Lazaretto

by Diane McKinney-Whetstone

“They laboring carrying that stretcher. Must be a large somebody on that thing,” Sylvia said on a whisper.

  “Too large to be Vergie”—Nevada matched Sylvia’s whisper with her own voice turned low.

  Sylvia watched the doctor staggering ahead of the stretcher, but thankfully she saw Spence holding up the rear. “I’m going over there,” she said as she ran ahead of Nevada in the direction of the hospital.

  “Yes, go, Sylvie,” I’ll make sure Vergie’s okay, though I know she is. I woulda felt it in my bones otherwise.”

  20

  THE CRATE CONTAINING Bram lay patiently on the pier, having attracted the wedding guests’ belongings after someone deposited his burlap sack beside the crate, then another his cardboard box, another her fancy flip-top overnight bag. In short order the crate was obscured as belongings were tossed even across its top.

  Vergie sat down on the corner of the crate. She was wet and shivering as she clung to a blanket someone had thrown over her shoulders. Vergie had gone into the water after Carl. She was a strong swimmer, that skill honed on the frequent fishing trips she’d taken with her father from the time before she could even walk, when she’d spend as much time in the water as she did in the boat. She’d gone under twice before she spotted the trail of blood that led her to Carl. She dragged him to the surface and by then Splotch and two other men had also jumped in, and, with the help of the river’s perfect push, they’d gotten him back in the boat. She didn’t consider right now that she’d saved Carl’s life as she stared straight ahead into the gray and silver river and assaulted herself with her thinking. She berated herself for inciting Carl’s shooting in the first place. Her inability to rein herself in when she felt disrespected had caused it. Hadn’t her aunt Maze told her time and again that every situation was not cause for a fight; that she must learn to distinguish between trifling slights and major injustices; that she must let the small things roll off her back, and save her temper for challenging the more egregious treatment; that catastrophe might result over some insignificant matter because of her tendency to overreact. And it had happened today; the flick of her finger at the white men in the other boat may have cost Carl his life. “Dear Carl,” she said out loud, as her chest went stormy and she started heaving. “I may have killed you, ah, I may have . . .” She started shaking uncontrollably and thought she was going into convulsions when she sensed someone approach and at first she thought it was Splotch and she tightened inside. But then she felt the warmest hands moving up and down her arms, the sweetest voice in her ear saying, “Come on, Verge, you need to get out of these wet clothes, come on now before you catch the grippe.”

  “Nevada, Nevada,” Vergie cried. “Carl was shot because I flicked my hand at some white men.”

  “Don’t do that, Vergie,” Nevada said as she pulled her up and got her into a complete hug. “That is a devil’s trick to make those that have been wronged feel that they are in the wrong. Nothing you could have said, no gesture you could have made, justifies someone firing a gun at your boat. I will not abide such talk from you. Now come on, get dried up. I have a bowl of turkey broth with your name on it.” Nevada spoke in a calming voice as she led Vergie toward the house.

  SON, THE STRAPPING though feeble-minded nephew of the quarantine master, was there with the wheelbarrow to begin transporting the company’s belongings down to the storage area in the cellar of the house where the party would be. Son didn’t know that the crate was not part of the company’s belongings, that there was a corpse inside the crate. He just knew that he’d been directed to haul everything that was there over to here. And that is what he proceeded to do.

  Son followed Kojo’s instructions and loaded the piles of things left at the pier onto the wheelbarrel and carted them from the pier to the basement of the guesthouse. He’d been back and forth to the cellar, serving each person who called for this or that bag or case or satchel, waiting patiently while they retrieved what they needed, then returning same to the cellar. So far, no one had asked for anything from the pine crate, and he was disappointed, because he wanted to take the empty crate and fill it with rocks and see if he could sink it in the creek. The crate had tiny openings between the slats of wood, and Son got down on his knees and held his candle close to try and peer inside. He thought he could see a thick muslin sheet, thought that the thing inside was shaped like the dead bodies that Son occasionally saw being toted from the hospital. He’d asked his uncle about it once as they’d watched a particularly large man being carried from the hospital to the crematory, and Ledoff told Son that it was a corpse, and that all corpses had to be burned or buried. Son pronounced it course.

  Right now he hung his lantern on the hook on the wall above him and sat down on the cellar floor. The glow of light fell over him as he studied the thick line of twine that was wrapped around the crate and knotted at the top and bottom. Son’s uncle had taught him how to undo knots of all varieties. Do not fret over the tangle, he’d instructed him—just use the tangle, follow it, let it show you the ends. He traced the twine where it was most confused. He picked at the center to loosen the confusion and slid his fingers in and then let out a little yelp when he thought he’d touched the end. He loosened the knot and shouted hooray when he’d gotten through the tangle that had held the crate’s lid secure. He repeated the process at the other end. He was proud of himself as he lifted the lid and leaned in and then laughed from the onslaught of odor that was a mix of pine and bad eggs. Just as he’d figured: there was a body inside. It was wrapped in a loose cotton sack and tucked in with sheets as if it had just been put down for a nap. Son untied the sashes attached to a board at the bottom of the crate that had held the sack in place. He lifted the sack and cradled it the way he’d cradled the foal that had died last year unexpectedly. His uncle had explained that the mother likely killed the foal, that the mother sensed it was sick and killed it to protect it. Son wondered if this one’s mother had killed him. He had that same rotten-egg smell that he remembered from the foal. He slung the sack over his shoulder and walked it to the very back of the cellar. He looked from end to end of this section of cellar and picked out an earthen spot beyond the concrete floor. He spread the body out and opened the loosely gathered top of the sack. A thin sheet of cotton covered the face and was attached to an undersheet with a row of silk stitches. Son wondered if someone had closed the eyes. He’d often hear Sylvia talking about having to close a dead man’s eyes; the way Sylvia talked it seemed to Son like a kind thing to do for a person. He popped the stitches and lifted the cotton square. This man’s eyes were already closed. Son was struck by the thick clumps of forehead scars. He felt sorry for the man that his face was scarred. He traced his fingers over the scars and then patted them lightly. He thought that the man had a nice face, that he must have been a nice man, not the type of man that would yell at Son and call him a stupid lug, a donkey’s ass, imbecile, dunce, retard, freak, the way men often did before he’d been sent here to live with his uncle at the Lazaretto. Son bowed his head and made whispering sounds the way he’d noticed others do over the dead. He lightly replaced the cotton square over the man’s face. He started to pull the top of the sack back around his head, but then stopped, deciding to leave his head uncovered just in case he might wake up. He removed the cotton square as well and laid it on the corpse’s chest. Then he looked up to see what the man’s eyes would view should he wake and not be able to untangle himself from the sack. Son was sensitive to such things, having himself been tied down to a gurney, unable to move because of the contraptions attached to his head when he’d cry out in pain and think that it wouldn’t hurt so much if he could just look at something of interest. He tilted this one’s head so that should he wake he’d be staring at a spider’s web that glistened silver in the corner of the low ceiling where it hung. Satisfied, he got up to leave. He heard a sound then, like a muffled blast. He realized the body had just blown wind, intensifying the smell of rotten eggs. That sound always made him laugh. He laugh
ed now. He doubled over, he laughed so hard. When he finally composed himself, he climbed the ladder that led to the yard and re-latched the cellar door.

  He took the crate deep into the woods. Then he returned to the cellar to see if the body had moved. He didn’t think that it had. He thought now that he wanted to keep the body completely hid from anyone else who might come down here. He repositioned the boxes and bags and trunks that the guests had brought with them so as to make a wall. He added to the stack larger items that had already been down here—a retired potbelly stove that he had to drag because it was too heavy to lift, a desk with three legs that was upended and resting on its side, a cracked dresser mirror. When he was finished he stood back and admired his wall. It was wide and tall and sturdy. He laughed out loud. Then he left to find Sylvia or Nevada or Kojo, to see what next he’d be instructed to do.

  THE LAZARETTO’S HOSPITAL was a wide, two-story stone mansion-like structure. Sylvia went around to the back door where they kept lye soap next to the spigot. She scrubbed her feet and then washed her hands. A lantern drizzled light from the top of the door and she could see flecks of lavender and rosemary that had been spun into the soap. The sight sparked the smell that went straight to her head with a jolt. She stepped into the slippers always waiting for her here and then hurried up the three short steps that led into the hospital’s back corridor.

  The doctor was still calling for leeches; his voice reverberated down the hall and seemed to be coming from any one of the framed oil renditions of white men that lined the corridor walls. Spence, the poor groom, was leaving the intake room that was midway down the long hallway. Sylvia was relieved to see Spence. He was smart, a quiet intellect, a gentleman. His aunt belonged to some of Maze’s social clubs, and Sylvia had been delighted when Ledoff had asked her opinion of Spence because he was thinking of bringing Spence on as an orderly. She’d even thought for the briefest time that Spence had eyes for her, had settled into the notion of keeping company with him since they practiced the same profession; if anyone would understand her devotion to her work, surely he would. But then as it turned out he’d really had eyes for Mora, or more likely that Mora had eyes for him, bulging eyes the way she’d gone after Spence shortly after he’d arrived, as if God had stopped making men.

  Right now she could see the thick creases in Spence’s forehead all the way from where she was; he looked up and she watched his expression loosen when he saw her, as if the sight of her dispelled the worry that had been trapped along his brow. “I was coming to find you,” he said as he rushed toward her.

  “Who’s on the gurney?” she asked, standing still to collect herself for whatever she was about to hear.

  “It’s Carl.”

  “What happened?” she asked in a whisper, as her heart dropped to a lower spot in her chest.

  “Boat shot at, probably by those Petty Island whites drinking moonshine. Carl took a shotgun blast to the leg, then went overboard.”

  “Sweet Jesus,” she said. She wanted to sink to the floor. She started for the intake room instead. “Anybody else hurt? Vergie?”

  “No, Vergie’s fine, just wet and cold.”

  “Ah,” she said, relieved about that at least. “Vergie went in the river after Carl, right? I know she did with her foolhardy self. How bad is the leg?”

  “Shattered.”

  “Knee involved?”

  “No. The knee appears spared.” Spence looked down, and then rushed his words. “Can’t say the same for the rest of the leg. I fixed a tourniquet mid-calf. Gave him a few drams of morphine in some brandy.” He looked back up at Sylvia then. “I think the lower leg’s good as gone.”

  “Is he conscious?” Her voice shook as she tried not to cry.

  “Fading in and out.”

  “Let me take a look at things,” she said.

  The doctor yelled out then. “Nurse, dammit!” Sylvia motioned Spence away, then took a deep breath and walked into the room.

  21

  NIGHT HAD FALLEN hard over the Lazaretto, especially for Linc. He’d walked part of the way here from Hog Island, where he’d been forced from the boat of the men who’d shot at the schooner filled with black people. Then he’d begged a ride to here from a shad fisherman who’d taken pity on him when Linc gave him a story of having been beaten and robbed, not entirely untrue, and he certainly looked the part. But he’d apparently come in through the Lazaretto’s rear because there were no markers pointing toward the entrance, no glow from an overhead gas lamp. There was just an unforgiving non-path through tangled understory of aggressive oak saplings and vines that ripped through his pants and sliced at the skin along his legs. Just a plethora of croaking frogs and a type of mist that seemed to drop and hang as if suspended by invisible threads. Just his anger and his dread and his grief about his own situation, his concern for what damage those gunshots may have done, if anyone on that schooner had been hit, or killed. But now there was also: music.

  His ears perked up then, surprised at the sounds. He’d expected maybe the whistle of ships loaded with sugar or whiskey or rags or tea that had to be cleared through here before entering the Port of Philadelphia; or perhaps the disappointed wails of hopeful immigrants detained in quarantine who’d presented with swollen glands, diarrhea, bloodied spittle, hot foreheads, incessant vomiting. But not what he heard: the zoom-zoom of a banjo, harmonica shrieks, jangles from clapping tambourines that shattered the air. It was black people’s music, and it worked its way into his bones the way their music always had, from the time he first heard it as a little boy at Buddy’s house and Buddy had looked at his badly beaten hands and told him they were the finest hands he’d ever seen. He was suddenly transported to Buddy’s, remembering now how Meda would pull him into the dining room, where the women fed him bowls of mustard and kale slick with lard; they called him Sugar; told him he was a toothsome something for a white boy. Remembering how much he loved it there: loved the syrupy ways of the women, loved how the air shook when the men laughed, or cursed; loved the smells of vanilla and baking apples. And then there was the music, the way the air rippled and held the beat. Such a beat tugged at him now, leading him—he hoped—to Bram.

  He approached a clearing and now faced a thin creek. The gentle sound of water was no match for the thump and clang of the tambourines. And now there was another sound, a woman’s unbridled sobs. She was there by the creek. Her naked back exposed. Her skin the color of whiskey. He turned away quickly, out of respect, disturbing the air around him that smelled of creek lilies and seared duck fat.

  Sylvia had just left the hospital. She had cleaned the wound in Carl’s leg and packed it, having removed all the buckshot she could find. She’d gotten Carl as comfortable as she could with a tonic of brandy and morphine and then she’d left—left with the doctor drooling and nodding in the chair at Carl’s bedside—before her ability to distance her emotions from the task at hand expired. For the span of time she worked on Carl, it was just a limb with a nasty gunshot wound commanding her attention. She’d been efficient because she’d been detached. She’d closed her ears to his cries in ways that she could not have if she’d allowed him to be Carl—gushy, big-hearted, lovable Carl. She would have rushed then, to spare him the pain. She would have rushed and done a sloppy job. And he was alive, she’d told herself over and over as she walked back to the house, where everyone was gathered, her resolve intact to put as sunny a coating as she could on the report she would give about Carl. Then she noticed the splatters of blood on her dress and she stopped at the creek to clean the dress, knowing that the last thing the wedding guests needed at this point was the sight of Carl’s blood. Not after what they’d already endured on the boat ride over. She sat on the rock and unhooked her dress and allowed it to slip from her shoulders. That’s when she heard the music. She was surprised, but also relieved that they’d decided to go ahead with the pre-wedding celebration, because it would help. But the music wore away at her resolve to be cheerful as the creek water lapped th
e blood from her dress. She cried, tried to get all of the crying out of her as she felt an anger welling up that she even had to be cleaning Carl’s blood away, that a boatload of black people could not even travel the few miles from the docks of Philadelphia to the Lazaretto without harassment. Then she sensed an opening in the air behind her that let in the salty smell of a man’s sweat.

  “Who is it? I am not decent,” Sylvia snapped.

  “I’m sorry,” Linc said. “My back is to you, be assured.”

  “Are you lost?” she asked, as she pulled her dress from the creek to cover herself. The dress was soaked and the splash of water shocked her chest. “You must be lost. This side of the creek is for people who live here.”

  “People live here? Then I must be,” he said. “Lost, yes, I must be lost. I thought this was the Lazaretto.”

  “It is the Lazaretto, and the people who work here live here,” she said, as she reached around to hook the back of her dress. She stood from her perch on the rock and lifted her lamp. “Turn around,” she barked.

  Linc did and she raised her lamp, blinding him. “My brother fell ill this afternoon”—he rushed his words—“collapsed on the street in Philadelphia, and I’m told he was put on a boat to be quarantined here.”

  “And no one on either of the barges stopped you from coming onto the Lazaretto?”

  “I—I honestly didn’t see a barge. I must have come in the wrong way. A barge would have been welcome, considering what I have just been through, you know, the woods and the thorns and all.”

  She moved in closer, studying him, he knew, trying to figure out what he was. He wondered then if she recognized him as a wanted man. Wondered if she’d seen the postings of him over the years detailing his crime. Orphan Sets upon Housemaster in Vicious Fist Attack: Reward Offered for Information Leading to His Apprehension is just one of the headlines he could recite after all these years. He started to toughen his expression, but then he relented, just allowed his naked desperation to hang there uncovered.