Lazaretto

by Diane McKinney-Whetstone

  Bram took the stance and jabbed four times into the air in quick succession. They were forceful jabs as he imagined that it was him, not Linc, going after Robinson in that chair.

  “Good form,” Buddy said. “You teached him well, Linc. So I figger these was all body blows.”

  “No, each one to the head,” Bram said.

  “Well, answer me this, how tall do he stand? As tall as me?”

  “About,” Linc called from where he sat at the table, alternating his hands in the pot of ice.

  “That so? Well, how you get to his head? What he do, lean forward and give you a invitation?”

  “I think Linc’s first punch caught him right in the gut so he did lean and on account he couldn’t cover his head.” Bram rushed his words.

  “So who threw the first punch?” Buddy asked, looking from Linc to Bram.

  “Robinson,” they said in unison.

  “Where did it land?”

  “Got him right about here,” Bram said, as he pointed toward his stomach area.

  “So who threw the first punch?” Buddy asked again, looking directly at Bram, all play gone from his good eye.

  “Robinson did,” Bram said, trying to return Buddy’s stare, but unable to do so, so he focused on Buddy’s cheeks, which were peppered with tiny black moles, and his complexion, which was the same red and brown as Mrs. Benin’s piano. He missed that piano suddenly, the feel of the keys under his fingers, the way he could lose himself in the music he played.

  “Who threw the first punch?” Buddy asked yet again, and the room was silent, save the soft footsteps of Nola leaving the room and the ice clinking on the side of the pot as Linc moved his hands around.

  “Linc did,” Bram said.

  “And what was this here Robinson doing when Linc threw the punch.”

  “He was threatening to send us away.”

  “But what was he doing? Where was he at?”

  “He was in his quarters.”

  “Doing what?”

  “Sitting in his chair like the king he thought he was.”

  “So you and Linc barged into his quarters? He sitting in his chair, and Linc punches him in his head?”

  “We did not barge in,” Bram said.

  “Only I did,” Linc said from the table.

  “I had been ordered in there already.”

  “So he ordered Bram in to tell you he was gonna send the two of you away?”

  “He ordered me in,” Bram said, “but not for that.” And this time he returned Buddy’s stare. “It was under the guise of cleaning his dratted quarters and he put a awful proposition to me and I said no, and I left half-dazed and then Linc showed up with his hot head and barged in there.” Bram tried to control the way his voice shook right now, but he could not.

  “Mnh,” Buddy said, as he seemed to reel back and forth even as he held himself straight and tall.

  “What was he like when Linc was done wit im?”

  “He was out cold.”

  Buddy snorted, then he turned to leave the room, saying as he did that he would get Mrs. Nola to prepare them a meal. He stopped under the archway between the dining room and living room. “I hope you killed him, Linc,” he called over his back. “I hope you killed him dead. Save me from having to do it.”

  Nola got the swelling down on Linc’s hands. Then she prepared for them a king’s breakfast of peppered cow’s brain and cornbread. After they had filled themselves, she sent them down to the cellar closet to gather the heavier quilts and winter clothes that she’d stored there during the warmer months. They heard footsteps coming down and they found each other’s eyes and dared each other not to cry. These footsteps were light as a ballerina’s, because she’d always carried herself like one with her straight back and slender neck and slight build; and even before they wrestled each other to be the first one through the closet door, they picked up her scent that was like ginger and mint. “Meda!” they said in unison, as they tried to push through the door at the same time and landed in a huddle on the floor. “Meda. Meda. Meda.”

  Right now they sat in the shed kitchen, which looked out over the backyard made golden by the retreating daylight. Though the air over the table was chalky and gray as Meda unfolded a posting, which she showed first to Buddy. “Whew,” Buddy said on an extended breath. “Nuttin’ good about this here. Nuttin’ at all.” He straightened his shoulders and read aloud what was there. He read slowly, stopping to sound out the words. “Orphan bludgeons housemaster in vicious attack. Blunt weapon used. Orphan on the run. Reward for his apprehension or information leading to his apprehension.” He turned the paper around. “See, got your likeness taking up the rest of the page.”

  Linc glanced at it and then looked away. “So they do,” he said.

  Meda took her voice down to a whisper and lowered her head. “They tell me he is in a hideous state. He is not even able to form words. And the situation is worsened because he has apparent connections to people in high places. His uncle is a magistrate, his own brother, a constable.”

  “Whew,” Buddy said, as he shook his head back and forth. “That do make it worse, but if he got no bility to talk, how he fingering Linc?”

  “From what I have gathered,” Meda said, as she looked from Linc to Bram, “when Linc’s name is put to him, he releases an awful sound. So all the way here I have been pondering what could have happened exactly to cause Linc to be in such a fight with the man?”

  “Do not matter worth a crumb what happened exactly,” Buddy said. “If the law say this here is what spired, then far as anybody that matters is concerned, this here what it says on this paper is what took place.”

  “But what led up to it, had he first beat you, Linc?” Meda persisted.

  “Not exactly,” Linc said.

  She looked at Bram then. Bram’s face had gone completely red. “Did he beat you, Bram? Is that what happened? Was Linc defending you?”

  “Do not matter,” Buddy said again. “Leave that part of it alone, Sister. Whatever the man did or did not do, I am willing to wager my life that he mustta earned the whupping Linc put on him.”

  “But we need to know what happened if Linc is to mount a proper defense,” she countered.

  “Sister, you been breathing that air at that mansion much too long if you think Linc got a defense.” He waved the paper around. “And if that Robinson is truly connected to people in such high places, it is only a matter of time for the law come breaking in my door. No secret that Linc was accustomed to spending time here.”

  Linc pushed back from the table and stood. “We don’t want to cause you trouble with the law, Buddy. They will do what you’re saying, maybe worse.”

  “Did I ask you to be concerned wit my affairs?” Buddy said.

  “No, but—”

  “Well, till I invite you into my business, you stay outta it.”

  “Sir,” Linc said as he sat and rested his palms on his knees.

  “Now, this is how it will be, till it is otherwise. You and Bram will stay here till we plans out your next move.”

  “But you just said they’ll kick your door in—”

  Buddy held up his hand to stop Linc. “And since we know that will be the move, we prepare for it. That closet in the cellar where the missus store her extras mighta saved a life or two of colored people born to be free who went after their birthright, and stopped in Philadelphia on their way to Canada, ’cording to what I been told. Or, it mighta held escaped convicts, I heard that about it, too. History can be twisted into the shape of a confused tree root depending on the one telling it. But the certain fact is that there is a fake floor in that closet that opens up and leads down to a hole big enough to ’commodate two good-size men. Not the Harrity Hotel, but it got air for breathing. You stay here till we put a plan in place. They show up, we store you down there till they leave.”

  “That is how it shall be, then,” Meda said. “Until we can arrange for your safe passage to a place where you will not be wante
d men.”

  “Not too often Sister agree so readily with my assertions,” Buddy said. “So I must be getting smarter.”

  “Or I am getting dumber,” Meda said to the sound of Buddy’s snickers, and a half-laugh from Linc. Even Bram offered up a smile.

  THEY WERE THERE for over two weeks without consequence. During the day, before the living room filled with nighttime gamblers, the boys moved the heavy furniture around at the direction of Buddy’s wife so that the floors could be thoroughly cleaned. They sanded away the dried candle wax and charred ash embedded in the floor around the gambling table. They climbed into the chimney and swept it to newness. They turned the soil in the backyard and planted bulbs. They took down the dead tree and chopped it into manageable-sized logs of kindling. They kept the fireplace free of ash, the windows free of sediment, the tables free of dust. They were happy to do whatever Buddy or his wife asked, since their home was serving as their haven for now. Plus the expense of energy gave their physical selves the chance to release the fear and anger that otherwise had no outlet.

  The arrangement had its downside. Though they had the run of the house when it was just Buddy and Nola and the visitors they trusted, such as Miss Ma, they had to remain unseen when card games took over the living room. They’d keep to the shed kitchen or the corner of the yard or the cellar. The sound of the cards, when he could hear them being shuffled, was a torture for Linc, since he could not sit at the table and be a man with the other men. And Bram wanted more than anything to set up the xylophone he’d found in the cellar, and stand next to the one blowing the harmonica, and the one plucking the fiddle, and hold down the melody with his own strikes upon the crudely fashioned instrument.

  On the nights when the Indian summer warmth made it possible, they slept in the backyard and on more than one occasion woke to the iceman’s song and the clop-clop of his horse; the horse would come to stand in front of Linc and stare at him as if he knew him in another lifetime. Bram complained that the horse spooked him, though Linc had gotten so comfortable with the animal that he’d offer her crumbs of cornbread, and on the mornings when Linc had none, the horse seemed just as content to lick away at Linc’s empty palm.

  In the meantime, Robinson’s condition neither improved nor deteriorated. The blows to his head had reduced Robinson’s life to that of a house plant, dependent on others to water him, to drain him, to turn him so he might face the sun. He could not speak, and there was disagreement about his ability to comprehend when others spoke to him, except when Linc’s name was mentioned; his eyes would bulge and he’d unloose a sound from his throat that was like the mating call of a bull frog.

  Better for Linc if Robinson had died. His family’s quest to find Linc and avenge the assault might have dissipated if they’d had the chance to sit in front of Robinson’s draped casket and listen to a eulogy reminding them of the power of forgiveness. Instead, Robinson’s kin were daily reminded of the attack on him each time they wiped the foam that accumulated around his mouth, or changed his shitty pants, or listened to his high-pitched squeals, which seemed to come out of nowhere, and which they swore were his attempts at forming Linc’s name. So between the constable brother and the magistrate uncle, there was pressure all across the legal system that justice should be served on Robinson’s behalf. They threw money around. They upped the bounty. And then it happened just as Buddy predicted: they kicked in his door.

  Miss Ma, who lived near the corner and had first sight of people coming and going, ran to her backyard and projected her voice in the direction of Buddy’s house and started singing from Handel’s Messiah “And He Shall Glorify.” She’d told them to listen for her voice, she couldn’t commit exactly to the tune she would sing when she saw them, but it would be loud, she said, and so pleasant they might be tempted to tarry and listen. But run instead, she’d cautioned.

  Bram heard it first. He was leaned over, arranging wood chips around the rhododendron bush he’d just planted. He tossed the shovel and yelled, “She’s singing!” and that brought Linc from the shed kitchen, where he’d been whitewashing the walls. They took the cellar stairs in two jumps and pushed into the closet and lifted the floor the way Buddy had instructed and squeezed themselves into the hole. Nola followed quickly behind them and spread out the boxes that they’d pushed to one side to lift up the floor. They heard the thud and crash that was the sound of Buddy’s front door hitting the living room floor. Yelling and cursing and feet stomping working their way through the house. “Where is he?”

  “Who?”

  “You damn well know who.”

  “My door, look what you did to my door.”

  “Do the same thing to your face if you don’t tell me where he is.”

  “Who? I got a right to know who you talking ’bout.”

  “You got no rights, nigger. Where is he?”

  “I got a right to a front door on my house.”

  “You got a right to a billy club against your head, like he did to my brother. Where is he?”

  “Lord Jesus,” Nola said. “Is this about that white boy what assaulted the man in the orphanage. I saw a posting of it. I truly wish I did know of his whereabouts as certain as I could use the reward money.”

  “Yeah, to buy a new door.”

  Miss Ma had come in—Linc and Bram could tell by the whistling, howling sounds of her laughter.

  “What’s so funny, you loony wench? What? Is this funny?”

  “Leave her be, please, she has a condition—”

  “Well, make her shut up, crazy loony wench, put her in the fucking circus, but tell me where the fuck he is.”

  Their voices rose and fell as they moved through the house, up the stairs, then back down, through the kitchen, the shed, the whole time spewing profanity and insults and threats.

  Linc and Bram stopped breathing as they felt, more than heard, the cellar door being flung open. Footsteps rushing down, to the front, to the rear, to the corner where the closet was. The door opening, opening, opening, in slow motion it seemed, the sounds of its creaking like their own chests cracking. The boxes kicked at, pushed aside, like thunder blasts in their own heads. Muttered complaints, cursing, and cursing some more. And then a slow, slow silence snaked in; they couldn’t trust the silence, so they remained as they were, crouched in the hole, blackness all around them. Bram’s head was in his hands, and Linc reached out and pushed at Bram’s hand. “Did he?” he whispered to Bram, hoping with everything in him that Bram would reply, Did who? Did what? But Bram’s response was first a sniffing sound, as if his nose was filled with liquid and he was trying to hold it in, to keep it from running down his face, to keep it from showing. “He promised he would return our rings,” he said then. And the impenetrable darkness all around them got blacker still.

  12

  THEY WOULD GO to Yonkers in New York, where Nola had a cousin who worked at the new Glenview mansion. On the morning they were to leave, the iceman came at the usual time, but today his mare was hitched to a carriage where Linc and Bram would hide until they reached the ferry that they would take to Trenton, and then the train to New York. They stood in front of Buddy with their shoulders squared like grown men and thanked him for saving them from years on the chain gangs, or worse. They bowed and kissed Nola’s hands and Linc said that if fortune favored him, he should land a miss as perfect as her with whom to share his life.

  Buddy laughed. “You been ’round me too long, ’cause you even picking up my lines.”

  They went out into the backyard to wait for the iceman. They both wished for Meda, even as they understood that she could not arrive there so early in the morning. But there she was anyhow, sitting next to the iceman as he stopped the carriage in the alleyway at the entrance to Buddy’s backyard. As contained as Linc and Bram had been with Buddy, they spilled all out of themselves with Meda, as they both ran to her, and practically knocked her over, tussling to hug her first.

  She squeezed them hard and then they climbed into the back
of the carriage, and she covered them over with a blanket to hide them. As she covered them she thought of how she’d covered them that night she’d first met them, when their skin was new and they did not yet have names. She stood there remembering the feel of Linc’s head as it found the crook in her neck, how Bram had not cried at all that night, how she’d had the deepest, purest sleep as she’d rocked Linc to settle him. The remembering fell over her and held her motionless by the carriage. Then Buddy called to her from his perch on the back steps. “Let them go, Sister,” he said.

  “I will, I already have,” she called back, a defiance running through her tone as the iceman whispered something to his horse and it turned its head around and looked at Meda, a longing in its eyes as if it was giving a look by proxy on behalf of Linc and Bram.

  After Linc and Bram hugged Meda goodbye, they took a slow boat to Trenton, and after that a train to the Island of Manhattan, which was denser than Philadelphia; dirtier, too; louder, livelier, more corrupt, more options, lonelier, sadder, more sensual.

  They were met by Black Mary, Nola’s cousin, and they accompanied her on a Ferry ride along the Hudson to the majestic Glenview mansion.

  “I was expecting colored,” said the one doing the hiring, who had a bulbous red nose and breasts like a woman. “But Black Mary say you got good words put out for you, and that you know hows to plant a tree and prune a bush, and keep the grass even. And come snow, you gotta keep that cleared.”

  They nodded enthusiastically as he continued to list their duties. They were only thirteen, though they claimed to be sixteen. They settled into the routine of it. They worked hard, and ate well at the end of the day. They began to relax about being found. But after a year, they felt a snaking misery working its way to their bones, killing them: boredom.

  They wound their way back to New York City to the growing Italian district of Greenwich Village. “We could be Italian for all we know,” Linc said. Bram agreed as they picked up the accents and replicated them and gave themselves Italian surnames and invented pasts of having watched their parents die on the voyage over from a plague that killed half of the adults but seemed to spare all of the children. They made no mention of having ever lived in Philadelphia. They picked up odd jobs selling newspapers, working at fruit and vegetable stalls, even shining shoes. They missed Meda with an ache that neither expressed. They sent letters back and forth addressed to Miss Ma to avoid the law tracking them through their correspondence. They were kept up to date of the happenings in Philadelphia. And then they received a post that contained the very sad news that Nola had succumbed to a lung illness. Meda cautioned them not to try to return to Philadelphia, as she knew they would certainly want to pay proper respects to Buddy. But Robinson’s condition had not improved, nor had he died, which meant that his family’s thirst for revenge had not died either, and they would surely be nabbed if they were to try and return. She would come to them, she promised.