I looked to where he was pointing and noticed a second stretcher.
Instantly, my throat thickened.
It was a thin, lank-haired girl in her twenties who lay dead next to Mr. Nowry, a sheet covering her to the chin. Even in the pallor of death, though, I recognized her face.
It was Candace—one of Zalen’s ill-reputed photo models and prostitutes. But the great, swollen belly was gone now, only swollen breasts showing beneath the white sheet.
“Please, tell me her baby survived,” I implored.
“The baby’s fine,” he said matter-of-factly.
“Praise God…”
The man looked at me in the oddest way, then closed the long back door of the hospital coach, and went on his way.
I returned to the woman I’d been talking to. “I’m afraid Mr. Nowry has passed away. We should be sure to remember him in our prayers.” I took a doleful glance to his poor widow, still sobbing in the shop doorway. “I pity his wife, though.”
“She’s expecting any day now,” the woman told me with something hopeful in her tone. “You needn’t worry; the Nowrys are long-term town-members. The collective will provide for his widow.”
Another reference to this collective. My initial impression had been less than positive due to unavoidable insinuations but now, it seemed, I may have been hasty. The initiative, instead, sounded like a very serviceable system of social/fiscal management and profit-sharing. It was heartening to know that Mrs. Nowry wouldn’t be left on her own. As for Candace’s newborn… well, I could only assume it would be cared for by family members or placed in a fosterage program.
“You’re new in town,” said the redhead with the most traceable smile. Then she sighed. “Just passing through, I fear.”
“Why, yes, but why do you put it that way?”
“The handsome men never stay long.”
The flattering comment took me off guard. “That’s, uh, very nice of you to say, Miss, but I must bid you a good evening now.” I walked away quickly. Being complimented so abruptly by women always left me tongue-tied. At least it left me, however selfishly, with a good feeling. I’d certainly never thought of myself as handsome. I smiled, then, when I recalled Mary making similar comment.
The desk shift had changed when I was back at the Hilman House; a stoop-shouldered older woman tended the desk.
“Ma’am, I’d like to write a note to one of your guests, a Mr. William Garret,” I told her. “Would you be so kind as to pass it on to him?”
A moment of fuddlement crossed her eyes. She glanced at a ledger. “Oh, dear, I’m afraid Mr. Garret checked out several hours ago, along with another associate of his.”
“Would that be Mr. Poynter?”
“Why, yes, sir, that’s correct. They caught the motor-coach to the transfer station. Headed back to Boston, I believe.”
“I see. Well thank you for your time.”
That explained that, though I regretted not seeing Garret again, if only to bid him good luck in the future. At least he’d re-found his friend Poynter. It was too bad they hadn’t secured positions here.
Back upstairs, I passed a cart-pushing maid in the hall. She smiled and said hello. It took a moment to recognize her.
It was the maid I’d spoken to upon checking in, the pregnant one, though now…
She no longer displayed any signs of gravidness.
“Why, my dear girl!” I exclaimed. “I see you’ve borne your child…”
“Yes, sir,” she said rather flatly. “A boy.”
“Well, congratulations are in order but—really!—you should be resting, not working!”
She stared at me, head atilt, mulling her thoughts. “I’m just picking up a bit, sir, then I can go home.”
“But it’s unacceptable for an employer to insist you work so soon after—”
“Really, sir, I appreciate your concern but I’m feeling all right. I’ll be to bed very soon.”
“I should hope so.” This was mortifying. And with all the new labor laws in place to protect against such exploitation. “Where’s the baby?”
An odd pause stalled her. “Home, sir. With my mother…” She gave a meek smile that struck me as forced, and went on with her cart.
Off all the things, I thought. All the more reason for Mary to be out of here. Town collective or not, workers—most especially pregnant women—shouldn’t be used as an objective resource. Certain medical conditions must always be given leeway.
I’d already decided that I was going to take Mary and her entire family back to Providence with me. Should it turn out to be a mistake, then so be it. At least I will have tried. My only fret was how and when to make my desires known. It was of the utmost importance that she know nothing was expected of her in return, which might be difficult to convince her of, given the darker aspects of her past.
I will remove her from her burdens, I determined, and give her the life she deserves. And maybe, just maybe…
One day I’d have the privilege of marrying her.
So much for my “platonic” intents, but it was imperative that I be honest with myself. Of course, my idealism was strong, and I knew that things didn’t always germinate into what we truly wanted.
But I knew what I wanted. I wanted her. And I will make every effort to be the man she longs for but has thus far never had.
I knew that I had to buff not only the edges of my outrage over the young maid’s exploitation, but also the sad mishap of Mr. Nowry’s coronary attack—I needed to let my mind stray elsewhere. I decided to relax, then, in the clean room’s quietude, so I sat up in my bed and opened my most cherished book: The Shadow Over Innsmouth. It would not be a concerted re-reading, I’d decided; that would come tomorrow when I found the perfect place, perhaps in view of the harbor. Though the buildings were different, the inlet itself and the mysterious sea beyond was the same that Lovecraft spied when the korms of his masterpiece were first coming to mind, a brilliant amalgamation of atmosphere, concept, character, and, ultimately, horror. Evidently, Lovecraft had been so irrevocably impacted by Irwin Cobb’s sophomoric yet deeply macabre “Fishhead,” and also Robert Chambers’ flawed but image-steeped “The Harbour Master” that he’d seized the basic seeds of these stories and taken them into ingenious new directions, to weave very much his own superior tale of symbolic—and wholly monstrous—miscegenation. In it, when narrator Robert Olmstead accidentally stumbles upon the crumbling and legend-haunted Innsmouth seaport, he discovers, first, that the townsfolks have long-since assumed a pact of sorts with a race of horrid amphibious sea creatures first discovered by one Captain Obed Marsh, a sea-trader, while venturing through the East Indies; and, second and worst, that this monstrous and greed-driven pact involved not only human sacrifice but also the rampant crossbreeding of the creatures—the Deep Ones—and the human populace of Innsmouth. Any page I turned to led to an image or a line that I could easily deem my favorite.
Here was one, a line of dialogue spoken by none other than the “ancient toper” Zadok Allen, whose real-life model had been Zalen’s grandfather, Adok. The line read as thus: “Never was nobody like Cap’n Obed—old limb o’ Satan! Heh, heh! I kin mind him a-tellin’ abaout furren parts, an’ callin’ all the folks stupid fer goin’ to Christian meetin’ an’ bearin’ their burdens meek an’ lowly. Say they’d orter git better gods like some o’ the folks in the Injies—gods as ud bring ‘em good fishin’ in return for their sacrifices, an’ ud reely answer folks’s prayers.”