The Cole Trilogy: The Physician, Shaman, and Matters of Choice (123 page)

“If I hadn’t gone in to check for weeds, they’d be sitting there still,” Jay said.

Rob J. waited until the tearstained faces were washed and the boys fed. Then he walked Alex out along the river path. The current rippled and sang over the stones along the shore, the water darker than the air, reflecting the coming night. Swallows soared and swooped, sometimes touching the surface. High up, a crane plowed along as purposefully as a packet boat.

“You know why I’ve brought you out here?”

“Gonna whup me.”

“Never whipped you yet, have I? Not going to start now. No, I want to consult with you.”

The boy’s eyes regarded him with alarm, uncertain if being consulted was any better than being whipped. “What’s that?”

“You know what it is to swap?”

Alex nodded. “Sure. I’ve swapped things, lots of times.”

“Well, I want to swap ideas with you. About your brother. Shaman’s lucky to have a big brother like you, someone who takes care of him. Your mother and I … we’re proud of you. We thank you.”

“… You treat him mean, Pa, tying his hands and all.”

“Alex, if you do any more signs with him, he’s not going to need to speak. Pretty soon he won’t remember how to speak, and you’ll never hear his voice. Ever again. You believe me?”

The boy’s eyes were large, full of burden. He nodded.

“I want you to leave his hands tied. I’m asking you never to use signs with him again. When you talk to him, first point to your mouth, so he looks at it. Then speak slowly and distinctly. Repeat what you’re saying to him, so he’ll begin to read your lips.” Rob J. looked at him. “You understand, son? Will you help us teach him to talk?”

Alex nodded. Rob J. pulled him into his chest and hugged him. He stank like a ten-year-old boy who had sat all day in a manured cornfield, sweating and crying. As soon as they got home, Rob J. would help him carry water for baths.

“I love you, Alex.”

“… you, Pa,” Alex whispered.

Everybody was given the same message.

Get Shaman’s attention. Point to your lips. Speak to him slowly and distinctly. Speak to his eyes instead of to his ears.

In the morning, as soon as they were up, Rob J. tied his son’s hands. At mealtimes Alex untied Shaman so he could eat. Then he tied his brother’s hands again. Alex saw to it that none of the other children signed.

But Shaman’s eyes grew more harried in a face that was pinched and closed off to the rest of them. He wasn’t able to understand. And he didn’t speak at all.

If Rob J. had heard of someone else who kept his boy’s hands tied, he’d have done everything in his power to rescue the child. Cruelty wasn’t one of his talents, and he saw the effect of Shaman’s suffering on the others in his household. It was an escape for him to take his bag and ride out to do his doctoring.

The world beyond his farm went on, unaffected by the Cole family’s troubles. Three other families were building new wood-frame homes to replace sod houses in Holden’s Crossing that summer. There was a lot of interest in putting up a schoolhouse and hiring a teacher, and both Rob J. and Jason Geiger supported the idea strongly. Each taught his own children at home, sometimes filling in for one another during an emergency, but they agreed it would be better for the children to go to a regular school.

When Rob J. stopped at the apothecary, Jay was bursting with a piece of news. Finally he blurted out the fact that Lillian’s Babcock piano had been sent for. Crated in Columbus, it had been carried more than a thousand miles by raft and riverboat. “Down the Scioto River to the Ohio, down the Ohio to the Mississippi, and up the goldurned Mississippi to the pier of the Great Southern Transport Company in Rock Island, where it now awaits my buckboard and oxen!”

Alden Kimball had asked Rob to treat one of his friends who was sick in the abandoned Mormon town of Nauvoo.

Alden came with him as guide. They bought a ride for themselves and their horses on a flatboat, getting downriver the easy way. Nauvoo was a spooky, largely deserted town, a gridwork of wide streets laid out on a pretty bend in the river, with handsome, substantial houses, and in the middle, the stone ruins of a great temple that looked as if it had been built by King Solomon. Only a handful of Mormons still lived there, Alden told him, old folks and rebels who had broken with the leadership when the Latter-day Saints had moved to Utah. It was a place that attracted independent thinkers; one corner of the town had been rented to a small colony of Frenchmen who called themselves Icarians and lived cooperatively. Alden led Rob J. right through the French quarter, disdain in the erectness with which he sat his saddle, and eventually to a house of weathered red brick by the side of a pleasant lane.

An unsmiling middle-aged woman answered his knock and nodded in greeting. She nodded also to Rob J. when Alden introduced her as Mrs. Bidamon. A dozen people sat or stood in the parlor, but Mrs. Bidamon led Rob up the stairs to where a sullen boy of about sixteen lay abed with the measles. It wasn’t a severe case. Rob gave his mother ground mustard seed and directions about how to mix it into the boy’s bath water, and a packet of dried elderberry blossoms to be used as tea. “I don’t think you’ll need me again,” he said. “But I want you to send for me at once if it causes him an infection of the ears.”

She preceded him downstairs and must have said a reassuring word to the people in her parlor. As Rob J. walked through to the door, they were waiting with gifts, a jar of honey, three jars of preserves, a bottle of wine. And a babble of gratitude. Outside the house, he stood, his arms full, staring at Alden in bewilderment.

“They’re grateful to you for treating the boy,” Alden said. “Mrs. Bidamon,
she was the widow of Joseph Smith, the Prophet of the Latter-day Saints, the man who founded the religion. The boy is his son, also named Joseph Smith. They believe the youngling’s a prophet too.”

As they rode away, Alden regarded the town of Nauvoo and sighed. “This was a right good place to live. All ruint because Joseph Smith couldn’t keep his pecker in his pants. Him and his polygamy. Called em spiritual wives. Nothin spiritual about it, he just liked poontang.”

Rob J. knew the Saints had been driven from Ohio, Missouri, and finally Illinois, because rumors of their plural marriages had inflamed local populaces. He had never intruded upon Alden with questions of his former life, but now he couldn’t resist. “You had more than one wife yourself?”

“Three. When I broke with the church, they were parceled out to other Saints, along with their young’uns.”

Rob didn’t dare ask how many children. But a demon drove his tongue to one more question. “Did that bother you?”

Alden considered, and then he spat. “The variety was right interestin, I shan’t deny it. But without em, the peace is wonderful,” he said.

That week Rob went from treating a young prophet to treating an old congressman. He was summoned to Rock Island to examine U.S. Representative Samuel T. Singleton, who’d been taken by spells while returning to Illinois from Washington.

As he entered Singleton’s home, Thomas Beckermann was leaving; Beckermann told him that Tobias Barr also had examined Congressman Singleton. “He needs a whole lot of medical opinions, don’t he?” Beckermann said sourly.

It indicated the extent of Sammil Singleton’s fear, and as Rob J. examined the congressman, he realized the fear was well-founded. Singleton was seventy-nine, a short man, almost entirely bald, with flabby flesh and a huge assault of stomach. Rob J. listened to his heart wheeze and gurgle and sputter, struggling to beat.

He took the old man’s hands in his own and looked into the eyes of the Black Knight.

Singleton’s assistant, a man named Stephen Hume, and his secretary, Billy Rogers, sat at the foot of the bed. “We’ve been in Washington all year. He has speeches to make. Fences to mend. He’s got piss-all to do, Doc,” Hume said accusingly, as if it were Rob J.’s fault Singleton was indisposed. Hume was a Scots name, but Rob J. didn’t warm up to him.

“You’re to stay in bed,” he told Singleton bluntly. “Forget about speeches and fences. Go on a light diet. Drink alcohol sparingly.”

Rogers glared. “That’s not what the other two doctors told us. Dr. Barr said anyone would be worn out after travelin from Washington. That other fella from your town, Dr. Beckermann, he agreed with Barr, said all the congressman needs is home cookin and prairie air.”

“We thought it’d be a good idea to call in several of you fellas,” Hume said, “in case there was difference of opinion. Which is what we’ve got, ain’t we. And the other docs disagree with you, two to one.”

“Democratic. But this isn’t an election.” Rob J. turned to Singleton. “For your own survival, I hope you do what I advise.”

The old, cold eyes were amused. “You’re a friend of State Senator Holden’s. His business partner in several ventures, if I have it right.”

Hume chortled. “Nick’s a little impatient for the congressman to retire.”

“I’m a doctor. I don’t give a damn about politics.
You
sent for
me
, Congressman.”

Singleton nodded, shot a messaged glance at the other two men. Billy Rogers led Rob out of the room. When he tried to emphasize the gravity of Singleton’s condition, he got a secretary’s nod, a politician’s oily sentence of thanks. Rogers paid his fee as if tipping a stableboy, and he was quickly and smoothly eased outside the front door.

A couple of hours later, riding Vicky down Main Street in Holden’s Crossing, he saw that Nick Holden’s intelligence system was working. Nick waited on the porch of Haskins’ Store, his chair tipped back against the wall, one boot up on the porch rail. When he spotted Rob J. he gestured him to the hitching post.

Nick led him quickly into the store’s back room and made no attempt to hide his excitement.

“Well?”

“Well, what?”

“I know you’ve just come from Sammil Singleton.”

“I talk about my patients with my patients. Or sometimes with their loved ones. You one of Singleton’s loved ones?”

Holden smiled. “I like him a whole lot.”

“Liking him doesn’t do it, Nick.”

“Don’t play games, Rob J. I only have to know one thing. Will he have to retire?”

“You want to know, you ask him.”

“Jesus Christ,” Holden said bitterly.

Rob J. stepped carefully around a baited mousetrap as he left the storeroom. Nick’s rage followed after him along with the odor of leather harness and rotting seed potatoes. “Your trouble, Cole, is you’re too dumb to know who your goddam real friends are!”

Probably Haskins had to be careful at day’s end to tuck away the cheese, cover the cracker barrel, things like that. Mice could play havoc with food merchandise at night, he reflected as he walked through the front of the store; and no way you could avoid having mice when you were this close to the prairie.

Four days later, Samuel T. Singleton was seated at a table with two selectmen from Rock Island and three selectmen from Davenport, Iowa, explaining the tax position of the Chicago and Rock Island Railroad, which was proposing to build a railroad bridge across the Mississippi between their two towns. He was discussing rights of way when he gave a small sigh, as if in exasperation, and slumped where he sat. By the time Dr. Tobias had been sent for and arrived in the saloon, everyone in the neighborhood knew Sammil Singleton had died.

It took the governor a week to appoint his successor. Immediately following the funeral, Nick Holden had left for Springfield to try to snare the appointment. Rob could imagine the arm-twisting in which he engaged, and no doubt there was effort expended by Nick’s sometime drinking friend, the Kentucky-born lieutenant governor. But evidently the Singleton organization had drinking friends of its own, and the governor appointed Singleton’s aide, Stephen Hume, to fill the unexpired eighteen months of the term.

“Nick’s goose is cooked,” Jay Geiger observed. “Between now and the end of the term, Hume will dig in. He’ll run next time as the incumbent, and he’ll be next to impossible for Nick to beat.”

Rob J. didn’t care. He was engrossed with what was happening within the walls of his own home.

After two weeks he stopped tying his son’s hands. Shaman no longer attempted to sign, but he didn’t speak either. There was something dead and gray in the little boy’s eyes. They hugged him a lot, but the boy was only momentarily comforted. Whenever Rob looked at his child, he felt self-doubt and helplessness.

Meanwhile, all those around him followed his directions as though he
were infallible in the treatment of deafness. When they talked to Shaman, they spoke slowly and enunciated distinctly, first pointing to their mouths when they had gained his attention, encouraging him to read their lips.

It was Makwa-ikwa who thought of a new approach to the problem. She told Rob how she and the other Sauk girls had been taught to speak English so quickly and effectively at the Evangelical School for Indian Girls: they had not been passed anything at mealtimes unless it was requested in English.

Sarah exploded with anger when Rob discussed it with her. “It was one thing to truss him like a slave. Now you will starve him too!”

But Rob J. didn’t have many things to try, and he was growing desperate. He talked long and earnestly to Alex, who agreed to cooperate, and he asked his wife to make a special meal. Shaman had a passion for sweet-and-sour, and Sarah prepared stewed chicken with dumplings, and hot rhubarb pie for dessert.

That evening, when the family was seated around the table and she brought in the first course, the sequence was much as it had been for several weeks. Rob lifted the cover from a steaming bowl and let the mouth-watering scent of the chicken, dumplings, and vegetables waft across the table.

He served Sarah first, and then Alex. He waved his hand until he had gained Shaman’s attention, and then he pointed to his own mouth. “Chicken,” he said, holding up the serving bowl. “Dumplings.”

Shaman stared at him silently.

Rob J. placed food in his own plate, and sat.

Shaman watched his parents and his brother eating busily, and he lifted his empty plate and grunted in annoyance.