The Cole Trilogy: The Physician, Shaman And Matters Of Choice Part 86

"I'm told you plan to open a school."

"You are wrongly told."

He smiled. "And that you intend to steal children into popery."

"Well, that is not so wrong," she said seriously. "We always hope to save a soul through Christ, child or woman or man. We always strive to make friends, draw Catholics from the community. But ours is a nursing order."

"A nursing order! And where will you nurse? Will you build a hospital here?"

"Ah," she said regretfully. "There is no money. Holy Mother Church has bought this property and sent us to this place. And now we must make our way. We are certain the Lord will provide."

He was less certain. "May I summon your nurses if they're needed by the sick?"

"To go into their houses? No, that would never do," she said severely.

He was uncomfortable in the chapel and started to withdraw.

"I think you are not a Catholic yourself, Dr. Cole."

He shook his head. He was struck by a sudden thought. "If it's necessary to help the Sauks, would you testify that the men who burned your barn were white?"

"Of course," she said coldly. "Since it is simple truth, no?"

He realized that her novitiates must live in constant terror of her. "Thank you ..." He hesitated, unable to bow to this haughty woman and call her "your Reverence." "What is your name, Mother?"

"I am Mother Miriam Ferocia."

He had been a Latinist in school, slaving to translate Cicero and accompanying Caesar through his Gallic Wars, and he retained enough to know that the name meant Mary the Courageous. But ever after, when he thought of this woman-to himself and to himself only-he would call her Ferocious Miriam.

He made the long ride to Rock Island to see Stephen Hume and was immediately rewarded, because the congressman had good news. Daniel P. Allan would preside at the trial. Because of the lack of evidence, Judge Allan saw no problem with releasing Comes Singing on bail. "Capital crime, though-he couldn't set bail at less than two hundred dollars. For a bondsman you'll have to go to Rockford or Springfield."

"I'll put up the money. Comes Singing's not going to run out on me," Rob J. said.

"Good. Young Kurland has agreed to represent. Best for you not to go near the jail, under the circ.u.mstances. Attorney Kurland will meet you in two hours at your bank. That's the one in Holden's Crossing?"

"Yes."

"Draw a bank draft made out to Rock Island County, sign it, and give it to Kurland. He'll handle the rest." Hume grinned. "The case will be heard within weeks. Between Dan Allan and John Kurland, they'll see to it that if Nick tries to make anything much of this case, he's gonna end up looking mighty foolish." His handshake was firm and congratulatory.

Rob J. went home and hitched up the buckboard, because he felt that Moon had to have a place in the reception committee. She sat erect in the buckboard, wearing her regular housedress and a bonnet that had belonged to Makwa, unusually silent even for her. He could tell she was very nervous. He hitched the horse in front of the bank and she waited in the wagon while he took care of getting the draft and handing it over to John Kurland, a serious young man who acknowledged his introduction to Moon with politeness but no warmth.

When the lawyer left them, Rob J. got back up into the buckboard seat next to Moon. He left the horse hitched right where it was, and they sat there and peered down the street at the door to Mort London's office. The sun was hot for September.

They sat for what seemed to be an inordinately long time. Then Moon touched his arm, because the door had opened and Comes Singing emerged, stooping so he could get through. Kurland came right after.

They saw Moon and Rob J. at once and started toward them. Either Comes Singing reacted in joy because of his freedom and couldn't resist running or something instinctual made him want to get away from there, but he had taken only a couple of loping strides when something barked from above and to the right, and then from another rooftop across the street there were two more reports.

Pyawanegawa the hunter, the leader, the hero of the ball-and-stick, should have gone down with majesty, like a giant tree, but he fell clumsily like other men, and his face went into the dirt.

Rob J. was out of the buckboard and to him at once, but Moon was unable to move. When he reached Comes Singing and turned him, he saw what Moon knew. One bullet had struck precisely in the nape of the neck. The other two were chest wounds in a pattern little more than an inch apart, and likely both had caused death by finding the heart.

Kurland reached them and stood in helpless horror. It took another minute for London and Holden to come from the sheriff's office. Mort listened to Kurland's explanation of what had happened and began to shout orders, checking the roofs on one side of the street and then on the other. n.o.body seemed terribly surprised to find the roofs deserted.

Rob J. had remained on his knees next to Comes Singing, but now he stood and faced Nick. Holden was white-faced but relaxed, as if ready for anything. Incongruously, Rob was struck anew by his male beauty. He was wearing a revolver in a holster, Rob J. noted, and he knew his words to Nick might place him in danger, must be chosen with the greatest of care, yet needed to be spoken.

"I never want to have anything to do with you again. Not as long as I live," he said.

Comes Singing was brought to the shed at the sheep farm and Rob J. left him there with his family. At dusk he went out to bring Moon and her children into the house for food and found they were gone, and so was Comes Singing's body. Late that evening Jay Geiger discovered the Coles' buckboard and horse tied to a post in front of his barn, and he brought Rob's property to the sheep farm. He said Little Horn and Stone Dog were gone from the Geiger farm. Moon and her children didn't return. That night Rob J. lay sleepless, thinking about Comes Singing probably in an unmarked grave somewhere in river woods. On somebody else's land that once had belonged to the Sauks.

Rob J. didn't get the news until midmorning next day, when Jay rode over again to tell him that Nick Holden's enormous stock barn had been burned to the ground during the night. "No doubt about it, this time it was the Sauks. They've all run off. Nick spent most of the night keeping the flames away from his house and promising to call out the militia and the U.S. Army. He's already lit out after them with almost forty men, the sorriest Indian fighters anyone could think of-Mort London, Dr. Beckermann, Julian Howard, Fritz Graham, most of the regulars from Nelson's bar-half the shickers in this part of the county, and all of them thinking they're going after Black Hawk. They're lucky if they don't shoot each other in the foot."

That afternoon Rob J. rode out to the Sauk camp. The place told him they had left for good. The buffalo robes had been taken down from the doorways of the hedonoso-tes, which gapped like missing teeth. The junk of camp life littered the ground. He picked up a tin can, the raggedness of its lid telling him it had been sawed open with a knife or a bayonet. The label revealed it had contained cling peach halves from the state of Georgia. He'd never been able to make the Sauks see any value in dug latrines, and now he was kept from sentimentalizing their departure by the faint smell of human ordure that drifted to him when the wind blew in from the camp outskirts, a last s.h.i.tty clue that something of value had disappeared from that place and wouldn't be brought back by spells or politics.

Nick Holden and his group chased the Sauks for four days. They never really got close. The Indians stayed in the woodlands along the Mississippi, always heading north. They weren't as good in the wilderness as many of the People who were now dead, but even the poorest of them was better in the woods than the white men, and they doubled back and twisted, laying false trails the whites obligingly followed.

The white men stuck to the pursuit until they were deep into Wisconsin. It would have been better if they could have returned with trophies, a few scalps and ears, but they told each other they'd scored a great victory. They paused at Prairie du Chien and took on a lot of whiskey and Fritzie Graham got into a fight with a trooper and ended up in jail, but Nick got him out, convincing the sheriff that a little professional courtesy was called for toward a visiting deputy. When they got back, thirty-eight disciples went forth and spread the gospel that Nick Holden had saved the state from the redskin menace and was a fine fellow to boot.

It was a soft autumn that year, better than summer because all the bugs were killed off by early frosts. A golden time, the leaves along the river colored by the cold nights but the days mild and pleasurable. In October the church called to its pulpit Reverend Joseph Hills Perkins. He had asked for a parsonage as well as salary, so after harvest a small log house was built and the minister moved into it with his wife, Elizabeth. There were no children. Sarah busied herself as a member of the welcoming committee.

Rob J. found gone-by lilies along the river and planted their roots at the foot of Makwa's grave. It wasn't Sauk custom to mark graves with stone, but he asked Alden to plane a slab of black locust, which wouldn't rot. It didn't seem fitting to memorialize her with English words, but he had Alden carve into the wood the runelike symbols she had worn on her body, to mark it as her place. He had a single unsatisfactory conference with Mort London in an attempt to get the sheriff to investigate both her death and Comes Singing's, but London said he was satisfied her killer had been shot dead, probably by other Indians.

In November, all over the United States, male citizens over twenty-one went to the polls. Country-wide, workingmen reacted to the compet.i.tion of immigrants for their jobs. Rhode Island, Connecticut, New Hampshire, Ma.s.sachusetts, and Kentucky elected Know Nothing governors. Know Nothing legislatures were elected in eight states. In Wisconsin, Know Nothings helped elect Republican lawyers who proceeded to abolish the state immigration agencies. Know Nothings carried Texas, Tennessee, California, and Maryland, and ran strongly in most of the Southern states.

In Illinois they won a majority of the votes in Chicago and in the southern portion of the state. In Rock Island County, inc.u.mbent U.S. Congressman Stephen Hume lost his seat by 183 votes to the Indian fighter Nicholas Holden, who left almost immediately after the election to represent his district in Washington, D.C.

PART FOUR.

THE DEAF BOY.

October 12, 1851.

30.

LESSONS.

The railroad began in Chicago. Recent arrivals from Germany, Ireland, and Scandinavia found employment pushing the shining rails across the mostly flat land, finally reaching the east bank of the Mississippi at Rock Island. At the same time, on the other side of the river the Mississippi and Missouri Railroad Company was building a railroad across Iowa from Davenport to Council Bluffs, and the Mississippi River Bridge Company had been formed to connect the two railroads via a bridge across the great river.

In the deep mysteries of the flowing waters shortly after dusk on a mild evening, millions of wriggling aquatic larvae were transformed into caddis flies. Each of the dragonfly like insects fluttered out of the river on four silver wings, crowding and jostling, falling on Davenport in a blizzard of shimmering snowflakes that coated windows, got into the eyes and ears and mouths of people and animals, and were a terrible nuisance to anyone who ventured out-of-doors.

The caddis flies lived only one night. Their short onslaught was a phenomenon that occurred once or twice a year, and folks along the Mississippi took them in stride. By dawn the invasion was over, the flies were dead. At eight A.M. four men sat on benches along the waterfront in the thin fall sunlight, smoking and watching work crews sweep the insect corpses into drifts that were shoveled into wagons, from which they were dumped back into the river. Soon another man came on horseback, leading four other horses, and the men left the benches and mounted up.

It was a Thursday morning. Payday. On Second Street, in the office of the Chicago and Rock Island Railroad, the paymaster and two clerks were making up the payroll of the crew constructing the new bridge.

At 8:19 the five men rode up to the office. Four of them dismounted and went inside, leaving one man with the horses. They weren't masked, and they looked like ordinary farmers except that each of them was armed. When they stated their purpose quietly and politely, one of the clerks was foolish enough to try to get a pistol from a nearby shelf and he was shot as dead as the caddis flies, a single pistol bullet to the head. No further resistance was shown, and the four holdup men calmly collected the entire payroll of $1,106.37 into a soiled linen sack before leaving. The paymaster later told authorities he was certain the bandit giving the orders was a man named Frank Mosby, who for several years had farmed land on the other side of the river to the south, beyond Holden's Crossing.

Sarah's timing was unfortunate. That Sunday morning she waited in church until Reverend Perkins asked worshipers to bear witness. Then, gathering her courage, she rose and went forward. In a low voice she told her minister and the congregation that after she had been widowed as a young woman she had had congress outside the bounds of holy matrimony, resulting in the birth of a child. Now, she told them, she sought through public confession to rid herself of sin through the cleansing grace of Jesus Christ.

When she was through, she lifted her white face and gazed into Reverend Perkins' br.i.m.m.i.n.g eyes. "Praise the Lord," he whispered. His long narrow fingers gripped her head and forced her to her knees. "G.o.d!" he ordered sternly. "Absolve this good woman of her transgression, for she has unburdened herself here in your house this day, has washed the scarlet from her soul, made it white as the rose, pure as first snow."

The murmurings of the congregation swelled into shouts and e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.i.o.ns.

"Praise G.o.d!"

"Amen!"

"Hallelujah!"

"Amen, amen."

Sarah actually felt her soul lighten. She thought she could float to Paradise right at this moment, as the Lord's strength coursed into her body through Mr. Perkins' five digging fingertips.

The congregation was abrim with excitement. Every person was aware of the holdup in the railroad office, and that the outlaw leader had been identified as Frank Mosby, whose deceased brother, Will, it was widely whispered, had sired Sarah Cole's first son. So the people in church were caught up in the drama of the confession, studying Sarah Cole's face and body and imagining a variety of lascivious scenes they would pa.s.s on in shocked whispers to their friends and neighbors as probable history.

When finally Mr. Perkins allowed Sarah to return to her pew, eager hands reached out to hers, and many voices murmured words of joy and congratulation. It was the glowing realization of a dream that had tormented her for years. It was proof that G.o.d was good, that Christian forgiveness made new hope possible, and that she had been accepted into a world where love and charity ruled. It was the happiest moment of her life.

Next morning was the opening of the academy, first day of school. Shaman enjoyed the company of eighteen children of varying sizes, the sharp new-wood smell of the building and furniture, his slate and slate pencils, and his copy of McGuffey's Fourth Eclectic Reader, battered and used because the school in Rock Island had purchased the newer McGuffey's Fifth Eclectic Reader for its pupils and the Holden's Crossing Academy had bought their old books. But almost immediately he was beset by problems.

Mr. Byers seated his pupils alphabetically, in four groups according to age, so Shaman sat at one end of the long communal desk-shelf and Alex sat too far away to help him with anything. The teacher spoke with nervous swiftness, and Shaman had trouble reading his lips. The pupils were ordered to draw pictures of their homes on their slates and then write their names, their ages, and their fathers' names and occupations. With the enthusiasm of first-day scholars, they turned to the shelf and soon were busily at work.

Shaman's first clue that something was wrong was when the wooden pointer rapped his shoulder.

Mr. Byers had ordered his cla.s.s to stop work and face him again. All had obeyed except the deaf boy, who hadn't heard. When Shaman wheeled in fright, he saw that the other children were laughing at him.

"We shall now read aloud the words on our slates when called upon, and show our pictures to the cla.s.s. We'll begin with you," and the pointer rapped him again.

Shaman read, stammering over some of the words. When he had shown his picture and was finished, Mr. Byers called on Rachel Geiger, at the other end of the room. Though Shaman leaned as far forward in his seat as he was able, he couldn't see her face or read her lips. He raised his hand.

"What?"

"Please," he said, addressing the teacher as his mother had sternly instructed. "I can't see their faces from here. Couldn't I stand in front of them?"

At his last appointment Marshall Byers had had disciplinary problems, sometimes so severe he had dreaded entering the cla.s.sroom. This new school was a fresh chance, and he was determined to keep a tight rein on the young savages. He had decided that one of the ways to do this was by controlling the seating. Alphabetically. In four small groups, according to age. Everyone in his or her place.

He knew it wouldn't do to have this boy standing in front of the pupils as they recited, gazing at their mouths, perhaps making faces behind his back, inspiring them to laugh and play rowdy tricks. "No, you may not."

Much of that morning Shaman simply sat, unable to comprehend what was going on. At lunchtime the children went outside and played tag. He enjoyed that until the biggest boy in the school, Lucas Stebbins, slammed Alex to make him "it," sending him sprawling. When Alex scrambled to his feet, fists clenched, Stebbins went close to him. "Wanna fight, yuh s.h.i.t? We shouldn't let you play with us. You're a bastid. My paw says."

"What's a bastid?" Davey Geiger asked.

"Don't you know?" Luke Stebbins said. "It means somebody besides his paw, some dirty outlaw crook named Will Mosby, put his dingus up Mrs. Cole's pee-hole."

When Alex threw himself at the bigger boy, he received a stinging blow to his nose that brought blood dripping forth and sent him to the ground. Shaman ran at his brother's tormentor and received such a boxing about the ears that some of the other children, thoroughly frightened of Luke, turned away.

"You stop that. You'll hurt him," Rachel Geiger shouted, glowering.

Ordinarily, Luke listened to her, dazzled by the fact that at twelve she already had b.r.e.a.s.t.s, but this time he just grinned. "He's already deef. Can't do his ears any more harm. Dummies sure do talk funny," he said cheerfully, giving Shaman a final whack before walking away. If Shaman had allowed it, Rachel would have put her arms around him and comforted him. He and Alex, to their subsequent horror, sat on the ground and wept together while their schoolmates watched.

After lunch, there was music. This consisted of the pupils learning the tunes and words of hymns and anthems, a popular lesson because it was a relief from book-learning. During music, Mr. Byers a.s.signed the deaf boy to empty the pail of yesterday's ashes that stood next to the wood stove, and to fill the woodbox by carrying in heavy chunks. Shaman decided he hated school.

It was Alma Schroeder who made admiring reference to Rob J. about the confession in church, believing he knew of it. Once he possessed the details, he and Sarah quarreled. He had felt her torment and now felt her release, but he was stunned and distressed that she would offer to strangers intimate details of her life, painful or otherwise.

Not strangers, she corrected him. "Brethren in grace, sisters in Christ, who shared my shriving." Mr. Perkins had told them that anyone wishing to be baptized this coming spring must be shriven, she explained. It baffled her that Rob J. had trouble understanding; it was so clear to her.

When the boys began to come home from school with signs they'd been fighting, Rob J. suspected that at least some of her brethren in grace and sisters in Christ weren't above sharing with others the shrivings they observed in church. His sons were closemouthed about their bruises. He was unable to discuss their mother with them, other than to speak of her with admiration and love whenever it was possible. But he talked to them about fighting. "It just isn't worth it to hit someone when you're mad. Things can get out of hand fast, even lead to death. Nothing justifies killing."

The boys were puzzled. They were talking about schoolyard fistfights, not killing. "How can you help hitting back when somebody hits you first, Pa?" Shaman asked.

Rob J. nodded in sympathy. "I know it's a problem. You have to use your brain instead of your fists."

Alden Kimball had overheard. A while later, he looked at the brothers and spat in horror. "Drat! Drat! Your paw has to be one of the smartest men ever drew breath, but I guess he can be wrong. I tell you, somebody hits you, you gotta nail the sumb.i.t.c.h, else he's just gonna keep hittin."

"Luke's awful big, Alden," Shaman said. It was what his big brother was thinking.

"Luke? Is it that ox of a Stebbins kid? Luke Stebbins?" Alden said, and spat again when they nodded miserably.

"When I was a young feller, I was a fair fighter. Know what that is?"

"A fighter who's pretty good?" Alex said.

"Pretty good! I was better than pretty good. Used to box at fairs. Carnivals and such? Fought three minutes with anybody'd come up with four bits. If they whupped me, they'd get three dollars. And don't you think a lot of strong men didn't try for that three dollars, neither."

"Did you make a lot of money, Alden?" Alex asked.

Alden's face darkened. "Naw. There was a manager, he made a lot of money. I did it for two years, summer and fall. Then I got beat. Manager paid three dollars to the feller beat me, and hired him to take my place." He faced them. "Point is, I can teach you how to fight, you want me to."

Two young faces looked up at him. Then two heads were nodding.

"Stop that. Just say yes, can't you?" Alden said irritably. "Look like a couple of d.a.m.n sheep."

"Little fear's a good thing," he told them. "Gets your blood to flowin. But you let yourself be too scared, you can't do anythin but lose. And you don't want to let yourself get too angry, neither. A fighter who's mad starts swingin wild, leaves himself open to be hit."

Shaman and Alex grinned self-consciously, but Alden was very serious when he showed them how to hold their hands, left one at eye level to protect the head, right one lower to protect the trunk. He was fussy about the way they made a fist, insisting they clench their curled fingers tight, hardening their knuckles so it would be like hitting their opponents with a rock in each hand.

"Fightin's just four blows," Alden said, "left jab, left hook, right cross, straight right. Jab bites like a snake. Gotta sting a little, but it don't hurt the other fella much, just keeps him off-balance, opens him up for something more serious. Left hook don't travel far, but it does a job-you turn left, put your weight on your right leg, swing hard at his head. Right cross, now, you put your weight on the other leg, get your power from a quick turn at the waist, like this. My favorite, straight right to the body, I call it the Stick. You turn low to the left, put your weight over your left leg, and drive that right fist straight into his belly as if your whole arm was a spear."