Blue Asylum (18 page)

The pressure on Wendell felt unbearable. He could see Iris Dunleavy’s eyes following him. She wanted an answer and this he could not give, so torn was he between his father’s authority and his innate sense of justice. The pressure had kept him from sleeping yet another night and invited in that insidious demon—the urge to find relief in private-fondling. This he fought off most of the morning, but by noon he could bear it no longer and he sadly acquiesced to the calling, setting off, heavy-hearted, for the docks. He tried not to look at the maniacs he passed in the courtyard—his brothers and sisters in lunacy.

Bernard was in an especially evil-tempered mood and would not let him take the canoe.

“Why do you do this every time?” Wendell asked.

“Because I am the dock guard and I have the responsibility to watch the boats. And you are not the owner of this boat!”

“The chef gave me permission. Like he does every single day!”

“You don’t have a note!”

“I had a note yesterday! The chef will not write me a note every single day!” Wendell’s groin ached maddeningly. Reason deserted him. “Let me at that goddamn canoe or I swear I’ll punch you! I’m a madman, can’t you see?”

Bernard looked shocked. He recovered, placed one great paw on Wendell’s chest, and pushed him down in the sand. “You think you can swear at me, do you, because your father’s the superintendent? You little bastard.”

Wendell picked himself up, his face quite hot, on the verge of just giving up and punching Bernard because he didn’t want to live anymore. Wendell cocked a trembling fist. The canoe bobbed tauntingly in the distance. Bernard crossed his arms and waited.

Wendell lowered his fist. Almost tearful with frustration and shame, he turned around and trudged off to find the chef. He spotted him in the surf, up to his knees in water, fishing. And what a day he was having. His pole was bent double from the weight of some invisible beast struggling under the sea. He was covered with sweat, knees buckling from the effort. Wendell waded out in the water to help him, splashing to the scene of battle and reaching down into the water. He felt something tug at his right hand and then break loose. Odd, he thought, staring down, why the water was turning red. He pulled his hand out of the water. All his fingers were missing on his right hand, leaving bloody nubs in their place that shot out fountains of blood. Only his thumb remained, sole survivor, pale in the sunlight.

Wendell had never heard the chef scream. It was a sound both girlish and shrill, and Wendell would have laughed had he not been staring down at the bloody water, where two of his fingers circled in the froth of an eddy. The chef grabbed him and hauled him to the beach, screaming at the top of his lungs. Wendell’s head spun and great patches of darkness swirled in front of his eyes. He fell down in a dead faint in the hot sand as the chef’s screams died in his ears, and he plunged into a sweet, brief darkness that smelled of Penelope.

When he came to, his father and the useless priest were on each side of him, leaning over close. He tried to say it didn’t hurt, not at all, but his eyelids were growing heavy again, and the sun was going down prematurely, but even though he had lost a lot of blood, it had not washed out the last of his curiosity. With Father Byrnes so near, Wendell couldn’t help but solve a mystery with his last strength. Just before he slid into another warm darkness, he reached up and pressed his good hand against the priest’s chest.

Wendell drew in his breath. His jaw fell open.

Under his hand he felt the outline of the melted cross. Evidence of miracles. Evidence of God. Half of his right was missing but his left was so much more enlightened. Wendell smiled and let the sun go down.

They carried the boy into the infirmary, where he regained consciousness just long enough to call weakly for the chef and to whisper the secret of the lamb in his ear. “He needs his milk,” Wendell said, and passed out again.

The chef went back to the kitchen, his stomach hurting, but was soothed by thoughts of the lamb. The chef, who had spent his own boyhood on a rice plantation in southern Georgia, had been taught that a rich meal equals happiness, no matter what the circumstances. And he remembered all those meals. The slaughtered hog in the wintertime just when his ribs were showing. The rabbit he’d managed to kill with a rock and then eaten raw in secret, without sharing any of it. The joy and the shame. For nothing seemed so bad to him when the gullet was full. Cakes, pies, vittles, fried chicken, broiled squirrel, found mushrooms, ripe berries. Sweet potatoes. Dandelion leaves stuffed dirty into the mouth. Bread with weevils in it. It all meant life was bearable. And now the lamb was recoverable after all.

He sharpened the ax against a block of limestone, his mood gradually improving despite the shock his system had taken. He opened the cookbook to the chapter on lamb stew and busied himself in the cupboards, taking down spices. Finally he took the ax and went to the boat dock, where Bernard kindly asked about the condition of the boy.

“He’ll live, I suppose,” said the chef, and put the ax in the canoe and set off through the pass and into the sound on the other side, rowing toward the red mangroves, where the boy had directed him.

The fence was right where he said it would be, between two midden mounds. The chef straddled the fence and stepped inside the enclosure, looking with astonishment on the careful craftsmanship of the structure, how delicately the saplings fit together. The lamb, who had been fast asleep in the grass, rose and tottered over to the chef, reared up, and placed his hooves on his thighs, gazing up at him. The chef stared down at him. The lamb blinked his dark eyes and nosed at the chef’s pockets, looking for his bottle.

That night, the dining hall filled slowly with the patients, some walking with purpose and others being led, some with bright eyes, some with vacant eyes, and yet they shared a common hunger with the sane. They took their seats and ate an offering of summer watermelon as an appetizer. Then the main dish was served. And though it was garnished with parsley and seasoned with the perfect blend of spices, and even was accompanied by fresh bread and some sea grape jelly the chef had plundered from the back of the cupboard, the men and women sighed collectively.

Chicken again.

Wendell awoke in the infirmary in a laudanum haze, the sun streaking in. His mother had cried herself to sleep with her head on his chest and now snored peacefully in the morning light. The laudanum had put him in a happy place, and his mother’s head felt like the weight of a tabby cat, not ideal but tolerable. He stroked her hair with his good hand. He looked out the window, saw a palm tree moving, and this tree, such an ordinary sight, filled him with appreciation at its exotic wonder, for everything was exotic and everything was new.

He, Wendell, the former lunatic, had been cured by God of his affliction—harshly, that was true, with the severing of his private-fondling fingers—but this same God had, a few moments later, offered proof of His existence and power in the form of the crucifix melted into the chest of the priest. No prayer, no sacrament Father Byrnes had uttered, no blessing he gave, no bread he dispensed, could ever mean so much as the simple fact that the legend was true. Wendell had felt it for himself and now, like his mother’s head, the weight of God’s authority was tangible and easily borne.

Now he knew what to do for Iris Dunleavy, for, as a new man, risen sane from the bloody sand of an ordinary afternoon, he realized that he needn’t follow any rule or law except what he thought might be pleasing to God, and what was pleasing to God was justice, whether it was a lamb spared, or a sane woman freed. Yes, he believed her story. Believed in her sanity, even though that belief came in direct opposition to his father’s diagnosis. Wendell’s confirmation of God’s existence had given him the strength to suppose, for the first time in his life, his father might be wrong.

Mary shifted, groaned. He patted her head, not too hard, because although waking her up would cause her to move her head from his chest, it would also release, in the morning light, a new flood of tears and lamentations.

The vile sea monster could have his hand. He had recovered his soul.

At first Iris held to her resolve not to let Ambrose interfere with her plans to leave the island. But the kiss was a bee in the house that eluded the swatter, and she could do nothing about it. Although she now only glimpsed Ambrose from afar, it didn’t matter. The kiss made the life that she imagined as a free woman sad and empty without him. This was her true suitor, not the plantation owner but the madman, pure of heart and strong and kind. The one who made her feel completely a woman and not an ounce a prisoner or a patient or a lunatic. It was settled in her mind. He would go with her because it was impossible for him not to. One morning in the dining hall she had her chance, quickly darting over to him and whispering the thought into his ear before she was hustled away. His shoulders straightened and he shot her a look of unbridled assent. Now it was only left to tell the boy.

After a few days, when he had healed enough from his terrible accident to finally come to her window and whistle softly to wake her from sleep, she groggily rose, found her robe, and lit the tallow candle on the windowsill so that his features sprang into life. She was surprised to discover in his face a sudden maturity, as though whatever had taken his hand had left wisdom in its place.

“I’m so sorry about your hand,” she said.

He nodded. “It feels fine. I’ll get along.”

She nodded. “You are being very brave about it.”

“Not at all. It was God’s will.”

She looked at him curiously. He’d never mentioned God before. “Does it hurt much?”

“Sometimes, but I am given a spoonful of laudanum and everything is fine again.” He looked directly at her. “I’ve come to a decision. I’m setting you free. Because I think you are sane, that somehow there has been a mistake, somewhere. My father is a wise man, but he doesn’t know you like I do.”

“Thank you, Wendell, I am truly so grateful. But there is someone I want to bring with me to freedom.”

“Who?”

“Ambrose.”

“Ambrose!” He sucked in his breath. “You’re not serious. That man is crazy!”

“Don’t call him that!” she snapped before she could stop herself. “He’s had a recent setback, but he was doing very well before that, and I’m confident it won’t happen again. He just needs a woman’s affections, a woman’s understanding. I can take care of him.”

Wendell shook his head slowly. “No, no, no. I have seen four strong men unable to hold him down. That man could hurt you. He could hurt himself. He belongs here.”

“He does not! He belongs with me. Now either it’s the two of us or nothing.”

Wendell lifted his bandaged hand and touched his head. Winced when it made contact. Lowered it again. “I’m sorry. I can’t do that. He is crazy, and if you think you can cure him, then you are crazy too.”

“You insolent boy! You are just like your father!”

She picked up the tallow candle and threw it at the wall. It went out and rolled to the floor, leaving the argument lit only by the stars and the moon. Wendell’s eyes went dark. His breathing slow and steady.

“I’m sorry,” he said, and was gone.

The doctor opened his eyes at some hour of night when the deepest sleep occurs. Those who wake at this hour feel a lonely separation from everyone but night birds and ghost crabs, never imagining the legion of kindred souls scattered in the darkness, who stare at ceilings and pace floors and look out windows and covet and worry and mourn. For a few minutes he simply lay there, his hands clasped over his chest, while Mary remained asleep. He slid out of bed and crept down the dark hallway. Wendell’s door was open a crack. The doctor pushed on it gently. His son was still asleep, on his back, his hands—or what was left of his hands—crossed upon his chest. After the accident, Mary had screamed at him that he had been to blame.

“If you only paid attention to him more, maybe he wouldn’t always be keeping company with the chef! He wouldn’t have been out there at all!”

She’d said other things, strange and terrible things.

“And maybe God was punishing you through your son!”

“Punishing me? For what?”

“You know what!”

“I don’t know what!”

“Liar!”

He had finally had to silence her with a spoonful of laudanum, and her accusations had grown slower and sleepier until finally she had sprawled out on the bed, fast asleep, arms and legs akimbo. What Mary didn’t know was that the doctor felt truly, achingly guilty for Wendell’s injury. That night on the beach, meant to be his single indulgence of the imagined company of Iris Dunleavy—the woman, not the patient—had manifested itself over and over, each time more real, more passionate, more hopeless to the tormented doctor. In fact, at the very moment the sea monster had swum up to take Wendell’s hand, Dr. Cowell had been staring out the window of his office into a scenery that did not involve sky or sea or cormorants or unguarded son, but lunatic and bed sheets and candlelight and flesh and mouth and breasts beneath his hands. And when the chef’s high girlish scream had roused him from his fantasy, he looked down and saw the horrific scene unfolding: the blood, the crowd, Wendell’s head thrown back.

Now, in the boy’s room, the doctor reached out and tentatively stroked his face, content as a doctor to find it warm but not hot, wistful as a father just to touch it. He crept back out of the room, but instead of returning to his sleeping wife, he put on his clothes and set off for his office. Once there, he lit the oil lamp, retrieved Iris’s file, opened it, and began to read the transcripts of her trial. What if, he asked himself now, the woman was telling the truth? What if these terrible things had occurred? And what if these words before him were not proof of a plantation wife’s madness, but of a plantation master’s crimes?

What if?

Could such a horror be true? He imagined Iris sitting shackled, testifying to a courtroom full of men. Imagined her straight shoulders and her steady gaze. Those hazel, angry eyes. The pale hands, clenched.