“What about you, Zeke?” I asked. “How did you fit in?”
“I had nothin’ to do with it,” he said sharply. “Nothin’, ’cept that I knew too much. But he was making the money for Honor and the kids. I kept that in mind.”
I stared at the field of tree stumps in front of us. I thought of the many thousands of dollars I would have to live on for the rest of my life. I thought of how much Henry loved Honor. How he’d spent most of his life having to love her in secret. I thought of how he had freed us both.
I looked at Zeke. “All right,” I said, a shiver of both excitement and fear running up my spine. “I’ll do it.”
MARCH 10, 1945
83
From the open window of the Cadillac, I waved to Adora and Zeke where they stood on the porch of Adora’s house. They smiled and waved back, but I knew Adora’s happy expression masked her tears. I’d stayed in the Cadillac keeping the heat on, while Honor and Jilly walked to the car, lugging their suitcases, Jilly clutching her doll Nursie in her free arm. I hadn’t wanted to be in the house for the good-byes. It would have been unbearable to witness that scene.
I got out of the car to open the trunk.
“Hi, Miss Tess!” Jilly said, trying to lift her small suitcase over the bumper.
“Hi, sweetheart,” I said, taking the suitcase from her and slipping it between my own suitcase and one of the spare tires.
I rested my hand on Honor’s back as she slipped her suitcase into the trunk. “How are you holding up?” I asked.
“I’m fine.” She smiled at me to let me know she meant it.
I closed the trunk and the two of them got into the backseat, Jilly clambering in on her hands and knees. They called out their good-byes, Honor’s voice not betraying the mix of emotions she had to be feeling. She was leaving her family and Hickory, heading across the country on a long uncertain journey toward a future she yearned for but hadn’t dared to imagine.
I turned to look at my passengers. “All set?” I asked.
“Yup!” Jilly said, her little legs sticking out straight from the seat, Nursie on her lap. She had no real idea what she was in for. Honor had done a good job of convincing her she was going on a great adventure. Indeed, she was.
Honor leaned forward to squeeze my shoulder. “Let’s go, Tess,” she said quietly, and I knew she needed to get away from her mother and brother, away from Ridgeview and everything familiar, before she broke down.
I steered the Cadillac into the street, and for the hundredth time that morning, I thought over everything we had with us, hoping we’d forgotten nothing. I didn’t ask Zeke where he had gotten that second spare. I already knew too much I would need to lie about if we were stopped. We had chicken sandwiches Adora had packed for us, bags filled with apples, biscuits, and molasses cookies, and a big thermos of cold tea. I had the Green Book and I’d marked possible places, most of them private homes, where we—or at least Honor and Jilly—could safely stay along our route. I had a map of the country as well as maps for Tennessee and Kentucky, the first states we’d drive through. I’d affixed the red C sticker to the windshield and had the gasoline coupons safely in my handbag. At Zeke’s suggestion, I’d packed a pail we might need on the road if we couldn’t find a bathroom Honor and Jilly would be able to use. I hoped and prayed I’d thought of everything.
I had five hundred dollars in my handbag, the money Henry had hidden for me in the armoire. I also had cash in the bank from the stipend intended to tide me over until I received my inheritance. One worry I would never have for the rest of my life was money. I planned though to find a way to give some of that “inheritance” to Henry and Honor. I wanted Honor and Jilly to have a much better life than the one they’d had so far, and Henry could use some money himself. He was no longer the owner of a prestigious factory. Instead, he was training to be a ship builder in a town near Seattle, starting out as an apprentice, keeping the fact that he’d lived and breathed woodworking all his life a secret. He didn’t want anyone poking into his background. I was sure his supervisors were finding him a quick study.
I drove out of Ridgeview, heading toward Lake Hickory, our last stop before we started our journey. We passed the small building where I’d been living with Grace since moving out of Ruth’s house. Grace was funny and kind and it was all I could do to keep myself from telling her the truth about Henry, but I wisely stayed silent and feigned my grief. I’d yet to see that wild side of Grace that Ruth had told me about long ago. I found her lively and positive, qualities that had made her a wonderful nurse in the polio hospital.
I saw the sparkle of the lake through the trees and turned onto the road leading to the hospital. It felt strange to be driving up that narrow rutted road in a skirt and blouse rather than my nurse’s uniform. Four days ago, the Hickory Emergency Infantile Paralysis Hospital closed its doors. During the nine months we’d been in existence, we’d treated four hundred and fifty-four inpatients. We lost twelve of them, and though we grieved each one, our losses were the lowest percentage of any polio treatment facility in the country. We’d still had eighty-seven patients at the time we closed, Amy Pryor being one of them. Twelve ambulances and seventy cars driven by our tireless volunteers drove every one of those patients to a new treatment center in Charlotte. As they left, the patients cried. The staff cried. I cried.
I pulled into the parking area near the stone building. Only a few cars and trucks were there this morning, and I saw workers carrying boxloads of equipment out of the wards. The Fresh Air Camp’s days as a hospital were over.
I drove as close to the stone building as I could get, and Jilly suddenly let out a shout from the backseat.
“There’s Doctor Vince!” she yelled. “In real-people clothes!”
Honor laughed, and I smiled. Yes. There he was, standing near the front of the building, looking handsome in tan trousers and a camel-hair coat, a brown plaid scarf at his neck. He walked toward us as I stopped the car in front of him.
He got into the Cadillac, taking off his fedora. Leaning across the bench seat, he kissed me, then turned to look behind him at Honor and Jilly. “Ready for the grand journey?” he asked.
“Yes!” Jilly said with all the joy of a child who had no idea what it was going to be like to spend the next nine days cooped up in a car.
Vincent looked at me as I put the car in gear. “Want me to drive?” he asked.
“I’ll drive first,” I said as I pulled out of the parking lot.
“We have a million apples and cookies,” Jilly told Vincent.
“Well, we’re very lucky people,” he said.
I thought of what lay ahead of us. More than a week on the road with counterfeit rationing coupons and a fake C sticker. Only the two tires to replace any flats we might have. The worry of being stopped by the police or maybe harassed by bullies, wanting to know what we were doing with Honor and Jilly in our car.
The day before, I’d sat in Adora’s house, ticking off all my worries to Honor as we talked about what we needed to pack.
“I’ll put up with nine difficult days to get a lifetime of happiness,” Honor’d said simply. I thought she was very brave.
It wasn’t only Honor and Jilly who were embarking on a grand new adventure this morning though. When Vincent and I left Washington State, we would head home to Baltimore. After eight months away, Vincent no longer had his job at the Harriet Lane Hospital, but he planned to open his own pediatric office with me working by his side. We’d had plenty of practice learning how to work together over the past few months. Plenty of time to fall in love all over again too. Very quietly, of course. Very carefully. Once again, we were waiting impatiently until we could be together, out in the open, as husband and wife. We would be married in May, one year later than we’d originally planned. I’d had to do some soul-searching about getting married when I was still technically married to Henry, but it was the only way to have a life with Vincent. It was impossible to get a divorce from a dead man.
In my mirror, I saw Jilly get to her knees in the backseat and turn around to look out the rear window, Nursie clutched under one arm.
“Bye-bye, Hickory!” She waved with her free hand. “Bye-bye!”
We were quiet, Honor, Vincent, and myself, all of us, I thought, touched by her words. Bye-bye, Hickory.
I remembered the article that had appeared in the Hickory Daily Record the day the hospital closed its doors. So ends the final chapter of the “Miracle of Hickory,” the reporter had written. It had been my miracle too, I thought now. I’d arrived in Hickory broken and frightened and filled with shame, but I had a strength inside me now I’d never known I possessed.
I turned onto the main road that would take us out of Hickory, and in my rearview mirror, I watched the buildings grow smaller and smaller until they disappeared altogether, and we were left with the open road ahead of us and a cloudless blue sky.
“Good-bye, Hickory,” I whispered to myself, my gaze on the mountains in the distance. “Good-bye,” I said, “and thank you.”
APRIL 12, 1955
EPILOGUE
Little Italy, Baltimore, Maryland
I was about to enter LoPresti’s Butcher Shop when the bells at St. Leo’s started ringing and the siren at the fire station blared. A couple of car horns joined in the cacophony and the other shoppers and I stopped walking and simply stared at one another. What on earth was going on? The war was long over, yet I was sure every one of us was reminded of how the church bells tolled that day as well. I had no idea why they’d be ringing today.
I walked into the butcher’s to find the customers talking excitedly to one another. Old Mrs. Bruno grabbed my arm.
“Did you hear, Tess?” she asked, nodding toward the big radio on the shelf behind the meat counter. “That new Salk polio vaccine’s been approved! They just announced it!”
“Oh!” I said. The bells and sirens suddenly made sense. I stood in the middle of the crowded shop, the women chattering around me and Mr. LoPresti asking his familiar “who’s next?”, but I was no longer truly there. The raw, meaty smell of the shop was gone. Instead, the air filled with the scent of freshly cut lumber, antiseptic, and hot wet wool. I heard the sound of saws and hammers. The whoosh of the iron lung and the cries of a frightened child. They took my breath away, those sounds and smells.
“Can my kids get the vaccine from Dr. Vince?” Rose Merino asked.
I shook off my memories and gave her my attention.
“I’m sure he’ll have it soon,” I said. “You can call the office and ask.” No one wanted that vaccine more than my husband.
“Imagine a summer without polio hanging over our heads!” Michelle Abruzio said. One of her children was asleep in her arms. Another dozed in the stroller at her feet. I’d lost track over the years of how many she had.
“I miss when you used to work in Dr. Vince’s office, Tess,” Rose said, a mournful look in her big brown eyes.
I smiled at her. “I’ll be back in the office again before you know it,” I said.
I’d thought Vincent was crazy when he suggested I go to medical school, but he knew me better than I knew myself. He knew I needed to be challenged and he was right. I loved my classes. One more year in school, followed by my internship and residency, and I’d be working with Vincent again, this time as his partner.
“A lady doctor.” Mr. LoPresti shook his head as he pulled a roast from the glass-fronted case and began wrapping it for Mrs. Bruno. “That’s as wrongheaded as a lady butcher,” he said, but he winked at me over the top of the counter and I knew he was teasing, at least in part.
“I don’t know how you manage to keep house and go to school at the same time, Tess,” Michelle said. “At least you only have the one kid. My five keep me hopping.”
“I bet they do,” I said. There was a time when her comment would have stung, but Vincent and I had long ago made peace with the fact that we could have only one child. Maybe that was a good thing, since Philip was such a little pistol. Last Tuesday was his eighth birthday and to celebrate he drew mustaches on every picture in our new Life magazine and broke his arm when he fell out of the dogwood tree—the tree we’d planted in my mother’s memory. He was full of energy and hard to keep in one piece, but he was a good boy. He had his daddy’s brains and kind heart.
* * *
Vincent and Philip were already home and in the kitchen when I walked in the door with the groceries and the mail. Our three-story brick house was only a few blocks from where Vincent and I had grown up, but it was three times the size of our childhood homes and, best of all, we owned every inch of it. I set the groceries and mail on the table, gave Vincent a kiss, and hugged my son more tightly than he would have liked. I ruffled his thick, jet-black hair. He was already shying away from my displays of affection, so I would get them while I still could.
“What’s that?” he asked, pointing to the mail on the table as I let go of him.
“What’s what?” I followed his gaze. On the top of the stack of mail was a postcard with some sort of illustration on it. I picked it up and saw that it was a drawing of a skull entirely composed of intricate floral designs. The image was both spooky and beautiful and the three of us looked at it with knitted brows.
“I think it’s supposed to be a sugar skull,” Vincent said.
“What’s a sugar skull?” Philip asked the question I was thinking.
“It’s Mexican,” Vincent said, resting his hands on Philip’s shoulders. “A symbol of Mexico’s Day of the Dead festival. Who sent it?” He reached for the card and flipped it over. “Postmarked Mexico City,” he said, but I was already reading the few lines of neat, slanted handwriting.
Tess and Vincent,
We’re in Mexico City and when H spotted this card, he said he thought you’d appreciate it. You can tell he’s gotten a sense of humor in the last few years! Sincerely, H, H, J, F, C, and P.
I smiled. Every couple of years we’d get a postcard from them, each one with a new initial at the bottom. Their family was expanding.
“Who’s H, H, J, and … all those letters?” Philip asked.
“Old friends of ours,” Vincent said. “A husband and wife and their children.”
“What do the letters stand for?” Philip asked.
Vincent looked at me and I gave a small shake of my head. The likelihood anyone would ever come around asking us questions about Henry and Honor at this late date was not strong, but I didn’t want to take chances.
“They just like to go by their initials,” I said to Philip.
“Dopey,” Philip said, backing away from us. “Can I go to my room?”
“Dinner in half an hour,” I said. “Wash up, all right?”
He mumbled a response and disappeared down the hall. I was still holding the card, and once Philip was out of our hearing, I said, “I don’t understand. Why did Henry say I’d appreciate this card?”
Vincent turned the card over so that the skull was facing us again. “He was probably thinking of Reverend Sam’s skeleton,” he said.
“Oh!” I laughed. “I bet you’re right. Do you think they’re visiting Mexico City or living there?”
“You can never tell with those two,” Vincent said, walking to the cupboard near the sink and taking out a glass. Over the years, Henry and Honor’s postcards had come from Seattle, North Dakota, Dallas, and now Mexico City. We didn’t know if Henry was using his own name or some other in the places they lived. The less we knew, the better.
“They’re together,” I said. “That’s all that matters.” I set down the card with a shake of my head. “It’s such a coincidence that this came today,” I said. “I’ve been thinking about Hickory all afternoon.”
“The polio vaccine,” he said, filling the glass with water from the tap.
I nodded. “It’s wonderful news, isn’t it?” I said. “When will you get it?”
“Should be Monday,” he said, then smiled. “The summer of ’55 will be a worryfree summe
r.”
I began unloading the groceries from the bag on the table. “Do you ever think about all those kids we treated?” I asked.
“Often,” he said, leaning back against the sink as he sipped the water.
“It’s hard to believe they’re all ten years older than when we knew them.” I added a few oranges to the fruit bowl on the table. “Some of them are probably married with kids of their own by now,” I said. “Jilly Johnson is fourteen. Amy Pryor’s baby is ten.” I shook my head. “I hope they’re all leading wonderful lives.”
Vincent put his glass in the sink, then smiled at me. “You’re a romantic, do you know that?” he asked.
I barely heard him. For the second time that day, I was lost back in memories of 1944. “Hickory changed me for the better,” I said soberly. “I was falling apart when I got there and it slowly made me whole again.”
Vincent was loosening his tie, heading for the hallway and the stairs, but he stopped walking to look at me.
“You always say that, Tess,” he said. “But have you ever stopped to think about how you changed Hickory?”
I stared at him, puzzled.
“Look what you did for Henry and Honor and Jilly, not to mention for the hundreds of patients at the hospital, some of whose lives you literally saved. I can personally testify to that.” He walked over to me. Kissed me on the lips. “Hickory’s the better for you having been there, sweetheart,” he said.
I watched him turn and walk down the hallway. Heard him climb the stairs. I felt a little choked up. I looked down at the postcard and the intricate floral designs on the skull. I smiled, remembering Reverend Sam and his crazy anteroom and his skeleton. I remembered the day he told me I was kind. No one else had ever asked him if his gift left him tired, he’d said. I remembered Adora telling me I’d saved Henry from “something terrible.” I remembered endlessly tucking hot wool around the thin, useless legs of frightened children, and breathing life into Amy Pryor’s baby. And I would never forget the journey across country, the nine days that turned into two treacherous weeks, and the very real dangers faced by a little girl and her anxious mother.