The Resurrectionist: A Novel Part 9

SUNDAY MORNING, MAY 10, 1864, and Nemo Johnston was a spectacle of superfine raiment and bearing. His haberdashery was all in place, from the fine felt bowler just arrived from the Bloomingdale's catalogue to his wool suit with a subtle stripe accented by a silk pocket square of the finest ivory hue. All of it set off by the gold-handled cane he had retrieved from Colonel Lamar's coffin last week. He made his way leisurely down this public street dressed finer than most of Columbia's white citizens, grinning like a death's head.

The Columbia South Carolinian folded under his arm bore news of a slave uprising down in All Saints Parish, two plantations over from Drake's Windsor. With the Union gunboat blockade just off their sh.o.r.e, the rice aristocrats were losing control; two overseers had been killed-one shot, the other hanged-and there were now armed slaves loose in the low country. The newspaper compared the uprising to those of Denmark Vesey and Nat Turner, reminding its readers that upwards of fifty whites were dead before they brought Nat down. The South Carolinian writer, in fact, seemed nearly hysterical. Nemo had already read the article twice over his breakfast, but had decided that the news was so good he would carry the paper all day.

The morning was especially fine, so he detoured from his usual route, drawn by singing in the Episcopal Cathedral on Gervais a block away. Rare indeed for the devil's right hand to darken this door, but this was an extraordinary day. He slipped through the great doors and climbed the steps to the slave balcony soundlessly.

Upstairs was full of the smell of starched cotton and sweated wool, black faces gleaming over the busy fans that could never cool these upper reaches in the Carolina heat. A nearly electric tension followed him as his brethren marked the appearance of the slave quarters' boogeyman in this sacred place. He squeezed into an open seat beside a teenage girl-Tyree's niece, he thought-who dropped her fan to the floor and stared at him, her head wobbling slightly, as though a timber rattler had come to service and alighted beside her. He showed her a mouthful of white teeth.

The singing ended and the rector rose to the pulpit, bespectacled and albed and looking especially stern. Without preamble he leaned upon the great Bible propped before him and read: " 'Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For ye are like unto whited sepulchers, which indeed appear beautiful outward, but are within full of dead men's bones, and of all uncleanness. Even so ye also outwardly appear righteous unto men, but within ye are full of hypocrisy and iniquity.' So says Christ Jesus, in chapter twenty-three of Matthew's gospel," the rector said, "and it is a text with particular application to the congregation gathered here today."

Nemo leaned forward in his seat, hardly believing his luck. Years now since he had last emerged from this building with the bilious taste of its bland hypocrisy in his mouth, and he had sworn then that he had quit this G.o.dforsaken place for good. But now, on his first day back, the white preacher had welcomed him with a homecoming message, the truth at last. He gazed down upon the rows of white parishioners below and thought, You had it coming and now you going to get it, and all your chattel up here to witness it.

"For it has come to be known here in Columbia-and throughout the South-that conditions within our domestic sphere untouched by northern aggression are not so blessedly tranquil as they have lately seemed," the rector said. His face was tilted upward, as was Nemo's; Nemo was beginning to wonder if the G.o.d he had heard discussed so warmly since he landed in Charleston might not be showing his presence after all. But when he lowered his gaze from the timbered ceiling, Nemo saw that the preacher's eyes were raised not to heaven but to the balcony.

"My sable brethren, these dry bones are not just the sins of the gambling house, the saloon, the bedchamber of your neighbor's wife. These dry bones of iniquity are also the hardness of heart you may feel toward your masters, for as our Savior Christ has told us, we are all servants, and should be humble, gracious, obedient. This is no less true for the benighted child of Africa than for the sons and daughters of Europe-nay, it is even more so."

Nemo leaned back, settling against the pew heavily. It seemed that the preacher had read the morning paper too.

He allowed himself to drift for a few moments then, knowing he had been burned again by this great white machine, all-powerful, with its plotting and knowing tentacles stretched out a half mile farther down any road he had yet chosen to travel. So for some minutes his mind was elsewhere, as it often was on moonless nights in Cedar Vale, prospecting among the remains of his people for forage to sneak through the back door of the medical school. As he did then, he thought not of this steaming southland but of vast dry plains far away, of mile-wide suns setting savannahs afire with the orange glow of sunset.

But the man's voice kept bringing him back. And the eyes, the pale blue eyes quick with life. Every time the preacher looked up from his text they rose to the balcony, scorching and accusative. When Nemo knew that Doctor Ballard, down front and center in the pews, had just performed an appendectomy on the rector's daughter, Margaret, cauterizing the wound as he'd practiced on the body of Berenice MacCallan's mother-and Berenice herself sitting two rows behind him now.

Nemo thought back to a.s.sisting at the dress rehearsal of that procedure in the anatomy laboratory-the suturing and tying of Mrs. MacCallan's dead appendix-when the preacher's voice returned to him, the words seeping into his consciousness like the bite of formalin in the nose.

"And hear me well, you servants, destined for a higher station in the glorious hereafter," the preacher said-always, always, Nemo thought, a better place once dead. Poor Mrs. MacCallan hadn't got there yet, as far as he could see. "Repentance never comes too late. I urge you to bring your dry bones into the light, to confess the sins of your plotting against your masters. I say to you, my black brothers, come forward and confess your sins and even the scribes and Pharisees among you will be forgiven."

He felt it welling up inside him, stronger than anything he had felt in years. Maybe it was Doctor Ballard sitting down front in his white suit looking innocent as a lamb, pure as a whited sepulcher. Maybe it was Berenice MacCallan murmuring "Yes, Lord" behind him, knowing nothing of the busy week her mama had had at the college, picked over by a third of the faculty before he laid her in the bas.e.m.e.nt under a thick coat of lime. Maybe it was even the news from All Saints, turning the tide down by the Waccamaw, swapping bone for bone. Probably it was all these things. He saw it all now-this sermon, this moment-as the punch line to a great cosmic joke, two hundred years of irony echoing across the oceans from Africa to Columbia. And because he could do little else, he began to laugh. A chuckle at first, and one of his pew mates shushed him, but the preacher was off again on the dirty bones and Nemo, bone man himself, cackled aloud. Bowing over with it, he saw that he had clamped a hand on his neighbor's knee-that of Tyree's niece, who sat walleyed, transfixed and petrified by this contact in spite of the indignity.

"No, child, I ain't no Satan. Devil's in the good seats," he said, his throat hitching. "Downstairs. On the ground floor."

He was gone then, beyond restraint. A ba.s.so roar, peals of his laughter cascaded down from the balcony. Faces turned up toward its source, reddening-none of them redder than Ballard's when he spotted Nemo. A handful of men rose and made their way up the aisle. In seconds he could hear them pounding up the stairs.

"That's right, white folks, send up the deacons!" he shouted before exploding again.

There was a shuffle behind him, and Nemo felt hands hooking him under his arms. He had only a second to dab his glistening cheeks with his handkerchief before they hauled him up.

Downstairs they hurled him clear of the nave steps onto the sidewalk. Rising, he replaced his pocket square and adjusted the bowler back to its steep angle. He set out for home with the gold cane tapping the sidewalk bricks smartly, evenly, his head held high. He was smiling again, for Nemo Johnston was superfine, a man among men, and despite the rough handling, entirely beyond their reach.

EDWIN WINSTON SAT on a stool behind the wooden dispensing counter of the apothecary, his eyes intent on the pages of the ledger spread open before him, blissfully content among the familiar scents of calomel and castor oil. The morning was quiet, the only sounds at this moment the scratch of his pen's nib against the paper and the creaking of the wooden stepladder on which Nemo stood, above and behind him, reaching for another bottle of patent medicine on the apothecary's tall shelves. They had been at this work for an hour now, the professor of chemistry tallying off inventory as the slave called out quant.i.ties of Burnett's Cod Liver Oil, McMunn's Elixir of Opium, Dr. Wistar's Balsam of Wild Cherry. Winston wrote out each number carefully in his ledger, periodically pausing to press a blotter on the pages to soak up the fresh ink from the fountain pen. The room was filled with lambent autumn light, dust motes dancing in it, and the light glinted off the doctor's spectacles as he nodded at the figures in the ledger.

"Barnes's Magnolia Water," Nemo said, "two quarts."

"Very good. That leaves only Winston's Baby Syrup. How much?"

Nemo shook a bottle, its liquid contents sloshing against the brown gla.s.s. "Just one half pint, Doctor Winston, near empty."

Winston smiled. "Going like hotcakes, is it not? I'll mix up a new batch this evening. Ballard tells me he can hardly keep enough on hand for new mothers with colicky babies. The morphine is the ticket." Winston looked up at Nemo. "I say this in the strictest of confidence, of course. The blend is proprietary. I am expecting word from the Patent Office any day now."

Nemo nodded as he descended the stepladder. "Congratulations to you, sir."

"Missus Winston is nearly beside herself with pleasure," he said, blushing. He cleared his throat and looked back at the ledger. "All is satisfactory except for the laudanum count. One expects the students to dip into it from time to time, but this year's boys are setting the record, I am afraid. Have you seen anyone back here more than usual?"

Nemo shrugged his shoulders. "They a few claiming stomach ailments."

Winston seemed about to inquire further, but before he could speak again the door opened and Johnston entered, looking flushed and triumphant. He shut the door behind him carefully and smiled at Winston and Nemo as he leaned against it.

"We have a most propitious new enrollment," he said at last.

Winston shut the ledger. "This late? The term began two weeks ago."

"Trust me, Winston, you will be happy to make whatever adjustments are necessary. Our new man is a refugee from the low country, a gentleman who has lately vacated his lands for fear that Sherman's march will proceed to the seaboard. Nemo, do you remember a Mister Albert Fitzhugh from All Saints Parish?"

Nemo stiffened slightly. "Two plantations over from Windsor, I recall." He remembered much of the Fitzhughs, from what he had heard at Christmas visiting-time from the slaves five miles down the coast. Fitzhugh, it was said, had shot a field hand named Monday in the face for working too slowly at harvesttime. He had left the body in the fields as a reminder to the others, who watched it picked over by crows as they hoed the nearby rows. Two nights later, some of them had stolen out to the field and buried the body in a levee. "Folks said the old gentleman was a Christian man."

Johnston waved a hand in the air. "He may have been, but it is the son I am talking about. He spends money like a pagan." Johnston crossed the room and set a paper on the counter in front of Winston.

"Check those figures, Winston. I negotiated special terms for his admission. It seems there is no accredited high school in the parish. Certain tuition adjustments were thus in order to make his matriculation amenable to our standards."

Winston's eyes widened behind the gla.s.s lenses. "By what terms did you arrive at these fees?"

"He will need tutorials to bring him up to speed. His mathematical ability is atrocious, his chemistry even worse, Winston. We will all have to take a special interest in his progress." Johnston turned to Nemo. "I am placing his success in the anatomy course in your hands, Nemo."

Nemo began to speak, but the doctor turned on his heel and motioned for the slave to follow him. "To the dissecting room, Nemo. Mister Fitzhugh expressed an interest in beginning the course of study immediately."

After a moment's pause, the slave followed him, hurrying to catch up so that he could hold the door open for the doctor. Johnston was already talking again, a stream of words pouring forth that Winston did not hear. Neither did the chemist note the silence that ensued once they had gone beyond the shut door, so intent was he on scribbling ratios of morphine, sugar, and corn syrup on his shirt cuff, all the quant.i.ties doubled from his last production run of Winston's Baby Syrup. He could hardly wait to share the news with Mrs. Winston.

NEMO MOVED QUIETLY down the midnight-dark cobblestone streets, the moon dim above him through the blanket of fog that had settled over the town and its river-basin valley as though it meant to choke out all the life there. The fog was packed densely between the buildings, spilling out of the alleys and into Hardin Street, damping the usual glare of the street's opulent gaslights to irregular flickers little stronger than candles. Against the stones, his footfalls were strangely muted by the close air, short echoes tapering quickly into the fog and dying there.

How strange, this near silence. Ten years ago he could not have imagined a city the size of Columbia, but he had grown to love it-its colors and noise, so many sounds, even at night, from the horses and milk cows in their stalls on every block to the ruckus of the red-light district down on Huger, near the river, throwing up its bawdy roar into the wee hours. A steady din that rivaled the slave quarters at Christmas, every night. It had always made his work easier. But tonight, it seemed, he alone was stirring.

He paused to check the address written on his hand against the numbers he could just make out on the iron placard fastened to the front of a brick townhouse. When he was certain the address was correct, he stepped up to the front door and gave the bra.s.s bellpull two short yanks. After a moment he heard sounds of movement inside, and the door was thrown open to reveal Albert Fitzhugh in a silk dressing gown. Fitzhugh's eyes seemed unaccustomed to the darkness outside; for nearly a minute he only stared at his caller, as though without recognition. Nemo saw that behind him the parlor was heavily furnished, its walls adorned in a flocked wallpaper against which hung an oval portrait of an aristocratic-looking white woman. When his eyes fell again to Fitzhugh's face, he saw that it had reddened.

"My G.o.d. You are at my front door." He looked up and down the street in spite of the fog and the hour. "Are you insane, boy?"

"Doctor Evans said-"

"Go around back." The door slammed shut.

Grinning, Nemo stepped off the narrow porch and hooked around its banister into the alley, waving at the fog as he had once swiped at spiderwebs in the dense thickets of All Saints. This new boy had become his cross to bear, certainly, but even this cross came with certain amus.e.m.e.nts. He remembered the day Johnston had introduced them in the dissecting room, how they had found Fitzhugh sitting on top of the demonstration desk in the midst of a monologue to the other students about the gout that had regrettably kept him out of this great fight, about the lodgings he had secured for himself and his mother on Hardin Street, about his and his mother's decision that he could best be of service to the cause as a Confederate surgeon. At his feet had lain a mottled hound with brown ears and doleful eyes. The dog had risen, growling, when Nemo entered the room. Johnston had settled a hand on Nemo's shoulder then, smiling uncomfortably.

"Mister Fitzhugh, tell us again the name of your companion."

Fitzhugh had dropped off his perch on the desk and begun scratching the dog under its jowls.

"Stonewall. He's an English pointer. Best bird dog in the low country. I paid a hundred Confederate dollars for him and he was worth every penny of it."

Nemo had suppressed a smile. He had just read an article in the South Carolinian reporting sorrowfully that the Confederate dollar was now trading nine to one against gold. This dog was depreciating fast.

Despite Fitzhugh's ministrations, the dog still growled at Nemo. "Doesn't like n.i.g.g.e.rs, though," Fitzhugh said thoughtfully. "Might want to keep that boy clear of him."

"Perhaps he may not have a place in the dissecting laboratory," Johnston had said carefully.

Fitzhugh straightened to his full height. "He goes where I go."

Johnston cleared his throat. "Very well, then. But this Negro is your preceptor in anatomy. Some compromise will have to be reached."

Fitzhugh had nearly quit just then, but at Johnston's urging, and with a.s.surances from the other students of Nemo's abilities, Stonewall had been retired with a kick under the table set aside for his master. Yet even after Doctor Johnston had gone, the dog still growled and yipped as Nemo set out Fitzhugh's dissecting knives and saws, and nipped once at his ankle. Fitzhugh laughed, so Nemo had thrown the sheet off the dead corporal from the Wisconsin Regulars a little more abruptly than usual, to showcase the bruising on the dead man's collarbones and around the bayonet wound in his chest, which was now leaking pale formalin. Once Fitzhugh had recovered from his pallor, he spoke almost reverently.

"My first patient."

"Don't look like he's going to make it."

Fitzhugh had glared at him. "I used to own n.i.g.g.e.rs down in the country," he said.

Nemo had folded the sheet evenly. "That a fact, captain?" he had said, already moving away with the folded sheet, glad to put some distance between the dog and his ankles.

"And I believed in the whip," Fitzhugh had said to Nemo's back.

He could hear the dog now, barking furiously in the kitchen at the rear of the house. Fitzhugh was waiting for him there in the open doorway, one hand against the jamb and the other knotted into the ruff of Stonewall's neck.

"What in G.o.d's name are you doing here, and at this hour?"

"I was saying that Doctor Evans want you down to the Negro hospital to watch a live birth. Woman's been in labor two hours and he can't hold the baby off much longer."

"You woke me for this? A n.i.g.g.e.r live birth?"

"Doctor Evans say it's time for you to start your obstetrics training."

Fitzhugh seemed too furious for speech. He caught a flicker of movement in Nemo's eyes and turned. Behind him, on the townhouse's back staircase, stood a middle-aged woman in a voluminous satin robe, her hair bundled under a linen sleeping cap. Nemo recognized her as the woman from the portrait in the parlor, only heavier and with more p.r.o.nounced cheekbones than the portraitist had recorded. She clutched the stair railing nervously as she looked down on them.

"Albert, what is it?" she said, her voice giving way to a heavy cough.

"Get back to bed, dear," Fitzhugh said gently. "You should be resting."

With a worried glance, the woman climbed the steps out of sight. Fitzhugh turned back to Nemo. "The town air disagrees with Mother," he explained, "and the last thing she needs is a strange n.i.g.g.e.r interrupting her sleep."

"You want I should send Doctor Johnston out for her? Cough sounds deep."

"I'll attend to Mother, thank you," Fitzhugh said archly. He looked down at the dog, whining in his grip. "I'm inclined to turn Stonewall loose on you for bothering her."

Nemo did not budge, only raised his hands in a gesture of strained patience. "What you want me to tell Doctor Evans? That woman can't wait long."

The door was already shutting on Fitzhugh's response. "Come back when you have a paying patient," he said.

Nemo turned to make his way back to the school. He had taken perhaps a half-dozen steps on the courtyard bricks when a shape came out of the fog in front of him, too quickly for him to reach into the pocket where he kept the knife. A face pressed close to his before he could see that it was female, and smiling.

"I knew that voice. You Cudjo from over on Windsor, ain't you?"

The face was not only smiling but beautiful, a honeyed brown the color of deep amber, yet he squared his shoulders just the same.

"Who's asking?"

"It's Amy, Mister Cudjo. Don't you remember me?"

Nemo felt his shoulders loosen, remembering a thirteen-year-old with ribbons plaited in her hair, fanning rice from a gra.s.s basket into one of the hollowed-out trunks that served as mortars after the harvest, her smile as bright as the sun.

"Toby and Maria's Amy?"

Her smile broadened. "That's me," she said, nodding. "Come up with Mister Albert and Mrs. Libby. Ain't this a fine town?" She held out a hand to him, almost formally, and he took it. Her touch was cool and warm at the same time.

"How come you didn't stay with your mama?"

"Daddy said she too old to travel. Sent me instead. I'm so glad to be out of them All Saints fields I don't know what to do with myself."

Nemo placed his other hand on top of hers, encircling it with the darker skin of his own.

"Well, you out of the frying pan, girl," he said, sighing as he looked back at the townhouse. "Let's just hope you ain't landed smack in the fire."

NEMO SAT ON his front porch in his favorite rocking chair, reading a week-old South Carolinian, warming his bones in the weak afternoon sunlight that bathed his west-facing house. This December had started breezy and cold and showed no signs of letting up any time soon. Twice this week he had begun his mornings by breaking ice on the surface of his well, dropping the bucket hard to crack through the icy skim, which shattered like gla.s.s in the predawn stillness. But this afternoon was warm enough, just barely, to sit outside and take in some fresh air, to watch the sun play out its hues over the rooftops of Rosedale and read a little news of the war.

All the news this month, like most of November's, was of William Tec.u.mseh Sherman. His name had been anathema to the southern press since Meridian, and now, with Atlanta and Savannah burned to cinders, the South Carolinian seemed to be straining to find epithets enough to heap on the Yankee war criminal. Charleston would be next, the paper said gloomily; all Columbia could do for its sister city was offer consolations from its safe distance up in the Midlands, clear of the sea and too insignificant to burn. Yet still the city was shrouded by an anxiety he could feel in the air, could sense in the quick gait of people on the streets, the quiet apprehension of the horses and livestock.

Maybe it was the newcomers who spread the unease; half of Charleston and Savannah, it seemed to Nemo, had been here since the harvest moon, fleeing Sherman's swath of destruction with as many of their belongings as they could carry. The city was loud with their low-country accents, all the boardinghouses full. They had brought their things, and they had brought their money too: Nemo saw an article on the front page announcing that Columbia was now home to fourteen banks, when just five years ago there had been only three. He reminded himself to point out the piece to Doctor Johnston, who would be pleased by the growth potential the article indicated. Lately the doctor had been nearly disconsolate over the progress of the war.

Nemo heard the rasp of metal on metal out at his front gate. Without moving the newspaper held in front of him, he dropped his left hand to the pocket of his overcoat. He felt the cold steel of his knife there and pulled it out slowly, placing it at the proper angle across his lap.

He folded the paper over to the second page, lowering it, and as he did so he caught sight of a group of figures at his front gate, silhouetted in the orange light of the lowering sun. He counted five of them. He was about to speak when he saw one of them drag a stick along his fence pickets. It rattled against the fence and fell silent.

"Say, Mister Nemo. You really the booger-man?"

The speaker's head just barely cleared the top of the fence.

"Who that out there projecting in my yard?"

His deep voice startled a couple of the boys, who stepped back closer to the road. But the speaker pressed forward, through the open gate, and walked a half-dozen slow steps up the walkway. Nemo saw that his feet were swaddled in old croker sacks against the cold, and that he wore no coat.

"I say, you really the booger-man?"

"Step closer, child. I can't see your eyes."

"Ain't afraid. Mama tell me you going to h.e.l.l."

"Come closer, child. I got to be able to look you in the face."

As if emboldened by invoking his mother, the boy stepped up nearly to the porch. Nemo saw that he was standing on one of his pansies, the croker-sack binding on his foot crushing the flower, which had been holding out strong against the winter cold, still blooming purple and yellow.

"Mama say you going straight to h.e.l.l. She say the plat-eye going to get you and take you down there hisself."

"I got something to tell you, child," Nemo said, setting the newspaper down and leaning as far forward as the rocking chair would allow, his chin poised over the porch rail. "I am the plat-eye." He raised two fingers in the direction of the boy's eyes and wriggled them like brown snakes.