The Cole Trilogy: The Physician, Shaman And Matters Of Choice Part 95

It began with an outline of the national structure of the political secret society. Its base was composed of district councils, each of which chose its own officers, enacted its own bylaws, and initiated its own members. Above them were county councils, made up of a single delegate from each of the district councils. The county councils supervised the political activities of the district councils and selected local political candidates worthy of the order's support.

All units in a state were controlled by a grand council, composed of three delegates from every district council, and governed by a grand-president and other elected officials. At the top of the elaborate structure was a national council that decided all national political matters, including the selection of the order's candidates for the presidency and the vice-presidency of the United States. The national council decided the punishment for dereliction of duty by members, and it fixed the order's extensive rituals.

There were two degrees of membership. To attain the first, a candidate had to be an adult male born in the United States of Protestant parents, who was not married to a Catholic woman.

Each prospective member was asked a blunt question: "Are you willing to use your influence and vote only for native-born American citizens for all offices of honor, trust, or profit in the gift of the people, the exclusion of all foreigners and Roman Catholics in particular, and without regard to party predilections?"

A man who so swore was required to renounce all other party allegiance, to support the political will of the order, and to work to change the naturalization laws. He was then entrusted with secrets, carefully described in the report-the sign of recognition, the handshake grip, the challenges, and the warnings.

To attain the second degree of membership, a candidate had to be a trusted veteran. Only second-degree members were eligible to hold office in the order, to engage in its clandestine activities, and to have its support in attaining office in local and national politics. When elected or appointed to power, they were ordered to remove all foreigners, aliens, or Roman Catholics working under them, and in no case "to appoint such to any office in your gift."

Rob J. stared at Miriam Ferocia. "How many are they?"

She shrugged. "We don't believe there are great numbers of men in the secret order. Perhaps a thousand. But they are the steel in the backbone of the American party.

"I give these pages to you because you oppose this group that seeks to harm my Mother Church, and because you should know the nature of those who do us evil, and for whose souls we pray to G.o.d." She regarded him soberly. "But you must promise not to use any of this information to approach a suspected member of the order in Illinois, for to do so might place the man who wrote this report in terrible danger."

Rob J. nodded. He folded the pages and offered them back to her, but she shook her head. "It is for you," she said. "Along with my prayers."

"You mustn't pray for me!" It made him uncomfortable to talk with her regarding matters of faith.

"You cannot stop me. You deserve prayers, and I speak of you often to the Lord."

"Just as you pray for our enemies," he pointed out grumpily, but she was undisturbed.

Later, at home, he read the report again, scrutinizing the spidery penmanship. Someone had written it (perhaps a priest?) who was living a sham, pretending to be what he was not, risking his safety, perhaps his life. Rob J. wished he could sit and talk with that man.

Nick Holden had easily won reelection twice on his reputation as an Indian fighter, but now he was running for a fourth term and his opponent was John Kurland, the Rock Island attorney. Kurland was highly regarded by Democrats and others, and perhaps Holden's Know Nothing support was flagging. Some people were saying the congressman might be turned out of office, and Rob J. was waiting for Nick to make a spectacular gesture designed to win votes. So he was only slightly surprised when he came home one afternoon to hear that Congressman Holden and Sheriff Graham were gathering another volunteer posse.

"Sheriff says Frank Mosby, that outlaw, is holed up in the north county," Alden said. "Nick's got folks so stirred up, they're more in a mood to lynch than to arrest, you ask me. Graham is deputizin people right and left. Alex left here all excited. He took the goose gun and rode Vicky to town." He frowned apologetically. "Tried to talk him out of it, but ..." He shrugged.

Trude hadn't had a chance to cool, but Rob J. threw the saddle back on and rode to town himself.

Men were cl.u.s.tered in the street in small groups. There was loud laughter on the porch of the store, where Nick and the sheriff were holding sway, but he ignored them. Alex was standing with Mal Howard and two other youths, all of them holding firearms, their eyes bright with importance. His face fell when he saw Rob J.

"Like to talk to you, Alex," Rob said, leading him away from the others.

"I want you to come home," he said when they were out of earshot.

"No, Pa."

Alex was eighteen years old, and volatile. If he felt pushed, he might just say go to h.e.l.l and walk away from home for good. "I don't want you to go. I have good reason."

"I've been hearing about that good reason all my life," Alex said bitterly. "I once asked Ma outright, is Frank Mosby my uncle? And she said he isn't."

"You're a fool, to put your mother through that. It doesn't matter if you go up there and shoot Mosby all by yourself, don't you know that? Some people are still going to talk. What they say doesn't matter at all.

"I could tell you to come home because it's my gun, and because it's my poor blind horse. But the real reason you can't go is that you're my boy, and I won't let you do something that'll eat at you the rest of your life."

Alex shot a desperate glance to where Mal and the others were watching curiously.

"You tell them I said you had too much work waiting at the farm. And then you go get Vicky from wherever you tied her, and you come home."

He went back and mounted Trude and rode up Main Street. Men were roughhousing in front of the church, and he could see that already there had been some drinking.

He didn't turn around for half a mile, but when he did, he saw the horse with the prissy, uncertain trot she had developed with her bad vision, and the figure bent over her neck like a man riding against a strong wind, the little bird gun held with its muzzle high, the way he'd taught his sons.

The next few weeks, Alex stayed out of his way, not so much angry at him as avoiding his authority. The posse stayed away two days. They found their quarry in a crumbling sod house, taking elaborate precautions before sneaking up on him, but he was asleep and unheeding. And he wasn't Frank Mosby. He was a man named Buren Harrison who had stuck up a storekeeper in Geneseo and robbed him of fourteen dollars, and Nick Holden and his lawmen escorted him triumphantly and drunkenly to justice. Subsequently it was learned that Frank Mosby had drowned in Iowa two years before, while trying to ride his horse across the Cedar River during floodwater.

In November, Rob J. voted to send John Kurland to Congress and to return Stephen A. Douglas to the Senate. The following evening he joined the crowd of men who waited for election news in Haskins' store, and in a display case he saw a pair of marvelous pocketknives. Each had a big blade, two smaller blades, and a little scissors, all of tempered steel, a case of polished tortoisesh.e.l.l, and caps of gleaming silver on both ends. They were knives for men who weren't afraid to whittle life with thick shavings, and he bought them to give to his sons at Christmas.

Just after dark, Harold Ames rode in from Rock Island with the election returns. It had been a day for inc.u.mbents. Nick Holden, Indian fighter and upholder of the law, had narrowly defeated John Kurland, and Senator Douglas also would be going back to Washington.

"That'll teach Abraham Lincoln not to tell people they can't keep slaves," Julian Howard chortled, shaking his fist in triumph. "That's the last we'll hear from that son of a b.i.t.c.h!"

42.

THE COLLEGIAN.

Inasmuch as Holden's Crossing wasn't on the railroad, Shaman's father drove him the thirty-two miles to Galesburg in the buckboard, with his trunk in back. The town and the college had been planned a quarter-century before in New York State, by Presbyterians and Congregationalists who came and built houses on streets laid out in a precise checkerboard pattern around a public square. At the college, the dean of students, Charles Hammond, said that since Shaman was younger than most of the others enrolled, he should not live in the dormitory. The dean and his wife took a few boarders into their white frame house on Cherry Street, and it was there, in a room at the rear of the second floor, that Shaman was housed.

Outside his room, stairs went down to a door that led to the backyard pump and the privy. In the room on his right were a pair of pale Congregational divinity students who preferred to talk only with one another. In the two rooms across the hall lived the short, dignified college librarian and a senior student named Ralph Brooke, who had a freckled, cheerful face, and eyes that always seemed slightly amazed. Brooke was a student of Latin. At breakfast the first morning, Shaman saw that he carried a volume of Cicero. Shaman's father had schooled him well in Latin. "Iucundi acti labores" he said: Accomplished labors are pleasant.

Brooke's face lighted like a lamp. "Ita vivam, ut scio": As I live, I know. Brooke became the only person in the house whom Shaman regularly talked to, with the exception of the dean and his skinny white-haired wife, who tried to mutter a few dutiful words daily.

"Ave!" Brooke greeted him each day. "Quomodo te habes hodie, iuvenis?" How are you on this morning, young fellow?

"Tarn bene quam fieri possit talibus in rebus, Caesar." As well as can be expected, under these circ.u.mstances, O Caesar, Shaman always said. Every morning. Their little joke.

At breakfast Brooke stole biscuits and was continually yawning. Only Shaman knew why. Brooke had a woman in the town and he stayed out very late, and very often. Two days after Shaman moved in, the Latinist convinced him to steal down the stairs and unlock the back door after all the others were abed, so Brooke could sneak in undetected. It was a service Brooke frequently would call upon.

Cla.s.ses began each day at eight. Shaman took physiology, English composition and literature, and astronomy. To Brooke's awe, he pa.s.sed an examination in Latin. Forced to study an additional language, he chose Hebrew over Greek, for reasons he wouldn't contemplate. His first Sunday in Galesburg, Dean and Mrs. Hammond took him to the Presbyterian church, but after that he told the Hammonds he was a Congregationalist and he told the divinity students he was a Presbyterian, and every Sunday morning he was free to walk about the town.

The railroad had reached Galesburg six years before Shaman did, and had brought prosperity and a boomtime mixture of people. In addition, a cooperative colony of Swedes had failed at nearby Mission Hill, and a lot of its members had come to Galesburg to live. He loved to watch the Swedish women and girls, with their light yellow hair and lovely skin. When he took steps to make certain he didn't stain Mrs. Hammond's sheets at night, his fantasy females were Swedish. Once on South Street he was stopped short by the sight of a darker head of female hair he was certain he knew, and for a moment he was unable to breathe. But it turned out that the woman was a stranger. She smiled at him quickly when she saw him staring, but he put down his head and hurried away. She looked to be at least twenty. He didn't want to get to know any older women.

He was homesick and lovesick, but both maladies soon diminished to become bearable pains, like toothaches that were not excruciating. He made no friends, perhaps because of his youth and his deafness, which resulted in good scholarship because mostly he studied. His favorite courses were astronomy and physiology, although physiology was a disappointment, being a mere listing of body parts and components. The closest Mr. Rowells, the instructor, came to discussing processes was a lecture on digestion and the importance of regularity. But in the physiology cla.s.sroom was a wired-together skeleton suspended from a screw in the top of the skull, and Shaman spent hours alone with it, memorizing the name, shape, and function of each of the old bleached bones.

Galesburg was a pretty town, its streets lined with elm, maple, and walnut trees that had been planted by the first settlers. Its inhabitants were proud of three things. Harvey Henry May had invented a steel self-scouring plow there. A Galesburger named Olmsted Ferris had developed good popcorn; he had gone to England and popped it in front of Queen Victoria. And Senator Douglas and his opponent, Lincoln, debated at the college on October 7, 1858.

Shaman went to the debate that night, but when he arrived at Main Hall there already was a crowd, and he realized that from the best seat available he wouldn't be able to read the candidates' lips. He left the hall and climbed the stairs until he reached the door to the roof, where Professor Gardner, his astronomy teacher, maintained a small observatory at which each student in his cla.s.s was required to study the heavens for several hours each month. Tonight Shaman was alone, and he peered into the ocular of Professor Gardner's pride and love, a five-inch Alvan Clark refracting telescope. He adjusted the k.n.o.b, shortening the distance between the eyepiece and the convex front lens, and the stars sprang straight at him, two hundred times larger than a moment before. A cold night, clear enough to reveal two of the rings of Saturn. He studied the nebulae of Orion and Andromeda, then began moving the telescope on its tripod, searching the heavens. Professor Gardner called this "sweeping the sky," and said a woman named Maria Mitch.e.l.l had been sweeping the sky and had won lasting fame by discovering a comet.

Shaman discovered no comets. He watched until the stars seemed to wheel, enormous and glittering. What had formed them up there, out there? And the stars beyond? And beyond?

He felt that each star and planet was part of a complicated system, like a bone in a skeleton or a drop of blood in the body. So much of nature seemed organized, thought out-so orderly, yet so complicated. What had made it so? Mr. Gardner had told Shaman that all anyone needed to become an astronomer were good eyes and mathematical ability. For a few days he'd considered making astronomy his life's work, but then he changed his mind. The stars were magical, but all you could do was watch them. If a heavenly body went awry, you couldn't ever hope to make it well again.

When he went home for Christmas, somehow Holden's Crossing was different than it had been before, lonelier than his room in the dean's house, and at the end of the holiday he returned to the college almost willingly. He was delighted with the knife his father had given him, and he bought a small whetstone and a tiny vial of oil and sharpened each blade until it could cut a single hair.

Second semester, he took chemistry instead of astronomy. He found composition difficult. You have told me BEFORE, his English professor scribbled crankily, that Beethoven wrote much of his music while deaf. Professor Gardner encouraged him to use the telescope whenever he pleased, but the night before a chemistry examination in February he sat on the roof and swept the sky instead of learning Berzelius' table of atomic weights, and he received a poor grade. After that, he managed less star-watching but he did very well in chemistry. When he went back to Holden's Crossing again for the Easter holiday, the Geigers invited the Coles for dinner, and Jason's interest in chemistry made the ordeal less awkward for Shaman because Jay kept asking him questions about the course.

His answers must have been satisfactory. "What do you plan to do with your life, old Shaman?" Jay asked.

"I don't know yet. I've thought ... perhaps I can work in one of the sciences."

"If you'd like pharmacy, I'd be honored to apprentice you."

He could see on his parents' faces that the offer pleased them, and he thanked Jay clumsily and said he'd certainly like to think about that; but he knew he didn't want to be a pharmacist. He kept his eyes on his plate for a few minutes and missed some of the conversation, but when he looked up again he saw that Lillian's face was shadowed with grief. She was telling his mother that Rachel's child would have been born in five months, and for a while thereafter they talked about losing babies.

That summer Shaman worked with the sheep and read philosophy books borrowed from George Cliburne. When he returned to college, Dean Hammond allowed him to escape from Hebrew, and he elected to study Shakespeare's plays, advanced mathematics, botany, and zoology. Only one of the divinity students had come back to Knox for another year, but so had Brooke, with whom Shaman continued to converse like a Roman, keeping his Latin fresh. His favorite teacher, Professor Gardner, taught the zoology course but was a better astronomer than a biologist. They dissected only frogs and mice and little fishes, making a lot of diagrams. Shaman didn't have his father's artistic talent, but being a child around Makwa had given him a head start in botany; he wrote his first project on the anatomy of flowers.

That year the debate about slavery waxed hot at the college. Along with other students and faculty members, he joined the Society for the Abolition of Slavery, but there were many at the college and in Galesburg who identified with the Southern states, and at times the debate became ugly.

Mostly, people left him alone. The townspeople and students had become accustomed to him, but to the ignorant and superst.i.tious he had become a mystery, a local legend. They didn't understand about deafness, and about how deaf people could develop compensating sensitivities. They had quickly established that he was stone deaf, but some thought he had occult powers, because if he was studying alone and someone came in quietly behind him, he always detected a presence. They said he had "eyes in the back of his head." They didn't comprehend that he was reached by the vibrations of approaching steps, that he could feel the coolness from the opened door, or see the flicker of air movement in the paper he held in his hand. He was happy none of them would ever witness his ability to identify notes played on a piano.

He knew they referred to him sometimes as "that strange deaf boy."

On a soft early-May afternoon he had been walking about the town, observing the progress of the flowers in the yards, and at South Street and Cedar a railroad lorry pulled by four horses came around the corner too fast. Though he was spared the thunder of hooves and the yipping, he saw the small furry shape narrowly miss disaster from the front end, only to be caught by the right rear wheel that carried the dog around through almost a full rotation before finally it was flung clear. The lorry lumbered away, leaving the dog flopping in the dust of the street, and Shaman hurried closer.

The critter was a nondescript yellow female with stubby legs and a white-tipped tail. Shaman thought there was some terrier in her. She was writhing on her back, and a thin trickle of red ran from the corner of her mouth.

A couple who had been walking nearby came and stared.

"Disgraceful," the man said. "Mad drivers. It could as easily have been one of us." He held out a warning hand as he saw that Shaman was about to kneel. "I wouldn't. It's sure to bite you in its pain."

"Do you know who owns her?" Shaman asked.

"No," the woman said.

"Just a street cur, this one," the man said, and he and the woman walked away.

Shaman knelt and patted the dog warily, but the animal licked his hand. "Poor dog," he said. He checked all four limbs, and they didn't appear broken, but he knew the bleeding was a bad sign. Nevertheless, after a moment he took his jacket off and wrapped it around the dog. Holding her in his arms like an infant or a bundle of laundry, he carried her back to the house. No one looked out the side windows and noticed him bearing his burden into the backyard. He met n.o.body on the back stairs. In his room he put the dog on the floor and then took his underwear and stockings out of the bottom drawer of his bureau. From the hall closet he helped himself to some of the rags Mrs. Hammond kept for housecleaning. They made a kind of nest in the drawer, and he put the dog there. When he inspected his jacket, he saw there was only a little blood on it. Besides, it was on the inside.

The dog lay in the drawer, panting, and regarded him.

When it was time for supper, Shaman went out. In the corridor, Brooke watched in astonishment as he locked the door to his room, something n.o.body did who was going to be elsewhere in the house. "Quid vis?" Brooke said.

"Condo parvam catulam in meo cubiculo."

Brooke's eyebrows rose in astonishment. "You have ..." He didn't trust his own Latin. "... Hidden a little b.i.t.c.h in your room?"

"Sic est."

"Haw!" Brooke said in disbelief, and slapped Shaman on the back. In the dining room, it being Monday, there was leftover Sunday roast. Shaman slipped several small pieces from his plate into his pocket, Brooke observed with interest. When Mrs. Hammond went into the pantry to see about the dessert, he took half a cup of milk and left the table while the dean was engrossed in conversation about the book budget with the librarian.

The dog wasn't the least bit interested in the meat, nor would she lap the milk. Shaman took some milk on his fingers and put it on her tongue, as if he were feeding a motherless lamb, and that way he got a little nourishment into her.

For several hours he studied. At the end of the evening he stroked and petted the listless dog. Her nose was hot and dry. "Go to sleep, there's a girl," he said, and blew out the lamp. It was strange having another living creature in the room, but he liked it.

In the morning he went straight to the dog and found that her nose was cool. In fact, her whole body was cool, and stiff.

"d.a.m.nation," Shaman said bitterly.

Now he would have to think of how to get rid of her. Meantime, he washed and dressed and went to breakfast, locking his room again. Brooke was waiting for him in the hall.

"I thought you were joking," he said fiercely. "But I could hear her crying and whimpering half the night."

"Sorry," Shaman said. "You won't be bothered again."

After breakfast, he went up and sat on his bed and looked at the dog. There was a flea on the lip of the drawer, and he tried to crush it but kept missing. He would have to wait until everyone left for the morning and carry the dog out then, he thought. There must be a shovel in the cellar. It would mean he would miss his first cla.s.s.

But he realized eventually that this was an opportunity to do a postmortem investigation.

The possibility intrigued him, but presented problems. Blood, for one. From helping his father during autopsy he knew that blood coagulated somewhat after death, but there would still be bleeding ...

He waited until almost everyone had left the house, then went to where the large metal bathtub hung from a nail on the wall of the back hall. He carried it to his room and set it by the window, where the light was good. When he put the dog in the tub on her back, with her paws in the air, she looked as though she was waiting to have her tummy rubbed. Her toenails were long, like a neglected person's, and one was broken. She had four claws on her hind feet and an extra, smaller claw above each of her front feet, like thumbs that somehow had wandered upward. He wanted to see how the joints of the limbs compared to human joints. He snapped up the small blade of the pocketknife his father had given him. The dog had loose long hairs and thicker short hairs, but the fur on the underside didn't impede at all, and the flesh parted easily as the knife opened her.

He didn't go to cla.s.ses or stop for lunch. All day he dissected and made notes and rough diagrams. Late in the afternoon, he'd finished with the internal organs and several of the joints. He still wanted to study and draw the spine, but he returned the dog to the bureau and closed the drawer. Then he poured water into his washbasin and scrubbed long and hard, using lots of brown soap, and emptied the basin into the tub. Before going down to supper, he put on fresh clothing from the skin out.

Still, they were scarcely on soup when Dean Hammond wrinkled his fleshy nose.

"What?" asked his wife.

"Something," the dean said. "Cabbage?"

"No," she said.

Shaman was happy to escape when the meal was over. He sat in his room in a sweat, dreading lest someone should decide to take a bath.

No one did. Too nervous to be sleepy, he waited an exceptionally long time, until it was so late that everyone else would have gone to bed. Then he carried the tub from his room, down the stairs, and out into the soft air of the backyard, and emptied the b.l.o.o.d.y slops into the lawn. The pump seemed especially noisy as he worked the handle, and there was always the danger that someone would come out to use the privy, but no one did. He scrubbed the tub with soap several times and rinsed it well, then took it back inside and hung it on the wall.

In the morning he faced the fact that he wouldn't be able to dissect the spine, because the room had grown warmer and the scent was heavy. He kept the drawer closed and piled his pillow and bedclothes around it, hoping to seal in the smell. But when he went down to breakfast, the faces around the table were grim.

"A mouse, dead in the walls, I expect," the librarian said. "Or perhaps a rat."

"No," Mrs. Hammond said. "We found the source of the stench this morning. It seems to be coming from the ground around the pump."

The dean sighed. "I hope we shall not have to dig a new well."

Brooke looked as if he had gone sleepless. He kept looking nervously away.

Numb, Shaman hurried off to his chemistry cla.s.s, to give them a chance to clear out of the house. When chemistry was over, instead of going to Shakespeare he hastened home, eager to take care of things. But when he climbed the back stairs he found Brooke and Mrs. Hammond and one of the town's two policemen standing in front of his door. She held her key.