Different Sin

by Rochelle Hollander Schwab

  Through his closed eyes David could see his father’s face lose its color, his hands shaking on the tablecloth. Hell, he wasn’t as upset at Peter’s going off to fight, and it’s not like a doctor’s going to the front lines. Though I suppose there’s always the danger of a stray shell. And of course, Mike’s his son.

  David turned restlessly. You’d think Rachel would be upset, but she didn’t seem distressed. Not that she’d be likely to let on in any case. Look how the two of them held up this afternoon. They must be scared to death for Peter, but they’re not about to show it. The image formed once more of Mike and Rachel’s proud faces, their hidden fear betrayed only by the grip of hand on hand.

  At least they have each other to turn to. They needn’t be ashamed of their affections.

  The image of Mike and Rachel faded, replaced by the memory of Zach’s angry face the week before. They’d had another of their quarrels. Over that damn pervert, Roosa. “I’m damned if I know what you’re afraid of,” Zach had said. “I told you, Byron’s just asked a few friends in for the evening to celebrate moving into new lodgings.”

  “And I told you I’m not going.”

  “Well I’ll be damned if I can understand why not. It’s just for an evening of talk, for Lord’s sake. And if I know Byron, there’ll be a sight better food and drink than any we’d see here or at Pfaff’s either. The Fifth Avenue Hotel’s supposed to have the best kitchen in New York. You’ve complained enough about how sick you are of sitting in Pfaff’s night after night. I don’t see what you’re so afraid of.”

  “I’m not afraid dammit! I’m just not interested in spending an evening talking to a bunch of perverts like—”

  “Like me!?”

  David winced as Zach stormed toward him, bracing himself for a blow. Zach grabbed his arm and swung him to face the mirror. “I see two perverts here if that’s what you choose to call us!”

  “I didn’t call you— I— I’ve told you before, I’m not— It’s only our friendship that’s made me—”

  Zach sighed gustily and dropped his arm. “Whatever you call me, David, I’m at least honest with myself. Which is more than you can say. And I’m not ashamed of wanting to spend an evening in the company of people who accept me for what I am.” The door clicked shut on his rigid back.

  David turned again, trying to rid himself of the memory. It had been three days till they’d made up the quarrel. Though they’d forgiven each other readily enough then.

  A breeze came through the window, touching his face lightly, recalling Zach’s first tentative caresses when they’d finally mumbled their apologies. They’d grown in intensity as they buried their differences in urgent, heated lovemaking, Zach’s hands pulling him closer, fondling him hungrily, Zach’s mouth moving down his body, engulfing his member with hot, rhythmic strokes till he’d had to stifle his sudden outcries of pleasure.

  David moaned. God, how he’d like to reach out and touch him right now, let his own mouth move on Zach’s body, feel his throbbing, joyous release. He tossed restlessly in the narrow bed. His hand crept down and closed on his erect penis.

  Christ! Not here! Not in Mike’s house, for God’s sake. With Josh asleep on the trundle bed just a few feet away. If he couldn’t sleep, he’d get up, get a glass of water, maybe read awhile.

  David padded downstairs to the kitchen and worked the pump handle in the sink. He set down the glass, thirst quenched, but sleep no closer. He’d find something to read then. He’d left the novel he’d been reading in his room at Mrs. Chapman’s, but there’d surely be something in Mike’s bookcase.

  He felt for matches in the dark, then lit the lamp in the front room. The books seemed to have been set haphazardly in their case, the family Bible sharing a shelf with the children’s schoolbooks and Mike’s old medical texts. David looked through them, shoving aside The Narrative of Frederick Douglass, The Condition and Elevation of the Colored People, Colored Patriots of the American Revolution, a book of verse by John Greenleaf Whittier. He saw only two novels: Uncle Tom’s Cabin and A Tale of Two Cities. He had no desire to reread either.

  He pulled a book at random from the top shelf: Darwin’s notions on the origin of species. David thumbed through the pages. God. How could Mike read this? He set it back on the shelf and sank into a chair. The table alongside it was cluttered with magazines and newspapers. Well, it might be interesting to take a look at the Boston papers.

  David reached for a newspaper from the pile, managing instead to knock one of the magazines from the table. The Boston Medical and Surgical Journal. He flipped through it idly. It was even duller than Darwin’s book. He gave a final glance at the advertisements filling the back pages.

  “IMPORTANT ANNOUNCEMENT: New improved douche chair prevents wasting of vital fluids from the vice of self-abuse. More effective than genital cage in cooling impulses of unnatural venery.”

  David stared at the illustration, unable to take his eyes from the description of the chair, its seat open like that of a privy, the zinc pan underneath to be filled with ice water or medicated refrigerant fluid that would be pumped onto the genitals at the first stirring of sexual excitement.

  The journal slipped to the floor. David lowered his head into his hands, uncertain whether to laugh or cry. What in hell would the inventor of this damned chair prescribe for the type of unnatural venery that existed between Zach and himself?

  Was it possible a doctor could actually cure those desires? Mike was a doctor. For a moment David imagined himself coming to Mike with such a shameful complaint. How the hell could he ever face him again after such a confession?

  He couldn’t. If he were ever to break himself of his sin he’d damn well have to come up with the strength to do it on his own.

  Chapter 13 — 1863

  IF HE COULD JUST GET ZACH TO SEE THINGS HIS WAY FOR ONCE. David knotted his cravat by feel, without bothering to look in the mirror. Hell, he had to struggle against the temptations of the flesh as much as Zach. Zach knew that.

  Not that he gave a damn for David’s struggles though. He must’ve told Zach a dozen times in the six weeks since his visit to Boston that he meant to break himself of sinning once and for all. And Zach had dragged out his volume of Plato to argue it was no sin, or those lousy poems by Whitman celebrating the love of comrades.

  “Comrades, sure. You know damn well how I treasure our friendship,” David had told him last night. “But we’ve gone way beyond simple friendship.”

  “I daresay Whitman had more than simple friendship in mind when he composed these.”

  “I don’t give a goddamn what he had in mind!”

  “Nor, I daresay, for my feelings for you. I’m not able to turn my affections off so easily as you.”

  David sighed. How the hell could Zach accuse him of lacking affection for him? He knew damn well— A rap on the door broke into his thoughts. “Yeah, come in,” David called. The door opened simultaneously with his words. Elliot breezed into the room.

  “Hey David, you have a spare collar I can use?”

  David fished in his bureau. “Don’t you ever buy anything of your own?”

  Elliot laughed. “I’ve gotta save up three hundred bucks in case my name comes up in the draft. I don’t want to be caught short if I need to buy an exemption. You’re lucky you’ve no need to worry about it. Well, I’ve gotta get going. Thanks for the loan of the collar.”

  He’d best get going too, David told himself. No use stewing over last night. Let Zach think his affections had cooled. It might make it that much easier to keep them in check.

  ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

  Sweat trickled down David’s neck as he threaded his way up Sixth Avenue two hours later. He yanked at his cravat, loosening it along with his collar. The steamy heat was worsened by the closely packed bodies of the crowd. Sixth Avenue overflowed with angry men and women carrying placards demanding an end to conscription, shoving their way toward a platform at the edge of Central Park where speakers shouted protests aga
inst the opening of the draft lottery in New York City two days earlier.

  The air was heavy with the mingled odors of sweat and exhaled whiskey. Streams of tobacco juice splashed trousers and shoes. Laborers and longshoremen, who’d walked off their jobs to show their hatred of the draft, wet hoarse throats with whiskey bottles passed hand to hand and roared their applause for the speakers in tones of mounting fury.

  David winced as a gob of tobacco spittle hit his ankle. He shifted his position fruitlessly, too hemmed in by the mob to move, and flipped his pad to a new page. At least he’d gotten a few hours respite from his drawing table to cover this unexpected rally.

  It was far more hours than he’d anticipated before he managed to make his way past blockaded and destroyed street car tracks back to Leslie’s. Outrage against the draft had exploded into violence across the city. News and rumors flew: An angry mob had burned the Provost Marshal’s office at Third Avenue and 46th Street to force an end to the draft selection. Police Superintendent John Kennedy had been beaten. Union veterans in the Invalid Corps had been shot down as they tried to restore order.

  David had watched an angry mob set fire to the Colored Orphan Asylum on Fifth Avenue. The mob had allowed mere minutes for orphanage staff to evacuate the children before looting and burning the building. Even after the youngsters were lined up outside, holding hands in wide-eyed fright, women and men glowered and threatened them, stopped from actual attack only by the arrival of a company of firemen, who stood guard with axes and hook poles. David sketched automatically, staring in disbelief at women, faces contorted with hate, screaming, “Kill the damn little niggers!”

  He repeated his horror to Elliot as they stumbled exhaustedly from Leslie’s late in the night.

  “Hell, David, you know the Celts have it in for the niggers, afraid they’ll steal their lousy jobs from them.”

  “But these were kids for God’s sake! If you’d seen the way they looked at them— How the hell can they? Don’t they have kids of their own?”

  Elliot shrugged. “They’re a bunch of animals, lousy Irish scum, that’s how.” He laughed shortly. “It’s not just the niggers they have it in for. They’ve threatened to hang Greeley for his support of the draft. A bunch of drunken scum tried to burn down the Tribune building earlier this evening.”

  David stopped dead on the sidewalk. “My God! What happened? Is— Are—” He tried to keep his voice casual. “Have you seen Zach?”

  “Nope. I’ve been stuck at my drawing board since I got back, same as you. But I heard Greeley hightailed it out the back way, hid himself under a table at Windust’s restaurant.” Elliot snorted. “I’d like to have seen that—New York’s mightiest editor huddled under a tablecloth.”

  “But his staff—”

  “They were right on his heels, every last man of them.” Elliot laughed again. “And didn’t set foot back in the building till the police drove off the mob for them. I hear they’ve got a regular arsenal in there now though. They’re not about to be made laughingstocks a second time.”

  “My God!” David turned and stared in the direction of the Tribune. At this hour the street appeared quiet, a few stolid policemen walking their beat. “Are they still inside? Have they gotten the final edition out yet?” He took a few tentative steps toward the newspaper building.

  “By this hour they better have, or they might as well call it tomorrow’s. C’mon, will you.” Elliot glanced at David with sudden curiosity. “You worried about Zach, for pity’s sake? He’ll be fine. He’s probably having a grand time playing soldier.”

  ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

  It was hard to believe only two days had passed since the riots had flared up on Monday. David slogged along uneasily at the rear of a crowd of some fifty hard-drinking, yelling men and women. Thank God Zach was safe! Despite Elliot’s reassurances, he’d been tense with fear till he’d seen him with his own eyes. But Zach had been fine—fatigued, but oddly exhilarated as he told David how he’d spent the night on sentry duty at an upstairs window, helping stand guard for the compositors, once his own copy was in.

  Rioting mobs still howled for vengeance on Greeley and his newspaper though; Zach could yet be in peril. There was no telling—David stumbled on a loose paving stone, nearly falling against a burly, unshaven man alongside him. “Watch whereya goin’, goddam ya,” the man growled.

  David winced, muttering an apology as he drew back. He’d best pay attention to his own peril now. Though he’d followed Leslie’s caution to his artists to dress in shabby, workmen’s clothing before mingling with the rioters, it would still be all too easy to give himself away. He shoved his hands into his pockets, feeling the folded pages he’d torn from his sketchpad, and concentrated on memorizing the scenes he’d commit to paper afterwards.

  They’d reached Twenty-Seventh Street, a neighborhood of poor Negro shanties. The mob’s shouts took on new viciousness. David shuddered. In the past two days he’d seen some half dozen bodies of Negroes dangling slackly from lamp posts. He’d no desire to witness a hanging with his own eyes.

  The street was deserted, its colored occupants fled or in hiding. The rioters milled about aimlessly. There was a sudden shout of triumph as a woman pointed to the end shack of a tumbledown row, where a darting movement had been spotted behind a window. Empty bottles and paving stones were hurled through the window, their crashes nearly lost in the screams of the mob. David shuddered again and edged his way out of the crowd.

  A narrow alley ran behind the row of shacks. David circled the rear of the mob in the direction of the alley, peering over the rioters’ heads for a view of the ringleaders. A sudden movement in the alley caught his eye. The back door to the house opened a crack and a Negro girl of eleven or twelve slipped through. She darted a frightened glance around, then stepped inside again, emerging almost immediately with an infant clutched in one arm, a toddler clinging to her other hand. David held his breath as two more youngsters crept out after her—a girl of perhaps nine years and a boy of six or seven, who leaned against the doorframe clutching a pair of slender sticks with crosspieces tied to the tops like toy swords. Oh God, surely the child didn’t hope to fight off the mob with those pitiful toy weapons!

  The infant gave a sudden, piercing wail. The mob surged toward the alley, spewing their hatred as they spotted the children. The youngsters stared back, apparently frozen in terror. Run, for God’s sake run! David thought, his voice seemingly paralyzed as well.

  The older girl snapped from her stupor, speaking urgently to the others, her words drowned by the mob’s shrieks. Thrusting the infant into the arms of the second girl, she lifted the toddler onto her skinny hip and grabbed the arm of the boy. The second girl shifted the infant to clutch his other hand. The girls strained fruitlessly to run down the alley, dragging the boy between them.

  A bottle flew from the crowd, striking the younger girl on the shoulder. She cried out and dropped the boy’s hand. A second bottle sailed just above the children’s heads, showering them with broken glass as it smashed at their feet. The older girl turned, her face contorted with desperation and terror. She loosed her own grip on the boy. The two girls fled, the babies bouncing and shrieking in their arms. A shot exploded. The bullet missed its mark, splintering the window frame of one of the shanties. The man who’d fired cursed as the girls reached the alley’s end and darted out of sight.

  The boy stood frozen where the girls had left him, leaning on the two sticks. Not toy swords, David realized in horror, but makeshift crutches. He could see plainly now how the youngster’s right leg hung withered and useless.

  The man with the revolver raised it again. A toothless woman next to him shoved his arm down. “Are ya that daft, then, to waste bullets on a nigger brat!” David exhaled, then gasped as the woman squatted, rising triumphantly grasping a heavy paving stone. The youngster’s eyes dilated with fear. A thin whimpering sob escaped him.

  More of the women grabbed up paving stones. Men grasped bottles by their nec
ks, made clubs of sticks and revolvers. David forced his eyes from the mob to the trembling child. Oh God, don’t let them hurt him! Oh God, why didn’t somebody stop them?

  The toothless woman broke into a furious chant. “Kill the damn little nigger.” Other voices took it up. “Kill the damn nigger! Kill all the bloody niggers!” He could grab him. For God’s sake, he could grab him up and run. He could at least give the kid a chance.

  The angry howl rose. Move, goddamn it move! His legs felt like reeds, trembling and useless beneath him. Sharp elbows shoved him aside as the mob closed in on the crippled boy. Stones and pistol butts rose and fell, came up red and slimy, thudded down once again. David closed his eyes and clung to the edge of the shanty, trying not to listen to the thudding blows, the boy’s high, piercing shrieks of pain.

  The mob’s cries rose into a victorious shout that slowly trailed off. David forced his eyes open. The last of the mob was disappearing down the alley. The boy sprawled motionless. He took a tentative step toward him. The child’s skull was crushed, blood and brains oozing onto the dirt, his left eye torn from its bloody socket.

  David stumbled away blindly. He tripped over the curb and fell heavily, pulled himself to his hands and knees, sank down on the curbstone. Finally he pulled a sheet of paper from his pocket, managed to unfold it. He stared down at the page, trying to visualize his drawing, then bent forward and retched, covering the paper, his hands, his trousers, with hot, bitter vomit.

  After a long time he rose and staggered downtown toward Leslie’s.

  ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

  “I can still hear him screaming. Oh Jesus, God, Zach, I can still hear it.” David lowered his head into his hands and shuddered. He’d stumbled back to the boardinghouse dazed and silent, but once he found Zach he hadn’t been able to stop himself from pouring out the whole, terrible story. At last he’d quieted, drunk the brandy Zach had produced, let Zach urge him out of his soiled clothes into a clean nightshirt. And then the images had welled up anew and he’d started sobbing it out all over again.