Comes a Time for Burning (28 page)

“Come!” A commanding voice snapped from the library doorway. “A hot breakfast, and then you two can do what you must.”

Chapter Thirty-six

With the capriciousness so characteristic of the disease, the cholera outbreak in Port McKinney killed twenty-three before burning out. The last six deaths directly attributable to the outbreak occurred on May 17th and the morning of May 19th, 1892.

At seventeen minutes after six on May 17th, Pastor Roland Patterson died after abruptly sitting up in bed, gesticulating and shouting, although no words issued from his parched mouth before he pitched back, senseless.

Later that same day, the twenty-six-year-old logger Herb Bonner received two liters of mild salt solution to ease the thickening of his blood from dehydration, asked for a drink of iced champagne, and died before he had the chance to swallow.

Hours later, logger Carl Curran suffocated after inhaling his own vomit.

Of the young women from the
Clarissa
, three suffered long and complicated recoveries, and as soon as they were ambulatory, left Port McKinney for Seattle. Letitia Moore struggled until the early morning hours of May 19th, and then passed away after telling Bertha Auerbach that she felt well enough to walk home.

At 8:12
AM
on May 19th, fifty-two-year-old veteran nurse Adelaide Crowell died in her sleep after what appeared to be a restful and recuperative night.

Four days later, sixteen-year-old villager Bennie Tuttle drowned while diving for the trove of logging chain flung into Jefferson Inlet by the explosion of the
Willis Head
.

Thirty-nine-year-old ambulance driver and family friend Howard Deaton recovered fully, but fought a recurring infection in his leg. It killed him two years later, on Christmas Day, 1894.

Lucy Levine, twenty-two, the first to be struck in the epidemic, survived the cholera, left Port McKinney never to return, and married a saw-mill operator north of Bellingham, Washington.

Carlotta Schmidt underwent surgery for breast cancer at the Port McKinney Clinic on May 28th, 1892, and died of recurring cancer three years later.

Sonny Malone awoke from his month-long coma in June, 1892, to ask Dr. Thomas Parks what had caused the loss of all of his hair. Never returning to the big timber, Malone became a fixture around Port McKinney, although reportedly suffering from “mental aberrations.”

Elaine Stephens, who had lost her entire family, lived with Thomas and Alvina Parks for six years, eventually completing her studies toward a medical degree. After completing University in Portland, she returned to Port McKinney to practice at the Parks-Hardy Clinic.

By that time, the family portrait on the mantle at 101 Lincoln showed considerable progress toward Alvi’s goal.

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