The case for the former was made by Mrs. Pell’s suitor, Mr. Aloysius Mannheim, who had successfully survived the storm by being conveniently situated in an Austin hotel sitting room some two hundred miles away while it was about its deadly business. Mr. Mannheim had been meeting with representatives of the National Biscuit Company, who were considering the prospect of engaging him, a factory designer by trade, in the construction of a Texas UNEEDA biscuit factory — a factory expressly required for the dual purpose of baking the UNEEDA crackers and then sealing them hermetically and hygienically within the company’s unique “In-Er Seal” packaging. Mr. Mannheim was a roving man of commerce; this is one of the two reasons that Mrs. Pell demurred at becoming his wife. The other reason was that her former husband, Mr. Pell, had been dead less than four months, washed out to sea in the terrible storm. And though the marriage had never been strong (for Mr. Pell had a weakness for juniper berry wine — known more commonly by its more economical denomination, “gin”), Mrs. Pell could not bring herself to remarry so soon. Other widows and widowers had done it and had been condemned by this city of mourners for their disregard for the dead.
The case for the latter (with regard to the aforementioned calendrical debate) was made by Mr. Hayes, a boarder at the orphanage, whose former rooming house had blown away like so many toothpicks.
“When did the Year 1 A.D. begin?” queried Mr. Mannheim, gesticulating with a UNEEDA biscuit pinched between his thumb and forefinger.
“What are you getting at, Mannheim?”
“That there was no Year Zero, A.D. That year was called Year 1, which means that the first century in the Christian era and every century thereafter must include for its 100th constituent year the year that you so ignorantly ascribe to the next century.”
“Stop confusing Mr. Hayes, Aloysius,” castigated Mrs. Pell. “And give me a cracker.”
As Mr. Mannheim pulled a cracker from its unique In-Er-Seal wax paper packaging, he continued: “There shouldn’t even be an argument here. The year 1900 belongs to the century past. Ergo, our new century began two days ago. Case closed.”
“Perhaps, my dear Aloysius,” said Mrs. Pell, calmly munching upon her cracker, “the first century of the Christian era was an anomaly. It had only ninety-nine years. Did you ever think about that? Stranger things have been recorded. Why, my little Rock-a-bye Girl was found wedged high within the branches of an ocean-lashed live oak tree, as if placed there by the gentle, salvational hand of God Himself. She’s a special child. She hardly cries. I want you to meet her, because I’m considering adopting her.”
Mr. Mannheim cleared his throat and adjusted himself in his chair. “You told me, my dear woman, that you had no plans to adopt any of these girls. In fact, you said that once you had found good homes for them all, you’d leave the orphan-rearing profession altogether and move with me to Austin.”
“I’ve had a change of mind. All of my little motherless lambs are dear in their own way, but little Gail has staked the strongest claim in my heart.”
“Let’s shelve this conversation for some other time.” Mr. Mannheim pushed himself from the table and away from the picked-clean chicken carcass that represented the first truly satisfying meal taken in this house since before the hurricane, food being hard to come by throughout that dismal preceding autumn, especially food that once ran about on two legs and cackled. “It’s late. I must rise early to assist in repairs to the hospital that bears my family’s name — a name that you will one day bear yourself, my love, once we can come to a meeting of the minds on this matter of adopting other people’s children. It isn’t enough that you have spared these little ones from circumstantial abandonment; must we also make them our legal wards?”
“Aloysius Mannheim! You have now shown a cruel and selfish side to yourself that gives me troubling pause!”
Cross words between the two lovers continued back and forth until each participant could little bear another moment and fled the field of battle in different directions. Mr. Hayes was left to empty the box of crackers in solitary silence, and then to poke at the fire and wonder what had become of the flaxen-haired girl who resided that previous summer in his rooming house (just down the hall from his own room) and who, no doubt, survived now only in heavyhearted memory and doleful, recurrent dream.
That later life-altering day of previous reference arrived in the warmer season, when Galveston was clearly on the mend, its citizens once again drinking deep from the waters of hope and high expectancy for a century that promised progress and prosperity and permanent recovery.
However, such was not the fate destined for Mrs. Pell, who woke early in the morning to the tocsin of her assistant Miss Falcongentle’s frantic, frightened calls. There was a child upon the roof of the orphanage, and that child was none other than Gail Hoyt.
“How in the name of the blessed virgin did Baby get up there?” cried a hand-wringing Mrs. Pell, as Mr. Hayes held the ladder so that Barnacle, the orphanage’s liveryman and general do-all, could scramble to the girl’s rescue.
“I have no idea, Mrs. Pell,” answered Miss Falcongentle, her face a worrisome disc within the circular frame of her flannel sleeping bonnet. “Her little bed was empty and I looked all about the rooms and was ready to scour the grounds when I heard her mischievous chortle coming from this most unlikely location.”
The chortling had, in fact, hardly suspended, for Gail was continuing to take a toddler’s delight in her present predicament, sitting negligently upon the pitch of the wood-shingled roof as if she had been comfortably lodged there since birth.
And then it happened: just as Barnacle reached out for her, the Rock-a-bye Girl lost her balance. It was not the only time that such an accident was destined to befall Gail.
Down came baby in a roll and a tumble, bouncing off the eaves as if there were springs attached to her diminutive bottom, and then landing with perfect convenience in the outstretched arms of Mrs. Pell. The child was unharmed, but Mrs. Pell’s right arm was wrenched in its socket, a place in her neck pinched, and her left hip would never be the same again.
Miss Falcongentle took Gail from the woman who had, in fact, saved the little high-flying girl’s life through involuntary maternalistic outreach. Yet it was the last time that Mrs. Pell would ever touch the child.
There would be no more nuzzling, no more cuddling of Gail Hoyt. “I can no longer abide her,” confessed Mrs. Pell to a grateful Mr. Mannheim, who now saw no further impediments to the marriage. “There are signs of willfulness even at this young age which give ample evidence of the potential for a lifetime of conflict between the two of us. It saddens me to be bringing to such swift end my hopes for adopting the child, but it simply cannot be otherwise.”
There was nothing else that could be done for the toddler except to secure her a good home. Five and a half years would pass before this outcome could be effected.
The husband and wife who adopted Gail were loving and kind, but well into their middle years. They had not been able to have a child of their own, but now decided to make a go of it with one of the many needy orphans of Galveston. But there was another reason for why the Harrisons took her in. Burt and Reva Harrison were trapeze artists. Perhaps you know the song:
They’d fly through the air with the greatest of ease,
That daring middle-aged couple on the flying trapeze.