Sarah Canary (7 page)

According to Dr Carr, the woman in black who had appeared so suddenly in the graveyard the night before had the classic facial features of the criminally insane. He cited the work of Cesare Lombroso at some length and included a description of the new woman. Thick black hair, gray eyes, diastema of the teeth with exceptionally large canines, a repulsive, virile air, and big, sensual lips. This tallied closely with Lombroso’s description of the accomplished or potential poisoner. Contractor Greene tended to employ reliable patients in the kitchen to save himself the wages of an additional Chinaman. Dr Carr had made a further notation restricting the new inmate from this duty.

He had also written that the woman appeared to have menstruated recently. Dr Carr had seen this immediately, had, in fact, been looking for it and said so forthrightly in his notes. This, more than any other factor in her appearance and demeanor, had made him tell Sheriff Jeb Chambers that the Chinaman who had been found with the woman could well be an innocent victim in the case, however much the layman might be tempted to draw the other obvious conclusion. If called into court, he would be forced to say so. He could cite authorities on this subject. Delasiauve, among others, had been quick to call attention to the abnormal mental condition into which many women are thrown at each menstrual period. Their desires are exaggerated or perverted; they may even be impelled to criminal acts. In his own practice, Carr noted parenthetically, he had once treated a young lady who, while menstruating, suffered from the delusion that a large Negro man was entering the house through the window and pointing a pistol at her. He had read of more extreme cases, such as Marce’s account of a patient who furiously attacked with a knife anyone who offered her the most trifling opposition during her menstrual period. He knew that the menstrual cycle, which represented the disappointment of the maternal instinct, could occasion a gross perversion in which the natural feminine desire to procreate became instead a desire to kill. There were already legal precedents for what he was saying; he had told Jeb so. Last night’s entry ended with a list of them. Dr Carr had gotten as far as the Lydia Palmer case, which had yet to go to trial.

B.J. handed the notebook back. ‘What’s diastema?’ he asked.

‘Excessive spacing between the teeth,’ Dr Carr told him. ‘There is so much room beside her upper canines that the lower ones occlude when the mouth is closed.’

‘Oh,’ said B.J., returning to the fireplace. He knelt on the hearth and turned back the edge of the rag rug so that it would stay clean while he swept up the ash from yesterday. ‘It’s too cold in here for you to work,’ he said solicitously. ‘Maybe if it were warmer the frogs would think it was mating season. Let me get things going.’ He arranged the logs, hoping they were dry enough. He tore strips from an old newspaper and stuffed them into crevices so that the logs would light. ‘There’s an article here about Belle Starr,’ he said. Much of the article was now on his hands. There were actual, decipherable letters across his palms. Raven-ha, they read. He stared at them for a moment before wiping them off on his thighs. Indian talk, he supposed. Lake Raven-ha. On the shores of Raven-ha. ‘Now she’s flayed a man with her quirt just for being saucy. She’s married another damn Indian half her age. And it set me thinking, you know, how masculine a lot of these women who like to ride so much are. Do you think it’s possible they’re just wishing they had what men have? I mean, is it too farfetched to think the horse could be a sort of substitute for ... a male member? ‘ B.J.’s voice fogged slightly on the last words. He coughed, looking over at the desk where Dr Carr had stopped writing and was regarding him, his fingers slipping absently up and down his pen, which now rested its nib on the paper in his notebook.

‘A horse is a lot bigger than a penis,’ Dr Carr said. His voice was gentle. ‘Think about it, B.J. You know this.’ He put the pen down and withdrew his watch from his breast pocket. ‘Come here, B.J.,’ he said. ‘Look at this. Perceptional distortion is not an uncommon symptom for a man with your condition. I once had a female patient tell me my watch was as big as a carriage wheel. Could you hold this watch in your hand?’

‘It’s a perfectly normal-sized watch,’ B.J. lied. Really he had never seen a watch so huge. It was a pumpkin of silver and glass, and the doctor’s hand trembled under its weight. ‘I know that horses are bigger than penises. I was abstracting. Maybe these horses are the closest thing to a penis these women can get.’

‘
I
don’t want a penis as big as a horse. Do
you
want a penis as big as a horse? Is this why you think Belle Starr wants a penis as big as a horse?’

‘She doesn’t,’ said B.J. ‘She just wants a penis, and a horse is the closest she can come.’

Dr Carr put away his watch. ‘A pen is closer to a penis than a horse,’ he said. ‘The root word is even the same. A knife is a lot closer. Do you think Belle Starr has no access to a pen or a knife?’

B.J. sat back on his heels and stared into space for a few minutes. ‘I guess it was crazy,’ he concluded. ‘Now that I think about it more. You’re right, of course. It’s ludicrous.’ He shook his head cheerfully. ‘That’s why you’re on that side of the desk and I’m on this one.’

‘You’re just overexcited.’ Dr Carr’s voice was soothing. ‘Your progress has been excellent. You mustn’t expect the treatment to be a straight road. Bound to be some twists. Let me finish the fire here. I want you to go back to your room and lie down for a little while. Will you do that, B.J.?’

‘All right,’ said B.J. He stood and brushed off the bits of bark and dirt that clung to his clothes. There was a dark ink smear on Dr Carr’s notebook where the pen tip had run when he stopped writing. B.J. could see it clearly from where he stood. ‘You’ve spoiled your page,’ he said. ‘Sorry.’

Dr Carr looked down. ‘Well, I’ll be,’ he said. His voice carried a message of surprise and pleasure. ‘It looks just like two frogs coupling, doesn’t it? See, here’s the male . . .’

‘It looks like a puddle,’ said B.J. ‘Like a rain puddle.’ He looked at the blot again. ‘Only smaller,’ he added and then shut the office door carefully behind him and moved through the dark hallways to the male part of the asylum.

He had to pass through the female section on his way - not directly through, of course, but through the corridor around it. Someone was howling inside. The introduction of a new patient always threw the ward into chaos. He stood at the door and listened for a moment. The howling was guttural; it was the woman from Germany. She was in love with him; B.J. knew this, much as his natural modesty coaxed him to demur. She watched him all the way through breakfast, trying to mesmerize him with her eyes. Snake eyes. Sometimes he could hardly eat. And
sometimes
she invited him to her room, where she claimed to have two dead fleas dressed as a bride and a groom, laid out in an old jewelry box. She had made their clothes herself, she said, and caught the fleas herself as well. Killing a flea without crushing its body was not an easy thing to do. She had finally starved them in a stoppered medicine bottle, a project which had taken a surprising number of months. And the tiny veil had taken hours to attach. Almost a year of work was represented. B.J. would have liked to see these fleas. If only it hadn’t been wedding clothes. If she had dressed the fleas for the opera, perhaps. Or in ceremonial Indian dress.

The floorboards in the corridor tipped suddenly upward, forcing B.J. to walk uphill or wait until they tipped back. It was either part of his condition, landscape distortion, or it was another earthquake. Both were too common to alarm him. He waited for the floor to flatten.

A woman in black, a woman he had never seen before, curled out of the doorway, soundlessly, like smoke. Diastema of the teeth. Gray eyes. Large, sensual lips. She wore her hair cut short in the current fashion of the Duchess of Austria; B.J. had seen illustrations of her haircut in advertisements in the paper. Her dress was a complicated affair, though very unclean. He was surprised by her hair and her clothes, which suggested money. People with money didn’t end up at Steilacoom. She stood directly in front of him. She probably thought he had been listening at the door.

‘No, I wasn’t,’ B.J. told her quickly. B.J. was often rather frightened of women, but this woman was so very small. Her mouth was slightly bruised, which showed that she had already been initiated by the wardens into life in the asylum. She had an air of fragility about her. B.J. felt protective. She had no business being in the corridor.

‘You go back to your room,’ B.J. said to her, hastily, looking around to see if anyone was listening. ‘Or you’re going to be hit again.’ He tried to remember which warden was helping with the women this morning. It was a popular duty. Was it Houston’s day? He thought so. ‘Are you crazy? Go back,’ he said more strenuously. She smiled at him, but he would take no more responsibility. He didn’t want another woman falling in love with him. Expecting things. Flowers. Gifts. Notes. Time. Women, all women, whatever their mental condition, had this unnatural need for attention. It wasn’t enough just to be with them, even. You had to talk about them. You had to talk about nothing else. How you felt about them when you first met them. How the feeling was even stronger now. How you had never felt this way before in your whole life. He pushed past her. When he turned to look back, she was gone.

B.J. could not really go to his room and lie down. The doctor might actually not know this and B.J. would not have wanted to be the one who distressed him with the truth, but the penalty for not finishing assigned chores was one he had paid only once and was never going to pay again. He decided not to return to his room at all, but made his way to the kitchen to see if wood or water was needed for breakfast. A new Chinaman had just been hired. He wore a filthy padded coat and fiddled with his braid while William Ross, cook by trade and inmate by circumstance, instructed him in the preparation of graham mush and boxty.

‘Staples here at the asylum,’ Ross was telling him. ‘Scarcely a day goes by when boxty isn’t served in one form or another. You could say the asylum runs on boxty.’ He laughed. ‘A joke,’ he explained. ‘It goes right through the patients like grain through a goose.’ He waited for the Chinaman to express amusement, but there was no response. When Ross spoke again, his voice was less familiar. ‘B.J., here’ - he gestured toward B.J. with the point of a large kitchen knife - ‘is an example of the fine, strapping health boxty can provide. If you ever need wood fetched or water, you can ask B.J. But remember, he’s not to go out alone. None of them are. He needs to get the key and a warden. If he’s not quick about it, then
you
get the warden yourself and tell him so.’

Ross acted more like a warden than an inmate himself, and on special occasions, like the birthday of one of Greene’s many daughters, Ross was called to the contractor’s own home to cook. B.J. knew that Dr Carr had recommended Ross’s release weeks ago. Dr Carr thought, and B.J. agreed with him, that Ross had never really been insane. B.J. was afraid of Ross.

He looked at the Chinaman to see if he was afraid of him as well. The last Chinaman had once thrown his cleaver at B.J. There was still a slice in the wall over the water bucket where the blade had lodged, the handle trembling in the wood like the shaft of an arrow. B.J. sometimes stroked the scar for reassurance when he set the bucket down. The bucket would soon be empty again. He would fill it and then it would be empty. The world seemed to conspire to erase his efforts, to erase him. There were times at night when B.J. tried to touch himself and could feel nothing but the blankets and the empty bed. He would reach for himself and miss, clutching air in both fists. There was no other terror like the one that came over him when he had ceased to exist. But there on the wall was something permanent. ‘B.J. was here,’ the gash said to him. November 23, 1872. B.J. dropped the water bucket and the water puddled on the kitchen floor and seeped between the floorboards and the Chinaman threw his cleaver into the wall by B.J.’s head. ‘B.J. was here.’

The new Chinaman wore the same thick braid, the same dark, baggy pants, and the same oversized boots as the old one. He stood there looking blankly down at the pulpy mass in the pot. B.J. thought he seemed very tired. He had a large lump on his forehead from which rays of black and purple and green extended. It made B.J. wonder if he could be an inmate. They had inmates from France and Scotland and Holland and Germany. But no Indians and surely no Chinese. How would you know if a Chinaman was insane? All Chinamen were insane. He watched the Chinaman give the mush a tentative stir. It took both his arms to pass the spoon through.

Ross’s knife caught the light at the edge of B.J.’s vision and he turned toward it. Suddenly it was the largest knife B.J. had ever seen. Sunlight spread on the flat blade whenever Ross’s hand was still. When it moved, the blade of the knife sliced the sunlight into small, flashing pieces.

There was a code to the flashing light. The knife wanted many things. The knife wanted the winter turnips and the last of last year’s potatoes and the side of beef hanging in the pantry. The knife wanted the Chinaman’s braid. Lay it across the table and cut it off. Three blind mice. Three blind mice. The knife sang insinuatingly. B.J. shut his eyes so as not to listen. The knife whispered directly into his ear. Say nothing about the woman in black, it told B.J. You better not. B.J. pressed his lips tightly together so that he wouldn’t. Ross went into the pantry and took his knife with him, leaving B.J. without guidance.

The Chinaman was looking at him. B.J. panicked. ‘There is a new woman in the ward today,’ he confessed all in a rush. The words flooded from him. ‘All in black. A tiny little woman. I saw her.’ He moved closer to the Chinaman, lowering his voice. ‘She was
outside
the ward.’