Eliza lay beside him on the stretcher, nestled in the crook of his arm.
Her lips against his ear, breathing life, just like on the train.
“Not yet,” she whispered.
He was on a picnic blanket now with Eliza, looking up at the clear blue sky, finding pictures in the clouds.
Eliza pointed. “There’s a buffalo.” The swells of her chest rose and fell beneath a yellow dress with red flowers. She slapped his arm. “Pay attention, Ellsworth.”
He didn’t see the buffalo cloud but claimed he did. Eliza’s hair fanned out on the blanket. His left hand held her right, fingers intertwined. Now that she’d agreed to marry him, he didn’t see what could stop them from holding hands all day if they wanted.
“Are you sure you want to live here?”
She pointed to the sky. “That one looks like one of those incandescent lightbulbs.”
“Eliza?”
“I’m sure, Ellsworth.” She inhaled the summer air, and her chest rose and fell. “Every soul has its match, and I found mine. I felt the pull toward Bellhaven, just as I felt the pull toward you on that train.”
The train. The derailment. The only two in the car to survive.
“Can you not feel the pull, Ellsworth?”
“I reckon so.” He looked back to the sky and pointed. “Hey, look, there’s an alligator.”
Ellsworth opened his eyes.
The air was colder, drafty. A real blanket now hugged him.
Eliza was memory—scent on a pillow.
Anna Belle sat by his bed. Her smile must have been contagious, because Dr. Philpot smiled next, and then Gabriel at the foot of the bed, who squeezed Ellsworth’s left foot and then patted it.
Anna Belle ran the top of her hand across his clammy brow. “His fever broke.”
Dr. Philpot placed a cold stethoscope to his bare flesh, near where the bandages wrapped his chest. “Welcome back to the land of the living, Ellsworth.”
It was dark outside. A fly buzzed at the window sill.
Music sounded from the first floor—Raphael on Eliza’s piano. That was okay. Something about it felt right.
“What day is it?”
“Thursday,” said Gabriel.
Ellsworth tried to remember when he’d been stabbed.
“It’s been two days,” Anna Belle said.
“You’re very fortunate to be alive,” said Dr. Philpot. “The blade went into your heart. To be perfectly honest, I see no rational reason why it’s still beating.”
Anna Belle patted his hand. “Most stubborn man I’ve ever met.”
She looked antsy and a little pale herself, as if she hadn’t slept in days. She hadn’t made her face up or fixed her hair.
It was the chapel.
“I best get going,” said Dr. Philpot. “Let me know immediately if anything changes.”
Anna Belle said she would. Gabriel squeezed Ellsworth’s foot again and then followed the doctor out of the room. Ellsworth asked for water, and Anna Belle helped him with a sip. She wiped his damp hairline. “Do you remember talking just before you opened your eyes?”
He remembered watching the clouds and holding Eliza’s hand, not Anna Belle’s. “What did I say?”
“Something about following the fault line,” she said. “Finding the crack where the plates don’t line up and . . .”
“And what?”
“And that’s where the bad medicine gets through?”
He shook his head. “America Ma. While I was out. She told me those things.”
“Ellsworth, who is America Ma?”
He shrugged because he didn’t know, but something in the way Anna Belle had asked made Ellsworth wonder if she already knew about America Ma and was looking for some answers herself. “The pressure forces it up like a geyser. Like steam hissing from the ground, except invisible. That’s why the chapel was built there, Anna Belle. In the woods. That’s where they come up.”
“That’s where who comes up, Ellsworth?”
He didn’t understand his own thoughts. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Don’t worry yourself with it.” She squeezed his hand.
“Where is he?”
“Where is who?”
“Old Man Tanner?”
“He’s locked up. Sheriff Lecroy put him in a cell.”
“He talking?”
She shook her head. “In tongues. He’s gone completely off the tracks. Thrashes against the bars. Curses and spits. Leroy said that at night he paces inside that small cell—not forward, but backwards. Round and round he goes. Leroy said he can’t take it much more.”
“He’s suffering from withdrawal.”
“Sheriff Lecroy?”
“No, Old Man Tanner. He’s used to going into the woods every day. And now he can’t.”
“Your father loved you, Michael.”
“But not completely, Mother. He would never look me in the eyes. It’s like he was ashamed of me.”
“Oh, Michael . . .”
“I go by Ellsworth now, mother. You know that. All my friends call me Ellsworth. They’ve done it for years now. I know you don’t like it, but I’m not Michael anymore.”
“Don’t say that.”
“Why did Papa never look at me? It was like he wanted to love me but couldn’t.”
She stared down at the table, sighed, finally spoke.
“Your father was sterile, Ellsworth. Do you know what that means? To be sterile?”
“I know about the birds and the bees, if that’s what you’re asking.”
She drank tea and watched out the kitchen window toward the woods. “We tried to have children for years but were unable to. We saw several doctors.”
“And?”
“And it was determined by all of them that your father could not reproduce.”
“Yet here I am.” Ellsworth leaned back in his chair, folded his arms defiantly. “I see.”
“No, you don’t see.” She slammed her cup down, spilling tea on the table. “It’s the same way the rest of the town looked at me. Like I was some harlot. Do you know what that is too?”
“I read the Bible.”
She picked up her tea again. “Your father had made our issues known to the public. He was a drinker. He talked a lot when he was boozing and drank even more after he found out his ailment. The entire town knew why we couldn’t have children.”
They sat silent for a moment. Ellsworth remembered the pop the baseball made in his mitt after one of his father’s throws. He’d relished the sting it made on his palm. “Was he?”
“Was he what, dear?”
“Was he even my father?”
She cried silently and nodded. “I loved your father. I’d never stray. I prayed every night for us to conceive. Despite what the doctors told us, we never stopped trying.”
“But then it worked. You were with child. With me?”
“Yes, dear. It worked.”
“Because you prayed?”
“That’s what I believe, yes.”
“And Papa?”
“Your father was not a very religious man. You know that.”
“He liked going to church.”
“He liked seeing his friends. He liked the artwork in the cathedral. He liked the music.”
“He told me that once. Told me he felt better for going because of those things.”
She smiled. “He dozed off during mass more times than not.”
“Still . . .”
She watched him. “Do you see, though, why he could never look at you?”
“Not really.”
“There was always that doubt that you were his child. He didn’t really believe God had answered my prayers. As much as I denied it, the suspicion that I’d been with another man was always in the back of his head. And the more the town whispered about it, the more he believed it—all the way up until he died on the church steps.”
The room was dark except for the triangle of moon glow aga
inst the wall.
The boy with the green eyes hovered bedside on a stepstool. His hands pressed against Ellsworth’s chest, warming the wound beneath the bandages. The boy told him to close his eyes, so he did. He’s healing me from within. But that made no sense. It’s only a dream.
“Sleep now, Mr. Newberry. And don’t speak nothin’ of this.”
Ellsworth nodded, half in and half out of delirium. He lay silent for a while, reveling in the warmth where the boy’s hands had been. He dared not open his eyes. The boy was no longer touching him, but he was still in the bedroom. The stepstool scooted across the hardwood, and the boy’s weight settled into the wooden chair beside the bed.
“You know the night she brought us here,” said the boy, “and hid us down in the basement . . .” Ellsworth was aware enough to know that the moment called for a monologue. The boy assumed he was asleep and was unburdening himself. “I saw something in the woods that night, and I’ve yet to tell anyone. There was a man in the woods. Not a man really, but a bunch of birds . . . in the shape of a man. Cardinal birds, like the ones coming here now. All beaks and red feathers.” Ellsworth waited for more details, but none came.
And then he dozed off.
Night passed and the sun rose.
The fly on the windowsill had died, but four more had replaced it. Ellsworth recalled Raphael’s hands on him overnight, pressed against the wrapped hole in his chest, the wound Dr. Philpot said was healing faster than it should. And there was something about a man made of birds—cardinal birds. When Ellsworth turned his head he spotted Raphael in the bedside chair.
“Hi.”
Ellsworth said, “Where’s Anna Belle?”
“Went into the woods with Linda May.”
Ellsworth looked at Raphael’s hands, then fell back to sleep.
“I just don’t understand it,” said Eliza.
“What do you mean?” asked Ellsworth. Nearly a foot taller, he still had to take long strides to keep up with Eliza’s pace. She walked quickly, constantly in a hurry. “It’s America’s pastime, Eliza. It’s baseball. And I’m probably going to be in the minor leagues next season.”
“It’s nonsensical. You hit a ball with a wooden club and run in circles.”
“It’s actually a diamond. But even so, it’s a dream of mine. One day soon I’ll play in the big leagues. For the Dodgers.” Ellsworth laughed. “Eliza, slow down.”
Eliza suddenly slowed her pace, then tightened her grip in his hand and swayed their arms as they strolled along the seawall promenade of the Battery. The row of colorful antebellum homes always lifted her spirits. She hardly watched where she was going, and everything caught her attention. Occasionally he’d have to steer her away from a passing couple so as not to collide. She’d flinch whenever a bike zipped by, startle every time a car honked. Wind whipped upward from the converging Ashley and Cooper Rivers, tossing her auburn hair into a frenzy. She made no effort to corral the loose strands, while other women nearby worked desperately to keep their fancy hats on.
“It’s too hard anyway,” Eliza said.
“What’s too hard?”
“That baseball.” She’d suddenly grown melancholy. “It’s too hard. And that bump on the field is too close. I worry you’ll take one in the face. And I like your face.”
“I have a glove. And I’m quick. And it’s called a pitcher’s mound,” he said playfully. “Not a bump.”
“I like your face, Ellsworth.”
He said no more on the matter. He’d never told her he’d already taken one off the face when he was sixteen. Broke bones around his right eye, and his brain swelled. Dr. Philpot had told his mother he might not live. A month later he’d been back on the mound.
Eliza smiled—deep dimples and red-painted lips a stark contrast to porcelain skin. Sailboats, barges, and passenger ships sent waves throughout the Charleston harbor.
It had been Ellsworth’s idea to take a day trip to the city. He’d witnessed her bouts of melancholy numerous times—they’d been married for nearly three months now, and the moments rarely lasted long. But last night, for the first time, she’d unnerved him. Out of the blue, during dinner, staring out the window with her mashed-potato-filled fork paused inches from her open mouth, she’d said, “I saw her last night.”
“Saw who?”
“The black woman.”
“What woman?”
“America Ma. I saw her in the woods.”
Ellsworth had put his fork down. He’d heard of people around the world who saw visions of the Virgin Mary or made pilgrimages to Lourdes to seek cures for the sick or disabled. But this made no sense. “You saw this woman in a dream?”
“No,” she’d said, her fork still suspended in front of her mouth. “No, I was awake. I was outside fetching clothes from the line. I saw her on the edge of the woods. She smiled at me.” Eliza slid the mashed potatoes into her mouth. “I think she smiled at me.”
Ellsworth had watched her chew and swallow and then asked her to pass the salt. They’d spoken no more about the woman. But the next morning he’d suggested they take a trip into the city.
Eliza had a thing about not stepping on pavement cracks. She’d skip to avoid them. Sometimes she’d hum. Sometimes she’d talk nonstop. And sometimes she’d grow so painfully silent that Ellsworth wanted to pick her up like a fragile bird and hug thoughts from her head. Feel her shoulder blades against his palms and her chest against his and squeeze her tight until her breath released against his neck. She was older than him by five years but often acted like the younger one.
A steamer blinked over the horizon. Eliza pointed across the shimmering water and spun into a dancer’s twirl right there on the Battery wall. In doing so, she accidently bumped into a couple passing in the other direction, the wife in particular, who was desperately trying to hold onto her feathery, wide-brimmed hat. Ellsworth saw it coming but couldn’t stop it in time. The woman was not amused by the brushing of shoulders. She’d been caught off guard and would have tripped had her mustachioed husband not caught her arm.
The man straightened his hat and looked down upon Eliza, who apologized profusely. He muttered something about “lunatic” and “asylum” and ushered his wife along.
Ellsworth clenched his right hand into a fist.
Eliza caught his arm. “It’s nothing, Ellsworth. Only words.”
But words once said couldn’t be unsaid. Words did damage like an ice pick, chipping away. Some words stung more than bullets. Ellsworth wrestled free and was upon the mustachioed man in seconds. He pasted the man on the right side of his jaw, spinning him like a top. The man’s bowler hat popped from his pomade-slicked hair, and the wind took it out into the harbor.
“Oh, my lands,” the wife shrieked, her gloved hand to her mouth.
The man righted himself and removed his jacket. He rolled up his sleeves as if ready to brawl right there on the Battery, even as his wife begged him to ignore the insult.
Ellsworth hunkered down into a fighter’s stance, fists poised, and the mustachioed man did likewise. But then something splashed in the water behind them.
Ellsworth looked over his shoulder. Eliza swam through the dirty water toward the man’s bowler hat, which was floating next to a log. Her arms chopped the water. Her beige dress billowed out around her like a sun-dappled lily pad. The water had to be freezing.
Eliza snatched the hat and turned back toward the seawall. She navigated the rocks below and reached up toward Ellsworth on the wall. He pulled her dripping body to the pavement. He could see straight through to her undergarments and wanted to cover her immediately. He tried to with his own coat, but Eliza sidestepped him with the same twirl that had gotten them into the situation in the first place. She poured river water from the hat, tiptoed over, and plopped it right back atop the mustachioed man’s head.
“There you go.” She patted the man’s shoulder. “All better now.”
Water dripped down the man’s brow. He watched her with wide eyes, g
rabbed his coat from the ground, and hurried down the Battery with his distraught wife.
Ellsworth gripped Eliza’s shoulders. “Are you all right?”
“A tad cold.” Her teeth chattered.
His knuckles were sore from the punch. He covered her with his jacket and walked with his arm around her shoulders, rubbing to keep her warm.
“The hat was more than a hat,” she said after they’d walked several blocks into the city. “It was important to him. That is why I retrieved it.”
“How do you know it was important?”
“I saw fear in his eyes.”
“Because I was about to paste him again.”
“No,” she said matter-of-factly. “It was the hat. He was terrified of losing it.”
They walked arm in arm for another block, the focus of everyone’s gaze—she was soaked to the bone. “She tells me to look out for such things. To help those in need.”
He stopped walking. “Who, Eliza? Who tells you this?”
She began walking again. “Just a voice.”
A lump formed in his throat. He rubbed her shoulder as they walked. “You said ‘tells,’ not ‘told.’ Eliza, how long have you been hearing this voice?”
“Since I was five.”
Ellsworth awoke with an appetite.
Anna Belle was with him again. She had chicken noodle soup. She helped him sit up in bed, but he insisted on spooning it in himself.
She was distracted, fidgety, in a hurry to be somewhere else.
That night Ellsworth opened his eyes to slits.
Raphael had his hands on the bandages again, pressing against the chest wound.
Ellsworth closed his eyes and acted like he hadn’t seen a thing.
The next morning he found Raphael on the bedside chair again. They watched each other for a minute. Ellsworth sat up against the headboard on his own. The bandages had been changed.
Raphael said, “Dr. Philpot doesn’t have words.”
“About what?”
“About how quickly your wound is healing.”
There was a sandwich on the bedside table. Ham and cheese between two thick pieces of wheat bread. Ellsworth ate it, ravenous. He grunted against the headboard. Raphael handed him an apple, and Ellsworth took a healthy bite.
All Things Bright and Strange Page 11