Eastland Page 3

  “No! I can’t.” Not without Karel.

  Mae grumbled and released my hand. “Go. Have fun. Only stay clear of my boring brother, if you know what’s good for you.” She waltzed into Johnny’s open arms.

  “I’ll come see you later,” I called to her. “Love you!”

  Mae twirled around to face me. “Love you too, chickadee.” She blew me a kiss.

  I waved and then dashed for the doors but slowed when I got outside.

  During the short time I’d been in the Promenade salon, the ship had tipped even closer to the river. The aft outdoor staircase was rain-soaked, sloped, and slippery. It looked as perilous as an iceberg. Should I take the risk? Or stay inside, cool and comfortable, and listen to the orchestra?

  How badly did I want to see Karel, really?

  5

  I crawled upstairs to the fourth and topmost deck. The Hurricane Deck was totally uncovered, and in this miserable drizzle, nearly deserted of passengers. I clawed past long, white lifeboats and huge, inflatable rafts toward the front of the ship. I managed to reach the railing behind the captain’s pilothouse without slipping or falling or breaking my neck. And there, beneath his black umbrella, stood Karel, staring down at the busy wharf below.

  I must have made some noise because at that instant Karel looked up.

  “Dee? Is that really you?” He studied me for a moment. My heart twisted with anxiety.

  Maybe I shouldn’t have come. I was about to duck behind a lifeboat, when he smiled.

  “Stay there. The deck is slippery. I’ll come to you.”

  I squeezed the railing, trying to steady the joyous thumping in my chest as he approached.

  “Your mother changed her mind? That’s wonderful!” He put his hand down on top of mine.

  We’d never touched before and the feel of his warm skin on mine made me light-headed.

  “Mama doesn’t know I’m here. I snuck out.”

  Karel took in a sharp breath. “What’ll your mother do to you when she finds out?”

  “Don’t know. But I’m not going to worry about it today.” Most certainly tomorrow, but not now, when Karel was standing beside me. He shifted his umbrella over my head and then scooted closer. I breathed him in, hoping for another delicious whiff of chocolate like the one I’d had this morning. But all I got was a nose full of smelly river.

  “I don’t want to be disrespectful to your mother, but I’m glad you disobeyed her. What kind of trouble could happen on such a sturdy boa—” Before he could finish, the steamer shifted sharply. “Hang on, Dee.” Karel clutched my hand as the boat rolled from riverside back toward the dock. “Feels like she’s righting herself.” He peered over the railing.

  I followed his gaze and saw the wharf drawing closer. “Thank goodness!”

  Karel loosened his grip on my hand. I let out a groan of disappointment. Why had I said that out loud? I could have at least pretended to be terrified.

  “You okay, Dee?”

  “I’m a bit rattled, but I’ll survive.”

  “Oh, I hope so.” Karel smiled, his heather-grays shimmering. “I wouldn’t want anything to happen to you just as we’re getting to know each other.”

  Had I heard him right? Could we really want the same thing?

  “Better get your sea legs.” He put his arm about my waist. “You’re trembling.”

  “I-I’ve never been on a boat before.” My voice quivered at his embrace. “Or in a lake. I can’t swim.” Any better than I could dance.

  “Well, then I’ll have to teach you.”

  “To dance?”

  Karel laughed. “What? No, I could teach you to swim.”

  “Oh, right. Sorry. I got, I was. I’m confused. Don’t mind me.”

  “But what if I want to? Mind you, that is?” He gave my waist a little squeeze. “You’re intriguing. Like a mystery begging to be solved. But surely a girl as pretty as you has heard all this before?” He stared at me as though he expected an answer. But I didn’t have one. At least not one I cared to share.

  No one, except Mama, had ever called me pretty. And mysterious? I was loyal and hardworking, but not interesting, especially not to someone like Karel. Yet here he was, on a ship with hundreds of available young women, and he was spending his time with me.

  “You keep things to yourself. You’re not outrageous like my sister.”

  Mae? She was the most amazing person I knew. But Karel and Mae were siblings. Bickering was what the two of them did for sport. I didn’t want to take sides, so I quickly changed the subject.

  “Speaking of sea legs. I know you’ve cruised this lake many times before. Mae told me all about your summers on the Michigan shores.”

  “Bragged is probably more like it.”

  I shook my head. “Mae never brags.” Even though she had every right to be stuck-up. Their father, Mr. Koznecki, had a prominent, well-paid position in the finance office at Western Electric. Mae didn’t have to work. But as soon as she’d turned the legal working age of sixteen, she had insisted.

  “Financial independence,” Mae had proclaimed at the time, all decked out in her suffragette sash, “helps women to become self-sufficient.”

  “Easy for you to say.” You have a living, breathing father to help with expenses.

  “It is easy for me to say. I work hard for my money and so do you, Dee. Will you join us in the fight for liberty and equality?”

  “I’m already in the fight. I’m a working woman. I help put food on the table. Pay the rent.”

  “You’re a true suffragette and my hero. I could never manage your life. I’m too soft. Seriously, Dee, you should tell your story. Who better to illustrate our cause to other women? You’re totally independent. You don’t need a man.”

  But I’d like a man. The one standing beside me would do just fine.

  “Yeah, yeah,” Karel was saying. “Mae’s an angel.”

  “No, but she’s close.”

  He shook his head and laughed again. “Mae’s okay.” Karel removed his arm from around my waist and stepped back, planting his feet wide apart. “Feel that? Ship’s back to an even keel.”

  I should have been relieved by his confidence in the ship’s somewhat questionable stability, but somewhere in my head, a voice with a suspiciously French accent told me to keep ahold of the handrail.

  “Hey, Cap!” A crewman on the dock hollered up to the pilot house. The captain appeared at the door, looking craggy and fearless with his broad shoulders and weathered face. “You can have the bridge anytime now.”

  I looked at Karel for translation.

  “He means that on the captain’s command, the Clark Street Bridge is ready to open.”

  The activity on the dock heated up. Two crewmen drew in the gangplank while others moved into place at the fore and aft ropes, awaiting the signal from their captain to cast off the lines. From out on the river, a whistle blew as a tugboat moved into place in front of our ship.

  “The Kenosha there will tow us out onto Lake Mich—” Karel began, when the ship pitched toward the river again. Passengers yelped in surprise. Quite quickly, the lighthearted atmosphere onboard turned to one of agitation.

  An explosive crash punctured the air.

  “What was that?”

  “Don’t know,” Karel said. “Sounded like glass shattering.”

  I remembered that giant refrigerator in the bar with all those glass bottles of beer and soda. And what about the throng of passengers crushing the food counter? Or the people milling about the dance floor? What about the children racing across the Cabin Deck? What did they have to hold on to for safety? They’d be at the mercy of this rolling steamer.

  “Maybe we should get back to Mae,” I said as the list toward the river worsened with each passing second. “All stay together.”

  “Must be a problem with the water in the ballast tanks. Give the captain a moment. He’ll sort it out.” Karel scooted next to me again. I felt the reassurance of his shoulder touching mine. This wa
s what I’d been dreaming about for years, but somehow even his presence wasn’t enough to squelch my jitters.

  “I really think we should go below and find Mae.” The French voice in my head had grown louder and more insistent.

  Karel turned. Our eyes met. For one dizzying moment, he hesitated like he’d been startled, and then he inched even closer. My heart hungered to taste his lips on mine, but my mind knew better. This was not the right time for a first kiss.

  He must have sensed it too because he pressed back and snapped his umbrella shut.

  “Let’s go.” He held out his hand.

  I was reaching for him, anxious to leave, when the crew began to shout.

  “Please! Move to starboard!” they ordered across every deck. “Hurry, now!”

  A commotion arose as passengers on the opposite side of the Hurricane Deck groped their way from the riverside railings, up and across the slanting floor, toward us. Below us, passengers on the Promenade gathered along the dockside rails. People had finally decided to listen to orders. Relief coursed through me until I realized I heard music.

  The orchestra was still playing? Had Mae heard the warning? Had she stopped dancing?

  “We’d better hurry!” I seized hold of Karel’s shoulder with one hand, my other hand creeping along the rain-slick rail, as he led the way to the staircase. All around us, passengers grumbled and griped as the steamer continued to tip toward the river.

  “Saints preserve us!” one man howled. “This ship’s unsteady. I want off.”

  “Are we going over?” a young woman asked her husband as the two clung to a lifeboat.

  “We’ll be fine.” The teenage husband hoped to reassure her, but I saw the fear in his eyes.

  On the wharf below, seamen, police, and bystanders had paused to gape at the pitching ship. All movement on the Clark Street Bridge had stopped. Everyone stood still, silently staring our way. I looked at the clock tower on the warehouse directly across the river from us. It was seven-twenty-four. Our earlymorning departure was right on schedule.

  But was the Eastland ready?

  “Cast off the stern lines,” the captain ordered.

  The dock crew released the aft ropes. The rear of the ship swung away from the wharf causing the nose of the ship to drift inward toward the dock. The forward lines were still attached to the pier.

  Then, ever so slightly, my weight shifted. The ship seemed to be righting herself yet again. I breathed a sigh of relief as the deck rose up from the river to a more even keel.

  Our reprieve didn’t last long. Within seconds, the rising stopped. The steamer reversed direction and rolled back toward the river. This time, the listing intensified, as did the stink rising from the fast-approaching water. Children whined and grabbed their stomachs. A young, redheaded woman in front of us let out a moan and retched all over her lacy, yellow frock.

  “Karel, Karel!” I tapped his shoulder. “This doesn’t seem right.”

  He turned and stared at me, his taut expression only heightening my fear.

  “It isn’t. She’s listing at such a sharp angle; it’ll be hard to stabilize now.”

  The French voice roared. Mort!

  Why hadn’t I listened to Mama? Why had I chosen today of all days to defy her?

  But I knew why.

  “Mae!” I screamed.

  Karel tossed his umbrella overboard and spun toward the stairs. I managed to snag the edge of his blazer as he dragged me along a row of lifeboats, past a pile of rafts, in a frantic race to reach the exit. From the decks below came the brittle sounds of dishes breaking followed by wails of panic as chaos erupted across the entire ship.

  On the wharf, all activity froze.

  I wanted to add my cries of alarm to the turmoil around me. Mama had been right. Something deadly was about to happen, and now, I might never see her again.

  In front of me, Karel had stopped moving. He whipped around and looked at me.

  His face was sickly white.

  “We’re not going to make it to Mae!”

  “No! No! We can’t leave her!”

  I released his blazer and sped for the stairs. But the ship had tipped almost completely onto its side, making the incline too steep to maneuver. I slipped onto my behind, jarring my hat right off my head. It slid down the deck toward the putrid waters and disappeared over the side. I followed, mere seconds behind my drowned hat.

  6

  Karel seized me under one armpit before I could slide down the slanted deck into the river. Anchoring himself to a rail with one hand, he pulled me toward him. I reached up for the railings, which at this pitch were no longer at my side, but towering at an angle over me. I clung to the wet bars, quaking.

  “Only one thing to do.” Karel crawled between the bars to the outside of the railings and crouched on the exposed hull of the ship. He reached back through the bars, extending a hand down toward me. “Now you, Dee! Climb onto the hull with me. She’s going over!”

  “What about Mae? She’ll be trapped!”

  “There’s no time! Come! Now!”

  I dared a look around and realized that everyone along the

  dockside of the ship had followed Karel’s lead. Passenger after passenger scrambled up, or over, or through the railings. Karel reached down and dragged me through the bars and onto the hull as the crew escaped to safety through the gangways.

  The captain attempted to climb over the rail of his pilot house but slipped and fell, banging his head. He staggered to his feet, managing to secure his own safety on the hull.

  As the warehouse clock ticked seven-thirty, the Eastland capsized into the Chicago River, her forward lines still tethered to the dock.

  Karel and I stood on the slimy, white-steel hull, which now lay tipped on its side, as horizontal as any street. I had braced for a tidal wave, an explosion of fury. But the beautiful steamer had rolled over in eerie silence, having made less of a splash than these wretched raindrops. The only sound I’d heard was the shrieking in my head.

  Half the ship rested under water on the river bottom, half above the surface, making the steamer appear as if it had been dissected lengthwise like a long sliced baguette. A great many of us had made it through the railings onto the hull, but others had not been as lucky. Countless passengers dangled from the sideways-tipped railings, the deck now a vertical wall beside them.

  Beneath them, only the river. The young redhead in the lacy, yellow frock hung suspended near our feet.

  “He-l-lp!” Her terrified eyes bored straight into my soul.

  Karel dropped to his knees and reached through the bars for her. But before he could grab hold, her fingers slipped. The redhead opened her mouth to scream, but no sound came out as she plunged into the murky waters.

  I screamed for her, for everyone who had lost their grip or been thrown overboard. But my cries seemed lost amid the ear-shattering howls of the countless drowning souls. The river foamed with people. I could barely see any water; their mass was so dense. Yet beside me, all movement had stopped. Like the paralyzed bystanders who’d watched the steamer capsize, the hundreds of survivors along the hull stood silently, wordlessly, watching the death struggle in the river.

  I pulled Karel to his feet.

  “Do you think Mae …” But I couldn’t finish. Mae couldn’t be out there fighting for her life.

  Could she?

  “No! Not Mae! Impossible! She’s a strong swimmer.” Karel turned from me. “Stay put! I’m going to find my sister.”

  I seized his arm. “I’m coming with you!”

  “No!” He heaved a heavy sigh and looked back at me. “No,” he said more gently. “I need you to stay safe. You have to wait here. Please, Dee, for my sake?”

  “But what about Mae?”

  “I’ll find her, I promise. I won’t come home without her. Now you promise me something. Remain on the hull ‘til help comes, then get yourself back to Cicero and stay with my parents ‘til I return.”

  I managed a nod.
Of course, Karel’s parents. Mae’s parents! Karel knew they would be as worried as Mama once word of this disaster got out.

  “I swear! I’ll wait for—”

  But Karel had disappeared into the mass of survivors on the hull. I was as alone as …

  Mae!

  I searched the river, but the spectacle was more than I could bear. Yet what if Mae was swimming toward me right now? What if she was calling my name? I had to keep my wits about me.

  Oh, but the noise! The unbearable screams! I wrestled with the impulse to cover my ears.

  No! I would not give in to my fears. I brushed my raindrenched bangs from my eyes and forced myself to watch as young women, weighed down by long dresses, brassieres, girdles, and boots, panted for air. Men, in wool suits, stiffcollared shirts, and ties, floundered about. Mothers clutching their children fought to keep them all afloat.

  One mother looked to be losing the battle. She and her baby went under, but then miraculously, the baby resurfaced, a look of surprise on its tiny face. I waited for the mother to reappear, but all I could see were her hands, holding her squirming infant up for air. Then one by one, the mother’s hands slipped away. She was gone. The baby flipped onto its back, still squirming.

  A second later, the baby disappeared beneath the surface, sinking to its death beside its mother. I let out a strangled scream, overcome now with a terror I’d never known. Mae could be out there, groping for her life. She had to hold on. Karel would come for her.

  Though the other survivors on the hull still seemed dazed and motionless, the stunned bystanders on the wharf and the bridge and the street had jumped to life. They tossed anything that could float into the water as a life-saving device. Planks and ropes and loose boards went flying. Poultry and produce workers pitched wooden chicken coops and empty lettuce crates.

  A lucky few reached the debris, managing to float or kick their way toward rescue.

  Two women had gotten hold of a coop and were paddling toward the dock, when a man’s head burst forth from the surface near them. The man seized the coop, trying to pry it from them, but the women fought back and won. The man sank back down. A second later, one of the women jerked and bobbed under. She splashed back up, gasping for air. Her friend reached for her. Both women sagged over the coop in apparent relief. All at once, the second woman jerked and then disappeared beneath the surface. Then the first woman was gone again too.