An Acquaintance with Darkness - Ann Rinaldi [96]
So that's what we did, all the way home. We thought of new last names for Annie. We had to walk. Robert couldn't get a hack. The press of people was terrible leaving the prison. Hacks were all over, people yelling for them, drivers yelling at each other. The mood was vicious and the heat didn't help any.
Annie was selling the house at 541 H Street. She needed the money. We went inside. It was musty smelling and all the furniture was covered with sheets. It was eerie. I didn't look at the stairway for fear I'd see Johnny coming down, all gussied up for a night at the theater. I didn't look at the piano, either, for fear I'd see Mrs. Mary just sitting down to play.
I was in the nest that had hatched the eggs. And it was already haunted.
Annie was all packed. Except for Puss-in-Boots. I hunted her up for her. She knew me and purred. I kissed the top of her head and told her to be a good girl, she was going home to Maryland. Then I put her into the basket for Annie and we went out front, where Robert was trying to hail a carriage. He finally got one and paid the man himself. Then he put all Annie's portmanteaus in.
H Street was quiet. The houses all shuttered. Yet I felt eyes peering out at us, at Annie. In front of her house I kissed her good-bye. We promised to keep in touch, but like it was the day Johnny walked out of my life, I knew I'd never see Annie Surratt again.
The last thing I did when she got into the hack was give her the nightflowers. Tears came to her eyes. "You've been a good friend," she said.
"I haven't been, and I know it," I told Robert as we watched her drive off. "I haven't been a good friend or a good niece or a good daughter or a good anything. Have I?"
He shrugged. "You were a good sister to Johnny Collins," he said.
"That you can joke at a time like this," I admonished.
"It's called gallows humor," he said.
"Robert!"
He thrust his hands into his pockets and stood there on the deserted street smiling at me. "No disrespect intended. Soldiers have it. Doctors have it. It gets us through the terrible times. Or we'd go insane."
He was perfectly solemn. "And you were good at the cemetery that night, too."
"Good enough to do it again?"
"No. Good enough to do something better."
"What?"
"What do you want to do?"
"I've been giving it a lot of thought. Don't laugh. Promise."
"It hasn't been a day for laughter," he said.
"Maybe it's been living with Uncle Valentine. And reading his books. But I'd like to be a nurse. Like Clara Barton."
He nodded. "What about a doctor? Like Mary Walker?"
He was serious. I felt something swelling inside me in the place where I supposed my heart to be. On the deserted street, I smiled at him and the moment held for us, healing and full of hope. "You won't ever tell Uncle Valentine about that night, will you?" I asked.
"Do you want to ride home or walk?"
"Ride. It's too hot for walking. But you'll never get another hack. They're all busy taking people home from the hanging."
"Trust me," he said.
* * *
Author's Note
In 1639 an apprentice in Massachusetts was dissected after his death, and his master, Marmaduke Percy, was arrested for causing the young man's skull fracture. This was one of the first legal postmortems in America. Such dissections were conducted all through our early history in this country. Many led to the arrest of perpetrators of murder. Many were done so doctors could simply determine why a patient died. Today we call them autopsies.
The acquisition of bodies for medical research became a problem in the eighteenth century in both England and America. At that time executed criminals were the only legal source for physicians. The first medical school in America was in the University of Pennsylvania's medical department, established in 1765. Dissection was allowed on the bodies of executed criminals, unclaimed bodies and, in Massachusetts after 1784, on victims of duels. Thus the practice of dissection became associated with criminality in America. It was said that the