Silence the Dead

by David Crossman

  “Where . . . where?”

  “In the woods.”

  “Hung?” she whispered, out of the children’s hearing.

  Sadie stole a quick look at the children, then nodded.

  Once again the woman’s body seemed to go limp in her arms, but she didn’t pass out this time. “Can you show me?”

  “Wot ‘bout them?”

  “I’ll leave them with my neighbor.”

  Sadie thought a moment. The idea had been to deliver the news then get out of town as fast as possible. Thomas would be waiting near the bridge. The struggle registered on her face.

  “Please,” the woman begged. “I can’t just leave him there. He’s a good man. A good husband and father.” She battled back her tears. “Please.”

  Finally, Sadie relented. “Awright. Come along, then.”

  Nearly an hour later, when simple worry had given way to a host of horrible fantasies in Thomas’ fevered brain, he watched from his hiding place in the bushes as a ragged little boy came walking solemnly across the bridge, with his hands in his pockets. Only at the mid-way point did he recognize Sadie. He stepped out. “What took you so long!”

  Sadie never stopped walking but, as he fell in beside her, explained what had happened. As she did, Thomas became aware that a change had taken place in her. Something about the suffering of the woman as she described it had affected her in a way even the horrors aboard the Crimea hadn’t. Perhaps she had simply been overwhelmed by them, as he had. There was something much more intimate and personal about this suffering.

  “I wanted jus’ to scoop them kids up and ‘old ‘em an’ take ‘em along of us so as to spare ‘em gettin’ on wi’out a pa.”

  Then something remarkable happened. Sadie cried. “Doin’ the right thing’s hard, Tommy,” she said, barely above her breath. “I can see why most folks don’t go in for it.”

  As they walked on, he put his arm around her and squeezed her tight.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  The next two days passed pleasantly enough along the towpath, though the weather was getting too cold for their clothing, and the nights required a warmth that only greater intimacy could generate. Thomas was determined that wasn’t going to happen, though the effort was killing him.

  “We need to get some coats, somewhere,” he said.

  “We’ll ‘ave to go into a town, then.”

  Thomas considered this. “I guess it’s safe now. Besides, grubby as you are, you’re lookin’ more like a boy every day.”

  “I tell you somethin’, Tommy boy, when I finally get outta these,” she tugged at her baggy trousers, “you won’t find me in boy’s clothes never again. An’ that’s a promise.” She spit on her hand and slapped her chest in the vicinity of her heart, by which she meant to indicate the sincerity of her vow. “I’m gonna dress like a woman, and folks’ll look at me an’ say ‘now there’s a proper lady.’

  Thomas just smiled, which aggravated Sadie to no end. “You wait an’ see if I don’t!” Thomas’ smile broadened, so she hit him with her hat. He laughed, so she hit him again. “I hate you.”

  Upon inquiry at the next town, they were directed to a second-hand store run from the vestry of the local Methodist church. There they found suitable wool coats as well as often-patched oil-skin raincoats, and for Sadie, a pair of sturdy boy’s boots that were just a size too big. The difference was made up with a pair of wool socks. The price, though extremely reasonable – and further discounted by their agreeing to sit through a ten minute Protestant sermonette – left them with only four dollars and fifty-three cents in addition to their gold sovereign, which Sadie had decided they mustn’t spend, but instead add to their collection of ‘soov’neers’.

  Before they left town, they bought enough bread, cheese, beef jerky, and potatoes to fill Flanagan’s saddlebag, diminishing their supply of ready cash by another sixty-seven cents.

  As they made their way out of town and back toward the towpath, Sadie was absorbed in the task of carefully counting and recounting their little hoard, which occupied her until they reached the river. She slipped the money into one of the pockets of her new coat and sealed it with its bright brass button.

  “Them Protestants think some funny things, don’t they?” she said, out of the blue.

  “Huh?”

  “Them Protestant ladies back there. What they said, d’you make any sense of it?”

  “I wasn’t really listenin’.”

  “You looked like you wuz.”

  “Bein’ polite, is all. They give us a bargain on these clothes.”

  Sadie was quiet for a while. Eventually she took the coins out of her pocket and counted them again, then apparently satisfied that none had dematerialized, put them back in her pocket. In the distance ahead, a barge was tied to the banking near a little rock wall and beside it, a family of three was making their dinner.

  “Am I a Protestant, Tommy?”

  “How should I know?” Tommy replied, a little more sharply than he had meant to. His thoughts had been elsewhere. “Sorry. I don’t know. Were you christened?”

  “Dunno.” Sadie shrugged, and her coat rippled about her. “What’s it mean?”

  “It’s when you’re named before God and sprinkled with water.”

  “Like tykin’ a baff like we done back at widow Swanzy’s?

  Thomas was nudged a bit off-center. “Swanzy wasn’t a widow.”

  “She will be if I ever lay my eyes on that ‘usband’ve ‘ers.”

  Thomas allowed the comment to dissolve on the breeze.

  “An’ I’ve got a nyme. Sadie. Sadie Conllan with two ‘l’s.”

  Thomas smiled and pulled the hat down over her eyes. “Ever been to confession?”

  “Which is wot when the cat’s ‘ome?”

  “When you tell a priest all the things you’ve done wrong.”

  “Coo! I’d be an’ ol’ lie-dy, time I finished that! No. I never. You?”

  “Of course.”

  “Why?”

  Once again, Thomas found himself irritated by Sadie’s ignorance, as if it were her fault. He took a deep breath. “You confess your sins, so that when you die, you don’t go to purgatory. You go to heaven.”

  “What’s purgatory, then? Like ‘ell?”

  “Sort of, except you don’t stay there forever.”

  “Why?”

  “Well, if your sins haven’t been really bad sins, just normal sins, then you just serve your time an’ take your punishment, then you get to go to heaven.”

  “So, it’s like prison?”

  Thomas considered the analogy. “I guess. Sort of.”

  Sadie seemed to find this an acceptable theology. “Good. I’ll take that one.”

  “That one what?”

  “I’ll take pergatory. That way I don’t have to be too good, long as I ain’t too bad.”

  Thomas felt woefully inadequate as a spiritual instructor. He knew she’d got the wrong end of the rope, somehow, but wasn’t sure how to set her right. He said nothing. Fortunately, by this time, they had drawn up to the barge and the little family beside it. The bargeman lay on the grass, his head in his wife’s lap. A little boy of two or three was everywhere at once, evidently glad to get off the barge and stretch his legs, and there was an infant in a basket which from a distance, Sadie had mistakenly assumed to be full of food. There was no mule or horse in sight.

  At their approach, the woman looked up. Her eyes were red-rimmed and underscored with deep purple semi-circles. She smiled wanly. “Hello.”

  Thomas tipped his hat. “Evenin’. Nice night.”

  The woman pulled her thin scarf tightly around her neck. “Yes.”

  As Thomas discharged his social duties, Sadie studied the family. The man was much thinner than he should be, if he was the oarsman. He looked frail and sickly. The same could be said of the baby. Though awake, it was too quiet and its eyes wandered blindly in their sockets. The woman’s breasts, as far as Sadie could tell, were far too
small to be engorged with the milk the infant required. The boy, too, was too thin to be healthy, though he didn’t seem to notice. He was running back and forth between her legs as if they were a croquet hoop and he a ball.

  “Matthew Adam! Don’t bother the young man.”

  Though this misapprehension had been their object all along, being directly addressed as a boy startled Sadie so much that she took off her hat and shook her long, curly brown hair loose. “I’m a girl!”

  Two rosy patches of color appeared on the woman’s sallow cheeks. “Oh! I’m so sorry, miss. I didn’t . . . ”

  Realizing what she’d done, Sadie cast a sheepish glance at Thomas, who was just shaking his head. The woman quickly tumbled to their ruse. “You . . . I was supposed to think you’re a boy, right?”

  “That was the idea ma’am,” said Thomas. “You see . . . ”

  The woman forestalled him with a gesture. “It’s not important. I quite understand there may be any number of reasons.” She turned to Sadie. “It must be a very difficult deceit since you’re such a pretty girl.”

  It was Sadie’s turn to blush, which Thomas had never seen her do. It made her even prettier.

  “But I will advise, if you permit,” said the woman, with a soft smile, her voice only just above a whisper, “that if you wish the deceit to succeed, it would be best not to be upset if someone calls you a boy.”

  “Right you are,” said Sadie, stuffing her hair back under her hat.

  The woman’s husband had been watching the proceedings with an amused, slightly pained expression. Thomas’ attention, meanwhile, turned to the old ironware kettle boiling on the fire. It held a watery broth in which floated an assortment of disinterested vegetables, so few in number that, had they been ships under full sail in Cobh harbor, they’d have had plenty of room for maneuver with no fear of collision.

  The woman watched him watch the soup. “You must have walked a long way. Won’t you sit down and join us?”

  “You don’t ‘ave to ask me twice!” Sadie plopped herself down beside the woman and reaching into the basket, began coo-cooing the baby and tickling its chin. The child’s skin was cool on her fingers, too cool, and it didn’t respond to her touch. “Thomas, since we’re takin’ their ‘ospitality, we should add to the pot, don’tch’ya think?”

  “Huh? Oh. Oh! Sure!” Inwardly he swelled with pride for Sadie, who had contrived a way to help out without offending anyone’s pride. He rummaged through the saddlebag and all eyes were upon him as he drew out a handful of potatoes, fresh from the ground that morning. The eyes widened when, after another dip into that unexpected horn of plenty, he produced four long thick strips of beef jerky. “Catch!” he said, tossing the potatoes to Sadie. “Give ‘em a rinse in the river. I’ll cut this up and add it to the pot.”

  Sadie did as she was told, then returned, and taking a knife from a stone by the fire, cut the potatoes into bite-sized morsels and dropped them into the soup. “And I smell chives, somewhere,” said Thomas. He picked several stocks, bulbous roots and all, from among the grass at the water’s edge, rinsed them quickly in the river and tearing them by hand, tossed them into the stew.

  By this time the bargeman had pulled himself to a sitting position – not without great effort, Thomas and Sadie noted – and the family had gathered around the pot. Even Matthew Adam was bewitched to motionlessness by the smells that began to issue from the magical cauldron. As the soup simmered, its ingredients exchanging flavors, Thomas cut thick slices of bread and handed them around.

  Apparently, conditions had reached the stage beyond which pride was not an issue. Each member of the family took the bread eagerly and consumed it hungrily, as if their lives depended upon it.

  Sadie caught Thomas’ eye and winked. He winked back.

  By the time Sadie doled out the soup into four tin bowls, Thomas had caught two small fish and had them cleaned and roasting on the cook stone. He hadn’t had that much trouble catching them and wondered why, if the family was so close to starving, they hadn’t done the same.

  During the meal, his question was answered.

  The family’s name was Orchard. Roland, Patrice, Matthew Adam, and in the basket, little Jemmy. They were originally from Ohio, had moved out west, to New Mexico, at the encouragement of Roland’s older brother, James, who was making a good living providing lamb for the military. Roland and his family, however, had had to return to Ohio within the year to care for their parents who, despite years as barge operators, had at last fallen prey to the dread river disease, typhoid fever. Two months later, they were both dead and buried. The barge, Edwina Mae, was their legacy.

  It had been the Orchard’s intention to sell the vessel and upon the proceeds, to return to New Mexico and resume their new life. But fate had once again intervened. Roland contracted consumption and would never have the strength to make the trip back out west. At the same time, the disease, which was now in the last stages of eating him alive, eventually rendered him too weak to make a living on the barge. It wasn’t long before no one would hire him for fear their cargo would never make it to market. Then their mule – as if it had been contemplating the example of Job and wanted to do its part in afflicting the Orchards with suffering that they might be improved thereby, one foggy morning miss-stepped, fell into the canal, and drowned.

  Soon thereafter, their slim resources ran out. Since then they had been living on the grudging kindness of river neighbors, prayer, hot water, and whatever fell within easy reach they could add to the pot. Lastly, the whole family had come down with the flu, leaving Roland too weak even to fish, and Patrice so drained by hunger and fatigue that it was all she could do to keep the children alive.

  Telegraphed appeals to brother James in New Mexico absorbed their final pennies, but went unanswered. For the most part, folks they met along the river, believing the family to have contracted typhus, avoided them, literally, like the plague. The nearest village in which they might appeal for help, that from which Thomas and Sadie had come, was too far away.

  “Even my milk gave out in the end,” said Patrice. “It sounds terrible, but we’d all been livin’ on it.”

  At the end of the meal, Thomas cast an appraising eye along the barge’s hull. “Your boat seems in good shape.” It certainly afforded a much more pleasing prospect than the Crimea had at first glance. Or any number of glances, come to that.

  “Oh, it is!” said Roland. The meal had transformed him. His eyes were bright and his tongue no longer seemed thick in his mouth. “She’s fine, really. We still mean to sell ‘er, once we . . . But, she’s the only home we have right now. And the children need a roof over their heads.”

  Thomas drank down the dregs of his soup. It wasn’t much for flavor, but no one seemed to notice. It was filling and nourishing. “Oh, sure of it, I am.”

  He stole a look at Patrice, who was running her hand through her husband’s hair. She, too, had been rejuvenated by the soup, but sadness had long ago taken up residence in her dark green eyes, and now stared out at the world from behind the bars of her soul. That was the look she returned Thomas now, with an ever-so-slight side-to-side shake of the head which said that she knew her husband, the companion of her dreams, would soon be dead.

  As for Jemmy, it was too late already. Before the night was out, her brief time on the stage had come and gone, and the curtain had closed upon her little unsung cycle of suffering.

  Thomas and Sadie participated in the impromptu funeral at a little hummock of mud and sand not far from the water’s edge. Thomas had dug the grave and Sadie and Patrice, together, had lowered the infant in, her eyes closed in peace, and the corners of her lips curled ever so slightly as if amused that the ride was over and pleased at the prospect of the ride to come.

  Tears were in short supply. Sadie had the impression they’d all been spent long since. Roland, on wobbly knees, was supported by his wife at the grave’s edge where they stood with their arms around one another. Matthew Adam, his belly fu
ll with a breakfast of bread and cheese, ran in circles, not really seeming to care much that his little sister had just been put in a grave – as if it were a game of which he was not an integral part.

  Roland said some words too private to repeat, Patrice said ‘amen,’ and hand in hand, they each tossed a fistful of dirt on the tiny, lifeless figure.

  Thomas filled in the grave. Patrice wove a cross of reeds and autumn flowers and stuck it in the little pile of freshly-turned earth.

  “I’d like to make a proposal,” said Thomas that evening, after everyone had been allowed a little time to come to terms with their loss.

  “Considering you’ve saved our lives, I’m pleased to listen to anything you’ve got to say, Thomas.”

  “You usu’ly carry cargo to the Ohio, right?”

  “Right.”

  “But no one’ll hire you, ‘cause . . . you’re . . . ”

  “Dying.”

  Patrice closed her eyes and clasped her hands to her chest as if she’d been stabbed in the heart. Roland laid his hand upon hers and squeezed it gently.

  “Right,” said Thomas, summoning a practicality he did not feel. “From what you said earlier this afternoon, there’s more than enough coal to be shipped.”

  “Still too much for the trains, though that won’t hold true more than another season or two, and a market hungry for it,” said Roland, before launching into a violent fit of coughing.

  Thomas waited for the seizure to abate. “All right, then. What if I take over as oarsman.”

  “But you can’t mean Pattie and Sadie to pull ‘er fully loaded! They’d not make it an hour. And I . . . ”

  “We’ll buy a horse,” said Thomas.

  This suggestion yanked Sadie’s head up as if her chin had been tied to a celestial string. “We will?” she mouthed.

  “We will.”

  By bedtime that night, negotiations were concluded whereby, in return for taking over barge operations and buying the horse, Thomas and Sadie would be given passage to the Ohio and a third of the Orchard’s share of profits from the sale of the cargo. Out of their share of the proceeds, the Orchard’s would buy back the horse as well.