The Resurrectionist

by Matthew Guinn

The man nodded, and Nemo lifted the remains of Toby from the table. Toby was maybe forty pounds of weight now, reduced by cutting to little more than bone and ligament. He carried him easily in one hand and picked up the full bucket of Quash’s blood from the floor with the other. At the cellar door he paused to set the bucket down as he turned the knob. The voices called from the dissecting room almost as soon as he had opened the door.

  “Shut that door, damn it.”

  “My God, what a stench!”

  But Nemo paid the voices little heed, for beneath the shouting he heard a light knocking on the front door of the building. He set the bucket on the cellar’s top step and tossed the bundled sheet down the stairs, where it landed on the clay with a muffled thump. In seconds he had locked the cellar and was stepping quietly across the foyer to the great doors. He swung the heavy oak open on the morning sunshine and saw a white woman standing on the front steps, a valise beside her.

  “Good morning,” she said, the sunlight glinting in her gray eyes. Nemo had never seen eyes of so light a shade. A moment later he realized she was holding out her hand to be shaken.

  “Good morning, ma’am,” he said, taking the hand uneasily and giving it a quick shake. Back at Windsor the penalty for such contact would have been nearly fatal. He wondered where on earth this woman could have come from.

  “I’m here about the circular,” the woman said. “The advertisement for a nurse?”

  Nemo nodded and ushered her into the cool foyer with a slight bow. “Certainly, ma’am,” he said, watching the woman as she stood with the valise held in front of her with both hands, her eyes taking in the banister, the sweeping staircase, the tall ceilings. She was hardly bigger than a girl. “May I tell Doctor Johnston who’s calling?”

  The young woman’s eyes had come to rest on a portrait of Benjamin Rush that Doctor Johnston had hung in the front hall. She studied the doctor’s features as though she did not think much of what she saw.

  “Sara Thacker,” she said, looking at him again. Then she sniffed once, her nostrils flaring slightly. “And you may as well tell him that you fellows need a housekeeper as well.”

  JOHNSTON HELD A CHAIR for the young woman, then took a seat behind his desk uneasily. A nurse, by his definition—or indeed as defined by any of his contemporaries—was by nature matronly and plain. This Sara Thacker, though dressed modestly enough in a simple linen dress, was neither. Her face bore no rouge and her sandy hair was drawn back in the simple ponytail favored by rustic women, but that hair was lustrous and her gray eyes were too bright, he thought, ever to blend into the dull wards of the Negro hospital or settle cheerfully on such menial work as the emptying of bedpans. Most troubling of all, beneath the linen dress he could detect no corset.

  Johnston looked over her letters of reference, nodding from time to time. After a few long moments he peered over the top of the stationery at Sara, his eyes narrowed over his spectacles.

  “These are strong recommendations, particularly the reference from Major Anderson. He describes your conduct during the summer’s malaria outbreak as ‘heroic.’ That is high praise indeed from a decorated military man.”

  The young woman’s eyes wandered to the window. “I did what was required,” she said softly. “I’m afraid Major Anderson is in for a hard time.”

  “He certainly is. It is fortunate for you that he deemed it inadvisable to carry women with him to Fort Sumter.”

  “I would have gone,” she said. “There will be a sore need for nurses there.”

  “Doubtless that is correct.” Johnston cleared his throat. “I apologize for the directness of the question, but the hiring procedure at an institution such as ours always requires a degree of indelicacy. You have served in the military’s nursing division for over a year. Surely during that time among the men of the service you were presented with opportunities for a less arduous life. Why is it that you have not married?”

  The young woman looked at him instantly, light in her eyes. “Would I sound too indelicate, sir, if I told you I found the overtures of eighteen-year-old private soldiers unappealing?”

  There was a long moment of quiet before Johnston cleared his throat again. He smiled faintly. “Frank, perhaps, but not indelicate.”

  But the young woman seemed not to have heard him. She pulled the circular Johnston had posted from her valise and read from it: “ ‘All applicants must present letters from at least two persons of trust testifying to morality, integrity, seriousness, and capacity for care of the sick.’ ” She looked up at Johnston. “I find that order of qualifications interesting.”

  “Is that so? What in the world is curious about it?”

  “I wonder that capacity to care for the sick is not the first consideration.”

  “I see,” Johnston said. He drew a long breath. “But you must understand that the stability of the environment here at the college is fragile and must be maintained. The young men studying here are, physiologically speaking, at their prime. Any feminine distraction would be extremely disruptive. Their vigor, their energies, must be rigorously directed at their studies.”

  “At caring for the sick.”

  “Precisely, without distraction.”

  Miss Thacker tapped the circular against her knee and smiled. “Perhaps, then, they were admitted without adequate testimony to their morality. Or their integrity.”

  Johnston felt his temper rise. “The circular also states, if I remember correctly, that applicants should be matronly women of mature years.” Johnston paused, and his face flushed scarlet. “Begging your pardon, but you seem to possess neither quality.”

  Her gray eyes never left his face as the long seconds of silence spun out. After a moment, he set the letters on his desktop and spoke again.

  “Miss Thacker, I admire your candor. But I cannot help thinking it would be better suited to a more, shall I say, liberal environment. Perhaps you should consider a move northward? My former colleague Joseph Warrington administers an excellent nursing program at the Philadelphia Lying-In Charity. I would gladly write to him on your behalf.”

  She rose, and as she did caught Doctor Johnston’s eye lingering on her waist.

  “I can afford a relocation to the north no better than a whalebone corset, sir,” she said. “If you decide I’m suitable for the position, please send word to the commissary by Miller’s Ferry. I am staying with my people across the river for the time being.”

  Johnston’s mouth was still open on an unspoken word when she shut the door behind her.

  FRIDAY NIGHT, APRIL nineteenth, and the booming of Charleston’s guns on Fort Sumter seemed still to be echoing across South Carolina a full week later. In honor of the occasion, the faculty had decided to celebrate what they called the Second American Revolution in grand style, with a secession ball. Tonight, nearing eleven, the school glowed with candlelight from every window and its doors had been thrown open to the select society of Columbia, who now thronged the ground-floor rooms in their finery, the sound of their voices jubilant over the whisper of crinoline and starched linen and the tinkling sound of crystal and sterling service put to full use. In one corner of the parlor a hastily assembled group of slaves was flailing away at “Dixie” for the third time, Napoleon Horry scratching his fiddle as though he meant to saw it in half while Ben Smith clawed at a gourd banjo behind him. Ben’s son Sam was keeping time for the trio, squatting on the floor and slapping a set of spoons between his knees while pairs of ladies and gentlemen danced, awkwardly attempting to match the song’s tempo with a sped-up waltz.

  In his dusty suit of tails, Nemo stood behind a bar improvised from a dissecting table and a white tablecloth, nodding and smiling as he refilled glasses. After this long day the line of people in front of the table seemed interminable, but he was happy to celebrate secession with the white folks, since the war would be the end of all of them. He appeared to be the only one here tonight who knew it, though; even Doctor Johnston was a bit tipply, having allowed himself a thi
rd glass of punch to toast Abraham Lincoln’s imminent defeat. He stood over in the corner talking with Nurse Thacker, who looked uncomfortable in her new dress and touched her neck from time to time as the doctor spoke.

  But Nemo had a more pressing concern than the fate of the Union: he was nearly out of whiskey. He had laid in provisions since Wednesday but had grossly underestimated the thirst that secession would elicit in the gentlemen in attendance. And now he saw, midway back in the line, Charles Hampton, coming on inexorably for yet another tumbler of rye. Apparently Mister Hampton intended to drink Columbia dry before departing for Charleston to join the fight; his face burned crimson above the gold lieutenant’s stripes of his freshly tailored uniform. Nemo eyed his last bottle of whiskey nervously as he ladled out another glass of punch.

  Hampton was tapping his julep cup on the table even before the lady in front of him moved aside. Nemo poured out the last of his whiskey into the cup with a deferential smile. But Hampton did not budge.

  “Fill her up, boy,” he said, tapping the cup again.

  “Can’t do it, sir. We fresh out of whiskey.”

  “Out, you say?”

  “Yes, sir. We cleaned out. Ben over there was supposed to bring another barrel this afternoon, but he didn’t show up with nothing but his banjo. Can I pour you some apple brandy? How about some gin or rum punch?”

  “Rum! Good God, man, we’re not sailors. We must have whiskey!”

  Nemo held out the empty bottle in response and shrugged apologetically. Hampton’s face took on a darker hue of red.

  “Don’t you brandish that bottle at me, boy. You get those feet hopping and fetch me some more. I don’t care a damn if you have to run all the way down Gervais for it.”

  Nemo looked at his feet and shook his head sadly. “Doctor Johnston told me not to leave my post, sir. He said so specific.” Behind Hampton, the line was growing restless at the delay. Soon Nemo would have a Confederate mutiny of his own to contend with.

  Hampton reached out his hand and gathered a fistful of Nemo’s shirt in it. He pulled upward until Nemo’s eyes met his.

  “I’ll whip you myself, boy, if you don’t fill that tumbler in a minute.”

  Nemo let his eyes widen as though struck by an inspiration. “Well, now, Mister Hampton,” he drawled, “there is one small barrel down the cellar I know of, but the captains tell me it’s off-limits.” He watched Hampton’s face as he spoke. “Tell me it’s aged something special. But they told Nemo to leave it alone. Said it was strictly for a momentous occasion.”

  Hampton’s eyes narrowed. “Would you not say this is a momentous evening?”

  “Well, sir, I guess it is something special, now, in point of fact.”

  The hand turned him loose. “Well, get it. I’ll watch out for things up here. I can spoon out punch as well as a nigger, I reckon.” Someone in the line laughed. Nemo picked up a pewter pitcher and started toward the stairway door while Hampton took up his position behind the bar to a smattering of applause.

  Nemo had to excuse himself past a pair of young ladies whispering to one another at the cellar door. As they giggled and moved away, he quickly unlocked the hasp below the glass doorknob. Downstairs, he was glad he had sprinkled an extra layer of quicklime on the floor that morning. The smell was still there, but subtly—little more than a sullen undercurrent to the scent of dry earth, only the hint of decay present beneath the tang of kerosene from the lamp burning on the wall. Tonight the basement looked much like any other, save for the cocky jut of a half-buried rib cage beside one of the brick foundation pillars, dusted with white powder, the last of the cadavers he had cleared for the ball.

  He stepped to the corner where the barrel waited, set upright on one end, and pulled off the lid. He dipped the pitcher into the whiskey and let it fill, careful to keep it clear of poor Minnie Jenkins’s stillborn baby, who floated upright in the amber liquid. Nemo had not opened the barrel since he had brought the baby down here in August and was pleased to see that the whiskey had worked a marvel of preservation. The little boy looked like an angel, he thought, with his tiny hands balled into fists against his cheeks. His short tufts of curls wafted gently as the pitcher rose from the whiskey, and Nemo placed a hand on them for a moment, saying a silent prayer. Then he put the lid back in place and climbed the stairs.

  Hampton was waiting for him in the front room when he hurried in with the pitcher, smiling as he moved through the crowd. Hampton handed a cup of punch to a stout woman in a satin toque and stepped aside for Nemo to fill his cup. Nemo poured with one hand and crushed a sprig of mint into the cup with the other. Hampton took it and tossed it back in a gulp. Nemo cleaned the rim of the pitcher with a napkin very slowly, watching Hampton from the corner of his eye as the white man coughed and wiped his lips. Eyes watering, Hampton stretched out an arm, pointing at Nemo.

  “Now that,” he said, “is whiskey. Hit me once more.”

  Again Nemo filled the cup, his smile even broader than before. Hampton turned to the waiting line and raised his glass. “To the Confederacy!” he shouted. The others raised their glasses, cheering, happy to toast everything that was right in the world, the preservation of the old order. Nemo was pleased to see that Lieutenant Hampton drank the deepest.

  THE FRONT PORCH of Walton’s Commissary sagged under the weight of the dozen black men gathered there to while away the hot Saturday afternoon. Summer was coming on strong this year and the cicadas seemed to be singing praises for the heat. Their droning whine all but drowned out the rare comment from the loungers and the murmuring of the milk cows in their stalls behind the store. None of the men complained about the heat. They were glad not to be working in it, with their weekly half day completed at noon, leaving them the welcome expanse of forty hours free of labor until Monday’s dawn. Later this afternoon the more industrious slaves, who hired out their Saturday time, would begin to arrive, crowding in the store to spend their new pennies on hard candy and cuts of meat, spreading their aura of prosperity and enterprise. But for now, in the weekend reprieve of hard work, there was only the cicadas’ song and the men’s lassitude, a quiet time of contentment, of being owned by no man.

  Several of them napped in cane-bottomed chairs they had leaned against the front wall of the store. One of these, awakened by a mosquito’s bite, opened his eyes and gazed down the road leading to Walton’s place. He squinted into the distance, then leaned forward, the chair’s legs clapping down on the porch planks. “Here come Nemo Johnston,” he said.

  The others followed his gaze, knives stopping their carving on sticks of yellow pine, chair legs scraping. In the shimmering heat they saw Nemo coming up the sandy road with his deliberate gait. He wore a black driving coat that set off the white of his boiled shirt, and his head was capped with a Panama hat made of straw dyed black. The heat was so intense in the road that the black shapes of the coat and hat seemed to waver as he came on, his outline shifting in the humid air. But all of the men knew that when he reached the shade of the porch he would have not a drop of sweat on his brow or lip.

  “Ain’t he dressed fine?” one of the younger men asked.

  “Yeah, he dressed fine. He going to dress your ass out someday.”

  “Won’t get me. My brother Abe going to sit up by my grave. We made a deal. Two weeks of nights he’ll be there. I do the same for him if he go first.”

  “Sammy, you a fool. You think Abe going to leave Sally alone nights for two weeks?”

  One of the men laughed. “I’ll check on her.”

  Sammy looked uncertain. “Abe promised.”

  “Sure he did, child. Promise is a good thing. But some promises hard to keep. What if Abe went on first? What would you do if you saw that black bastard coming up on you in the dark graveyard?”

  Someone hissed, and the men’s conversation stopped abruptly. They looked over at old Renty Tucker where he sat perched on a barrel by the screen door. His wife, Melissa, had died the week just past. Though he sat erect and impassi
ve, a single tear had trailed through the dust on his weathered cheek.

  No one heard Nemo’s approach until he propped a boot heel on the porch steps. He greeted them, doffing his hat, and began wiping the dust from his foot with a handkerchief. His boots were covered in snakeskin.

  One of the men whistled. “Where you get them boots, man?”

  “Mister Carlton made them for me. I killed the snake down by the Congaree.”

  “Mister Carlton?”

  “Snake was four foot long. He wouldn’t die till the sun went down.”

  “Mister Carlton a white cobbler.”

  Nemo nodded. “Still white the last time I saw him.”

  One of the young men sitting on the porch floor spoke up. “They say a copperhead can put his tail in his mouth and roll after you like a wagon wheel. Run you down.” He said it a little too loudly. Some of the old men grunted.

  “I’m doing his only rolling now,” Nemo said. No one spoke up to contradict him. He climbed the steps and crossed the porch, pausing at the door. He took the Panama hat off his head and turned to old Renty.

  “I was sorry to hear about Mrs. Melissa,” he said.

  Renty Tucker clenched his jaw. It looked as though he were trying to grind his teeth down to nubs.

  “Mrs. Melissa was a good woman,” Nemo said. “Always kind. She resting peaceful, now, Mister Tucker. I’m sure of it.”

  Renty Tucker put his face in his hands after the screen door slapped shut. He shivered like a cold wind had just blown over him.

  Inside, Nemo set his hat on the counter as he spoke to Walton, who was always glad to see his only customer who had never put anything on credit, always paid in cash. He followed Nemo now as he sauntered down the aisles with his hands clasped behind his back, walking slowly between baskets of dried beans and the tins of crackers and baking powder, sacks of coffee beans and potatoes. Now and then Nemo would pause and nod at a shelf and Walton would sack an item up. His croker sack was getting heavier by the minute.