An Acquaintance with Darkness

by Ann Rinaldi

  I sat up in bed. I was awake, but the muffled voices were still in the house. Downstairs. I got up and opened my door.

  Addie was standing there, like she'd been waiting for me the whole time. I jumped. I'd taken to locking my door at night after she'd come into my room a couple of times and I'd awakened to find her standing over me.

  "You should knock," I scolded.

  "And if a man has committed a crime punishable by death and he is put to death, and you hang him on a tree, his body shall not remain all night upon the tree, but you shall bury him the same day, for a hanged man is accursed by God; you shall not defile your land which the Lord your God gives you for an inheritance," she said.

  "What?"

  "Deuteronomy," she said.

  I stared at her. This woman could not read. But then, all Negroes know their Bible, even if they can't read. That didn't surprise me. What surprised me was that she'd said the words slowly, like a child reciting a verse, but in plain English, with no slave dialect.

  She smiled. "I can speak in tongues when I want," she said.

  I nodded.

  "You know what that verse mean?"

  I shook my head no.

  "He do." She pointed to the direction of the banister and the downstairs. "Your uncle. He know full well." She was speaking like Addie again. "He know, and he goin' against that verse." Then she put her index finger to her lips, shushed me, and led me over to the banister.

  I followed, thinking, Dear God, somehow she's found out that Uncle Valentine went to a hanging and brought the corpse back to the medical college.

  "Listen," she said again. I peered down over the banister, listening. I must humor her.

  Voices. One was Uncle Valentine's. Another belonged to Merry Andrews. And he was very excited. The other voices I didn't recognize.

  Apparently Addie had already gotten the drift of the conversation. She was grinning widely. "You jus' listen. An' you'll know what I always tol' you 'bout him."

  I sighed wearily. Were we to speak of this again? I was annoyed because I wanted to sit down and savor my dream, because my daddy had been in it. And even if it was silly to put so much store in a dream, the presence of my daddy was still strong with me.

  "How many?" Uncle Valentine was asking.

  "Hundreds," a strange voice said.

  "What do you mean hundreds?"

  "Hundreds were killed in the accident. All Federal soldiers. On their way home from Vicksburg, just out of Confederate prison camps." Merry's voice. "The name of the riverboat was the Sultana. On the Mississippi. Just north of Memphis, near Old Hen and Chickens islands. Word we got was that it was a burst boiler. Wreckage was strewn into the air. Men and horses and mules were everywhere in the water. Over two thousand souls were on board. They're saying at least twelve hundred were killed."

  They were speaking in muted disembodied voices that seemed to float up to me like part of my dream. "There will be nothing left of them," Uncle Valentine said sadly.

  "You're working on burns, aren't you?" Another voice. Whose?

  Robert's.

  "Yes, burns," Uncle Valentine said. "You're right. This is our chance to learn about burns! Of course, forgive me, Robert, I'm not thinking clearly. I've had no sleep. How quickly can you get there?"

  "I can leave now," Robert said. "There's a train at eight this morning."

  "Mole?"

  "I'm on my way, boss. Just give the word."

  "Spoon?"

  "I'm all packed."

  The Spoon and the Mole! I was awake now, all right. I heard Myra's voice in my head: I'll bet that business at the cemetery was all a little farce. So you would never dream he was involved in body snatching.

  I had to hold on to the banister.

  Uncle Valentine knew those two dwarf body snatchers he'd chased that night in the cemetery. They worked for him. What more proof did I need to know that Myra was right?

  "Have you made contact?" Uncle Valentine was asking.

  "Yes." It must have been one of the dwarves. "Our man in Memphis."

  "How many do you think we should bring back, Robert?" Uncle Valentine asked.

  "Two," Robert said. "Other doctors are sending representatives. So we should waste no time. Students from Winchester Medical College in Virginia are on their way there already."

  "Have you a plan?" Uncle Valentine sounded like a teacher now, like Mrs. McQuade.

  "It's always best to say you're family," Robert said. "I'll say I'm looking for a brother. And I thought I'd take Marietta with me. She could be a neighbor, looking for her husband. We've done it before. She's sharp and smart, with a level head and not given to silly feminine hysteria or scruples. She said she could get someone to take her place in school for a few days."

  "Right," Uncle Valentine said.

  Marietta. But of course, why not? I felt a stab of jealousy. Sharp and smart. Enough to be in on whatever it was they were doing. A level head. Not given to silly feminine hysteria or scruples. She worked in the lab, didn't she? Oh, it was like a knife through me, hearing Robert talk about Marietta like that. And the special note of pride in his voice when he'd said it, too!

  "It's always better with a woman along. They invite less suspicion," Uncle Valentine said.

  A woman. He considered Marietta a woman! And me a child. He wouldn't even let me go over and see Annie without permission. Because I hadn't gone last time, Annie had been put out with me. And we'd ended up having a fight.

  "I want facial burns, if you can get them," my uncle was saying. "Also burns on limbs. And get them back as quickly as possible. Pay whatever you must. Come into my office. I'll give you money."

  Their voices were receding. I slipped past Addie and down the stairs, staying close to the wall. In Uncle Valentine's office they were making plans, talking about money, train schedules, routes.

  "My Maude should go with him," Merry was saying. "She could act as the grieving mother. You know how good she is at it."

  "Yes," Uncle Valentine said, "but I need her here."

  Grieving? You only grieved when somebody was dead. Were they going to get dead bodies, then? For a moment I'd allowed myself to think Uncle Valentine was going to have them bring back living burn victims.

  Oh, I didn't know! Think, I told myself sternly. Be sharp and smart. Like Marietta. Addie didn't help, of course. She'd come down onto the stairs and was poking me and pointing and grinning "I tol' you, I tol' you," she said gleefully. "You sees now what I means? Now you believe old Addie?"

  I looked back at her. "You'd best get back upstairs," I hissed.

  Just then Robert came out into the hall, heading for the front door. I heard his special walk, with the little limp, turned my head, and there he was, staring up at me.

  Me and my silly feminine hysteria. And scruples.

  For one terrible moment that seemed to stretch into eternity, he and I looked at each other. And in that moment I knew what was wrong with me.

  I loved Robert.

  Not Johnny. Robert. With his limp and his Northern accent and his full mouth and long nose and determined thrust of jaw. With his passion for medicine and his dark brown eyes. Not Johnny's eyes anymore. But his own. His very own. There for me. Inviting me in. That's what he'd been doing all along. Only I'd been too stupid to know it. Instead I'd rebuffed him. And now he was going away with Marietta.

  He was like Johnny, yes, in age and stature and a certain something about the cheekbones. But here was the thing I'd just this moment come to understand.

  He was the good side of Johnny. The side that I'd seen fleetingly, been drawn to, and tried to draw out. The side that had eluded me. It was here in Robert. And it was not fleeting at all. It was real and constant and full-blown. Most likely it would bloom best in times of darkness, of trouble. And I wanted to be part of it.

  I saw the surprise on his face. His mouth fell open. Then I saw understanding creep into his eyes. He knew I'd heard everything.

  He slid his gaze in the direction of U
ncle Valentine's office, where the others were still talking, then back to me. He shrugged his shoulders. He gave a little smile.

  I did not breathe. Neither did I smile back. I would enter into no conspiracy with him now. And he wouldn't have seen my smile, anyway. Because somebody was there in the hallway between us.

  The ghost of Marietta.

  He knew it and I knew it. So I dropped my gaze to my hands in my lap. If I was to be perceived as having feminine scruples, well then, I would put them to good use.

  I was angry with him. I had every right. For his being in on this, for keeping it from me so I was left eavesdropping like a naughty child. But most of all because I knew now that he'd traveled with Marietta before. And admired her for it.

  He knew I'd heard that along with everything else. Now he expected me to smile at him?

  I looked at him again. Was he going to tell Uncle Valentine I was here? Well, go ahead, tell, I thought. See if I care.

  I saw the uncertainty in his face, the look in his eyes. As if he were pleading. For what?

  For some kind of understanding.

  In that moment I knew he would not give me away. He nodded his head at me, almost curtly, then turned without even a whispered word, and went out the front door.

  I felt a great sob forming inside me. Something had just happened between me and Robert, but what?

  And then I knew. A deal had been struck between us.

  My understanding, for his silence.

  I never said I'd give my understanding, did I? And I never asked for his silence, either. I turned with a strangled sob, pushed my way past Addie, and ran up the stairs.

  "Now you know," Addie was saying, lumbering behind me on the wide upstairs landing. "Now you know, doan you?"

  "Leave me alone!" I whispered savagely.

  I knew nothing. I knew less now than before. Only that I'd been betrayed somehow by both Robert and Uncle Valentine; I did not even know the exact nature of the betrayal. I knew that everyone in the house but me understood what was going on.

  I knew that Myra was probably right. But I had no proof. Everything that had been said could have two meanings. It was the way they talked to each other in this house. In codes.

  I knew that I'd lost Robert, before I was even mindful that I'd wanted him. Just like I'd lost Annie. And Puss-in-Boots. I went into my tower room, where I belonged, like the miller's daughter, and closed the door.

  18. I Didn't Like the Arithmetic

  FOR THE NEXT FEW WEEKS I walked around in a kind of daze. I took part in things but did not feel part of them. After a while I felt like Addie must feel and thought I must be going mad.

  How does one go mad? Is Addie mad? If she is, she does not know it. If you don't know it, does it count?

  One minute I'd be so sure Uncle Valentine and Robert were involved in the snatching of bodies. Everything pointed to it. The way Robert and the Spoon and the Mole had jumped so fast on that steamboat accident. Robert going there as a brother of one of the victims. And taking Marietta along as the wife of a neighbor. Why couldn't Robert have gone as an assistant for Uncle Valentine, if they were to bring back live bodies?

  Uncle Valentine saying it was always better to have a woman along because they invited less suspicion. Suspicion of what?

  Merry saying Maude should go along to act as a grieving mother. And how good she was at it. Was that why Maude went to so many funerals here in Washington? As a grieving mother? To claim the bodies? Was that why she went only to funerals of the impoverished or the forgotten?

  It was all starting to add up, and I did not like the arithmetic.

  Then the next minute I would look around me at the ordered rhythms of the house, at Uncle Valentine's casual and yet elegant demeanor; I would think of the good he was doing, and know I was wrong.

  If he was engaged in body snatching, why did all those poor people who came on Tuesdays and Thursdays entrust themselves to him for treatment? I know he didn't charge them. I watched when he welcomed his patients. I saw the gratitude in their faces. One day I saw an old Negro woman kiss his hands.

  Why had he taken Addie in instead of letting her die in the streets and using her body? Why didn't he let Marietta die after she was pulled out of the water? She'd been so sick, she had told me.

  Why hadn't I found any evidence in the shed? Robert hadn't had time to remove it.

  Was it possible that all the intrigue involved in his trip to Memphis was because Uncle Valentine simply wanted to treat two burn victims who might be left to die? And in order to get them here Robert had to pretend to be a relative?

  Would he be good in his role of brother to one of the victims? I could see him doing it, limping a little when he walked across the room to speak to the authorities. With that old military bearing about him, proud and in command of himself, yet all respectful at the same time. Never giving away what he was thinking; guarded, yet polite.

  Where did you get your war wound? they would sav.

  And he'd tell them, hesitantly. Fredericksburg. With that little hoarseness he got in his voice when he spoke of the war.

  And they'd give him the two wounded. Or the two dead bodies. Or whatever he wanted. Because when he said Fredericksburg like that, when he looked down saying it, or across the room, as if he were still hearing the guns booming and the screaming men and crazed horses, when he got that look in his eye like he did remembering, they'd give him anything.

  I'd given him my heart, hadn't I?

  Thirteen days went by with me in this state. Somehow I got through them and managed not to make a brass-bound fool of myself.

  "Don't ever act on your thoughts if you're confused, Miss Muffet," Daddy had told me. "Wait until your mind clears."

  There it was. There was what I would do. I would do nothing. For now, at least. I would wait until my mind cleared. If it ever did. I would treat Uncle Valentine as I had always treated him, as if I suspected nothing. I would sit on my turret and continue to eat my curds and whey.

  On May 1 President Johnson ordered nine army officers named to the military commission to try the eight accused in the assassination conspiracy. Of course Annie's mother was one of the accused.

  Uncle Valentine read this to me from the newspaper at breakfast. "Federal authorities have ruled it be a military rather than a civil court," he said. "This might be a good topic for your Wednesday Discussion Group. Everyone in Washington is arguing the point. Does the military have a right to try civilians?"

  It was a good question. But I did not bring it up for the Wednesday discussion, even though Mrs. McQuade gave us extra credit if we introduced a good topic. I was too involved in the whole thing. I didn't want Myra to get a whiff of my friendship with Annie and Johnny Surratt. Who knew what she'd do with that little tidbit, she and her newspaperman father. No one in my class knew of this yet. So far I'd managed to keep it secret.

  Was I still friends with Annie? I didn't know. I hadn't seen her since our argument. Then that very Thursday, the fourth, when I was thinking of her, she came around again. It was downright creepy.

  I had just settled the next-to-last of Uncle Valentine's patients in the waiting room and turned to see what the last lady in the hall was here for. Out of my eye I'd seen her lingering in the shadows with a shawl over her face. I had a pad and pencil in my hand.

  "And what is your ailment?" I asked before turning.

  "They're going to try my mother." She drew the shawl back.

  "Annie!" I dropped my pad and pencil and we hugged. She felt thinner.

  "You never noticed me," she said.

  "You had that shawl on."

  "I wear it all the time when I go out. I don't want to be recognized."

  "Nobody here would recognize you. These poor people all have their own troubles."

  "Still, I didn't want to put you in any danger. By association."

  "Oh, Annie." I ushered her into the kitchen. I was flooded with guilt for having ignored her. "I don't feel that way about you," I
said.

  She sat down and peered at me. "I was watching you. You seemed a thousand miles away. I know the look. I feel that way myself most of the time. What's wrong?"

  "Nothing. I was just busy. How have you been, Annie?"

  "Terrible. I have bad news."

  "I know about the military trial. Uncle Valentine says they won't dare convict her. He says they're only putting her on trial to try to bait Johnny out of hiding."

  "It isn't that," she said dully.

  I put the water on for tea. "What, then?"

  "It's my Alex." She took a crumpled paper from her reticule. Her movements were like those of an old lady. "Alex has been killed."

  "Killed?" I almost dropped a cup taking it down from the cupboard. "Killed?" I asked again. "The war is over!"

  She shook her head sadly and pushed the crumpled letter across the table at me. She seemed awfully calm. I picked up the letter and read it.

  She was right. Alex had been shot on April 25 at Durham Station in North Carolina, by a Southern sniper who had decided the war wasn't over yet.

  "Oh, Annie!" I said.

  She was either in shock or beyond grief. "It's for the best, I suppose. I never did tell him about Mama. Although I know he may have seen it in the papers. And that's why he stopped writing. I couldn't bear losing him because of that. I suppose it's better this way. I'll take that tea now," she said. "Things can't possibly get much worse." Her eyes were dull. She looked like a waxwork figure we'd seen once in the Smithsonian. "Except if they hang my mother."