An Acquaintance with Darkness - Ann Rinaldi [93]
"Thank you, Dr. Bransby," Annie said. Then she looked at me. "Mama liked the flowers," she told me. Then she went out.
***
"Uncle Valentine, are you going to take the body?"
He was on his way into the kitchen. He stopped. "What do you think, Emily?"
"I think of what you told me. That you would put nothing and no one before medical science. So then, if they give Annie her mother's body, are you going to take it? Is that why you wrote the note to Dr. Porter?"
He smiled at me, a slow sad smile. "No, Emily," he said.
"No?"
"This may be the first time in my life that I let someone come before medical science. But no, Emily, I am not going to take the body. I wrote the note to Dr. Porter to appeal to his humanity. To try to get Annie's mother's body released to her for a proper burial. Now I'm on my way to the kitchen to see if there's any chicken left. I need something to eat."
I thought I heard firecrackers. It was still the Fourth, wasn't it? I felt them exploding inside me. "I'll get you some chicken," I said. "You go and finish your work."
26. I Wish I Could Be Miss Muffet Again
"MY GOD, they're not going to hang the woman, are they?"
He looked like a newspaperman. There were so many of them around. He had pad and pencil. He pushed his way through the crowd at the gates of the prison yard. It was eleven in the morning and already the sun was beating down like some kind of a great white bird suffocating us with its wings.
"Nobody knows yet," a man behind us said. "Ask that one there, why don't you? She's the daughter."
The reporter looked at Annie. His face lit up, not believing his luck. "Are you Annie Surratt?"
"Yes."
"Can I ask you some questions?"
"You don't have to answer if you don't want to, Annie," Uncle Valentine said.
Annie said it was all right and went off with him a distance away from us and the others crowded at the prison gate. "How long have you been keeping this vigil here?" I heard him ask. And Annie's murmured answer, "Since I came out of my mother's jail cell and bade her good-bye at six this morning."
We'd been here since ten. Uncle Valentine hadn't wanted me to come. "A hanging is no place for a young girl," he'd said. "What has the world come to?" But his argument was no good. He knew what the world had come to.
There were a lot of young girls present. There must have been about two thousand people pressed against the wrought-iron fence that surrounded the prison yard. Inside were about a thousand soldiers. And some civilians.
Annie had told us they had special tickets.
The crowd was in a festive mood. Inside the gates the carpenters were still hammering at the gallows. Every once in a while we could hear the crash of a trapdoor as it was tested. The sun rose higher in the sky. Everyone waited.
Annie came back with the reporter. "They can't find anybody to dig the graves," she was telling him. "All the prison employees refused, because they are hanging my mother."
He scribbled very fast. "Thank you, Miss Surrart," he said. "I wish you luck. I heard that General William Hancock is at the back door of the prison waiting for a messenger from toe president." Then he lifted his hat and motioned for a guard. While he waited, he looked at me. "Those flowers you're holding are wilted, miss," he said.
"No," I told him. "They're nightflowers."
"Nightflowers?"
"Yes. They will bloom tonight."
He tipped his hat at me. "How appropriate," he said. Then he flashed a card at the guard, who opened the gate and let him into the prison yard.
Annie followed him with her eyes. She gripped the iron bars of the gate. Uncle Valentine put a hand on her shoulder and drew her back. She was hollow eyed, white-faced. She looked ten years older than her seventeen years this morning.
Propped up in a corner, where the gate met the fence, she had a casket. A plain pine casket. She'd brought it, just in case.
Now we saw a short man in a captain's