Mad Boy

by Nick Arvin

  “Mother,” Henry says. “Mother is dead.”

  “Dead?” Father sets him at arm’s length, gapes. “What? What? Dead?”

  Henry nods.

  Father screams. Letting go of Henry he turns and crashes his head into the wall, again and again, until Henry drags him back. Father spreads his hands, and Henry chokingly explains, while Father grips and pulls on his beard. “You say she’s dead?” Father says. He winces, grimaces, hugs himself. “I can’t make it fit in my mind.” He sits on the tiny stool, the only furnishing in the room, aside from a filthy flat mattress and a bucket of piss. Light enters by a small, barred window. Tears stand in the hollow places below Father’s eyes, and he asks Henry to tell again how it happened, and Henry does.

  Henry adds, fighting through another fit of grief, “I had to leave her behind.”

  Father peers at him, confused. “She’s gone to a better place, I suppose, as she well deserves.”

  “Father,” Henry says, “after she died, she kept talking to me.”

  “She did?” Any doubt seems to pass from Father in an instant. “That’s no surprise, is it? She always had a great deal to say.”

  “She wants to be sent to sea, with her family around.” Henry tells about the barrel, the cart, talking to her. “But she went quiet, and I had to leave the barrel at Bladensburg.”

  “You say she’s inside the pickle barrel? She’s inside the pickle barrel Great-Great-Grandfather made?”

  Henry nods.

  Father looks closely at Henry a moment. Henry looks back at him.

  Father blinks. “Well,” he says, shrugging. “The pickle barrel is a temporary condition for her, as you say.”

  “We’ll send her to sea.”

  “Yes, yes. The dear woman,” Father says. “I wonder why she stopped talking?”

  Henry wants to tell Father what Suthers said and to hear Father pronounce it a lie. But looking at Father’s eyes, where there is a fragile new tracery of blood vessels all through the whites, Henry’s resolution fails him. What if what Suthers has said is true—and Father doesn’t know it? What if Father discovers that Henry is not his son: what then?

  “But her moods were never accountable,” Father says. “Melancholia. An excess of bile. She needed some sort of physic, though I never could work out what sort exactly.”

  “She said all of us should be there, for the burial at sea.”

  “A dilemma, that. I’m in a situation of some irony: my freedom of movement is constrained by the same government that, in principle, has the task of safeguarding it.”

  “I’m going to buy you out, Father.”

  “You have money?”

  Henry shakes his head. “I’ll find some, soon.”

  Father bolts to his feet, waves his hands. “Don’t!” He whirls and paces. “You’re too young. How could you take on such a task? The amount of money in question is very, very considerable. No no no.” Father sighs. “Better to leave your paterfamilias to his fate.”

  “But,” Henry says, “I’ll find the money!”

  “Perhaps Suthers will mind you until Franklin is released from his service.”

  Henry stamps his feet. “A war is like a rich man dancing with a hole in his pocket! There’s money all about! All I have to do is pick it up!”

  Father shakes his head. “My boy.”

  “The British are on their way to Baltimore! All sorts of things will be left lying around. It’ll be as easy as collecting feathers in a henhouse.”

  Father sits again on the little stool. Low and hunched, his gaze twitches around, taking in the cell with dismay and self-pity. “Truly,” he says, “it is a misery to abide in this hole, day after day.”

  The mouse comes to Father’s feet. Father lifts it, strokes a thumb along its back. “Each of us here has his own mouse,” Father says, cheering a little. “Sundays, we are allowed to race them in the hallway. We have to do something to exercise our spirits. No whiskey and nothing to do but race our mice and polish the bars with our eyebrows. This one’s Speck. Alas, Speck has had some poor luck lately, but it will come around. Always does.” Gray, quivering, the mouse looks at Henry with eyes like chips of wet black stone. “See how strong this one is?” Father says. “What a fighter?”

  It appears, to Henry, an unexceptional mouse. “They must run to all directions.”

  “Oh, no. We plug up every hole along the hallway, and we set them going from one end with a cat behind. It is an old, lame cat, but we still lose a racer from time to time. This is the third Speck, actually. Yes, my luck is certainly due to turn.”

  “Father,” Henry says, suddenly incensed. “You say that and say that, year after year, your luck will turn, your luck will turn. But: your luck never turns.”

  He halts. He has never said this before. He expects Father will seize him up and whip him.

  Father opens his lips, but says nothing. Henry launches onward. “Think of Suthers,” he says. “Suthers doesn’t wait for his luck to turn. Luck doesn’t mean anything to Suthers. He just goes and takes the thing he wants.”

  Father peers at Henry. Someone moans down the hall. A donkey brays in the street. Father seems to have shrunk. “There may be some truth in that,” Father says.

  Henry crouches, scratches a thumbnail in the black grime on the floor. “No,” he says, regretful. “Suthers is mean of spirit and unscrupulous.”

  “He is rather close-fisted. But he has been a friend to me.”

  This statement is extremely aggravating. Feeling that, after all, he must know, Henry says, “I have sometimes thought that it almost seems as if I am related to Suthers.”

  “Really?” Father says, doubtful, but Henry can see the idea turning in his mind. “Well, I wish you were!” His tone, his shining look: it’s clear that what Suthers spoke of has never entered Father’s thoughts. “A remarkable man. You shouldn’t say he is mean, unscrupulous. No. You are much too harsh. You ought to be more respectful.”

  “But surely,” Henry says, and out of grief and love he summons the deepest apology he can find, “surely, your luck really is due to turn.”

  “That,” Father says, “is as true a phrase as has ever been spoken.”

  They both watch a moment as the mouse gnaws Father’s little finger.

  “I heard Mother’s voice,” Henry says. “I really did. It went on and on.”

  Father straightens up. “Henry,” he says, “you are right. I must think of the distress of you and your mother.” He looks very solemn. “You have my permission to buy me free, if you are able. I do not know how you might do it, but you are industrious, and you have a way of setting your mind to a thing. And my luck is due to turn, as you say. Luck always turns in due time, Henry. It is a mathematical principle; Bernoulli proved it! One only needs to keep ready, so as to be able to grip the rising with both hands.” The mouse suddenly leaps to the floor, darts, vanishes. “Look at that vigor! So fleet and sprightly! Sure to win on Sunday.”

  Henry’s heart swells, but he cannot bear to cry again. He rushes to the door, hammers for the jailer.

  “You might stay a little longer,” Father says. “You’ll need to collect a great deal of money, I fear.” He looks at his empty hands doubtfully.

  “I’ll return soon!” Henry says. The door swings. He steps out.

  “And, Henry,” Father calls, “I am in direst need of whiskey! If you only find a little money, do you think you might fetch me a dram?”

  Coming into the street, Henry’s instinct is to run hard, away from the prison. So he does. He races as though hounds are upon him, through the streets, giving no attention to where he is headed, to make his legs burn, his lungs burn, his eyes tear. Sweat comes out all over.

  When he cannot run anymore, he rests at the side of the street. People are emptying houses and shops into wagons. Others barricade windows and doors with
scraps of wood, or they collect buckets, barrels, and troughs of water for firefighting. No one looks twice at Henry.

  As afternoon wanes, he rises and drags on through the streets, unsure what to do. He wanders into a bakery, where the sweet odor almost makes him sick, and he hopes to snatch a bun, but the baker shoos him out and locks the door behind. Before him two dogs fight with furious noise. A half-dozen American soldiers walk down the street, and passersby cheer. A woman and man embrace, and she goes off in a cart, weeping, while the man sets away in the opposite direction. Passing a corner, Henry notices a sign: “Ann Street.”

  He remembers the cat, the box drilled with holes.

  From somewhere up ahead comes a thready scream, but it seems scarcely exceptional amid the general tumult. Henry studies the numbers on the doors. Shoulder-to-shoulder on both sides of the street are narrow two-story brick houses. Number 402 is like the others, but on a corner. In the last dim daylight the windows are dark, except for an orange glow on the second-floor ceiling.

  The scream sounds again. Henry stiffens—it comes from the house before him.

  The door is locked. Henry peers in the window, at a nicely furnished room, empty of people.

  Another awful scream ropes down. It seems to come from the window directly overhead.

  Henry trots around the corner. Toward the rear of the house is a servants’ door—not locked. He eases it open, moves along a dark empty hallway, through a kitchen, into a parlor, finds a staircase. The screams have eased to moans, a grunt, a sudden strange gasp.

  Henry glances around, wondering if he should take some things and slip out, but he feels impelled up the stairs, testing the steps for noise before setting down his weight. Although perhaps no one would notice the stairs creaking: the cries above are rising. Someone there is talking, too. A low woman’s voice, saying, “Go on, go on, will you.”

  The stairs end in a short hallway with three doors—two closed, one open. Peeking around the frame of the open door, Henry sees a woman on a bed, sweating, groaning, her face taut with pain. Between her naked legs stands a second woman. “Go on,” she says. “Out with it.”

  The woman on the bed twists her head, eyes open but unseeing, and Henry recognizes the deep-set eyes, the pointed face. It is Mary.

  He nearly calls to her, but catches himself short.

  He has seen births before, of goats and cows and dogs, but never a human person giving birth to another. Franklin said he would be an uncle. It will be a niece or a nephew. When the top of a head protrudes, Mary arches her back, and the nurse urges, “Go on! Go on!”

  Henry creeps closer, into the room itself, and steps sideways into the shadowy nook made by a wardrobe. His foot nearly lands on something—a cat peering up at him. Henry recognizes her. “Tuesday,” he mouths, making placating motions, fearing the cat will yowl and betray him. But Tuesday saunters away and disappears under the bed.

  The room falls into a quiet that seems terribly perilous. Henry leans forward to see.

  The nurse holds a little shape with one hand, dangling it by the feet.

  “Boy,” the nurse says. “A he.”

  She rubs the slick off the baby with a cloth and works the fluid out of his nose and eyes with her fingers, still holding him upside down. The cord from his belly dangles darkly. She rubs his back, until he breathes with a wet, wheezy gasp. His eyes startle open, and he stares.

  The nurse rights him. His breath steadies and the wetness goes out of it. She hands a balled cloth to Mary. “Staunch your bleeding and you can hold him.”

  She sets the baby on a woolen blanket, wraps him snugly.

  When Henry glimpses the child’s face he whispers—despite the risk—“Mother!” The baby has her look for sure. “Your grandbaby,” he murmurs, yearning to hear her.

  But the only sound is a tiny sigh made by the baby as the nurse hands him to Mary. Mary stares at him, cooing, and he gazes glassily back at her. The afterbirth comes a couple of minutes later. The nurse knots two pieces of rawhide around the cord, near the baby’s belly, then sets a knife between the two and saws through.

  She looks down at Mary and the baby. “Well, there he is.”

  Mary peers suspiciously at her.

  The nurse hoists a large pewter bowl from the floor. “We need clean water.” She takes the bowl out the door, starts down the stairs.

  Mary bends again to her baby. She looks extremely pale. Henry edges forward. “Mary.”

  Mary startles and makes a quick sharp sound before biting off her own scream with an audible click of teeth.

  She and Henry look to the door. Faintly, the nurse utters a curse. Something rattles. But there is no sound of steps.

  “May I hold my nephew?” Henry whispers, edging forward. He’d often wished for a younger brother. “I’d like to hold him. What’s his name?”

  “Henry,” Mary says low. “Why are you here? Oh my God, Henry, how long have you been there? I can’t believe you’re here. You’ll have to explain later. We have to go.”

  “But,” Henry says, “you just had a baby.”

  “I know! And it’s a boy. She’s going to take the baby from me. I believe she really will. Or, my father will, he’ll send his men. I don’t know exactly how they’ve worked it out, but you’re going to help me leave, with the baby.” She struggles to move her legs over the edge of the bed while cradling the infant with both hands.

  But the nurse strikes the stairs with clomping footfalls. Henry starts to back into his hiding place.

  Mary thrusts the swaddled infant forward. “Take him,” she says, in a scant whisper. “Run!”

  Henry is happy to hold the baby. He gets both arms under the creature in an awkward cradle—his nephew seems incredibly tiny, no bigger than a muskrat—and retreats to the shadows as the nurse enters with the pewter bowl slopping water.

  She stops. “By God,” she says, staring.

  Mary sits at the edge of the bed, glowering, empty-handed.

  “Where is he?” the nurse cries.

  Behind the nurse is a narrow path to the doorway. Henry takes a breath, springs forward, darts through.

  He hears the water bowl crash. The nurse howls, “God damn it, my foot!” Then, “Dear Lord, it’s a baby thief!”

  Henry is already on the stairs, moving fast as he can in the dark. The baby makes a tiny cough as Henry reaches the bottom. He glances down and finds the baby staring unnervingly at him with great black eyes. He grips the child to his chest with one arm like a piglet, gropes with the other arm for the front door. The nurse clatters on the stairs. “Baby thief! Oh my God! Baby robbery!”

  Henry finds the door, fumbles the latch, shoves, steps through. Even amid the excitement, it makes him happy to be holding the baby, and he coos for his nephew as he steps into the street. He turns and runs around the corner. As soon as he’s out of sight of the door, he presses his back to the wall, lays a hand lightly over the baby’s mouth, and whispers, “Ssh ssh ssh.”

  The moon has not risen. By the glow of a couple of lamplit windows he can sense the edges of things. He doesn’t dare look around the corner, but he hears the nurse at the front door. “Baby robber! Someone, help!”

  The baby snorts under Henry’s hand with surprising vigor. Luckily, the nurse couldn’t possibly hear over her own yelling. “Baby stolen! Purloined baby! Thief!”

  A couple of men down the street call, “What? What? What’s wrong?” Henry hesitates, wondering if he should flee now. But his instinct says the baby needs his mother, and he will have to chance it. He returns to the servants’ door, pushes through, moves again through the hall and kitchen to the parlor.

  Mary stands at the foot of the stair, leaning on the newel post, breathing heavily. She holds a thing under her arm; it looks at Henry with green-glowing eyes. Tuesday.

  The nurse is still shouting in the street. Mary doesn’t seem
to see Henry until he nudges her. “You have him,” she says. “Good.” She sets her free hand on Henry’s shoulder and allows him to lead her back through the kitchen into the dark hallway.

  The hall is narrow, and they must move one behind the other. Mary leans on Henry’s back. The clomping of the nurse comes through front door. Somehow she detects them in the hallway and comes at a run, shouting, “Miss Mary! You must return to the bed immediately. Who is there with you? Is that . . . ”

  Mary turns. Henry, glancing back, sees the silhouette of Mary’s hands opening as she lofts the cat.

  Tuesday, silent until now, yowls horribly in flight, and lands on the nurse with scrambling claws.

  The nurse falls backward, shrieking, flailing. Mary shoves Henry along the hall. As they stumble outside he laughs and dances his feet. “You threw the cat!”

  “Tuesday will never forgive me,” Mary says.

  Tuesday bursts through the doorway behind them and flies past, claws scrabbling, screeching as loud as anything that Henry heard at the Battle of Bladensburg. In an instant he vanishes into the darkness.

  Mary sighs. She grips Henry by the shoulder. “We must hurry. That woman is quick on her feet.”

  They move between the looming shadows of houses for a block, then Mary draws Henry to one side. Beside a wall, gasping, she collapses. Henry crouches next to her. Scarcely a thing can be seen.

  The baby rouses and cries, and Mary takes him from Henry. “He wants nursing,” she says. She sounds dreadfully tired. Henry feels more than sees Mary beside him drop her gown off the shoulder and press the child to her bosom.

  He does not like this, crouching in the dirt and dark to nurse a newborn, and he shifts his feet. “They’ll be back with lanterns,” he says. But there is nothing to be done, except to listen to the click of the baby sucking.

  After a minute the baby pauses. Henry whispers, “We have to move on.”

  Silence. Then Mary says, “Henry, I can’t. I need to rest.”