An Acquaintance with Darkness - Ann Rinaldi [1]
"What goodness?" Mama would ask. "What heart?" She hadn't spoken to Mary Surratt since that woman's brother foreclosed on our house in Maryland when Mrs. Mary's husband died, over two years ago now. And they were girlhood friends. We lived over the creek from them in Maryland. And now we lived at 543 H Street. And they lived at 541.
"The same goodness that made her find us this house," I'd remind Mama.
"A small enough favor, since they took our other."
"Mrs. Mary still didn't have to find us this house," was always my reply. "It wasn't her idea in the first place, to take our old one."
It did no good. I could never make peace between them. Mama was going to die without ever speaking again to Mrs. Mary. Would I do that to my best friend? (Who was my best friend? Annie Surratt, Johnny's sister.) No, I wouldn't.
I paused in front of Mama's room. She was still sleeping. Good. I started down the narrow stairs, wishing I had forty acres and a mule right now. What I would do with them, I didn't know. But I'd do something. Anything would be better than living here in this narrow, sad little house, with the rain pouring down outside and Mama dying. I couldn't blame Ella May for leaving.
"Who is it?" I asked again.
"It's Johnny," came the muffled answer from the other side of the door.
How had I known it would be Johnny? The same way I'd always known he'd be down at his daddy's tavern-post office-store of an afternoon, back in Maryland. I was just a skinny little kid back then, down in Prince George County, and I'd get the feeling he'd be there. And he would be, too, standing on the front porch talking politics with his daddy, the squire, and the other planters who'd come to jaw away the afternoon.
"Just a second." When had he gotten back? He'd been gone since the end of March. And I hadn't seen him since a week before, when he took me and Honora Fitzpatrick to Ford's Theater. Honora boarded with his mother. She was nineteen. We sat in box number 10.
The president's box! Up so high over everyone else! The draperies were silk brocade, the seats crushed velvet; the chandeliers sparkled overhead. Johnny wore a blue military cloak. Where had he gotten it? Where did he get anything he had these days? His large revolver, his bowie knife, the two horses he kept at Howard's stables.
Everyone looked at us that night, wondering who we were. I wore my blue silk moire. The play was Jane Shore. And then John Wilkes Booth stopped in, and I thought Honora would swoon. Booth was a matinee idol. All the girls were crazy for him.
More knocking. "I'm coming!" I stumbled down the narrow steps. Johnny hadn't spoken to me since that night at the play. The next day he rode off with six men, one of them Booth. I went over with a pie to show my thanks for the theater. He wouldn't look at me; just rode off.
Annie took the pie. "If any harm comes to my brother because of that scoundrel Booth, I'll kill the man," she said. She had Booth's picture in her room. Signed.
How had Annie gone from thinking Booth was a matinee idol to wanting to kill him? And what did it have to do with Johnny? Booth was pure Secesh, loved the South. So did all the Surratts So did half the people in Washington. Mrs. Lincoln herself had had four brothers killed fighting for the Confederacy. You couldn't sort things like that out anymore. And you couldn't kill people for it, or there wouldn't be anybody left in Washington.
I saw Johnny's shadow through the frosted glass of the door. I unhooked the latch. A cold blast came in.
"Hello, Emily."
"Hello, yourself."
"Don't be like that."
"Like what?"
"All huffylike and contentious."
"I'm not huffylike."
"Well, you're contentious."
I smiled. Johnny could do that to me, always. Make me smile no matter what was going on around us. But still, I wasn't about to let him off that easy. "What do you want, Johnny?"
"To come in out of the rain."
"You are in."
"Not all the way."
I moved back in the hall. He came in, and I closed the door. "What's the matter?" I asked.
He took off his hat. He was nothing