An Acquaintance with Darkness

by Ann Rinaldi

  "Who are these people?" I asked Maude.

  "Some of them are professional funeralgoers."

  "How do you know them?"

  "Oh, I've been known to go to an occasional funeral myself. There are people who have no mourners, you know. It helps when some of us show up to pay respects." She smiled and handed me a cup of tea. When I'd just about drained the cup there was a taste to it that was different, a faint bitterness about it.

  By the time the reverend arrived I was ready to agree with everyone that Mama looked beautiful. I think Maude had put something in my tea.

  "Is my Uncle Valentine coming?" I asked Maude.

  "No. You hurt his feelings. He felt it best he stay away. But he sent all the flowers."

  Hurt his feelings? Yes, I supposed I had. I would have to make it up to him somehow. I looked at the flowers. The room was awash with them. But something was wrong.

  "If he paid for the flowers he was cheated," I told Maude. "They look wilted already. They aren't blooming."

  "They will be tonight."

  "Tonight?"

  "Yes." She smiled at me. "Over your mother's grave, in the dark. They are nightflowers. My husband delivered them earlier. They are from your uncle's garden."

  Was she serious? Or was I muddleheaded from the tea? No matter, the reverend was starting prayers. I closed my eyes and sank back in the chair. Next thing I knew the reverend was saying good words about my mother, speaking about her in glowing terms. It didn't sound like my mother he was talking about, but like a stranger.

  Before we left for the cemetery Annie took me into the kitchen and gave me a glass of cold lemonade. "Who is that funny little man who came in just before prayers?" she asked.

  "I don't know. I didn't see him. I don't know half the people here, Annie."

  "He looks like a dwarf. Like he should be in a circus. And he's all done up in tweed and a cape, like it's midwinter. He's spent most of his time near the coffin."

  "My head seems fuzzy. I think Maude put something in the tea. Everything's soft around the edges."

  "It'll be hard around the edges soon enough," she said.

  They took the ironclad coffin outside. People went to the waiting carriages. Annie and Maude went upstairs to freshen up. I was alone with the funny little man in the parlor.

  "I don't believe I know you, sir."

  He couldn't have been more than four feet tall. Yet he reminded me of somebody. He bowed, a sweeping gesture. "Miss Emily, is it?"

  "Yes."

  "Guess, guess, you will never guess my name," he said. His eyes twinkled.

  Guess? I stared at him.

  Then he sobered. "Please let me tender my condolences. Your mama was a lovely woman. Lovely. A great loss."

  "You knew my mama?"

  "I knew her indirectly. I am husband to Maude."

  Husband to Maude? He was under five feet. Maude was enormous in comparison.

  His eyes twinkled. "I am small of stature but big of heart," he said. "And I know your Uncle Valentine well. He could not make it today. I come as his emissary."

  "What do you do for Uncle Valentine?"

  "I am a man of all trades, Miss Emily. And because of my size I am looked upon fondly. All dwarves are these days. Ever since Tom Thumb and his wife were received by the Lincolns in the White House ... I make deliveries for your uncle. Receive shipments. Facilitate things."

  It was a vague answer. He looked like a gnome from my childhood fairy tales.

  "The nature of your uncle's work is such that certain shipments must be delivered on time or they will spoil."

  I understood then. "You bring the flowers!" I said. "The nightflowers! Like you brought them here today!"

  "Ah, you put it so nicely. Yes, I bring the nightflowers. You have spoken a lovely sentiment there. Lovely. Nightflowers. Why didn't I think of it?"

  But he had! Was the man mad? Before I could study on it, Maude came down the stairs, followed by Annie. "Merry, you aren't tiring this child with your gibberish, are you?"

  "Maudee, Maudee, are my words gibberish?"

  Merry? What kind of name was that for a man? He should change it.

  He stamped his foot. "Now you've done it. You've gone and given away my name to this child. And she was supposed to guess it."

  It was then that I knew who he reminded me of.

  Rumpelstiltskin, the gnome in the fairy tale. From the Brothers Grimm. I could still hear my father's voice reading it. And telling me the lesson of it. "Don't ever enter into difficult arrangements just to save the moment, Miss Muffet," he'd said.

  When the miller's daughter was put in the tower by the greedy king, to spin the flax into gold as her father had boasted she could do, Rumpelstiltskin had come to help, because she could not make good on her father's boast and was crying. If she did not spin the gold for the king, he would have her head cut off in the morning. Twice Rumpelstiltskin helped her, spinning the flax into gold. But she had to give him jewelry first. Then she ran out of jewelry and he demanded her firstborn child. She promised it. What did she care? She would never marry and have a child.

  But she did marry. She married the king. Why anyone would want to marry a man who had threatened to have her head cut off, I never could understand. Even if he was a king. Then they had a child. And Rumpelstiltskin came to claim her firstborn.

  But she cried so, that Rumpelstiltskin gave her three chances to guess his name. So she sent scouts throughout the kingdom. One saw Rumpelstiltskin dancing in the forest, chanting his name, and told the miller's daughter, who was now the queen. And when the little gnome came back to claim the child, she guessed his name. Then he got contentious. He stamped his foot through the floor and was killed.

  When Merry Andrews stamped his foot, I'd seen Rumpelstiltskin.

  But then, who was Maude? Some scheming matron in a Grimm fairy tale, with her calming ways and bitter tea that set my head to reeling? I saw it now. Perhaps I wouldn't have if my head had been clear. But when I looked up at them standing in front of me, she towering over him with her arm around his shoulder, him smiling, it came to me that these two were not what they seemed.

  She goes to funerals, I thought. He delivers shipments on time, so they won't spoil. Why do I think he is speaking of something other than flowers?

  "Come along now, Emily." Maude put her arm around me. "Don't pay mind to him. He loves to spin tales. Don't believe anything he's told you."

  "But he hasn't told me anything," I said. Or had he?

  I had the feeling he had. And that I had been too doltish to understand. Oh, I wished my head were clear.

  The cemetery was deserted and cool. The grave had been dug, the flowers were in place, the reverend said the words about ashes and dust, which I never will understand. How can we return to dust when we are supposed to be made in God's image? From about a block away came the strains of "Dixie" being played by a brass band. It was Abraham Lincoln's favorite song.

  Someone handed me a single flower. Its head was bowed, its petals drooped. I set it on top of Mama's coffin. Then I looked up. There was Mrs. Mary standing across the grave from me. In love with John Wilkes Booth, I thought. Well, she'd gone to that fancy girls' school with Mama. Like Uncle Valentine said, it had given them notions.

  Everyone was leaving the cemetery. The funeral was over. I felt spent. From the street it seemed as if the revelry was getting louder. Dusk was falling. Tonight all of Washington would be illuminated in honor of the end of the war.

  Annie came up to me. "Booth took Mama to Surrattsville this morning. He's coming tonight, too. I can't wait until he sees my candles in the windows. And I'm not moving them. I don't care what anyone says. Do you want me to come home with you?"

  "I'll take care of her," Maude said. "She's my responsibility until she moves in with you people, if that's what she insists upon doing."

  Maude and I went home, and I put Annie's candles in the two front windows of the parlor.

  "Now, why do you want to do that
when you've had a death in your family and can be excused?" Maude asked.

  "I don't want to be excused." The candles looked lovely. The windows were open and the sweet spring air drifted in. "My daddy fought in the war. And this may be the only war I'll ever be able to celebrate the end of."

  "Well, I certainly hope so." Then she turned and went back into the kitchen. "Come have your supper. There's plenty of food left over."

  I followed her into the kitchen and sat down at the table.

  "I went to the hospitals so many times with your uncle to attend the wounded. That's when you learn that suffering has no uniform," she told me. "Many times we met Mrs. Lincoln in the hospitals. She would bring flowers from the White House, candies, cakes, liquors, chickens, turkeys. Nobody knows this about her. She didn't want people to know. But we met her many times in the hospitals."

  "What is she like?"

  "A small, modest woman. Nothing like they write about her. She never wanted to be noticed. But I did speak to her on one occasion. It was right after they lost Willie. Do you know what she said to me?"

  "What?"

  "'We must let them go and get on with the business of living. The only way to let them go is to mourn them. We must work at it, the same as we must work at being happy.'...I noticed you didn't cry today at your mother's funeral."

  I fell silent. "I'm going upstairs," I said, "to finish Mrs. Lincoln's dress."

  I don't know how long I worked on Mrs. Lincoln's dress. Perhaps an hour. Outside I could hear the sound of rockets going off, bands playing in the distance, music, and the shouts of people enjoying themselves.

  Grief is hard work. We must work at it, the same as we must work at being happy.

  Who would have thought that you had to work at grieving? Was it a chore you had to apply yourself to? Was that why Mrs. Lincoln had gone visiting the hospitals?

  I had not worked at grieving for Mama. I had not even tried.

  An especially bright rocket went off down the block, but it was as if it was in my own mind. I set the black silk dress with the white flowers on it aside and went downstairs, meaning to slip out the back door.

  "Where are you going?" Maude was there, watching me.

  "Out. I'm going out."

  "Where, at this hour of the night, with the streets full of unsavory characters?"

  "It's only eight o'clock. I'm going to the cemetery."

  "What for? Lunatics go to the cemeteries at night."

  "I'm going to work out my grief. Like Mrs. Lincoln. I'm going to cry for my mother."

  She took off her apron. "You can't go alone. Take someone with you."

  Not her. Please, God, I prayed, don't let her want to come with me.

  "I'll send for a hack," she said. "Why don't you go and ask your friend Annie to go with you? She offered to keep you company tonight, didn't she? Go and ask her to come back here and wait for the hack."

  I looked into her eyes to see if she was scheming. They were bland, innocent. If she offers to make me tea, I won't take it, I decided. Because she'll put something in it again. Likely she'll knock me out this time. But she was putting on her cloak and bonnet to fetch a hack. "All right," I said. I went out the door to cross the backyards to the Surratt house to fetch Annie.

  6. The Mole and the Spoon

  I WAITED OUTSIDE the back door while Annie got her shawl. She slammed out of the house.

  "Booth is making me crazy. I told you he'd make a fuss over the candles in the window, didn't I? I swear, he's a madman. Denouncing the people who are celebrating the war's end. Saying he hopes Washington burns down from all the candles in the windows. I'm so glad Johnny's gone away so Booth can't influence him anymore. Oh, the night is delicious!" She raised her arms to the crescent moon and smattering of stars overhead, and we tramped through the underbrush of the backyards. "Oh, what I would give to be with Alex on a night like this," she said.

  "I'm glad you could come."

  "I'm glad you asked. No, I'm honored. I think it's a wonderful idea to go to the cemetery. It was so crowded this afternoon."

  Maude was back from ordering the hack. It had cost her ten dollars. "You'd think prices would start going down now that the war is over," she complained. "But I was glad to pay it. It'll make me feel better, knowing you'll be safe. It will be here in an hour."

  "An hour!" Annie and I both said it at the same time. "But we want to go now!" I told Maude. There was something devious in this, I was sure of it. "What will we do for an hour?"

  "You can work on your sewing, for one thing," she suggested. "You said that dress for Mrs. Lincoln had to be finished tonight, didn't you?"

  She was right, as usual. She took up her knitting. I ran upstairs and got down Mrs. Lincoln's dress, and Annie took up a needle and helped me finish the hem. The hour went quickly. The hack came, and as we went out the door I was laughing.

  "What is it?" Annie asked. "Tell me."

  "She didn't offer to make us tea," I said. And I told her how if Maude had offered, I would have known she was up to one of her tricks. "And I wouldn't have gone if she'd made tea, ten dollars or no ten dollars for the hack," I said. "I swear it."

  Christ Church looked different at night, looming overhead with its stone architecture. It looked like something from the Brothers Grimm. Eerie candlelight flickered in the windows.

  "They're still using part of it as a hospital," I told Annie. "I know your church doesn't do that, but ours does."

  "The Protestants live their faith," she said. "We Catholics talk it."

  Just then a cart pulled away from the church. We stood watching. The driver waved to us and we waved back.

  "Dead soldiers," I told Annie. "They always take them away in the middle of the night, so people can't see. He's taking them to Arlington, the new national cemetery. It's on Robert E. Lee's front lawn, across the Potomac. How would you like to come home from the war and find your front lawn turned into a cemetery?"

  "After what Alex told me about Gettysburg, I would think that man's mind is a cemetery," she said.

  Annie's astuteness amazed me. I was always learning from her. We went around the corner and in the side gate of the cemetery. What with the candlelight from the church windows and the gas lamps on the street, the cemetery was not dark. Each tombstone stood out, though shadows played about in the slight evening breeze.

  Mama had no tombstone yet. But it was light enough to see two people by Mama's grave. They were surrounded by tools, and they were using shaded lanterns.

  And they were digging.

  I grabbed Annie's arm. "Who could they be?" I whispered.

  "Grave robbers," she said.

  My heart lurched. I'd heard of grave robbers. At school the girls joked about them. All the girls in school boasted that they knew of someone whose relative's body had been robbed from the grave. But I never believed it. I thought it all talk. "Here?" I croaked. "In Washington?"

  Annie gave me a look. "Especially here in Washington," she whispered. "Because of the war. Doctors have just come to realize how much they don't know about the human body."

  I nodded, and Annie pulled me behind a tombstone that had an avenging angel on top of it.

  "We have to do something," I told her. "We can't let them take my mother!"

  "Wait." She got down on the ground and crawled around the tombstone to get a bit closer. I watched and waited. I was trembling, more from anger than fright. I could hear the soft but distinct digging sound coming from Mama's fresh grave, the plop-plopping of soft earth.

  They were trying to dig up my mother!

  I gulped back a sob.

  "Hush!" Annie ordered fiercely.

  I hushed. She was a distance from me now. Then, having satisfied herself that she'd seen enough, she crawled back.

  "They look like children," she said. "They can't be grown-ups. They're too small. They must be children out on a lark."

  "Children? A lark? What children do such a thing?"

  "I don't know, but Washingt
on has changed with the war. Come on, we're going to stop them."

  "How?"

  She had a plan. I would circle around to the left of them and she to the right. "We'll scare them off," she said. "We'll make them sorry they ever drew breath."

  We parted.

  No sooner had I taken my first step, with shaking limbs, than a sound pierced the night.

  "Whooooo! Whooo! I'm a-coming, Lord, I'm a-coming."

  It was a lonely, soul-searing sound, half-animal and half-human. At first I thought Annie had made it. But in the next instant she was back beside me, clutching me so close I thought I'd die.

  "Annie, what is it?" Fear ran through me, a cold river of fear, the kind that settles in your lungs and drowns you.

  Annie pointed. "Look."

  Did I dare? I did, and fair trembled at the sight.

  There, in a far corner of Christ Church cemetery, rising above a large granite cross of a tombstone, there was a white figure—rising, rising, from behind the cross.

  "Whooo! I'm a-coming, Lord, I'm a-coming." And it did come, out from behind the giant granite cross, with arms, or whatever they were, upraised.

  "Annie," I whimpered, "it's a ghost."

  I must give Annie credit. To my everlasting shame, I really believed it was a spirit unloosed on the world. Annie didn't. She was too practical, too unbelieving, too disdainful of everything to hold with spirits, unloosed or otherwise.

  "Ghost, my father's nightshirt," she said. And her voice was so edged with distrust, with anger, that I clung to the wonderful sanity of it.

  "What is it, then?"

  "Someone who's outflanked us." Annie sometimes talked army talk. She got that from Alex. Usually she annoyed me with it, but now I thought it most reassuring.

  Still, we clung together and watched as the "ghost" made its way around the headstones, whoo-ing and calling upon the Lord for all it was worth, going right toward the grave robbers. Or children. Or whatever they were.