An Acquaintance with Darkness (20 page)

There it was. There was what I would do. I would do nothing. For now, at least. I would wait until my mind cleared. If it ever did. I would treat Uncle Valentine as I had always treated him, as if I suspected nothing. I would sit on my turret and continue to eat my curds and whey.

On May 1 President Johnson ordered nine army officers named to the military commission to try the eight accused in the assassination conspiracy. Of course Annie's mother was one of the accused.

Uncle Valentine read this to me from the newspaper at breakfast. "Federal authorities have ruled it be a military rather than a civil court," he said. "This might be a good topic for your Wednesday Discussion Group. Everyone in Washington is arguing the point. Does the military have a right to try civilians?"

It was a good question. But I did not bring it up for the Wednesday discussion, even though Mrs. McQuade gave us extra credit if we introduced a good topic. I was too involved in the whole thing. I didn't want Myra to get a whiff of my friendship with Annie and Johnny Surratt. Who knew what she'd do with that little tidbit, she and her newspaperman father. No one in my class knew of this yet. So far I'd managed to keep it secret.

Was I still friends with Annie? I didn't know. I hadn't seen her since our argument. Then that very Thursday, the fourth, when I was thinking of her, she came around again. It was downright creepy.

I had just settled the next-to-last of Uncle Valentine's patients in the waiting room and turned to see what the last lady in the hall was here for. Out of my eye I'd seen her lingering in the shadows with a shawl over her face. I had a pad and pencil in my hand.

"And what is your ailment?" I asked before turning.

"They're going to try my mother." She drew the shawl back.

"Annie!" I dropped my pad and pencil and we hugged. She felt thinner.

"You never noticed me," she said.

"You had that shawl on."

"I wear it all the time when I go out. I don't want to be recognized."

"Nobody here would recognize you. These poor people all have their own troubles."

"Still, I didn't want to put you in any danger. By association."

"Oh, Annie." I ushered her into the kitchen. I was flooded with guilt for having ignored her. "I don't feel that way about you," I said.

She sat down and peered at me. "I was watching you. You seemed a thousand miles away. I know the look. I feel that way myself most of the time. What's wrong?"

"Nothing. I was just busy. How have you been, Annie?"

"Terrible. I have bad news."

"I know about the military trial. Uncle Valentine says they won't dare convict her. He says they're only putting her on trial to try to bait Johnny out of hiding."

"It isn't that," she said dully.

I put the water on for tea. "What, then?"

"It's my Alex." She took a crumpled paper from her reticule. Her movements were like those of an old lady. "Alex has been killed."

"Killed?" I almost dropped a cup taking it down from the cupboard. "Killed?" I asked again. "The war is over!"

She shook her head sadly and pushed the crumpled letter across the table at me. She seemed awfully calm. I picked up the letter and read it.

She was right. Alex had been shot on April 25 at Durham Station in North Carolina, by a Southern sniper who had decided the war wasn't over yet.

"Oh, Annie!" I said.

She was either in shock or beyond grief. "It's for the best, I suppose. I never did tell him about Mama. Although I know he may have seen it in the papers. And that's why he stopped writing. I couldn't bear losing him because of that. I suppose it's better this way. I'll take that tea now," she said. "Things can't possibly get much worse." Her eyes were dull. She looked like a waxwork figure we'd seen once in the Smithsonian. "Except if they hang my mother."

"They're not going to hang your mother." I said the words fervently.

"People in Washington are thirsty for blood," she said. "They want culprits. They don't care who they are, innocent or not. They want someone to blame for the loss they have suffered. Do you know they're still dragging Lincoln's body around out there? The man's been dead two weeks and they haven't buried him yet. If they'd bury him and get it over with, maybe all this hysteria would stop and we could all get back to normal!"

She was right. The Lincoln funeral train hadn't reached Illinois yet. But I doubted if things would be back to normal when it did. I felt as if I didn't know what normal was anymore. And I hadn't lost a sweetheart in the war. My brother hadn't run off to Canada with a price on his head. And my mother wasn't in prison.

But I felt a deep and haunting sense of loss just the same. What loss, I asked myself, besides Mama? And she would have died even if Lincoln hadn't been shot.

I'd done nothing but gain knowledge since I'd come to Washington.

Now I knew that a girl could have been one-eighth Negro and still been sold as a slave. Now I knew that people rob graves. Now I knew that our medical hospitals were hopelessly behind the times. I knew that more men could have been saved if we'd had an ambulance corps earlier in the war. I knew that a young man can be shot by a sniper even after a war is over. While another can run off and not come out of hiding, even when his mother's life is threatened.

Now I knew that a matinee idol can kill a president.

I knew that my uncle may have been stealing bodies for research. So that maybe the next time a young girl's daddy got wounded in the stomach, they could save him. Or the next time a president got shot they would be able to keep him alive.

Would that be so wrong?

Were there degrees of right and wrong?

It
was
a loss I felt. The loss of my innocence.

On May 4 they finally buried Abraham Lincoln in Illinois. On the tenth they arrested Jeff Davis, president of the Confederacy, in Georgia. They said he was wearing a woman's dress.

On the twelfth a man came up to our door, took off his hat, and asked to rent a room. I was alone after school. He was in uniform. "We don't rent rooms," I told him. "I'm sorry."

I felt bad. He was thin and sunburnt and somewhat the worse for wear. He wore a loose shirt and held a soft hat. His boots were dusty and his mustache drooped. So did his eyes. "There are places that feed soldiers on their way home," I said. "I can direct you to one."

"Ain't hungry, miss. Or on my way home. Yet. Come for the review."

"Review?" I asked.

He must have thought me a noodleheaded flighty girl. "Hunnerts of soldiers in town. Ain't you seen 'em?"

I had. I nodded. There had seemed like an unusual amount of soldiers walking the streets these last couple of days.

"Gonna be a lotta soldiers in Washington the next week or so. 'Bout a hunnert and fifty thousand of 'em."

"A hundred and fifty thousand soldiers?"

"Yes, miss. For the review of the Grand Armies of the Republic. On the twenty-third. They say it'll take us two whole days to parade. I was with Sherman."

"Sherman? Did you know a Captain Alex Bailey?"

"No, miss, sorry."

"Well, in any case, doesn't your regiment have a place to stay?"

"We're bivouacked near the unfinished monument to George Washington. But I had hopes of a clean room and a tub of water. Been a long time since I was in a house."

I directed him down the block to where Mrs. Waring, whose husband had been killed in the war, was talking about starting a boardinghouse.

"Much obliged," he said.

"Would you like something cold to drink?" It was the least I could do.

"That sounds good, miss."

I fetched him a glass of lemonade. He drank it quickly.

"Where are you from?" I asked.

"Indiana, miss." He wiped his mouth with his sleeve and handed the glass back to me, then put his hat back on his head. "Much obliged," he said again.

"Can I ask you something before you leave?"

He nodded briskly.

"Did you burn people out down South, like they say Sherman's soldiers did? Women and children?"

He hesitated. "You're Secesh," he said.

"No. I'm from Maryland, but we're Union. My daddy died fighting for it."

"I ain't never burned no women or children, miss," he said.

"What did you do, then?"

"I foraged. For food."

I smiled to show I believed him. But I didn't. Likely the food he'd foraged had been plundered from the larder of some Southern woman who had children to feed and no man left on the plantation. Mrs. McQuade said what Sherman's men couldn't take with them they'd slaughtered on the spot—chickens, hogs, cattle. Just to leave destruction in their wake. Was it wrong? They'd brought the war to a quicker end. Did that make it right? We'd had a whole Wednesday Morning Discussion on it.

The soldier smiled back at me. "Come see the review," he invited, as if he were in charge of the whole thing. "Gonna be cavalry and mules and wagons, infantry, Zouaves in their flashy uniforms, everything."

I told him I would, watched him walk away, and went back inside. I had some reading to do for class. It was the end of the term and Mrs. McQuade was giving tests. No sooner had I sat down than there was another knock. Another soldier? Again I went to open the front door.

It was Robert. He had a cat under his arm. A red cat.

"Was that soldier looking for a room?" he asked. I found my tongue. "Yes."

"They're all over town. It's swarming with them."

"There's going to be a review."

"I heard. It'll bring disease, drunkenness, and fights."

"My, you're in a cheerful mood. I suppose things went well in Memphis."

"They did."

"Why did you knock? You never do."

"I have a friend who needs a room. I thought I'd ask politelike."

"Why don't you take your friend to the Young Men's Christian Association, where you live?"

"Because they don't take cats," he said. And he held out the fluffy red cat. "He needs a home. His name is Sultana. Will you give him one?"

We were uncomfortable in each other's presence. It was different now. I hadn't been wrong about that morning in the hallway. Something had happened between us and whatever it was, he'd felt it, too.

We sat in the parlor. I gave him some lemonade. He put the cat in my arms, and I carried on about it like I'd never seen a fool cat before. "Sultana?" I said. "You named him after the riverboat that blew up?"

"Yes."

I stroked Sultana. He purred in my lap, looked into my face, and gave me that unblinking stare cats give. "Where did you get him?"

"Found him abandoned on the docks in Memphis. I'd wired your uncle on a business matter and asked him what I could bring home for you. He wired back. 'A cat,' he said. That you were upset because you'd lost Puss-in-Boots."

"Annie took her back. Why did you want to bring me something?"

"To make up for things."

"What things?"

"Whatever it was that caused the look on your face the day I left here."

I stroked the cat's ears. "They'll give you undying loyalty for scratching their ears," I said. "Such a little thing to do to get loyalty."

"Yes," he said. "And humans require so much."

"You want me to say I want my ears scratched, Robert? You think that's what I want from you?"

"No, but I'd like to know what it would take, Emily, for you to trust me. I thought what I did that morning in the hall would do it. When I didn't tell your uncle you were eavesdropping."

"Is that why you didn't tell him?"

"Yes. I want you to trust me, Emily. What must I do?" He looked at me square. "Since the day I met you, you've been angry, defiant, bitter toward me, as if I'm to blame for everything in your life. I can't help it about Johnny. Or Annie. You have to stop blaming me. All I want is to be friends with you. I like you, Emily. I liked you the minute I met you."

"As a girl?"

"Well, you are a girl, aren't you? Yes."

I ducked my head. I could feel things bursting inside me. "I'm not blaming you for Johnny or Annie," I said.

"Well, then, what
are
you blaming me for? Would you do me the honor of telling me?"

I gave a great heaving sigh. "You mustn't tell my uncle any of this. Promise?"

"Trust me."

"I heard the conversation before you left for Memphis. You were to bring back two riverboat victims. Have you brought them back?"

"Yes."

"Are they dead or alive, Robert?"

He was not stupid. The understanding was there in his eyes. I could not catch him off guard. "They're alive, Emily. Burn cases. I dosed them with laudanum to ease their pain and brought them back. They're in Douglas Hospital. Why would I be bringing back dead people?"

"For specimens. What we talked about the night you showed me inside the shed."

More understanding in those eyes. "You suspect us of stealing bodies. That's why you were listening on the stairs."

"I can't help it, Robert. There's the Spoon and the Mole, for one thing. They were trying to rob my mother's grave the very night she was buried! Uncle Valentine chased them."

"He told me about that." He sighed. "He found out they were running a little grave-robbing business on the side. He's called them to account for it and made them promise to stop. They never stole bodies for him."

"Then what were they doing here that morning you left?"

"They work for your uncle. They do numerous odd jobs. They get around, as dwarves do. They scout around the city and tell your uncle of cases he might be interested in. They found him Marietta. And Addie. And their contacts got the news to us about the riverboat accident."

"Why did you have to lie and say you were a relative of the burn victims? Why not say you worked for a doctor?"

"Relatives get there first. Officials release victims only to relatives. I know it was a little dishonest, but we're concerned with helping the victims. Your uncle is doing research on burns. He's made progress."

"You have an answer for everything," I said. "It's so provoking."

"I'm sorry, Emily, if the answers I give you don't fit in with what you want to think of us. You're of an age where you have a lively imagination. We're not doing anything dramatic or exciting here. Our work consists of long, tedious hours, a lot of failures, and a few slow gains. I'm sorry to disappoint you."