Walk Through Darkness (16 page)

E
IGHT
The scent was strong in his nostrils, sharp, head-clearing. There was movement around him. Hands worked over his body. Someone’s hip pressed against his side. A damp towel lifted from his forehead and the air touching his wet
skin brought a new cool. There was a hymn, sung low, sweet and painful both, from deep within a woman’s throat, which grew alternately louder and softer as she worked. And beyond her were walls that sometimes groaned and settled and a ceiling upon which steps could be heard. And further beyond were street sounds, carriages and voices, a dog that barked in clipped, high tones. There was a clock that told the hour, but he knew this was far away. He wasn’t sure just when he had become aware of these things. It seemed, in fact, that these things had always been around but that he had only recently noticed. They hadn’t mattered before. But now, for some reason, they did.

It was a strange feeling, remembering his eyes, recalling that he could open them, that there was a world to be beheld and they were the tool for it. The first thing he saw was the blurred, fleshy underside of an arm, bare to the skin, smooth, a hue like stained chestnut, dotted with freckles the size of poppy seeds. This arm was the entirety of his view for a few seconds and then it was gone. His sight flew upward into space, settling on the ceiling, unpainted boards with water stains radiating out from a few points like ripples in a pond. He stared at these for some time, not thinking about that arm or its owner, just focused on the grain of the wood and the manner in which water distorted it.

The humming stopped. “Thought you would find your way back,” a voice said. At first, the voice seemed to have nothing in common with the hymn. It was solid where the tune had been ethereal; it had a matter-of-fact good nature so different than the melancholy of those notes. William didn’t turn to the voice, and yet he was strangely prepared for the face that appeared before him. She was a colored woman, her face the same freckled complexion as that of her arm. Her features were weighty and generously rounded, not crafted for beauty and yet pleasant to look upon. She smiled, her teeth uneven and spaced with gaps but somehow merrier for it. “Yeah, you back for good this time.”

She turned away and left him staring at the ceiling. He
wanted to follow her, but he had forgotten how to turn his head, forgotten that such a movement was a possibility. Instead, he listened. The folds of her fabric as she moved, her flesh rubbing against the cotton, the dribble of water into a basin, a sound that he knew was that of a soft, wet cloth being squeezed between two hands. They were lovely sounds, and he realized he had been hearing them for some time.

A door somewhere slammed shut, the vibrations of it echoing through the house. The woman dropped the cloth into the basin, stood with it and moved away. William followed her with his eyes. The room was tiny, little wider than the cot upon which he lay, and the woman had only stepped away a few feet. She turned her attention to a small, dim window toward the far end, high up at the junction with the ceiling. She peered up at it, head craning side to side at something he couldn’t see. “That girl’s just now leaving the house,” she said. “I knew it. She’s gone and lost that job. I knew it by the way she wouldn’t look at me straight. She’s back to peddling her backside. Told Russell as much, but he said what’s it matter long as she pays the rent.”

The woman clicked her tongue off the roof of her mouth and turned back toward her patient. “Lord, William, if I didn’t need them tenants to pay the rent I’d clear the house of them. Here I am trying to keep a decent home and they each and all got other things on they mind.” She moved back toward him, her legs rubbing the side of the cot, metal basin balanced in her one hand. She sat down on a small stool, set the basin on her lap and dipped her fingers in for the wet cloth. “Bet you still a little cloudy, aren’t you? You had a fever, William. That’s all. Little yellow fever or something kin to it, but you done pulled through just fine. You ain’t out of the fire yet, but the worst is behind you.”

The woman’s words resonated in his head, bouncing around and, at first, difficult to grasp. He had to force his mind to order them and narrow them down to a simple sentence. “I had a
fever …” The woman agreed that he did, a damnable fever that she had been fighting for three days now. She went on talking, though he lost the direction of her words and had to close his eyes and try to start over. “Who are you?” he asked.

“I’m your angel of mercy in a time of need. Least I’m trying to be. Name’s Anne Murphy. You call me Miss Anne and I’ll answer to you.”

He opened his eyes. “How’d you know my name?”

The wrinkles of the woman’s forehead creased with amusement. “I know your name cause you told it to me. Told me all sorts of things. I won’t even embarrass you by recounting them.” She set the damp cloth in place across his forehead, just far enough down that the ragged edge of it cut the upper portion of his vision. The sharp scent of vinegar—that’s what he had been smelling. “Naw, some a what you said I’ll just keep to myself. You’d die of shame I told you half the things you rambled on about. Course, I am gonna help you find the lady of yours. But we’ll talk about that when you’re stronger.”

William started to protest. He felt for the cloth and would have pulled it away, but the woman clucked an admonishment with her tongue. That was enough to still him. More than that even, the sound eased him, reminded him of something which he didn’t try to place but which was a good thing. He lay back, and was asleep by the time the woman pulled the door fast behind her.

In the days after he regained true consciousness, William pieced together the events he had missed during his illness. Yellow fever was one of the many maladies rampant during the summer months. Anne explained that it had ravished Philadelphia just before the turn of the century like some classic plague of the Middle Ages, nearly halving the population. It had never been as bad since, but it flared up often, always during the hottest months, always without explanation. Anne had found William in
an alley near her home and recognized his symptoms. She couldn’t explain what had prompted her to take him in, except to say that she figured he was somebody’s son. She had two boys herself and just did as she prayed others would do if one of her lot was in trouble. She hid him away in her cellar and nursed him through three days. He went in and out of consciousness, sometimes aware enough to converse with her, other times so far gone that he soiled the cot without noticing. She put aside all notion of propriety, bathing and caring for him as she would her own kin. William remembered almost nothing of this time, and Anne joked that that was fine, as a man might get embarrassed if he did recall such things.

The ordeal left William so feeble that he couldn’t stand for a week after waking. Most of his time was spent in solitude, staring up at the ceiling and listening to the world outside the cellar window. At night, Anne’s sons and her boarders returned. He was never sure just how many people lived in the floors above him, but he began to recognize certain voices. There was the short, polite speech of a young man who left early and returned late, and the deeper voices of the workmen who stomped into and out of the house. Their boots shook free dust particles that floated down on him, catching in his hair like dandruff. Children’s voices came in a clutter of sound, intermingled with the quick patter of their feet. The girl Anne had speculated about had a strange cadence to her speech, beginning each sentence forcefully but losing steam as she spoke, the end of her statement dribbling away above him. Anne’s eldest son had a rich, baritone voice. Her younger was shriller in his speech, quicker. Neither of them bore much resemblance to her, a fact William noted when one or the other of the boys brought him food and water. One was dark-skinned and short. The other was light of complexion, with wavy hair like that of a white child. They were the only others to care for him, and, as far as he knew, none of the boarders even knew of his existence.

Anne emptied his bedpan daily, something never commented on, just a chore she attended to without complaint. She shaved his scraggly beard with her own hands, her handling of the blade precise and without hesitation. It was strange to feel the air on his chin again, to finger the smooth, sensitive skin. Anne said a clean face suited him, his features being strong as they were and best viewed without disguise. Patches down his jowls and on his upper lip were remarkably pale next to his suntanned features. Anne commented on this, but William only shrugged and looked boyish and uncomfortable, nervous as if he were standing before her unclothed. She left the blade for him to use as he wished, and she brought him a replacement shirt. Though it was not new it was embarrassingly clean and well kept when compared with his own. Before parting with his old garment he plucked the medallion from the inside of it and slipped it in the pocket of the new shirt. He did this secretly, unwilling to explain the action to Anne.

Anne was also true to her promise to help find Dover. William didn’t see most of her efforts, but she brought back word that she had sent an army of friends in search of her, using the Carr name as her primary reference point. She spoke to chambermaids as they hung linen to dry, to cook staff at the back doors to kitchens, over slatted fences and in alleyways and church pews. She sent inquiries out through colored coachmen and chatted longer than usual with the coal man. He was a grizzled man who had long sought to court her. He knew the back streets of the city and promised to find out what he could. Though her sources brought back many intimate details of the city’s white citizens, no strong lead was forthcoming. The first Carr family they discovered was of very new money, with ties across the Atlantic. As far as she could learn, they had no female children of marrying age. The second family was not of the appropriate station to match William’s descriptions; the third was a rambling group of dockworkers whom she likewise dismissed.

As the first week passed into the second Anne questioned him further on this family he claimed Dover was with. Was he sure he had got the name right? Did he know the white girl’s given name, or, better yet, her father’s? She tried to get him to remember something, anything else they could go on. She even asked him if he was sure they were from Philadelphia. Each of these questions left him ringing with doubt. He had emblazoned the Carr name onto his brain. He had formed it in his mind every day since he had heard it uttered, but as soon as he took that doubt on board nothing seemed as certain as it had before. He had never written it down, never spelled it out. He had never heard the woman addressed by that name and had no real proof of its authenticity. And that last question nearly floored him. Might he be in the wrong city? He searched back through that distant conversation with Kate and tried to see the words her lips formed. Even if he was not mistaken, Kate might have been. She knew little of the geography of this country or of the difference between Philadelphia and Providence, New York and Boston. If this city was just one of many, his search might have no ending.

One morning Anne’s youngest son brought him a book and a faded map of the city center. The map was about twenty years old, but he thought it might still prove useful. William thanked him, without asking how it might be useful. The young man nodded and slipped out the door, up the stairs and away into the upper house. Without opening it or reading the title, William set the book on the floor beside his bed. He had no interest in it. He did unfold the map, however, and lay it out on his cot. He ran his fingers over the creases, as if the imperfections would flaw the map’s details. He had seen maps of Britain and France long ago when he had been hired to that schoolboy, but that had been so long ago. It was hard to make sense of the flat dimensions before him, the grid pattern etched with hard edges, black ink against yellowed paper. He traced the wavering lines of the
city’s two rivers and eyed the letters of street names, finding nothing familiar in any of it. He tried to twin the rectangles and squares with avenues he had walked, buildings he had looked upon, but the effort was more frustrating than anything else. Before long he folded the map and slipped it back inside the book and lay back on the cot. He tried to feign indifference, but he was not indifferent. Within half an hour he had retrieved the map and leant over it to try again.

In the afternoons Anne always found time to come and sit with him. She chatted about the day’s events, the myriad dramas of the streets and the foibles of her own boarders, people she spoke of frankly but also seemed to have a fondness for. She didn’t ask him much of his history, but she never seemed surprised by it. She had known he was fugitive before he had admitted it. Known he had been a slave. Known he had been whipped and seemed to even know the designs of the scars on his back. And though she was ever kind, there was something disturbing in her knowledge of him and in his dependence on her.

“You know that girl has had three babies already?” Anne asked, speaking once more of the young woman she believed to be a prostitute. “Three babies and her hardly seventeen herself. One of them came out stillborn. Other two she sent off to her family in the country. Ask me, she should head back out there herself, but she got her own mind on things. Always thinks she’s missing something.”