An Acquaintance with Darkness (16 page)

"Ah, I knew you were being nice for a reason. What's your pleasure?"

"I'm doing a paper for extra grades at school. I want to surprise Uncle Valentine with an A-plus in science. It would help, ever so much, if I could get into his shed in back, so I could see his laboratory and write all about the equipment a doctor uses."

He gave me a down-turned smile. "Why don't you ask your uncle to let you in?"

"I told you. I want it to be a surprise. Do you think that after we play chess this evening, you could take me in there?"

He was thoughtful for a moment. "A paper, you say?"

"Yes. Mrs. McQuade said she wants to see more initiative on the part of her girls. She says that science is all around us, if we open our eyes and pay attention. She suggested we try our backyards and come up with a topic." I was warming to it, proud of my lying. "Well, I looked in my backyard and I saw Uncle Valentine's shed. And so that's when it came to me. Of course, I might not understand everything he's got out there. But you could explain it to me. If you would, I mean. Would you, Robert?"

I'm starting to sound like a Southern belle,
I thought,
the one thing Daddy wanted me never to be.
But it was for a good cause. Wasn't it?

"I don't see any harm in it," Robert said. He said it casually, not realizing what he'd done for me.

I could breathe again. There was no evidence in the shed. If there were, Robert wouldn't have agreed. Not unless he was planning on slipping away from me sometime this night to remove the evidence. But he'd not be able to. I'd watch him tonight, every minute. I wouldn't let him out of my sight. Then at some future date, I'd slip Miss Sly Boots into the shed. And watch her disappointment. She'd have to go to her father and tell him he was wrong.

She'd be so angry, she'd stamp her foot and go right through the floor like Rumpelstiltskin.

S
O FAR
I
HAD
managed to do very well. Robert hadn't been out of my sight once and we were at dinner. I watched Maude take away the soup dishes, wondering if I could manage as well for the rest of the evening.

"Do you like the fish, Emily?" Uncle Valentine asked.

"Yes. I love the stuffing Maude made. But I'm afraid I ate too much turtle soup."

"Eat the fish. Fish is good for you. It's brain food," Uncle Valentine said.

Robert winked at me. "Eat the fish and you can swim better," he said. "Do you swim, Emily?"

"Yes."

"Where did you learn?"

"In Maryland. We had a creek."

"Who taught you?"

"Johnny Surratt," I said.

"Oh." Robert scowled. I knew what he was thinking. Did everything in my life go full circle and get back to Johnny Surratt? "I hear he's still in Canada. There's a twenty-five-thousand-dollar price on his head."

I picked nervously at the fish. I hadn't thought about Johnny all day. I felt disloyal to him. All I could think of was if I'd really get into the shed this night.

The table was set beautifully. Night-blooming cereus, their white petals down because it wasn't dark yet, were in a bowl as the centerpiece. Candles glowed. Even though the house was equipped with gaslight, Uncle Valentine preferred candles. There was, in addition to the fish, roasted potatoes, green beans, pickled preserves, cheddar and Gloucester cheeses, a chicken pie. And a whipped syllabub.

Where Mrs. McQuade had her Wednesday Morning Discussion Group, Uncle Valentine had his Thursday Evening Dinners. I hadn't lived with him long enough to experience the range of guests, but I had lived with him long enough to know he hated eating alone. Tonight it was just Robert. What with the Lincoln funeral, everyone was exhausted.

"I heard that Booth was arrested in Toronto," Robert said.

Toronto? I looked up quickly. If they'd caught Booth in Toronto, did that mean they'd also catch Johnny? Then I realized Robert was joking.

"I heard he was arrested in Massachusetts. And Pennsylvania. And Chicago," Uncle Valentine said.

"How can you make sport about it?" I asked him.

"It's becoming quite the thing to come up with new and absurd stories about where John Wilkes Booth was last seen," Robert said.

"It's no joke to any handsome man with a black mustache," Uncle Valentine said. "The paper said today that dozens of them have been seized and rushed off to jail." He sighed. "The funeral is over here in Washington, but I don't think the country will ever recover from this blow. Ever. In the North, mobs are attacking anyone who has the hint of being a Southern sympathizer, tarring and feathering them, beating them. I'm not sure it was a good idea allowing the funeral train to go on this long journey through so many states."

"The people would have it no other way," Robert reminded him. "I heard they are lining the tracks, thousands of them, all the way to Baltimore. Singing."

Just then came the sound of a wagon coming in the gate. Uncle Valentine and Robert exchanged glances. "Too early," Uncle Valentine said. "The fool."

Robert got up and went to the window. "It's only the ice wagon," he said.

Another shipment of ice?
I thought. Maude had ordered enough ice all week to make an igloo. Then Uncle Valentine started talking again. He said he'd heard that John Wilkes Booth had been seen on a train wearing women's clothing, with burnt cork on his face to make him appear as a Negro.

The ice wagon rumbled into the yard. I heard Maude go out the kitchen door to greet the driver. Uncle Valentine offered me some of Maude's fresh beaten biscuits. I did like beaten biscuits. And Maude's were lighter than any I'd ever eaten. But if Robert went outside to greet the iceman, I was going with him. I didn't know what excuse I'd give, but I'd find one.

As it turned out, I did not have to. Robert stayed at the table all through dinner. After Uncle Valentine left for the theater, we went out to the shed.

I watched as he lifted a stone out of the side wall of the shed, secured a key, and ingeniously replaced the stone. As he did so, another wagon appeared at the gate.

Robert set down the shaded lantern. It was still raining lightly, a fine rain that did not deter Marietta's nightflowers from blooming but seemed to make them glisten. From somewhere in the distance a clock in a church steeple chimed. Nine woeful bells.

"I'll take this shipment first, then show you inside," Robert promised.

I stepped aside. I was shivering. The horse-drawn wagon came in through the gate and stopped just short of the shed. The driver jumped down.

"Mr. Christian?" Robert asked.

"The same," the man said.

"How many casks did you bring?"

"Three." The man was well built, with black hair and beard. He was also well dressed, though a bit wet. "Who is this?" he asked, gesturing to me.

"Niece of the doctor."

"One of us?"

"She's still in school," Robert said. "Are the contents of merchantable quality?" He peered at the casks in the wagon. They said
PICKLES
.

"Yes."

"Not from out of state, I hope. The doctor wants no out-of-state pickles."

"Local," Christian said. "Fresh picked from a nearby farm."

"How much a cask?"

"Forty dollars. And seven dollars each for shipping."

"Seven? That's outrageous!" Robert sounded angry.

The man shrugged. "The contents are packed in the right solution."

"Rum, arsenic, and corrosive sublimate?"

"Yes."

Robert grunted. "The formula works wonders. Very well, but you've made a tidy profit. If the merchandise isn't fresh, you'll hear from us." He reached inside his coat, took out his wallet, and counted out the cash.

"I was chased by three roughs," the man complained. "Pickles are in short supply these days."

They struggled getting the casks out of the wagon.
Awfully heavy for pickles,
I thought. They rolled the casks on the ground. Robert opened the shed door and they went inside. I waited out in the fine misty rain. Then Mr. Christian came out. "Tell the doctor if he wants any more pickles, I can get them fresh. Always." He climbed into his wagon, clucked to the horses, and the wagon rumbled off.

I looked at Robert. "Pickles?" I asked.

He smiled. "You must know everything, mustn't you? It's the solution the pickles are packed in that we're after. It's used to preserve specimens and is in great demand."

"Why did he ask if I was one of you?"'

"He meant working for the doctor. Now, do you want to come in and see the shed or not?"

We went down four steps once inside the door. The first thing I noticed was the cold.

"Be careful," Robert said. "Sometimes there is water on the floor."

"Why is it so cold?"

"To keep the specimens preserved." He went about lighting lamps.

The place came to life. The back wall was lined with heavy draperies. "Window," Robert said. "When your uncle works in here he opens the draperies to let sunlight in. Nobody lives back there, so he has privacy."

The walls were painted white. And lined with wooden shelves. Some of the shelves had large jars filled with floating things. I saw the head of a pig in one jar. A frog in another. Even a snake. From a far corner a human skeleton glared at me. I gasped.

In still another jar a human finger floated in some solution.

Robert smiled. "It was saved by your uncle when it was found on the floor of one of the army hospitals. I see you brought pad and pencil. Aren't you going to take notes?"

"Yes."

Robert showed me around. He showed me syringes, stones taken from a gallbladder, a human skull. I saw no bodies. But I was fascinated just the same.

He showed me some carbolic acid, used as a disinfectant. He held up a jar with some dark liquid. "This is iodine," he said. "It was first used in a field hospital in Jonesboro, Georgia, during the war, where it was sprayed into the air as an antiseptic. But we here in America are way behind Europe in our medical progress. Here, for instance, is a clinical thermometer. It is hundreds of years old. Yet during the war there were not more than twenty in the whole Union Army."

I wrote.

"This is a hypodermic syringe. It is still only used by some surgeons. Most still prefer to dust morphine into wounds or give opium pills. This is an ophthalmoscope. A doctor can examine the inside of the eye with it. It was invented in 1851. But then years after its invention few doctors in our army could yet use it."

"Why?"

"Because the army had too many incompetent medical men. And because before the war most medical schools did not have the advanced knowledge of the day. The war opened up those opportunities for us. It gave us the chance to do things, out of sheer necessity, that were not even allowed or taught in medical schools."

"So there was some good to the war," I said.

"Yes. War always brings us technological advances."

"My daddy died of a stomach wound."

"So many did. The son of Dr. Bowditch of Boston, for instance. Young Bowditch was wounded on the battlefield. No ambulance was sent out to him. He was brought off on a horse and died. Bowditch fought the War Department for a trained ambulance corps."

"Did he get one?"

"Yes. Where did your father die?"

"Chancellorsville."

"May of '63. By then we had an ambulance corps. But it was a Confederate win. The ambulance corps brought about eight thousand of our men into the division hospitals, but twelve hundred were left on the field when our army retreated. They were treated well enough when captured, but in the ten days before the prisoner exchange there was a real shortage of supplies."

I nodded. My mouth was dry. "I know what that is." I pointed. "A stethoscope."

"Yes. Invented in 1838. And Harvard Medical School still doesn't have one. Its catalogs still don't mention many of these instruments."

"Why?"

He shrugged. "Too many medical schools are just diploma mills. What we've learned from the war still hasn't gotten to them. It's why the work your uncle is doing is so important. He is directly teaching what he learned in the war. And he is one of the most qualified teachers of anatomy around today."

"You mean he works on dead bodies."

"All medical schools use them, yes. Anatomy courses are the reason for the establishment of medical schools. Before that students learned as apprentices, following doctors around."

"Where do you get the bodies?"

"They are bequeathed to us. Or they are those of executed criminals." His gaze was warm and direct. Was he lying? No, I decided. His answers were too easy. I wrote some more.

"And finally, this is an achromatic microscope," Robert said. "The headquarters of the Army Medical Department didn't have one until 1863. Well, does that satisfy your curiosity?"

"Yes. Thank you, Robert."

He extinguished the lamps. As we walked past the casks, it occurred to me that the label, PICKLES, on each one was ludicrous, in light of all this scientific equipment. I followed Robert out the door. Not for one moment did I believe there were pickles in those barrels. What, then? I did not know. But I was sure whatever was in them was for the good of mankind. Perhaps some new discovery. Who was I to question it?

***

"What are these flowers?" Myra stood on the stone path, her eyes wide. "I've never seen such flowers."

"Never mind the flowers. They're an experiment for the good of mankind," I told her. That shut her mouth for a while and added just the right touch so that when I asked her to turn her back while I got the key to the shed, she obeyed without a fuss.

"This is a hypodermic syringe," I said inside the shed. I picked it up. "It is still only used by some surgeons. Most still prefer to dust morphine into wounds or give opium pills."

She stared, openmouthed. "It's an ugly thing. Put it down."

"Perhaps you would prefer to see this. It's an ophthalmoscope."

She shivered. "What's it for?"

"To examine the inside of the eye."

"The
inside?
"

"Yes. It was invented way back in 1851. And few doctors yet use it."