Lazaretto (20 page)

“For certain, that beautiful blue gown and the matching satin slippers and Sister's hair pinned up the way she liked it,” Miss Ma said, and Linc felt his insides twisting. “Undertaker had even shaped her mouth in a smile. She had a pretty ole mouth, anyhow. Looked to be seeing the face of Jesus laying up there in that cas
ket smiling. And then it was the most beautiful thing I seen that Buddy got the iceman's horse to lead the procession to the cemetery. That horse walked so proud, like it was his high honor to lead Sister to her final resting place.”

Nevada had returned. “Y'all talking about Sister? That sure is timely, 'cause I made this cornbread in honor of her memory.” She held up a tray of cornbread cut in squares, the tops so evenly browned they appeared as if they'd been painted on. She leaned in and offered Linc the tray. He took one quickly, had to grab it quickly because he was so filled with contraries right now that he thought his disconcertion would show. He was at once that little boy grabbing for Meda's hands, and this grown man on the run. He was honorable, and he was a fraud. Here with the most selfless of intentions—to find his brother; he was also here to hide out to save himself, to work out his own selfish desires. The cornbread was hot as he bit into it; it was both hard and soft and the flavor exploded in his head. He tasted a hint of lavender; tasted memory; tasted grief, a grief almost overpowering.

“Is it good, Sugar?” Nevada asked him as she passed the tray to Miss Ma. “Sister told me that usually when she gave someone her recipe, she'd kill 'em right after so her ingredients could stay secret, but she said she liked me so she would let me live.” They all laughed then—Linc, too, surprised that he did as he imagined Meda saying that. His chest opened then, allowing the grief the space to spread out, to separate, leaving a hole in the center that the laughter momentarily filled.

NOT FAR FROM
where they were having breakfast, Son was down in the cellar, enjoying a hunk of cornbread Nevada had just cut for him, his reward for being such a good listener and worker. He intended to offer a portion of the cornbread to Bram, also wanted to give Bram a sip of water from his canteen. Thought the food and drink might tease Bram all the way awake. Son was sure that Bram had moved since yesterday as he'd been careful to position Bram's head so that it faced the spiderweb. But just now Bram's head was angled more toward the wall, his chin almost touching his shoulder. Son gently lifted Bram's chin so that he once again faced the spider's web, then placed his hand over the sack where he thought Bram's heart should be to see if his chest was rising and falling. He imagined it was. But then, Son imagined he could feel a pulse in all kinds of things: hollowed-out logs, seashells, the ground after a storm.

“You dead or just 'sleep?” he asked Bram. “If you just dead, I'ma eat all this cornbread.” He waved the cake under Bram's nose, to no response. He crammed the cake into his own mouth and closed his eyes over how good it was, the kind of good that filled him up inside and made him want to cry because he thought how much he would miss it if suddenly he no longer lived here. He started crying then. He ate the cornbread and cried. When he was down to the last morsel, he set the plate down. “I'ma leave this for you if you woked up, 'cause you been moving since yester
day. Move again.” Son held his own breath so that he could detect any motion. Nothing. Not even the dust down there moved right now. “Water?” he asked as he waved the canteen under Bram's nose. He dabbed water on Bram's lips. “Maybe you are dead,” he said, as he sat on the floor next to Bram. “Or maybe not.” He patted Bram's forehead and then went to the other end of the cellar and gathered the crates and odds and ends of old furniture to add to the wall to make it even taller and wider and thicker, to further separate Bram from the open space that was the rest of the cellar. Satisfied with his labors, he left.

SYLVIA FELT THE
onslaught of heat as she pushed open the back door to the hospital. The smell seemed to come from everywhere in here, as if the pictures of white men lining the walls were instead corpses in varying stages of decay. This was that smell she'd dreamt about, intuition warning her of Carl's deterioration, she realized as she pulled a handkerchief from her dress pocket and covered her mouth and nose, and then stepped inside. She collided with Spence, who was on his way out. They seemed almost to embrace as Spence circled his arms around her to keep his balance, and she instinctively wrapped hers around his waist, and they stood this way momentarily under the threshold. When their bodies separated an awkward air rushed between them and they both looked down at the floor as Spence bent to pick up her handkerchief that had dropped and handed it to her as he said that he'd just been on his way to find her. “The leg, Sylvia,” he said on a whisper. “It is trying to gangrene already, you believe it?”

“I know, I dreamt of it,” she said as she took the handkerchief and twisted it around her fingers.

“So what now?” he asked.

“I go clean the wound, and then I get Doctor, so that he can sign off on getting Carl transported back to Philadelphia as soon
as possible,” Sylvia said as they started walking down the hallway. “And you go off and do whatever a man does on the day of his wedding—besides change his mind.”

“You caught on to my scheme, Sylvia,” he said, trying to make light. “I have been all day concocting an excuse for avoiding the altar.”

“Well, I can understand how one might try such a thing, marrying into a family that boasts the likes of Lena. But never let my name be pulled into association with your scheme.”

He laughed on a whisper, then touched her wrist lightly, stopping her in the hallway midway to Carl's room. “I've already burned the barium salts for peroxide and, uh, about getting the doctor . . . Truth be spoken, I do not know if the doctor is in best form this early—”

“He is usually in the best form that he will be early. He declines as the day wears on.” Sylvia cut him off, even as she felt the touch of his fingers against her wrist. “Why? Have you seen the doctor already this morning?”

Spence looked away. “No,” he said. Though in fact he'd just left the doctor, had just put the long pipe to the doctor's mouth and lit the mound of opium in the pipe's bowl and watched the muscles in the doctor's face go slack. “But I was thinking whether the doctor is of use or not.” He rushed his words. “I am not scheduled to say vows until this evening. Some cockamamie time my bride-to-be and her crazy-headed sister came up with. And they tell me I cannot step foot on that side of the Laz until wedding-bell time lest it bring all kinds of damnation to our life together. They say I dare not catch a glimpse of Mora beforehand. I am just speaking all this to declare that I am here to help for as long as you need me—and you'll likely need help preparing Carl for transport.”

“And I am declaring that you need to be off practicing the saying of ‘I do' so you do not stumble over your words when it's time
for you to say them in front of all the people who journeyed here for that single purpose.”

She gently shook her wrist free and started walking again, in silence, all the way into Carl's room. Spence followed her in. Carl's bed was centered under the screened window that drizzled in the pink and yellow morning light, the moisture from the dew, and the splashing sounds the river made. It would have seemed a beautiful scene to Sylvia if not for Carl's leg, swollen, the wound oozing its substance clear through the bandaging. Carl was soundly asleep, snoring lightly.

“Well, hear me out on other points, Sylvia,” Spence whispered, as he doused a cloth with alcohol. Sylvia held out her hands and he wrapped them in the cloth, pressing lightly. “Carl is a big man. You need strength to hold him down should his pain throw him into a delirium.”

“You mean the doctor needs strength,” she said as Spence pulled the cloth from her hands, wiping the tips of her fingers as he did.

“If favor is smiling down on us, then, yes, of course I mean the doctor.” He held a gown open for Sylvia and she pushed her arms in. “But maybe favor has turned her back on us, and the doctor cannot perform the duties they pay him a whole lot of money to perform.”

“What are you trying to say, Spence?”

He looked out the window, a glaze of perspiration coating his forehead. “I am saying that if a major surgical procedure is required, then you will need me to assist.”

“Spence, there is no way that I am attempting a major surgical procedure on this man,” she said as she moved toward the bed. She undid the wrapping that loosely surrounded the wound. The sight of it merely confirmed what the smell had already indicated. Infection had surely taken hold. She leaned in and turned the leg
slightly and peered in at the wound. She called for peroxide, and Spence was already handing it to her. She poured the peroxide into the wound. The wound seemed to cry out, though Carl appeared unfazed in his narcotic sleep.

Spence stood beside her, leaning in, too. His breath stroked her neck.

Sylvia asked as she palpated the length of Carl's leg below the wound, “I surely do not dispute the severity here.” Sylvia stood up from the bed and turned to face Spence. “But, again, my plan is to get him back to Philadelphia as soon as humanly possible, certainly before the end of this day.” She pointed to the bands of cotton that Spence handed to her.

“And what if it must be sooner than transportation can be arranged? Today is Saturday, Sylvia, the ferries are irregular today.”

“We are not at that bridge, so no need to contemplate its crossing,” she said as together they rewrapped Carl's leg. Their shoulders touched, and then their arms. They were efficient, the movements of each in time with the other's. When they were finished, they stood back, surveying their work. Spence broke the silence.

“I know the sight of Carl like this must trouble you mightily. I know you and Carl share a past. Believe me, Sylvia, I inquired about you over the years.”

“Before or after you inquired about Mora?” The question slipped out before she could call it back.

“I have no response to that,” he said, as he looked down, “other than to say that should I have had my first choice—”

“Let us agree,” Sylvia interrupted him, redirecting the conversation, “that our plan is to get him to Philadelphia as soon as possible. If his condition becomes dire before then, we will adjust as the situation dictates.”

Carl began to stir, gasped out her name. She went to the head
of the bed. “Hey, sweet cakes,” he said, “my sweet little honey pot, you look to be an angel in all that white, you not here to lead me to glory, are you?”

“No, baby, 'course not. And leave the rest of us on this evil earth? You not getting off that easy.” She ran her hand along his cheek, and kissed his forehead. She sensed Spence leaving the room as she focused fully on Carl.

“But, but, Carl, it is your leg—” she whispered.

“That is some mighty fine brandy y'all serve at this place,” he interrupted. “I would have looked to get shot a long time ago if I knew I could sip on some good liquor that did not come from corn, and have you standing over my bed—”

Sylvia put her finger to his lips. “Carl, you got to listen to me, baby. You got to hear what I must say to you—”

“Only thing I want to hear from you is that you will accept my hand in marriage. I know that last time I said it would be the last time, but a man is allowed to reverse himself when he is staring death in the face.”

“Carl—”

“I shall be true, so true, I shall never ever make you blue,” he tried to sing, and then laughed a morphine-tinged laugh.

“I know it,” she said, as she stroked his cheek some more.

“So true I will be to you, just say you too”—he continued his attempt at song.

“Infection's taken hold, baby—”

“Da-da-dee-du.” His voice rose in degrees.

“If we do not stem it, it will—”

“Kill me,” he sang. “Put a dagger to my heart and just kill me.” He closed his eyes. He was no longer singing. He was talking, pleading. “Just kill me, Sylvia, please. I would rather be dead than be a one-legged man. You remember how we danced. Life is not worth the living if I cannot dream of you and me dancing again.”
His voice was raspy; water drained from the corners of his eyes. She dabbed Carl's eyes and encouraged him to sip the morphine-tinged brandy. She whispered love words and watched him smile a sloppy smile. She stroked his cheek and spoke softly until he faded again into sleep.

AT THE APPOINTED
time for the ceremony, everything was nearly as it should be. Kojo had built the trellis of pine that would form an arc over Mora and Spence as they spoke their vows. Vergie and Miss Ma and Bay draped garlands of roses around the trellis, and affixed bows to the chairs, and otherwise transformed the area behind the house into a wedding chapel. Fine white linen covered the tables set with the best china and silver and candleholders on display. The gifts dutifully delivered from the basement by Son were shaped in a high and wide pyramid and formed their own display. The corn had been husked and grilled; the turkey baked and resting; the spirits ready for uncorking; the cake, all five tiers, iced and swirled.

The guests were assembled in their going-somewhere-special garb. Skell donned a collar and a crucifix—he was a recently ordained minister and as such was legally allowed to officiate. He carried his oversized Bible with the pages edged in gold, the appropriate verses concerning holy matrimony already marked.

Lena and Mora stood at the window of the upstairs-bedroom-turned-bridal-parlor, waiting for their cue to begin the procession down. Vergie and Nevada sat next to each other, and Vergie leaned over and whispered to Nevada, “I heard from Bay that the bows on Lena's dress are about the size of Virginia and North Carolina conjoined.” Nevada let go a laugh but then swallowed
it as Skell fixed his face in a grimace. Skell stood next to Kojo, Spence's best man. Nevada refused to look at Kojo.

The guests chatted and waved their sachets scented with rosemary oil to hold the mosquitoes at bay. Every now and then someone turned to the back of the yard, looking for Spence. The one on the harmonica blew a few toots and they all came to attention, expecting that Spence had finally arrived, but it wasn't Spence. It wasn't Spence again when PD, the soloist who would sing the Lord's Prayer began to stretch his voice out. Nor was it Spence at every new sound that followed over the next half hour. People started to fidget and whisper to aisle-mates that something must be amiss—it's supposed to be the bride that holds things up, definitely a bad sign when the groom is late. Finally they heard fast-moving footsteps and there went up a collective sigh, followed by an even more unified groan: still no Spence. This time it was Son. He ran straight to the aisle where Nevada was. He reached in the pocket of his overalls and pulled out a finely textured linen envelope. “For Mora,” he announced. “From Spence to Mora.”

“Oh shit,” Nevada said under her breath as she moved quickly from her seat and took the envelope and ran into the house.

“One does not need to be a soothsayer to guess at the contents of that envelope,” Kojo's wife, Lil, said as she fanned herself ferociously.

“Well, no sense in jumping over a puddle when the ground is dry,” Miss Ma said.

“I agree,” Skell called from up front. “We should at least wait to hear a report.”

“Smells like a bad report to me,” said Splotch. “Man thirty minutes late for his own wedding. Where might he be?” Splotch got up from his seat and walked toward the rear of the gathering
space. “Let me try to hunt him down. I did not come all this way to play with my thumbs.”

Vergie watched Splotch leave. She was relieved. He'd hovered around her after breakfast, and she could not walk two steps without him right there: smiling at her; offering his arm for a walk; a bench so that they could sit and chat; his assistance clearing the breakfast dishes, cleaning the ash from the stove, stoking the coals in the barbecue pit. At home, his attention was tolerable, but here on the Lazaretto it had become so concentrated it approached unbearable, especially since she had been so preoccupied with worry over Carl's condition. And added to that, she'd sensed that Linc had lingered after breakfast, hoping to say a word to her, but Splotch had made that impossible. She'd felt her stomach sink with disappointment when she watched Linc exit the gathering after breakfast. Nevada added to her disappointment, going on and on about what a charmer Linc was, that he had her grandmother eating out his hand, Nevada said, and Vergie knew that Miss Ma did not suffer fools lightly. “Perhaps he might call on you when you return home,” Nevada had told her. “I did tell him that you live on Addison Street with all the high-siddity Negroes, but he should not be thwarted by that, as Sylvia and I have managed to be close as sisters despite that.”

Nevada had come back into the yard and the chatter hushed and all sat up to hear an explanation for Spence's absence. She positioned herself up front, but not directly at the center of the trellis. All eyes were on her as she smoothed out her dress, which was cinched tightly at the waist and matched in color the palest of the pink roses adorning the trellis. Her hair was pinned to one side, and Vergie thought that she'd never seen Nevada more beautiful as when she folded her gloved hands lightly in front of her as if she were about to sing an aria. She cleared her throat, then
said, “Spence has sent word to Mora that the wedding must be postponed. I cannot say for certain when—or even if—it will take place. However, we still must eat, whether they say ‘I do' or ‘I do not.' We will be serving dinner the next hour.”

A stunned silence followed, even though they'd just been chattering on about the possibility of this very outcome. Now they looked at one another in disbelief. “What? Why? Really?” they said in a run of voices.

“This must be related to Carl,” Skell said. “No other explanation.”

“Dear Carl,” Miss Ma said in a whispery voice.

Then Kojo asked what had Spence's note said, exactly.

“I am not at liberty to speak on it,” Nevada replied as she looked out onto the gathering.

Then Lil asked how was Mora taking the news?

“How would you take it?” Lena said, entering the fray as she walked slowly down the center aisle. She held her bridesmaid bouquet as if she herself were the bride, and Nevada and Vergie looked at each other and smirked. “I just want to know where Sylvia is.”

“Well now, Lena,” Nevada said slowly, “where do you think she is? She is at the hospital. She is the head nurse here, after all.”

“Do not get huffy with me, Nevada,” Lena said, now at the front of the chapel area. “I am just proffering the observation that we have barely seen Sylvia at all this weekend. No Sylvia. No Spence. And now no wedding . . .”

The air rippled with gasps that Lena would pose such a notion. Nevada bristled. “I suggest, Lena, that you leave Sylvia's name out of your misshapen mouth.”

“Make me!” Lena pushed her chest out at Nevada.

Vergie rose from her seat. “I will make you if she does not,” Vergie said, and she started to move toward the aisle.

The schoolteacher, Ella, whispered to her cousin that Maze would be mortified if she saw Vergie conducting herself in such unladylike ways.

“Well, not as if this gathering is exactly high society,” her cousin whispered back.

They snickered among their group; then Miss Ma unleashed a stream of laughter. And then the yard-turned-chapel went still.

Two white men entered. Both in suits and top hats, both with billy clubs braced as if they were coming to quell an uprising, as if they had license to be here and the ones already here needed to ask permission of these white men to take their next breaths.

Kojo stood, his eyes on the one walking down the center aisle, his eye really on his billy club. He'd been hit with one before for no good cause other than they'd been searching for a thief and he was as good as anybody to use for their whipping boy. “Sirs?” Kojo said.

Then Skell stood, too. “May we help you?”

Then the husband to Ella's cousin stood; the soloist who'd been prepared to sing the Lord's Prayer stood; the one holding the harmonica stood; one by one, every man in the yard-turned-chapel stood, their faces ashen as if they were watching their own deaths approach, but standing nonetheless, ready if necessary to fight for themselves, to defend the women assembled here.

Vergie wanted to yell and curse at the white men intruding on their gathering, wanted to tell them to take their damn billy clubs and beat their own asses, wanted to fling her hand at them the way she'd flung her hand at the white men in the other boat. But she did not. She considered what the result would be the way she rarely considered the consequences of her unbridled temper. If she expressed how she felt this instant, one of the two would surely move in her direction, putting Skell and the other men in jeopardy because they'd be compelled to defend her and might end up with a head-bashing or worse.

She eased from her seat. She walked to the back of the yard-turned-chapel as she heard Miss Ma say, “Praise the Lord,” which stopped Vergie in her tracks, as Miss Ma was not known for making such proclamations. “You have come to investigate how we was shot at and nearly killed on the river. Praise the Lord, I say.” Then Nevada also joined her grandmother's chants of “Praise the Lord,” then Skell joined in, then Kojo and his wife; one by one the entire gathering joined the chant, and Vergie marveled at the wiles of Miss Ma as she turned to leave the yard. “Praise the Lord,” she whispered to herself—the saying it helped wrestle down her temper, which had so wanted her to shake a fist at the white men who'd barged in on their sacred time. She walked away from the yard. Wished she'd been able to reason with her temper when they'd been on that boat the way she'd done just now. Everything did not have to be a fight, at least not her fight, her aunt Maze had tried to impress that on her. Sometimes it was better to turn away, walk away, as she was doing now.

She was walking in circles, she realized, because she'd come several times already to this part of the shallow creek where the rocks made a bridge. She decided this time to cross—slipped her shoes from her feet and lifted the hem of her dress and stepped from rock to rock. She could see tadpoles just below the surface of the water shimmying like fast girls. A floating bloom of coral honeysuckle served as a raft for a family of hummingbirds. Their journey kept her occupied until she reached the other side. She walked past the main house and the mansions that served as Ledoff's and the doctor's private quarters. She stood on the pier, flanked by the barges. The sun was sinking lower in the sky, leaving a trail of red and yellow. The air smelled of wet pine and fish oil. The blue-gray river lurched in spots as if it was trying to reach up and steal some of the sunset's color, as if it was tired of being blue and gray and wanted the feel of orange.

She started walking again. She was passing the hospital, but she didn't allow her head to turn in that direction, lest she fall into despair all over again about Carl. His condition must have deteriorated for Spence to miss his own wedding. She was falling into despair anyhow. Now she faced the curing shack, where Sylvia had told her that Linc had spent the night. She peeped in. The sight of the chains bolted to the wall drew her all the way in. The ceiling was low and she had to practically stoop once she crossed the threshold. It smelled of mud and mint, and she guessed the mint aroma came from the sheet folded neatly on the cot. Bay, who did the laundry here, had a penchant for drizzling oil of peppermint into everything she washed. Just above the cot were the chains. Vergie had grown up with stories about the liberators of the enslaved and as a child she would fantasize that she was the most famous liberator of all, Black Moses. She'd imagine herself shooting down the overseers trying to foil their escape; taking hatchets to chains such as these. She fingered the metal, it was hard and cold as death. She tried to imagine these chains bolting her to the wall, but she couldn't. A knot of guilt rose up in her throat and she swallowed hard. She knew that had she been born as she was four score sooner and two states south, she still wouldn't know the feel of these chains. She'd know the big house. The beds there. Welt marks on her spine not from a whip but from the rough friction of the sheets, the proprietor's breath pushing in her ear like knife stabs, his sweat like acid burning through her skin all the way to the bone.

She put both her hands through the circle the chain made and sat on the cot and swung her feet around and reclined. She closed her eyes. She still couldn't imagine it, even as the metal dug into her wrist and the pain of it shot through her arms and the line of anger widened. “How dare they!” she said out loud. “Hate-filled ravagers.” She saw herself again, flicking her hand at the two on
the boat because she knew they'd said some disparaging thing about them. How many disparaging things had she heard, even from the ones who covered their prejudices under the veneer of politeness? Her flick of the wrist had been for them, too; for every time she'd moved seamlessly through the parlors when she'd assist her aunt and uncle as they catered lavish affairs for one of their white clients and they thought her white and she'd had to endure overheard talk about the smaller brain, larger teeth, penchant to steal, animalistic, work-averse, rhythmically proficient, overly natured, the dear, sweet, loyal, mammified Negro. She'd seen them crammed into that other boat, too, when she'd flicked her wrist. And right now that might be what was costing Carl his life. She pressed her wrists deeper against the cold metal that dug into her skin. She knew that she could pull her hands from these chains at any time, so she allowed the hurt and pressed them deeper still.