Man With A Message

He had everything he needed right here. Well almost. He missed his brother, Josh, but he was a chef in a Los Angeles restaurant and raising his wife’s four boys, and it was good to know he was happy.

Whitcomb’s Wonders, the agency of tradesmen Cam worked for as a plumber, had become his family. They were a cheerful, striving group of men who enjoyed working part-time for the company because it allowed them to pursue other endeavors—raise their children, go to school.

Fred came running back to Cam, his head held high so that he could hold on to a giant branch that protruded at least two feet out of each side of his mouth. His tail wagged furiously.

They were in the middle of a serious tug-of-war over the branch when Cam’s cell phone rang. Cam tossed the branch, then answered.

“Mariah Mercer from the Manor says they’re sinking!” Addy Whitcomb told him urgently. “A pipe in the bathroom burst.”

Cam reeled in the dog, who’d just headed off to chase the branch. Repairing the Maple Hill Manor School was a lucrative job for Whitcomb’s Wonders. One of the oldest buildings around, it was a plumbing and wiring disaster. They’d just been contracted to replumb the kitchen in the main building as part of a remodeling project.

“The bathroom in the main building?” he asked.

“No, the dorm. You know, the old carriage house.”

“Okay. I’m in town. I’ll be there in about ten minutes.”

“I’ll call and tell her. And just to reward you, Cam, I’ll find you a really wonderful girl.”

“No favors necessary, Addy.” Addy was Hank Whitcomb’s mother. Whitcomb’s Wonders was Hank’s brainchild, and the men who staffed it provided the source for much of Addy’s Cupid work.

“But I want to!”

“No. Got to go, Addy.”

Fred was disappointed at no more play but enjoyed the sprint across the common toward the truck. Cam let him into the passenger side, then ran around to climb in behind the wheel. The truck’s tires peeled away with a squeal as he headed for the Manor. He’d outfitted his somewhat decrepit old truck to hold his tools and supplies so he was always ready to report to a job.

He tried to imagine what could have caused a pipe to burst. Pipes often froze and broke in the winter, but this was spring. And the Lightfoot sisters, who ran the school, had told him that they’d renewed the carriage house plumbing about ten years ago.

He knew that only a small number of children still boarded at the school, and did so only because of long relationships with the Lightfoot sisters, who’d taken over running the school from their mother in the fifties, after she’d taken it over from her mother, and so on all the way back to pre-Civil War days.

Letitia and Lavinia Lightfoot, who both charmed and intimidated the crew working on the renovation, were in their late seventies and still took pride in the bastion of civility they managed in a world they considered both fascinating and mad.

Cam refocused his attention on a series of curves, then exited onto Manor Road, which led through a thick oak, maple and pine woods to a clearing where the school stood, one of the finest examples of Georgian architecture in western Massachusetts. He turned left toward the carriage house, instead of right toward the main building.

It was dark now and all he could see of the carriage house, a replica of the main building but smaller, were its white columns, caught in the floodlights that illuminated the small parking area in the front. He pulled up beside a van, gave Fred a dog biscuit and spread his blanket on the seat. “Relax, buddy,” he said, patting the dog’s head. “I don’t know how long I’ll be.”

Fred, just happy for the attention, cooperated.

Cam grabbed his basic tool kit and went to knock on the front door. He could hear a great commotion on the other side—children shouting, feet hurrying.

The door opened with a jerk and a little blond girl wearing neon-orange pajamas stood there, pale and breathing heavily. Behind her children ran up and down the stairs with towels and buckets. He heard a boy yelling from upstairs, “Turn the cutoff…it looks like a faucet!”

A younger male voice yelled back, “I don’t see it! I don’t see it!” he said again.

The little blond girl turned to shout up the stairs, “He’s here!”

“Tell him to hurry!” the boy replied.

Cam experienced a weird sense of unreality, as if he’d blundered into a world occupied only by children. Not one adult was in evidence.

“Come on!” The little blonde grabbed his wrist and pulled him inside.

He allowed her to tow him up the stairway, its carpeting soggy. There was water everywhere, inches of it in the narrow upstairs hall.

Water rushed from the bathroom through a large hole in a pipe visible because of the broken tiles in the shower stall.

“Hey!”

The boy’s voice made him look down. He saw a woman lying on her back, apparently unconscious, the boy’s arm keeping her head out of the water. Her face was familiar. Cam had seen her around the school while scoping out the kitchen in the main building.

He dropped his tool kit on a sink and fell to his knees.

“You’re not the ambulance guy?” the boy asked. He was about ten, his dark eyes panicky, his face ashen.

“No, I’m the plumber,” Cam replied, putting two fingers to the pulse at the woman’s throat. He couldn’t detect one, but then, he could never find one in himself, either. “What happened?”

The boy appeared close to tears. “I busted the pipe looking for gold. She came in, slipped on a towel in the water and fell and hit her head. I’m not supposed to move her, right? I mean, she could have broken something.”

Gold? Cam didn’t even take the time to try to figure out what that meant. He did a cursory exploration of arms and legs and detected nothing out of place. She didn’t seem to be bleeding. He decided that getting her out of the water took precedence over maybe causing her further injury.

“Is there a dry bed anywhere?” He slipped his arms under her and lifted her. She was small and fragile. Water streamed from her all over him as he stepped back to let the boy lead the way.

“In here!” The boy beckoned him into a room two doors off the bathroom. Cam noticed absently that the doors had hand-painted signs with kids’ names on them.

A pack of children followed them and gathered around the bed as Cam lay the woman down.

She looked younger up close than he’d thought. Her dark hair, now drenched, was pulled back into a tight knot, and she wore a silky, long-sleeved blouse, through which he could see her lacy bra. A long blue cotton skirt lay clumped around her, also heavy with water. She’d struck him as stiff and matronly when he’d seen her at the school. How different his impression of her now.

He wrapped the coverlet around her.

He leaned close to tell if she was breathing. He felt no air against his cheek, heard no sound. Where was the ambulance? He’d taken a CPR course a few years ago, but he couldn’t remember it now. So many pumps, so many breaths.

“She’s gonna die!” one of the little girls said tearfully.

“No, she won’t!” the boy said.

“She won’t!” another boy repeated.

“She won’t!”

Cam glanced up, wondering why he kept hearing double, then realized he was seeing double, too. Twins.

The woman made a scary, choking sound and the children cried out in unison.

Knowing he had to do something, he shooed the children aside, leaned over the woman, pinched her nose and placed his mouth over hers.

She was cold and still in his arms, like a marble statue.