Oleander City by Matt Bondurant

Author:Matt Bondurant
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Blackstone Publishing
Published: 2022-04-12T21:06:28+00:00

Diana

Cordelia brought up a small box that had been left by the front door with “Diana Longstreet, American Red Cross” scrawled across the top. Inside was a doll made of feed sacking, dyed dark brown and filled with tiny seashells. There was a note.

I found this on my run along the beach and thought of your orphan girl. I hope to see you at the match tonight.—Joe

Such a strange man, Diana thought. A confusing combination of the beastly and the baroque. Diana met hundreds of men in her work, including some who were handsome, accomplished, and dedicated to admirable causes. Many of them tried to gain her attention and she never had difficulty letting them pass. But here she was a few days later and Joe had not simply dissipated like the others. Instead he was lodged in the front of her mind, like a barb stuck fast in her imagination. Even walking down the hall of the warehouse she was thinking about the way his curiously disfigured lip worked around words, the calm placidity of his eyes, the way his hands grasped the brass rail of the balcony. The way he seemed to radiate a sense of his physical self beyond his skin. Joe had joined the small orbit of celestial objects in her head and as he gained light and expanded, others were diminishing and fading away.

Diana washed the doll and sewed up the hole in its side before tucking it beside the girl under the blanket. Her face was losing color again and the bones of her shoulders poked out of the neck of her dress. Dr. Mountcastle said if she did not wake soon they would have to try force-feeding her or she would die of starvation. Liverwright continued badgering Diana to let him take a series of portraits of the girl.

She could be the darling of this tragedy, he said. The orphan child-hero. Sell a hundred thousand papers.

Diana refused and made Liverwright swear he would not identify the girl or write about her situation until she was well and her background confirmed.

There are more than two dozen orphans in this building, she said. Pick one. Anyone but this one.

Dr. Mountcastle said it was quite possible she was sensible to at least part of the waking world. She may hear, feel, even smell things. Diana dug through her trunk and found the small copy of Emily Dickinson’s poems and curling up beside the girl she began to read to her, going through the whole book a dozen times in an afternoon.

To fight aloud, is very brave–

But gallanter, I know

Who charge within the bosom

The Calvalry of Woe–

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