White Wind Blew Read Online Free PDF

breakfast.”
    A tall black man with thick dark hair and bulging muscles walked away from the main sanatorium, pushing a loose-wheeled wooden cart stacked high with food and supplies. Apples, oranges, and bananas. Wheat bread and cucumbers and tomatoes. Beneath the cart rested a dozen glass jars of white milk. Steam rose from beneath a beige towel at the front of the cart. Fresh breakfast.
    “Morning, Big Fifteen.” Wolfgang lifted the towel and snatched a piece of bacon.
    “Morning, Boss.” Big Fifteen rested on the cart for a moment and wiped sweat from his forehead. He nodded at Susannah. “Miss.”
    Susannah nodded without smiling and walked on across the lawn.
    Wolfgang patted Big Fifteen on his thick shoulder. “First trip of the morning?” Three times a day Big Fifteen trekked the property with a cart full of supplies for the colored hospital that lay lower down the hill. And when he wasn’t pushing supplies, he helped with the maintenance, everything from chopping wood to cutting grass.
    Big Fifteen nodded. “Gots to feed my people, Boss.” He stared toward Susannah, who stood facing a cluster of crows eating bread crumbs. “Why don’t she talk to me, Boss?”
    “A little shy, I guess.” Wolfgang inhaled the pleasant aroma wafting up from the cart. “What else they cook up this morning?”
    “Bacon…and some eggs and sausage.”
    Susannah folded her arms across her chest and spoke over her shoulder. “We’d have more of the bacon if Lincoln would keep the pigs bottled up.”
    Big Fifteen lifted the cart. “Reckon so, Miss.” He smiled. His muscles flexed beneath his long-sleeved gray shirt and he continued down the hillside.
    “Good day, Fifteen.” Wolfgang watched him descend the uneven terrain, hardly straining on the downhill. Big Fifteen stood at least six foot six, and his hands were enormous, big enough to palm the largest of pumpkins from the patch on the north side of the hillside. They called him Big Fifteen because of the size of his boots.
    Big Fifteen, a patient at Waverly for two years, had been cured of TB in 1916 when the hospital was a mere flicker of the size it was now, and he’d insisted on staying at Waverly to help the patients at the colored hospital. He’d never say it, but Wolfgang could tell by the looks Big Fifteen would give Dr. Barker that he wasn’t satisfied with the conditions down there. It was cramped, dark, and overcrowded. And if indeed it was fresh air that helped cure the disease, the white patients got the best of it, perched as they were at the highest point in the county, where the Waverly wind was found in abundance. The colored hospital caught everything downwind—the air, the smell of the pigs and cows, the smell of the freshly baked food before it was transported, along with the flooding from the heavy rains.
    “Abel seems to be doing better every day,” said Susannah, as they walked on. Abel Jones, the poor little boy; he’d arrived at Waverly in 1926 from the German Protestant Orphans Home. No family, no visitors, no pictures from loved ones. Susannah had become like a mother to him, and at times Wolfgang felt like he’d become the boy’s father too, a position that left him at once uncomfortable and yet pleased.
    Wolfgang glanced at her. “Abel has you to take care of him.”
    The comment drew a smile from Susannah. “Miss Schultz spoke of you before I left last night. She hopes you’ll play for her today.”
    “Dr. Barker thinks my music therapy is a waste of time.”
    “Has he told you that?”
    “No, but I can tell.”
    Susannah waved her hands. “Dr. Barker is a bore who’s mad at the world because his wife won’t sleep with him anymore.”
    “She’s afraid of catching TB,” Wolfgang said. “I’d be careful too.”
    “Would you?”
    “You know what I mean.”
    She watched him curiously. “You know Barker’s wife moved out.”
    “No, I didn’t know that.”
    “Moved off the hillside and took the kids with her,” said