An Acquaintance with Darkness (12 page)

"Come now, Emily," he was saying. "I'm not that bad, am I?"

I scowled across the table at him. "We have to have some understanding," I said to him. He nodded. "I agree."

"I can't have you ordering me around like I'm a child. I took care of Mama all that time. Since Daddy was killed."

"You did a wonderful job," he said. "And you are more mature than most girls your age. But you still need a protector, Emily. And I intend to act in that role until you are of age. I do not intend to order you around like a child. I haven't the time for it. I respect your ability to make intelligent decisions and I expect you to respect mine."

"Then why can't I go out and meet Annie today?"

"Because it is not an intelligent decision. Mobs are attacking people in the streets out there. People are running around with knives and guns. They are calling it Black Sunday, for heaven's sakes! People are frightened and angry. To say nothing of your injured foot."

I fell silent. I could see how he had always bested Mama. Why she was always angry with him. Because he was probably always right.

"So I'm like Addie, then," I said dismally. I knew I was being petulant, but I didn't care.

"Addie?"

"Yes. I met her last night."

"She can be a nusiance. Don't listen to her."

"She says she's a prisoner."

"She is not a prisoner, she is a patient. I keep her door locked, days, because she is on special medicine, and it makes her addled. She must rest. And you are not a prisoner. It is my duty to care for you. If you are angry over that, then you do not have the intelligence I have credited you with."

There was anger in his voice. It brought tears to my eyes. "What's wrong with Addie?" I asked.

"She has the Wasting Disease. Same as your mama and my wife. I'm giving Addie treatments."

"Why isn't she in a hospital?"

"Negroes don't have a very good time of it in our hospitals."

"She says you do bad things here, Uncle Valentine. And that if I live here, I'll find out."

"I do experiments, Emily. In my shed out back. And I see some patients here. In my office in front. I'm writing a paper on the diaphragm, a protector of the heart and cardiac vessels, and its influence on the organs of circulation. All this is frightening to Addie. Progress in medicine is frightening to many. They cling to the old ways. Marietta, for instance, is as bright a girl as you'll ever meet. She helps me in my lab. But when she takes sick, she won't have my medicines. Has her own supply of herbs that she grows in her own garden."

I had no answer for that. I was embarrassed. He was so forthright.

"Now, promise me you'll stay in today. And rest that foot. You can make the black paper for the front of the house. And tomorrow I'll have Robert take you to see Annie.... It's Black Sunday out there. Please, child, we're in the throes of one of the worst times we've ever had in this country."

I promised him I'd stay in. I have always known when I am bested—there's one good thing about me. I ought to know. I've been bested often enough in my life. Black Sunday....Well, they'd named it right, anyway.

O
H, JOHNNY,
Johnny, where are you? Why did you run away? How could you leave me here like this? And what about your mother and Annie? Oh, Johnny, you don't know what's going on here. You wouldn't have run away if you'd known what was going to happen. You're not a coward.

Robert was asking me something. I had to pull myself out of my reverie. "I beg your pardon?"

"I think we ought not to drive up directly in front of the house. I think we ought to park a little away down the street. Don't you?"

"Are you afraid?"

His handsome face that still sometimes reminded me of Johnny stiffened. His voice grew sad. "Why do you taunt me, Miss Pigbush?"

"Call me Emily."

"All right, then, Emily. Why do you taunt me? I've been nice to you. I like you. And I think, deep down, you have esteem for me. If I've done something to offend you, please tell me. But since I came to your uncle's house this day you've been taunting me."

"I'm sorry," I said. "But I suppose that's why. You're begging me to tell you what you did wrong. Johnny never would have begged."

"Johnny, is it?"

"
Yes.
"

He drew the horse to a stop a little down the street from the Surratt house. "Well, your precious Johnny may be begging for more than the understanding of a fourteen-year-old girl before this whole thing is through." He was angry now, but he did a good job of controlling that anger.

There was one other thing that made him different from Johnny: He still had that old military bearing about him. The way he walked, despite the limp; the way he never gave away what he was thinking; the guarded yet polite way he spoke to people; even the way he held his head.

"I apologize for not being Johnny," he said.

"And I apologize for being only fourteen."

We sat looking at each other on the front seat of the carriage. There was a challenge in the brown eyes. The moment held, with each of us staring the other down. Then, of a sudden, I smiled. And he did,
too. Then we both laughed. And the tension broke.

"To answer your question, yes. I am afraid of pulling right up in front of the Surratt house this morning," he said. "I've been through a few battles, Emily. I know when to be afraid and when not to be. And I'm not ashamed of it. And I tell you now that I'd rather face a charge by Stuart's cavalry than go into that house right now."

"You don't have to go in with me. I'll go alone." I started to get down from the carriage.

He held my arm. "Discretion is the better part of valor," he said.

"What?"

"Shakespeare.
Henry IV.
I had a lieutenant who quoted that to us all the time. He saved lots of lives. You see those four men at the end of the street?"

I looked in the direction he indicated. "Yes."

"They're detectives."

"How do you know?"

"I just do. Wait. Watch them a moment"

It only took a moment of watching before the four men walked across the street to the Surratt house.

"If that isn't an advance at the double," Robert said, "nothing is."

The detectives went up the front steps of the Surratt house and knocked on the door.

"Oh, what do they want?" I whispered to Robert.

"Just what your uncle hoped to have you avoid.
I'm beginning to think you should have met Annie in the cemetery, as you originally planned. If you had to meet with her at all."

"She's my
friend,
Robert. A person doesn't desert a friend in time of need."

"All right. All right. Just be quiet. And as calm as possible. No matter what happens. Those detectives aren't here to take Annie for a stroll in the park," he mumbled.

We could see the Surratt door open. The men went in. We waited. Robert unfolded his newspaper and started to read it. The front page was full of a proclamation by Secretary of War Stanton:

ONE HUNDRED THOUSAND DOLLARS' REWARD!

THE MURDERER OF OUR LATE BELOVED PRESIDENT,
ABRAHAM LINCOLN,
IS STILL AT LARGE!

Fifty Thousand Dollars will be paid by this Department
for his Apprehension!

Twenty-Five Thousand Dollars' Reward
for A. Atzerodt, sometimes called "Port Tobacco"!

Twenty-Five Thousand Dollars' Reward
for David E. Herold!

All persons harboring or secreting the said persons,
or either of them, or aiding or assisting their
concealment or escape will be treated as accomplices,
subject to a trial before a military commission,
and the punishment of death!

LET THE STAIN OF INNOCENT BLOOD
BE REMOVED FROM THE LAND!

At least they aren't offering a reward for Johnny,
I thought. That means they can't prove he had anything to do with it.

"Robert," I said finally, "maybe Annie needs my help. I can't sit here like this."

"You must. I can't have you charging in there. I promised your uncle I would look out for you today."

"I should have come this morning, like I wanted to." I moaned.

"I couldn't make it this morning. You know I worked last night."

"Why do you have to work at night? You're a medical student."

"I stay late at the lab. Sometimes it's the only time I can get any work done on my experiments.... Now, just be patient a few moments longer. Nobody in their right mind would go charging in there now."

Just then a man came tearing down the street, right past our carriage. He paused for a moment in front of it, eyes riveted on the Surratt house, completely unaware of us.

"I know that man," Robert said.

I looked. I knew him, too. I gasped. He was wearing a gray coat, black pants, and an old cap. His name was Powell. He'd been to the Surratt house when Johnny was home. And he'd stopped with Booth at the president's box at Ford's Theater the night Johnny took me there.

It came over me then like a cold sweat.
Booth had stopped to visit us in the president's box at Ford's Theater! Where he would come, almost a month later, to shoot the president
!

Why had Johnny taken us there that night? Was it to meet Booth? So Booth could familiarize himself with the president's box?
No, no, I must stop going down that road,
I told myself.
Down that road lies madness
.

"He was hiding in the Congressional Cemetery last night," Robert said of Powell. "I saw him climbing out of a marble vault. Just lifted the slab off and got right out. Pretty as you please. Like he was getting out of bed in the morning."

"I thought you were working in the laboratory last night."

"I had to go to a late funeral."

I had the feeling he was lying to me. But I had other things to think of now.

Together we watched as Powell crossed the street right in front of us, walked to the Surratt house, went swiftly up the steps, and knocked on the door. It opened. He was admitted.

"That's the same man," Robert said with certainty. "He was up to no good then, and he's up to no good now."

Powell's clothing had looked disheveled, as if he'd been hiding somewhere. I said nothing. Why would Powell go rushing into the Surratt house now? Apparently he did not know detectives were inside. We waited some more. After a while a carriage pulled up in front of the Surratts' house and two more men went inside. Then they came out the front door: six detectives, Annie, Mrs. Mary, and Powell.

Their hands were manacled behind their backs. Even Annie's.

"No!" Again I started to get down from my seat.

Again Robert stopped me. "Don't be a fool!"

"A fool? To care about my friend? They're taking her away!"

"They have to. Likely to question her. If she and her mother are innocent, they'll let them go. What do you think you can do, anyway? Besides involving yourself?"

He was right. I could do nothing but watch as four detectives got into the carriage with Annie, Mrs. Mary, and Powell, and the other two walked back across the street to where their own carriage was parked. The two carriages, one following the other, drove right by us, going the other way.

I saw the detectives, grim faced, staring ahead. I saw Annie. She seemed to be struggling with her hands so manacled. She looked right at me as their carriage passed by.

"Robert!" I moaned.

"She'll be all right," he insisted. "If she's innocent, she'll be all right."

"You believe that? Didn't you just read that proclamation by Stanton in the paper? He's out for blood!"

"Damn," he said. "I knew that man Powell was up to no good, climbing out of a vault in the cemetery at midnight. Somehow he's connected with all this! Why didn't I stop him when I had the chance?"

"Midnight?" I looked at him. "They hold funerals at midnight now?"

"Sometimes they do," he said.

"You and Uncle Valentine seem to go to more funerals."

"Doctors do, when their patients die. And the time isn't always convenient. Don't split hairs, Emily."

"Don't you sit there all superiorlike and tell me not to split hairs. You just lied to me, Robert deGraaf, telling me you were working last night in the lab. And now it turns out you were in the cemetery at midnight, seeing a man climb out of a marble vault!"

"I wasn't aware that I had to account to you for my actions.
You
lied to
me.
You knew that man. You'd seen him before. Likely at the Surratts'."

"I think you're despicable to hold me to every thing I say when I've just watched my best friend being taken away by the police! You don't know how that feels!"

"My best friend was killed at Gettysburg. So don't tell me I don't know, Emily, please."

"Well, this is different."

"It sure is." He picked up the reins and clicked to the horse.

"Where are we going?"

"Home."

"No, we can't, please. We must go in the house."

"The
house!
What for?"

"The cat," I said. "Annie has a cat."

His stare got colder and colder. "Go on."

"Well, there's no telling how long the police will keep Annie. And Puss-in-Boots has to be fed, doesn't she?"

"Puss-in-Boots?"

"The cat. Annie took care of my cat and my bird when we had to leave Surrattsville and couldn't bring them here to Washington. I can't do any less for her, can I?"

He agreed that I couldn't. But he didn't like it. Reluctantly, he guided the horse up in front of our old house. "Now what?" he asked.

"The detectives are all gone. And I know how to get in the back door. Please."

He relented. But only if he could come with me. So we went through the yard of my old house, then through the yard next door and into the Surratts' yard. The last time I'd been here was when Uncle Valentine came to fetch me in the rain. It seemed like years ago, instead of days.

No one was home in the house next door. Or if they were, they were minding their own business. "I'm indulging you," Robert kept saying as he followed me up the back steps and I fetched the key from under a flower pot on the back porch. "I know I'm going to be sorry for this."