Bending Toward the Sun by Mona Hodgson

met his gaze. “Did you need me for something else? Is there a problem?”
    “No. It can wait.” PaPa swatted the air. “You girls tend to your business.”
    PaPa left to greet the banker’s wife as Emilie went to the desk for the ledger. When she returned, a display of dipped candles lined the counter, laid out like felled trees.
    “There’s thirty of ’em.”
    Emilie wrote a voucher for Anna and handed it to her.
    Anna’s hands stilled, her eyes widening. “Did you hear that?”
    Emilie shook her head. “I didn’t hear anything. Suppose I was too busy concentrating.”
    Anna slid the voucher into her sack. “It sounded like a distant explosion.”
    “We heard it too.” His steps quick, PaPa carried a keg to the counter with the banker’s wife at his heels.
    Emilie set the bookwork down. “Where’d it come from? Could you tell?”
    “From the river.” The banker’s wife pulled money from her woolen skirt pocket. “If you ask me, it was probably one of those dreadful steamboats. They’re dangerous things, you know.”
    PaPa paled and rushed to the storeroom. Emilie and the others followed him out the back door. They looked downstream toward an umbrella cloud of smoke and steam. Shouts and screams filled the air, even at this distance.
    A boy rushed up the hill shouting, “Renglers’ steamboat blew up!”
    She looked at PaPa, her stomach knotting. He was shaking. Oliver and Owen were more than his checkers buddies; they were good friends. She squeezed her father’s hand. “Maybe they weren’t there.”
    “That’s what I wanted to tell you.” Tears streamed his face. “Quaid McFarland was here. He finished making the railing for their boat.”
    She shook her head, fighting the storm building inside her.
    “He had it in the wagon.”
    She stared at the billowing smoke. “No! Please, God, no!”

Thirteen
    W hat was happening? Where was he?
    Quaid sputtered. Choked. Fought to gain his balance.
    A fire on the boat. He had to help the others. But he was being pulled away from them.
    Muddy water stung his eyes, weighted his lungs. His legs could no longer kick, or his arms flail. A brawny arm pushed against his chest.
    God, is that You?
    “I’ve got ya.” God sounded a lot like Captain Pete.
    Safe, he gave in to the blackness.

    “Took on a lot of water, he did.” Pete?
    “Got to clear his lungs.” Doc Stumberg’s gravelly voice.
    “Quaid Patrick McFarland! Stay with us … stay with me, Son.” Mother.
    He was rolling. Draped over a barrel. Back and forth. Quaid gasped. His gut wrenching, he gagged. After he’d spit and sputtered, strong hands pulled him off the barrel and propped him against it. His eyelids felt leaden as he fought to open his eyes.
    “His eyes. They’re opening.” Mother’s voice again.
    He blinked until a craggy face came into view. Doc Stumberg. Where was Mother?
    Were the myriad sounds actually distant, or was something wrong with his hearing? He dug at his ears with his pinkies, dislodging wet dirt.
    “You were underwater,” the doc said.
    Quaid tipped his head to drain the remaining goop from his ears.
    “Thank You, God! Thank You, Jesus!” His folks’ voices mingled.
    He turned toward the prayer, where Mother and Father knelt beside him in front of a cheering crowd.
    “A fire in the engine room, then the whole thing went up.”
    Quaid remembered. “Oliver? Owen?” Didn’t sound like his own voice, forced and puny.
    “We’re here, buddy.” Oliver said. “Your shouts got us all out in time.”
    “You’re a hero.”
    “No lives lost.”
    “Explosion tossed you overboard like a rag doll.”
    “Captain Pete spotted you floating downstream. Dove in after ya.”
    Voices came from all around. Some he recognized. Others he didn’t. None of them belonged to Emilie.
    Johann Heinrich stepped forward. Was the man trembling? Kneeling, Mr. Heinrich looked Quaid in the eye. “Can you find it in your heart to forgive me? I was wrong.”
    Thank You, God!