In the Midst of the Sea

by Sean McCarthy

  Mr. Randolph was still facing away from them, and the whole thing had taken on the effect of a play.

  “Thank you, Mr. Cushing,” Mr. Randolph said again, “but just to be sure, I would like to clarify. Am I in fact speaking to Jacob Cushing?”

  One knock.

  “Good. I would like to ask you a few questions. An image of you is forming, over there and in this room, and I would like to say you look very well. Your wife has told me nothing about you except for your name, and where you were lost, that it is all. I know nothing else about you, and I don’t want her to tell me. I,” he said, “would like you to tell me about you. By the look of you—reddish hair and slightly balding, clean-shaven, barrel-chested, and blue-gray eyes that mirror the sea—I’m guessing that you were probably not yet thirty when you passed.”

  Now it was Mrs. Cushing’s turn to gasp, all eyes instantly upon her.

  “Am I correct?” Mr. Randolph asked.

  Two knocks.

  More whispering.

  Mr. Randolph did turn and look at Mrs. Cushing then.

  “Had he made it home, my husband would have been thirty-four that year,” she said, a tremor to her voice.

  Mr. Randolph nodded, and turned back to the audience, again closing his eyes.

  “Thirty-four?” he repeated.

  One knock.

  The woman beside me gave her husband a visible shove then, and the old man awakened, startled, looking around the room as if he was not sure where he was, nor for that matter, where he had been. She pointed at the stage. He made a strange noise with his throat and nodded.

  “You did leave behind some children, did you not, Mr. Cushing?”

  Knock.

  “Four children,” said Mr. Randolph. “Three boys—one himself now at sea—and a girl. Now all grown.”

  Knock. Knock.

  Mr. Randolph did not turn this time, but he waited. On the stage, Mr. Pratt looked at Mrs. Cushing. “My daughter died of small pox when she was eleven,” she said.

  “Yes,” said Mr. Randolph. “Now I can see her. She is with him.”

  Mrs. Cushing began to weep. I heard no noise emit from her. But she bit her lower lip, and her body shuddered slightly, tears moving down her cheeks. A look on her face of both sadness and joy.

  “A fair-haired girl,” continued Mr. Randolph, “blonde with streaks of red. She’s wearing a green dress. Velvet. You want your wife to know that she is with you.”

  Knock.

  Mrs. Cushing let out another cry.

  “Mr. Cushing,” continued Mr. Randolph, “you had written a letter to your wife, not long before your ship was lost.”

  Knock.

  “And you would like to know if she ever received it.”

  Knock.

  Mrs. Cushing nodded.

  “Mrs. Cushing,” said Mr. Randolph. “Is there anything in particular you would like to ask?”

  She nodded. “Yes, yes, there is. I wonder if he has seen my mother.”

  Silence. And then a knock. This one loud, almost perturbed.

  Mr. Randolph smiled, “The infamous mother-in-law-son-in-law relationship,” he said, “it, too, endures through eternity.” The audience laughed.

  “Can you ask him if … if there is a heaven?” the old woman asked. “Is he in heaven?”

  The audience sat in silence, but the tension felt to be rippling through the air. I felt my hand tightening on the old woman’s beside me, and her’s on mine.

  “Mr. Cushing?” said Mr. Randolph. “Mr. Cushing. If you can, would you be kind enough to speak through the trumpet. The trumpet is there so the audience can clearly hear you.”

  Silence.

  “Mr. Cushing.”

  It was then that the rattling began. It was first very faint, nearly imperceptible, but I noticed the looks on the faces of the volunteers. Mrs. Cushing was still staring out in wonder, eyes boring into the back of Mr. Randolph’s head, but Miss Mayhew and Mr. Pratt, were looking down, staring at the table. The table moved again just slightly, another quiet rattle. They both removed their hands from the surface, and it moved again, this time slightly more violent, enough to cause the water to splash over the rim of the grass. Someone in the audience gasped again. Miss Mayhew and Mr. Pratt suddenly pushed back their chairs, but Mrs. Cushing stayed put, and then the table before her began to shake, the noise growing louder and louder, impossibly loud for such a small table. The shaking became so aggressive, it almost felt as if the table might explode, breaking into a thousand pieces. But it didn’t explode. It stopped quite suddenly, and then as several more members of the audience stood, preparing to leave, it began to rise.

  “Mr. Cushing,” said Mr. Randolph again.

  Miss Mayhew and Mr. Pratt pushed their chairs farther backward. Mr. Pratt’s face had drained of all color, but then he suddenly stood, approached the table, swinging his arm through the air above it as if looking for strings, wires. Nothing. And then dropping to his hands and knees, swinging his arm below. Clean. He backed up quickly and landed flat on his rear end. Adjusted his spectacles. The table was left hovering there above the stage, two feet in the air. And Mrs. Cushing still had yet to move.

  I watched as Mr. Randolph took a deep breath. “Mr. Cushing,” he said. “I would like to respectfully thank you for joining us this evening. It was kind of you to take the time.”

  The table dropped, banging loudly as it hit the stage, and only now did Mrs. Cushing jump backward, her chair nearly tipping over. Mr. Pratt was quick to her rescue. Grabbing the back of the chair, and lowering it to the floor before it could topple.

  Paschal Beverly Randolph, his color now returning to his cheeks, opened his eyes, but he paid no attention to the people who had begun milling toward the exits. I wondered if it happened often.

  Following the demonstration, Mr. Randolph took a seat at the table on the stage, and several people stepped up to speak with him. He had books for sale and was signing them for anyone who wished to purchase one. I was tempted but then worried what would happen should Hiram find it. Even worse things would come to be if he were ever to find this journal. After contacting Jacob Cushing, Mr. Randolph had gone around the audience and offered words from deceased loved ones for several people who had raised their hands. Only once did a man say that he had no idea whom Mr. Randolph was speaking of.

  I came down from the balcony and waited at the back of the theater, watching as Mr. Randolph spoke quietly with the people on the stage. I was astounded by what I had witnessed, and merely wished to have a better look at him, closer. This man with the power, the gift, to ease the sorrow that finds all of us sooner or later in our lives. Sometimes throughout. I realize that many of his kind have been labeled frauds, charlatans, but it was not so with him. He cared about people, wanted to comfort them. It came through his voice, the way he moved, carried himself, and the things that he said. He was both a man of science, and a man of faith, compassion. I could feel it.

  The lights were much brighter now, and he looked older, tired. It shook me a bit as I moved closer. Later, he would tell me that the communicating experience often drains him considerably, sometimes to the point where he feels too weak to stand.

  As the crowd dwindled, a woman, perhaps in her late thirties, sat with him on the stage, their chairs facing each other. At first she was speaking and then sobbing into her hands. Mr. Randolph placed a hand on her shoulder, and then closing his eyes, he began to whisper, and I wondered if he were healing her.

  I waited until she left, and then taking several deep breaths, I gathered my nerve and followed him backstage. The door to his dressing room was open, and his assistant was nowhere in sight. The lighting was dim back here, and everything about me seemed coated in dust. Old and long since touched. I almost felt as if I was floating through a dream, and I couldn’t quite believe I was approaching him. He was sitting in a chair in the dressing room when I knocked, completely still, and he was looking straight at me, not the least bit startled, almost as if he we
re expecting someone. Expecting me?

  I went to speak, but even I could barely hear my words, my voice so small emerging from my throat. I thanked him for the performance, but he still said nothing, he just sat staring, and then I asked him—despite Hiram—if perhaps I could purchase a book. He smiled a little and shook his head.

  “You didn’t come see me for a book,” he said.

  A few wisps of hair fell from my bun, and I brushed them away from my eyes. “I’d love to purchase one.”

  There was a box beside his dressing table, and he leaned over and pulled out a copy. Scribbled the inscription. To Elizabeth, Best Wishes, Paschal Beverly Randolph. I felt a jolt in my chest, my heart. I hadn’t told him my name. He handed me the book, and my hands shaking I went to hand him the money, but he brushed it away.

  “Compliments of the house.” He paused. “I saw you in the balcony. But that wasn’t your parents you were with.”

  “No, I’m not sure who they were.”

  “Well, in a way that’s good,” he said. “The gentleman won’t be with us much longer. There are several people on the other side waiting for him. His parents, an uncle, and a brother, I think. Maybe more. It was there for a second and then it was gone.” He was quiet again, squinting a little as he stared at me. Reading? And then something passed through his eyes, the color again passing from his face. I asked him if everything was all right, and he shook his head a bit, almost as if awakening from a dream. “Fine,” he said. “Fine.”

  My heart was racing again, and I had so many things I wanted to ask, so many things I wanted to say, but my tongue could barely move. I thanked him and turned to head back out through the theater. I had just passed through the doorway when he called out to me.

  “Elizabeth.”

  I turned.

  “The name Henry?” he said. “Does it mean anything to you?”

  I nodded.

  “A paternal figure. But older. Your grandfather?”

  Shocked, I nodded again.

  “He says to tell you that you have to get away from him,” he said. “He’s very worried. He’s afraid of what might happen.”

  29

  Ford was out in the yard without any shoes. It didn’t make any sense that he wouldn’t have any shoes on because it was winter, but then he noticed the leaves were back on the trees, bright green, and the air was rippling with waves of humidity. A quiet humming sound that only came in high summer, that only came when you were alone, and everything else was silent around you. But he wasn’t alone. There was a woman in the backyard with her back to him, kneeling on the ground, facing the cemetery. She had her hair up, and wore a long dress despite the heat. She sat perfectly still just to the left of the oak tree—the oak tree was tiny, barely a sapling, but he knew what it was—almost as if she were praying, and there was a little girl running about the tree. A bow in her hair, and herself in a long dress tied in back with a bow. White stockings. The little girl looked as if she were trying to catch the woman’s attention, but the woman either couldn’t see her, or was paying her no mind. And then when Ford looked again, the tree had grown. It was enormous now.

  Ford took a step closer, and listened, but he could still hear nothing but the humming sound, and then something breaking in the tree above. An acorn falling. Either a squirrel or a bird moving in the foliage. The house was behind him now. He felt eyes on him, coming from the house, the hairs on his neck standing on end, and his heart picking up its pace. He wanted to turn and see the house, he had to turn, and yet he couldn’t. Was terrified to turn. The woman stood slowly then, her back turned toward him. And then she turned slowly to look at him, and Ford tried to scream.

  He sat up in bed, his shirt soaked. He looked at the clock. Just after nine—and Diana hadn’t yet come up to bed. He wondered if he had really let out a cry, or if it was just in the dream. It was a dream he had repeatedly since they moved in—the woman, the little girl, and the enormous tree, but up until now the woman had never turned. And now he realized he had seen the woman in the dream before. Seen her picture. Down in the cellar.

  He lay back, catching his breath, stared at the ceiling.

  30

  March 24, 1872

  If Hiram finds out what I have done, I shiver to think what might happen. I don’t believe neither he nor I would be safe, from him.

  A storm had come in off the sea Saturday night while we were in the theater, and I waited an hour or more for it to pass but when it did not, I decided it would be better to stay in Edgartown for the night. There could be little harm. I still had a small sum of money tucked away, and certainly enough to get a room at the inn, and Hiram would not return before Monday at the earliest—more than likely even later should the storm on the mainland prove to bring snow. I know how people, islanders, might view a lady staying here on her own, but given the conditions, traveling back home, especially with the road so close to the sea, did not seem to be wise. I had spoken to one coachman who had come that way and he had advised me that much of the road was already nearly impassable, the waves crashing over the land bridge that is Beach Road—connecting Cottage City with Edgartown—and flooding Sengekontacket Pond. It is a tidal pond, and he assured me that waters should have recessed by late morning or early afternoon of the next day, but as of now, he said, it was out of the question.

  I had no umbrella. I don’t know why I didn’t think to bring an umbrella as the temperature had risen and it was surely too warm for snow, but I had not. Nor had I brought a night bag nor a change of clothes. I hurried along South Water Street, the wind and rain blowing in furiously coming in off the sea, and the waves crashing loudly in the distance—I could only imagine the damage they were doing to the wharf. By the time I arrived at the Achelous Inn my clothes were completely drenched, the water dripping in rivers down my cheeks. The inn was an impressive mansion in the Georgian style with Doric columns and an enormous clove leaf window above the porch roof on the second floor. It had been owned by a sea captain with two ships—The Syren and the Pilgrim—and he had built the home to retire in with his wife, but the town lore stated, she had retired there alone, her husband lost at sea.

  Now there was a thin man in a high collar and gray vest waiting inside at the desk. He was bald on top except for a small tuft of dark hair right in the center above his brow. He needed only one look at me to understand my situation, and he explained that his wife could possibly lend me a nightgown to wear while I laid my clothes out to dry. The inn was nearly full, he said, but there were two or three rooms still available. Mine would be on the second floor.

  And it was on the second floor that I once again ran into Mr. Randolph.

  I was on my way back to the desk to check with the man about obtaining a pitcher and a glass for water—I had already taken off my wet things and wore my overcoat over my nightgown—and Mr. Randolph looked to be just entering his room, two doors down. He stopped and looked at me, but he did not smile, and as his eyes betrayed nothing, for a moment I did not think he recognized me despite just having seen me backstage. But then he bowed his head, slightly.

  “Mrs. Steebe,” he said.

  His voice startled me. I didn’t remember telling him my last name either, and I wondered if he were reading my mind. I didn’t want him to be reading my mind. I started to blush, and bowed my head slightly in return.

  “I imagine more than a few people from the lecture will be spending the night,” he said. “The weather being as it is. I, myself, was not planning on leaving until tomorrow regardless. The eleven clock ferry, a coach to Boston, and then the train to Albany, I hope. I usually stay over near Trinity Park—there is a nice little inn there with a wonderful view of Ocean Park and the sea, and that wonderful hotel that is going up—but I heard the road tonight is impassible. The weather in this region is so unpredictable, it is hard to make any plans definitive.”

  “Usually,” I said.

  I cannot recall how the rest of the conversation went before I found myself in his
room, sitting at the table by the window. I believe I had mentioned going downstairs for water, and I believe he said he had some inside, but how I ended up in there is not clear. I know how it would be looked upon if anyone were to learn that I spent time in his room, and worse, oh, much, much worse if word were ever to get back to Hiram. And normally, under normal circumstances, I never would have followed him. But the circumstances seemed far from normal, and to be truthful they seemed far from real. Nothing seemed real since I first heard his voice in the theater, and then witnessed what followed. It was all a dream. And I almost wonder now if he had put me in a trance.

  He poured us each a glass of water, and then he removed his coat, his bow tie, down to his shirt and his vest. He rolled up his sleeves and he took a seat across the table from me. The wind grew louder outside, rattling the panes on the window. We were far enough inland, and up a slope, where we should have been safe from the surf, but on an island in a storm, you could never be sure.

  I could feel the man’s eyes on me still, but I tried not to look at him. I couldn’t be sure what it may imply if I looked at him, what my eyes might betray. He worked searching through the layers of people’s minds, their souls, so who could say what he might see that others, anyone else, would surely miss. Possibly it would be something I could not even see myself. But then something inside me stirred, I felt a pull, something magnetic, and I did turn. The black of his eyes, his pupils, already so large, steady and transfixed. And then, as hard as I might try, I couldn’t look away.

  “The spirits are strong around you,” he said at last. “Have you known many people who have passed?”

  I shook my head. “Not more than most. I had a brother who died when I was small.”

  “Jeremy,” he said, and as he did my heart jolted as if it might stop. “Short for Jeremiah—although, I suppose it usually is. A small boy, weak, and his skin very pale. I can see him. Was it a lung disease he died of?”