Lazaretto (17 page)

“Sweet Jesus, what has happened?” Sylvia said, as much to herself as to Nevada.

Now she saw the stretcher being carried; her heart stopped.

“They laboring carrying that stretcher. Must be a large somebody on that thing,” Sylvia said on a whisper.

“Too large to be Vergie”—Nevada matched Sylvia's whisper with her own voice turned low.

Sylvia watched the doctor staggering ahead of the stretcher, but thankfully she saw Spence holding up the rear. “I'm going over there,” she said as she ran ahead of Nevada in the direction of the hospital.

“Yes, go, Sylvie,” I'll make sure Vergie's okay, though I know she is. I woulda felt it in my bones otherwise.”

THE CRATE CONTAINING
Bram lay patiently on the pier, having attracted the wedding guests' belongings after someone deposited his burlap sack beside the crate, then another his cardboard box, another her fancy flip-top overnight bag. In short order the crate was obscured as belongings were tossed even across its top.

Vergie sat down on the corner of the crate. She was wet and shivering as she clung to a blanket someone had thrown over her shoulders. Vergie had gone into the water after Carl. She was a strong swimmer, that skill honed on the frequent fishing trips she'd taken with her father from the time before she could even walk, when she'd spend as much time in the water as she did in the boat. She'd gone under twice before she spotted the trail of blood that led her to Carl. She dragged him to the surface and by then Splotch and two other men had also jumped in, and, with the help of the river's perfect push, they'd gotten him back in the boat. She didn't consider right now that she'd saved Carl's life as she stared straight ahead into the gray and silver river and assaulted herself with her thinking. She berated herself for inciting Carl's shooting in the first place. Her inability to rein herself in when she felt disrespected had caused it. Hadn't her aunt Maze told her time and again that every situation was not cause for a fight; that she must learn to distinguish between trifling slights and major injustices; that she must let the small things roll off her back, and save her temper for challenging the more egregious
treatment; that catastrophe might result over some insignificant matter because of her tendency to overreact. And it had happened today; the flick of her finger at the white men in the other boat may have cost Carl his life. “Dear Carl,” she said out loud, as her chest went stormy and she started heaving. “I may have killed you, ah, I may have . . .” She started shaking uncontrollably and thought she was going into convulsions when she sensed someone approach and at first she thought it was Splotch and she tightened inside. But then she felt the warmest hands moving up and down her arms, the sweetest voice in her ear saying, “Come on, Verge, you need to get out of these wet clothes, come on now before you catch the grippe.”

“Nevada, Nevada,” Vergie cried. “Carl was shot because I flicked my hand at some white men.”

“Don't do that, Vergie,” Nevada said as she pulled her up and got her into a complete hug. “That is a devil's trick to make those that have been wronged feel that they are in the wrong. Nothing you could have said, no gesture you could have made, justifies someone firing a gun at your boat. I will not abide such talk from you. Now come on, get dried up. I have a bowl of turkey broth with your name on it.” Nevada spoke in a calming voice as she led Vergie toward the house.

SON, THE STRAPPING
though feeble-minded nephew of the quarantine master, was there with the wheelbarrow to begin transporting the company's belongings down to the storage area in the cellar of the house where the party would be. Son didn't know that the crate was not part of the company's belongings, that there was a corpse inside the crate. He just knew that he'd been directed to haul everything that was there over to here. And that is what he proceeded to do.

Son followed Kojo's instructions and loaded the piles of
things left at the pier onto the wheelbarrel and carted them from the pier to the basement of the guesthouse. He'd been back and forth to the cellar, serving each person who called for this or that bag or case or satchel, waiting patiently while they retrieved what they needed, then returning same to the cellar. So far, no one had asked for anything from the pine crate, and he was disappointed, because he wanted to take the empty crate and fill it with rocks and see if he could sink it in the creek. The crate had tiny openings between the slats of wood, and Son got down on his knees and held his candle close to try and peer inside. He thought he could see a thick muslin sheet, thought that the thing inside was shaped like the dead bodies that Son occasionally saw being toted from the hospital. He'd asked his uncle about it once as they'd watched a particularly large man being carried from the hospital to the crematory, and Ledoff told Son that it was a corpse, and that all corpses had to be burned or buried. Son pronounced it
course.

Right now he hung his lantern on the hook on the wall above him and sat down on the cellar floor. The glow of light fell over him as he studied the thick line of twine that was wrapped around the crate and knotted at the top and bottom. Son's uncle had taught him how to undo knots of all varieties. Do not fret over the tangle, he'd instructed him—just use the tangle, follow it, let it show you the ends. He traced the twine where it was most confused. He picked at the center to loosen the confusion and slid his fingers in and then let out a little yelp when he thought he'd touched the end. He loosened the knot and shouted hooray when he'd gotten through the tangle that had held the crate's lid secure. He repeated the process at the other end. He was proud of himself as he lifted the lid and leaned in and then laughed from the onslaught of odor that was a mix of pine and bad eggs. Just as he'd figured: there was a body inside. It was wrapped in a loose cotton
sack and tucked in with sheets as if it had just been put down for a nap. Son untied the sashes attached to a board at the bottom of the crate that had held the sack in place. He lifted the sack and cradled it the way he'd cradled the foal that had died last year unexpectedly. His uncle had explained that the mother likely killed the foal, that the mother sensed it was sick and killed it to protect it. Son wondered if this one's mother had killed him. He had that same rotten-egg smell that he remembered from the foal. He slung the sack over his shoulder and walked it to the very back of the cellar. He looked from end to end of this section of cellar and picked out an earthen spot beyond the concrete floor. He spread the body out and opened the loosely gathered top of the sack. A thin sheet of cotton covered the face and was attached to an undersheet with a row of silk stitches. Son wondered if someone had closed the eyes. He'd often hear Sylvia talking about having to close a dead man's eyes; the way Sylvia talked it seemed to Son like a kind thing to do for a person. He popped the stitches and lifted the cotton square. This man's eyes were already closed. Son was struck by the thick clumps of forehead scars. He felt sorry for the man that his face was scarred. He traced his fingers over the scars and then patted them lightly. He thought that the man had a nice face, that he must have been a nice man, not the type of man that would yell at Son and call him a stupid lug, a donkey's ass, imbecile, dunce, retard, freak, the way men often did before he'd been sent here to live with his uncle at the Lazaretto. Son bowed his head and made whispering sounds the way he'd noticed others do over the dead. He lightly replaced the cotton square over the man's face. He started to pull the top of the sack back around his head, but then stopped, deciding to leave his head uncovered just in case he might wake up. He removed the cotton square as well and laid it on the corpse's chest. Then he looked up to see what the man's eyes would view should he wake and not be able to untangle
himself from the sack. Son was sensitive to such things, having himself been tied down to a gurney, unable to move because of the contraptions attached to his head when he'd cry out in pain and think that it wouldn't hurt so much if he could just look at something of interest. He tilted this one's head so that should he wake he'd be staring at a spider's web that glistened silver in the corner of the low ceiling where it hung. Satisfied, he got up to leave. He heard a sound then, like a muffled blast. He realized the body had just blown wind, intensifying the smell of rotten eggs. That sound always made him laugh. He laughed now. He doubled over, he laughed so hard. When he finally composed himself, he climbed the ladder that led to the yard and re-latched the cellar door.

He took the crate deep into the woods. Then he returned to the cellar to see if the body had moved. He didn't think that it had. He thought now that he wanted to keep the body completely hid from anyone else who might come down here. He repositioned the boxes and bags and trunks that the guests had brought with them so as to make a wall. He added to the stack larger items that had already been down here—a retired potbelly stove that he had to drag because it was too heavy to lift, a desk with three legs that was upended and resting on its side, a cracked dresser mirror. When he was finished he stood back and admired his wall. It was wide and tall and sturdy. He laughed out loud. Then he left to find Sylvia or Nevada or Kojo, to see what next he'd be instructed to do.

THE LAZARETTO
'
S HOSPITAL
was a wide, two-story stone mansion-like structure. Sylvia went around to the back door where they kept lye soap next to the spigot. She scrubbed her feet and then washed her hands. A lantern drizzled light from the top of the door and she could see flecks of lavender and rosemary that had been spun into the soap. The sight sparked the smell that
went straight to her head with a jolt. She stepped into the slippers always waiting for her here and then hurried up the three short steps that led into the hospital's back corridor.

The doctor was still calling for leeches; his voice reverberated down the hall and seemed to be coming from any one of the framed oil renditions of white men that lined the corridor walls. Spence, the poor groom, was leaving the intake room that was midway down the long hallway. Sylvia was relieved to see Spence. He was smart, a quiet intellect, a gentleman. His aunt belonged to some of Maze's social clubs, and Sylvia had been delighted when Ledoff had asked her opinion of Spence because he was thinking of bringing Spence on as an orderly. She'd even thought for the briefest time that Spence had eyes for her, had settled into the notion of keeping company with him since they practiced the same profession; if anyone would understand her devotion to her work, surely he would. But then as it turned out he'd really had eyes for Mora, or more likely that Mora had eyes for him, bulging eyes the way she'd gone after Spence shortly after he'd arrived, as if God had stopped making men.

Right now she could see the thick creases in Spence's forehead all the way from where she was; he looked up and she watched his expression loosen when he saw her, as if the sight of her dispelled the worry that had been trapped along his brow. “I was coming to find you,” he said as he rushed toward her.

“Who's on the gurney?” she asked, standing still to collect herself for whatever she was about to hear.

“It's Carl.”

“What happened?” she asked in a whisper, as her heart dropped to a lower spot in her chest.

“Boat shot at, probably by those Petty Island whites drinking moonshine. Carl took a shotgun blast to the leg, then went overboard.”

“Sweet Jesus,” she said. She wanted to sink to the floor. She started for the intake room instead. “Anybody else hurt? Vergie?”

“No, Vergie's fine, just wet and cold.”

“Ah,” she said, relieved about that at least. “Vergie went in the river after Carl, right? I know she did with her foolhardy self. How bad is the leg?”

“Shattered.”

“Knee involved?”

“No. The knee appears spared.” Spence looked down, and then rushed his words. “Can't say the same for the rest of the leg. I fixed a tourniquet mid-calf. Gave him a few drams of morphine in some brandy.” He looked back up at Sylvia then. “I think the lower leg's good as gone.”

“Is he conscious?” Her voice shook as she tried not to cry.

“Fading in and out.”

“Let me take a look at things,” she said.

The doctor yelled out then. “Nurse, dammit!” Sylvia motioned Spence away, then took a deep breath and walked into the room.

NIGHT HAD FALLEN
hard over the Lazaretto, especially for Linc. He'd walked part of the way here from Hog Island, where he'd been forced from the boat of the men who'd shot at the schooner filled with black people. Then he'd begged a ride to here from a shad fisherman who'd taken pity on him when Linc gave him a story of having been beaten and robbed, not entirely untrue, and he certainly looked the part. But he'd apparently come in through the Lazaretto's rear because there were no markers pointing toward the entrance, no glow from an overhead gas lamp. There was just an unforgiving non-path through tangled understory of aggressive oak saplings and vines that ripped through his pants and sliced at the skin along his legs. Just a plethora of croaking frogs and a type of mist that seemed to drop and hang as if suspended by invisible threads. Just his anger and his dread and his grief about his own situation, his concern for what damage those gunshots may have done, if anyone on that schooner had been hit, or killed. But now there was also: music.

His ears perked up then, surprised at the sounds. He'd expected maybe the whistle of ships loaded with sugar or whiskey or rags or tea that had to be cleared through here before entering the Port of Philadelphia; or perhaps the disappointed wails of hopeful immigrants detained in quarantine who'd presented with swollen glands, diarrhea, bloodied spittle, hot foreheads, incessant vomiting. But not what he heard: the zoom-zoom of
a banjo, harmonica shrieks, jangles from clapping tambourines that shattered the air. It was black people's music, and it worked its way into his bones the way their music always had, from the time he first heard it as a little boy at Buddy's house and Buddy had looked at his badly beaten hands and told him they were the finest hands he'd ever seen. He was suddenly transported to Buddy's, remembering now how Meda would pull him into the dining room, where the women fed him bowls of mustard and kale slick with lard; they called him Sugar; told him he was a toothsome something for a white boy. Remembering how much he loved it there: loved the syrupy ways of the women, loved how the air shook when the men laughed, or cursed; loved the smells of vanilla and baking apples. And then there was the music, the way the air rippled and held the beat. Such a beat tugged at him now, leading him—he hoped—to Bram.

He approached a clearing and now faced a thin creek. The gentle sound of water was no match for the thump and clang of the tambourines. And now there was another sound, a woman's unbridled sobs. She was there by the creek. Her naked back exposed. Her skin the color of whiskey. He turned away quickly, out of respect, disturbing the air around him that smelled of creek lilies and seared duck fat.

Sylvia had just left the hospital. She had cleaned the wound in Carl's leg and packed it, having removed all the buckshot she could find. She'd gotten Carl as comfortable as she could with a tonic of brandy and morphine and then she'd left—left with the doctor drooling and nodding in the chair at Carl's bedside—before her ability to distance her emotions from the task at hand expired. For the span of time she worked on Carl, it was just a limb with a nasty gunshot wound commanding her attention. She'd been efficient because she'd been detached. She'd closed her ears to his cries in ways that she could not have if she'd allowed him to be Carl—
gushy, big-hearted, lovable Carl. She would have rushed then, to spare him the pain. She would have rushed and done a sloppy job. And he was alive, she'd told herself over and over as she walked back to the house, where everyone was gathered, her resolve intact to put as sunny a coating as she could on the report she would give about Carl. Then she noticed the splatters of blood on her dress and she stopped at the creek to clean the dress, knowing that the last thing the wedding guests needed at this point was the sight of Carl's blood. Not after what they'd already endured on the boat ride over. She sat on the rock and unhooked her dress and allowed it to slip from her shoulders. That's when she heard the music. She was surprised, but also relieved that they'd decided to go ahead with the pre-wedding celebration, because it would help. But the music wore away at her resolve to be cheerful as the creek water lapped the blood from her dress. She cried, tried to get all of the crying out of her as she felt an anger welling up that she even had to be cleaning Carl's blood away, that a boatload of black people could not even travel the few miles from the docks of Philadelphia to the Lazaretto without harassment. Then she sensed an opening in the air behind her that let in the salty smell of a man's sweat.

“Who is it? I am not decent,” Sylvia snapped.

“I'm sorry,” Linc said. “My back is to you, be assured.”

“Are you lost?” she asked, as she pulled her dress from the creek to cover herself. The dress was soaked and the splash of water shocked her chest. “You must be lost. This side of the creek is for people who live here.”

“People live here? Then I must be,” he said. “Lost, yes, I must be lost. I thought this was the Lazaretto.”

“It
is
the Lazaretto, and the people who work here live here,” she said, as she reached around to hook the back of her dress. She stood from her perch on the rock and lifted her lamp. “Turn around,” she barked.

Linc did and she raised her lamp, blinding him. “My brother fell ill this afternoon”—he rushed his words—“collapsed on the street in Philadelphia, and I'm told he was put on a boat to be quarantined here.”

“And no one on either of the barges stopped you from coming onto the Lazaretto?”

“I—I honestly didn't see a barge. I must have come in the wrong way. A barge would have been welcome, considering what I have just been through, you know, the woods and the thorns and all.”

She moved in closer, studying him, he knew, trying to figure out what he was. He wondered then if she recognized him as a wanted man. Wondered if she'd seen the postings of him over the years detailing his crime.
Orphan Sets upon Housemaster in Vicious Fist Attack
:
Reward Offered for Information Leading to His Apprehension
is just one of the headlines he could recite after all these years. He started to toughen his expression, but then he relented, just allowed his naked desperation to hang there uncovered.

Sylvia wrestled with the urge to offer him consolation. As a nurse, she routinely doled out consolation right along with a camphor salve or alcohol soak. And she could see that he was ripe for a word of reassurance as she bombarded him with her lamplight. But she did not offer consolation. Right now she was tired of feeling sorry for white people.

“Are you acquainted with those shooting at boats when the people in them are studying their own affairs?” she barked at Linc, even though everything about him suggested to her that he was not.

“Beg your pardon?” He reeled even as he stood firm and continued to look into her blaring light because he couldn't look away since that would mean guilt, and he had been in that boat, making him guilty by association. It didn't matter that he'd fought
with all he had in him to try and keep the drunken bastard from getting off those shots; he'd gotten the shots off, and Linc had been in the boat when he had, and if she knew that, Linc would be reduced to just another white bigot in her eyes, a disgusting vermin, in no way worthy of her assistance. And he needed assistance right now because he needed Bram. God, Bram!

“A boat was shot at,” she continued. “A group of upstanding people coming here for a wedding celebration, innocent of anything that would warrant them being shot at. Shot at as if they were game. Are you connected to them?”

“Absolutely not, I am sorry, that is outrageous, no, I assure you. Was anyone at all injured?” he asked, bracing himself for her reply, and recalling that he had remained low on the deck as they'd passed the other boat, unlikely he would have been seen, remembered.

“Somebody was hurt, yes.” Her voice shook, and she swallowed hard, determined not to cry again. “When did your brother supposedly pass out? We never got word. We do get word in such cases.”

“This afternoon,” he stammered.

“And he was sent here for what reason?”

“I honestly do not know. His name is Bram, short for Abraham, named for the president, as was I. My name is Lincoln.”

“Mnh. Is that supposed to sweeten me because you were named for Mr. Lincoln. If I were a rebel would your name suddenly be Jefferson Davis?”

The pained look that came upon his face stopped her, softened her some. She lowered her lamp. “Your brother is likely still in Philadelphia. But, regardless, you are on the wrong side of the compound. So go to the other side of the creek and follow the path up to the main house, and just beyond there you'll see the barges. A bargeman should see you and ask you what your business is. Tell
him Nurse Sylvia said for you to wait up there. If he is in a better mood than I am, he should allow it. Once I am able, I will discover what I can about your brother's situation.”

“Yes, ma'am, Nurse Sylvia. I am deeply grateful for whatever assistance you render.” He thought something about her was vaguely familiar. Clicked through his mental file but could not make a connection, so settled on her familiarity having to do with Meda. Her demeanor was so like Meda's in the aftermath of Meda suffering an affront by a white person. He swallowed the rise of emotion moving up his throat as he thought about Meda, thought about Bram, and what a drastic condition Bram must be in to have been brought here. He followed her directions until he wound out of her view. Then he departed, following her directions, and walked toward the music. It led him to a pair of houses, and he approached the one that glowed with yellow light.

Inside the house they were beginning to have a time. They'd dried off and changed clothes and spruced up and were now gathered in the parlor, its space expanded with the pocket doors parted so that the parlor flowed into the dining room. Their anger was beginning to thin over their ordeal of being shot at for sport. Their breaths came easier as they talked it out, some loudly over top of one another, others by whispering in a loved one's understanding ear. They expressed their gratitude that they'd all gotten here alive, especially that Carl was still alive, and that the river had not claimed Carl and Vergie and the others who'd gone in to save him. Some even claimed that the river had helped with the rescue; that it intentionally rose and provided the lift as Carl's rescuers propped him and made it possible for the hands to help from inside the boat. God and the river, they agreed, had taken their side in the end. Gradually, as they talked it out, they could feel their frayed nerves reconnecting, their sour stomachs beginning to quiet.

Now they nibbled on starter foods of lettuce and cucumbers, eggs mashed and spread on soda crackers, fried mackerel, stuffed tomatoes. The music was starting up as the tambourines shimmied, in a halting way; the harmonica trilled softly; a base drum mimicked the rhythm of a thumping heart trying to settle itself down. The vibrations carried through them; these were calming vibrations. A little laughter then, someone let go with hand claps, another stomped his foot. Hips could not resist swaying. Arms reached out. The chatter grew wings and flitted about. The taste of hell that had been the boat ride over was gradually replaced by the comfort of a community wrapped up in the music that was both worldly and praising.

Vergie, though, was having a harder time. She couldn't reconcile the gratitude that the others were expressing right now with the fact that Carl lay wounded in the hospital. Though it was promising that Carl was at least semiconscious as they'd carted him off the pier, Vergie understood the damage a scattergun's blast to the leg could do. She knew the rivers of arteries running through the leg by name from when she used to hold Sylvia's books for her as she studied. She'd traced her finger over the drawings, fascinated by the complexity, and match the lines to the names Sylvia recited. She knew Carl's wound was serious, and that it was all her fault. Though Nevada had refused allowing Vergie to heap upon herself the responsibility. She'd listened and shushed her as she combed and brushed Vergie's hair to help it to dry. She reminded her, over and over, that the outlaws who shot Carl were the only villains, period.

That talking-to had calmed Vergie, but the relief was only temporary. The sense of guilt was returning in waves, and though she tried to force herself to laugh at Kojo and his wife as they attempted to cut up on the dance floor, she was getting ready to stand up here and cry all over again. Nevada tapped her shoulder
then and handed her a pot filled with strawberry punch. “Keep busy, Vergilina Mayella,” she said, calling her by her full name.

“God, Nevada, what will I do if Carl does not survive?”

Nevada held up her bandaged finger to stop her. “If any part of him knows Sylvia's working on him, his life is good as saved. You know how much he adores her.” Nevada tried not to notice Kojo and Lil on the dance floor, the affection moving with them as they danced. She'd already tired of hearing Bay and the others in the kitchen talking about this one's wife and that one's sweetheart. And when they got to Kojo, Bay said, “He got hisself a cute little ole wife, nice disposition, too, real sweet.” “Smiles too much for my liking,” Nevada had said, causing Bay to put her paring knife down and look at Nevada and raise her eyebrows. “Just my opinion,” Nevada rushed to add. “Y'all can like her much as it pleases you.” Then she pulled her attention from Kojo and his wife dancing and focused entirely on Vergie.

“Okay now, I'm countin' on you to keep the punch bowl filled and my table looking pretty. Moving hands hold the sadness at bay till situations change and the sadness flies away.”

“You just made that up?” Vergie asked as she took the pot.

“Good, whadin it?”

Vergie nodded and laughed despite herself, and then Bay stuck her head in from the kitchen to tell Nevada that the hourglass on her turkey was done, did she want it turned, or basted, or what? “Comin',” she called over her back, as she blew Vergie a kiss and Vergie puckered her lips in response and went behind the table to fill the bowl.