Three Rivers Rising by Jame Richards

all been just a terrible dream
and I’ll open my eyes to find
Celestia rocking in my mother’s chair,
watching me sleep.
Same as before.
    Celestia
    Weary.
Weak.
Waves pass through me.
I wrap my arms around my middle
to hold back the pain.
At least Peter improves.
    The man with the mare
returns
with my note
unopened.
    “He isn’t up there,” the man says. “No one is.”
    Father must have
retreated
to the city,
fearing
a mob,
a vengeance,
thinking nothing
of me.
    I am truly disowned.
This is how it feels.
    A shiver works through me
and all my heat leaves
through stinging cheeks
and burning eyes.
    “Typhoid,” Kate says. “It’s here.”
    After all I have survived,
now I should die
to spite them?
    My legs fold up beneath me.
    Kate
    Typhoid.
    The standing water
might kill more
than the wave.
    Folks doubled over
stumble into camp.
Some too feverish
are carried.
Cordon off a separate section,
extra clean.
    The girl has it.
    The boy is well enough.
He helps me now,
helps me care for her.
    And so they switched places.
The vigil is his.
    They get me to thinking,
and I don’t like to give in to thinking:
If I was there to see Early die,
maybe
he’s been watching over me—
soul dead
in a moving body—
and he doesn’t like what he sees.
Maybe
he’s pointing me
to lessons.
Maybe Early is saving me
even though I couldn’t save him.
Early is pointing me
back to life.

East Conemaugh
    Maura
    The railroad is good to us,
repairing the tracks
straightaway
so food and water
and the blankets of city folks
can get to us.
    Joseph’s out on the line now,
since almost the first minute,
finding ways to get the trains through
even if he has to lead the cars
one by one
like skittish horses across a stream.
His work is interrupted every few minutes
by another newspaperman
from a city I will never see
wanting to hear the whole story again,
wanting to know if he’s aware that he’s a hero
and that important people all over the country
convey invitations to tea.
My Joseph has charming ways, though,
saying, “There’s too much work to be done.”
That and his smile seem to satisfy the newspapermen.
Just what a hero would say—
I read it in their faces as they scribble.
    They shake hands,
tip their silly hats,
and canter down the hill
back to Johnstown.

    Barrels of whisky appear first,
before food or water.
Some of the men indulge in the evenings
at the edge of the camp.
Every man wants to toast my husband,
slap his back
with teary-eyed gratitude
and offers of gifts when we all get back on our feet.
Some nights he doesn’t make it home at all—
home being the ring of stones
where I tend my fire
and the pile of dirty blankets I rock our babies to sleep in.
This is my hearth.
Come back to my hearth .
    I don’t know how much more gratitude I can bear.

Johnstown
    Kate
    The girl fails,
weaker by the hour.
No cure for typhoid—
just let it run its course.
Even if there was a medicine,
we wouldn’t have it here .
The plan:
  Keep her clean.
  Offer food
  and water.
  Bring down the fever
  if you can.
    No supplies
for even these simple tasks.
    The boy makes arrangements
with a family in the hills
who will take them in
so she can die in a bed at least.
    Want to say, Do they know it’s contagious?
But something stops me—
never hesitated to speak good sense before—
I just nod
and he goes off
to find a length of wood for a stretcher.
    Maybe something exists beyond good sense,
something about
love,
loss,
dignity
even in death.
    Then the trains arrive.
    Train cars bring food and water,
donated clothing,
volunteers,
even medicine.

Supplies arrive
before the fever takes her,
before the boy takes her to the hills.
Now, with clean water,
she has at least
a fighting chance
to outlast the illness.
    Fate?
Luck?
Not long ago
I would have said that I saved her
with knowledge and the strength of my will,
that I saved the boy,
but now I believe they saved each other.
With hope.
    If they’re alive,
they have hope,
a chance at