Lazaretto (19 page)

LINC SAT UP
with a start. It took some seconds for him to realize where he was as he looked around in the lean-to of a shack and remembered then that Sylvia had taken pity on him last night when she'd finally gotten to the barge where she'd told him to wait. She'd insisted again that he must be mistaken about his brother having been sent there by the hospital. “We always get advance notification,” she'd said. She was civil, professional. But a storm was kicking up below the surface, he could tell. The same was true for him, though he guessed his inner turmoil was more evident because her manner had softened considerably from when he'd encountered her at the creek. He wondered if she'd gotten wind of his claim to be a colored man.

Pink and yellow daylight plowed through the window that was really just a square cut out of the side of this wooden shack. His eyes traced the spot that his fingers had traced before he'd fallen asleep, chains bolted to the wall, chains that ended in wrist shackles. He'd fallen asleep imagining what it must feel like to live chained to a wall. He woke every hour, it seemed, his wrists throbbing, his thinking weighted down by his mounting desperation over Bram's condition. And now he had further complicated his situation by claiming to be a black man. Asked himself now why'd he even made such an outrageous claim. Tried to convince himself that he'd mainly told that lie so that he would not be taken for one of those who'd terrorized that boat yesterday, even
though he knew that was unlikely; then told himself it was so, that the people here would take pity on him and help him find Bram; and certainly them believing him black would hamper him being recognized as the violent orphan with the large bounty on his head. He couldn't yet admit to himself that his say-so of being black, the way the words had slid out so soft and easy, as if they'd been greased down with lard, had everything to do with Vergie. Even as he realized that no woman had ever affected him so, he couldn't yet allow his conscious mind to accept that he might be smitten. Now he convinced himself that he was just caught up in a whirlpool of emotion over Meda's death, Bram's disappearance, returning to Philadelphia; it was everything else going on, not this Vergie, not the nearness of her that had made the earth tilt, rearranging everything about him so that he'd said with such ease, yes, I am in fact a colored man.

He rubbed his wrists, thinking that as soon as he found Bram, he'd tell him about how he'd slept in a slave shack. When they were young boys they'd been riveted by Meda's stories of people who'd escaped from slavery and fled north. Their favorite story was about the woman who'd climbed into a pine box and had herself mailed north to freedom. That one at least had a somewhat happy ending, because Meda didn't sugarcoat the stories. She'd once told them about a young woman who looked something like her and had no skin on her back because every night her back was whipped raw. She'd described the whipping in all of its brutality and they started to cry and Bram even covered his ears, saying that he couldn't listen anymore. But Meda insisted that they listen. She maintained that they needed to understand how ugly evil was so that they would never be so ensnared. “You're white boys who will be white men, and on every side you will be seduced to have dominion over colored people in one form or another. Think instead about Mr. Lincoln's heart,”
she'd say, then she'd go on an extended riff about something Abraham Lincoln said about equality.

Linc sighed at the memory and rolled a cigarette and stepped outside of the shack into the blazing pink and yellow. He could hear the loud churning sounds of the river as it tumbled over itself. He walked farther toward the patch of farmland. More voices, a man and a woman this time, the rhythm of their interaction so familiar to him. The man pulling on the woman, pleading. Her pushing him away, calling him a low-down dirty scoundrel. “Get from 'round me,” she yelled. “Go have your wife.”

Linc winced as he watched the man go lumbering off, shoulders hunched as the woman stood there, unwavering; nothing about her moved. By the time he'd finished his cigarette, he could hear her sweet-talking the hens as she collected their eggs. Now she felt his presence and turned and squinted.

“Who you?” She threw her voice up the hill.

“Ah, Lincoln, my name is Lincoln. I am here at Nurse Sylvia's invitation,” he rushed to say it to prove he had license to be here.

He braced himself as Nevada walked up the hill toward him, dragging the fallen pink remnants of the daybreak with her. He thought her pretty with her round face and light eyes. “You the guilty man?” she asked.

He managed to hold his expression together as he gathered words from the back of his mind, words that he'd held there for a decade.
I am not guilty. I was justified.
Then, shifting his thoughts to the present:
I tried with everything I had to stop them from firing that gun at the boat.

“The one who tracked mud through the foyer last night?” she continued, as he managed to keep the spread of relief from taking over his face.

“I offered to clean it, I did.”

“So Vergie informed me.” She was right in front of Linc now; her head tilted, studying him as if he were a curiosity.

“Something amiss?” he asked.

“No, just seeing,” she said. “Vergie told me that you are a colored man. So I am just trying to see. Though to my mind, a man is a man is still a man. And you look fairly standard to me, could go either way. No offense. Race a matter of geography, anyhow.”

“Ma'am?”

“To my way of thinking, the worth of one skin color versus another was conjured up by man. The sun darkens the faces it kisses and it kisses the ones closest to it. The sun act just like many a man I come to know, a lazy suitor content to select its lover from the block it live on rather than venturing out of the neighborhood.” She moved in closer and peered up at him. “I see that your ear tips are dark, that must be where the colored part of you hides, in the tips of your ears.”

Linc resisted the temptation to grab his ears, even as he tried to figure out what she'd just said. “My mother used to tell me the same thing about my ears.”

“Did she now? She from Virginia?”

“No, no, ma'am.”

“What's her name?”

“Uh, Alma,”

“Mnh, I knew a Meda, though everybody called her Sister. Wonder if her given name was Almeda and they shortened it. She just died the other day; her brother's sweet on me, at least he claims to be, though if that be true, I aver he would have taken the boat ride with the others to spend the weekend with me.”

“But did you not say his sister just died?” he said, stiffening as he realized that she was talking about Meda, his Meda, and Buddy. Realized that this was the Nevada that Meda had spoken of, this
was Miss Ma's granddaughter. “He may be too grief-stricken to be with people at this time.”

“I believe I could have given him respite.”

“From what I hear about the boat ride, he may have fared better on dry land. As my mother always said, an unseen protector keeps us from unseen dangers.”

“So where your momma from?”

“New York,” he said, kicking himself now for saying his mother's name was Alma. A flood of other names occurred to him: Ginny, Martha, Bessie, even Ann, Betty. But Alma? “That is where I grew up, New York,” he said. “And I am very sorry about your friend's sister.” He lowered his eyes then; he could mostly manage to disguise the sadness he felt about Meda in very short intervals.

“Okay,” she said, as she shifted her egg basket from one hand to the other and started walking again. “Lovely talking to you, even if I only take agreement with half of what you said. I still maintain the man should have put himself on the boat. You welcome to breakfast. 'Bout a half hour from now,” she called over her shoulder.

“Much obliged,” Linc called behind her. “Where should I come?”

“The same house as last night.”

“And who shall I say invited me?”

“You can tell 'em Nevada, though I might deny it.” She laughed out loud when she said that.

When she was out of range, he let go his pent-up breath, which he hadn't even been aware he was holding in. He thought this farce had gotten out of hand. Particularly with people here who knew Buddy and Meda. He needed to end it. Needed to concentrate on finding Bram, not putting all of his focus into pretending
to be a black man. He decided that he'd tell the truth of himself when he went for breakfast. He would explain that he was swept up by their music last night, that he'd just wanted to share their space, just for a while, because he was in the midst of some traumatic circumstances. He'd tell them how Bram collapsed and disappeared, how devastated he was over Meda's death. He would admit that he was not born and reared in New York, that he was the little white boy who was always with Meda on Saturdays when she traveled to Buddy's house. Surely there were others here who, like Nevada, knew Buddy, might even be people here who recognized him. But if he admitted to that, there might also be those here who knew what he'd done to Robinson. Might be people here who were sympathetic to Robinson. Meda had told them on her first visit to see them in New York, after they'd run away, that Robinson's people had spread money around Fitzwater Street in the hopes of getting tipped off about where Linc was hiding out. He walked toward the creek as he thought about what to do. There were advantages both to coming clean and to extending the lie. He decided on splitting the difference between the two. He'd admit that he wasn't black, but stick to his story of being from New York.

He found a remote part of the creek and, shallow though the creek was, tried to submerge himself and bathe as best he could. He tried to shut his thinking down. Bram had told him once that it was possible to find a space of nothingness that existed when one thought ended and before the next began. It was just a dash of space, a spec of sand, but if he could find it, it was possible to elongate the dash into a noticeable spate of time that was supremely calming. Bram told Linc that that's what he did when he reached beyond and seemed to go into a trance. Linc had never been able to be still long enough. Though right now he did try to at least
concentrate on the feel of the rocks against the soles of his feet, the splashing sounds the water made, the smell of the lavender and lilies, the croaking frogs, the slant of sun on his chest; he'd never noticed such things before as he reclined somewhat and took it all in. Then, despite his best efforts not to, he thought of Vergie.

THEY SET UP
tables in the shady back for breakfast. The men and women emerged from their separate sleeping houses in their go-to-market-type garb—not Sunday's finest, those were patient for the wedding later, but a notch up from what they'd generally wear around their houses early on a Saturday. They said, “Morning. How you? You sleep well?” in singsongy voices as cheeks were smooched and hugs went around and they waited for Nevada to direct them to their seats. “Ma, you sit here,” she said to Miss Ma, “right next to Skell, who appears to be doing preaching duties for the wedding, maybe some of his religion'll rub off on you.”

“Not if I can offer up resistance,” Miss Ma said to the laughter of those inclined to joke about such things as religion, or those having none, as Nevada motioned the others to the table, careful to seat Spence's relatives—the tailor and his schoolteacher wife, and the milliner, and the record-keeper at Shiloh—far away from her grandmother's end of the table. That end she made heavy with the more raucous crowd who were known to frequent Buddy's house.

Splotch was told to sit at that end, though he countered that he should desire to be placed next to Vergilina. “You old enough for your desires to be withheld, Mr. Splotch,” Nevada said, to laughter. Kojo laughed especially hard, and Nevada turned and looked at him. “You find that funny, do you? Does the missus? And where is she, by the way?”

“She wit the bride and her sister, spreading out the wedding gown so the wrinkles will fall away,” Miss Ma said, and then she let go a stream of laughter, to the discomfort of those sitting in the refined section.

Plates of food were relayed out to the table then. Shad that had been planked and charred, fried scrapple, bowls of hominy, scrambled cows brain, and the eggs that Nevada stretched with peppers and chunks of ham. Vergie rearranged the settings to make space for the basket of rolls, steam still rising. The food aromas, especially the smell of the rolls, hung in the air.

When they had settled themselves, Skell offered up grace, taking time to ask for special healing blessings for Carl, and then to touch the hearts of all assembled there that they might not turn away from enjoying the bounty of this day: the weather, the company, the occasion of the wedding, leaving Carl in His hands, working through the hands of those trained to do His work.

Shortly there was the pleasant sound of silver gently hitting glass, weaving in between the chatter that tickled the air, light and sweet, drifting from topic to benign topic: the array of roses on the trellis; the pleasant sound the rolling river made; the elegant table Nevada had set. Splotch made a joke about the waning moments of Spence's life as a free man to a plume of laughter especially from the men. No one mentioned Carl, as if they'd all heeded Skell's prayer that they not fret, but rather trust. And then Linc approached the gathering and the air around the table went still.

Kojo rushed toward Linc. “Sir? May I help you? Direct you?”

“Please, call me Lincoln,” he said as he recognized Kojo as the one Nevada had spurned earlier.

“Well, Mr. Lincoln, you'll forgive me if I shan't call you by your first name, seeing as I had a buddy whose daddy was tole by a white man to call him by his first name and the next thing you
know my buddy's mother was trying to decipher if the bashed-up dead man presented to her was her husband for sure.”

Linc lowered his eyes. “I am sorry. Truly. That certainly would not be the outcome in this case, I assure you, nothing even close, really.”

“So, you were saying where you trying to get to?” Kojo asked.

“Well, here. Uh, for breakfast.”

“Oh, well, you see, this is a special gathering just for us, Mr. Lincoln, and—”

“Lincoln, please, call me Lincoln. And I have been invited.” Linc looked beyond Kojo to those gathered at the table. He looked for Nevada; even Sylvia would do. Someone who could vouch for him.

Now Splotch had walked over to where they were. “You the one my lady told me about, correct?” Splotch asked in a low voice.

“Your lady?” Linc asked, careful to allow just a slight raise of his brows. But his eyes wanted to bulge, his mouth wanted to gape. His heart was in fact beating double time. This was Splotch. Splotch! Unmistakably. Beyond the defining scar that gave him his name, he'd once held a knife to Linc's neck. The scene came back to Linc in a flash: when Splotch had accused Buddy and Linc of cheating and he'd grabbed Linc and pressed that knife to his throat. Linc could almost feel the vein in his neck pulsing the way it had that day, as if it knew it might be severed. He balled his fists to hold himself from rubbing his throat.

“Yes, my lady, Miss Vergilina,” Splotch whispered, though his voice carried a hard edge. “I saw you sharing space with her in the parlor last night. Is it just a habit wit you crashing in on other folks' private times?” Splotch asked, as he moved in closer to Linc. “Soon as I saw you come strutting over here, I said to myself, Here come that white-looking nigger from last night.”

Linc turned red. He tried to swallow the words pushing
through his mouth, but it was too late, as he heard himself say, “That be the case, then I guess that would make you that black-looking nigger from right now.”

“Say what?” Kojo said, as now he, too, moved in closer to Linc. “I shoulda known you wadn't no white man. Why ain't you just say from the first?”

Both Kojo and Splotch had moved so close up on Linc that he could feel their breath against his face. He took a step back, not to retreat, but just to give himself room to size them up, to calculate his chances should he need to take them both on.

“What we got goin' on here?” Nevada screeched at the top of her voice as she walked toward them carrying a jug filled to the rim with strawberry punch. “I invited this fine young man here whether it pleases you or not, Kojo. Everything around here is not meant exclusively for your pleasure.”

Kojo turned quickly to look at Nevada, a pleading in his eyes that she not expose their carrying-on, but his movement was abrupt, causing it to appear that Nevada accidently—it was actually intentional—splattered the full volume of strawberry juice right in his face and also Splotch's. There was a collective gasp as both Kojo and Splotch jumped back, letting out yelps and wiping at their eyes.

“Oh my, now that was just so clumsy on my part,” Nevada said. “I do so beg your pardon, both of you.” She winked at Linc then and handed him a handkerchief to wipe away the splatters of juice that had hit him. He took the handkerchief and nodded a thank-you.

Kojo moved quickly away, walking toward the house. Splotch just stood there, drawing his hands down his face and Linc offered Splotch the handkerchief. “From one colored man to another,” he said.

Splotch looked at the handkerchief and then looked at Linc.
“Fuck you,” he said to Linc, then he walked away, too. Linc lowered his gaze, focused on a spot where the dew hung on the grass like diamond chips.

Now Nevada was in front of Linc. “Ready for breakfast, Sugar?” she said, and he thought again of Buddy's house, the way the women had called him Sugar, the thought softening him.

“I would love breakfast,” he said, realizing all of a sudden that he had not eaten since before this time yesterday. Nevada was already calling for Vergie. And now he watched Vergie emerge from the kitchen. She was smiling in his direction and he imagined what her face would do when he told her he'd lied last night about being colored. He realized now that if his calling Splotch a “black-looking nigger” had not boxed him in to having to masquerade around this quarantine station as a black man, seeing Vergie at this moment surely did.

She walked toward him and he got that surge again. Now she was standing in front of him and he felt dizzy, felt sweat accumulate under his shirt collar. He tried to tell himself that he was not affected by the nearness of her.

“Having breakfast with us, are you?” Vergie asked him. He nodded, and as he glanced for the briefest second at her mouth, her lips slightly pursed. Realized now that glancing at her mouth last night was what caused him to claim to be a black man. Now he was angry at her for the provocation. Angry at Splotch for coming at him like that and forcing him to call him a nigger. Angry at the whole assemblage at the table as Vergie showed him to a seat.

The air was stiff all around him as Vergie introduced him and he bowed in the direction of each name she called. Now he was angry even at the stiffness in the air. He thought that he had his own stiff air to deal with. He was sorry in general about the treatment they likely endured on a daily basis. But he had his own turmoil, too: people looking to string him up for a justifiable punch
he'd thrown almost two decades ago, his brother vanished, Meda dead. He had his own joys shattered. Not a single one of them had a monopoly on heartache this instant. Yet he felt guilty for being angry at them for the apprehension his presence unleashed. Then he noticed Miss Ma.

He held a steady face when he looked at Miss Ma and wondered if she recognized him. No, she couldn't recognize him, he thought. He was only thirteen the last time she'd seen him. He was much shorter, his voice still squeaked; his hair fashioned in that bowl haircut that Robinson had dictated all the boys wear; his skin was paler, smoother, having not yet been exposed to the abundant sun that came with his bricklaying work, nor roughened by the hard-living nights. He almost wanted to hug her, wanted to say to her, “Miss Ma, it's me, the little white boy you saved from arrest when you sang your warning song in the yard. He wanted to hear her grunt the way she'd do whenever she saw him, though he could detect the affection she had for him in that grunt.

But he didn't. He had fully retreated behind the lying mask he wore; it was like burlap against his face; the friction of it burned deep wedge marks in his skin. His hot breath had nowhere to go. He was suffocating under the mask. Yet he smiled as he took his seat. “Well, this sure does resemble a table my dear departed mother would have set. I feel myself getting misty-eyed just looking out on this splendid arrangement.”

“Colored mama?” Miss Ma asked, and Linc nodded and noticed a few jaws drop, when he did.

“And you named for the president?”

“Yes, ma'am, my mother was grieving terribly when he was killed, as I guess was every Negro mother in the Union, so she named me for him.”

“You got his ways?”

“I beg your pardon.”

“Named for someone, you supposed to have his ways, part of being named for someone so he don't ever die. Honest Abe,” she said, then she started to laugh, and Linc pretended to be surprised by the uninterrupted stream of sound. Meanwhile a platter of eggs was passed to him followed by grits, a thick square of scrapple, and a healthy portion of planked shad. He lowered his head and whispered a prayer over his food. The aromas danced under his nose, especially coming from the fish and the butter in the hominy.

“Grace been issued aready,” Splotch said, returning to the table, clean shirt on. He took a seat at the head.

“Well, I see no harm in giving thanks twice for a meal this fine,” Linc said, as he concentrated on the plate of food; the shad's mouth seemed shaped in a smirk as it stared up at him with its one eye. “Plus, I recall my childhood, when a plate would be removed as surely as it was set in front of you if you did not first bow your head in gratitude. I grew up in a Christian home—”

“Ain't none of us can't make that claim,” Splotch said, cutting him off.

Linc chewed a mouthful of scrapple before he answered. His palate swooned from the first taste. The outside was crunchy, but just below the crust the meat was soft and moist and infused with sage. He convinced himself now that he would suffer through a sustained high level of discomfort for the privilege of this meal as he cut into the shad, separating the head, imagining for a moment that it was Splotch's head. “I should have been more specific. I did not simply mean a home where Christianity was practiced. That was actually the name of the residence. The Christian Almshouse Orphanage of New Yark,” careful to pronounce that city's name the way the black men he'd played cards with did. “My mother worked there in exchange for room and board for the two of us.”

“Sound like a white place to me,” Splotch said. “You raised white boy or colored?”

“Well, seeing as how my mother was a brown-skinned woman, it would be kind of hard for me to be raised as a white boy.” He spit out the words “white boy” the way he'd heard Buddy and others do as he pulled the center bone from the shad, filleting it, and then stopped talking to scoop up a healthy portion. He almost wanted to close his eyes over how good it was.

“From the looks of you,” Splotch said, “I offer it would be hard for you not to be raised a white boy.”

“Well, good thing all is not as it looks to be,” Linc said. “I had one beautiful mother, and I could not even think of being reared by anyone other than she.”

“How she look?” Miss Ma asked Linc.

“She was small-statured, but she had a graceful way of carrying herself that made her appear taller, straight back; until the day she died, I never knew her to slouch.” He put his fork down and stared off into the morning air that was yellow and then blue as the high trees swayed and let in the sun and then hid it. “She had eyes that drooped a bit, they were a little sad, but her smile compensated. Everything around her brightened when she smiled.”

He stopped himself as he bit into a roll, then sopped the roll through the grits and allowed the conversation to shift away from him. Bits of what they said hit his ear and he realized that some were talking about a funeral they'd attended the past week and then that's all he could hear because they were speaking of Meda's funeral.

“I will say that her brother spared no expense on her service,” he heard Skell say.