An Acquaintance with Darkness (18 page)

"I'll be home from school directly," I promised. "Do you want me to sort the mail?"

"If you would be so kind."

He got tons of mail every day. From students asking to be in his classes; colleagues all over the world; old friends in Edinburgh, where he went to medical school; suppliers from out of state; quacks writing to him of their cures; old patients he had made well again. There were bills, newspapers, periodicals. I kept a log as to what letter had come in from what place on what day.

It was on that very Thursday, the twenty-seventh, that I found the letter addressed to me in the pile of Uncle Valentine's mail. I had just finished ushering four patients into the waiting room and was sorting the mail out on Uncle Valentine's desk.

My heart jumped right up from my chest, like Puss-in-Boots jumped for a dangling string. It was on its way out of my mouth when I saw that the letter had no postmark. How had it gotten here?

I had to put my hand over my mouth to hold my heart in.

There was no return address. It was Johnny's handwriting.

Dear Emily,

Bum this letter.
Please, burn it as soon as you read it. I am taking a chance even writing to you. I cannot write to Annie. I suspect all the mail coming to our house has been seized. Tell Annie, please, that I am fine. I cannot tell you where I am. Just that I am in Canada. They have detectives here looking for me. I originally came north on orders from General Wilder, who directed me to go to Elmira, New York, and learn about the fortifications of the prison where they are holding Confederate soldiers. I completed my mission and was traveling from Elmira on my way back to Richmond, when I heard about Lincoln's assassination. Then I read in the papers that they are offering $25,000 for my capture. So I took the next train north and crossed into Canada, where I've been hiding. I have employed a gentleman to go to Washington to put himself in touch with my mother's counsel and report to me if my mother is in any real danger. I have paid this man's expenses. He promised to find where you were living. But his presence is a secret. Even from my mother. You must keep it a secret. Promise.

Until I hear from him that my presence is necessary, I must stay hidden away. But my bag is packed. Up until now I have had only one report from him: "Be under no apprehension as to any serious consequences. Remain perfectly quiet, as any action on your part would only tend to make matters worse. If you can be of any service to us, we will let you know; but keep quiet."

Again, please tell Annie I am fine. Tell no one else you have heard from me. And burn this as soon as you read it. I do miss you, Emily. Canada is beautiful. I wish you were here with me.

Yours affectionately,
Johnny

My hands were trembling. I felt the blood drain from my face. Johnny's man had dropped this off at our house!

Johnny was alive and well. And hiding. But he was ready to come back if his mother needed him.

Tears flooded my eyes. My heart felt like an old rag wrung out in turpentine. It stung so. My legs were shaking with a life of their own that I could not control. In the next room I could hear Uncle Valentine's patients talking. I heard a baby whimpering. Then the front door opened and I heard Uncle Valentine come in. "Good day, good day to all," I heard him greet his patients. "Give me just one moment, dear people, and I shall be right with you."

Then his footsteps coming into the office!

I crumpled the letter up and stuffed it in my apron pocket.

"Emily. So there you are."

"You're early," I said.

"Yes, well, I seeded things earlier than usual at the college today. Don't forget, this is Thursday, dinner party night."

"Yes. Who's coming?"

"A photographer fellow named Gurney, who took a picture of Lincoln in his coffin in New York City the other day. He brought the picture to us at the college. Lincoln is not holding up. I told them he wouldn't. His face is all shrunken in. He still must travel through Albany, Syracuse, Buffalo, and Cleveland, then into Indiana and Illinois. You look pale. Are you all right?"

"I have a headache."

"Go lie down, child. I'd like you to be at your best at dinner."

"I haven't logged in the mail yet."

"You can do it later. Go, go. I must see my patients. Get yourself a nice cup of tea and take it to your room."

I went. I got myself a nice cup of tea. I heated it on the fire on the stove in the kitchen. The fire was low, but it burned brighter when I put the letter from Johnny in it. Then I got some fresh sugar cookies Maude had just made that morning and went to my room to think.

Johnny's man had come here to our house. Would there be any more letters for me?

I
HAD SENT
A
NNIE
a note the very afternoon I got the one from Johnny, asking her to dinner that evening. But she couldn't come. Our guests were Mr. Gurney, the photographer who took the picture of Lincoln in his coffin in New York, and Dr. Springer and his wife. He was a colleague of Uncle Valentine's.

Gurney told us that a large Newfoundland dog had walked under the president's hearse in New York City. Its owner said he'd been in Washington, met Lincoln, and had the dog with him. Mr. Lincoln had patted the dog and now, the owner said, the dog recognized Lincoln's hearse.

Mrs. Springer spoke about gentle things. The roses she was cultivating in her garden, her love of Shakespeare. Dr. Springer was doing experiments to prove that flies were the culprits in the transmission of hospital gangrene. He was in the Peninsular campaign in 1862. And he observed that troops in motion most of the time were healthier. "It wasn't because of exercise and better morale," he told us. "It was because they left their dirt behind them."

I enjoyed myself immensely. And I forgot about Annie. The next day, when she came to the house, we had a fight. And from there everything in my life turned sour as bad milk.

Annie and I were alone. As usual, Maude was off to a funeral. I lit some astral lamps and they made a nice glow in the parlor. I made tea and served applesauce cake. I told her the story about the Newfoundland dog in New York walking under the president's casket.

She didn't smile.

"Uncle Valentine's guests are always so interesting," I said.

"Well, I'm glad you're enjoying yourself here, Emily. I really am." She crumbled bits of applesauce cake in her dish with her fingers.

"I didn't say I was enjoying myself. I said things were interesting."

"It's the same thing. You know what I did yesterday?"

"You were invited for supper. You didn't come." I hadn't told her about Johnny's letter yet. I was waiting to surprise her at the right moment. It hadn't yet come.

"I went to visit my mother. They put her in a smaller cell. She has no bed but straw on the floor. One thin blanket. She has to relieve herself in a bucket, out in the open, in full view of the guards. My mother is a lady. How can she live like that?"

"I heard the others who were arrested are confined in ironclads on the river," I said, "with hoods over their heads at all times."

"Are you telling me my mother is lucky?" She was spoiling for a fight.

"No."

"They won't let me bring her any supplies."

"Perhaps you can bring her something else," I said. And I told her about Johnny's letter. I didn't tell her about Johnny's man in Washington.

Her expression never changed while I recited the contents of the letter to her. I had committed it to memory.

"Let me see it," she said.

"I can't. I burned it."

"You
burned it!
" Now she really had something to pounce on me about.

"As Johnny directed."

"It would have meant so much to Mama!"

"It would have led them to Johnny."

"How? You said he didn't tell you where he was."

"It would have led them to me," I told her.

She looked at me. "Are you saying you're ashamed to know Johnny?"

"No. But they don't know the Johnny we know. They think he was in on the plot. Uncle Valentine doesn't want them thinking I was."

"Oh, I see. Because that would ruin all those lovely Thursday-night dinners for you."

Tears came to my eyes. "That isn't fair."

She didn't care. She kept right at it, hitting me one blow after another. "Or maybe he doesn't want the attention of the authorities on him. With what he does."

"What are you talking about, Annie?"

"You know. This doctor business. And what he does with dead bodies."

For a moment I couldn't speak. Then I found my tongue. "Whatever he does, it's all proper and legal. And he went to the prison and spoke up for his friend Dr. Mudd. That doesn't sound like he's trying to avoid the authorities. I think you're being hateful and mean, Annie. Uncle Valentine was good to you. Didn't he get the lawyers for your mother?"

"Oh, what do I care about dead bodies or what he does with them, anyway? The only dead body I care about is John Booth's. I'm glad he was shot. I'm glad they killed him. I'd have killed him myself if they didn't. All I care about is Mama. And the way I have to see her in prison every day. What do you expect?"

"I expect you to be reasonable."

"Who is reasonable in Washington these days? Find me one reasonable person. Everyone has a gripe, a fear, a hatred. And is looking for someone to blame it on."

"Exactly. And if they find Johnny, they'll blame it on him."

"Johnny shouldn't wait to be found," she said. "He should come home of his own accord."

"How can you say that?"

"He knows I'm in trouble. And Mama. He's read it in the papers. He should come home to be with us." She was crying, wiping her eyes with her sleeve.

"Then you'd have both a mother and a brother in jail," I said. "Would that help?"

"It'd help to know Johnny cared enough to come home and put himself in the line of fire for Mama. Or help me. I've got no one. Not even Alex. I've had no letters from him. Wouldn't you think he'd write? I go home to an empty house. Without even my cat."

"You can have your cat back if you want her," I said, "but you're wrong about Johnny."

"You always did favor him over me," she retorted.

There was no consoling her. She wouldn't be soothed with more tea or applesauce cake, words, or reminders of friendship. She left in a huff.

She took Puss-in-Boots with her, too. Just picked her up and went out of the house with the cat under her arm. In the rain. I sat alone, feeling hurt and confused. I wanted to cry. Annie was the only friend I had from the old days, the days when my mother and father were still alive, the days before the madness of the war came on us all like some sickness, turning us against each other. She was the only one with whom I could share common memories. And now she was gone. With Puss-in-Boots.

I waited for Uncle Valentine to come home. I couldn't tell him about the letter from Johnny, of course, but I could tell him Annie had been in a foul mood and meaner than a hen with its head chopped off.

I could tell him we'd fought, that she thought Johnny should come back.

I could tell him she took Puss-in-Boots. He would know what to say. He always did.

But he didn't come home that night. He sent a note around to Maude, who came in soon after Annie left. He had gone to a hanging.

"A hanging?" My mouth fell open as Maude read me the note. "Why a hanging?"

"He was invited."

Invited? People got invited to hangings? I was baffled, desolate.

"They need doctors to pronounce the people dead," she said.

"Was it a criminal?"

"Of course. Why else is anyone hanged?"

Oh, I thought. So
then he'll get the body for his medical school.
I felt sick to my stomach at the thought, but I didn't say anything. Maude served me dinner alone in the dining room. Rain slashed against the windows. The lamplight flickered. A
good night for a hanging,
I thought. I wondered what Annie was doing all alone in her house. Then I remembered she was not alone. She had Puss-in-Boots.

I missed the cat. She'd taken to following me around the house. When I pulled back the bedspread she'd hop up on the bed and roll over, waiting for me. Would Annie remember to feed her, with all she had on her mind?

I went up to my tower room and got into bed. I tried to read, but I couldn't. The whole house seemed to be filled with creakings and eerie noises. Outside a shutter banged. A tree branch scraped against a window.

Upstairs, in her room above mine, Addie was walking. She walked constantly, it seemed. Two nights ago I'd gone up and knocked on her door to see what was wrong. She'd said Uncle Valentine had her on new medicine. It stopped the coughing. "But I's restless," she'd said. "An' I keeps thinkin' it's a shame to let it go to waste. I could be out there helpin' my people."

If you'd help me escape.
She had not said the words, but they hung in the dark between us. They fluttered around the glow of my candle, like moths drawn to the flame. And they followed me downstairs. Addie had become a recrimination to me. I felt guilty about her. As guilty as I felt about Annie. And there was nothing I could do for either one.

I listened to the sound of the rain against the windows. It lulled my thoughts. I supposed that Uncle Valentine had taken the body of the hanged man back to the medical school and that was why he hadn't come home. What would he do with it? Would the neck be broken? The eyes bulging out? Wasn't that what happened when they hanged people? What good would that body be to Uncle Valentine, anyway?

I fell asleep.

Toward morning I woke up. I'd been dreaming that I was in the creek back home, wading and waiting for Johnny Surratt, who was to bring fishing rods. We were to fish the morning away. Then my father appeared on Manfred, in his full-dress uniform of the Union Army. "Johnny isn't coming home anymore, Miss Muffet," my father said. Then of a sudden there was a terrible fog and my father rode off into it. I ran across the creek to get to the bank and call him back, but he was gone. All I heard was voices muffled in the fog.