What Is Visible: A Novel (24 page)

D
octor holds the spoon to my lips, and I open just enough to allow it. The first offering is heavy, sticky, familiar. I tongue the residue from my front teeth. Enduring sweetness.

“Honey, of course,” I write on the pad Doctor has set in front of me for the benefit of Dr. Combe, whom he has invited to witness. Too easy.

Doctor pats my hand and offers me a sip of water. Then another spoonful, this time like grains of sand. I remember this, the sensation of the sea upon my tongue.

“Salt!” I write and hold my glass out for Doctor to fill it again.

Twice more, he feeds me, and then I wait as he and Dr. Combe confer.

“Not as well as you’d hoped,” Doctor says.

“Tell me.”

“Knew you couldn’t suddenly―”

“If you give me right food―”

“No. It is as always. You are as always.”

I stand, registering the vibration of the crack as my glass falls from the table. “I am not as always. I can taste everything.” Footsteps shake the room; he must have asked Dr. Combe to leave. He is embarrassed that I am making a scene. I hold out my arms until he takes my hand again.

“Should I lie?” he asks.

“No.” But I know that a lie to him might be the truth to me.

“Got one right. Only—”

I crush his fingers in my fist. “You want me to fail. Great Doctor wrong? Don’t know anything about me.”

“Knew you’d guess by texture, so—”

“I know what I know.”

“Used pepper jelly instead of―”

I drop my hand before he can write another word. I brush the front of my dress for crumbs and walk out the door. It was honey. Honey, I’m sure of it. The rest doesn’t matter.

O
h, Charlie, what have you done?” Chev changed the bandages on his friend’s head as the blood seeped through the gauze. He’d given him laudanum twice today for the headaches, but Sumner still complained. It had only been two weeks since he was beaten almost to death on the Senate floor by Representative Preston Brooks. Brooks claimed Sumner wasn’t even gentleman enough for a duel after what he’d said in his three-hour speech, raving against the Kansas-Nebraska Act, which gave settlers of those territories the right to choose slavery or to abhor it. For the assault with his gold-headed gutta-percha cane, Brooks was fined a measly three hundred dollars.

“I have to go back,” Sumner said, his words slurred from the slice through his lip.

“Not now,” Chev told him, wiping the sweat from his face. “In time.” He regaled Sumner with the tenderness he usually reserved for only his youngest patients. He drifted back to sleep, woke yelling from a nightmare, his words indistinct.

“What was it?” Chev asked.

“I don’t know. Chasing me.”

He soothed him by telling of the thousands who had attended rallies in his support not only in Boston, but in Albany, Cleveland, Detroit, New York, and Providence.

“Cleveland?” he said, and for the first time since the accident, he laughed, a low, gurgling sound. Chev employed the nightstand as a podium and repeated the rousing speech that he himself had delivered at the Faneuil Hall rally, defending his friend. He reminded Sumner about the million copies of his now famous Senate speech that had been distributed all over the North, but didn’t mention the hundreds of new gold-headed canes that had been sent to Preston Brooks from all over the South to replace the one he broke on Sumner’s head.

“So I got the whole country riled?” Sumner asked, attempting a smile that looked more like a grimace.

“Yes, indeed.” Chev held his tongue regarding the repercussions he felt sure would come, and quickly, from this event. The republic had never been so polarized. Charlie had made sure of that. But slavery was an abomination, and it was probably true that there would be no other way for it to meet its end than with violence.

“Cleveland.” Sumner laughed again and closed his eyes, glad, Chev thought, at what he had wrought. Maybe that was because he’d always been a man who could only fight with words. He’d claimed he was channeling Demosthenes and Cicero, but the truth was that the “Crime Against Kansas” was three hours of vulgarity, far crasser and less noble than Charlie had ever been in his five years in Congress. His lowest note was mocking South Carolina Senator Butler’s speech and mannerisms, which all knew were the result of a stroke. Chev was disappointed in his closest friend, though of course the blight of slavery was far more disappointing. A duel would have been more manly, and God knows Sumner needed to be presented to the world as manly.

Even Julia was so concerned that she came to help out when she could spare herself from the children and the writing, and poor Laura had offered her services as well, though she’d always loathed Sumner and God knows Chev wouldn’t wish such a nurse on anyone. He recalled how she tortured Miss Wight with good intentions when she had her spells. Julia was as wound up about abolitionism as he was now—a tie that finally helped bind them—and the time had come for him to act. With the help of their dear friend, the Reverend Theodore Parker, the abolitionists, the Free-Soilers, and the former Cotton Whigs had united to supply the new band of seven hundred and fifty Kansas settlers. They’d raised almost six thousand dollars, most to go for Sharps rifles, revolvers, ammunition, and Bowie knives. Chev could not lock up his principles any longer, living in fear of contributing to the havoc; it was too late for that after Bleeding Kansas and bleeding Charlie. He had been approached by a man intimately involved in settling matters in those territories, sometimes in the direst of ways. But these were the direst of times, and so he charged forward, not daring to look back.

The day before Sumner’s speech, the country had thundered with news of the Border Ruffians’ sack of Lawrence, and then the retaliation on the Pottawatomie by Chev’s new compatriot, John Brown. Atrocities on both sides, with Brown and his sons cutting off the arms and butchering the remains of the Ruffians they thought were responsible, though these men did not themselves hold any slaves.

By January of the next year, 1857, John Brown had arrived in Boston. He met for the first time with his most loyal New England supporters—Chev, George Stearns, young Franklin Sanborn, and the two ministers Theodore Parker and Thomas Wentworth Higginson. But not Sumner; his psychic wounds were deep, and Chev didn’t know that he should return to the Senate at all, though he swore he would. Already his enemies were accusing him of cowardice.

With his cropped graying hair and streaked beard, Brown looked as if he’d stepped straight from the pages of the Old Testament, a prophet blessed with great self-possession and natural gravity. Everyone looked quite ordinary compared to Brown. For a man in his late fifties, how could it be that his eyes gleamed so electric, a beam as focused as the light that shone on Calvary? If Sumner was the Negroes’ greatest friend, then Brown was their deliverer. The group all agreed instantly that Brown was their man and cobbled together money for his expenses, a letter of credit, and one hundred of the Sharps rifles. Chev gave him a rifle and two pistols himself, placed them directly into those powerful hands that would wring such justice from the world. Gerrit Smith of New York joined them, putting his entire vast estate at the disposal of the abolitionists.

Chev brought Brown home to Perkins. He had told Julia all about him, and the man was so extraordinary that he wanted his family to meet him. They had had guests from Boz to the governor in this house, but he had never felt such reverence in introducing anyone. He could see in his wife’s eyes that she too beheld the singular greatness in the man; Julia rarely, if ever, became flustered, but she acted like Moses himself had stepped over the threshold. She declared him a Puritan of the Puritans. Cook had outdone herself, serving up a feast of roast mutton, tortoise soup, baked doves, and a layered huckleberry cake. Chev had made a point of not inviting Laura to dine with them because he knew she would prove a distraction, and yet at the last moment, she wandered in, brought no doubt by the great preparations rocking the first floor. He couldn’t keep her away from anything. Brown eyed her, and she was the first person who had appeared to interest him.

“Laura Bridgman,” Chev said.

Brown nodded. “I have heard much of her. One of our Father’s miracles, I’d say.”

Chev tried to explain quickly to Laura just who the man was as he led her to Brown, in the hope that she would behave accordingly. Every night, the students were read the
Transcript
, with one teacher appointed to translate for Laura. So although she was reasonably kept up with the news and politics, so far she had displayed a disappointing lack of interest in the slave question and the civil strife it promised. She curtsied, and upon standing, offered her hand to Brown. He held it firmly but with great courtesy, and yet she suddenly jerked her hand out of his grasp. She backed away and into Chev, who shook her for her rudeness.

“What’s wrong with you?”

She spelled back in near frenzy. “Mad. He is mad.”

“Please excuse her,” he told Brown, who didn’t look concerned. “Sometimes she skitters like a frightened horse.”

“Put in the bit,” Brown said quietly and walked away.

She must have felt the immense power emanating from his hands, so that was actually a good sign. Chev trusted her to act as his barometer for the extraordinary. But he still didn’t want her at the dinner table, so he sent her back out to her cottage. For once, she seemed glad to go. Brown hardly spoke during the meal and left far earlier than the Howes had hoped. He simply wasn’t a brandy and cigars kind of fellow.

The next week, in one of their many discussions on the abolitionist platform, Julia suggested that Laura could actually be quite useful in the grand scheme of things. Chev was not so sure she would volunteer to be of help; her ardor for her dear Chev had quite noticeably cooled. When he walked into a room, she sensed it immediately and usually took her leave forthwith. That was the thanks he got for rescuing her from death, a death she was hell-bent to bring upon herself. At least she’d never brought up again her alleged ability to taste and seemed to be eating enough, presumably satisfied with the provided victuals. If he were made of weaker stuff, he would’ve patronized and encouraged her delusions, which he was certain would have proved more damaging to her in the long run.

When he and Julia sat her down in the parlor, Laura held herself ramrod straight, her head cocked to one side like an inquisitive parrot. She clearly knew it was a serious matter if they were both meeting with her.

“Angry about Mr. Brown?” she wrote before they could begin.

“No,” Chev told her. “But why?”

“Brown not blind, but―”

“Of course, he’s not blind.”

“Only one big eye, like Cyclops.”

Chev couldn’t believe it. “Where in the world did she get hold of Homer?”

Julia laughed. “No worse than the Bible for her.”

“Mr. Brown has two eyes,” Chev wrote.

“Sees only one thing,” Laura countered. “Mad.” She fidgeted with her eyeshade, and for one frightening moment, Chev was afraid she was going to suddenly rip it off, which would be too much of a shock for Julia, who was not accustomed to such awful sights.

“She says he’s mad,” Chev told his wife.

“Well, she has held the hands of many maniacs and idiots. Perhaps she feels something―”

“You’re doubting the man now? Based on Laura’s assessment?”

“You’re the one who’s always claimed she could tell more from a person’s touch in thirty seconds than the rest of us could in thirty years.”

Chev looked disconcerted for a moment. “She does have her way, but I have no doubts whatsoever that Brown is willing to devote his life to the redemption of the colored race.”

He took Laura’s hand again, though her expression was obstinate. “We are helping Brown fight slavery.”

“He’s bad.”

“Slavery is bad.” Chev couldn’t believe he felt the need to explain himself to her.

“L,” Julia wrote, “surely you care about slaves.”

“I am not free,” Laura wrote, pushing down so hard that Chev could see the prints of her fingers in his wife’s palm. “I am not free to even be a woman like you.”

“Of course you are,” Julia said.

Chev noted that both women’s palms were sweating. Strange. Laura’s hands almost never sweated; she used a dusting of powder to make sure of it.

He tried again. “On Exhibition Days, help by writing against slavery to visitors.”

“What exhibition? You hardly show me.”

“I will then. You can write about Negroes. Have great influence.”

“You are all black to me,” Laura wrote. “Everyone is dark. Think it is the same for God.”

Julia was excited; she grabbed Laura’s hand again. “You could write exactly that.”

Laura sat for a moment, her lips twisted as if in exasperation, then tapped Chev’s arm and gestured at the door. “Go?”

“Yes,” he told her, and he and his wife were left alone. “You’d think she’d feel for the slaves, see that they are held captive as she is.”

“Why don’t you have the press raise
Uncle Tom’s Cabin
? It’s been out five years already, and none of your girls have read it. If only Laura could see one of the ‘Tom’ shows running. Two on right now in Boston.”

“I keep meaning…But that Stowe woman, she just rubs me―”

“Harriet is not my favorite model either, but I think the atrocities of the book will impress Laura, even if it’s not particularly well written.”

“That’s the other thing. I’ve always made a concerted effort not to overstimulate her. Those who are merely blind are subject to a much greater disturbance of their faculties when confronted with such horror, but with Laura the sensitivity is severely heightened. Who knows what she might do?”

“I think you’re more afraid of her getting started on religion again.”

“Even if I ordered the press to start tomorrow, it would still take a couple of years for the full print. And we have several other important books pending.”

Julia sighed theatrically. “I’ve tried to rile Laura up on women’s rights, you know, but she takes no interest in that either.”

His least favorite subject. Thank God Laura still had some sense, Chev thought, but shook his head in mock conciliation. “I’m surprised. She has perhaps lost her tender streak with age.”

“It can happen to the best of us,” Julia said quietly, then stood and left the room.

October 18, 1859. A day Chev would never forget. John Brown had been taken alive, but seriously wounded, at Harpers Ferry, Virginia, by Col. Robert E. Lee and company. Brown’s small band of eighteen, including two of his sons and five Negroes, had held the government arsenal for two days. His sons were dead, and none of the Negroes he’d been expecting from neighboring plantations had joined the rebellion. All this time the South had cowered in fear of a slave uprising, yet even the slaves Brown had freed voluntarily returned to their masters. For the life of him, Chev didn’t understand this; none of the abolitionists did.

He’d known old Brown was planning something, and the Secret Six, as they’d come to be called, had kept sending him money, Sharps rifles, and pikes. Brown was indicted exactly one week after his capture for treason and murder, and Chev immediately formed a committee to provide for his defense. True to his word, Brown refused to implicate the Northerners, but the authorities found letters and other papers incriminating the six at his farm just over the Maryland border.

Rumor had it that a federal warrant might be issued for the arrests of the Secret Six and they could be extradited to Virginia, where they could end up being tried for conspiracy. The Chevalier had never panicked in his life, but now he did. The month he’d spent in a Prussian prison in 1832 had hardened him against any real martyrdom. It had been soul-killing, and he’d only been in his early thirties then; now at almost sixty, he would fear for his life and his sanity. Let Brown be the holy martyr. Chev left nothing to chance; he composed a letter to the newspapers, disclaiming any prior knowledge of Brown’s plans. Of the assault at Harpers Ferry, he wrote, “It is still to me a mystery and a marvel.” By the day the letter appeared in print, Chev was on his way to Canada, telling his family and close acquaintances that it was a long-planned trip to recruit Canadians to teach the blind. He tried to get the others to flee with him, but only Stearns went.