Chapter 16
Chapter Sixteen
“The ghosts of Johnstown are the ghosts of American labor that is dead.”
~Chicago Herald
“My boys died so those men could fish?” Robert Townsend growled and threw the folded newspaper.
It sailed through the air before landing at Monty’s feet in the cracked, dry dirt.
They’d just carried all the church pews outside and were determining which ones to salvage and which to burn when Jim arrived with the morning paper.
The atmosphere of the town had shifted from despair to enmity.
Now that reporters had declared the disaster as manmade, folks wanted answers.
Everyone wanted justice, including Monty.
And reporters manipulated information and fed on the emotions of the flood victims and the periodical’s subscribers, which made an already precarious situation volatile.
Like Jacob with the angel, Monty had wrestled with himself every night since his meeting with Cyrus Elder, trying to figure out where he fit into all this.
Monty knew the identities of the club members.
Most of them, anyway. He’d also known the sagging condition of the dam when he’d joined Uncle Henry at the clubhouse two summers ago for both business and leisure.
He knew that any paperwork involving a club member or any permits to build on the property were purposely filed at the Allegheny Courthouse in Pittsburgh and not—as state guidelines required—at the Cambria County Courthouse, making the details of the club’s conception secretive.
Was Monty wrong to withhold the information?
What good would come from revealing it? The damage was done.
The condition of the dam was no secret. Over the past several years, many concerned citizens from Johnstown had either snuck onto the property to examine the dam themselves or filed a complaint with the county inspector.
The court system would discover and investigate the club members.
Revealing the list unethically would most definitely cause a mob riot on the members’ homes, and Monty didn’t want to be responsible for any deaths.
He hadn’t seen his family in over two years, so he had no knowledge or proof of any doings at the club recently that would aid in the investigations.
Revealing his knowledge would also reveal his family connections.
Not only would he lose his congregation, but it would invite an angry mob to his own door.
If he had one. He knew well the sin of omission.
If anyone asked him a question that would elicit the need to tell them who he really was, he would.
But choosing not to declare every detail of his life wasn’t lying.
Monty bent and picked up the newspaper, the summer heat and weight of the situation bearing down on him.
He glanced around. Jim Parkes sat in the dirt and rested his head against the side of the church, eyes falling closed.
Ernie approached from the back of the church where he’d slept on a pallet last night.
The man shook with the need for a drink.
A small breeze stirred a corner of the front page. He dropped onto a stump and stretched his legs in front of him, crossing them at the ankles.
Many thousand human lives—Butchered husbands, slaughtered wives, Mangled daughters, bleeding sons, Hosts of martyred little ones, (Worse than Herod’s awful crime) Sent to heaven before their time; Lovers burnt and sweethearts drowned, Darlings lost but never found!
All the horrors that hell could wish, Such was the price that was paid for—fish!
A man named Isaac Reed had written the poem, and the caption stated the poem’s popularity in several prominent papers.
It was accompanied by an article quoting James McGregor, a South Fork Fishing and Hunting Club member, who wasn’t afraid to divulge his identity.
The daft man claimed the flood was caused by a different dam breaking and that the club had been putting fifteen to twenty thousand a year into the property for upkeep and improvements.
“I am going up there to fish the latter part of this month. I am a club member, and I believe the dam is standing there the same as it ever was.”
The gall.
Monty dropped the paper on his legs and rubbed the hair on his upper lip. How dare anyone claim this calamity as a farce? If only he had the power to force those men to come here to see the valley of death for themselves.
“Can you believe that fool?” Robert curled his fists then flopped onto a pew facing Macedonia Street.
“They’d think differently if it were their wives and children,” Monty said. He handed the paper to Ernie, only to remember too late the man couldn’t read.
Robert stood again and paced like a caged lion. “Ruff put screens over the spillway so the club wouldn’t lose their precious fish.”
Shame plowed into Monty. He remembered Uncle Henry bragging about the fish they’d stocked in the lake for “only a thousand dollars.” Delivered by train from all over the country, only one had arrived dead.
Ruff added screens over the spillway so the fish wouldn’t wash downstream when the water level rose.
Prized fish that Monty had caught himself when visiting the clubhouse.
“Ruff was only ever in it for himself,” Jim mumbled.
Benjamin Ruff had sold three shares of the fishing and hunting club he’d founded to Uncle Henry. Monty had only heard Ruff’s name, but many native residents in Johnstown remembered the man well.
“Fulton’s saying Ruff removed the sluice pipes for scrap and never replaced them.
” The anger radiating from Robert was close to bursting through his skin.
“There was no way to release excess water in the reservoir without sluice pipes. The spillway wasn’t big enough to handle all the water.
He’s also saying Ruff removed the culvert and packed it with all kinds of junk that made it sag in the middle.
It’s no wonder the water breached the top. ”
“If you ask me,” Jim said, “that right there is what did us in. The only place for all that rain to go was up and over. With an earthen dam, once the water goes over, that’s the end.
They’re right when they say no dam could withstand that much water, but that dam wasn’t in proper working order to begin with. ”
Tears traveled down Robert’s cheeks the way they often did these days. “One paper said the creeks that feed into Lake Conemaugh dumped all kinds of small trees and debris into the lake the day before. Said it clogged up the screens so no water could get through the spillway.”
Monty stood and laid a firm grip on Robert’s shoulder.
He’d been doing a lot of that lately as words were hollow and reciting scripture only took him so far.
The Lord’s words were powerful, His promises true, but one had to open their soul and allow it to soak in, to nourish, to heal.
Circumstances such as these made trusting anything difficult.
Even for a pastor.
Truth was, even if the screens weren’t covering the spillway, the small trees would have traveled with the flow of water and jammed the spillway anyway. Not that he was defending the club.
The jangle of a horse and cart came from down the rough street.
Monty lifted his hand to shield his eyes from the sunlight.
With nearly all the livestock drowned, the sight of a man and a woman riding on the narrow bench looked out of place among the chaos.
Something commonplace they’d taken for granted in their previous lives.
Sadly, that was how they’d view their lives from now on—before the flood and after.
Monty lowered his arm to go back to work when his brain registered the woman’s nursing uniform.
Annamae was riding in the cart. Sitting next to a man she bumped into with every uneven spot in the road.
A possessive heat churned in Monty’s gut.
He wasn’t sure why. He only knew he didn’t like the visual of her in close proximity to another man.
Land sakes, he had more obstacles to work through than he’d thought.
As the man with a dark and neatly trimmed Vandyke beard pulled the horse to a stop, Annamae glanced at Monty and smiled. His pulse galloped. Hopefully, she didn’t smile like that for this other fellow.
Before anyone else had time to react, Monty jogged to Annamae’s side of the cart and assisted her to the ground. Her grin widened, exposing straight teeth above a plump bottom lip.
He looked away.
She curled her fingers around his arm. “Are you all right? You’re not feeling ill, are you?”
Yes he was, but not in the way she meant.
“No, I’m fine. What brings you by?”
“Oh.” As if she’d forgotten about the gentleman who’d driven her there, she lifted a small basket from the wagon and pivoted toward the man who stood on the other side of the carriage. “This is—”
“Doctor John B. Hamilton, United States Surgeon General.” The thin man tugged on the points of his vest.
The doctor said it with such authority, Monty wasn’t sure whether to shake his hand or salute. “Pastor Monty Childs.”
“Miss Worthington and I are traveling to every district with disinfectants to train folks in how to use them. We need a few leading men in each locale who can train others within their district. Your area starts at Clinton Street and covers all parallel streets southwest to the hillside. Miss Worthington suggested you’d be a good man for the job. Can you do this for us?”
Monty wanted to remind the doctor the town was no longer divided into streets and that deciphering where the old ones lay wasn’t easy, but he kept it to himself. If Annamae thought him capable for the job, he’d do it.
“Yes, Doctor,” Monty replied.
Doctor Hamilton instructed the men to help him unload the contents of the cart. Ernie took one look at Annamae and slunk away in embarrassment. Annamae stepped aside not seeming to notice.