The Mirrors (part thirty-nine)

The Mirrors

(part thirty-nine)

I am trying to cooperate. It’s the shortest way, I believe. We are given burdens in life to bear; at times we shoulder injustices. Why should a thing like this fall from the sky on anyone? I think of you Carrie, and our baby girl, and what good money is, if we end up spending it to knock our heads against a wall. Until I’m home I can’t look anyone in the eye and make them hear. You’ve lived your year without me. Go on, then, and let it be.

You look at Joseph, through the window, the clinic unlit. The hour is six or seven, the sky beaming hot evening light. Dumain’s patients lie abed, some strapped, some drugged. Some with tubes in their veins, but ambulatory. They feel dazed, weakened—

But will need, if they can, to find strength. To smash wire-embedded glass, bang, bang. These windows, so freshly painted white, are painted shut.

To drop, though the drop is three stories, to the little garden court. Or burn.

Your companion is Leonce. If it matters, you are thirty-two in this year of 1901, and he is twenty-five. To the extent of jealousy, it matters…yes. One of this pair, an outsider might observe, is misshapen. His belly sags, undershirt pushing through button-gaps. His arms are heavy, jacket big in the shoulders to accommodate how weight sits on him. His legs are toothpicks, he is stooped and triple-chinned, cavern-chested. If he stood beside Charleton, Godfrey in young middle age would look his father.

Godfrey is in exile from his own inheritance.

Wilmer Roback’s “protector”, designated in the will by which he escaped fatherhood, fingers the purse strings of Godfrey’s allowance. Grandfather has an agent in every pawn shop, he cannot be stolen from, allows Godfrey enough each month to die on.

The two watch Joseph open drawers in the pharmacy.

Burning fills the air, but wise Leonce says they won’t take off til nighttime. Dr. Bonheur has been out to clear the hall, warning the sick of no help for them today: “Get home and shut your doors.”

He’s gone, driving Mrs. Turner’s brougham, seeing her safe away. His bag is packed with tourniquet bandages, burn salve; his plan is to make for the courthouse, where they say the fighting got started.

Joseph must be left to guard the building. Downtown will be wounded, poor whites and blacks alike who don’t deserve dirty nails and shaking hands, unkind words.

Leonce tries the door. The lever under his thumb goes down and up.

“Got a bolt on. Go knock at the window,” he tells Godfrey.

“No. He’ll open sooner for you.”

They stand in stalemate. Both alive to the next step, of commitment.

Leonce has no conscience, none as to thieving. He has the coolness to hoard drugs, be tempted by them never. Nothing in his professional life does he intend sharing, or performing, before the eyes of Godfrey Roback. If the bolt will fly, he’d like it Godfrey’s boot that prints itself on the door; if the glass wants smashing, Godfrey’s blood on the floor.

84

The Mirrors

The Mirrors (part forty)

(2020, Stephanie Foster)