An Acquaintance with Darkness - Ann Rinaldi [64]
If he was engaged in body snatching, why did all those poor people who came on Tuesdays and Thursdays entrust themselves to him for treatment? I know he didn't charge them. I watched when he welcomed his patients. I saw the gratitude in their faces. One day I saw an old Negro woman kiss his hands.
Why had he taken Addie in instead of letting her die in the streets and using her body? Why didn't he let Marietta die after she was pulled out of the water? She'd been so sick, she had told me.
Why hadn't I found any evidence in the shed? Robert hadn't had time to remove it.
Was it possible that all the intrigue involved in his trip to Memphis was because Uncle Valentine simply wanted to treat two burn victims who might be left to die? And in order to get them here Robert had to pretend to be a relative?
Would he be good in his role of brother to one of the victims? I could see him doing it, limping a little when he walked across the room to speak to the authorities. With that old military bearing about him, proud and in command of himself, yet all respectful at the same time. Never giving away what he was thinking; guarded, yet polite.
Where did you get your war wound? they would sav.
And he'd tell them, hesitantly. Fredericksburg. With that little hoarseness he got in his voice when he spoke of the war.
And they'd give him the two wounded. Or the two dead bodies. Or whatever he wanted. Because when he said Fredericksburg like that, when he looked down saying it, or across the room, as if he were still hearing the guns booming and the screaming men and crazed horses, when he got that look in his eye like he did remembering, they'd give him anything.
I'd given him my heart, hadn't I?
Thirteen days went by with me in this state. Somehow I got through them and managed not to make a brass-bound fool of myself.
"Don't ever act on your thoughts if you're confused, Miss Muffet," Daddy had told me. "Wait until your mind clears."
There it was. There was what I would do. I would do nothing. For now, at least. I would wait until my mind cleared. If it ever did. I would treat Uncle Valentine as I had always treated him, as if I suspected nothing. I would sit on my turret and continue to eat my curds and whey.
On May 1 President Johnson ordered nine army officers named to the military commission to try the eight accused in the assassination conspiracy. Of course Annie's mother was one of the accused.
Uncle Valentine read this to me from the newspaper at breakfast. "Federal authorities have ruled it be a military rather than a civil court," he said. "This might be a good topic for your Wednesday Discussion Group. Everyone in Washington is arguing the point. Does the military have a right to try civilians?"
It was a good question. But I did not bring it up for the Wednesday discussion, even though Mrs. McQuade gave us extra credit if we introduced a good topic. I was too involved in the whole thing. I didn't want Myra to get a whiff of my friendship with Annie and Johnny Surratt. Who knew what she'd do with that little tidbit, she and her newspaperman father. No one in my class knew of this yet. So far I'd managed to keep it secret.
Was I still friends with Annie? I didn't know. I hadn't seen her since our argument. Then that very Thursday, the fourth, when I was thinking of her, she came around again. It was downright creepy.
I had just settled the next-to-last of Uncle Valentine's patients in the waiting room and turned to see what the last lady in the hall was here for. Out of my eye I'd seen her lingering in the shadows with a shawl over her face. I had a pad and pencil in my hand.
"And what is your ailment?" I asked before turning.
"They're going to try my mother." She drew the shawl back.
"Annie!" I dropped my pad and pencil and we hugged. She felt thinner.
"You never noticed me," she said.
"You had that shawl on."
"I wear it all the time when I go out. I don't want