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LINC STAGGERED TOWARD the creek like a drunk. Vergie’s voice still boomed through his head. Bram is dead. Bram is dead. Bram is dead. “No, no, no, no,” he said out loud, “you cannot be, Brother, dammit, you cannot.” He could hear wings flapping, and the call and response of night birds as they hooted and cackled, now squeals and clicks moving through the grass as if the nocturnal life out here was mocking him. Even the sound of the creek washing over the rocks that had been so soothing since he’d been here now sounded like a storm crashing through a caved-in roof. He had reached the boulder-sized rocks that served as the footbridge across the creek. He stepped out on the first boulder to start his trek across. He forced his eyes to focus, to no avail; he lost his footing anyhow. The shock of the water felt like an assault as he cursed and flailed about. He punched at the water. He thought he threw his shoulder out. He kept punching. His fist hit hard against the rock and he punched still. He punched until his breath could no longer sustain the punching. He leaned against the rock, gasping. A frog perched there, croaking, its eyes bulging, fixed on Linc. “What the fuck are you looking at?” Linc said. “He’s dead, my brother’s dead.” He cried out Bram’s name then. Then he just cried.
Linc sat on the boulder, hung his head, his breathing close to settling down. He could just make out the crunch of footsteps. He thought that it might be Vergie. He hoped that it was not. He knew he couldn’t process Vergie’s presence in his current state. Her presence would only confuse him. He might soften, even as he felt his resentment toward her growing wide and hard. He had denied who he was for Vergie. Had pretended to be other than a white man. He’d stepped out of himself, like a stage actor pulling on a made-up character. Left his true self drifting alone on an island moving farther and farther away, almost unreachable. By denying himself, he’d denied Bram, and had denied Meda, who’d told him, in the end, he and Bram had really just each other. Now he had nothing; now he was utterly alone, disconnected. He called Bram’s name over and over in his head, louder and louder, as if the sound of his brother’s name booming in his head might summon Bram from where he was, might bring him back even from the crater of death. Was this not the Lazaretto? Was not Lazarus the leper who was raised from the dead? Live out your fucking name, Lazaretto! he shouted in his head.
THE FOOTSTEPS WERE right at his back now. It was Sylvia. She had been at the hospital all evening into the night. Spence had told her that he thought tonight was as good a night as any to say his wedding vows and Sylvia had wished him well; he’d kissed her forehead that burned with regret. She didn’t tell Spence that she planned to debride the flesh around Carl’s stump because she didn’t want him to keep delaying his wedding. She figured she could do it on her own, and she’d come outside to get a gulp of fresh air before she started.
His back was to her, but she recognized it as Linc. He appeared to be ranting silently and she stood there and watched. He turned around then as if he knew she was there. She put her lamp low so as not to blind him. She thought about how she’d blasted the light in his eyes the first time they’d met, how rude she’d been, how she’d intentionally withheld a word of consolation because her heart ached for Carl and she was angry about the unprovoked attack on the boat. She’d burned through the moment when she might have said or done something to let him know that no matter the current situation, it would all work out in the end. She believed such moments were tests sent by the universe to measure her propensity for good. She’d fallen short that first time. So right now she did not pepper him with questions about why he had stealthily remained on the Lazaretto. Did not ask him if he was in fact a wanted man, or where had he been sleeping. In the woods? With Vergie? She didn’t say that she had suspected his continued presence here all along. That Vergie’s demeanor had betrayed it, given the way she sauntered more than walked during these days in quarantine; the way she lost her way in the middle of a sentence; the way she smiled into the air as if the air had just begged her: Pretty lady, make a smile for me. Instead, she pushed through all that was indictable about him at the moment so that she could see clear through to his need.
“I get to return the favor,” she said, right up on him now. “You walked up on me as I sat at the creek, crying, so I guess it is only fitting that I interrupt you in the moment of your despair.”
“I’m not crying.”
“Well, you would certainly have cause, given the condition of your hand.” She directed her light toward it and he looked at his hand and grimaced, his hand still formed in a fist, the skin worn away in places, exposing bloody patches, and he became suddenly aware of its throbbing.
“So I have smashed it,” he said. “Perhaps it should be smashed, perhaps I should smash the other hand as well. They are ugly hands, apelike hands, despicable.”
“That would be your assessment, not my own,” Sylvia said, as she moved all the way to the edge of the creek. “Are you able to straighten it? May I see you wiggle your fingers around, please?” He did. “Flex your fingers for me,” she said, and she situated her lamp on the boulder and inspected his hand and then palpated his wrist, asking if it hurt. Here? Sharp pains or just soreness? She pulled on his fingers, then said that she was satisfied he had not broken anything. “Though I might suggest that all of that energy throwing your hands around should be put to better use getting yourself into dry clothes.”
“I have no other clothes, nothing to change into,” he said, and he began to shiver even as he held himself stiffly so that it would not show. “I have nothing, nothing at all. My brother is dead and I am empty.”
“I am very sorry about your brother, Lincoln, I truly am. It was dreaded news when I learned of it, and I thought that you had made it out on the last ferry before the order to quarantine was issued or I would have found you, to tell you. How did you learn of it?”
“It does not matter.”
“You are correct. It does not. Although I must also tell you that the remains have yet to be located. So nothing has been confirmed. I tell you that neither to give you false hope, nor to add to your torment. It is just the fact of the matter that you should know.” She watched him begin to shake. “Are you getting chills?” she asked.
He hunched his shoulders. “I have told you I am empty.”
“Well, I regret that I am wholly incapable of treating your professed state of emptiness, but I may at least offer you some dry clothes. I must go over to the hospital. Walk with me. You can dry up and change over there.”
Linc was too spent to protest as he pulled himself from the creek and followed Sylvia toward the hospital. Blackness surrounded them as they walked, except for the broad streak of yellow pouring from Sylvia’s lamp that painted just enough of a path for them to see their way to the other side.
The smell was even more pronounced. Sylvia took in the air. This was the smell that flesh gave off as it died, the body screaming to be relieved of what it could no longer use before the uselessness consumed it. “You smell that?” she turned around and asked Linc.
Linc had been staring at the paintings of the white men that lined the walls. Was noticing the point of this one’s chin, the cut of that one’s nose; he’d look at men sometimes, measuring their features against his own, checking for similarities.
He turned around and sniffed when Sylvia asked him if he smelled something. “Other than the wet fabric clinging to me, I cannot say that I do.”
She started down the corridor. She pushed open a door and told him he could use that room for changing. “Pump for water at that basin; towels, hospital garb, on the shelves. Gowns and shirts and slacks and the like. You should find what meets your needs. You should also pour some alcohol on your hand.”
She pulled the door shut and he looked down at his hand. He had not even realized that he’d been landing his fist against the rock. At least it throbbed less right now, looked less misshapen now than it had at the creek; the blood had even begun to dry, trying to form a hardened protection over the tender pl
aces. He remembered how Meda had dressed his hands the time Mrs. Benin had beat them raw, remembered how Bram had cried on Linc’s behalf because Linc refused to cry; Bram’s screams had grown louder with each hit as if he and not Linc was the one getting beat. He stared off into space, his mind here in this hospital supply room and simultaneously years away. He tried to imagine how death would feel. “Ah, Bram,” he said. Then he put his head in his battered hand and wept.
SYLVIA EASED OPEN the door to Carl’s room. He looked over as soon as she entered the room and said, “Hey, sweet baby.” His voice came from the top of his throat, but at least he was alert, she thought. Oriented.
“Carl,” she said as she kissed his forehead. “You the best thing I’ve seen all day, you know that, don’t you?”
“Must be early,” he said as he tried to laugh but let go a loud, long moan instead. Sylvia quickly mixed a cocktail of morphine and brandy and helped him sip. “Ah, thank you, sweet cakes,” he said. “My leg is giving me a fit. I try not to complain, but it hurts like the dickens.”
“Whereabouts does it hurt?” she asked as she went to the foot of the bed and looked at the wrapping around the stump. Spence had attached a cup to catch the drainage. She really missed Spence right now.
“Hurts all over.”
“Above or below the knee.”
“Below, from my ankle all the way up my calf.”
She was relieved about that at least, phantom pain was normal. She was praying for no involvement above the knee. “Let me take a look and see what’s going on,” she said, as she looked around for scissors, more light. She saw Linc walk past the door. “Hey!” she yelled, and Carl jumped. “Sorry, baby,” she whispered, then cursed under her breath when Linc didn’t reappear. Then she saw Linc’s head at the door again. He peeped in, his eyebrows raised in a question. She motioned with her arms, big, urgent motions, and he walked all the way into the room.
“I need your help,” she said as she concentrated on unwrapping the stump. “See those lamps over there on the bottom shelf, light two and hang them from this railing above my head, please. And how is your hand?”
Linc looked at his knuckles as he picked the lamps up from the shelf. “Better,” he said.
“Good, before you get the lamps, hand me that magnifying glass, and after you hang the lamps, clean your hands real good for me, please. There’s soap by the basin. Water in the pump. Douse your injured hand in alcohol after that. Then look on the second shelf and you’ll see strips of cotton, wrap your hand and then come over and I will secure it. You’re not squeamish, I hope,” she said, as she held out her hand and he placed the magnifying glass there. She leaned in and peered at the stump.
Linc lit and hung the lamps and washed and doused his hands as Sylvia had instructed. He wrapped the cotton and went and stood next to her and looked at Carl and nodded awkwardly. “Hello, sir,” he said, as Sylvia secured the cotton around his hand.
“Sir?” Carl said, and then laughed a syrupy, morphine-inspired laugh. “I must be getting pretty close to Heaven, white man calling me sir. Am I, Sylvia? Tell me, sweet cakes, am I getting ready to die?”
“No, baby,” Sylvia said as she stood from her lean. “But that joy juice is starting to kick in. Say hello to Lincoln.”
“Lincoln? You named for the president?” he asked.
“Uh, yes,” Linc said, trying to concentrate on Carl’s face so he didn’t have to look at what was left of Carl’s leg.
“Parents favored the president?”
“Yes, sir, they—I mean, my mother did.”
“So that means you not from rebel stock?”
“Not by a little bit,” Sylvia said. “He’s got a colored mama.”
“You got a colored mama?” Carl asked, squinting at Linc. “I should have known no white man would be addressing me as sir.”
Linc hunched his shoulders. Asked himself how much longer could he continue this farce. Sylvia tapped his shoulder then and said, “I need a sheet folded about yea wide.” She separated her hands. “I am going to raise his leg, and I want you to situate the sheet under it, please.”
Linc pulled a sheet from the shelf above the lamps and folded it as per Sylvia’s instructions. He moved gingerly toward her. He still avoided looking at Carl’s stump, concentrating instead on Carl’s face. His face agreed with Vergie’s description of him. “You just look at his face and you know that he is good through and through,” Vergie had said. He told himself that’s why he’d focused on Carl’s face, not because he was at all apprehensive about looking at the stump. But he was apprehensive. And now that he was looking at it, he felt as if someone had just punched him in the gut. The worst, he thought, as he fixed the sheet under it, were the threads that hung and which he guessed tied off the blood vessels. He supposed he was holding his head back at that point because Sylvia whispered, “It’s not going to jump up and bite you.”
“I know,” Linc said defensively, straightening himself. “I was trying to position the sheet.”
“Well, now I need you to get him to drink the rest of what is in that glass. You’ll want to help him sit a little higher up and hold the glass to his lips and tilt his head,” Sylvia said as she went to the basin and began drenching her instruments with alcohol.
Linc picked up the glass and moved quickly to the head of the bed. Carl’s head was leaned to one side, as if he were trying to decipher some important thing. “So, you named for Lincoln. Guess your mama loved Lincoln like all the colored women did ’round the time he was killed.” Linc nodded as he moved in closer to the bed but Carl waved him away. “Hey, Sylvia, how ’bout the woman you told me about who loved Lincoln so much? Seeing this’un buck here whose colored mama named him for Lincoln making me remember her over again.”
“Drink your medicine, Carl,” Sylvia said as she laid the instruments one by one on a towel. “Furthermore, I have no idea who you might be talking about.”
“Yeah you do, the one you told me about when I asked for your hand that day on my boat when I was bringing you here and you turned me down and then told me about the first baby you delivered. You know, Sylvia, the woman who was always drawing pictures of ole Abe Lincoln and claimed to have served him tea.”
Sylvia dropped her scalpel when he said that, and she said “Drats” out loud and leaned to pick the scalpel up with a big commotion, hoping to distract him from the story. She didn’t want the details of the story to come out with Linc here, that she’d participated in separating a mother from her baby in the way that she had. She motioned to Linc, making a cup of her hand and putting it to her mouth, and telling him to get Carl to drink, thinking that he was useless to her right now if he couldn’t even do that.
Linc approached Carl again. “Uh, sir, let me help you drink this,” he said.
Carl grabbed his arm this time. “I’m talking, partner,” he said. “You had a colored mama, I know she trained you not to interrupt people older than you when they talking.”
“It’s the morphine,” Sylvia said, between her teeth, directing her words to Linc. “He needs to finish what’s in the cup, else he won’t go under anytime soon.”
“That was like something you see on a theater stage,” Carl continued. Some no-count rich lawyer white man with his fancy gold watch with bridges on it gonna force you and the midwife into telling the poor mother that her baby girl was dead—”
“Carl!” Sylvia said sharply as she scrubbed the scalpel with a ferocious back-and-forth motion. “Drink your medicine and drink it now. And your assistance would be more than appreciated this instant, Linc,” she said, irritation coating her words.
Linc’s hands were sweating and he felt dizzy as he shifted the glass from his bandaged hand to the other. Now he tried to convince himself that it was in fact the appearance of the stump making him feel woozy, and not what Carl had just said about the woman who drew pictures of Lincoln and served him tea and had a baby! Told himself that surely Carl was not speaking of Meda, not his Meda. Surely M
eda never had children. Surely Meda was not the only woman to have sketched drawings of Lincoln during that time. Half of the colored women in the Union likely indulged such a hobby. Many probably filled whole sketchbooks with their own renderings of Lincoln. Probably white women sketched Lincoln, too. And certainly other women may have been called upon to serve the president tea, any one could make that claim, whether or not it was fact. Besides, surely this man in a state of near delusion from a combination of the pain and the morphine could not even be fully aware of what he was saying. Linc thought that he could discount it all, but for the detail about the watch. Benin had owned such a rare gold watch with bridges on the face.
Still, he convinced himself, it was likely all a coincidence, and he tried to approach Carl again, tried to put the glass to Carl’s lips, but Linc’s hands didn’t seem to accept that it was a coincidence; his hands were trembling. “You got the shakes?” Carl asked then. “Sylvia, you best come help this boy. What the matter is, partner? You coming down with something?”
Linc could feel sweat pouring from everywhere, his scalp, under his arms, the backs of his legs. All the blood seemed to drain from his head and settle in his stomach. He looked down at the glass in his hand; it seemed that he’d dropped the glass a thousand times by now.
Sylvia moved quickly to the bed. “Lincoln? Do you need to sit?” She took the glass from his hands. “There is a stool right there behind you. Sit and put your head down low and take deep breaths.”
Lazaretto Page 27
