LOVE IS MORE THAN A FEELING
Chapter Twenty-Four
Jack and Rose stared,
slack-jawed, as Fabrizio di Rossi and Tommy Ryan stepped down from the train,
each carrying only a single bag that held their possessions. They had thought that
both Fabrizio and Tommy had died on the Titanic, but here they were, alive.
Fabrizio and Tommy stared back at them,
unable to believe their eyes. For over a year, they had believed that Jack and
Rose were among the fifteen hundred victims of the Titanic sinking, and yet,
they were here, alive and well, with a young baby as well.
Jack reacted first. Still not quite believing
that it could be true, he stepped forward. "Fabri?"
"Jack!"
They rushed forward and hugged, everyone else
looking on in wonder. It wasn’t every day that long-lost friends, thought dead,
were reunited. Suddenly, everyone was asking questions.
"How did you survive?"
"I thought you were dead. Why didn’t I
find you on the Carpathia?"
"What have you been doing the last year
and a half?"
Reluctantly, Fred and Monica interrupted the
reunion.
"Why don’t we find a way to ship all of
this stuff to our house?" Fred suggested, looking at the four suddenly
reunited Titanic survivors.
"Yes. We can’t just leave it here, and
the train will be leaving soon," Monica added.
Jack, Rose, Tommy, and Fabrizio had still
been staring at each other, hugging and shouting questions, when the Winkings’
words got through to them. Reluctantly, they put off their celebrating and
turned to the task of helping Fred and Monica bring their belongings to their
new home.
Jack, who was the most familiar with Chippewa
Falls, hurried down to a nearby warehouse to borrow a wagon. When he returned,
driving the wagon, they loaded the Winkings’ belongings into it and started for
their new home.
*****
When the group arrived at Fred and Monica’s
new home, they rushed to unload the wagon. The four men brought the heavier
items in, while Rose and Monica brought in the lighter bags and boxes, walking
through the house and planning where everything should go.
Once everything was unloaded, Jack returned
the wagon to the warehouse, while Fred, Tommy, and Fabrizio began unpacking.
Rose and Monica walked to the Dawsons' house to make dinner. The Winkings’ home
wouldn’t be ready for quite some time yet.
A few hours later, everyone gathered at the
Dawsons’ house. The men had finished most of the unpacking at the Winkings’
house, though things still needed to be arranged and set up. Rose and Monica
were just finishing making dinner when they arrived.
At dinner, Jack and Rose wanted to know what
Tommy and Fabrizio had been doing since the Titanic sank, and how they had
survived. Jack had already told them how he and Rose had survived, and what
they had been doing for the past year and a half, but now the Dawsons wanted to
know what their friends had been doing all this time, and how they had
survived.
Tommy began. "There were only a few
boats left—not nearly enough for all of the passengers still on board the
Titanic."
Jack and Rose nodded, remembering the
struggle to get into a boat—and how Rose had jumped out to be with Jack. They
had both been extraordinarily lucky to survive.
"Fabrizio and I were trying to get close
enough to get into one, but there was an officer with a gun guarding it,
shouting that only women and children could get into the boat. A first class
man had tried to bribe him to give him a place in the boat, but the officer
threw the money back in his face, shouting that his money couldn’t save him.
While this was happening, a steerage man climbed up and tried to jump into the
boat, but the officer shot at him. Everyone panicked then, and I was shoved
forward toward him. I guess he thought I was trying to rush the boat, because
he shot me right then and there."
Rose gasped in sympathy, and Jack looked
horrified. He had told them to go and check the other side of the ship for
boats, and this was what had happened. A wave of guilt went through him. They
all should have stuck together.
Tommy went on. "I fell back into the
crowd. The last thing I remembered before blacking out was Fabrizio calling the
officer a bastardo. Then, everything went black."
"How did you survive?" Jack wanted
to know. His fist clenched his fork at the thought of what his friends had
survived.
"I woke up when a wave washed me off the
deck. Fabrizio had assumed that I was dead, and had taken my lifebelt, so I was
lucky to stay afloat." Fabrizio looked a little sheepish. "There was
a boat nearby, and someone pulled me into it. I don’t remember much more,
except being told that the bullet hadn’t hit any vital organs. Whoever had
rescued me pressed a handkerchief against the wound to slow the bleeding. It
was bad, but I survived. I woke up several hours later on the Carpathia, in the
second class infirmary. The injury was bad, but the Carpathia had a good
doctor, who was able to remove the bullet and patch me up."
Fabrizio started in on his story. "After
Tommy was shot, and I took his lifebelt—" Tommy sent him a baleful look,
which Fabrizio ignored. "—I searched for another boat to get into, but
there was only one boat left on the ship. There was a huge crowd surrounding
it, and another officer was only allowing women and children on board. I pushed
my way through the crowd anyway, hoping that there might be room on board for
some men, too. One man got on board, the same one who had tried to bribe the
officer who shot Tommy. He’d picked up a little steerage girl and used her to
get himself on board the boat. I was getting close to the boat when a wave
washed over the deck. Most of the people in the boat were washed out of it, and
I was swept into the water."
Jack and Rose had stopped eating and were
listening intently. What Tommy and Fabrizio had survived was as bad, if not
worse, than what they had gone through.
"Did...did you get into the boat?"
Rose inquired, trying to understand how he had survived, when there had been no
room in a boat for him.
"Eventually. One of the ship’s smokestacks
collapsed, crushing several people. I was almost crushed, but managed to dive
down far enough to escape the worst of it. When I got back to the surface, the
boat had floated off the deck, and several people were on board, with more
struggling to get in. The first class man who had used the little girl to get
in the boat was clubbing people with an oar when they tried to climb aboard,
yelling that they would swamp the boat. He almost hit me, but I grabbed hold of
the oar, and when he went to swing it again, I let it pull me into the
boat."
Rose looked at Jack, knowing instinctively
who the first class man had been who had attempted to bribe the officer, used
the little girl to get a place in the boat, and clubbed people trying to get
into the lifeboat had been. Cal. Of all the pompous, arrogant first class men
she had known, only Cal would have gone so far. If only he had been put in jail
for shooting her...but there was nothing to be done for that. He was far away,
and none of them needed to be worried about him anymore.
"The Carpathia picked us up in the
morning. I looked around for you, Jack, but I couldn’t find you."
Jack wondered at that for a moment, then
realized that with all the hiding he and Rose had done, it wasn’t surprising
that Fabrizio hadn’t found them.
"Why didn’t you check the list of
survivors?"
"I did, but you weren’t on it. Neither
was Rose."
Jack realized that Fabrizio was right. He and
Rose hadn’t given their names until the ship docked. By that time, Fabrizio had
undoubtedly given up on finding them.
Fabrizio continued. "When I was leaving
the Carpathia, I was behind a group of sick and injured survivors. One of them
looked familiar, so I went to see if I knew the person. It was Tommy."
"Yeah, after you took my lifebelt and
left me for dead on the Titanic."
"Shut up." Fabrizio mumbled
something about crazy Irishmen under his breath, then went on. "I didn’t
know anyone else in America, so I waited until Tommy was released from the
hospital a week later."
"He came and visited, and we fought
about the lifebelt until a nurse threw him out," Tommy told them, drawing
laughter from the others. "We called a truce when he left the hospital.
Since we didn’t have anywhere to go, or anything to do, Fabrizio convinced me
to explore our new country with him. After all, we almost died getting here, so
it made sense to see everything there was to see. We wandered around the East
for about a year, and then decided to work our way west. Fabrizio had heard
about California from Jack and wanted to go there, so we slowly started
west."
"It was really slow. Neither of us had
any money, so we worked our way from place to place, just like Jack and I did
in Europe. We were on the train to California when we got to talking with
them." Fabrizio indicated the Winkings. "We asked where they were
going, and they said Chippewa Falls, Wisconsin. I knew that Jack had come from
there, so I asked if they had known him. They said they did, and that he was
living there. I thought it must be another Jack Dawson, because the one I knew
had died on the Titanic. They said that the one they knew had survived the
Titanic, and encouraged us to detour to Chippewa Falls with them to see for
ourselves."
"I didn’t believe them, either,"
Tommy added, "but they were right. I couldn’t believe it when I got off
the train and saw you two standing there—and with a baby in Rose’s arms. I
guess you didn’t die after all."
"Nope. We survived. Just barely, but we
did it." Jack put his fork down beside his empty plate. "Where are
you heading next?"
Tommy and Fabrizio glanced at each other.
"California, I guess," Tommy
responded. He wasn’t nearly so excited about going there as Fabrizio was, but
went along for lack of anything else to do.
"Why don’t you stay here for a
while?" Jack suggested. "We have a couple of extra rooms, since the
baby sleeps in our room with us. You could stay for a couple of weeks, maybe
find some work while you’re here. It’s getting toward harvest time, and
there’ll be jobs available."
"Yes. Please stay for a while,"
Rose added. "We haven’t seen you in so long. It would be good to have you
here."
Fabrizio nodded. "Sure. I can stay for a
while. California will wait."
Tommy thought for a moment, then nodded.
"Me, too. I could use a break from traveling, and it’ll be good to catch
up on old times. Count me in."
Jack smiled, welcoming his friends to
Chippewa Falls.