Flashback

by Nevada Barr

  "Nothing is there, for fuck's sake," Anna shouted into the bend of her elbows. "Okay. On three. One. Two. Three." Letting her hands slide down the sides of her face, still holding on lest her head begin to rotate and spit green bile or something equally alarming, she looked into the premature night beneath the knit of ceiling arches.

  Nothing but darkness. Nice quiet friendly darkness. No boogeymen, no dead relatives.

  "See?" she said. Having conversations with herself didn't make her question her sanity. She'd lived in New York City too many years for that. Many of the finest people in Manhattan talked to themselves.

  At some point during this fit of weirdness, she had folded herself up as small as possible, knees under her chin, heels up against her butt, elbows tucked in. With a conscious effort, she unfolded and stood up. Insanity didn't run in her family. She needed to talk to Lanny Wilcox. Now.

  Determination vanished as she stood in the growing shadows and realized she hadn't the faintest idea how to get out of this maze of black arches and blind passages. "Of course you do," she said to bolster her courage. "The fort just isn't that complex." Hearing it, Anna could not remember if "complex" was a word or if she'd simply uttered a jumble of sounds. The fear, momentarily at bay, rushed back.

  In a science fiction book she'd read once, a man had recited "rented a tent, rented a tent" over and over in his head, creating white noise to keep the Thought Police from getting through to his deeper knowledge. Hoping it would serve as well to keep insane thoughts from clouding her mind with terror and confusion, Anna mentally chanted the words and began to walk.

  The direction was irrelevant. Fort Jefferson was roughly circular. No matter which way she went, she would eventually reach an open casemate, a spiral stairway, and she would be back in the real world. Choosing not to think about what she might meet on her way, Anna walked straight-backed and resolute into the inky darkness of the northwestern bastion.

  When she reached the darkest center, the place where many arches knit together overhead, a place she knew from memory, the ceiling lost now in darkness, Anna left off trailing her fingers along the brick for guidance.

  Back to the wall, she sat down and waited for them to come.

  16

  My Dearest Peg--

  At long last I received your letter. The mail, slow always, reaches Fort Jefferson only when weather and the capriciousness of the Union Army permits. Had not Mrs. Teller taken it upon herself to (yet again) interfere in family affairs, I expect Molly would have kept her illness from all of us. This once I am grateful to the old biddy. I only wish I could come home. It is clear now why Tilly was sent to me; not "hoydenish ways" but Molly looking ahead as she always has. I'm glad she is being cared for by the Sisters of Mercy. The convent is where she is most at peace.

  Peace is something I think of a great deal of late because there is so little of it to be had here. The constant clamor of construction, drill, the testing of the munitions, the coarse clatter and shout of a thousand men squeezed into a tiny space, the endless high-pitched fussing of the sooty terns on Bush Key next door: I have grown so accustomed to it it is as the roar of the sea on the Massachusetts shore, underlying my days and informing my dreams.

  Tilly's clamorous passion rises above this cacophony. Despite much effort and the occasional cross word, I cannot ignore it and she cannot forbear speaking of it. Dr. Samuel Mudd and his "innocence" have become an obsession with her. An unhealthy hobby in this political climate. I finally convinced her to refrain from bringing up the subject in Joseph's hearing, but now and again she cannot resist slipping in a plea for her cause. Then I must live with my husband's icy looks and stony silence for half a day.

  Joel is much better. He walks now and will recover complete use of his right hand, Dr. Mudd tells us, and possibly his left, though the thumb was more severely damaged. His nose was twice broken--or more--and, having been left so long untreated, heals crookedly. This and a scar beneath his right eye will commemorate this beating for the remainder of his life. With his spirits returning, he is still an attractive man, though no longer as handsome as he was.

  Tilly's affection for him has settled from that of a lovesick girl to that of a friend, sister and nurse. Whether this is a maturing of genuine love or a cooling of ardor I cannot tell. I would rather she returned to making calf-eyes at her soldier. It was less alarming than her new quest.

  Her fixation on Dr. Samuel Mudd does not appear to be romantic in nature, and the doctor seems devoted to and speaks warmly of his wife back home. Hero worship might be nearer the mark. The doctor has a forceful personality and an inner strength that is compelling. He spends much of our time together speaking quietly and convincingly of his innocence. Tilly, wide-eyed and innocent, drinks in his words as if they were the stuff of life and has become enamored with the idea of winning his freedom.

  Over these last days most of her sentences begin with: "Dr. Mudd said . . ." or "Dr. Mudd told me . . ." or "Dr. Mudd didn't . . ." I have had to deliver more than one hard kick under the table to distract her as any mention of Samuel Mudd from her sends Joseph into an arctic mood.

  If these northern tempests were confined to our quarters I think I might be able to calm the waters, but Tilly has not been circumspect even when out of doors. So full is she with her youthful love affair with truth and justice and the belief that a pure heart will win over evil (oh how I rue the days we spent reading this child fairy tales!) that she has carried her quest on her sleeve, prattling earnestly to all and sundry.

  Before the advent of the much-vaunted Dr. Mudd--whom I am coming to detest simply because Tilly so clearly does not--Tilly was very much the pet of everyone here. Now I see people turn away when she approaches. I suppose I could live with social ostracism, but I'm worried that the repercussions of Tilly's wild talk could cost more dearly.

  Oh yes, talk. I forgot to tell you. We finally found out the horrific and treasonous outburst of Private Lane's that got him in trouble. You would laugh had not the words gotten the boy beaten very nearly to death. What Joel said was: "I wish Lincoln had been shot in the street. I've always wanted to play at Ford's. Now I suppose it will be shut down." Callous perhaps, but he is a boy and an actor. For this Sergeant Sinapp almost killed him.

  There is something going on with the sergeant, and it worries me. His natural hatefulness--and it must be natural, it goes too deep to be learned; it would surprise me not in the least were I to find his mother was a black widow spider who devoured Sinapp Senior moments after Sinapp Junior was conceived--anyway his natural hatefulness has changed into something more menacing. Before he was much like a vicious dog on a strong chain. He would leap and snarl but the chain (firmly held by Joseph, his commanding officer) kept him from harming most people.

  Now it is as if that chain is gone. He stalks and snaps as if devilishly gladdened by the knowledge that when he chooses to strike, nothing will stop him.

  The day before yesterday Tilly and I were taking food and fresh water to Joel. To regain his health Joel needs to have all we can provide in the way of fresh vegetables, meat and fruit. Joseph would have our heads if he knew we pilfered from his larder to fatten a Johnny Reb.

  The sergeant was standing guard over a group of prisoners--mostly union deserters from Pennsylvania and New York--who were working on the new shot oven as Tilly and I crossed the parade ground with our little basket of purloined tomatoes.

  Sinapp saw us and left his post, swaggering in our direction. I know it was just a fancy, but I swear I could smell his smile, feel it like whiskery horse lips on the back of my neck. Tilly and I walked faster, and I'm sure it gave him pleasure to think we were afraid of him. Had he known it had more to do with revulsion than fear, he would not have smirked so.

  He caught up with us just as a soldier was unlocking the door to Joel's cell for us. He followed us inside and told the soldier assigned to chaperone our visit to leave. Sinapp closed the wooden door, then stood with his back to it, letting us know that we w
ere trapped, as imprisoned and helpless as the three confederates who shared the cells.

  After the brilliant fog of dust and sunlight, the casemate was so dim it took a minute before I could see properly. When I could, I longed for the sun-blindness I'd enjoyed moments before. In all his thickness, Sinapp leaned against our only avenue of escape. "I thought I'd come by and have a piece of that nursing you ladies been giving Jeff Davis's boys." The way he said "nursing" would have made any woman cringe. Lest we miss his filthy point, he began stroking himself. Truly, Peggy, the man stood before us, his sticky eyes on Tilly, and petted the front of his trousers as though a small dog lay there. Which, perhaps, is exactly the case. In all the years I have spent living in a world populated by men--and many of the roughest sort imaginable--I have never seen such a display. Had I been told of it, I would not have believed. Oddly I was not alarmed immediately, just paralyzed by that horrible embarrassment one gets when one has the preacher over to afternoon tea and the dog mistakes the vicar's leg for a bitch in heat.

  "Good God, man, have a care!" Mr. Arnold said. He had come to the doorway connecting the cells while I stood transfixed.

  Sinapp heard Mr. Arnold, I could tell by the change in his face--a slight shifting of the sides of beef that pass for cheeks. If someone spoke to me as Mr. Arnold spoke to the sergeant (and for such reprehensible behavior) I should have sunk into the brick for shame. Sinapp did not. Apparently the man has no higher instincts with which to compare his baseness. Indeed this very baseness seems to be a matter of pride with him, coarseness being a skill he has honed to a fine point. Using it to skewer others gives him a tremendous sense of accomplishment.

  He laughed, a warm rumbling sound that in another man I might find pleasing, and, to the immense relief of those of us trapped in this theater of his making, ceased rubbing his trouser front. It is not my custom to stare at men below the waist, but because Sinapp had so purposefully called our attention to this part of his anatomy, I couldn't but notice his lewd thoughts and clumsy manipulations had caused a like erection beneath his trousers.

  Retelling this story in the safety of my own bedroom, knowing Tilly is snug and sleeping and Joseph working at the desk in the hall adjacent, I cannot but see it for the absurd incident it was, with Sergeant Sinapp as the leading character, a clown; a dark clown but a clown with buffoonery and exaggerated features all the same. In Joel Lane's cell I was not amused, nor were my "companions." I was frightened, as I believe were Dr. Mudd and even the cynical and unflappable Mr. Arnold. Joel was terrified, his body and mind knowing the depth of Sergeant Sinapp's power and cruelty. Tilly alone was unafraid. Angered by his manner, even if not completely aware of his meaning, she set her basket down with a thump. "We have every right to be here," she declared before I could stop her.

  Joel stepped between Tilly and Sinapp. A small thing this one step, but it spoke of such courage even in that airless room with the reek of Sinapp clogging my thoughts, I felt my heart swell.

  This one good and decent moment was not allowed to stand.

  The sergeant leapt forward. After his posing and posturing, the speed of his movement startled. It was as if he'd become more than human, vanishing from his place by the door and reappearing, his face but inches from Joel's. Fist closed, he backhanded Joel, a blow from his knuckles and wrist striking the boy from ear to chin. Joel fell as one dead.

  Tilly screamed and hovered, undecided whether she should drop down beside her patient or fly at his attacker. None of us had time to so much as breathe before Sinapp decided for her. Arms struck snake-like, fingers biting into her upper arms. I do not know what he meant to do. Kiss her perhaps, though that seems a gentle thing compared to the violence in his face and body. Even he could not have intended to ravage her there and then on the floor of the casemate with the three of us in witness.

  "That's quite enough," I said and moved to Tilly's side. He didn't loose her, so I slapped him hard enough it stung my palm. Violence begets violence. He let go of Tilly with one hand and drew back to strike me. Tilly and I had backed up till our shoulders were nearly touching the brick of the archway separating Joel from Dr. Mudd and Sam Arnold. I could not run, nor could I duck.

  The blow, which I believe would have felled me as surely as it had Private Lane--who had neither stirred nor made a sound since he went down--didn't come. Mr. Arnold caught the sergeant by the wrist.

  In that moment it came to me that the rules of honor were written by men. I took this opportunity to punch Sinapp in the eye with all the force I could muster. I hit him so hard I cried out as loudly as he when the bones of my hand met those of his face. In shock or blind fury he let loose of Tilly's other arm.

  "Go now," came a soft voice so close to my ear I felt the hair stirred by his breath. Mr. Arnold's dark eyes were fixed on mine, and I think he was smiling. It happened so quickly I cannot be sure of anything.

  His advice was sound. I grabbed Tilly and ran for the door.

  "Bitch," Sinapp hurled that at my back. After his bestial behavior, being called names by such as he was harder for me to take than his physical threat had been.

  "My husband shall hear of this," I told Sinapp.

  He shook off Mr. Arnold's grip. He said nothing but he smiled at me. I turned and ran after Tilly, not knowing if he followed or not, not knowing if Joel Lane had died or still lived. The only thing I did know was that Tilly's hero, Dr. Samuel Mudd, had made no move to help his patient or to protect Tilly or me. He'd stood back in the corner where the arch met the outer wall and watched in such a way I wondered if he were a coward or if things were unfolding as he had hoped and he was calculating the advantage this show of choler, lust and ill discipline might afford him.

  Once Tilly and I regained the sane light of the parade ground with its homely smells and familiar sounds of men at work, what ragtag remnants of the fear I'd felt in the casemate turned to anger, then settled into disgust and, I must admit, a desire to see Sinapp hanging from one of the trees he was so fond of decorating with the persons and misery of other men.

  That evening, when Joseph returned to quarters, I told him of what his sergeant had said and done, then settled back to watch the build of the cold fury he displays when his authority is knowingly thwarted by a subordinate.

  I do believe it began to blossom, but within moments a new emotion withered it. Often enough I've boasted of how well I know my husband, how easily I can read his moods. This time I could not. Or read too much. A flood of feeling poured into his face: anger, remembrance, shock, fear, sorrow and--I can scarcely credit this and would say it only to you--that implosion of thought and soul behind the eyes that speaks of cowardice. Mind you, I could be wrong. I must be wrong. These things I speak of seeing with such confidence were all a jumble and over in the space of two heartbeats. Joseph's face went blank then, the way it looks when he's been several days without sleep. The way it looked when he knew he would sit out the war on this island.

  "Don't put yourself in the sergeant's way again," he said as if Tilly and I had caused Sinapp to act as he had.

  I started to remonstrate--never wise, I know, but a habit I cannot break--but Joseph stood so abruptly the small table beside his chair rocked on its feet. "Do as I say," he snapped. "Or I will not be responsible for what happens to you." He left me, left our quarters. I heard the door onto the veranda slam shut.

  Knowing Joseph, for reasons I do not understand, has withdrawn his protection from Tilly and me, that we are very much alone on this too-crowded island, makes me truly and deeply afraid.

  17

  The silence that is unique to the sea out where the tides are nonexistent settled around Anna with the darkness. Beneath, and at her back, the warmth that never left the brick throughout the long summer soothed her aching muscles. She waited and she breathed and she relaxed. Once before she had been in a like situation, and it had ended badly with a screaming fear that stayed in her mind for years afterward. She wouldn't think of that. She was older now. Her horrors
were known. She would not invite them in.

  The first change was in the light. A last ray of dying sun skipped across the Gulf of Mexico like a molten stone, piercing the tangle of arches to paint a single golden stripe no more than an inch wide across the brick of the far wall. As she watched it grew brighter, pulsed with the rhythm of the sea, the rhythm of her heart. Light broke away from the stripe in tiny showers, each spark leaving a contrail as if it were a minute jet airplane flaming out.

  At length the light show shimmered into the darkness and was gone. To see if it worked, if she had any control over what was to happen next, Anna called softly: "Aunt Raffia?" and waited. Where the last spark had died, a pale shape began to pool on the floor. Luminosity poured into it from an invisible pitcher, the form of a woman being filled with light from the boots up the skirt to shirtwaist, arms, and finally the head, face averted, the hand raised as before, fingers poking nervously at escaping hairpins.

  "Be a nice aunt," Anna whispered to the apparition. "No turning scaley with long lickety tongues or anything." The figure dissolved and Anna wondered if she'd taken the fun out of its spectral life by ruling out reptilian metamorphoses.

  Anna was tripping. Days before it would have terrified her. Her memories of the bad old days during the early seventies were not of Lucy in the sky with diamonds but of the mind-crippling terror of losing her reason. Because she feared that same thing so recently, it was a relief to know that she was not going mad. She'd been drugged. It would turn out to be in the plastic bottles of carbonated water she'd been drinking, introduced, no doubt, by a hypodermic needle. That was why the water was flat, why there was water on the bottom shelf of her refrigerator and Lanny's. Whoever was doing the poisoning must have gotten careless, been rushed and pierced the containers below water line. Tomorrow, when she'd regained dominance over what gray cells remained to her, she'd call Wilcox with the good news. If he'd been a straight arrow during his formative years he would have no way of recognizing this drug-induced insanity. Anna might not have caught on if she hadn't guzzled nearly a quart of the doctored water on an empty stomach.