Blue Asylum (20 page)

“And what is that?”

Wendell smiled for a moment, then the smile faded, replaced by his characteristic intensity.

“Never mind. I’ll take care of him.”

She sensed his anxiety but dared not investigate. She herself was shivering in fear and anticipation. She was escaping an island the way she’d entered into marriage—completely bewildered, unsure of the way.

Iris felt suddenly sorry to be leaving him. “You’re the only friend I made here, besides Ambrose.” She reached through the bars and touched his hand. “I’ll write you from Virginia.”

He didn’t answer for a moment. “Do they have boys there?” he asked.

“Yes. Many boys.”

“I wonder if I’m ever going to get off this island.”

“You will,” she said, her heart breaking for him.

She remembered something. “Wendell, can you bring me a pen and a piece of paper?” she asked.

Wendell crept through the courtyard, carefully holding the folded note Iris had written to her lover in his good hand. Tomorrow night the moon would be full. Full moons meant very low tides, and good shelling. His grandmother, who died when he was seven, believed there was a phase of the moon for just about anything: birthing a baby, curing a drunk, digging a grave, planting a garden. Perhaps there was even a phase of the moon for helping lunatics escape. If so, he imagined a night with no moon would be optimal. Of course, the woman wouldn’t wait. He could see that on her face. He’d agreed to help the soldier escape, out of anger toward his father, but now that he had committed to the plot, he felt an ominous dread that had grown athletic, flip-flopping in his stomach, pounding in his head, and making his phantom fingers throb all at the same time.

In this gloomy state, he turned off the path back to the cottage and took another path instead, one that wound around behind the citrus grove and ended at the tiny cemetery. He entered and stood over Penelope’s grave. The shells looked especially pretty in the moonlight. A single weed grew out of the bare circle at the center of the grave. He pulled the weed and smoothed the dirt. He could pretend that what Iris thought was true—that love could conquer all, and lunatics could be healed simply by the fact that someone wished it so. But he had seen too much and had lived too long to believe it in his heart.

He should just tell her no. But the plan was very big now. He was sinking into it, drowning, as though his pockets were full of stones.

He missed the woman, missed her more than blue could cover. He longed for the contours of her face among the shadows of palms. He imagined the girl she used to be. How he loved that girl. Once she had found a speckled egg in the woods and believed she could hatch it with the warmth of her body. Believed there was life inside. Believed, night after night, cradling it under her arm, that a creature was sleeping inside, growing, yellow eyes half-open. And when the egg burst one night and spilled its sour soup, it did not spoil her heart for other eggs waiting out there in the woods.

The story reminded him of his own boyhood. Knotted shoelaces and love of snakes and candy. Lemonade on a Saturday. Block letters, pulled-off scabs, bitten-off honeysuckle tubers. Straight pew in a small church, the boredom of mid-sermon. Cow manure, bee pollen, acrobatics of blown dandelion seeds, underside of toadstools, knuckle blood, frog eyes blinking. The only war he knew then was the one he waged against bees, throwing rocks at their hives just to feel the ecstasy of adrenaline as he ran away through Johnson grass, chilly with sweet terror. Tolerable grief. A lizard kept in a jar that died of his fumbling boy-care. Love so elementary it could be drawn on a tablet with the blunt edge of a pencil.

Ambrose didn’t see the boy coming toward him. When he finally looked up, there he was, in a pair of tow-cloth pants that were dirty at the knees, blond hair uncombed, right hand bandaged, left hand clutching a folded piece of paper, which he handed over silently. Ambrose had never seen what his name looked like as she wrote it, and he lingered over the pleasure of the sight. One of the legs of the
A
was longer than the other, hobbled like a veteran, but the letters that came behind it were perfect and full. His eyes traveled over the rest of the letter, forgetting their shape now as he was pulled headfirst into their meaning. He drew in his breath. The plan was insane, and yet so tempting his hands shook, and in this state of weakness the memory saw its moment and attacked him full on.

Seth was tied to the post. Hair damp with sweat. The sun straight up overhead. Grave dug in the near distance.

Ambrose shook his head.
No.

Yes,
said the sergeant.
You’re the one who let him leave.

No, sir, I can’t. I can’t.

Time slowing down, warping, wandering. Seth shivered against the post. A body born from a winter march, pants loose on the waist, vocal cords standing out in his throat. Someone tied a handkerchief over his eyes.

Wooden coffin. Smell of smoke. Blue, blue, blue. Sunlight moved in waves. Snort of a mule. Shadow of the handkerchief, fluttering like a bird. First thump of a red drum.

The provost marshal read the charges. Hot sun, baked ground. Bored dog yawning in the shade. Camp pastor, who always smelled of spring water, holding a Bible and murmuring into Seth’s ear what Ambrose imagined was a tale of God’s forgiveness and loss, that deserters were not yellow in heaven but blue, color of divine and eternal circling, and do you, Seth Holden, have anything to confess?

Handkerchief slipping a bit when he cocked his head, uniform hanging on him like a sack. Ambrose could only stare at him in the space of time allotted, could feel his love for the shy boy, crafted and real and wild, the texture of a nest. That’s all he had left from this war. No nerves to calm his shaking hands. No fire left in his belly. No God to hear his prayers. Take away the love and he would have been translucent, a ghost.

Seth’s body straightened as the pastor stepped away. A gesture made toward bravery that only looked like it was: a boy trying to act the man. How old could he be? Sixteen? Seventeen?

The sergeant’s voice was in his ear.
Shoot him.

I can’t, sir.

Yes, you can.

He put the gun to his shoulder.

He’s my friend, sir.

The sergeant lifted his own gun, placed it just behind Ambrose’s ear.

Shoot him, or I’ll shoot you.

The sergeant cocked the trigger. Seth’s head weaved back and forth as though following the flight of a feather.

Ambrose had to calm his mind. Calm it. Blue of the sky, blue of an angel’s wings on a cold day in heaven, blue of a streak down the Roman nose of a Sioux Indian. War-paint blue, ceramic blue, Zouave blue, rainbow blue. Blue as a fishing hole, blue as a smile in December, blue as a bruise, as a robin’s egg as an Easter ribbon as the center of heaven as a voice in the dark as eternal reckoning—
NO!
Ambrose screamed as the gun went off.

Iris’s note fell out of his hand. The wind took it in the direction of the sea.

Wendell looked stunned. “No?”

“No! No no no no no!”

After a series of whispered messages brought back and forth by the boy, Iris and Ambrose met in the only place they could—on the shore, under open sunlight. They would have perhaps a few minutes before a guard came over to separate them, for they were under doctor’s orders not to speak.

“You can’t say no.”

“I can’t go with you, Iris. I’m not well. I can’t sleep. I can’t forget.”

“I can take care of you. I can heal you.” Out of the corner of her eye, Iris saw a guard making his way toward them, lazily walking in the sun.

“I’ll go mad,” Ambrose said.

“No, you won’t. I won’t let you.”

She could not sleep that night. She wouldn’t allow herself to think about what she was going to do with Ambrose, or where the two of them could possibly find a life together. And so she simply concentrated on the plan. The hour of stealth and escape. The matron had sprung another surprise inspection earlier that night, had taunted her and torn her bed sheets off and made her turn the framed still life just so, and just so again, so it was in its original position, no straighter for all the trouble.

Iris didn’t care. The matron was just a character in a story that would have its ending tomorrow night, together with the guards and the lunatics and the birds and the hermit crabs. The only people she would remember from this time would be Ambrose and the boy. Everything else would wash away.

“Why are you smiling?” the matron demanded. She took the pillow from her bed and threw it on the floor. “Fluff that pillow. You’re a swine. You have no manners. You are worse than a dog.”

Wendell came by later that night. He was subdued and seemed troubled, but she dared not ask him about it, afraid she would tilt some delicate balance inside him and cause him to change his mind. She wondered what would happen to him when his father realized he was part of the plot but didn’t allow herself to dwell upon it. She’d had no choice but to use the boy. And it was all for good, wasn’t it? She and Ambrose didn’t belong here. They belonged in Virginia, among whatever sane lovers were left in that land.

“My father has a clock in his office,” Wendell said. “Leave the office at exactly ten o’clock. Make sure no one sees you. By then, the doors to both the wings will be locked for the night, but the front door will be unlocked. Keep near the shadows. Make your way to the dock.”

“I understand.”

“Good luck.” He looked somber. The moon swelled behind his left ear. His shirt pocket bulged with something. Probably a shell.

“You don’t have to sound as though you were at a funeral,” she said. “We won’t be caught.” As she said these words, she tried to believe them herself.

He lowered his eyes. “That’s not what I’m worried about.”

Wendell trudged away from Iris’s window. The air was calm and clear, his parents were fast asleep, and the night was his alone. He could hunt for shells along the beach by the light of the full and glowing moon. Build a sand castle right at the edge of the water so he could watch the waves destroy it. Play among the citrus orchards. But he felt no desire to play tonight, and a midnight swim was out of the question. He had not dared to go back into the water since the day he’d lost his fingers.

The heaviness in his chest precluded any kind of activity but worry and regret. Tomorrow night the lovers would flee, and he would help them. The path was set and the woman’s will indomitable. He held his hand up to the pouring moonlight and wondered what the stump would look like when the bandages came off. He decided he would like to wear a hook, like a pirate. He debated, briefly, if this hook could be worn to bed at night, but the reverie vanished as his dark thoughts intruded again, and he set off for the cottage because there was nowhere else to go.

Because the hour was so late and he was certain his parents were asleep, he did not crawl through the window of the bedroom as was his custom but quietly turned the key in the lock of the front door and let it swing open soundlessly, closing it just as quietly behind him.

He tiptoed in the direction of his room, rounded a corner, and found his father slumped in his favorite yellow chair, staring off into space, lost in some climate of his own. Wendell froze, but the spell was broken; his father had seen his shadow and heard his breathing and looked up at him with the vaguely embarrassed look on his face that people have when they are intruded upon in the midst of deep thought, as though the images in their mind might be floating around the room in plain sight.

Father and son watched each other in the shared space of the living room. Something had to be said, even some pleasantry, in order for the son to pass. He had barely spoken a word to his father since he’d rejected his miracle on the dock, and even now, even with the older man looking so uncertain and awkward, he could not find it in himself to forgive him. Anger hurt his heart and made his missing fingers throb.

“What were you doing outside at this hour of the night?” his father asked.

“Looking for shells.” Wendell still felt too resentful to bother coming up with an energetic lie.

“Ah. It’s a full moon tonight. That’s good for shelling, isn’t it?”

“At low tide.”

Wendell began to walk in the direction of his room.

“Wendell?”

He stopped. “Yes?”

“Perhaps you and I could look for shells tomorrow.”

Wendell’s face flushed and his heart raced with anger. How many times had he asked his father to go shelling?
No, Father,
he wanted to say.
Tomorrow I am helping two of your lunatics escape the island.
Instead he let his voice go flat. “I have enough shells, Father. Good night.” He squared his shoulders and stalked to his bedroom, closing the door behind him. Felt the tears coming. Tried to wipe them away with fingers that were no longer there.

The doctor watched his son leave the room.
Good job, Henry,
said a voice in his head that was usually kinder.
You’ve done it again. He was trying to make you feel better, out there on the dock, and you reacted from your own bitterness and rejection.
You killed his miracle because your own didn’t come to pass.

Why didn’t you apologize, then, just now? How difficult could it be?

He felt so foolish trying to talk to Wendell, stammering around, afraid that by being too direct he would somehow earn his scorn. Boys liked a certain amount of things to go unsaid. Or so he remembered.

He felt alone. Mary wasn’t talking to him either. Evidently he’d offended her as well.

“What is it?” he’d asked her, finally. “What did I do?”

“Nothing, Henry. You never do anything. You are perfect and I am just your old, fat wife.”

She was already asleep in the other room. He’d given her a spoonful of laudanum as a peace offering. He had no idea what to offer his son. His chair creaked when he stood up, and the sound depressed him. He had a flash of Iris, and that depressed him. He blew out the tallow candles by his chair, and the new darkness depressed him. Slowly, sadly, he made his way to his room.