Darkness

Gregor’s

When my beloved returns home, Ben has returned after transporting the patients. “Hey Ben, if you can just escort Sarah home I’d appreciate it, maybe grab some dinner at the boarding house, then I want you to go home yourself,” Gregor tells him, “I sent Samuel home too. I want you both to just stay home and rest tomorrow - you two deserve a day of loafing around doing nothing. Nobody on the crew is working either. It’s a day of rest, after all.”

Gregor takes Vernon from Sarah, saying “Thank you Sarah, enjoy your day off tomorrow.” She smiles, caresses the baby’s head, and follows Ben out the door.

My beloved muses, as he watches Ben leave to escort Sarah home, that the whole reason he established the escort protocol to protect his female employees was in fact Smith. It was his assault on Sarah that prompted Gregor to insist that the women under his protection not move about town undefended. And now Smith is gone. Not the danger, though, Gregor realizes, Smith wasn’t the only dangerous man in town.

Nadine says, in her sternly fond way, “Your dinner is ready, and I expect you to actually eat it this time, Gregor. I know that you have been running yourself ragged this week, and I want you to take care of yourself better.” Gregor shrugs sheepishly, enjoying the feeling of being mothered by the woman. He never knew his own mother all those centuries ago.

Rosalind snorts out a little laugh. “I’ll take care of him, Nadine, don’t worry. Good night.”

Nadine departs, Rosalind says, “Sit down, Gregor, I’ll get dinner out.” He enjoys the baby’s babbles while his wife brings a meat pie to the kitchen table.

“Where’s Jake?” he asks.

“Still running around with my brother somewhere. Now that it’s staying light out later, they seem to think they can scamper around the countryside half the night.”

Gregor sends a silent inquiry to me. “Jake and Jack are playing in their fort again. They have managed to install some flooring, using boards they ‘borrowed’ from one of the flatboats being dismantled Under-the-Hill.”

“Ha!” he thinks silently to me. “I’ll have to go admire their fort sometime, purloined flooring and all.”

My beloved enjoys his quiet evening with Rosalind, eating a little of the pie but mostly holding the baby, then helping to put the child down to sleep. Afterwards, the couple spends some time in the parlor as they rarely have the opportunity to do any more, he reading, her working on embroidery, enjoying a companionable silence.

“This is just wonderful,” Gregor thinks happily to me, and I am so pleased that after the last few days of toil he is finally at ease.

Jake comes in as the last light is fading. Gregor grins at him. “Glad you’re back Jake, spares me having to send out a search party.”

Jake smiles, but rather tiredly. “Sorry for being out so long. Jack and I were working on something.”

Gregor teases, “Were any of the flatboats left intact after you were finished?”

Jake’s eyes widen. “Um, I’m going to bed,” he says, and flees the room, with Rosalind and Gregor laughing behind him.

Soon Rosalind puts down her stitching, yawning. “I can barely keep my eyes open, Gregor, I’m heading to bed too. Are you going to sleep at all?”

“Probably not,” he says with a fond smile, “you took care of me a couple of nights ago, remember?” She laughs softly. He doesn’t suggest that they renew their intimacy tonight, because he knows how very tired she is. He spends a few minutes kissing her, tenderly, sweetly, then bids her good night.

He moves into his study, his accustomed location for spending long, sleepless nights. He has been very involved with the cabin and infirmary, and has spent no time working on the steamboat ledgers. He intends to address the account books overnight.

Since the yellow fever outbreak first began several days ago, I have routinely scanned the local population, to keep track of whether any new cases are developing. I have continued to do so, every two or three hours, and in this way Gregor has been kept informed about whether more patients can be expected. He certainly hopes that none are found now that the infirmary is ostensibly closed, but he knows that he can rely on me to continue monitoring for him.

I am scanning for the second time tonight since he started his work on the account books. He enjoys this work, finding it very relaxing to go over the lines of figures, to perform calculations, to strategize plans for the finances of his enterprise. The arithmetic, the manipulation of numbers, is very orderly and methodical, and he has always found this to be an extremely pleasant contrast to the chaos inherent in dealing with human beings. He is deeply engrossed in his task.

The hour is late, nearly two in the morning, when my examination of the townspeople is interrupted by an event much closer. I had not even considered checking inside this house, but suddenly I become aware that the little houseboy, Jake, is being awakened by a wave of nausea. Oh dear.

“Beloved,” I warn him, ”Jake is ill.”

He looks up from his columns of figures, his eyes wide, brought back to reality from the refuge of his numbers. “Yellow fever?” he thinks, already up and striding towards the little chamber behind the kitchen where Jake sleeps.

“Probably.”

He grabs a basin and some cloths from the kitchen, and makes it into Jake’s room just in time to find the boy sitting up, feeling extremely queasy and miserable.

Jake

Jack and I are waiting along the shore just north of Under-the-Hill, behind a spot where one of the flatboats has been torn apart. When they get to Natchez, they either continue floating downriver to New Orleans after a day or two in port here, or they are destroyed. There’s no way for them to go back up the river again, so they are basically just spare wood once they arrive here. The wood is sold for firewood, or for building other boats, or for other projects, but first it is usually left here on the side of the river for a couple of days to dry out.

We wait, hidden behind some bushes, until there is nobody around, then we dart forward and grab the board we have decided on. By the time we hear, “Hey! You boys! Stop! Bring that back here,” we are already too far away for anyone to catch us.

Laughing with glee, we drag the plank up along the dense growth along the river, until we get to the foot of the hill. Gregor’s house is pretty directly over our heads here. We move a little further down, and add the board to our fort.

We’ve decided we’re tired of our feet being so dirty inside the fort, and figured we should add a floor. It’s about half finished. We’ll steal another plank tomorrow. Neither one of us has much fear of being caught - nobody would bother guarding the old flatboat wood, and we’re just a couple of kids. There’s not much chance of anyone Under-the-Hill recognizing us.

So our fort grows a little nicer every time we come down here.

I’ve got a little bread in my pocket that Nadine gave me, like she usually does, and Jack and I share it while he tells me what he learned in school. It’s like we’re both going to school, really, he is very good about telling me everything. I can read now, even do some figures. Right now he is telling me about some history they are learning, about the war, and about how there’s about to be another one.

The bread is delicious, but suddenly it isn’t really sitting right with me and I give the rest to Jack. The sun is down, and usually we stay out just as late as we can, but all at once I feel so tired that I just want to go home. “Hey Jack, I should be getting back,” I tell him, and he shrugs.

“You’re off tomorrow, right?” he asks.

“I should be, it’s Sunday.”

“Great, let’s come down here again. Maybe we can finish the floor.”

“All right,” I say, but I can’t care about it all that much, I am just so beat. Maybe it’s because of carrying all those packages around town earlier.

We climb the hill, and normally I can scurry straight up, but it seems to take me a lot longer than normal. When we finally get to the top, we say goodnight, and he crosses the street to go to his house.

I go in the front door since I can see the parlor lanterns are lit, so Gregor and Rosy must be in there. Gregor says something about flatboats, and I am suddenly worried that somebody has recognized us after all and tattled on us, so I rush off to bed. I hear them laughing as I go, though, so I know I’m not in trouble.

I’m so tired that I’m asleep before my head hits the pillow.

Suddenly, I’m awake again, my stomach churning, and I know I’m about to make a mess, and I feel horrible, and hot, and achy, and my head hurts, and my stomach is rejecting everything I ate today. I try to get up and make it to the chamber pot, but it’s already too late. But somehow Gregor is here the moment I open my eyes, holding a basin right in front of me on the bed while I lose my dinner.

It’s too violent and uncontrolled for a moment to do anything but grab the basin and bend over it, but afterwards I am horribly embarrassed. What is Gregor even doing in here? “I’m so sorry,” I gasp, wishing he wasn’t watching my smelly mess.

He drapes a cloth over the basin and sets it aside, then says, “It’s all right, Jake, I’ll take care of you.” He puts his palm on my forehead, and it feels so cool and nice there against my hot skin. “Here, lie back, just rest,” he says.

I stare up at him in the dark, barely able to see him in the dim light coming through my door from the lantern kept burning low in the kitchen. I feel terrible, and I want to tell him to go on, I’ll be just fine, but I don’t want him to leave me alone. Having him here is very comforting somehow, even if it is a little embarrassing to have my boss watching this weakness.

“Don’t worry, Jake,” he says, “I don’t mind. Doctor Duncan has been teaching me this week how to take care of you, remember?”

It doesn’t hit me until he says that what must be going on. “Do I… do you think I have yellow fever?”

He nods, and produces a nice wet cloth that he puts against my forehead, while he keeps another hand against my shoulder. “I think so. But I’ll make sure that you’re all right, it’ll be fine.”

Am I going to have to go to the infirmary now, I wonder? I don’t want to. I start feeling shaky and sad and scared, worried that I’m going to have to leave, and I don’t want to leave, and I don’t want to die, I don’t want to leave Gregor, I don’t want to never say goodbye to Jack, I really don’t want to die away from home, and…

“Jake,” Gregor says, interrupting my spiral of panic and doom, sitting down on the bed and lifting me up a little, leaning me against him, wrapping one arm around me. “Please don’t worry. I know exactly how to care for you. You can’t go to the infirmary, because we sent all the patients home and closed it. I’ll take care of you here. And you’re going to be fine. I promise. I know just what to do.”

“But….”

“Jake, do you trust me?”

“Well, yes, but….”

“Please just trust that I know what I’m doing, I will take care of you, and you will be just fine. All you have to do is rest. I’ll stay right here with you, all right?”

My voice sounds very young and small as I say, “You won’t leave me?” I almost don’t even care that I sound kind of like a whining baby. I just really want him to stay with me.

“I won’t budge,” he says. “I’m not going anywhere. Just close your eyes, Jake, try to go back to sleep.”

He doesn’t even lay me back down on my pillow, he is so nice to me. I think he wants me to believe that he’s not going anywhere. So he just leans against the wall behind my mattress, and pulls me up onto his lap against his chest, and wraps both his arms around me, and lets me rest there right on him. It feels like how Vernon must feel when his father holds him, and I can’t even object to being held like a baby even though I’m a strong young man, like he called me earlier. This is strangely comfortable, my stomach doesn’t feel so bad, and my head isn’t hurting as much. I start to feel calm and drowsy.

“Shhhh,” he says, “go to sleep.”

I close my eyes, and feel myself drifting while I am safe in his arms, and even though I feel so sick, I also feel more soothed than I can remember ever being.