Bones to Ashes

“No one’s getting sick.”

“I’ll have to leave.”

“You can stay as long as you want.”

“That’s what you always say. But I’ve got the book.”

I noticed Harry was clutching her scrapbook.

“You didn’t see the part about Évangéline.”

“I did,” I said.

As I reached for the book, Harry swiveled. Over her shoulder I could see a child with long blond hair. Harry spoke to the child, but I couldn’t make out her words.

Still holding the book, Harry walked toward the child. I tried to follow, but the moccasins kept sliding from my feet, tripping me.

Then I was peering into sunlight through an iron-barred window. All around me was darkness. Harry and the child were staring in at me. Only it wasn’t a child. It was an old woman. Her cheeks were sunken, and her hair was a silver-white nimbus surrounding her head.

As I watched, rents appeared in the wrinkled skin around the woman’s lips and under her eyes. Her nose opened into a ragged black hole.

A face began to materialize beneath the woman’s face. Slowly, it took form. It was my mother’s face. Her lips were trembling and tears glistened on her cheeks.

I reached out through the bars. My mother held up a hand. In it was a bunched wad of tissue.

“Come out of the hospital,” my mother said.

“I don’t know how,” I said.

“You have to go to school.”

“Bastarache didn’t go to school,” I said.

My mother tossed the tissue. It hit my shoulder. She threw another. And another.

I opened my eyes. Ryan was tapping my sleeve.

I went vertical so fast the recliner shot into full upright and locked.

“Bastarache will be out in an hour,” Ryan said. “I’m going to tail him, see where he goes.”

I looked at my watch. It was almost seven.

“You could stay here with Hippo. Or I could drop you at a motel, pick you—”

“Not a chance.” I got to my feet. “Let’s go.”

As we drove, I dissected what I could recall of the dream. The content was standard fare, my brain doing a Fellini with recent events. I often wondered what critics might write of my nocturnal meanderings. Surreal imagery with no clear demarcation between fantasy and reality.

Tonight’s offering was a typical retrospective from my subconscious. Harry and her scrapbook. Kelly Sicard’s reference to moccasins. Her wadded tissue. Bastarache. The window bar imagery was undoubtedly thrown in by my id to portray frustration.

But my mother’s appearance puzzled me. And why the reference to a hospital? And sickness? And who was the old woman?

I watched other cars pass, wondering how so many could be on the road so early. Were the drivers going to jobs? Delivering kids to early morning swim practice? Returning home after a long night serving burgers and fries?

Ryan pulled into a lot outside the prison’s main entrance, parked, and leaned sideways against the door. He clearly wanted quiet, so I dropped back into my thoughts.

Minutes dragged by. Ten. Fifteen.

We’d been there a half hour when a dream-inspired synapse fired.

Mother. Hospital. Illness. Nineteen sixty-five.

The whisper I’d heard upon reading about the Tracadie lazaretto geysered into my forebrain. Connected with other disparate images and recollections.

I sat bolt upright. Sweet mother of God. Could that really be it?

In my gut, I knew I’d stumbled on the answer. Thirty-five years and I finally understood.

Instead of triumph, I felt only sadness.

“I know why Évangéline and Obéline disappeared,” I said, excitement laying a buzz on my voice.

“Really?” Ryan sounded exhausted.

“Laurette Landry started bringing her daughters to Pawleys Island when she lost her hospital job and had to work double-time at a cannery and a motel. Évangéline and Obéline were yanked back to Tracadie when Laurette got sick.”

“You’ve always known that.”

“The girls started coming to the island in 1966, the first summer after the Tracadie lazaretto closed.”

“Could be there was another hospital in Tracadie.”

“I don’t think so. I’ll check old employment records, of course, but I’ll bet Laurette Landry worked at the lazaretto.”

Ryan glanced sideways at me, quickly back at the prison entrance.

“Évangéline told me her mother was a hospital employee for many years. If Laurette worked at the lazaretto, she’d have been in close contact with lepers. It’s a fact she became ill with something that required daily nursing by Évangéline.”

“Even if Laurette did contract leprosy, you’re talking the sixties. Treatment has been available since the forties.”

“Think of the stigma, Ryan. Whole families were shunned. People were forbidden to hire lepers or other members of their families if the person diagnosed was living at home. And it wasn’t just personal lives that were ruined. The presence of the lazaretto had a devastating impact on the Tracadie economy. For years, no product would include the town name in its labeling. Public association with Tracadie often meant a business was ruined.”

“That was decades ago.”