be picked up at the point of drowning by small boats that circled the area. Like rats chased from their hidey-holes, the passengers left ship. Callie worried for Beth in her bulky condition. Above, the seamen were shouting and pushing, forcing people over the side.
It was only minutes, but to Callie it was a lifetime before the skiff in which she sat was filled to capacity and made its way to shore. She held tightly to her poke, clasping it to her. It was all she had in this world: a few changes of clothes, a small bit of food, and her letters to Peggy.
There were piers built out into the water at the foot of the cliff where the large brick hospital building stood, but none of the skiffs docked there. Instead they pulled up on the beach, and their passengers had to step out into knee-deep water and wade to dry land.
Callie collapsed on the hard-packed, rock-strewn beach. She sat like a broken puppet, repelled by the sights and sounds and the experience of climbing down the rope ladder into an unsteady boat. She was terrified to the core, weak and shaken.
It was an eternity later when Patrick found her, huddled and shivering. “Callie! Callie! Beth sent me to find you . . .” Patrick sank down onto the beach, hard pebbles biting into his knees. He was astounded at finding Callie like this. Bright, tough little Callie James was stiff with fear, shaking and trembling as though the fires of hell had revealed themselves to her. The sight overwhelmed him.
“Callie! Callie! Pull yourself together!” He gathered her into his arms, held her while she burrowed against his chest. “Callie, Beth needs you. You’ve been the strength for all of us.” He soothed her, patting her back, smoothing her long chestnut hair back from her whitened face.
“That’s a girl,” he said when he felt the tremblings soften. “That’s our Callie. You’ll be fine, won’t you? You don’t want them to take you to the hospital, do you? There’s a shelter down the beach a ways where I’ve left Beth and the boy. Come along with me, Callie. Please?”
Callie nodded her head. No, she didn’t want them to take her to the hospital. All she wanted was to see her mother, play with the children . . . but that was impossible. Patrick led her along the beach to find Beth. The light October breezes lifted the strands of hair that had escaped their braid and freshened her cheeks. She would be strong, she told herself over and over. She must be strong.
People milled up and down the beach. Entire families seemed to have set up camp on the beaches and along the sloping cliff. Men, women, children, most of them dressed in little more than rags, littered the beach. The hospital sat high on the hill, various out buildings lining the road down to the water’s edge. Out in the bay more than twenty ships rested at anchor, their passengers within sight of New York City but prevented from going there.
When Beth saw Callie, she threw her arms around her. “Oh, I thought we’d never find you! Someone said a woman drowned before a boat could fish her out of the water . . . Oh, Callie, I thought it might have been you!”
“Hush, Beth,” Callie said, “I’m here now.”
Beth was staring beyond Callie to a section of the cliff where families had pitched camp. Their meager cookfires smoked from the damp tinder they were burning along with rags and anything else that would feed the flames. Her body was rigid; her eyes wide and staring. “Beth, what is it?” Patrick asked alarmed. “We’re all here together and safe—”
“No! We’re not safe!” Beth wailed, the terror in her voice sending chills up Callie’s spine. Little Paddy began to wail in sympathy. “Don’t you see?” Beth attacked Patrick in her distress. “Have you no eyes? These people are living out here in holes dug by their hands or in gullies and hovels someone else has left behind. Patrick! I don’t want to have this baby in a hole in the ground! Promise me! Promise me!” She collapsed into her husband’s arms, weeping with great heaving sobs against his chest.
“Easy, darlin’, easy. I promise you, I swear. We’ll go to the hospital shelter; we’ll be safe there. Paddy can’t live outdoors with his chest. I promise you, Beth.” Patrick’s optimism was failing him. His beautiful, approving Beth was near the edge of madness, and he worried that even God could not save them from the ordeal they faced. Steeling his resolve, Patrick forced a smile. “Come now, love. We’ll walk up the hill to see what can be done.” Paddy stuck his thumb into his mouth, hanging onto his father’s pants legs, demanding to be picked up. “Here now, darlin’, look how you’re frightening the boy.”
Beth looked down at her son. “There, there, sweet, Mummy’s just being silly.” She touched his wayward curls in a soothing caress.
Callie looked away from the naked emotion displayed by her friends. The thought came out of nowhere: Where are you, Byrch Kenyon? This is something you should see so you can put it in your newspaper! Mr. Kenyon had warned her that it was no easy road for the emigrant, but did he know the inhumanity of it all?
From long habit, Callie lifted her eyes heavenward. “Lord, I know these people are praying just as hard as I am, and You aren’t listening. How can You allow this? Sweet Jesus, it’s time to do something!”
The walk up the hill to the Tompkinsville Hospital and its annexes was a long, hard trek, and Beth was near total exhaustion. Officials wearing red armbands imprinted with white crosses policed the crowd, herding Callie and Beth along with Paddy into a line. “Women and children for a preliminary examination,” the official repeated gruffly. “Men to the other side.”
“If we can just find a place to rest,” Patrick said. “My wife is very near her time, and she’s dead out on her feet . . .”
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