Veiled in Smoke

by Jocelyn Green

  A troubled look creased Miss Dean’s forehead. “Oh, I don’t know. That’s against regulation.”

  Sylvie placed the small bundle on the counter. “Please. There’s nothing harmful here, only things that would surely help him. Wool socks, a newspaper, a book of poetry.” Inside the book, they’d written notes to him between the sonnets. “Our father owned a bookstore. Surely you would allow us to give him something to read. Surely it isn’t healthy for his mind to be unoccupied.”

  Miss Dean twisted a finger in the beaded chain attached to her glasses. “I’ll see what I can do. Now, as for your appointment with Dr. Franklin, I wasn’t aware of anything on his schedule today.”

  Nate rapped his knuckles on the counter. “Excellent. Then he can make time to see us. We’ll wait if necessary, but we won’t leave without speaking to a doctor. Thank you.”

  The receptionist sighed. “The three of you will need to find some seats and be patient.”

  “Of course.” Nate smiled, and Meg watched it produce the desired disarming effect on Miss Dean. She plucked off her glasses, slid Sylvie’s package into a drawer, and excused herself from the room.

  Seated against the wall was the same elderly couple Meg had seen the last time she was here. The grey-haired woman knitted while the man beside her stared vacantly at the tops of his shoes. Meg ached with sympathy for them. When the woman met Meg’s gaze and smiled warmly, Meg couldn’t help but return it.

  Meg sat down beside her. “Excuse me,” she began. “You were here last time I came to visit my father’s doctor, weren’t you?”

  “Why, yes, I’m sure I was. I’m here every day, you see. My daughter is somewhere up there.” She lifted her gaze toward some hidden place.

  “Do you get to see her?” Meg asked.

  “Oh no. No, not unless it’s warm enough for the patients to work outside. In that case, they sometimes let me see her through a window. But I find comfort in being beneath the same roof as her. I can’t let her go, you see, even though she’s fifty and I’m seventy-one. I’ll never stop being her mother. At least this way we’re not really apart, even though we aren’t together.” With a gentle nod, she resumed her knitting. “And if you don’t mind my saying so, your father will never stop being your father either. That bond is for life, and beyond.”

  Though age and hardship had touched this woman, her kindness and love made her so beautiful to Meg that it nearly took her breath away. She wanted to paint her seamed face, to capture the bright flame of generous spirit in the midst of such a place.

  “So where is he?” Sylvie murmured. She wandered from the reception room into the hall, looking toward the arch that divided the public rooms from the corridor that led to hidden places.

  Meg excused herself and followed her sister. “Up there somewhere.” She pointed to the ceiling. “That’s the floor that holds the men. Women are on the upper floors.”

  The buttons of his frock coat unfastened, Nate hooked his thumbs into his trouser pockets and joined them.

  “Do they ever go outside?” Sylvie asked.

  “Sometimes.” Nate cleared his throat. “There is a farm on the grounds behind the building. They use the patients to work it. But during the winter, no, they don’t get out much.”

  Pounding sounded on the floor above them. A man screamed, and another shouted to drown him out, his chanted nursery rhyme growing frantic to cover the sound of another’s despair.

  A ridge between her eyes, Sylvie glided closer to the arch, staring up at the noise. A dull thump and a cry of pain silenced the screaming. The patient shouting “Humpty Dumpty” continued. “‘All the king’s horses and all the king’s men couldn’t put Humpty together again!’ He sat on a wall! He had a great fall! They couldn’t put him back together!”

  Meg shuddered. “All things made new,” she whispered in spontaneous prayer. “Dear Lord, make all of us new.”

  “Ah, Mr. Pierce? Misses Townsend?” Miss Dean’s meek voice was soon overshadowed by a heavy tread.

  Meg wheeled around to see Dr. Franklin approaching and Miss Dean ducking back into the reception room.

  “You stay away from there.” The doctor beckoned them away from the arch.

  “Dr. Franklin. Good to see you again.” Nate’s voice bounced off the walls.

  “I doubt that, but let’s not waste time quibbling, shall we?” He jerked his head to indicate they should follow him into his office.

  The room felt even smaller now that there were four of them. Even before the doctor claimed his chair, Meg began.

  “My father, Stephen Townsend, is innocent of the crime charged to him, the murder of Hiram Sloane, that prompted his arrest and committal to the asylum. Another man confessed to it. You can read about it in this morning’s Tribune.”

  A copy of the paper lay folded on his desk. He must have already seen it, for his expression bore no surprise. With a hooded gaze, Dr. Franklin stared at her. “And?”

  “And so he doesn’t need to be here,” Sylvie replied. “The cause of his arrest is obsolete. We want to take him home.”

  “Just like that.” The doctor snapped his fingers. “Without even asking about his treatments and progress.”

  “Would you tell us if we asked?” Meg gripped the ends of her muffler, burying her fists in the wool. Nate’s presence was a quiet source of strength beside her. As he let her and Sylvie steer the conversation, she knew he was observing it all, digesting and dissecting, ready to step in.

  A slow smile parted Dr. Franklin’s chapped lips, revealing small, straight teeth. “I would tell you that he has responded to treatments the way we expected him to. I would also say that even if we were sure he was no longer a danger to society, removing him from our care makes him more of a danger to himself. He’s at peace here. He’s happy.”

  Meg scoffed. “Happy?”

  “The pressures of the outside world are so many, and especially heavy for one burdened with soldier’s heart. Here, there are no expectations upon him. We do not require him to do anything except eat and sleep and take his medications. He is free from the fear of failure, because there is nothing he can fail at.”

  “You mean there is nothing for him to do,” Nate said. “He eats and sleeps and takes medicine? What kind of life is that?”

  “A safe one, Mr. Pierce. And for a patient with soldier’s heart, safety is a luxury he’s rather fond of.”

  Memories reeled before Meg of her father pacing, patrolling, up at nights, completely convinced that Rebels were coming to kill him. “You mean he doesn’t suffer paranoia about lurking danger anymore?”

  The doctor spread his hands wide. “Even he can recognize the security of our facility. Not even his family can get in to see him.”

  “But we’re no threat,” Sylvie said.

  He cocked his head. “Aren’t you? Have you never demanded that he perform a task of which he was incapable? Have you never made him feel the weight of your disappointment in him? Your shame?”

  Pink blotches crept up Sylvie’s neck. Meg’s fingers went cold even though they were wrapped in fabric.

  “As I thought.” Dr. Franklin smiled. “He is free from all of that here. He poses no threat, for he feels no threat.”

  Nate frowned. “You mean he feels nothing at all. How much opiates do you give him?”

  Dr. Franklin stood. “Enough to do the job. He’s learned to prefer them over the alternative.”

  A picture of her father filled Meg’s mind. But he was neither the bookish, affectionate father of her childhood, nor the suspicious insomniac who could not let a stray animal go hungry. The vision she conjured instead was of a man slumped in a chair, unresponsive, a string of drool swaying from his mouth. Looking at Sylvie, she saw her horror reflected in her sister’s dark eyes.

  “The alternative,” Nate repeated, a fire kindling in his voice. “An alternative method of keeping him subdued. Which is it, Franklin? A wooden crib or isolation?”

  “The crib proved ineffective. Isolati
on, however . . . We learned to add a straitjacket to keep him from injuring himself. But like I said, 283 now takes his medicine.”

  Meg winced at the idea of a crib for a grown man. How wretched. How dehumanizing.

  “What?” Sylvie whispered. “Stop this. Stop what you’re doing. He’s not a number, he’s a person. He’s my father.” She was shaking.

  “What you’re telling us is that our father would rather feel nothing at all than feel alone.” Meg’s eyelids grew hot and sticky, and her voice faltered. Nate gently put his hand on the small of her back. Meg knew it was not a gesture to quiet her but to infuse her with strength she sorely needed. She drew a fortifying breath. “But he’s never been more alone than he is here, even without solitary confinement. Discharge him.”

  “I can’t do that. It isn’t up to me alone.”

  Sylvie folded her arms. “Does he even get the letters we send?”

  “Calm yourself, young lady. If I say he gets your letters, he gets them.”

  But Meg suspected her father was in no condition to read them. Not if he was drugged into oblivion. Hurt and frustration combusted into anger. She clenched her teeth, completely at a loss for a reply.

  “This isn’t a prison, Dr. Franklin, or at least it shouldn’t be,” Nate said. “Ironically, if it were, he’d be released. He’s innocent of the crime that brought him here. You keep him at taxpayer expense against the wishes of his family. Might make for an interesting story on the use of public funds.”

  Dr. Franklin threw back his shoulders. “I told you, the decision isn’t mine alone to make.”

  “Then whose is it?” Meg asked. “I want to talk to them.”

  “The committee includes several doctors and psychologists, and they are not available to you. Now, if you’ll excuse me, there’s nothing more I can do for you today.”

  “You can tell him we were here.” Meg wrapped her muffler around her neck. “Tell him we want to bring him home and will do whatever it takes to make that happen. He needs to be with his family.”

  “Sometimes family doesn’t know best.” The doctor’s tone was clipped and clinical.

  She looked him square in the face, refusing to be cowed. “Sometimes family is the only thing worth living for. And what he’s doing here isn’t any kind of living at all.”

  WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 22, 1871

  Two slices of bread sagged on a tin plate black with filth. Poorly cooked hominy pooled beside it, soaking into the crust. But paired with the recent news that Otto Schneider had confessed to the murder of Hiram Sloane, Stephen felt like he could stomach it.

  He hadn’t done it. He hadn’t killed his friend. It was right there in the newspaper for all to read: charges against Stephen Townsend had been dropped. Schneider remained in custody. Inwardly, Stephen celebrated this, even though the authorities still called him crazy. Not every battle was won—or even fought—at once.

  Hugh elbowed Stephen in the ribs. “Look at that slop and tell me it doesn’t take you back to a nobler time, eh?” His stutter hadn’t faded, but it no longer fazed Stephen at all.

  He watched the gruel’s sickly spread and knew exactly what Hugh meant.

  A tremor shook the Irishman, either from too much medicine or from being without it. It was hard to tell the difference. “At least during the war we were fighting for something. We were taking a stand.” Hugh spooned the food into his mouth, just the same.

  The windows were locked shut, and without a breath of fresh air, a foul smell permeated the room. It might have been the food. Or the men.

  Sipping cold tea from a rusty tin cup, Stephen scanned the dining room. Fifty men hunched over their plates in rows on long narrow benches. A few of the men looked up at him, their expressions lucid. A man named Charlie, prone to seizures, sang to himself in the corner of the room. Henrik rocked back and forth on the floor, arms wrapped around his knees. In straitjackets, Patrick and Amos ate off their plates like dogs. Learning who they were had been an act of defiance and humanity for Stephen. If he didn’t want to be known as a number, he ought to know their names too.

  At Andersonville, he had organized an oratorical society among the prisoners to keep their minds sharp. In the last couple of weeks, he’d tried to rouse interest in such a group here too. Hugh wouldn’t join, on account of the stutter, but a few other patients did. The mental exercise helped a little. It would have been better if more participated, but most were too mellowed out with medicine.

  Perhaps that was how they preferred it.

  Stifling a sigh, Stephen folded a piece of bread in half and sopped up the repulsive liquid in case there might be any nutrients hiding inside. As he muscled it down with a hard swallow, he fought the current of memory threatening to sweep him back to the war. “‘Make not your thoughts your prison,’” he muttered to himself.

  “What’s that?” Hugh blinked at him. “Your thoughts a prison?”

  “It’s a line from Shakespeare’s play Antony and Cleopatra. Caesar is speaking to Cleopatra, but I find the words a relevant reminder to myself.”

  Hugh scratched behind his ear. “’Tis a fancy line of thinking for a man supposed to be taking the drugs.”

  Instinctively, Stephen scanned the room for attendants, but none were present. They didn’t eat here, but in a separate room, probably with better food. “I don’t take the opiates. I tuck the pills in my cheek when I swallow, but I don’t wash them down. I’ll never go back to that drooling slow-witted version of myself again. But I do take the tincture at night that helps me sleep.” He still had hallucinations, but not when he was sleeping.

  A slow grin split Hugh’s weathered face, revealing the loss of two more teeth to scurvy. “You mean the whiskey. You drink the whiskey they give you at night.”

  Stephen frowned. “It doesn’t taste like whiskey.”

  “No, not like the good stuff. They’ve added powders to it. But the effect is the same, isn’t it? It makes you feel better. Whiskey’ll do that. Bet you’ll never go without it again.”

  Cold expanded from the pit of Stephen’s stomach. He didn’t want to drink whiskey every night. He didn’t want to form a dependence on it, or soon he’d be drinking more than a man should. But neither did he want to return to insomnia. Years of sleep deprivation had whittled away at him physically, mentally, emotionally. Now that he knew what solid sleep did for him, he couldn’t bear the future without it.

  “Me,” Hugh was saying, “I’ll never give up the whiskey or the opiates. I’ve gotten to where I can’t stand to be without either one, you know?”

  “You mean you’re addicted?”

  An exaggerated shrug yanked one shoulder toward Hugh’s ear. “Don’t mind if I am. As long as I stay here, they give me what I want.”

  “But that stuff changes us. You can’t possibly feel like yourself that way.”

  Hugh’s checkered smile turned wan. “My friend, that is entirely the point. You think I like who I am? You think anyone here likes who they are?”

  Stephen dropped his spoon onto his plate. “I think you’ve forgotten who that is. How long have you been in the asylum, anyway?”

  “I came right after Lincoln was shot.”

  That was more than six years ago. Six years! Stephen couldn’t imagine passing such a vast amount of time in this place. Especially since Meg and Sylvie had delivered a taste of the outside world.

  “You done eating yet, Hugh?”

  The Irishman slanted his gaze. “Why do you ask?”

  “Because I have something for you, and believe me, you won’t want to put anything else in your mouth after this.”

  Hugh’s eyebrows lifted. “I’m ready now, I am.”

  Stephen smiled as he pressed a peppermint candy into his friend’s palm, then unwrapped one for himself and popped it into his mouth. Sylvie had added them to the package with a note: Hope you still like these. Of course he did. He’d forgotten how much.

  The vibrant flavor sprang to life, refreshing his palate and clearing hi
s mind. He used to keep peppermints in the pocket of his waistcoat when he ran the bookstore with Ruth. Whenever he’d held Sylvie on his lap, she’d sneak one out for herself. Any time he needed to approach a customer, he made sure to freshen his breath with a peppermint first. So the taste wasn’t merely a pleasure for its own sake. It brought forth recollections from the happiest years of his life, when Ruth was still beside him. The girls paged through storybooks by the hearth. The smells of coffee and pastries from the neighboring merchants mingled with the smell of books. Oh, how he had loved those books, before the war stole his ability to concentrate.

  Hugh groaned with pleasure. “Where on earth did you get it?”

  “My daughters brought a package for me yesterday. Miss Dean snuck it in to me, but don’t say anything about it. I’d hate for her to get in trouble.”

  “What else was in it?”

  Stephen tucked the peppermint into his cheek. The most significant item was the newspaper with news of Schneider’s confession, but he didn’t want to talk about that right now. “Socks,” he said instead, pulling up his trouser leg to show the thick grey wool on his feet. “And a volume of poetry by John Donne. He was—is—my favorite poet.” When Hugh gave no sign of recognition, Stephen continued. “He was the dean of St. Paul’s Cathedral in London in the 1600s. It was a tumultuous time for religion, and he was passionate about his faith.” In fact, Donne’s passion had both inspired Stephen when he was considering a future in theology and reminded him that faith was profoundly personal.

  Hugh puckered his lips, sucking on the candy. “Did he write anything I might have heard? Give us a line.”

  This was unexpected. But the first stanza of one of the holy sonnets easily rolled off his tongue:

  “Batter my heart, three-person’d God, for you

  As yet but knock, breathe, shine, and seek to mend;

  That I may rise and stand, o’erthrow me, and bend