An Acquaintance with Darkness (28 page)

I nodded. Uncle Valentine was fair. I went back to my reading.

The next time I answered the door clapper, it was Annie. She seemed not to know me, or care. She was dressed neatly now, her hair done up in a bun. She carried a small portmanteau.

"Is Dr. Bransby in?"

I ushered her into the cool dimness of the house. Uncle Valentine got up from his desk, came forward, and took her in his arms. "There is always hope for a last-minute reprieve," he told her. "People are telling me that wherever they go, in hotels and on the streets, people are saying they shouldn't hang your mother."

"You've been kind. I shall not forget it. I came to tell you, I'm going to spend every night from now until the seventh with my mother in her cell in Carroll Prison."

"Are you sure you want to do that, Annie?" he asked.

"Yes. My mother needs me."

"What can we do for you?"

"Just be there on the seventh. Stand with me, if she doesn't get a reprieve."

"We'll be there," he said.

She picked up her portmanteau and turned to me. "Puss-in-Boots is with a neighbor until I can return home again."

I nodded mutely.

She started to leave. I wanted to put my arms around her, too, before she left, but she walked right by me, head held high, shoulders straight. She had a carriage waiting, she said.

I couldn't let her go like that. I must do something for her, but what? Then it came to me.

"Annie, wait," I begged.

She turned. "I haven't time."

"Just a minute. Wait right there in the hall. There's something I must give you." I ran through the kitchen, took a knife off the counter, and ran out into Marietta's garden. The heat was beating down unmercifully. Where were they? Oh yes, there. The night-blooming cereus. I bent to cut two on long stems and brought them back into the kitchen. There I wrapped them quickly in wet paper and brought them into the hall where Annie was waiting.

"What are they?" she asked.

"Night-blooming cereus. They are nightflowers. Bring them into your mother's cell."

"Thank you," she said.

"Tell your mother hello."

She nodded, thanked me again, and went out the door.

That was Sunday, July 2. Somehow we got through the next few days without losing our senses. On the Fourth, Robert took me sailing on the Potomac. We were not as friendly as before. We were wary of one another, yet at the same time bound by secrets, shared experiences, and concerns. And he had a newfound respect for me. I could not ask for more.

He was a very good sailor. Maude had a supper of cold chicken, hot biscuits, jellied shrimp, and ice cream when we got home. There were fireworks afterward, down by the Sixth Street wharves. Robert took me, but when I looked up to see those colorful bombs bursting over the water I took no joy from them. And a couple of times when an especially loud one went off I saw Robert wince.

We walked home in silence. Robert left me at the gate and walked home. When I got inside, Annie was there, in the parlor with Uncle Valentine. Neither of them looked up as I came in. I took a chair and listened.

Annie was begging. "I need you to use your influence with Dr. Porter, the jail physician, to get them to release my mother's body to me. They don't want to let me have her."

"Why don't we wait and see what happens on the seventh before we talk about this?" Uncle Valentine said.

"I know what's going to happen on the seventh. They're going to hang her. Neither Mrs. Douglas nor Thaddeus Stevens could get anywhere with the president. She's going to hang."

"There is always hope for a last-minute reprieve, Annie. I heard that the president's secretary is going to keep a fast horse outside the White House door, in case Johnson changes his mind at the last minute."

Then of a sudden Annie stood up. "Dr. Bransby," she said in a clear firm voice, "I'm going to be standing outside the prison gates on the seventh. Stanton has told all the relatives of the condemned that he will not release the bodies. He wants them buried in pine boxes by the jailhouse wall. If you use your influence with Dr. Porter, if you get my mother's body released, I'll give it to you. For medical research. My mother gets migraine headaches, you know."

Uncle Valentine looked up at her, disbelief on his face.

"I mean it, Dr. Bransby. You can have my mother's body. I know you use the bodies of executed criminals. It's legal. I know that, too. My mother is no criminal, but I'd rather give her to you than have her buried on the penitentiary grounds."

My uncle nodded and sighed, got up, and walked across the hall to his office. I got up, too. I saw him penning a note. Then he gave it to Annie. "For Dr. Porter," he said.

"Thank you, Dr. Bransby," Annie said. Then she looked at me. "Mama liked the flowers," she told me. Then she went out.

***

"Uncle Valentine, are you going to take the body?"

He was on his way into the kitchen. He stopped. "What do you think, Emily?"

"I think of what you told me. That you would put nothing and no one before medical science. So then, if they give Annie her mother's body, are you going to take it? Is that why you wrote the note to Dr. Porter?"

He smiled at me, a slow sad smile. "No, Emily," he said.

"No?"

"This may be the first time in my life that I let someone come before medical science. But no, Emily, I am not going to take the body. I wrote the note to Dr. Porter to appeal to his humanity. To try to get Annie's mother's body released to her for a proper burial. Now I'm on my way to the kitchen to see if there's any chicken left. I need something to eat."

I thought I heard firecrackers. It was still the Fourth, wasn't it? I felt them exploding inside me. "I'll get you some chicken," I said. "You go and finish your work."

"M
Y
G
OD,
they're not going to hang the woman, are they?"

He looked like a newspaperman. There were so many of them around. He had pad and pencil. He pushed his way through the crowd at the gates of the prison yard. It was eleven in the morning and already the sun was beating down like some kind of a great white bird suffocating us with its wings.

"Nobody knows yet," a man behind us said. "Ask that one there, why don't you? She's the daughter."

The reporter looked at Annie. His face lit up, not believing his luck. "Are you Annie Surratt?"

"Yes."

"Can I ask you some questions?"

"You don't have to answer if you don't want to, Annie," Uncle Valentine said.

Annie said it was all right and went off with him a distance away from us and the others crowded at the prison gate. "How long have you been keeping this vigil here?" I heard him ask. And Annie's murmured answer, "Since I came out of my mother's jail cell and bade her good-bye at six this morning."

We'd been here since ten. Uncle Valentine hadn't wanted me to come. "A hanging is no place for a young girl," he'd said. "What has the world come to?" But his argument was no good. He knew what the world had come to.

There were a lot of young girls present. There must have been about two thousand people pressed against the wrought-iron fence that surrounded the prison yard. Inside were about a thousand soldiers. And some civilians.

Annie had told us they had special tickets.

The crowd was in a festive mood. Inside the gates the carpenters were still hammering at the gallows. Every once in a while we could hear the crash of a trapdoor as it was tested. The sun rose higher in the sky. Everyone waited.

Annie came back with the reporter. "They can't find anybody to dig the graves," she was telling him. "All the prison employees refused, because they are hanging my mother."

He scribbled very fast. "Thank you, Miss Surrart," he said. "I wish you luck. I heard that General William Hancock is at the back door of the prison waiting for a messenger from toe president." Then he lifted his hat and motioned for a guard. While he waited, he looked at me. "Those flowers you're holding are wilted, miss," he said.

"No," I told him. "They're nightflowers."

"Nightflowers?"

"Yes. They will bloom tonight."

He tipped his hat at me. "How appropriate," he said. Then he flashed a card at the guard, who opened the gate and let him into the prison yard.

Annie followed him with her eyes. She gripped the iron bars of the gate. Uncle Valentine put a hand on her shoulder and drew her back. She was hollow eyed, white-faced. She looked ten years older than her seventeen years this morning.

Propped up in a corner, where the gate met the fence, she had a casket. A plain pine casket. She'd brought it, just in case.

Now we saw a short man in a captain's uniform coming across the dusty yard toward us. Two soldiers with carbines were with him. Everyone else saw him,
too, and a murmur ran like a ripple through the crowd. He drew some keys out of his pocket, opened the gate a crack, and motioned Annie to the other side. The soldiers stood by the opening, rifles poised to hold back the crowd. Annie went in.

A distance away she conferred with the man. His face was close to hers. From our side of the gate the people shouted at the soldiers. "Let the woman go! Stanton doesn't need to hang a woman!" The soldiers stood guard, stone-faced, carbines poised across their chests. A distance behind them I saw other soldiers approaching.

Annie was conferring with the captain. I saw her nod and smile weakly, then he led her back to the gate. The soldiers opened it and slipped her through and locked it.

She walked and spoke like someone in a trance. "That was Captain Rath. He's the hangman," she said dully. "He said Generals Hancock and Hartranft, who are running things, want him to stall as long as he can. They're still hoping for a messenger from the president."

Uncle Valentine drew her aside and pulled a flask out of his pocket. "Have some water, Annie," he said. She took some. I saw her lift the flask and the water dribble down her chin. Then we waited some more.

Robert drew me aside. "Are you sure you want to see this?"

"I must stay with Annie," I said.

He nodded and took my hand. He squeezed it.

"If it were my mother, I wouldn't be able to be like Annie, Robert," I said. "I don't know how she's holding up."

"We never know what we can do until we have to do it."

There was something I needed to say to him, something important. But I couldn't think of what it was Time and the sun beat down on us. People were opening umbrellas, holding them over their heads.
Why don't they just go home,
I thought,
to their cool, safe houses? Why did they have to come out here to see this?

In what seemed like a short while I heard church bells down the street. Twelve chimes, soft and musical on the summer air. Birds twittered in the trees overhead. Across the street some children were playing. How could this be? How could life go on like this when they were going to hang my best friend's mother?

Then the back door of the prison opened and they came out.

Four of
them.
Three men and a woman. Accompanied by two priests and three ministers.

A unified gasp went up from the crowd. Then silence.

Mrs. Mary was wearing her good black bombazine dress, the one with the satin ribbons.
How could you wear your best dress to be hanged in?
Her head was veiled. The priests were on either side of her, supporting her arms. Under the blazing impersonal sun the sad procession walked across the dusty prison yard and the prisoners went up the steps to the scaffold. Atzerodt, Herold, Payne, Mrs. Surratt.

Thirteen steps.
Had they planned thirteen steps?

It was in that moment that I thought of Johnny Surratt. My Johnny. I wondered if he still had the handkerchiefs Annie had made him with the days of the week on them. I remembered the night he took me to Ford's Theater and we sat in the president's box.

A hundred years ago. Another time.
Where are you, Johnny? If you'd come back they wouldn't be hanging your mother. Couldn't you have come back?

I wondered if Annie's mother were thinking of him. I wondered what she was thinking just now.

The prisoners sat on chairs on the platform. General Hartranft read the execution order. Then the clergymen said their prayers, each in turn. Then more waiting.

"Oh, God!" Annie moaned. "They're holding an umbrella over my mother. She must have one of her headaches!"

"Hold on, girl," Uncle Valentine told her. "A stay of execution can still come."

"How can they be so cruel, Dr. Bransby? How can human beings be so cruel?"

Uncle Valentine put his arm around her and held her close. I clutched the stems of my nightflowers. Robert gave me a tight smile of encouragement.

Then we waited some more. Mrs. Mary was kissing her crucifix.

Nooses were slipped over the heads of the prisoners. Then Captain Rath made them stand up while soldiers tied their hands behind them. He himself knelt and tied a rope around Mrs. Mary's dress, just below her knees. Then white hoods were placed over the prisoners' heads.

Just before the hood was placed over Payne he shouted, "Mrs. Surratt is innocent and doesn't deserve to die!" Then the voice was muffled by the hood.

Emboldened, Atzerodt cried out, "Good-bye, gentlemen. May we all meet in the other world!"

Annie moaned. "Don't look," Uncle Valentine said. He drew her head against his chest. Her face was to his jacket front. I saw him cast an eye to Robert, saw Robert nod.

Captain Rath wasn't ready yet. He walked up and down the platform behind the bound and hooded prisoners, checking ropes and hoods. "He's stalling for time," Robert whispered.

Time. I looked up at the white heat-laden sky.
Cicadas were singing in the trees, their song an upward spiral. Then the back door of the prison opened and everyone gasped again.

I craned my neck. Was it a reprieve?

General Hancock stood there. "Go ahead," he said.

Captain Rath stood motionless. "The woman, too?" he asked.

Hancock nodded.

Annie had turned her head to see, but Uncle Valentine turned her face back into his jacket front again. "No more looking, Annie," he said. "No more, child."