The Mirk and Midnight Hour (8 page)

A fierce longing welled in me. To see Rush once more as I did in life, to grasp without doubt that he still existed somewhere, to know his feelings at the moment of his death …

Amenze must have read assent in my face. She dropped my hands and reached into her mojo pouch to bring out a pinch of something powdery. She rubbed it between her fingers, breathed it into her nostrils, and then blew it away in a little puff. Murmuring low and sibilant, she raised her long, bony arms to the sky. An ethereal yellowish-green light suffused the air around us.

I did not speak or move, except to tremble a little.

A sighing sounded that might or might not have been the wind whooshing around the corner. A beam of light that pierced through overhead clouds gathered brightness between Amenze’s arms.

Her voice deepened in intensity, as if the words were tugged out of her throat. Her eyes rolled back in her head. She dropped to her knees. The shapeless glimmer before her gained form, a column roughly the shape of a man, the height of my brother. In a moment I would see his face.

I gasped and cried out, “No! No! Stop! Don’t do this to him!” I covered my eyes with my hands.

I had almost done a terrible thing. A Witch of Endor—like terrible thing. Because of King Saul’s encounter with the witch and the spirit of Samuel she conjured up, Saul despaired completely, and he and his family all died shortly after. Only bad could come of wrenching Rush from heaven because of my selfishness.

I lowered my hands. Amenze was watching me. She slightly lifted her shoulders. “As you wish.” She stood.

“Thank you for trying to help,” I babbled. “It’s only that it couldn’t have been right.”

Without another word, she left me alone and shaking.

“Rush,” I whispered to the breeze, “I’m so sorry for that. Don’t worry about me. We miss you, but we’ll be all right. I’ll try not to cry about you anymore. Be happy, and when it’s the right time and place, I’ll see you again.” Against my chest the amber amulet glowed with its own warmth.

It took me several minutes to pull myself together before I could move slowly out to the street to face other people.

“Where have you been?” Sunny asked when I found her and her mother waiting in a crowd at the square. Her speech sounded especially shrill after Amenze’s melodic tones.

For a second I couldn’t speak. I shook my head a little and could feel the amber, still warm. When I finally spoke, my voice was hoarse. “I bought my pins and then—and then I had to help someone.”

She seemed to lose interest. “Had Mr. Maloney any new shoes in?”

“No. Not a single pair.”

Sunny looked pleased. “I bought the last, you know. For the wedding.” She displayed her high-heeled slippers, which she was tapping about in for everyday use.

For the send-off some children were having a warlike parade down the street, complete with wooden swords, rifles, and small flags on poles. Some wore miniature Confederate uniforms. Most of the onlookers smiled upon them fondly, but the sight made me shudder.

The sound of horses’ hooves and marching feet reached us. Over the hill they came, long lines of men clad in ghostly gray, some on horseback, some on foot. Sunny, Miss Elsa, and all the others waved handkerchiefs and shouted goodbyes and God bless yous. I shrank back against the brick wall of the building behind me, watching, frozen, as my father and the soldiers moved through town, leaving us behind.

A year ago, when Rush’s company left, newly sewn Stars and Bars flags hung from every balcony, along with paper rosettes and streamers. We showered them with flower petals as if it were a celebration. “It’ll be over in a month,” the boys had bragged, all jaunty and proud. We were free and independent. We hoped for little or no bloodshed, that they’d let us depart from the Union peacefully. We were innocent and stupid then. And sinful to be jolly over such a terrible thing. But we didn’t know. No more than Addie, the Northern girl whose letter I had read, had known as she and her friends played at war, with their military fashions and fancies.

The good wishes hung heavy and mournful and echoing in the air. Just as the soldiers were nearly out of sight, they turned in their
saddles and gave a resounding rebel yell, sounding like the scream of a banshee. I clapped my hands over my ears.

Sunny burst into sobs. A little crowd gathered to pat her shoulders, offer handkerchiefs, and tell her everything would be all right.

“I try not to be so sensitive,” she said in a choking voice, “but I can’t be like Vi-let.” She turned to me. “How can you be so unfeeling? How can you remain dry-eyed?”

Several pairs of eyes turned my way and I went rigid under their examination. My fears and sorrows were deep, but private; I kept them to myself.

As I silently waited for Sunny to regain her composure, my eyes were drawn to a group standing across the street, remote from the rest of the crowd. Amenze, the young VanZeldt fellow I had seen in our woods, and the older, bearded man loomed like shadows surrounding a slight man with spectacles and a forked silver beard. He wore a neat white suit and straw hat. The “improper” doctor. He appeared squat and gnomelike next to the VanZeldts.

The shadows might well have been members of one family. All had the same loose, elongated limbs and severe, beautiful bone structure. While Amenze glowed in her shimmering garments, the two men wore shapeless shirts and ill-fitting dark trousers. I got the sense that their clothing was no more than a covering for them, that they hardly noticed what they wore. Their expressions, as they looked down their noses upon the world of men, were aloof and contemptuous, although I reminded myself not to judge too quickly; Amenze now appeared every bit as haughty as the others, yet she had tried to help me and had needed my help.

Dr. VanZeldt must have felt my gaze, because he looked up now so that his spectacles glinted straight my way, causing me to blink. He flashed a swift, rather sweet smile and tipped his hat.

I turned away, flustered, barely acknowledging the gesture. “Come on,” I said. “There’s Michael now.”

Sunny squelched through the mud to the buggy, squealing, “Ooh! My shoes! My new shoes!”

“This farm has got to be the lonesomest place in the world,” Sunny said as she sulked in one of the shabby, overstuffed sitting room chairs.

I shrugged. “Don’t worry. We won’t be lonesome once Cousin Seeley arrives. He’ll love to have you go on adventures with him all day long.”

“Bite your tongue. I hope I never even have to see the child. Where can we keep him? The chicken house? Or better yet—aren’t little boys kind of like dogs?—can we tie him to a tree out back?”

“Anna Bess, hush,” Miss Elsa said in her sweet, plaintive voice. “You know how wretched I’m feeling.” She seemed to be perspiring more than the temperature justified.

A striped sock she was knitting had been lying limp in her lap for the past hour. She dabbed her forehead with a handkerchief.

I stroked Goblin, who was curled, purring, on my lap under the book I was reading, and wondered about my stepmother. She had always appeared pale and fragile, but in the week since my father’s
departure, she’d begun looking consumptive—thin and almost bluish white, with purple shadows beneath her eyes. She would fall asleep sitting up, in the middle of the day. I had asked her if she was ill, but she had brushed me off. Maybe when I knew her better, I could inquire more persistently.
If I ever know her better
. Conversations with Miss Elsa were fragmented, with a detached quality, as if she weren’t quite with us.

“Mama!” Sunny said loudly.

Miss Elsa winced as though her daughter had thrown a firecracker at her feet.

“Mama, don’t you think we ought to redecorate this room?”

My stepmother fluttered her hands without looking up. “I’m not sure.… Perhaps Mr. Dancey …”

“You know it’s hideous,” Sunny said.

“It’s not!” I cried.

“Shows your taste, miss,” Sunny said tartly. “The carpet’s all nubby and homespun and holey, there are cracks in the plaster, and there’s not even a lick of wallpaper. And that ghastly bird on the mantel!”

“It’s a bittern,” I said under my breath.

“It did what?”

“It’s a bittern,” I said, louder. “My uncle Ed trapped it and had it stuffed.”

“Whatever it is, must it lurk up there staring at me?”

Once I would have agreed with Sunny that the bird was ghastly; as a child, I had been frightened of its long, pointed beak and its beady little eyes glaring down from the polished black mantel, but now
I loved it because everything in this shabby room meant home to me. I loved the furniture in the simpler style of the last century and my graceful harp of burnished wood, whose strings tinkled softly, hauntingly when anyone walked near it. The flaws—a cracked pane in the bookcase door, the funny, warped shadow the bittern cast on the wall, the indentations on the floor Rush had caused when he was stomping around inside with homemade stilts—only made everything more endearing.

“Mama!” Sunny said piercingly again. When she saw her mother shudder, she lowered her voice and continued in a wheedling tone, “If you’ll just give me the money, I’ll take care of everything. Even these days, Memphis is sure to have all we’ll need, and Papa William left you plenty of cash—I saw.”

“I don’t think—” Miss Elsa began, closing her fingers protectively over the purse she kept in her pocket.

“You can’t spend Pa’s money on wallpaper!” I interrupted hotly. “Not when we need it for food, and heaven knows how long this war will last.” The stimulation of speaking my mind to Sunny these days was enjoyable. It felt as if I had loosened the corset laces I had begun cinching more tightly since Sunny’s comment about them.

“It’d be fun, Miss Priss!” Sunny retorted. “Don’t you know anything about fun?
I’ve got to have something to do here
. I’m dying of boredom. Can’t you see I’m bored as a pancake?”

I laughed out loud. “ ‘Bored as a pancake’? What is that supposed to mean?”

My stepsister stared, baffled by my amusement.

“Poor Sunny, you have no idea how idiotic that was, do you? The
saying is ‘flat as a pancake.’ Who knows what someone as silly as you could be as bored as?” I laughed again. “I have to admit it was funny, though.”

She compressed her lips. “Do you always have to make me feel stupid?” Her voice shook and she turned her back on me. “You’re just like my aunt and the teachers at school and—and
everyone
else. Always treating me as if I’m a useless fool.”

These last words stopped me short.

Could it be true? Could it be that all the while Sunny had been making me feel despicable and inferior, I had been making
her
feel despicable and inferior? That we were even? This was a new thought.

Sunny still faced away. Now it was her turn to rub her forehead as if it ached.

In a surprising, jerky movement, Miss Elsa kicked out her legs beneath her skirt and put her arms over her head, moaning.

Sunny gave a great sigh. “Oh, for heaven’s sake, Mama, go take your medicine.”

“Yes,” Miss Elsa said, rising. “Yes. I need it, don’t I? Excuse me.…” She drifted from the room.

“Bless her heart,” Sunny said, shaking her head.

“What is her medicine?” I asked.

Sunny was silent for a moment, gnawing at her lip, before replying. “Laudanum, if you must know.” She looked down at the carpet and burrowed the toe of her slipper into a hole. “Your father is aware of it and scolded her, so that’s why she didn’t have any this morning. She’s trying to cut back, but it makes her miserable.”

“Does she take many doses?”

“Only constantly,” Sunny said shortly.

“That much?”

She groaned. “Surely you’ve noticed she’s never really with us. I’ve always felt a bit like an orphan.”

I tried to return to my book but ended up going over the same page three times without really seeing it. How often had I felt unnoticed around my invalid mother? And I had had a homey home, a father, a brother, Laney, and Aunt Permilla as well. I glanced at my stepsister. “Did you always live with your uncle?”

“Yes. Ever since I was a bitty baby. Our aunt kept us cooped up in one little room. She didn’t like to be reminded we lived there.” Sunny tossed her curls and looked away so I couldn’t see her expression.

I sat silently stroking Goblin and thinking. “Sunny, this is your house now too,” I said at last. “Let’s paint this room. Paint doesn’t cost much and we could do it ourselves. What color do you think?”

She turned and looked searchingly into my face. Then she gave a little cry, smiled brilliantly, and threw her arms around me. I braced myself.

“Oh, you darling thing!” she said. “A cheery buttercup yellow, I’m thinking. Sorry I was cross. You know I can’t help my temper—it’s the Irish coming out.”

Later, when Sunny was pacing the floor and making her plans, I took a cup of warm honey milk to Miss Elsa’s room. She was huddled on a chair by the window.

“Are you all right, ma’am?” I asked. “I’ve brought you something to drink.”

“Thank you,” she said, lowering her hands. She looked appalling. “How considerate, Violet, dear.”