Lazaretto (25 page)

And then she felt the thick heat of Spence's hand covering her hand, his breath pushing into her ear. “I'm here, right here,” he said.

“My eyes—”

The words were no sooner from her mouth when she felt the light swabs of cotton against her closed eyelids. His touch stunned her with its realness. He moved the cotton gently over her eyelids, then up along her brow, then her forehead, pushing and dabbing and smoothing. His breath was soft and hot as the fine mist of it landed on her skin. “Did I get it all?” he asked. “What do you need next? Just tell me everything you need.”

It was better that he'd asked what she needed and not what she wanted. She'd always been adept at distinguishing between the two, her success had been predicated on that ability. She wanted Carl's leg attached and healthy; she wanted for Spence not to be affianced to Mora; she wanted to be in another space, even the room next door would do, wanted Spence to untie the back of the surgical gown and move his hands under the gown and lower his lips to the hollow of her neck. But her wants had no place here and now. In this moment, only her needs mattered. And all she needed right now was to have the dust cleared from her eyes so she could see.

“My eyes, Spence,” she said sharply. “I need them flushed. I cannot see.”

He pulled himself away from her, straightened himself up, even as he seemed to collapse as he stood. “I am sorry, Sylvia, I didn't know what—I am sorry—of course, there is water right here,” he said as he poured water from a jug onto a cloth and then tilted her head and rung the cloth so the water rained over her eyes.

She squinted and took the cloth and pressed it to her eyes. “More?” he asked. She shook her head no and slowly opened her eyes.

“I cannot get through the bone. You might need to work the saw some.”

“Looks to me as though you got through it five minutes ago,” Spence said and Sylvia looked down and saw the bone completely severed, feeling a confluence of elation and devastation.

She stepped back. Spence covered the lower leg with a sheet and lifted it from the bed. The effort it took for Spence to carry the leg was evident as Sylvia watched the muscles in Spence's shoulders tense in and out, and listened to his sharp inhales of breath as he tried not to grunt. He moved to the other side of the room, where a vat waited, and slowly lowered the leg. She could see the relief in his body when he was free of the weight—though she thought now that surely what remained on the table, the empty space where the leg had been, was heavier still. No weight more crushing than absence, she thought; it held memory, sensations that would never, could never, leave. What a torture it would be for Carl to drag that painful absence around from here on. She stopped herself. To indulge a sentimental mood was not only useless right now, it was detrimental. The bones yet needed shaving and smoothing, threads had to be snipped, antiseptic salve applied. But all Sylvia could see right now was that absence which took up the space on the table beneath Carl's knee. How would he ever balance that absence with his remaining leg? She knew only one way that would even approach what he'd need. Her hand in matrimony. Spence was standing next to her again. “Should Carl live to once again seek my hand in marriage, I shall oblige,” she said.

Spence sighed.

“And you?” she asked.

“I plan to follow your lead, Nurse Sylvia. As soon as I can get up the nerve to make my way to the other side, I plan to do right by my bride-to-be.”

AFTER SYLVIA AND
SPENCE
completed shaving the bones and snipping the threads and wrapping the stump, Sylvia left Spence to perform the rest of the cleanup. She walked outside of the hospital's back door as if in a trance. She sat on the bench and took in deep gulps of air, as if she'd stopped breathing while she was inside and was now attempting to replace what she'd missed. It was not yet a night sky, the air blue and red, heavier than it looked, and warmer, too. She sensed motion in the air, knew who it was even before she caught the whiffs of lavender. “Yes, Nevada?” she said, as she felt her sit next to her on the bench. “It must be important that you came over here. Meal preparations should be at their height right about now.”

“It is important, Sylvie,” Nevada said in a whisper. She took in Sylvia's appearance, how disheveled she was; splatters of blood up high around her neckline, and low around the hem of her dress, the places the surgical gown had not covered, Nevada reasoned. She knew Sylvia well enough to know that there was no need asking her if she was all right; Sylvia would resist consolation until she was ready to be consoled. “I just came to tell you that you were right. I made a big mistake being with Kojo. And now that Buddy is here . . . it was Buddy all along. Kojo was just a substitute. A very poor one at that.”

“You are lying to me, Nevada,” Sylvia said, staring straight ahead.

“I am not lying. It is Buddy I want.”

“Yes, but that is not what brought you over here.”

“You think you know me all to pieces. Okay, I confess. I came to tell you I think Buddy might ask for my hand.” She giggled like a schoolgirl. “I know you always thought he was the one for me anyhow—”

“I am glad about that, Nevada”—Sylvia's voice was wooden—“but you have one more chance to tell me why you are really here.”

“Drats, Sylvia. Okay . . . I want to know how Carl is doing.”

Sylvia swallowed hard. “He has got a better chance of surviving now than he did this morning.”

“He had you working on him, how could he not?”

“He lost the leg. And of course the doctor being the doctor, the surgery fell to me,” Sylvia said as she blew into the air. She could hear Nevada trying to swallow a gasp, saw the pale pink of Nevada's sleeve move through the air as she put her hand to her mouth.

“I guess I cannot see him just yet?” Nevada asked when she had recovered herself.

“Not just yet.” Sylvia sighed. “I shall give you one more chance to tell me what really brought you over here,” she said, struggling to keep her voice steady.

“I told you why—”

“I know you better.”

“Well, since you got so much knowing, why don't
you
tell
me
why I came here?”

“Just being your busybody self. You had the sense something happened and you are trying to determine if I am holding up okay.”

“Are you?” Nevada asked, taking the opening Sylvia had finally provided.

“No,” Sylvia said. “As a matter of fact, I am not.” Then she put her hands over her face and cried into her hands. She cried for Carl, that he'd have to go through life as he now was, though he'd begged her to kill him instead. She cried for his mother and pictured her sinking to the ground when she was told.
No, not my baby's leg
, she'd wail. She cried for Vergie, who'd fault herself; for Nevada and the others who loved Carl as if he was their own
brother; she even cried for Lena, petty, spiteful Lena. And then she cried for herself as she struggled to reconcile the slashing and the saving. Yes, she'd severed his leg from the rest of him; she'd saved his life. Those were the hard tears, oppositional, wrestled. She thought the cavity of her chest would crack wide open, she cried so hard, thought the hacking sounds she made were swaying the earth from side to side. She realized then that Nevada was rocking her. Dear Nevada. Was there ever a woman more righteous when righteousness demanded its due? Nevada had put her arm around Sylvia's shoulder, and their shoulders moved as one, as if the two were sitting side by side on a church pew as the choir sang, or even if there was no music, just souls stirring. The river swished by, as if keeping time. It was a soothing combination now, the earth swaying, the push-pull of the river. She closed her eyes and went with the rhythm until she no longer cried.

Spence broke the silence between Sylvia and Nevada as they swayed shoulder-to-shoulder on the bench. The night had crept all the way in, and he placed a lamp on the ground next to the bench. “Ladies,” he said. “I guess you will need this light for the trek back over.”

“Nevada may,” Sylvia said as she sat all the way up and dabbed her eyes with her handkerchief. “I'll stay on this side of the creek. Carl will be waking soon.”

“No, you go ahead on back, I'll tend to him,” Spence said. “Delay me having to face the music likely waiting for me over there.”

“I don't think music's gonna be your problem when you finally make your way over there, Sugar,” Nevada said. “In fact, if it's just music you facing when you get back over there, you ought to count yourself a truly blessed man.”

“That bad?” Spence asked as he sat on the bench.

“Worse than that bad.”

“Mora threw a fit?”

“She threw a fit, her shoe, her comb, brush, lamp, and was about to pull her mirror from the wall, but I had to step in at that point.”

“Hush, Nevada, you are exaggerating,” Sylvia said.

“You can think I am exaggerating if it pleases you, and I have not even gotten to Lena. If you value your life, Spence, Lena's the one you must avoid. She was hell bent on coming over here, but I told her this is where the yellow fever germ is.” She laughed. Spence joined in, and then Sylvia, too, and it seemed that the crickets also knew of Lena because suddenly their outburst made a contribution to the levity trying to gather around the bench.

Nevada asked Spence then if he had thought about an alternate date for their wedding ceremony. “The area behind the house is still decorated,” she said. “You could still do it since we are trapped here together anyhow.”

Spence sighed. He stood and jammed his hands into his pockets and paced a couple of steps in either direction. Said that he and Mora would work out the timing based on everything else going on.

Nevada stood, said, “Let her know, but right now I best get back over and set the food table for those greedy Negroes, they are discontented enough since they came all this way and didn't witness two joined in holy matrimony
and
they cannot even leave.”

Spence insisted that Sylvia go, too. He would stay and keep watch over Carl.

THE QUARANTINE WAS
in its third day and Nevada had managed to stretch the food. The hens had been generous with their eggs as if they knew the situation. The cornbread and grits were plentiful, the goat supplied just enough milk, and, city boy though he was, Buddy was a sure shot with the geese, and the ducks, but declined to go after the wild turkey Nevada told him about. The white men stayed to themselves on the other side of the compound, though they did manage to show up around mealtime. Generally there was a spat just about every evening, and Lena was usually somewhere near the center. But the groups had started to mix in, too. Ella found herself in conversation with Miss Ma, someone she'd otherwise disregard. And Nevada thought Kojo's wife pleasant after all, though that was probably helped along by Buddy's showing up, surprising Nevada, delighting her. Not so with Buddy and Kojo. Buddy mispronounced Kojo's name when they were first introduced, called him Fojo, so Kojo called Buddy, Buffy, and their interactions only went downhill from there.

Linc would hide out in the cellar during the day. After the sun had dropped under the river and the Lazaretto went dark, and after the constables had eaten and belched and returned to their plush quarters at Ledoff's house, and when most had retired to the parlor to listen to soft songs played on the harmonica, or to the corner of the dining room for Bible study led by Skell, or to hear
an impromptu lecture by Ella on the improvement of Negro life in urban areas, then Vergie would sneak away to the cellar with a plate of food for Linc. She'd check to make sure no one was about in the back of the house and Linc would emerge from the depths, and they would run toward the woods, holding hands, giggling like five-year-olds. They would take the long way around to the shack where Linc had slept that first night. They would sit together on the lumpy cot and fondle out each other's pasts: Vergie told Linc how she'd chopped off all of her hair, how she was almost snatched by a rich woman whose pink feathered hat matched the embroidery on Vergie's petticoat. She talked about how much she loved her father, and her ideas about her mother, whom she'd never known. “She was gypsy, a wanderer. I suppose that is why I've stayed so close to Sylvia and my aunt and Uncle Levi. Perhaps there is a part of her in me—that fear has stilted me in some ways.”

Linc in turn talked about that first job he and Bram had in New York, where they were groundskeepers, but they were bored beyond measure so they got jobs in the guts of the city. Told her about the night Bram was burned, how he faulted himself, how Bram turned away from the piano after that and it broke Linc's heart. Vergie would stiffen whenever he mentioned Bram. She wanted to tell him what she knew. She just did not know how. So she'd just listen to him sigh, and enjoy the feel of his shoulders as they nestled side by side, talking the way that people did when they were falling in love.

Tonight the air was dark and heavy and smelled of the sweet corn grilling in the charcoal pit. Vergie lifted the door to the cellar and called, in a whispered voice. “Linc, it's me, Vergie. I am coming down.” He helped her down the ladder and she handed him his platter and sat with him while he ate. Afterward, instead of going outside, she opened up the spread that she'd borrowed
from the top of Sylvia's closet and propped the pillow against the wall and they sat like that and talked. Tonight they laughed about the situation Linc had first observed between Nevada and Kojo. “When I saw him covered in red from the juice Nevada dumped on him, my first instinct was to help him, I thought he'd been stabbed. But then I reminded myself that Nevada does not seem like a knife-wielding woman, what do you say?”

“No, definitely not,” Vergie said, trying to catch her breath and settle herself down. “Nevada has no feelings in her fingertips, so she must take care around knives.”

“No feeling in her fingertips?”

“No, she was run over by a carriage when she was a baby.”

“Oh, that's awful,” Linc said as he winced.

Vergie held up her own hands. “I have tried to imagine what that must be like.”

“I suppose the rest of the body compensates,” Linc said, noticing that Vergie's fit of laughter had closed up the space between them on the spread.

“That's what Nevada says, too. But imagine, if I could not feel anything, I could not do this,” she said, as she drew her finger along his arm. It was a forward move for her, she realized, as she felt his arm stiffen. She'd never tried such a move. Most of her moves with the men at home had the purpose of holding them at bay. She didn't think about her intentions here. She might stop. And she did not want to stop. That trickle of a sensation she had first experienced when he'd appeared in the parlor had grown to a river and she otherwise had no idea how she would ever contain it. “Well, of course I could still do this,” she said, as she continued to lightly stroke his arm. “But without the tactile sense I would not be aware of what I was doing.”

“
I
would be aware,” he said as he looked straight ahead at the line of lamplight hitting the wall.

“Well, Nevada did say that her malady gives her a greater insight. And I am inclined to agree.”

“I would say that is a safe inclination,” he said, practically whispering.

“She told me about you.”

“Nevada told you about me?” He spoke haltingly, all play gone from his tone as he prepared to deny that he was Linc, the little white boy who was always with Sister.

“After the first night in the parlor, Nevada told me that we were doing a love dance, that she had watched us from the kitchen doorway. And I told her she was loony, we had not danced. And she said that we had, we just were not aware of it, but the air was, because it swirled around us in big red sashes that only she could see, because she allows herself to see such things which most people do not. She told me that you had eyes for me. Is she right? Is she?”

“I've only been acquainted with Nevada for the briefest time, but my sense is that she is generally right.” He looked at her mouth as he spoke. Her lips were painted red and parted, and he ran his thumbs along the side of her face and then pressed his lips against hers. He couldn't believe the jolt that moved through him at the feel of her mouth. She leaned into him with such ease. Felt to him as if she was made to lean into him this way. Her eyes were closed and her face had the intensity of someone fervently praying, and he thought that he heard her whispering. She made small crying sounds from the back of her throat as he pushed against her in circles.

He'd managed to unhook the back of her dress, then pulled it from her shoulders. His lips found the spot on her neck that she thought must be her weak spot. His lips were hot and wet against that spot on her neck and now she was crying the way she'd always cried when she'd craved something this intensely.

“Are you all right?” Linc whispered. “Vergie, are you?”

“Oh God, uh, yes, Father have mercy, yes.”

Linc reached behind him to spread the quilt out more. He reached back for the pillow but kissed her before he did as if she might disappear from him in the slice of time that it took for him to grab the pillow. He stood facing her now; he kneaded the pillow. He raised his eyebrows, asking her with his eyes for permission. She looked behind him at the ladder that led to the cellar opening. He read her look. He tossed the pillow on the quilt and went halfway up the ladder rungs and grabbed for the rope that hung from the door handle. He tied the robe around the top ladder rung. He knotted it and tied it again as if this were the most important thing he'd ever had to do in his life. He was sweating by the time he got back to the space where Vergie was. She had allowed her dress to fall away, her restrictive petticoats too. He grew dizzy from the sight of her. He tried to speak, to tell her how beautiful she was but he was babbling, he was babbling and slobbering and now he thought he might cry, too, as he freed himself from his own clothes. He had never ever felt as he did right now as he drew her to him and their skin touched in places that should be taboo given the length of time they'd known each other. And yet he'd never remembered feeling this pure. He was a liar and a fraud, a throwaway orphan boy; still there was a sense of innocence about their skin touching right now. He felt more than worthy, he felt exalted, ordained, as they lowered themselves on the quilt, first on their knees as if they were praying, and then all the way down, moving together in a frenzy the way the holy sometimes did when the Spirit hit.

Afterward, they lay swaddled in the quilt, her head against his chest, his hands stroking her back. Her heartbeat was settling down, the tingle slowly leaving her body. The air was soft as it fell over them like a smile. This could be the most perfect moment she'd ever lived if not for the fact that she had yet to tell Linc
about Bram. She turned and angled herself on her elbow. “Do you believe in God?” She asked it in a whisper.

“Why, are we damned to hell for what we are doing?” He kissed her forehead. “If that be the case, I can go with no regrets, because I have surely been to Heaven these nights I have spent with you.”

She laughed in spite of herself, felt the laugh all the way to her toes. “Heaven? This cellar is certainly a new twist on Heaven.”

“I think that Heaven will likely be a twist on my sense of what is—if it is.”

“Did you go to church a lot growing up? I guess they were fairly strict about that sort of thing at the orphanage.”

“They were indeed.”

“And what about since you've been grown?”

“Mnh, occasionally.” He thought back to the Sunday mornings when he'd just left an all-night card game and would fall in on a church service where Bram was earning money playing the piano.

“Do you enjoy church?” Vergie asked, as she ran her finger along his nose.

“Why? Are you thinking about a ghastly large church wedding when I make an honorable woman out of you?”

She held back a gasp. Felt a flutter in her chest when he said that, though she'd never fancied herself the type whose single purpose in life was to get married. “Maybe I like my state of dishonor,” she said. “But my aunt Maze would settle for nothing less than a big church wedding, just so you know.”

“Really?” he said, a laugh to his voice. “I actually had the Lazaretto in mind. Splotch could be my best man.”

“And Lena could be my maid of honor.”

They both laughed then; they laughed so hard that they shook and gasped, and had to sit up so that they could breathe. Linc
kissed her forehead again and said, “Though of course Bram will be my best man.”

“Aw, Linc.” She lay back down and pulled him against her. She wrapped her arms around his neck as tightly as she could. There was no way to say it other than to just say it, she told herself. “Bram's dead.” Her voice warbled when she said it, and at first Linc thought that she was laughing still about Splotch and Lena. But then he heard the words, her voice distorted as it moved through his ears.

He sat up with a jolt. “What did you say?”

“I am so sorry, Linc—”

“What did you say?” He spoke each word pointedly.

She sat up, too, and stared straight ahead. “They put us under quarantine because a man who stumbled out of the tavern where you and Linc were died from what they think was yellow fever, but his body never arrived but it was delivered and—”

She tried to pull him back down, to squeeze him to her, to comfort him.

“No!” he shouted as he jumped up.

“Linc, aw, come—”

“No.” He put his hands to his head, as if by doing so he could suddenly undo what she'd just said. He started picking up his clothes, starting pulling his clothes on. “Where's his body?”

“They do not know.”

“They do not? This is horseshit. Somebody must tell me something—”

“Lincoln, they cannot tell you more than I just have. Plus, everyone thinks you are no longer here, and the constables are still here in quarantine, too.”

“Fuck the constables. Your cousin or somebody has got to tell me something. How can they claim such a thing—that Bram is
dead—with such certainty? They do not have a body, how can they say he's dead?”

Vergie started gathering her clothes around her, as well. “I know this is hard for you—”

“You do not know—”

“Well, I can imagine—”

“You cannot imagine!”

“Aw, God, Linc, do not—”

“Do not
what
? Do not go find some answers?”

“Actually, I was going to say do not be a donkey's ass.”

“Bram is all I have,” he said, as he stuffed his feet into his boots, the effort masking the sobs fighting to take over his voice. “You have all these people—Sylvia, Nevada, your aunt Maze, your daddy. Bram is all I have.”

“You have me,” she called to his back.

“It is not enough,” he said as he untied the rope that had served as a makeshift lock. And then bounded up the ladder and was out of the cellar.

“Yeah, well, go to hell yourself,” Vergie said after she heard the door slap shut.

She had wanted to say it to him directly, but the words had caught in her throat. She looked up now at the closed cellar door, then back at the crumpled quilt on the floor. She folded the quilt, set the pillow on top. She swallowed hard to get rid of the ball in her throat, felt it drop to her chest like a hard regret. She'd rushed things; rushed telling him about Bram, rushed opening herself for him to move inside of her the way he just had. She picked up the pillow and squeezed it to her. It smelled of the beeswax Nevada had smoothed on her edges to keep them from frizzing up. She was grateful at least that it was not his scent that lingered but her own.