Mad Boy

by Nick Arvin

  “There’s no time. There will be—” Henry says, leaping up.

  Then he remembers nothing for a time.

  Mary hears a solid, hard, alarming sound break off Henry’s sentence, hears him hit the earth like a sack of cornmeal.

  “Henry?” Did someone strike him? She finds his shoulder and shakes him, but he doesn’t respond. She feels for his heart—it’s still going. Clutching the baby close with one hand, she reaches up with the other, and finds a timber jutting from the wall, a sort of saddle rest or sawhorse. Henry struck his head on it.

  Mary settles back to the wall. She does not feel that she can possibly move much anyway. She worries for Henry, though. She once heard of a farrier struck in the head by a horse’s kick who never woke again, although he lived six months on spoonfuls of milk and porridge.

  Unable to carry her thoughts any further, she closes her eyes a moment, and thinks of nothing at all.

  Some uncanny perception rouses her. She looks round, sees a lantern. She wishes that she had moved on while she could. The lantern is only a couple hundred feet away and sways to the side of the street to peer between buildings. Soon it will be on her. She might have left Henry here, but now she will be heard, and she has no chance of outrunning whoever holds the lantern.

  She closes her eyes against it. She had really thought for a moment that she might escape with her son. Now, as she waits, time seems to revolve like water around a drain, moving and moving while scarcely drawing closer to its destination. She thinks of praying—her eldest sister is always praying, and Mary generally scorns anything her eldest sister does, but she can think of nothing to do but pray.

  In her mind, she asks God’s aid. Not for herself, she notes, desperately, but for her son. She could not bear to lose her son, and a son should not be taken from his mother. She would give anything, promise anything.

  She casts about: what can she offer?

  She peeks, sees the lantern has come yet closer.

  What could she possibly offer God that would have any meaning to Him? She thinks, Forgiveness. Yes, forgiveness—even forgiveness she will give, she will promise.

  The lantern sways nearer.

  Help me, she pleads, moving her lips silently, and I will always forgive, forgive everyone.

  Under Mary’s hand, Henry twitches.

  He shifts his feet, turns his head. He comes off the ground with a lurch, as if drawn up by the jerking of a string.

  Mary says, “Henry?”

  He touches his head, looks round, stares at the lantern, makes a little grumble in his throat.

  “That’s the nurse,” Mary whispers. “Or one of my father’s men.”

  Henry grimaces. “I’ll lead them away.” He stumbles into the street, draws himself up. “Oops!” he says. He cradles his arms. “Don’t look at me! Nevermind me!”

  He runs off, the lantern following. Mary can’t see much, but she can see that it’s a man with the lantern, not the nurse. She wonders how many are out searching.

  Yet she doesn’t worry now that anyone will find her. Instead she contemplates what she has promised. What exactly has she promised?

  Some fifteen or twenty minutes later Henry returns—he surprises her, he’s so quiet in the dark. “We have to go,” he says. “They’re all around here.”

  “I can’t,” she says and fights to stop herself from crying. Henry hesitates and, to her annoyance, stamps his feet. But she thinks, Forgive. And she lets him take her elbow and pull her into the street. She sways. Evidently it is possible to stand. Perhaps it will be possible to walk, too. She pushes one foot forward, then the other.

  Henry walks beside her, one hand on her elbow, the other to his head. “We only need a place to pass the night,” he says. After a minute he adds, “In the morning I’ll go find Franklin.”

  “Franklin is dead.”

  “He’s dead?” Henry cries.

  “They executed him.”

  “Oh, that. No, I saw him afterward.”

  “Saw him?” Mary stops. “Franklin? Be clear. You saw who, when?”

  “But,” Henry says, still walking, “Mother’s dead. It’s strange. And . . . ”

  “Be clear,” Mary says, trailing him. If he’d stop, she would hit him. “Who’s dead?”

  “Mother’s dead, but she still talks. Perhaps Franklin is dead, too. I don’t know. I hadn’t thought of that before. I saw him, but—” Henry seems frightened, breath short. “But, we embraced. So— I can see Mother still, too, but she looks dead and can’t embrace me.”

  “You can see your mother where?”

  “In a pickle barrel.”

  Mary shakes her head, dismayed, alarmed.

  “Mary,” Henry says, “are you dead?”

  “You’re raving,” Mary says. “You’re tired. You struck your head.” Her own voice sounds small to her, and she peers around with dread. “Please, tell me if Franklin is alive.”

  “Mother’s dead, of that I’m sure. She could say who’s alive, who’s not.”

  “Franklin, Henry. Is Franklin alive?”

  “I think so.”

  “You saw him.”

  “I’m sure of that.”

  “You’re not yourself, Henry,” Mary says. “Not at all. You don’t usually think this hard.” Mary focuses on the forward progress of her legs. She has hope for Franklin, but cautiously. What is wrong with Henry? The mention of Franklin cleared her mind briefly, but now exhaustion and pain roll back upon her. She mumbles, “I’m sorry about your mother.”

  “It’s all right. I still hear her. I mean, I did.”

  A lantern light appears down the street. They shuffle away from it, round a corner. Henry says, “A church!” The moon now stands low in the sky, and she can dimly see Henry run up and knock, then rattle the door, without answer.

  Another—or possibly the same—lantern appears. Mary hisses. They stumble away. A wet fishy smell comes by a breeze off the water. A small animal somewhere shrieks, dying in the grip of a cat or a rat.

  She lets Henry lead because she cannot think what else to do. Henry’s mumbling as he goes. It cannot be good for the baby, wandering about in the night air. She tries to think of forgiveness. If she falters in her forgiveness, she may yet be punished. Henry casts avid glances all around. What can he be looking for? She’s so tired. She must not swoon. Her hips feel jellied. But she walks, because of her baby. She sees that everything she will ever do, she will do for him.

  Franklin alive? Her eyes weep, which is an aggravation, because she cannot see, and things are difficult enough already. If Franklin’s alive, she can forgive anything.

  Then in her exhaustion even that thought fails and gives its energy over to walking, slower and slower.

  She sits in the muddy street.

  Opposite them is a large house, lights visible in several windows and surprisingly busy, with men moving in and out. Henry leaves her and goes to the door.

  Presently he returns. “I know where to go. It’s not far.”

  Mary’s not sure: perhaps she’s asleep. She’s aware, vaguely, of Henry pushing at her back, then pulling at her arm. She’s aware of Henry having one of his tantrums—the stomping feet, the dark face, the fists, so forth. It amuses her.

  Until she notices a terrible absence, as if an organ had been taken out of her. She regains her feet before she even understands what has happened—that Henry has taken the baby.

  She gropes after him. He trots ahead, shushing and holding her son in a ridiculous way. Mary, bent, stumbling, weeping, follows.

  They come to another house, this one larger than the last, with lights in several windows, emitting various muffled indistinct noises, as if people are busy inside. Henry knocks, and the door swings. A woman in a black gown with lace gloves looks around, then down. Henry says something to her. She cocks her head, studyin
g Henry, then the baby. She gestures inside.

  They enter a small foyer lit by a smoky, low burning lamp on a small table. To the right stands a closed door, to the left extends a hallway lined with doors, and ahead rises a stairway. The sound of a chorus of drunks singing badly carries from upstairs. The woman says, as she disappears up the stairs, “I’ll send her down.”

  “My son,” Mary says, taking him from Henry. “Don’t ever, ever do that again. Ever.” She leans against the wall. “What is this place?”

  “I know someone here,” Henry says.

  In the hallway, the nearest door opens. A man in an army uniform steps out. Behind him Mary glimpses a dead-eyed woman wearing only a light shift, seated on a rumpled bed.

  “Oh my God!” Mary cries. The man leers as he brushes past. “These are whores! A bawdy house!” Mary shuffles backward along the wall. “I can’t be seen here!”

  “But that’s why this is just the place,” Henry says.

  “You’re mad!”

  “No one will ever look for you here.”

  Mary feels she might fall to the ground and die.

  Steps sound on the stair. “Too bad!” a voice calls. “Too bad for me that you keep turning up. Good thing you don’t need any help.”

  Mary peers at the girl as she comes down: a little, bony whore.

  The task of forgiveness presents itself.

  Henry says, with diffidence, “Hello, Abigail.”

  The whore looks at Henry as if he is the least of all the smallest things in the world. She turns to Mary, and her expression conveys the idea that Mary is, possibly, yet smaller. But when she notices the baby, her brows lift. “How old?”

  “Not a day in this world,” Mary says.

  “Well. You’re in some fix? Too bad for you.”

  “Abigail—”

  She cuts him off. “Too bad for you, but a nut like that needs warming and shouldn’t be in the streets, I suppose. Come on.”

  Henry wakes, looks round, rises from the floor. Mary sleeps with the baby on a bench covered with horsehair cushions, the only furnishing in the little whitewashed room. Light comes in by a small window of rippled glass. Somewhere outside, a cock crows. The room has one door, and through it comes faintly a moan.

  Henry watches Mary and the baby a moment, but soon grows bored.

  The door doesn’t open easily—he has to push hard, and the moan comes again. A leg blocks the door. He squeezes through and finds the hall full of bodies and empty whiskey bottles. There are a score or more men entwined and atop one another, this man’s head on that man’s chest, another man’s foot on someone’s ear. All are asleep. Most wear army uniforms, or parts of uniforms—some are missing jackets, missing boots, missing pants, using their shirts for pillows. Whiskey bottles lie all about.

  Henry closes the door, high-steps over bodies. At the end of the hall he stops, shakes the last man awake, asks about Franklin’s regiment, the 5th Maryland.

  The man squints. “A young one for whoring, aren’t you?” He flops one hand vaguely. “East.”

  Outside Henry finds the city freshly washed by a heavy rain, a loamy smell rising from the slimy churn of the street. Abigail is perched on the wide front step before the door along with a half dozen other young women chattering and laughing. They watch people go by in the street. One of the girls has a boiled chicken in her lap, and she’s pulling the feathers. Abigail is idly collecting feathers and setting them into the mud at her feet, as if creating some strange flattened feathery creature. The girls have knowing faces; their hair is uncovered; several wear bright clusters of false jewels. They shift about, stand, flounce their skirts, sit again. One girl winks at Henry as he circles around to stand before Abigail.

  He waits until she looks up. “Look who’s back,” she says. “Again. She can’t stay here.”

  “We’ll pay.”

  “Then pay.”

  “Soon, I mean.”

  The girls laugh. One, rolling her eyes, says, “Don’t you know, dear, tomorrow’s money isn’t money at all?”

  Abigail says, “Didn’t you get anything at the battlefield?”

  Henry scowls. “I couldn’t, because of some things that happened.”

  Abigail hoots mockingly. “Too bad. Your friend will have to leave.”

  The girl beside her leans forward. “There are ways. She can earn her roof.”

  The girls nod, watching Henry.

  “She needs to hide,” Henry says. “They’ll take her baby from her.”

  “Who’s going to take the baby?”

  “Suthers, her father.”

  Abigail recoils from the name. “Jeremiah Suthers? From Alexandria? That’s mad. What’s he care about a baby?”

  “It’s his grandson.”

  Abigail shakes her head. “That’s mad,” she repeats.

  “So?” Henry kicks at the feathers in the mud. “Suthers takes what he wants—money, babies, anything.” He searches the faces of the girls. He cannot tell what any of them are thinking.

  Abigail shrugs. “I know Suthers is something in Alexandria, but this is Baltimore.”

  “You have to help her!” Henry cries. He backs up a step. “She needs help. I’m going to find the baby’s father—my brother.”

  “Come here, imp.”

  Henry spins, runs.

  “Ungrateful goblin!” Abigail calls.

  “Goblin!” The other girls shout. “Goblin! Goblin! Goblin!”

  Something whacks Henry wet and hard between the shoulder blades—a handful of mud and chicken feathers. At the corner he stops to look back, and the girls seem to have already forgotten him. They sit in the sun, languid and bright as a row of cats on a roof beam.

  The Philadelphia Pike rises to a high point atop the ridge of hills on Baltimore’s east flank. From here Henry can see on the slopes below a series of defenses that appear fairly impressive, if rather ramshackle. A pair of rough forts stand at either end of the north-south ridge, and a dozen cannon aim outward from each of these. Scattered between the two forts are chains of redoubts and batteries with various cannon, and also breastworks, flèches, traverses, palisades, and deep ditches filled with stakes. Around, upon, and among these are parties of soldiers, thousands altogether, some in drill, some cleaning weapons, some digging further lines of trench or heaving logs into walls.

  A soldier moving mud with a whale spade tells Henry that the 5th Maryland have been sent toward North Point, on the peninsula between the Patapsco River and the Back River, to meet the redcoats.

  Henry follows the road downhill. Below the fortifications, men for a mile and more around work with axes, saws, picks, and rakes to cut trees, clear brush, and beat down the late season corn to open the lines of sight and remove cover.

  Henry trots on. If there is to be fighting, he does not want to miss it. He turns onto the peninsula road, and soon he’s into the old woods, which grow thick and silent here, and he is alone.

  The forest is cut by shafts of light slanting down. Mosses grow on the boles and the road. Swaths of ferns spread under the trees. For a time he walks beside a long still pool that shows himself back to himself. He alternates walking with trotting at a wolfish pace, sweating lavishly. Trotting has the happy effect of outdistancing the worst of the mosquitoes.

  The day has tipped past noon when he hears the heavy crack of cannon. Soon, through a break in the trees, he sees wraiths of smoke easing into the sky.

  He passes a small, solitary tavern. An entire regiment of American troops waits here, peering down the road. Their banner says they are the 6th. Henry circles around. The cannon are firing faster, and shells explode in a great clamor. Henry wets his feet in a creek, regains the road, runs through the speckled light that reaches the ground, rounds a gentle curve.

  A line of five American cannon spans the road amid a tremendous b
ank of smoke, and when the cannon fire the smoke flashes with red light and more smoke joins the general haze and the cannon leap backward several feet. The crews wrestle the guns forward, sponge out, load, ram, and fire. Beyond the cannon the road opens into farm fields, and as Henry approaches he can see the American regiments spread like wings to either side of the cannon, positioned behind a split rail fence along the edge of the field.

  And coming toward the Americans, not a hundred yards away, are the British in a line of faded red jackets stretching the full width of the field, thousands of men.

  Henry’s feet vibrate with excitement. Covering his ears against the steady blast of cannon, he casts around for a place to hide until the fighting passes. But then he notices the twentieth or so soldier to the left of the roadway—a very large man, squeezed into an American blue jacket.

  An officer screams, and the Americans right of the road fire, hundreds of muskets discharging with a sound like a giant steel boot stomping gravel. Another officer screams, the giant boot stomps on the left of the road, and a billow of smoke engulfs Franklin’s big shape.

  For Franklin’s first shot he had packed in a musket ball transfixed by a two-inch nail, a hunter’s trick for creating a massive wound. It had probably been wasted, the distance too great to hit anything except by luck, even with Franklin’s rifle. He works at reloading with an ordinary ball while watching the oncoming British. Prime, shut pan, cast about, load, pour powder, shake cartridge—

  Until now there was nothing for Franklin to do but to watch, and the redcoats have been a dreadful marvel, marching in column into the far side of the fields, a half mile away, then moving and wheeling in big blocks of men, individual units progressing to new positions like sliding panels, swinging to an angle on the flanks like a gate on a hinge, methodically assembling themselves into precisely the shape that pleased them.

  American cannon caused only ripples here or there along the lines of red. And meantime a series of carts appeared from the far woods and trundled behind a cluster of farm buildings. A few minutes later the British began lighting off rockets. Franklin had seen the rockets at Bladensburg only at a distance. Here they arced low and straight toward him, making weird sounds, like children with whooping cough. One skidded through the grass, and stopped a dozen feet away, frothing itself with smoke, spinning in place like a beheaded chicken. The British artillery began setting up, and they were bigger than the American guns. When one fired, it did so in apparent silence—smoke flung out of the barrel like a bundle of rags. The boom came seconds later. The crash of the shell came yet later, with a noise like an iron kettle smashing as it flung metal and made a burned place in the grass. The British artillery concentrated first on the American cannon, firing with the perfect regularity of a tolling bell, and Franklin wished he had been positioned elsewhere along the line, away from the road and the cannon.