“Saw you at the parade yesterday,” Colm said.
For a moment her feet forgot their purpose and entangled themselves in her petticoat, causing her to stumble and nearly fall. Had he been among the masked men who’d thrown that flour admixture in her face? No. Each one of the men had spoken and none with an Irish accent. And surely she’d have recognized his blotchy skin or the uneven slope of his shoulders. Still, the tone of his voice made her leery. “Oh? I didn’t see you.”
“Went in costume, I did.”
“As Mephistopheles, I should expect,” she said. But clearly, he’d not read Goethe, as he took no offense at the gibe.
“No.”
“A leprechaun, then?”
At this, he frowned. “As a court jester, if you please. And you ought’a been in costume too for all that ruckus you caused, marching with them other darkies like that behind the parade. Mr. Whitmark would be none too pleased if he knew.”
It had not occurred to Effie someone she knew might have seen her yesterday, holding the banner with the others. She’d thought of little else aside from her proximity to Samson. Six times their shoulders had brushed amid the jostle of the revelers. Then that first jeer rang out. An orange peel struck her cheek. Fear swelled inside her. Would the crowd mob them? But Samson had looked at her, as if he sensed the uptick of her pulse, and smiled bravely. She knew then there was nowhere in the world she’d rather be than there beside him. The clamor of onlookers beat against her eardrums, elbows jabbed at her back, wads of paper and peanut shells struck her skirts, but somehow she remembered the moment as a private one. Herself, Samson, the touch of his shoulder, the ease of his smile—the rest was just a blurry backdrop. Colm had no place in the memory.
“It was nothing.”
“Nothing? Not two years ago there was an out and out battle—right there in front of the customs house—’cause of black leagues like yours.”
“We’re a Republican ward club, not some vigilante league.”
“So you are part of them.”
“No, I mean . . . not really.”
“Why were you with them, then?”
It wouldn’t do to explain that she’d fallen in love with one of the club’s leaders. A brute like Colm would never understand. Besides, what she did with her precious few hours away from the shop and demands of the dead was none of his business.
“They’re friends is all, and I’d thank you to keep out of my private life.”
Friends. An ill-chosen word, perhaps. After all, she’d met the lot of them only twice. Surely that didn’t fit Mr. Webster’s definition. And yet, saying the word sent a strange thrill through her.
Colm snickered. “Maybe you ought’a find different friends then. Mr. Whitmark’s got enough to do defending his name without one of his workers hanging out with the likes of radicals.”
She took hold of both cases in one hand and shook out the tired fingers of the other. Was it so radical to want to walk down the street unmolested? To want to send your children to the same good schools white children attended? To want a seat at the theater, soda shop, or on the streetcar? It hardly seemed so radical to her. She switched cases to the other hand and gave her fingers a shake. Tiny pinpricks of pain spread across her hand with the return of blood. Besides, she wasn’t involved with the ward club anyway. She’d attended one meeting and held the corner of a banner for the span of three blocks.
Still, she remembered the scratch marks on the shop’s shingle the day she arrived. SCALAWAG. It couldn’t be easy for Mr. Whitmark, a Unionist in a city of Seceshes. Would he mind her association with the club? Surely not. He was a Republican himself. Colm hadn’t the slightest notion of Mr. Whitmark’s true character.
“I dare say, he’d—” She paused and dropped behind him, skirting the edge of the sidewalk to make room for an approaching couple out on an early-morning promenade. The man wore a single-breasted frock coat of blue wool, the woman flounces of silk. Colm set down the cooling table and doffed his cap to them. The man touched the brim of this glossy top hat while his companion gave a languid nod in Colm’s direction. Neither of them looked at Effie and proceeded on as if she’d not been there at all, even as the hem of the woman’s skirt brushed Effie’s in passing.
“I dare say he’d like even less knowing you steal sips from the flask of whiskey he keeps tucked away in the mahogany display casket,” she finished.
Colm’s neck turned scarlet. He glared at her but said nothing more.
* * *
Several minutes later, he stopped in front of a large house and opened the iron gate. Effie hesitated a moment before following him through. Sculpted hedges and well-tended flowerbeds perfumed the air. Leafing magnolia trees dappled the flagstone walkway in shade. A double-gallery colonnade with lacy iron railings rose above the yard.
“Who died here?” Effie asked, her voice just above a whisper.
“The son of some famous officer or other from the War.”
“How old?”
“Twenty-three. I think that’s what Mr. Whitmark said.”
The beauty of the house disquieted her—its lush surroundings, its symmetrical facade, its vibrant blue shutters closed out of respect for the dead. Perhaps that was it. No matter how grandly or wretchedly you lived, death, in his time, would find you. She opened the dressing case and selected a door badge of black crepe with a white rosette and ribbon. She hung it over the knocker before following Colm around the house to the back entrance.
A young Negro maid greeted them in whispers and led them through a series of hallways before bidding them wait outside a set of closed parlor doors. Mr. Whitmark’s voice sounded faintly through the wood—tense and thin.
The house still smelled of Mardi Gras, of cinnamon cakes and bourbon, of tobacco and day-old eau de cologne. But also of death. That pungent sweetness of slowly rotting flesh. It was faint yet, and Effie doubted anyone else in the house sensed it. But if she didn’t start her work soon, they would.
The maid tapped once and opened the door just wide enough for her slender frame to shimmy in. “Pardon me, sirs. The undertaker’s assistants are here.”
“Shall we begin, then?” Mr. Whitmark asked.
A long pause, then came a voice she recognized from several weeks back at the shop. Not a customer, but someone else who’d come just before suppertime, quarreled with Mr. Whitmark for several minutes, and then left. Effie, hanging laundry in the back courtyard, had heard only snippets—enough to gauge the man’s anger and intimacy of their acquaintanceship.
Now the man’s voice came calm and steady. “Think of your wife, Bill. You don’t want her to see him like this.”
Bill—whomever that was—did not answer.
“My brother’s the best embalmer in the city. I’d stake my name on it.”
Could this be the showy brother whom Mr. Whitmark had mentioned?
From inside the room, she heard a restless shifting and guessed it was the third man, this Bill, the famous officer Colm had spoken of, the father of the deceased, the only one hitherto silent.
“Fine,” he said at last. “But I insist upon being present during the . . . procedure.”
“I . . . er . . . don’t recommend that. Best keep the memory of your son—” Mr. Whitmark stopped, silenced it seemed by some look or gesture. “Of course, Colonel Randolph. Lead the way.”
The parlor door swung wide and an older man with broad shoulders and dark shadows beneath his eyes emerged. Despite the early hour, he wore full evening dress—coattails rumpled, white tie askew—and Effie guessed he’d not changed since yesterday. A look of unease played across his face, one that only deepened upon regard of Effie and her ash-marked companion.
“These are my assistants,” Mr. Whitmark said, joining them in the hall. “Mr. McLeary and Miss—” But Colonel Randolph was already halfway down the hall.
Mr. Whitmark clenched his jaw and rubbed his knuckles the way he did at the shop when he couldn’t get the account books to add up or C
olm left a mess in the storeroom. Rheum was crusted at the corners of his eyes, but he smelled sober. The man behind him, his brother—a few years younger by the look of him, and just as squarely built—clapped Mr. Whitmark quietly on the back and nodded for him to follow.
The body was laid out in a large bedroom on the second floor. Thick velvet curtains shrouded the windows. The smell was stronger here and not just that of putrefying tissue, but of shit and liquor and fifty-cent perfume, the kind the whores down by the levee wore. Colm flinched. The maid gasped and stopped in the doorway. The War had long ago rid the rest of them of such squeamishness. A strange fellowship, Effie thought. Officers of opposing sides and her, a runaway slave.
Colonel Randolph lit a silver-footed paraffin lamp atop the bedside table, then retreated to the far corner of the room, arms crossed, eyes flickering between them. The lamp cast a pool of yellow light over the body. Bruising covered the young man’s face. His nose had been broken. She’d need makeup to hide the discoloration, extra cotton packing and perhaps even some wax to build back up the nose. But first the cleaning.
“A basin of warm water and another lamp,” she whispered to the maid, who looked relieved to be sent away.
Colm began setting up the cooling table alongside the wall nearest the door.
“Not there,” Effie said. “On the other side of the bed in case I need more light.”
“Yes, yes,” Mr. Whitmark said, talking over her, his voice unusually reedy. “Over here. I’ll have better lighting closer to the lamp.”
I’ll have better lighting? He intended to embalm the body? If that was his plan, why was she here at all? Better if she’d stayed back to see to the shop. She almost voiced this, but his gray eyes fixed her with an intense look, obviously meant to telegraph something. Though she couldn’t decipher his exact meaning, she stayed quiet.
When the maid returned with the water basin, Effie hesitated. Did he intend to wash the body too? But Mr. Whitmark nodded once, and she took that as permission to proceed. She stripped the body of its clothes, conscious of Colonel Randolph’s eyes at her back. It felt like a giant furnace bellow had forced too much air into the room, belaboring her every exhale.
She handed the dead man’s soiled clothes to the maid when she returned with another oil lamp, then set to work washing. The water was not as warm as Effie would have liked, and she struggled to get the soap to lather. The young man’s bowels had loosed when he expired, and dried excrement stuck to his thighs. This was not uncommon, but she found her hands unsteady and her armpits damp as she scrubbed it away. Behind her, Colm was setting out supplies on a card table brought up from the parlor. Every clink and clumsy clatter sent a shudder down her spine. She’d not felt this nervous since that day in the morgue and had the sense that just as much was riding on her performance now.
More bruising covered the young man’s torso, and the back of his skull was cracked. Lucky the blow had come there and not to the front of the head, where it might have caved in his sphenoid or temporal bone. That required much more work than a broken nose and, even with several layers of molded wax and makeup, never looked quite natural.
She took a wad of cotton from the dressing case and carefully packed it into the back of the mouth. With more cotton in hand, she lifted the sheet covering the loins and rolled the body slightly to its side. Before she could continue, a hand grabbed her shoulder and flung her backward. She stumbled into the edge of the cooling table, her head striking the sharp edge of the window casing. Blood trickled down her scalp. The margins of her vision darkened.
“Great God! What is this?” Colonel Randolph shouted, amplifying the pain in Effie’s head. He raised his hand to strike her.
Her insides clenched, but she did not cower or raise her arms in defense. A voice, familiar but unplaceable, rumbled in her mind. No cryin’ now, you hear? You’s gotta be brave.
Before the blow fell, Mr. Whitmark stepped between them. “We must plug the orifices lest they leak. It’s a standard part of the process. She meant no disrespect.”
Colonel Randolph slowly lowered his hand.
“It’s been a long night for you. Perhaps you’d like to—”
“I’m staying here.” Colonel Randolph straightened his waistcoat and returned to the corner, his bloodshot eyes never softening.
Mr. Whitmark rubbed his knuckles again and swallowed what she expected was a sigh. “Continue, Effie.”
She took a moment to be sure her balance wouldn’t fail her and then continued with her work. Her hands no longer trembled, her skin, if anything, felt more clammy than hot. She’d done this before, worked beneath the shadow of violence. Not this type of work and not in any years recent, but she recognized this fear-tempered concentration as surely as that rumbling voice.
She shaved the young man, placed eye-caps on his eyes and closed the lids, sewed his lips together, and swabbed his skin with embalming fluid. No cryin’ now, you hear? The calming timbre of the voice reminded her of Samson. But the words belonged to someone else.
She thought back to her first summer in Indiana. The hot, sticky air. The hum of insects rising as the sun set over the prairie. She sat on the edge of the porch, swinging her legs over the ledge, polishing her buttons with a scrap of flannel from Mrs. Kinyon’s sewing basket.
“Something’s wrong with that child, John,” she heard the woman say from the kitchen. “Yesterday, she stepped on a nail and didn’t cry a peep! Never in all my days have I seen a girl so . . . so dispassionate.”
“You speak as if that’s a bad thing,” the captain had said.
“You’ve gone cold as a corpse if you think it ain’t.”
The tingling fume of chemicals brought Effie back to the present. That voice must have predated her time with the Kinyons. Why else wouldn’t she have cried? Likely predated the War too. But before that . . . there was nothing.
She wrung the embalming fluid from her rag and stepped aside as Mr. Whitmark and Colm moved the body to the cooling table. Then Mr. Whitmark dismissed Colm back to the shop. Effie, however, he bid stay.
“All I’m going to do now is make a small incision in his neck that we might access his artery and inject the fluid,” Mr. Whitmark explained. A few beads of sweat sat at the edge of his hairline, ready to trickle down his brow. “The blood’s mostly clotted, but the incision still might weep a bit.”
“Just get on with it,” Colonel Randolph said.
Mr. Whitmark bent over the body and examined the neck, probing the soft flesh several times with his finger to locate the artery. “Scalpel, Effie.”
She handed him the blade. His hand jerked slightly, went still, then jerked again. This was not the tremor of fear, though the pitch of his voice and flush of his skin suggested he too was addled by Colonel Randolph’s presence. It wasn’t the quiver of too much coffee or kola nuts, though he overimbibed in both now in place of the bottle. She’d seen his hand twitch like this before when lighting a match or straightening the skirt of a casket. She’d seen evidence of it as well in the account books, his clear, straight script trailing off into a string of illegible letters. She’d thought it just a symptom of his drying out, along with the sickness and sleeplessness and headaches he’d complained of, but such effects should have tapered by now.
He wiped the sweat from his forehead. Bent down. Probed the skin. Hesitated. “Damn it, Effie. You’re blocking my light.”
She moved to the far side of the card table, though her shadow hadn’t been anywhere near his field of work. At least this way she obstructed Colonel Randolph’s view. If Mr. Whitmark’s hand slipped, it might go unnoticed.
He brought the blade close to the skin. Too high. An incision there would be hard to conceal, even with a wide neckcloth. But Effie dare not say so. As if he’d read her thoughts, he moved his hand down, but then too far to the right, where he’d more likely nick the windpipe than expose the artery. Another jerk of his hand. He drew a long breath in through his nose and resettled his hand. Instead of
one smooth cut, he made several superficial slashes, but at least he’d found the right location and soon the carotid lay uncovered.
“Aneurysm needle,” he said.
She passed him the small, hooked instrument. After three bumbling attempts, he managed to work the hook around the slippery vessel and elevate it above the surrounding tissue. Effie’s head throbbed. Dried blood had matted in her hair and likely stained her bonnet. She was little more than a circus ape here, fetching him supplies, moving hither and thither at his command, standing idle while he did work she could more aptly and quickly perform. She’d sealed away her memories as a slave, balled up and buried them long ago, before she’d been an adult and conscious of the doing. But it must have felt like this—threatening and demeaning.
The pain in her head wasn’t Mr. Whitmark’s fault, she reminded herself. He wasn’t the one who’d flung her against the wall. In the months since her arrival, he’d never once touched her. But then, neither had Captain Kinyon, and he’d wounded her just the same.
Once the tubing had been connected to the hand pump and from there to the reservoir of embalming fluid, Mr. Whitmark began the injection. He wiped his brow again in between squeezes and leaned back in the chair Effie had brought for him. “This part will take a while, William. An hour. Maybe two. Why don’t you at least change out of your evening clothes and take something to eat.”
“How do I know you’re not going to slice him open while I’m gone and take his heart or liver?”
This time Mr. Whitmark didn’t bother to hide his sigh. “I’ve already told you, embalming doesn’t require the removal of any organs. That’s a myth. A vestige from the days when they used to evacuate the body cavity and fill it with sawdust for preservation.”
Colonel Randolph didn’t move, but Effie could tell from the way he leaned against the wall and blinked slowly that he was tired.
“I’ll come fetch you before we dress him, and you can inspect the body yourself,” Mr. Whitmark said. “You’ll see no cut marks or incisions besides the one I made here at the neck. You have my word.”
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