An Acquaintance with Darkness - Ann Rinaldi [56]
While dressing I'd hear Maude coming up the steps again. And I'd know it was with a tray of food for Addie. Before he went down for breakfast, Uncle Valentine would go up to the third floor to visit Addie. I'd hear Addie complaining, Uncle Valentine saying the same thing every morning. "Well now, how do you feel today, Addie? Is that medicine working?"
Every morning, Uncle Valentine ate a hearty breakfast of fresh fish, biscuits, eggs, and coffee. I couldn't bear so much food in the morning. So I'd have hot cooked oats with brown sugar. Was that what Miss Muffet ate sitting on her tuffet? I'd always wondered what curds and whey were.
Uncle Valentine would read his paper while eating. Maude would come in and out softly, setting down more food. I'd hear her talking to deliverymen at the back door—the man who brought the milk, another with fish. Then to her husband, Merry, who stopped by for breakfast. Maude and Merry lived a few streets over. And she went home each night.
Merry popped his head in the door of the dining room every morning. "No shipments last night, boss," he'd say.
"All right, Merry. You better go home and get some sleep," Uncle Valentine would answer.
Merry worked nights.
Or else Merry would tell Uncle Valentine about a shipment that had come. "A dark shipment, boss." And Merry would stand there, all four feet of him, turning his hat in his hands.
"That's all right, Merry. We could use a dark shipment."
"The Board of Guardians at the Almshouse isn't happy."
"They never are," Uncle Valentine would say. "I'll talk to them later."
"Talk won't do it. They want more money."
"Then we ought to start calling them the Board of Buzzards."
Merry would nod his head vigorously. "But there's good news, boss. The procurement committee has intelligence on some new donations."
"Good, good, Merry. I'll be in touch with them this afternoon."
Sometimes Marietta dropped by early in the morning to have coffee with us. She'd talk to Uncle Valentine. About her children. She'd ask him what to do about their ailments. "Willie has the croup," she'd say. Or, "Florence is coming down with a cold."
Uncle Valentine would tell her what to do for them. Or, if it was bad enough, he'd tell her to bring them around.
Usually Maude lingered after she served Uncle Valentine his second cup of coffee, and she'd go over plans for the day. "Funeral this afternoon," she'd tell him.
He'd ask who. It was never anybody important. Maude seemed to go only to the funerals of those who were impoverished or bereft of family. Many were at Potter's Field, which was the burying ground for paupers.
"They've caught up with John Wilkes Booth," Uncle Valentine read to me from the paper on Thursday, April 27, at breakfast.
"Where?"
"In Virginia. On a farm owned by a man named Garrett. South of the Rapahannock. Federal troops surrounded the barn and ordered the suspects out. He was in there with Herold."
"David Herold," I said.
He looked up quickly. "You never said you knew him."
"Herold is the friend of Johnny's who worked at Thompson's Drug Store. He was supposed to bring the medicine for Mama. He didn't."
Uncle Valentine nodded and continued reading. "Federal troops set afire the barn where Booth was hiding. He wouldn't come out. Then someone fired a shot and killed him. They're bringing his body back to Washington for identification and an autopsy."
"Why are they doing an autopsy?"
"They want to determine what killed him."
"A bullet killed him,"I said.
Booth dead. It set me to thinking of Annie. What would she say? "Can I go to Annie's after school? I think she's going to need me."
"No," he said sharply. "I don't want you near that house!" Then he softened. "Annie can come here anytime she wishes," he said quietly. "But there is no telling when the Metropolitan Police may search that house again. You must listen to me on this, Emily. Don't you see what happened to my friend Dr. Mudd?"
He was