Frankenstein's Monster (38 page)

The greater danger had come from my shoulder. When Walton jabbed the pick into the bullet hole, the bone fractured and the doctor had to dig out the splinters. The wound then became infected, and they expected me to die, or at the least to need amputation almost to the collarbone. But I lived. I will always have a “bad arm,” the doctor said. Somehow, that makes it more mine. Despite this, I am thankful I do not write with the hand on that side, or else I would be wild.

I have not yet been able to visit Lily’s grave, though Darby’s wife says the view is a pleasant one, facing away from the colliery and the ironworks and west toward the hills. At night, when Darby and his wife and children are asleep, I think of
Lily in her grave and wonder if everything I have done since first seeing her on the cliffs has been meaningless. Then the dawn breaks and Darby’s children gather and play about me, pretending I am an elephant or a pirate ship or an unclimbable mountain (unclimbable because the burns on my back are still raw). More people have shown me kindness than I ever allowed myself to believe; and many others gave begrudging tolerance. Despite it, Walton or my own violence always forced me to leave, and I never discovered what might have happened if I had stayed where I had been accepted and tried to live peaceably. Now my injuries
force
me to stay—at least for a while—and a child on one side of me stares transfixed at every word I write, a child on the other side weeps piteously because I have not yet told him today’s story, and Mrs. Darby is enough at ease to yell at me for dropping crumbs on her newly swept floor.

And what of Lily? Must I discount our days together as meaningless because she was mad? I never knew happiness with her, but I glimpsed its possibility. And, in the end as she lay dying and later as I worked in the mine, I felt pity. I felt forgiveness. I felt … even love?

For a monster, such emotion is itself a prize to be treasured.

Letter from Anne Todd to

Lizzie Beacham

My dearest Lizzie,

I should have given you news before this, I know, but the rector, who usually writes my letters for me and is so kind as to correct my grammar besides, has been too busy with his duties to spare the time. By now you’ve heard about the dreadful accident in the mine last month, one hundred forty-nine lost and only twenty-one brought up alive. The rector has gone from burying the dead to comforting the living to helping the widows and orphans. His work is not yet done, but he is sitting with me now over a cup of tea and has consented to put up with my talkative tongue and write down my words. He says he would teach me to write myself but then I wouldn’t have such a chance to visit with him and gossip.

Again I’m thankful I’m the wife of a baker and mother of his own apprentices, for it is dreadful enough just to watch such tragedy without having one’s husband go down below. George’s cousin, whose shift had just come up, was badly hurt when he’d gone back down to help, for a final explosion killed almost as many rescuers as men working the shift. George’s cousin will be out of the mine for several weeks, the doctor has told him, which I say is more blessing than curse. At least there will always be bread for him and his family.

Though you may have heard about the accident, you have not heard, I wager, about my part in it, for I did help in a way. The very night it happened, just a few hours before, who should come to my door but John Darby, carrying the most pathetic infant I have ever seen. It was tiny and weak and had a leg that looked like a thin twist of dough. It didn’t cry.
Later, when it was hungry, it gave a faint squeak like a mouse caught in a trap.

“Its mother is dead, poor thing,” Darby said, “and the father’s been shot and is lying up in the tavern. Can you nurse it till we know what to do?”

I felt peculiar to be given a stranger’s babe to nurse, and not someone from town I’ve known all my life, but how could I not take it in with its little wrinkled cheeks and crippled leg? Later I found out the father recovered enough to go below and help. He was a wonder to see, they told me, as big as a giant in a fairy tale and working a fairy tale’s deeds, but with so ugly a face they were calling him Darby’s Devil by night’s end. Of the twenty-one survivors, he alone brought up seventeen, going into the most dreadful and dangerous places to find them. The last explosion hurt him badly. As he lay at Darby’s house for days without talking, the stories of what he’d done spread through the town and so excited everyone they wanted to see him. Little Tommy Sutton, Peggy’s youngest, was for staking a claim on him, saying the man should be called
Tommy’s
Devil, for it was Tommy what he brought up first. As everything became known, the miners started calling the man the Black Angel instead, for all that he did, but not even an angel could stay white down in the mines.

The rector says we must stop calling the giant so many things, as we will confuse him as well as ourselves, and at every name, strange or not, we will all run out into the square and bump into one another.

When he was well enough to walk, the first place he came after seeing his wife’s grave was right here. He had to stoop low and sideways to get through the door, and then couldn’t straighten up when he got inside. I was so shocked, with him being so tall and having such a dreadful face, that I blurted out, “It’s such a start you gave me, your being so ugly, sir. It’s
you, isn’t it? The Black Angel. I swear, you look like you’ve been in a hundred explosions before this one, I mean, like bits of a hundred miners come together in you.” My face was red with shame but my mouth still wouldn’t stop. “I swear, I pity anyone who runs up against you in a dark alley.” At last I had the sense to keep still.

He pretended as if he hadn’t heard a word, or maybe he really didn’t, with explosions still ringing in his ears. He said he was Victor Hartmann, and that he’d come to see the boy and maybe to bring him over to Darby’s to show him round, as it was a warm and sunny day.

“What have you called him?” I asked, for I’ve been nursing the lad the whole while without knowing his name.

The man smiled, which in itself was something to see as it pulled his scars every which way. The smile was so sad it made me teary.

“She used to call him ‘worm’ so often I’m of a mind to call him that myself,” he said.

I nodded. “It was that way with my last. I called him ‘lump.’ He was near three months old before I began to call him Kevin. And yours—he looks like a wiggly white worm, doesn’t he, sir? Well, I’ll fatten him up soon enough, that is, if you’re going to leave him with me.”

“Leave him?” he asked. “If I leave him, he will end up in the mines, won’t he?”

“I think he should be weaned first, no? And grow a tooth or two?” I tried to make a joke, he was frowning so much.

“Of course,” he said. “You mean, leave him with you for now.”

“Yes, just for now. Later you’ll be wanting to take him back home to your family.”

“I have no family.”

“Your wife’s then,” I said quickly, for he still looked so sad.
“Surely there’s someone who’ll be glad at the sight of him. What of your wife’s parents?”

“I don’t know. I would want her father to be glad to see the boy, but after all that has happened … He doesn’t know that Lily is dead.” He was talking more to himself, not me, as if I’d left the room. His big hand touched a straw bracelet around his wrist, which sat right next to another of little bells. It seemed to comfort him and to help him think. “I should try, though, shouldn’t I?” he asked. “To bring the boy home? I should at least try.”

“Yes,” I said quickly, as he was about to go melancholy on me again. I could see he was the type to brood and would like as not see a sunny day as only what happens in between the rain. “No one can resist a fat new baby,” I said, giving him the boy. “And he
will
be fat by the time you leave, I promise you.”

When I said that, he reached into his pocket and pulled out a hair barrette with jewels in it as big as summer peas. “They are real,” he assured me. “Are they enough for payment?”

“Why, to be fair, if I pried out one and gave you back the rest, I’d still be paid a thousand times over. Even so, you shouldn’t talk about payment,” I said. “For what you’ve done, I guess I can spare a bit of milk.”

“Take it anyway,” he said, pressing it into my hands. “Along with my thanks. I suppose you will see me often, now that I am well enough to visit the boy, though I’m not sure where I’ll be staying. I think I’ve imposed on Darby too long.”

I laughed at him and said there were at least seventeen families that would take him in that minute if they knew he was wanting a roof.

“Then you think I might be welcome in this town?” he asked.

“Aye, more than welcome. We’re grateful to have you.”

He looked down at the boy for a long time, then said something very peculiar:

The rector just told me this is poetry by Milton. I am a great respecter of words, having none, and said I would give Wally Milton an extra cake for his. And now the rector is laughing at me as he writes this and says no, he doesn’t mean Wally.

Anyway, after the giant said his bit of poetry, he lifted his enormous hand like he was going to touch the little boy under the chin, but he stopped and didn’t do it. The baby grabbed his finger, or tried to grab it since it was so big—and oh, the look on him then! Like he didn’t know grabbing fingers is what babies do. Like he was the first father in all the world and this was the first baby.

He was making me teary again, so I shooed him out, saying, “Be off with you. Black Angel or not, you’re just a man and like any man you’re underfoot. Let me get back to my work.”

“What did you say?” he asked.

“I said I must get back to my work.”

“No, your words before that.”

“I said you’re just a man, and like any man you’re underfoot.”

I cannot describe the expression that came over his face, so fast did it change from one feeling to another. Then he suddenly held the baby close, as if something dreadful would snatch it away, and he left to go to Darby’s.

I must end here, for the rector has just interrupted to say this is the fifth time I’ve used
dreadful
and do I want to go
back and strike some out or leave my words as they are. I say leave them, but I’ll not repeat myself again, nor go on to a new sheet of paper, so I will end here with my love to you and your new husband. Do write back and tell me when we may expect a visit, but remember, it is the rector who will be reading your words, so do me no mischief when you put your thoughts on paper.

    
Your cousin
,

Anne

I
’M ENORMOUSLY GRATEFUL
to the many people who helped me birth the Monster, including—

My tireless agent, Steven Chudney, who on the inhale can extol the wonders of a new manuscript and on the exhale say, “Now cut 20 percent, rewrite the rest, and
then
let me see it—and
where is that other book I’m waiting for?”

My editor, Heather Lazare, whose insights into the characters and suggestions for the story gave the novel a much deeper and truer emotional heart.

Fellow writers Susan Taylor Brown, Laura Salas, Bonny Becker, and David Caruba, who kept me sane throughout.

Friends and family members, who have always generously given me their help.

Readers, past, present, and future, who patiently allow this author to tell tales.

And my husband, Michael, who has supported and encouraged and loved me as a writer, from the very first line of my very first picture book, through the books that followed, to
Frankenstein’s Monster
. Despite new stories already littering the house and possessing my mind, he loves me still—and, for that, mere gratitude is a pale, pale word.

Works by other authors are quoted throughout the book. Some quotations are unattributed to maintain
the flow of the scene. Some have been changed to better express Victor’s emotions at that moment. For questions regarding these or anything else—or to just stop by for company—please visit my website:
www.susanheyboerokeefe.com
.