The Dark (9 page)

P.S. The house is coming along a pace. I plan to paint the hall vermillion as I recall you liking that shade. And don’t trouble yourself about my imbibing of liquor. It won’t happen again, not ever. That night of the first “raps” was a mere foolish lapse. Nor will I abandon you again, I swear it, Leah-Lou.

Leah folds her father’s letter back into its little rectangle. Considers, then pops it into the bible box. She takes a small bag of grain and goes out into the limpid spring morning, into Mechanics Square Park, and settles on the narrow bench far from the other park-goers. Sparrows, just returned from their winter vanishing, flick jewel-drops of water from a pedestal bath. The sparrows slumber underground some learned men say. Others speak more fantastically of the birds flying to Africa, which might as well be the moon, and that is a theory also.

Leah tosses some grain and more birds swoop to the flagstones. Oriole and warbler. Vesper sparrow and kingbird. Humility bird. Finch. She can identify many. Is happy as a treasure hunter when she spies a new variety. Oddly, she does not wish them stuffed and put in a curiosity cupboard to be viewed at her leisure, not even though the cross-hatch scars on her forearms were dealt her by birds, by, indeed, a multitudinous flock of the passenger pigeons. This incident—witnessed by her father only—is hazed by years, and engenders no terror or resentment, only a certainty she has been marked somehow, a certainty that grows when she hears, as now, the birds give voice to what must be God’s music for God’s enjoyment; for why else would He bid them sing? A pity that Leah lacks the daring to write music that warbles and trills, music that is an improvisation without clear pattern or end. Music bursting with colour. God would enjoy such music. And Leah surely would. But it would perplex all others.

She tosses the last of the grain. Pushes any thought of her father from her mind, any thought of his letter. She must rouse the girls. She will tell them “enough.” This peddler’s ghost must depart. He has no use among the living except to annoy the neighbours. Not the worst of uses … Still. Her father might be correct. She should not make too much of the raps. It might be courting trouble, disaster even.

Just then a cardinal, brilliant red, larger than all the others, hurtles to the flagstones. The other birds are no match for him. They scatter as he takes his due from what has been cast down.

A fortnight later, Leah writes a letter of her own. She addresses it to her mother only. The girls have been asking for their mother, and
Leah could certainly use her help with cooking and care-taking. And then there is the no small matter of Calvin Brown’s arrival a week ago. Leah knows her reputation is solid as hewn oak. Still, her mother’s presence will thwart any stray gossip about the gangle-limbed Calvin being too handsome and solicitous to be anyone’s adopted brother.

She folds the letter and melts the wax for the seal. “Calvin? Calvin!” she calls. He promptly appears in her bedroom doorway. His lip is still swollen from the spirits’ hi-jinks the night before, and he looks wearied, but becomes all smiles and cheer when she asks him to post the letter to Arcadia.

“I’ll post it smart, Leah,” Calvin says. His voice has a nasal tone and an uncertain timbre and is, Leah thinks, somewhat grating. He pushes a dark curl out of his eyes.

“Yes, is there more, dear?”

“No, except … except that I’d post anything for you, Leah. I’d march it my own self to the world’s end.”

Leah smiles. “Oh, I doubt we need ever take anything that far.”

O
n the fifth day of our acquaintance my patient, out of the blue yonder, declared that she would like some candy.

“Candy? What sort, madame? Gibraltars? Licorice? Chocolates from Switzerland? Shall I steam over and buy you a passel forthwith? Do I seem a servant? A lackey of any stripe?”

She smiled. “No, and I am sorry, Mrs. Mellon.” She explained she had been thinking of the Posts and their apothecary. Thinking, too, of Calvin, this “ersatz” brother. “The one I just spoke of? He ever smelled of ginger-root and chocolate from the confections he made. He aimed to have his own shop one day. Alas and such, he would have, but he was swayed from his purpose.”

“Young men are easily swayed. They just follow along, tra-la-la, even if they know better, even if they’re warned, strongly warned, against rose-glassed ideals … and, oh, here is your medicine. Here.” I poured her laudanum into a tumbler, spilling a drop or two, I allow, in my distraction. To explain: I had seen my son swayed by all the rhetoric and brouha that preceded the abolition war. I agreed with the grander cause, certainly, but not the method, by which I mean the method of using young men as cannon fodder, and ditch filler, and numberings on a damned general’s tally sheet.

“Is there more?” my patient asked. She held the emptied tumbler in both hands, like some pauper with a tin cup.

“No, no, that is sufficient for the now. But, if it is of such importance,
then I suppose I can bring you some penny candy next visit.” At which I hauled out my knitting (I had still not found its form). “I have time aplenty if you need to talk on, duck,” I added.

A J
ULY DUSK THICK WITH RAIN
, and inside the Posts’ apothecary Maggie looks steadfast at the show-globe that illumines the window as might a green moon. Nearby the clerk tends to a pot of leeches. “They’re God’s creatures, same as any,” this clerk says to Katie.

“Sure had me fooled,” Katie replies. “I thought they were licorice … well, till they squirmed and all.”

Maggie risks a glance at Amy and Isaac Post, who are conferring with Leah at the counter’s far end. The Posts are angular, poke-edged people who fit together with ease, alike a child’s wooden puzzle. Not that there is anything childlike about them, Maggie thinks. Amy wears her plainness with pride. Has a long face and slate-grey hair pulled taut; a forceful gaze. Isaac has the wisest eyes in the world. Usually he wears a beatific smile above his chin beard. Not this day. Indeed, Maggie cannot recall him ever looking so troubled and uncertain.

“I wish Ma were here,” Katie says to Maggie. “Right
here
, I mean,” she says, indicating the apothecary itself with its shelves laden with tinctures and powders and ointments, and all in clear jars and vials to show their true colours and nature.

“Me, too,” Maggie says. Mother’s unquestioning, supportive presence has become oddly comforting. She left Arcadia the moment she received Leah’s letter detailing the growing manifestations and asking for her help and is now at Mechanics Square with Calvin and Lizzie, Leah having insisted those three stay to see if the ghosts would manifest during the daylit hours. After the ghosts hurled candlesticks and carpet balls at Calvin that night a week past, well, Leah said, anything is possible.

“It’ll turn out all right, Kat,” Maggie whispers.

“What will?” Katie asks, still surveying the apothecary’s marvels.

“Everything.” Yes, everything, Maggie thinks. Because after Leah tells the Posts of the events at Hydesville and Mechanics Square the Posts will nod in bemusement, surely. Then they will sit Maggie and Katie down and say in that comforting, old-timey talk of theirs: “Not to worry, loves. Thou may stop now. It is not too late. All is understandable. Thou art so young.” Yes, that is what the Posts will say. They do not consider childhood an unavoidable malady, nor as a trial to be endured, but as a stage of blessed innocence. As such, they ever dote on children, their own as well as Maggie and Katie and any others in their purview. They do not whip, nor scold, but talk to children as if they have reason and sensible motivations. They certainly do not load children with chores and responsibilities. They have a maid for all that. Machteld. She waits on customers in the apothecary also, is wide-hipped and splotched-faced and eighteen or so.

Maggie chances another look to the counter’s far end. Sees Amy shake her head. In disbelief? Disagreement? Admiration? The response will be an honest one, whichever it is. Amy Post is ever forthright. A champion, really, of all that is good. Of the truth. Maggie mulls over the word:
truth
. The Quakers give it a capital T and consider it the same as God, or something like that. And Jesus is the Light complete, but a man entire.

“Not God’s son, then?” Maggie asked Amy once.

“Everyone is a child of God,” Amy replied in her grave and kindly way.

At this Maggie realized nothing was as straightforward as she had thought. Things can be two, even three things at once.

Katie slips up beside Maggie. “You reckon they’ll let us have some licorice? I’ve never tasted it. Never ever. I’ll just die if I can’t try it.”

Maggie puts her finger to her lips. Machteld has turned and is watching them with a peculiar scrunched-up expression that Maggie cannot read.

“Fiddle and fuss, aren’t you a worry-all,” Katie says.

The threesome group of Amy and Isaac and Leah grows tighter. Hushed. The Posts glance over at Maggie and her sister with greater and greater astonishment.

“Kat, Kat, do you recollect the names of Amy and Isaac’s two little ones, you know, the ones that died. When was that, six years ago? Think quick.”

“Mildred? Nope, nope. Matilda and … Henry. And licorice.” She grins. “That’s not a name. I just really want some.”

“For pity’s sake, just ask the clerk … but make your best manners, now.”

Katie does so and the clerk obliges with two ropes. Katie twists hers round her wrist and chews the end. “You a run-off slave, sir?”

“Kat, your manners,” Maggie hisses.

The clerk chuckles. He is youngish and tall and crooked to one side. “No, miss, I’m a freed man. You want to scrutinize my papers? No? Pardon me, then.”

He attends to a boy who has just entered the apothecary. The boy chants, “Coverton’s cure-all. Bay rum hair tonic. A pint of castor oil. Another of worm syrup. A fold of chewing tobbaccy. A peppermint stick.” He nods to show he is done and looks as proud as if he has named every angel in God’s array. The Posts’ apothecary often boasts a line of children. There is no need for haggling, that adult art. The Posts would no more overcharge than become highwaymen and wave about pistols. Instead they tag everything with an honest price. There is no coin nailed atop the counter to compare against dishonest tender, no pawned silver under it. Their apothecary is very successful because of this. Honesty, it seems, pays very well. At this thought Maggie’s throat grows tight.

“You like it, this one?”

Maggie looks up. Sees Machteld, a lint-stuck peppermint in her open palm. Machteld’s English is accented though she has lived with the Posts for several years. Her entire family died of ship fever on the way to America. The Posts are her family now.

“Thank you, but, no, Machteld. Peppermint reminds me of medicine, which I loathe.”

Machteld closes her hand into a fist. She looks so stricken that Maggie nearly apologizes. But, Christ-in-all, why must Machteld ever ply her with unwanted gifts? Ever press Maggie to be her friend, when Maggie, clearly, doesn’t even like the way she breathes?

“But what proof dost thou have? It is too remarkable,” Amy says to Leah, and loud enough that Maggie can easily hear.

Katie chews her licorice rope in trepidation. Maggie understands her thoughts: Amy never ever raises her voice, and what this heralds is anyone’s guess. “Amy and Isaac, they’ll understand it all,” she whispers to Katie. “Them of all people, they got to. And then it’ll be like it was, Kat, I promise. Because things have gone too far. I mean, anyone can see that.”