An Acquaintance with Darkness - Ann Rinaldi [38]
"She has the Wasting Disease. Same as your mama and my wife. I'm giving Addie treatments."
"Why isn't she in a hospital?"
"Negroes don't have a very good time of it in our hospitals."
"She says you do bad things here, Uncle Valentine. And that if I live here, I'll find out."
"I do experiments, Emily. In my shed out back. And I see some patients here. In my office in front. I'm writing a paper on the diaphragm, a protector of the heart and cardiac vessels, and its influence on the organs of circulation. All this is frightening to Addie. Progress in medicine is frightening to many. They cling to the old ways. Marietta, for instance, is as bright a girl as you'll ever meet. She helps me in my lab. But when she takes sick, she won't have my medicines. Has her own supply of herbs that she grows in her own garden."
I had no answer for that. I was embarrassed. He was so forthright.
"Now, promise me you'll stay in today. And rest that foot. You can make the black paper for the front of the house. And tomorrow I'll have Robert take you to see Annie.... It's Black Sunday out there. Please, child, we're in the throes of one of the worst times we've ever had in this country."
I promised him I'd stay in. I have always known when I am bested—there's one good thing about me. I ought to know. I've been bested often enough in my life. Black Sunday....Well, they'd named it right, anyway.
11. The Man From the Marble Vault
OH, JOHNNY, Johnny, where are you? Why did you run away? How could you leave me here like this? And what about your mother and Annie? Oh, Johnny, you don't know what's going on here. You wouldn't have run away if you'd known what was going to happen. You're not a coward.
Robert was asking me something. I had to pull myself out of my reverie. "I beg your pardon?"
"I think we ought not to drive up directly in front of the house. I think we ought to park a little away down the street. Don't you?"
"Are you afraid?"
His handsome face that still sometimes reminded me of Johnny stiffened. His voice grew sad. "Why do you taunt me, Miss Pigbush?"
"Call me Emily."
"All right, then, Emily. Why do you taunt me? I've been nice to you. I like you. And I think, deep down, you have esteem for me. If I've done something to offend you, please tell me. But since I came to your uncle's house this day you've been taunting me."
"I'm sorry," I said. "But I suppose that's why. You're begging me to tell you what you did wrong. Johnny never would have begged."
"Johnny, is it?"
"Yes."
He drew the horse to a stop a little down the street from the Surratt house. "Well, your precious Johnny may be begging for more than the understanding of a fourteen-year-old girl before this whole thing is through." He was angry now, but he did a good job of controlling that anger.
There was one other thing that made him different from Johnny: He still had that old military bearing about him. The way he walked, despite the limp; the way he never gave away what he was thinking; the guarded yet polite way he spoke to people; even the way he held his head.
"I apologize for not being Johnny," he said.
"And I apologize for being only fourteen."
We sat looking at each other on the front seat of the carriage. There was a challenge in the brown eyes. The moment held, with each of us staring the other down. Then, of a sudden, I smiled. And he did, too. Then we both laughed. And the tension broke.
"To answer your question, yes. I am afraid of pulling right up in front of the Surratt house this morning," he said. "I've been through a few battles, Emily. I know when to be afraid and when not to be. And I'm not ashamed of it. And I tell you now that I'd rather face a charge by Stuart's cavalry than go into that house right now."
"You don't have to go in with me. I'll go alone." I started to get down from the carriage.
He held my arm. "Discretion is the better part of valor," he said.
"What?"
"Shakespeare. Henry IV. I had a lieutenant who quoted that to us all the time. He saved lots of