Lazaretto (29 page)

LINC STOOD ON
the pier and looked into the river. The daylight churned itself yellow across the sky and he tried to recall the exact instant during Sylvia's recounting when he knew she spoke of Meda. He thought that it may have been her first descriptions of the woman's polite features and sad, dreamy eyes, or the fact that the woman sketched President Lincoln, and claimed to have served him tea. Likely it was the sounds, the discord of notes jumping from everywhere on the scale as Sylvia spoke: notes so high they could shatter starlight; lows that could stir the buried dead, flats that might scorch through iron; sharps that cut like acid-tipped knives. And suddenly there was sound conjugated, music being made, a wordless song, a melody that he thought he knew, a tune he could sing. Meda had in fact had a child. Tom Benin, Linc knew by the description of the watch, had been the father. A girl; she had a girl. That is what Sylvia had said.

But it was not a girl. Linc was certain. The earth had not tilted to make him know this truth; the heavens had not opened to a thousand angels singing; the river had not reversed its course, or turned to blood, or wine, or run dry. He'd known it by his hands. He remembered Mrs. Benin's scorn that long-ago day when she'd stood in the porch entry as he and Meda and Tom Benin must have made quite the picture for her. Meda reading nonchalantly, her legs crossed, a peek of her ankle exposed, as if she were the lady of the house sitting on her own porch; Tom Benin listening
to him count, even laughing when Linc applauded himself; Linc squeezed into the chair with Tom Benin, so relaxed with him that he'd pulled his hand out so that they could play a clapping game; he'd situated his hand on top of Tom Benin's, and Tom Benin had commented on the nice form to Linc's hands. Linc had noted that both their hands jutted in an odd way along the sides. After that, Mrs. Benin's irritation with Linc's inability to sit still on the piano bench turned to sudden wrath. Her insults toward him grew venomous. Her violence against his hands, he now knew, was an attempt to beat away the familiarity, the truth that his hands told.

Buddy had always maintained that it was impossible to know if a person was bluffing by looking in their eyes. The eyes are built for charming and seducing, they lie with ease, Buddy always said. “Look at what the hands do. The hands will act on their own accord to tell on what you don't even know you know.”

Sylvia's eyes had looked at him directly when he'd questioned the baby's gender; her eyes were unflinchingly sincere. He'd watched her hands, however, furl into a fist; but it was the softest fist. As if her hands alone knew what a tender secret they held.

Linc turned and started walking in the direction of the hospital. Then he kept walking beyond. His steps were deliberate, purposeful as he reached Ledoff's house, where the constables lodged. He would tell them who he was: the son of Meda and Tom Benin. He would tell them what he knew: that Robinson had violated his brother on who knows how many occasions; that he himself had punched Robinson senseless as a result. He didn't think of the consequences as he turned the knob and pushed the heavy door wide open, as if this were his house, as if he were the landlord come to oust errant boarders. He was remembering how Robinson had called them throwaway little nothings. Spawned from alley rats.

He stepped into the foyer, was stopped by a scene in the foyer. Broken glass from smashed vases and lamps, and even paintings
pulled from the walls. One of the constables worked to restrain an old graying white man who shook convulsively and yelled, “Get Spence, get that nigger here, he knows what to do.” Linc recognized him as the doctor Sylvia had alluded to who would do anything for the promise of an opium pipe. The second constable stood calmly in the archway between the foyer and the parlor and the one tussling with the doctor yelled out to him, “Whadder we do wit 'im? Bloke has gone mad.”

“Tie 'im down and lock 'im in one of the rooms till the nurse comes back. Nothing else yer can do till he comes through his need of the pipe or the need kills him before he do.”

That one managed to secure the doctor's hands with leather cuffs and forced him toward the back of the house. The doctor sobbed and tried to shake them off. “Tell Spence I will free him, I swear it on my dead mother's soul. I will sign his papers if he comes to me now.”

The remaining constable looked at Linc and shook his head. “Man on the hip sucking that opium pipe is a pitiful sight when there is nothing left to smoke. Guess the quarantine keeping more than sickly immigrant people from coming here,” he said as he walked into the parlor and Linc followed. “Luke-the-constable”—he extended his hand and Linc shook it. “And what might I be doing for yer? I thought that other than my boy, who came wit me and who cannot keep his lips from the brandy cork, and that slobbering excuse of a doctor, and the one who acts like a dunce, that we was the only white on this place. Do not bode well for us if this is how we stack up when the colored is left to run things. Make a man think them equalatists know what they talkin' about. Though I will say that colored nurse sure proves the point. She makes a regular visit over here to keep me up on the status of the quarantine and so forth. She is tough as iron and is holding up to the task.” He went to the sideboard and commenced
to pour brown-colored liquid into a sizable goblet. “And the quarantine happens not to be the worser of things to come down in my life. Better lodging here than I keep back in the city with the wife and kids screaming in my ear the whole live-long day. Might investigate if the nurse can get me hired on here after they open the place to ships again. Now, what can I do fer yer? Might I offer you a sniff of brandy in the absence of the head man of this island, who got fine taste in his drink and his apparel.”

Linc looked at Luke-the-Constable and realized that he was attired in what he guessed to be Ledoff's clothing, a nicely threaded high-collar shirt, perfectly seamed pants, supple leather slippers. Then he looked out on the mess in the foyer. He could hear the doctor crying and ranting from a far corner of the house. He felt a sensation moving up from deep in his gut, felt like a ball of heat gathering parts of himself as it rose toward his chest. He'd come over here to turn himself in, finally. Expected that this man would have taken one look at him and had his minion wrestle him to the floor and shackle him. And yet he was offering him a drink instead, and the doctor was the one in restraints. He'd been lying this whole time on this island about being a black man, and yet the lie was actually the truth. The sensation had burned through to his throat uncontainable and he opened his mouth to release the fire trapped there. What came out surprised him. It was laughter. It doubled him over as it blazed out. His eyes ran and he made snorting sounds.

“Jesus,” the constable said. “What is happening to all people of the white persuasion at this place?” And Linc laughed harder still. He gasped for breath. He collapsed into the wing chair. He tried to compose himself, to explain himself. And then he did compose himself because the door opened and Sylvia walked in and the constable jumped up—almost pulling himself to attention—and ran to the foyer.

“Good day, Nurse Sylvia,” the constable said, and Sylvia looked around as if in shock, rendered speechless. “It does appear that the doctor is having a rough go of it. Made a ready mess of the place.”

“Where is he?” she asked when she found her voice, which sounded like a growl coming from the back of her throat.

“My boy got it handled, he got 'im in cuffs and barricaded 'im in one of these fine rooms.”

Sylvia appeared to be reeling, and he asked her if he could help her to a seat. She waved him away. “Thank you, I shall be well in just a moment.” She took deep breaths as she stood there, looking at the holes in the wall where pictures had hung. Realized now what she'd begun to suspect the day that she and Spence amputated Carl's leg. Realized that Spence had in fact been feeding the doctor the opium pipe, and now that the quarantine had likely prevented a fresh supply, coupled with Spence's own absence, owing to his wedding last night, the doctor was in a manic state of withdrawal. “I shall send Son over so that he can begin picking things up,” she said. “Although I am tempted to leave it all as it is, so that when Ledoff returns he will understand the urgency when I implore him to request the doctor's replacement.”

“On the opium pipe pretty bad, I'd say,” Luke-the-Constable agreed. “I'd be much inclined to putting in my word on what I seen of the doctor's egregious manner if it be a help to you, Nurse Sylvia.”

Sylvia looked around, still in shock. “The glass, though, is a hazard. It must be cleaned up.”

“I will get my boy to throw in a hand. Not as if he is otherwise saddled with work to do.”

Sylvia nodded. Then she scanned the foyer again in disbelief. She leaned and tried to upright one of the framed pictures lying facedown. She knew which one it was by the gilded frame, Ledoff's favorite. It was heavy and Linc had come into the foyer
and was now leaning with her, telling her to watch her footing, not to fall on the glass. Together they lifted it, and Sylvia said, “In the parlor,” and Luke-the-Constable swept away glass and debris with his foot to make a path for them. They propped it on the divan. It was a portrait in oils of Abraham Lincoln. Sylvia was explaining that Ledoff had told her that he'd paid a king's ransom for it because he felt that it was so lifelike, that it captured not only the president's likeness but also his spirit. She was glad that at least the glass that encased it had not been shattered. They stood back and viewed it. It was not the typical rendering of Lincoln, nothing stoic, bland, or contemplative about it. He appeared to be staring back at them as if he took delight in what he saw, and Sylvia remarked that for all the criticism he suffered about his looks, he was not unpleasant to gaze upon. Linc nodded, thinking that's what Meda always said. Tried to tell Sylvia that now. “A similar position was maintained by my uh, my uh, uh, my—” He took a deep breath. He could not yet say the word.

“Mother.” Sylvia finished the thought.

They were quiet. The glass encasing the painting caught the daylight and acted as a mirror. Sylvia saw on their faces the struggle to come to grips with what they now knew that they'd always known. Sylvia reasoned that Tom Benin had called out the command that morning to tell Meda that her baby girl had died so that Meda would never figure out who her baby was. Sylvia now believed that Benin had likely always planned that the baby would be a part of Meda's life, and—peripherally—his own.

Sylvia cleared her throat to try to begin to explain to Linc that she'd not intentionally lied when she told him it was a girl. But then she couldn't say anything because just then Spence pushed through the door. Out of breath, he pulled up short as he took in the chaos in the foyer. “What in tarnation has . . .”

“Well, look who it is, Mr. Newly Betrothed,” Sylvia declared as
she went out into the foyer and stood in front of Spence, her arms folded across her chest. “It is all too apparent that you could not simultaneously satisfy both your bride and the doctor whose needs you have apparently been fulfilling for some time now. Have you not, Spence? Admit it and then take a good look, Spence. This is the result when your services end too abruptly.”

“I know, Sylvia,” Spence said, his dark skin many shades lighter from the shame swathed there. “I deserve all the tongue-lashing you can give, but right now you must come with me. We have a situation.”

“What situation? I just left Carl. He is resting comfortably.”

“Nothing to do with Carl, it is on the other side of the creek. I can explain it on the way over—” And with that, Spence was out the door, with Sylvia following closely behind him.

Linc turned to Luke-the-Constable, who seemed surprisingly unfazed by any of this. “I shall take you up on that offer of a drink,” Linc said. “And then I'll tell you why I'm here.”

LINC TOOK THE
long way around from Ledoff's house to the other side, his head crowded with thoughts of the conversation he'd just had with Luke-the-Constable. Buddy had been correct when he'd told Linc there was something else going on with the presence of the constables. Linc had just learned that they were not here for him. They were here for Bram.

From what Linc gathered, as Luke dappled his explanation of the warrant against Bram with complaints of his own home life, Bram had gone to pay Robinson a visit. He'd told the housekeeper that he had been one of Robinson's favorite boys at the orphanage, and that it was unforgivable that it had taken him so long to stop by, but here he was. The housekeeper had allowed Bram in and even ushered him up to Robinson's room because, according to her, he seemed such a gentle soul with the bluest eyes, and she felt sorry that he was so damaged with that horrific scar on his forehead. He seemed so trustworthy, she said, that she took advantage of his time upstairs with Robinson to run a brief errand. When she returned she found Robinson propped in his chair just as she'd left him, though he was showing more than his usual palsy, and his eyes were red as if he wanted to cry but was unable to summon tears. The real damage, she said, had been done to the room. The room had been ransacked—drawers pulled open, their contents strewn about, closets in disarray. She could not say for certain if anything of value was missing. She had managed to fish
through the chaos to find all of his expensive timepieces, his gold rings and such. But there had been a box of trinkets in the drawer of his chest that his kinfolk boasted had been given to him by the boys at the orphanage as evidence of the high esteem they'd held him in. She did not know if there was any value to the box, but she was fairly certain that that had gone missing. Linc had stopped listening at that point because he knew what was in that box: the jewelry Robinson had confiscated from all of the boys shortly after he'd taken over; the rings Meda had given to Bram and to him were surely in that box. Linc's head was spinning as he flashed back to the rag-draped woman at the hospital who'd asked Linc if he was looking for the man with the rings and Linc assumed her to be talking about Bram's burn scars. Then he was remembering that afternoon when they'd squeezed into the hidden compartment of Buddy's cellar closet and Linc had asked Bram, “Did he?” That's all he had asked. And Bram had sniffed and then simply said, “He promised he would return our rings.” Bram had gone and got their rings.

He'd almost said that out loud to Luke-the-Constable as he managed to pull his attention back to Ledoff's parlor, where Luke was droning on about his unhappy wife. “Why,” Linc had pressed Luke, “would a pair of constables be sent here to apprehend Bram when by the housekeeper's own admission nothing of any value was taken?”

“Murder,” Luke had said with a drunken smile. “The Robinson chap finally gave up the ghost.”

Linc felt his blood go to ice. “But you said the housekeeper said—”

“I know it, I know it, I know it. He was alive when the vandal was still there, but he has since died, and the warrant states that the violence against the man's domicile contributed to his death.”

Linc tried to explain to the constable then that he himself was
the one who had pummeled Robinson so many years ago, not Bram. Bram had never touched him. Bram was entirely innocent. Bram would give his last crust of bread to a hungry child, or fight a man twice his size to defend a lady's honor; he could play the piano such that you'd think the heavens had opened and a thousand angels were singing, whether or not you believed in such things as Heaven, or angels, you would still look up because surely there was some beatific force at work that allowed him to play that way. He'd stopped himself; he was breathing hard, trying not to cry.

Luke had drained his glass and sat back and said, “Ah, this brandy, this is the life on this quarantine station.” Then he told Linc that all of what he'd just spouted about his brother being a saint was either true or it was not, it did not matter to him one way or the other. The only thing that concerned him is that they had lifted the bounty from Linc's head and placed it on Bram's. “I wager they figure they got a better case if they dwell on what happened just now, than somethin' what happened years and years ago. No offense, but you worth nothin' to me, yet I would be willing to give you a healthy share of my bounty if you let on about your brother's whereabouts.”

Linc had stared at him straight on. “Are you trying to make a joke? My brother is dead.”

“All right, now that is a start at least. Can you lead me to his body, the commission is not as much if I bring him in dead, but it will be enough to at least quiet the missus's complaining for a week.”

Linc had pressed his lips together and left.

So now Linc was crossing the creek—to go where? he asked himself. To do what? For starters, he needed to find Vergie. He needed to apologize for his outburst. And also—he just wanted to see her. He didn't know how much he would tell her just yet about what he had come to know about himself, who he truly was;
he just wanted to talk to her, wanted to feel the intense sweep of her eyes, the way she listened with her eyes and how her gaze followed his every word as if there was a meaning to what he said that her eyes alone could decipher. He wanted to hear the timbre of her voice hitting his own ears, the pauses, as when he'd listened to her speak as they'd snuggled under the quilt on the cellar floor, and she'd pause at the end of a phrase and he could hear her swallow. Even that tiny sound, it had astounded him the way that it moved him. He'd thought at such times that he was beginning to understand what love was, when the most insignificant thing about a person—the sound of saliva sliding down the throat—becomes as magnificent as the sounds of angels singing.

He was on the other side of the creek. The path was lush with wildflowers and berry bushes and smelled of lavender and recently turned earth. He spotted Kojo and Splotch then. They were carrying a coffin-shaped pine box and seemed to be struggling with its weight. At the sight of them Linc's world stood still. “Hey!” he yelled.

They turned and Splotch said loud enough for Linc to hear, “Keep walking, nobody but that white-looking nigger.”

“Hey!” Linc called again as he ran to catch up with them. “Is that my brother in there? Is it? Is that Bram?”

Splotch and Kojo looked at each other. “Yes, it is your brother,” Splotch said. “We on our way now to lower him into a hole.”

Linc stopped where he was and fell to his knees. “Do not bury him yet. Please. Put him down, let me see him. Let me say goodbye.”

They set the crate down in front of him. “All right,” Splotch said as he dusted off his hands. “But I am warning you, it is not a pretty sight in there.”

Linc buried his head in his hands and whispered Bram's name. Then he sat up straight and ran his fingers along the groove of the
crate's lid. A family of hummingbirds seemed to cry just above as if they, too, wanted to offer final goodbyes. The crate smelled of pine and wet dirt, it was intoxicating as he lifted the lid—or was he just drunk with grief? His brother. He could not look in the crate. Could not open his eyes just yet to see Bram stretched out lifeless because once he saw him that way, he would have to accept his death as real. He clenched his eyes tighter and tried to think of a prayer he could say. He could think of none, so he settled on: “I shall see you on the other side.” He did not fully believe that, but right now he also did not
not
believe it, and he thought that at least the possibility of seeing Bram in some Heaven was a comfort right now, so he said it again, louder this time, with more conviction. “I shall see you on the other side, Brother.” And then one more time he said it, this time shouted it as if he might actually wake Bram with his shout. Then he opened his eyes and looked in. He jumped up. “What the fuck!” he said. The crate was filled with rocks and grass and dirt.

He could hear Kojo and Splotch laughing from very far away, though they stood right there and were practically laughing in Linc's ear. “You dumb donkey's ass,” Splotch said, between his howling laughter. “‘I shall see you on the other side, Brother,'” he mocked Linc.

Linc turned around and punched his fist through the air, through the years, and landed his fist against Splotch's mouth the way he'd wanted to when he was a small boy and Splotch held a knife to his neck. They fought then. They cursed and punched each other, and Kojo stood by, yelling, “Get 'im, get 'im good, Splotch.” They rolled in the dirt and Linc appeared to be getting the best of Splotch, and Kojo pushed up his sleeves and commenced to move toward them, but a voice stopped him.

“I would not do that if I was you.” It was Buddy. “'Cause if you do, it will have to be me and you, and nothing would give me
more delight this instant than to whup your ass, and I reason your goal is not to make me a happy man.”

Kojo turned to face Buddy. He walked toward him and squared his shoulders and snorted. “I did not know he was a friend of yours—”

“Well, this is a case where what you do not know can cause you grave bodily harm.”

“Call off your boy, I will call off mine.”

“Hey, Lincoln,” Buddy yelled into the cloud of dust Linc and Splotch had stirred up, his eyes still fixed on Kojo, as if daring him to make a move. “Save some for the card table. That's where you really gonna give him a whuppin'. In the meantime, come with me—Sylvia got something she need to say to you.”