The Night Mark

by Tiffany Reisz

  “Up. I was on the walk and saw you leave the house. Thought you might need some company.”

  “You said you have bourbon?”

  “Don’t tell,” he said. “Want some?”

  “Sure,” she said. Carrick ran his hand along the inside of an unused feeding trough and pulled out a flask.

  He handed it to her. Faye eyed it before unscrewing the cap and taking a sip. It hit her right between the eyes and she coughed.

  “Good stuff,” she said, handing him back the flask. “Where’d you get it? Hartwell?”

  “Hartwell?”

  “Dolly said he’s a bootlegger. That’s why she’s scared of him.”

  “Makes sense. I found this in the house after the Landrys moved out.” Carrick took a sip and then another before hiding the flask in the trough under some old hay. “But you didn’t hear that from me.”

  “I didn’t hear a thing,” she said. Nanny butted Faye’s leg with her head. “I am not drunk enough for this.”

  “Would you like some help?” Carrick said.

  “Yes, please.”

  Carrick chuckled softly, shook his head.

  “As I live and breathe, I never thought I’d be teaching a girl in her underthings how to milk a goat. Where’s the bucket?”

  “Here,” Faye said, handing him the bucket. “And it’s hot out. Why should I wear all my clothes when no one but you can see me and it’s summer in South Carolina?”

  “There’s a good answer for that.”

  “What is it?”

  “Put your clothes on and maybe I’ll remember.”

  Faye rolled her eyes, laughed back and in her laughter realized she forgot for a split second he wasn’t Will. Only Will had ever made her laugh so easily. Only Will had ever made her so comfortable with herself. Only Will knew how to tease her so that she felt better about herself, not worse. A rare gift, and it seemed Carrick had that gift, too.

  “Ahem. The goat?”

  “Right. Where’s the bucket?”

  “In your hands,” she said.

  “Right,” he said. “Come on.”

  “Where are we going?”

  “We have to wash the bucket.”

  “That’s probably a good idea,” Faye said. She followed him into the house and watched him pour bleach into the bucket and swish it around. It smelled like a swimming pool but she supposed that was better than contracting some sort of hard-core 1921 bacterial infection.

  “Hands,” Carrick said. She put her hands over the sink, and Carrick rinsed them with chlorinated water. At least in 1921 they knew about bacteria and sanitation. Better than trying to survive in 1821.

  “Feels like I’m scrubbing in for surgery,” Faye said.

  “Surgery?”

  “Oh, you know. Doctors have to scrub their hands and arms before performing surgery. So I hear,” she said hastily.

  “Ah, well, I’m cautious as a rule. My sister died of tainted milk. Killed her and her baby.”

  “I’m sorry,” Faye said. “That’s so awful.”

  “I hadn’t seen her in years, but it still hurt to hear.”

  “You have any other family?”

  He shook his head. “Not anymore. Nothing closer than a cousin or two out there somewhere. Mam died so young, and Dad, he never remarried.”

  “That’s hard. I’m sorry. And you never got married?” She cringed inwardly. Surely Faith would know something like that. She shouldn’t ask so many questions. But how would she survive here if she didn’t?

  “I’d planned on marrying Violet, but you know how it was. The flu took down more nurses than anybody in ’18.”

  Flu. 1918. Faye racked her brain. That was the year of the Spanish flu pandemic, wasn’t it? Of course a flu pandemic would target nurses. It sounded as if Carrick had lost as many people he loved as Faye had. Even more. Job, Father Pat had said. The man who lost everything. And yet, unlike Job, Carrick still seemed to have kept his head up.

  “It’s very hard to lose someone you love. I know how hard.”

  “I don’t know if it was love, really,” Carrick said. “But we got along well enough.”

  Carrick picked up a dish towel and wiped her hands with it. She let him do it even though she could have done it herself.

  “Did you love him? Marshall?”

  “I married him,” she said. “Maybe I did at one point.”

  “You know it was your mother that wanted the match.”

  Another clue.

  “No,” Faye said. “I didn’t love him. But I loved someone else once, before him. And I lost him. And I lost myself when I lost him. And when you’re lost like I was, lost at sea, it felt like...”

  “Any port in a storm?” Carrick asked, smiling.

  She nodded, tears in her eyes.

  “Any port in a storm,” she said.

  “You’ll be safe in this harbor,” Carrick said, nodding around him. “Safe from him.”

  “He won’t look for me here?” Faye asked.

  “He might,” Carrick said. “But it’s me he’ll find. It’s me he’ll find, and he’ll wish he never looked.”

  Faye kissed him on the cheek. She hadn’t meant to but she did it.

  “Thank you,” she said. “You make me almost happy I had to come here.”

  “Then I have a job to do.”

  “What’s the job?”

  “To take the almost out of that sentence.”

  She smiled at him. “You’re not going to threaten to put a penny in a jar now, are you?”

  Carrick shoved his hands into his pockets, then pulled them out.

  “I’m out,” he said.

  Faye laughed. Carrick cocked his head, indicating she should follow him. They went back out to the little barn, Carrick holding the bucket in one hand and the kerosene lantern in the other.

  In the barn, Carrick hung the lantern from the ceiling, put oats into a bucket and put Nanny onto some kind of feeding stand with a bar to hold her in place.

  “It looks a guillotine,” Faye said.

  “You have quite an imagination,” Carrick said, adjusting the wooden yoke over Nanny’s neck.

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Don’t be. It’s good to hear you getting your spirit back.”

  “I lost my spirit?”

  “You’ve barely said ten words since you came here. Not until last night.”

  “I didn’t mean to be rude,” Faye said. “I was just...” What could she say? How could she explain herself?

  “You don’t have to apologize. I know shell shock when I see it.”

  “Shell shock,” she repeated. It was what they’d once called post-traumatic stress disorder. Depression and anxiety, coupled with flashbacks, an intense startle reflex—something war veterans and abused women had in common. “That’s a good way to describe it.”

  Carrick looked away. “Ah, well, Dad used to knock Mam around so hard she’d forget her own name for days at a time. I still regret she died before I was big enough to kill him for her.”

  “Carrick...” Faye wanted nothing more than to reach for him, hold him. Carrick seemed to regret sharing so much. He looked at her, smiled.

  “You ready to try this? Nanny’s about to bust.”

  Faye exhaled heavily. “I’ll try. But I feel sort of strange about this. I mean, Nanny and I, we barely know each other.”

  “She’s a hussy,” Carrick said. “She and Billy aren’t even married.”

  “What a scandal,” Faye said as she sat carefully on the little three-legged stool. “And now their baby is illegitimate.”

  “A stain on the family name.”

  “Carrick. What am I doing?” Faye asked.

  “Hands on the teats.”

  “Both of them?”

  “Both hands, both teats.”

  Faye cringed as she wrapped her fingers around the goat’s udders. “This is so weird,” she said, wincing. “Do I pull?”

  “No pulling ever. Squeeze. Keep your first finger and y
our thumb right at the top. Don’t move them. Squeeze down one finger at a time, but fast.”

  “That...makes no sense.”

  “Here. Give me your hand.”

  Faye reluctantly held out her hand to him. The more he touched her, the more she liked it. The more she liked it, the more she wanted him to touch her. Gently, he gripped her first and middle fingers in his right hand and squeezed.

  “Like that,” he said. “Feel it?”

  “I think so.”

  “Try it. And hurry. She’s going to run out of oats soon.”

  “What happens then?”

  “Ever been kicked by a goat?”

  “No.”

  “I don’t recommend the experience.”

  Faye extracted her fingers from Carrick’s hand and gripped Nanny’s swollen teats again. She bit her lip, closed one eye and squeezed like Carrick had instructed. A tiny stream of white came out and sprayed the inside of the bucket.

  “It worked!” Faye said, grinning up at Carrick.

  “Good,” he said, grinning proudly. “Do it again.”

  She did it again. It happened again. There was now approximately one tablespoon of milk in the bucket. Again she squeezed. More milk. And again. It was like squeezing a tube of toothpaste, sort of, and she almost said that aloud, except she wasn’t sure if toothpaste existed yet.

  “So I just keep doing this until she’s empty?” Faye asked, still squeezing. She found a rhythm that seemed to work, and Nanny wasn’t complaining yet.

  “Until very little’s coming out.”

  “I think we’re there,” Faye said. She squeezed and a few drops trickled into the bucket. “What now?”

  “Well...you sort of have to rub them.”

  “Rub them?”

  Carrick nodded, looking sheepish. “It helps keep them from getting sore.”

  “We wouldn’t want sore nipples, would we, Nanny?” Faye said. “I’ve had them myself, and they’re no day at the beach.”

  Carrick snorted a laugh.

  “You’re blushing,” Faye said to him.

  “Not used to ladies talking about their...”

  “Nipples?” Faye asked as she gave Nanny the rubdown all ladies deserved.

  “Those.”

  “Well,” Faye said. “I was married.”

  “Are married,” he said.

  “Can we pretend I’m not?” She carefully picked up the bucket of milk and moved it far away from Nanny’s feet.

  “That’s what we’re trying to do,” he said as he freed Nanny from the milking stand and put her back in her pen with her live-in lover and their bastard goat baby.

  “You keep reminding me I’m married.”

  “No,” Carrick said, shaking his head. “I keep reminding me you’re married.”

  She looked at him, a long look, a look he tried to avoid by averting his eyes and watching Nanny make a bed of her straw.

  “Tell me something,” Faye said. “Tell me about the day you and I met.”

  “You were there.”

  “I know what I remember. But tell me what you remember.”

  The littlest goat wandered up to the gate and butted Carrick’s palm with his head. Carrick scratched behind his ears, tugged his chin scruff.

  “Hey there, Gruff,” Carrick said. “Go back to sleep.”

  “Carrick, tell me,” Faye said. “Please?”

  He smiled to himself, a sad sort of smile.

  “We were fools, me and Marsh,” Carrick said. “He was the man who ran the ship, and I was the man who kept the ship running. We were close as brothers during the war. I trusted him with my life. I trusted him...with a lot. It didn’t matter then we were from different worlds. Then the war ended.”

  “And it mattered.”

  “It mattered.”

  “He had money. Your family didn’t.”

  “Not a red cent. I don’t know why Marsh tried to stay friends. I didn’t expect it of him. Maybe he just wanted to show off, stir up trouble. He asked me to visit him in his big place in Boston. I had a shift off from working the light and went to see him at the ‘Old House,’ and it was a house I expected to find. That was no house. That was a palace. I felt like a damn fool standing at the front door. Even the girl who opened the door wanted me to go around back till Marsh saw it was me. Then it was all right. He was happy enough to see me I could forget I didn’t belong in his world. He brought me into his house, gave me a drink, the finest cigar I ever smoked.”

  “What day was it?” she asked. “Do you remember the date?”

  “Never forget it. First day of summer in ’19.

  “I asked Marsh why he wanted to see me. ‘To gloat, Morgan,’ he said. ‘I’m getting married.’ Then he told me about you.”

  “What did he say?”

  “It wouldn’t be right to repeat all of it, but needless to say he was happy you’d said yes to his proposal. I gave him hell for marrying a girl half his age. Here he was, going on forty and marrying a girl of eighteen. He said anybody who ever said money can’t buy happiness never had any of either. Your family needed the money, he said. He needed the young wife. And then he asked if I wanted to meet you. I said I had to meet this girl who he’d wanted to give his heart to. Marsh said...”

  “What did he say? Tell me.”

  “He said...” Carrick looked upward as if asking God for forgiveness. “He said you didn’t do a damn thing for his heart, but it wasn’t his heart he was going to give you. Sorry.”

  “Very classy,” Faye said. “I married a prince among men.”

  “I thought it was just bragging. Marsh did that, and God knows sailors ain’t known for sweet talk.”

  “That was the day we met?” Faye asked.

  Carrick shrugged. “You were at the house. Do you remember? You and your mother. She took one look at me, and I thought she’d call the coppers. I should have worn my uniform.”

  “She was always a bit of a snob,” Faye said, playing along.

  “Ah, it was how she was raised. Except you weren’t.”

  “I’m glad I wasn’t a snob to you.”

  She stood at his side and reached into the pen. The little goat butted his head into her palm like he had with Carrick, and she scratched behind his floppy dark ears.

  “No...you were anything but. Your mother didn’t want me near you, and I’m sure Marsh wouldn’t have taken me out to meet you personally, but to spite her, he did it. He dragged me out to the