An Acquaintance with Darkness

by Ann Rinaldi

  As it turned out, I did not have to. Robert stayed at the table all through dinner. After Uncle Valentine left for the theater, we went out to the shed.

  I watched as he lifted a stone out of the side wall of the shed, secured a key, and ingeniously replaced the stone. As he did so, another wagon appeared at the gate.

  Robert set down the shaded lantern. It was still raining lightly, a fine rain that did not deter Marietta's nightflowers from blooming but seemed to make them glisten. From somewhere in the distance a clock in a church steeple chimed. Nine woeful bells.

  "I'll take this shipment first, then show you inside," Robert promised.

  I stepped aside. I was shivering. The horse-drawn wagon came in through the gate and stopped just short of the shed. The driver jumped down.

  "Mr. Christian?" Robert asked.

  "The same," the man said.

  "How many casks did you bring?"

  "Three." The man was well built, with black hair and beard. He was also well dressed, though a bit wet. "Who is this?" he asked, gesturing to me.

  "Niece of the doctor."

  "One of us?"

  "She's still in school," Robert said. "Are the contents of merchantable quality?" He peered at the casks in the wagon. They said PICKLES.

  "Yes."

  "Not from out of state, I hope. The doctor wants no out-of-state pickles."

  "Local," Christian said. "Fresh picked from a nearby farm."

  "How much a cask?"

  "Forty dollars. And seven dollars each for shipping."

  "Seven? That's outrageous!" Robert sounded angry.

  The man shrugged. "The contents are packed in the right solution."

  "Rum, arsenic, and corrosive sublimate?"

  "Yes."

  Robert grunted. "The formula works wonders. Very well, but you've made a tidy profit. If the merchandise isn't fresh, you'll hear from us." He reached inside his coat, took out his wallet, and counted out the cash.

  "I was chased by three roughs," the man complained. "Pickles are in short supply these days."

  They struggled getting the casks out of the wagon. Awfully heavy for pickles, I thought. They rolled the casks on the ground. Robert opened the shed door and they went inside. I waited out in the fine misty rain. Then Mr. Christian came out. "Tell the doctor if he wants any more pickles, I can get them fresh. Always." He climbed into his wagon, clucked to the horses, and the wagon rumbled off.

  I looked at Robert. "Pickles?" I asked.

  He smiled. "You must know everything, mustn't you? It's the solution the pickles are packed in that we're after. It's used to preserve specimens and is in great demand."

  "Why did he ask if I was one of you?"'

  "He meant working for the doctor. Now, do you want to come in and see the shed or not?"

  We went down four steps once inside the door. The first thing I noticed was the cold.

  "Be careful," Robert said. "Sometimes there is water on the floor."

  "Why is it so cold?"

  "To keep the specimens preserved." He went about lighting lamps.

  The place came to life. The back wall was lined with heavy draperies. "Window," Robert said. "When your uncle works in here he opens the draperies to let sunlight in. Nobody lives back there, so he has privacy."

  The walls were painted white. And lined with wooden shelves. Some of the shelves had large jars filled with floating things. I saw the head of a pig in one jar. A frog in another. Even a snake. From a far corner a human skeleton glared at me. I gasped.

  In still another jar a human finger floated in some solution.

  Robert smiled. "It was saved by your uncle when it was found on the floor of one of the army hospitals. I see you brought pad and pencil. Aren't you going to take notes?"

  "Yes."

  Robert showed me around. He showed me syringes, stones taken from a gallbladder, a human skull. I saw no bodies. But I was fascinated just the same.

  He showed me some carbolic acid, used as a disinfectant. He held up a jar with some dark liquid. "This is iodine," he said. "It was first used in a field hospital in Jonesboro, Georgia, during the war, where it was sprayed into the air as an antiseptic. But we here in America are way behind Europe in our medical progress. Here, for instance, is a clinical thermometer. It is hundreds of years old. Yet during the war there were not more than twenty in the whole Union Army."

  I wrote.

  "This is a hypodermic syringe. It is still only used by some surgeons. Most still prefer to dust morphine into wounds or give opium pills. This is an ophthalmoscope. A doctor can examine the inside of the eye with it. It was invented in 1851. But then years after its invention few doctors in our army could yet use it."

  "Why?"

  "Because the army had too many incompetent medical men. And because before the war most medical schools did not have the advanced knowledge of the day. The war opened up those opportunities for us. It gave us the chance to do things, out of sheer necessity, that were not even allowed or taught in medical schools."

  "So there was some good to the war," I said.

  "Yes. War always brings us technological advances."

  "My daddy died of a stomach wound."

  "So many did. The son of Dr. Bowditch of Boston, for instance. Young Bowditch was wounded on the battlefield. No ambulance was sent out to him. He was brought off on a horse and died. Bowditch fought the War Department for a trained ambulance corps."

  "Did he get one?"

  "Yes. Where did your father die?"

  "Chancellorsville."

  "May of '63. By then we had an ambulance corps. But it was a Confederate win. The ambulance corps brought about eight thousand of our men into the division hospitals, but twelve hundred were left on the field when our army retreated. They were treated well enough when captured, but in the ten days before the prisoner exchange there was a real shortage of supplies."

  I nodded. My mouth was dry. "I know what that is." I pointed. "A stethoscope."

  "Yes. Invented in 1838. And Harvard Medical School still doesn't have one. Its catalogs still don't mention many of these instruments."

  "Why?"

  He shrugged. "Too many medical schools are just diploma mills. What we've learned from the war still hasn't gotten to them. It's why the work your uncle is doing is so important. He is directly teaching what he learned in the war. And he is one of the most qualified teachers of anatomy around today."

  "You mean he works on dead bodies."

  "All medical schools use them, yes. Anatomy courses are the reason for the establishment of medical schools. Before that students learned as apprentices, following doctors around."

  "Where do you get the bodies?"

  "They are bequeathed to us. Or they are those of executed criminals." His gaze was warm and direct. Was he lying? No, I decided. His answers were too easy. I wrote some more.

  "And finally, this is an achromatic microscope," Robert said. "The headquarters of the Army Medical Department didn't have one until 1863. Well, does that satisfy your curiosity?"

  "Yes. Thank you, Robert."

  He extinguished the lamps. As we walked past the casks, it occurred to me that the label, PICKLES, on each one was ludicrous, in light of all this scientific equipment. I followed Robert out the door. Not for one moment did I believe there were pickles in those barrels. What, then? I did not know. But I was sure whatever was in them was for the good of mankind. Perhaps some new discovery. Who was I to question it?

  ***

  "What are these flowers?" Myra stood on the stone path, her eyes wide. "I've never seen such flowers."

  "Never mind the flowers. They're an experiment for the good of mankind," I told her. That shut her mouth for a while and added just the right touch so that when I asked her to turn her back while I got the key to the shed, she obeyed without a fuss.

  "This is a hypodermic syringe," I said inside the shed. I picked it up. "It is still only used by some surgeons. Most still prefer to dust morphine int
o wounds or give opium pills."

  She stared, openmouthed. "It's an ugly thing. Put it down."

  "Perhaps you would prefer to see this. It's an ophthalmoscope."

  She shivered. "What's it for?"

  "To examine the inside of the eye."

  "The inside?"

  "Yes. It was invented way back in 1851. And few doctors yet use it."

  She ran her tongue along her lips. "Thank heaven for that."

  "And this is called an achromatic microscope. The headquarters of the Army Medical Department didn't have one until 1863." I had memorized my notes well, so I was able to repeat, word for word, what Robert had told me.

  It was late afternoon, two days after my visit to the shed. Maude, Uncle Valentine, and Robert were all out, as I'd known they would be. Myra and I had skipped out of school to do this. Well, not exactly. We'd told Mrs. McQuade we were going on a field trip to discover nature in our surroundings.

  I had decided to bluff it out with Myra. To give her the full treatment, hoping the sight of all this would terrify her.

  It did. She did not know where to look first. Her eyes slid from one object to another, staring in horrified fascination and moving on. She moved gingerly around in the damp cold of the shed, bumping up against things. She moved now.

  "Look out for that skeleton," I said.

  She had bumped against it. The skeleton, in cooperation, rattled. Myra screamed and moved away.

  I picked up the jar of solution with the human finger in it. "This was found on the floor in one of the hospitals my uncle worked in during the war."

  She covered her hands with her mouth.

  "You aren't taking notes, Myra. You'll have to report back to Mrs. McQuade."

  "Horrid stuff. I won't write about it. What's that?"

  "What?" I looked in the direction of her finger. "Oh, it's a pig's head. And, of course, that other jar holds a frog and the third a snake. On that shelf directly behind you are stones from a gallbladder. Now, see this dark stuff?" I held it up. "Iodine. Used in a field hospital in Jonesboro, Georgia, during the war. As an antiseptic. Sprayed in the air."

  She nodded numbly. "Where are the bodies?"

  "Nobodies, Myra."

  "You've hidden them."

  "There were none here when Robert first showed me around, and there are none here now. The only bodies are in the college lab. And they were bequeathed. Or they are bodies of executed criminals."

  "My father says medical schools have nowhere near enough bodies. And that's why they have to steal them."

  How could I scare her off if she was going to use logic? "There are no bodies here," I said again.

  "How do I know you didn't get this Robert person to get the bodies out before I came?"

  I sighed. "I got in here on a pretense with Robert. Do you think I'd tell him why I wanted to see the place? They trust me. And he had no time to remove anything. From the time I asked him to bring me in here to the time he opened that door, I was with him the whole evening."

  She had no answer for that. She was running out of answers. But not questions. "What's in those casks?"

  "They're empty now. They held pickles—don't you see the labels?"

  "Pickles?"

  "Yes. The solution from them is used to preserve specimens. It is very much in demand." I opened the lid. I'd known it was empty because I'd seen the lid unsealed. It hadn't been the other night.

  She peered inside. "Smells of whiskey."

  "They were packed in rum, arsenic, and corrosive sublimate to preserve them. Well, now you've seen everything. What have you got to say?"

  "Let's get out of here." She shuddered. "I'll never eat pickles again."

  Uncle Valentine was picking at the food on his plate. It wasn't his way. He had a hearty appetite. It was dinner on Saturday, the twenty-second.

  He had invited Marietta. The windows were open, and from outside came the sounds of carriages on the street, children playing. It was dusk. Candles flickered. For most of the meal Marietta had kept us entertained with the clever sayings of her students and talked about their progress. Now she fell silent, and I sensed something was wrong.

  Marietta sipped her wine and twirled the stem of her glass with her slender hand. "He'll be all right," she said in her low, well-modulated voice. "I promise you, Valentine."

  They exchanged glances and I knew that she was "just knowing things" for him now, as she had described her special gift to me.

  "Things will be difficult for him for a while," she said. "He may go on trial, even to prison for a while, but eventually he'll be released. People will understand that he did the right thing."

  My uncle sighed. Then he turned to me. "We're being rude," he said. "You should know that my friend Dr. Mudd was arrested at his place in Maryland yesterday. And named in the conspiracy to murder Lincoln."

  I gasped. "I don't understand," I said.

  "Neither do I," Uncle Valentine muttered. "I saw him today. He's here in Washington in prison. It seems Booth and Herold came to Mudd's farm on the fifteenth after riding all night and day. Booth had a broken bone in his leg. Mudd fixed the leg. On the eighteenth, soldiers came to Mudd's place. Mudd lied. Said a man had come with a broken leg, but he didn't know who he was. The soldiers left and came back yesterday. And Mudd admitted he'd previously known Booth and known whose leg he had set."

  He looked at Marietta. "He shouldn't have lied. That will implicate him. Otherwise he could just claim he was doing his duty as a doctor."

  "He was," Marietta said simply.

  He scowled. "Is a doctor to be persecuted, then, for doing what he thinks is right? Does he not have a duty to mankind?"

  He brooded on the matter through dinner, in spite of Marietta's reassurances. And I began to wonder if he was asking the question about Dr. Mudd or about himself.

  16. Wish You Were Here

  I BECAME ACCUSTOMED to the rhythms of Uncle Valentine's house. In the mornings, before I was out of bed, I'd hear him down the hall in his water closet, blowing his nose and making all the sounds men make upon rising. I recognized those sounds from my daddy and they were, in their own way, comforting.

  Uncle Valentine was afflicted by what he called "the curse of the goldenrod." My daddy had had it, too. Only he'd come by his distress in August. Here it was only April 27, and Uncle Valentine was sneezing all over the place and there was no goldenrod in sight.

  "Would that I could find a cure for this wretched sneezing and eye itching," he'd say.

  For half an hour each morning he coughed up phlegm. "Maude," he'd call, "two grains of quinine, an ounce of whiskey, and a mug of hot coffee." I'd hear Maude climbing the stairs.

  On her way back down she'd knock at my door. "Are you awake?"

  How could I not be, with all that noise?

  Uncle Valentine then shaved. He did not sport a beard, like so many men of the day. And he wanted all his students clean-shaven, too. Robert was.

  I'd lie in bed for a while in my second-story tower room, in my Sheraton four-poster that was draped in blue. I had never had such a lovely room. I'd feel like a princess. Until I remembered that towers also held prisoners. Like the miller's daughter. And though I liked it and everyone was nice to me, I hadn't decided yet which I was.

  I'd scratch Puss-in-Boots around the ears. She slept with me every night. But I knew I must get up and get dressed. I was expected at the table for breakfast.

  While dressing I'd hear Maude coming up the steps again. And I'd know it was with a tray of food for Addie. Before he went down for breakfast, Uncle Valentine would go up to the third floor to visit Addie. I'd hear Addie complaining, Uncle Valentine saying the same thing every morning. "Well now, how do you feel today, Addie? Is that medicine working?"

  Every morning, Uncle Valentine ate a hearty breakfast of fresh fish, biscuits, eggs, and coffee. I couldn't bear so much food in the morning. So I'd have hot cooked oats with brown sugar. Was that what Miss Muffet ate sitting on her tuffet? I'd always wonder
ed what curds and whey were.

  Uncle Valentine would read his paper while eating. Maude would come in and out softly, setting down more food. I'd hear her talking to deliverymen at the back door—the man who brought the milk, another with fish. Then to her husband, Merry, who stopped by for breakfast. Maude and Merry lived a few streets over. And she went home each night.

  Merry popped his head in the door of the dining room every morning. "No shipments last night, boss," he'd say.

  "All right, Merry. You better go home and get some sleep," Uncle Valentine would answer.

  Merry worked nights.

  Or else Merry would tell Uncle Valentine about a shipment that had come. "A dark shipment, boss." And Merry would stand there, all four feet of him, turning his hat in his hands.

  "That's all right, Merry. We could use a dark shipment."

  "The Board of Guardians at the Almshouse isn't happy."

  "They never are," Uncle Valentine would say. "I'll talk to them later."

  "Talk won't do it. They want more money."

  "Then we ought to start calling them the Board of Buzzards."

  Merry would nod his head vigorously. "But there's good news, boss. The procurement committee has intelligence on some new donations."

  "Good, good, Merry. I'll be in touch with them this afternoon."

  Sometimes Marietta dropped by early in the morning to have coffee with us. She'd talk to Uncle Valentine. About her children. She'd ask him what to do about their ailments. "Willie has the croup," she'd say. Or, "Florence is coming down with a cold."

  Uncle Valentine would tell her what to do for them. Or, if it was bad enough, he'd tell her to bring them around.

  Usually Maude lingered after she served Uncle Valentine his second cup of coffee, and she'd go over plans for the day. "Funeral this afternoon," she'd tell him.

  He'd ask who. It was never anybody important. Maude seemed to go only to the funerals of those who were impoverished or bereft of family. Many were at Potter's Field, which was the burying ground for paupers.