Night Watch

I didn’t say they had found us, and more times than I knew. Mama would hide me in the root cellar, once with a handful of carrots she ripped from the ground as we ran. Don’t come out no matter what, until I fetch you! And she dropped me in. She told me, when she was still talking, never to tell about the War. No matter who won, it didn’t do to say what had happened. The Secessionists lost, I knew, and the Abolitionists won, but they were all ragged, drifting men.

He’d named Mama to suit himself—called her Mrs. until she was Miss Janet. And said my name wrong, Connolly instead of ConaLee.

I fell asleep hungry and heard the babbies, crying far off, like the sound of them would follow us forever.

Connolly, he said. How old are you?

He should have known but I told him. I’ll be thirteen at the end of December. Born after you went away.

Born in ’61, the year both sides mustered troops.

You’ll stay with her.

Here?

This is home. There’s nothing back there. It’s all give away.

It’s give away?

Are you listening to me?

Yes sir, I said, for he liked to be addressed such.

He leaned down and pointed his finger at me until he touched my throat, just at the little notch of bone. Then listen, he said. I am not yer Papa, nor have I ever been. I never laid eyes on you or your mama till I came upon you, and you don’t know my name.

It was true. She had never called him a name. Only at first he bade us call him Papa and she never said different.

No woman teched in the head is going to raise three young ones, he said.

We stepped together then, as though in a dance of certain measure, to the narrow bed and lay down upon it. We held the small round pillow between us and slept, safer, it seemed, than we had ever been.

She peered at her reflection, amazed it seemed, and turned her head to and fro, touching the long silk tassel, watching it move. She even smiled at me.

I knew I must fix the mirror to the wall so she would get used to seeing herself.

You are Miss Janet now, I told her. Whatever came before—it’s not true here.

She nodded. Then she whispered, Here, we are safe.

They were four words, barely breathed, but my heart warmed. Yes, Mama! I told her.

His three-year enlistment was up but he’d reenlisted in ’64; he would not go home until the War was won and the name he’d taken stayed his—legitimate, won, writ on discharge papers.

Their isolated Allegheny ridge in frontier Virginia seemed better hid than anywhere in Massachusetts. He’d heard tell of Boston, abolitionist stronghold, from men whose horses he’d shoed and curried, Southern purveyors come to sell goods to the plantations. The coming trouble, they said, the War to defend our way of life, the Yankee devils. He wanted to be one of those devils, even before Eliza’s father, on mere suspicion, had him bound, his chest branded like he was property—warning shack Irish off his daughter. The fact Dearbhla had been nursemaid to his motherless children, and raised her adopted son with them for a time, was worse insult.

He remarked to the nurse who held a tray beside him that the head bandage was the best he’d seen, thinking to himself that it held tightly in place the shattered secrets beneath.

O’Shea saw then the marks on the chest and the long welts that ran from chest to abdomen. They were keloid scars, long and narrow, a dark pink nearly blue. He looked to have been branded and whipped. It is old scarring, O’Shea said, but incurred as an adult. Torturers who do not respect Union sympathies captured him earlier in the War, I would say…

If the War were not in the way and I was bent on vengeance, I might draw the brand and search the South for the man or manor house it represents. And ask my tormentors for information. He looked levelly at the doctor, thinking perhaps he’d already acted vengefully, killed those who’d marked him. A number of them, perhaps. The thought was a neutral one. Aloud, he said, I am—a monster. Would you say, Doctor?

Dr. O’Shea shook his head. I’m not sure you have as much claim to that term as do those who scarred your chest. This War is—purely monstrous. From my standpoint, your recovery over these weeks is one of few good outcomes.

He’s crossed you, My One—but he must decide himself to leave, to see his own advantage. Eliza, I told you to only talk when he’s gone, but talk to me now. Tell me—

Help ConaLee, Dearbhla…

She won’t leave you, Eliza, nor these babbies. Least he’ll stay away more, if he thinks you senseless, mute.

Dearbhla cut the rope with the blade in the coop as Eliza collapsed against her. Why this binding? Dearbhla asked.

To keep me here, by the coop, till he return.

It’s only a bit of rope, Dearbhla said, coiling it in her pocket. It doesn’t tie you here. And you afraid to cut it yourself. I’ll take it—let him ask me for it. Now come, eat the food I’m making, bathe, rest. He asks, say you woke in your bed and have no thought of how. Or say nothing.

Eliza nodded, stricken. I won’t speak…before him.

And not before ConaLee, Dearbhla cautioned. She’s burdened, and too young to keep your secrets. Could be your silence may protect her.

Many have suffered, he said, and suffer now, especially here, in this border state. The fighting has ceased, but not the grief.

We encourage meaningful diversion each morning, mental stimulation in company, conversations on topics of interest, useful activity. For women, sewing and embroidery, sketching in pastels, simply for expression, for pleasure. Some evenings, lectures, performances, open to all able to enjoy them […]

We provide firm, sympathetic structure, healthy air and food, a refuge from family and strife. We counsel responsibility and participation. Our approach is known as “moral treatment.” Many can be cured with humane treatment, and the incurable, treated humanely.

Miss Janet, not her surname, I think, may never remember who she was, but perhaps she can accept who she is.

Now Eliza had gone in ruse and story, escaped her prison. Whose place was this anymore? These woods, forest upon mountain forest, mountains beyond mountains. The shuttered cabin that had thrived, the gardens gone to seed, the labor lost, the bounty of soil and stream and hunt, all lost, were his, sacrificed for a Union that held by dint of death. Yet if he’d returned, though food and sustenance remained, the poison of what lay below in the towns gained ground, despite a War won.

My mother embraced me as in days past, when I was her only child. Shhh, shhh, ConaLee. She pulled my hands from my eyes and held my face as she spoke. Child, you saw, she said. They know what he is. He is trapped, and we are not.

I could believe it, nearly. She seemed so certain.

Old Dr. O’Shea made me his son, near, in offering me his name. Hospital needed a name and I didn’t know mine. I was studied because I lived. They saw to my eye patch, gave me a hospital job. Moving patients, wharf to ambulance to hospital, once I was strong. My doctor watched over me near three year. Wrote me a reference when the War was over and I was civilized, back to strength, there to here. A secret for you, Weed.

Weed tilts his head, listening.

You can choose your own name when you want one.

I wish some living force had protected all of us. Men hunted, imprisoned us—they enslaved, shackled, burned down the country. And the just men suffered the cruelties of all the others. War scars last. Generations…

You were a soldier, O’Shea, who fought evils I was taught to abhor from childhood. I wish I’d not been required to ask your help. But we know I was taking precautions against a human interloper, though I think it very unlikely he is anywhere near us.

If his escape had been announced, and a manhunt immediately begun—

It was announced to the police, and the roads are watched […] We must leave his fate to law enforcement, far from here. His type will come to their attention, and the Asylum would only be harmed by news of his escape […]

O’Shea didn’t reply. The large Regulator wall clock ticked behind him, its round brass pendulum moving to and fro, glinting behind glass. O’Shea’s thoughts were hard. In this matter, Story was a fraud and a shill, whatever care or safety his “moral treatment” had won for some.

And now this maniac, birthed in the War and the lost past, is here among them, for the past is the present unrecognized.

ConaLee surveyed the house once more. It would be hers. Who lived there, came to stay—would be up to her. ConaLee, there is no forever. We are on our walk and the day is fine. Not so many families owned a house. Some owned more, this and that, houses, stores, railroads, vast lands. Others…died, or fled, or forgot who they were. Endurance was strength. The courage of the lost swelled and moved, a force separating the days, clearing the way.