Once again, Alice felt herself the outsider in this house.
“More days than I can number, Analee. Keep her as cool as possible.” He was already on his way down the stairs. “No need to see me out. Take care of each other. I know my way. I’ll return in the morning.”
Analee and Alice exchanged glances when they heard the front door close below them. Alice nodded to Analee, who disappeared back into Constance’s room. Alice stood looking at the closed door for minutes before turning to seek out the children, who would now be in her charge. The baby stirred within her as she entered their playroom to the sounds of their anxious greeting and questions.
*
Day and night ran together for Constance in an indistinguishable timelessness, in which time had no meaning—time or anything else. What was there other than this utter fatigue, this pain, this utter deathless death? Death would at least be an ending. Her suffering could be over. She moaned. Where were her children? Where was anything of the familiar in her life? Where was Analee? Ah, she must have whispered or croaked her name, for there were those strong hands brushing, soothing. There was the wet cloth. Ah, the cool. And Analee’s voice, soft and assuring. Singing. A lullaby. To put her to sleep. A hymn? To wake her? Would she ever wake? She wanted her children. She needed to tell the children good night.
“My girls—”
“They with Miss Alice. They be fine, Miss Constance. Now, don’t you worry ’bout them. They be fine.”
Constance heard the soothing voice, the soothing words beside her ear, and the low humming, the lullaby. She felt herself slipping, floating, rocking.
Click. Click. Click. The train was clicking, rocking, clicking, clicking, rocking along. Floating somehow, the train, floating over the river, fish swarming in pools below. Gold and silver glimmering in the morning light as the train rocked above them. She clung for balance in the open vestibule. Benton stared at her, his mouth open. His lips moving, saying something to her. A man’s wig tossing in his hands and a hat. Were those hands his? There were too many hands. Her own hands were reaching to catch his words.
The train was loud, and the wind, the wind blew the words away. She watched as they emerged from his mouth, like fish from the water, and slid away, pulled by the wind out over the river, the fish jumping to catch them, splashing, up and back, leaping into the air to catch the words. She watched them fall as the wig fell, the weight of the wig falling down on her head, hurting her neck, her back, her very legs pushed down, down, down. So heavy. Her hands flying to catch the words, to tear off the wig, her hands and the fish. So many hands. Not hers. Hers and not hers. Benton floating away from the train, falling over the water, following the words, lost in the fish, in the splash and the light of their glimmer, the shining rays of their light blinding her. Only her mouth alive now, her lips moving, his unknown words floating free in the light.
“Benton. Benton. I didn’t mean it. I needed to know. Only to know. Please, Benton, bring back the words. Forgive me. I didn’t mean for you to die. Don’t die, Benton. Don’t die. I didn’t mean it. Please.”
“Miss Constance. Miss Constance. Wake up. Wake up now.”
Why was Analee on the train? Her voice floating out there in the light with the words.
Constance felt the gentle rocking, ah, gentle now, the rocking, rocking, the clicking gone. Just the rocking of the train. She inhaled. Started to stretch, but no, it hurt too much. Everything hurt. Her whole self was nothing, nothing but overarching pain. Had she fallen with him from the train? Ah, no, there was something soft, something solid underneath the pain. A bed. Her bed? Was she in her bed? Was that Analee’s face, Analee rocking her like a baby, rocking her awake? She breathed. And breathed again.
“Analee?” Constance struggled to get the name out, to get the name right, but it came out slurred.
“I’m right here, honey. Right here.”
“Analee?”
“I’m here.”
Constance tried to find her, tried to find her hand. She was pulling at the covers, picking at them like picking lint from clothes. She sensed Analee’s reassuring clasp, holding her hand to still it.
“You gone be all right, honey. It’s all gone be all right.”
Constance held on to that hand. There was nothing else to hold.
“Analee?”
“Yes’m?”
“I think I killed him, Analee.” There. She had said it. “I did.”
“I know, Miss Constance.”
Analee’s fingers stroked her brow. So gentle, that touch. As gentle as forgiveness.
“It don’t make no never mind. That man was killing himself. I expect you done him a favor, saved him the trouble of doing it himself.”
Constance stirred, her mind still wandering in the dream of things, her body plagued by pain. “I killed him,” she insisted.
“I ain’t so sure, Miss Constance. Don’t make no never mind. That man was needing to get free of himself, needing to get free of his own killing, free of his own sinful self.”
“You didn’t hear me,” Constance mumbled, trying to turn her head, but the pain was too intense.
“I hear you. But I don’t need to hear you to know, Miss Constance. I done known for a long time now. I put away that suit and that wig. Won’t nobody but me ever know, and I ain’t telling. I ain’t even told you, now, have I? You gone be all right, Miss Constance. You just rest and get yourself well.”
Analee’s cool fingers felt soothing on Constance’s hand and arm. She no longer felt any urge to move her aching body.
“I killed him, Analee.” Within her an unexpected sense of calm and peace settled the painful urge to move.
“He didn’t have no peace in him, Miss Constance. Life didn’t hold no promise for that man. No meaning, neither. I seen it in him the first time you brought him home. He never was gone hold to life too long.” Analee shifted in the chair and let out her breath. “He might have just got you to save him the trouble.”
CHAPTER 45
Alice was already at the door before Dr. Birdsong could knock. She opened it and stepped aside. He closed and propped his umbrella against the wall before he stepped in.
“She’s been delirious in the night, Doctor. Or incoherent. I don’t know the difference. It is not easy for Analee and me to communicate clearly from one end of the hall to the other.”
“I’ve been expecting this.”
Birdsong took a stride toward the wide staircase, but Alice stopped him with a firm grasp on his arm.
“What do you mean, you’ve been expecting this?” She studied Birdsong’s face as he turned back to her. There was something in it both grim and somehow assured.
“Symptoms often present in such comparable ways, Alice, that it is almost impossible to tell one disease from another. But I believe we are looking at typhus.” He grew quiet.
Suddenly he began talking to her in earnest.
“It didn’t take us long to rule out influenza, because of the preliminary length of fatigue. We’ve had no epidemics of yellow fever in recent years, but cases do still occur randomly. However, even though it has been unseasonably warm, as I said before, it is far too early in the year for yellow fever. Which left me with a probable differentiation of typhoid fever and typhus. The two are sometimes difficult to distinguish. And we’ve had outbreaks of neither, though isolated cases do appear.”