by Amy Stewart
Again? That bothered me the most. How many times had Mrs. Kayser been sent away? I knew that some people stayed at Morris Plains for years, and that some never left at all, but rarely did a person go in and out like a guest at a hotel.
We faced a long and impossibly slow drive north to the asylum. The roads were so dark that Deputy Morris was obliged to lean forward and squint through the glass. The automobile’s top was soaked through and dripping. Every few minutes we would hit such a deep rut that a wheel would spin uselessly, making a terrifying sort of whine, and Morris would grunt and mutter something under his breath until he managed to sputter out of it and bounce on down the road. It was a wonder we didn’t puncture a tire.
Between the noise and the cold—not to mention whatever torment might’ve been visited upon Anna Kayser and Tony Hajnacka as they drew ever nearer to Morris Plains—none of us spoke. We rode along in silence for nearly twenty minutes before the automobile ran through a particularly deep puddle that bounced all of us right out of our seats. Tony got knocked to the side and hit his head against the glass. He yelled something incoherent and jerked around, staring wide-eyed at Deputy Morris and then back at me and Anna.
“If you want to throw me out, just do it.” He tried to raise his arms but remembered that he couldn’t, because they were chained to the door handle, and bent over instead to rub his forehead on his sleeve.
“Nobody’s throwing you out. Just be quiet.” Deputy Morris coughed and wiped his eyes with a handkerchief. The motor car was barely moving. My harness mare could’ve carried us to the asylum faster.
“I heard they tie you to the bed at night and you can’t so much as scratch your nose,” Tony said. There was an agitated rattle in his voice. Whatever good cheer he’d possessed earlier was fast draining away.
“Oh, they do,” Anna Kayser volunteered. “You get so stiff, being flat on your back all night.”
Tony jerked around in surprise. I put my hand on Anna’s shoulder and made what I hoped was a soothing Shhhhhh.
“You needn’t talk about it,” I said.
But Tony couldn’t contain himself. He was bouncing up and down in his seat and straining to turn around and see the woman behind him.
“You’ve been in there already! You know about it! What about the copper baths and the rubber masks, and what about the syrup of mercury and the lighting-wires they put into your ears, and—”
“Yes, they have all of that,” Anna said, in the manner of someone describing the furnishings at a dismal boarding-house. “And if you misbehave, there’s a room with no windows and nothing but wool batting on the floor, and you’ll stay there for days in the dark.”
“Oh, I’m likely to misbehave.” Tony rocked from side to side. Deputy Morris reached a hand out to throw him back against the seat, and the wheels skidded around on the road and threw us all to one side and then another.
“Damnit!” Morris roared. “Get him under control!”
I leaned forward and grabbed at Tony’s coat from behind. I pulled him back against the seat and hissed into his ear. “Mr. Hajnacka, you’re to keep very still and let Deputy Morris drive us safely.”
But Tony was trembling, and I could tell that he was working himself up to an outburst. He might have done it, except that a gust of wind flew at us broadside. Morris cursed and clutched at the wheel.
Just ahead of us sounded an enormous crack and a tree branch crashed down on the road, the bare sticks screeching against the glass. The tree had the otherworldly presence of a person grasping at us from the darkness. We all shrieked at once as Morris brought the auto to a halt.
It was oddly serene for a moment. The four of us sat in perfect stillness with the wind whistling around and the rain hammering down. In the dark we all turned and looked at one another, then out at the long fingers of the fallen tree before us.
Deputy Morris coughed into a handkerchief and lifted his hat to wipe his forehead. “I’ll go see if I can move it.”
“Let me help,” I said.
“Stay with the inmates.” With that he was gone.
Staying with the inmates is never a terrible idea, so I didn’t argue over it. The wound around Tony’s neck had started to bleed again, with all the jerking back and forth. I leaned across the front seat and dabbed at it with a handkerchief. He didn’t fight me.
Deputy Morris vanished into the dark. We could see nothing but a few branches in the glow of the yellow headlamps. I could faintly hear him coughing and swearing, and his boots sliding against the gravel. Finally the branches jerked out of view, a little at a time, and his bent form appeared across the glass. Then he was back inside, shuddering and wheezing.
He sat with his head down in his coat for a minute, and then he said, “These roads are washing out from under us. We’re only just now outside of Hackensack. I don’t think we’ll make it to Morris Plains tonight.”
“Do you mean to take me home?” Anna cried, suddenly hopeful.
He coughed again and dabbed at his eyes with his sleeve. “No, ma’am. I mean to take you back to the jail with us. We’ll stay the night and try again tomorrow.”
“Jail!” Her voice came in a high wail that agitated Tony and set him to rocking back and forth again. “You can’t lock me in a jail. I’ve done nothing wrong.”
Morris got the auto moving, and I slid over and put a hand on Anna’s arm. “Mrs. Kayser. You’re in the sheriff’s custody, that’s all. No one is accusing you of a crime. But we have to stop somewhere for the night.”
“I can’t go to jail,” she cried. “Couldn’t you send for my husband?”
“I’m going to make you very comfortable. We have a ward for the women and I’m in charge of it. It’ll be clean and quiet, and there’s good steam heat. I’ll have a change of clothes for you, and I’ll see to it that you get a cup of tea and a sandwich. I’ll be in a cell right next to you all night long. You can call out to me and I’ll come, no matter the hour.”
Anna went a little limp, and I thought I might’ve settled her down, but Tony only wound himself up further. “Don’t believe her! She won’t come when you call. They never do. They lock you in a room with a bunk and a toilet and you can pound the bars all you like but no one”—here he rocked back and forth again and hit his head against the window rhythmically with each syllable—“no—one—ev—er—comes.”
6
we made quite a fretful and anxious party as we rolled into Hackensack. I suppose all four of us were, by then, suffering from nervous exhaustion in one form or another.
To Anna Kayser, the jail must have looked menacing against the night sky: it had been built to look like a medieval prison, complete with turrets and the kind of narrow windows through which one might lob a cannonball. It could appear rather nightmarish in the dark.
Of course, I was tremendously comforted when the jail’s silhouette came into view, because it meant the end of a tiresome day and the prospect of a comfortable night’s sleep for me. But I watched Mrs. Kayser wring her hands together, and I knew I’d have quite a job getting her into the jail and settled for the night.
The auto came to a stop in the long driveway that ran between the jail and the river. If the guards had known we were returning with inmates, they would’ve been watching for us and rushed outside to help. But we weren’t expected back until after we’d delivered them to Morris Plains, so no one was waiting.
That wouldn’t pose a problem ordinarily, because I could handle my inmate and Deputy Morris his. But here’s what people don’t understand about our job: unexpected circumstances and small deviations to our normal operations can throw us off course. We try to be prepared for anything, but in our line of work, that’s nearly impossible.
Deputy Morris stepped around to open the door for Tony Hajnacka and unchain him from the door handle. I did the same, going around from the back seat to escort Anna Kayser out. For a moment, the four of us were right next to each other in the dark: Deputy Morris fumbling with Tony’s chains, and me h
elping Mrs. Kayser to find her footing on the uneven gravel.
I don’t know if Tony saw an opportunity and took it, or if he merely jerked away from Deputy Morris in a spasm of terror and found himself unexpectedly free, but either way, in the middle of that murky and muddy night, the unthinkable happened and our inmate ran off.
I didn’t realize in that instant that he’d gone. All I knew was that Morris had slipped or was shoved. When he fell on the slick gravel, he shrieked in pain and somehow managed to pull Mrs. Kayser down with him. I would’ve gone over, too, as she grabbed at the sleeve of my coat to steady herself, but by then I had spotted Tony running for the river bank. I slithered out of my coat and ran.
As the jail was equipped with so few windows, there was very little light streaming down on us. I could make out just enough of Tony’s figure to see that he moved with the uneven, loping gait of someone who hadn’t the use of his arms. At least Morris had managed to chain his wrists together before he ran.
He was obviously heading for the river, although I couldn’t say for certain whether he did it deliberately, intending to drown himself, or whether he simply couldn’t see what was in front of him. Regardless, I shouted for him to stop and he lurched over the embankment anyway.
There was nothing to do but to go in after him. I tried to tear a few buttons off my heavy outer skirt, but they were so carefully stitched, owing to Fleurette’s handiwork, that I couldn’t rip a single one loose. I plunged right into the water, wrapped in far too much wool and tweed.
This was no gentle river with mossy banks. It served a commercial purpose and, as such, dropped off sharply and moved swiftly. The shock of all that cold water made it impossible to take a breath, but I forged ahead with the water up to my shoulders and rising. Now and again my feet struck a stone or a buried log, so that I could more or less propel myself along without engaging in anything that resembled swimming. In my youth girls did not swim: we bathed. As such I hardly knew how to keep myself alive in a river.
Tony was ahead of me, his head bobbing just above the black water. He was drifting toward one of the great sewer pipes that discharged into the river and made a frothy whirlpool where the water surged in. I’m sure I don’t have to describe how foul it smelled, but in truth the odor didn’t make any impression on me at the time. (I was only later able to recall the stench of the river because of the way it lingered on my clothes, no matter how many times I washed them.)
Tony coughed and gasped for air. At terrifyingly frequent intervals he disappeared for a few seconds and then came up again, retching and groaning. With his wrists chained together, I don’t know how he survived for even a minute. His feet must’ve hit bottom once or twice too, which was all that kept him alive until I reached him.
It felt like I was in that river for an hour, but it must’ve taken only a few minutes for me to grab hold of him and wrap an arm across his chest. He didn’t fight me, but he didn’t help, either. I’d never had cause to haul a sack of potatoes across a river, but that was Tony Hajnacka, limp and weighty.
I dragged him to shore with only my feet to propel me. We went underwater together a few times, and even then he didn’t kick or fight for air. He was heavy enough to pull me underwater with him, and might have succeeded, except that I had more to lose than he did at that moment. No inmate was going to escape or die on my watch.
I couldn’t lift him out of the river. The best I could do was to heft him up against the embankment and to hold him there. My feet were braced against a slippery submerged boulder that threatened to give way, and because I had my hands under Tony’s arms, I couldn’t do a thing to keep myself steady without letting go of him.
Shoes and trouser legs gathered around us, but I couldn’t see to whom they belonged. Four arms reached down to slide Tony out of the mud, and then someone took my elbow and hoisted me up. I couldn’t get to my feet and was forced to lie there like a beached whale, gasping and sputtering in the mud.
Now the cold really set in. I’d lost all sensation in my feet and my heart hammered alarmingly in my chest. I pushed myself up out of the mud and there was Tony, right next to me, having been hoisted up on all fours so that someone could pound him on the back and force him to cough up all the water he’d swallowed. That had the desired effect, except that he vomited too, and gasped and coughed and choked some more.
Nonetheless, he was back on his feet before I was. He looked monstrous, standing over me in the light of a single lantern, covered in river mud and shaking, the bandage around his neck now gone entirely and the blood coming down in rivulets. His wrists were still in handcuffs and he was too weak to walk, so the guards had no choice but to drag him back to the jail, his feet scraping the gravel as he went. He had lost a shoe.
I managed to get myself sitting upright and accepted a blanket that was being handed to me. Sheriff Heath knelt down and put his face right in front of mine. “Is anything broken? Can you walk?”
“I suppose I’d better. You’re not going to carry me.”
He took my hands and forced me to stand, which was no easy feat because of the way the mud sucked at my wet clothes. My hat was gone, and it wasn’t until I tried to take a step that I realized that I, too, was missing a shoe, only mine was a very sturdy boot that was nearly impossible to take off after a walk in the rain. I couldn’t imagine how it had worked loose. The mud must’ve demanded a sacrifice from each of us.
At the sight of my stockinged foot, I laughed with a kind of nervous relief and said, “Nothing’s broken. I’m fine.”
“Then let’s get you inside.”
Everyone else had gone in. Only a guard waited at the door for us.
“What happened to Anna? I should get her settled. She was so nervous about coming to the jail.”
“She’d be even more nervous if she saw you in this state. The guards have her. Let Cordelia look after you.”
“Let’s not bother Mrs. Heath.”
“It’s no bother.”
I had no choice but to hobble across the drive, where the door to Sheriff Heath’s living quarters was half-open. Mrs. Heath waited just inside, swaddled in a bathrobe, with a stack of blankets and towels in her arms. I hated to step in: my outer skirt had come loose and was dragging on the ground, with a mess of gravel, mud, and leaves at its hem. I stayed in the doorway and kicked it off, then tried to wring out my petticoats, but Sheriff Heath pulled me inside. Before I knew it, I’d been swaddled in clean blankets and deposited in a chair, with a towel at my feet and another one over my hair.
The sheriff closed the door behind him and, all at once, it was over. The rain, the river, the inmate bent on running away or drowning himself—all of that was suddenly far away, and I was in the Heath family’s warm and quiet sitting room. For a moment I just sat there, shedding river water and mud, and giving off the odor of moss and the unmentionable filth of the sewer pipe.
It took a few deep and shaky breaths for my heart to reach any kind of normal rhythm and for the water to clear from my ears. When at last I was able to take hold of myself, I looked up at Cordelia Heath, who was at that moment holding a pair of towels out at arm’s length with the expression of a woman who didn’t like to have her towels soiled.
“Thank you, but it’s not necessary.” My voice came out gravelly from all the river water I’d inhaled.
“Apparently it is necessary,” Cordelia said.
Sheriff Heath stepped in between us, took the towels, and dumped them on my lap to do with as I wished. Then he sat down across from me. He was drenched, too, from the rain, and splattered in mud.
“You saved a man’s life tonight,” he said.
“I only wish it hadn’t been necessary. What about Morris?”
“His knee gave out. He can’t stand on it. We’ll take him home.”
“Well, it was sloppy of us to try to move both of them at once in this storm.”
“That’s exactly what the papers will say,” Cordelia put in. She was hovering around me, attempting
to look busy, although there was nothing more for her to do but watch the river water seep into her good upholstery. “The last thing we need is another escaped inmate in the news.”
I was the one who allowed an inmate to escape the year previous. I also caught the fugitive some weeks later, but that didn’t matter: in his campaign, Detective Courter was already making speeches about how the sheriff was too weak to keep a criminal in jail. Nonetheless, Sheriff Heath protected me: he never told anyone that it was I who allowed the man to flee.
Cordelia must’ve known she’d gone too far. Sheriff Heath fixed her with a look that I could only describe as disappointed and said, “Deputy Kopp has only just finished crawling out of the Hackensack River with a half-drowned man under her arm. Do you suppose we could offer her something hot to drink?”
That was enough to send her out of the room, which was his intent.
“You’re the first deputy to jump in the river on my watch,” he said when she was gone.
“I didn’t have time to think. He would’ve drowned.”
“You could have too, in those skirts.”
For the first time I noticed that he’d run outside in a suit of striped pajamas with a coat thrown over his shoulders. It embarrassed me to see him like that, but I must’ve looked even more shameful, in my sodden petticoats. I pulled another towel around myself for good measure.
From over his shoulder I saw his little boy standing in the hallway, staring at us through his father’s deep brown eyes. Sheriff Heath turned and saw him, too.
“Go on back to bed,” he said. “Deputy Kopp just had a fall in the mud.”
The boy backed away slowly, but I had the distinct impression that he was still standing in the shadows.
“Something’s not quite right about the situation with Anna Kayser,” I said. “She doesn’t belong in an asylum.”