The manitou (11 page)

Amelia
interrupted the doctor with a question.
“But what about Karen
Tandy’s medicine man?

What do you
suppose he was doing? I mean, why should he want to be reborn in her?”

Dr. Snow
scratched his ear. “It’s difficult to say. From what you’ve told me about her
dream of the Dutch ship, I’d hazard a guess that the medicine man’s existence
was being threatened by the Dutch settlement on Manhattan. Maybe the medicine
man had tried to prevent the rest of his tribe from selling the island so
cheaply. With the kind of occult powers that medicine men possessed, he may
have been able to see how instrumental the possession of Manhattan by white men
would be in the development of a white America. It’s also possible that the
Dutch, being strict Calvinists, considered the medicine man an evil influence,
and were out to destroy him.

Whatever happened,
he obviously thought that the only way he could escape was by leaving his
seventeenth-century existence, and reappearing in some other time. I wouldn’t
have thought he chose Karen Tandy deliberately. She probably just happened to
be a receptive home for his reincarnation, at the right place at the right
time.”

“Dr. Snow,” I
asked him. “If we’re not equipped to fight with this medicine man, then do you
have any idea who might be? I mean, can anyone at all summon enough power to
destroy him for good?”

Dr. Snow looked
thoughtful. “This is such a remarkable occurrence that one wishes that a young
girl’s life wasn’t involved. Just think of it, Mr. Erskine, within two or three
days we could actually meet an Indian medicine man, living and breathing, from
another time far in America’s past. It seems almost criminal to think of
destroying him.”

MacArthur
turned round from his seat by the window. “We all know the wonders of
anthropology, Dr. Snow, but this is a human life we’re trying to save here.
Karen Tandy didn’t ask to have this witch doctor grow inside here. I think it’s
up to us to do everything we can to save her.”

“Yes, I know,”
said Dr. Snow. “But there really is only one way we can do that.”

“And what’s
that?” Amelia asked. “Is it difficult?”

“It could be.
And dangerous.
You see, the only person who can fight a
medicine man is another medicine man. There
are
one or
two around still, in some of the reservations. But none of them would be nearly
as powerful as this man. They might know some of the old rituals, but it’s
doubtful if they’d have anything like the same abilities and strength. And if
they couldn’t beat him, if they couldn’t destroy him utterly, they’d inevitably
be killed themselves.”

“But wait a
minute,” I said. “That medicine man is still in the process of rebirth. He
hasn’t grown to his full size, and he’s obviously not as strong as he could be
when he’s completely redeveloped. If we could get hold of another medicine man
now, we could kill him before he emerges.”

“It would be
very dangerous,” said Dr. Snow.
“Not only to our own medicine
man, but to the girl as well.
They might both die.”

“Doctor,” I
said, “she’s going to die anyway.”

“Well, I guess
that’s true. But how are we going to persuade some poor old peaceful
reservation Indian to risk his life for a white girl he doesn’t even know?”

“We bribe him,”
said MacArthur.

“What with?”
asked
Amelia.

“Maybe we ought
to talk to Karen Tandy’s parents,” I suggested. “They’ll be in town by now.

They’re
obviously quite wealthy, and I guess a couple of thousand dollars would take
care of it.

Dr. Snow, do
you think you could find a medicine man?”

Dr. Snow rubbed
his chin. “Oh, that shouldn’t be too difficult. I have a friend in South Dakota
who could probably dig someone up. We’d have to pay to fly the medicine man to
New York, naturally, even supposing that he’d agreed to do it.”

“I think it’s
time we talked to Karen Tandy’s parents,” I said. “They have a right to know
what’s going on, and we’re obviously going to need some cash. Dr. Snow, can I
ask a favor of you?”

“Certainly,”
said Dr. Snow. “This case is fascinating, and I’d feel privileged to help.”

“Could you call
your friend in South Dakota and ask him to start looking for the most powerful
medicine man he can find? Then if Karen Tandy’s parents do agree to bring
someone in, at least we’ll be ready. Could you do that?”

“With
pleasure,” said Dr. Snow.

We left the
Snow’s house around five o’clock. It was already night, and the wind hit us in
the face like a bucketful of razor blades. We drove off into the weird
half-light of icebound landscape, tired and chilly, but even more determined to
save Karen Tandy from the mysterious enemy which had invaded her body. The
first thing I wanted to do when I got back to New York was to check up on how
she was, and ask Dr. Hughes just how much time he thought we had left. There
was no point in going to all the expense of bringing an Indian medicine man
from South Dakota if Karen was already dead, or just about to die.

“You know something,”
said MacArthur, resting his legs across the Cougar’s back seat, “I think
there’s something like historic justice in all this. I mean, I feel sorry for
Karen, but as you sow you certainly shall reap, don’t you think?”

Amelia turned
round and smirked at him. “MacArthur,” she said, “I love your beard and I love
your body, but your philosophy stinks.”

I dropped
Amelia and MacArthur in the Village, and then I drove up to the Sisters of
Jerusalem to check on Karen. I was pretty exhausted by the time I got there,
and I went into the men’s room to wash up and tidy my hair. When I looked at
myself in the glass, I looked pale and tired and frail, and I began to wonder
how the hell I would summon up the strength to battle with a medicine man from
the golden age of Indian magic.

I found Dr.
Hughes in his office, reading a pile of reports by the light of his desk lamp.

“Mr. Erskine,”
he said, “you’re back. How did it go?”

I flopped down
in the chair opposite him. “I think we know what’s going on, anyway. But whether
we’ll be able to fight it or not – well, that’s another question.”

He listened
seriously while I explained what Dr. Snow had said. I also told him that we
were trying to find a rival medicine man to fly into New York.

Dr. Hughes got
up from his chair and went over to the window. He stared down at the crawling
lights of traffic, and the first spinning flakes of a fresh snowfall.

“I just hope to
God that none of this leaks out to the newspapers,” he said. “It’s difficult
enough keeping it quiet from the rest of the specialists and surgeons involved.
But just think about it –

the
world’s second or third leading specialist on tumors has
to bring in a redskin from the plains of South Dakota, some mumbo-jumbo artist
with warpaint and bones, because he can’t manage to deal with a tumor by
himself.”

“You
knows
well as I do that this isn’t any ordinary tumor,” I
said. “And you can’t fight a magic tumor with ordinary methods. The proof of
what you’re doing will be in the cure.”

Dr. Hughes
looked away from the window. “And supposing she doesn’t get cured? What do I
say then? I brought in a redskin medicine man, but that wasn’t any use,
either?”

“Dr. Hughes...”

“
It’s
okay, Mr. Erskine. I don’t really have any qualms about
this. I’ve seen enough tumors in my life to know that this isn’t anything like
an ordinary condition. And I believe your theory, about the Indians. I don’t
know why I believe it, but I can’t see any other rational explanation. None of
my colleagues has even got as much as a wild guess.”

“How is she, doctor?”
I asked him. “Is the tumor still growing?”

“Do you want to
see for yourself?” he said. “It’s got worse since you last saw her, yesterday.”

“If it’s okay.
I’ll try not to upset her, like last time.”

In silence, we
took the elevator to the tenth floor. In silence, we put on masks and robes. In
silence, we walked down the corridor to Karen Tandy’s room, and opened the
door.

It was
grotesque. Karen Tandy was
lying
on her front now, her
face as white as the sheet it was resting on. The tumor lay bloatedly on her
back, a fat white bladder of swollen skin. It was as big as a pillow, and it
seemed to shift and bulge and ease itself from time to time, a great pulpy
growth with a malignant life of its own.

“God,” I said
softly. “It’s grown enormous.”

“And it’s
getting bigger all the time,” said Dr. Hughes. “Come here, feel it.”

I stepped
cautiously up to the bedside. The tumor was so big that it was hard to believe
it was actually part of the girl who lay under it, carrying it on her back like
a sickening hump. I gingerly reached out with my fingertips and pressed it. It
seemed firm and distended, but there was a sensation of something slithery
inside. In fact, it felt exactly like the stomach of a pregnant woman.

“Can’t you just
kill it?” I asked Dr. Hughes. “It must be the size of a small child by now.
Can’t you just stick a scalpel into it?”

Dr. Hughes
shook his head. “I wish I could. I’d like to chop it off with a meat cleaver,
if you want to know the truth. But every X-ray shows that the nervous system of
this creature is inextricably bound up with Karen’s nervous system. Any
surgical attempt to remove it would kill her at once. They’re not so much like
mother and child – they’re more like Siamese twins.”

“Can she talk
at all?”

“She hasn’t
said anything for several hours. We took her out of bed to weigh her this
morning, and she spoke a couple of words then, but nothing that any of us could
understand.”

“You weighed
her? Is she in a bad way?”

Dr. Hughes
tucked his hands in the pockets of his robe and looked sadly down at his dying
patient. “She hasn’t lost any weight at all – but she hasn’t gained any either.
Whatever this tumor is, it’s taking all its sustenance directly from her. Every
ounce it grows, it takes from Karen.”

“Have her parents
been in touch?”

“They came in
this morning. The mother was very upset. I told them that we were going to try
for an operation, but naturally I didn’t say anything about the medicine man
stuff. They were angry enough at me as it was, because I hadn’t been able to
operate already. If I’d started telling them about oldtime red Indians, they
would have thought I was off my head.”

I took one last
look at Karen Tandy, lying white and silent under her sickening burden, and
then we left the room and went back to Dr. Hughes’ office on the eighteenth
floor.

“Do you think
her parents will be hard to convince? I asked him. “The problem is that all
this is going to take money. We’re going to have to bribe the medicine man, and
we’re going to have to pay for his plane fare and his hotel, not to mention
what the hell might happen if he gets hurt in the battle. I’d love to help, but
us
clairvoyants are not exactly Rockefellers. I doubt
if I could raise more than three or four hundred bucks.”

Dr. Hughes
looked glum. “I could get the money out of the hospital under normal
circumstances, but I don’t see how I possibly can for the use of a medicine
man. No, I think her parents have a right to know what’s going on, anyway, and
make the choice for themselves. After all, the life of their daughter is at
stake.”

“Do you want me
to talk to them?” I asked him.

“You could, if
you want to. They’re staying at Karen’s aunt’s place, on Eighty-second. If you
get into any trouble, ask them to call me and confirm that you have my support.”

“Okay,” I said.
“Now, how about a drink?”

“Good
thinking,” said Dr. Hughes, and fetched out his bottle of bourbon. He poured
out a couple of large ones, and I swallowed mine just as it came, fiery and
revitalizing after a weary day’s drive to Albany and back. I sat back and Dr.
Hughes offered me a cigarette.

We smoked for a
while in silence,
then
I said: “Dr. Hughes...”

“Why don’t you
call me Jack? This hospital’s pretty formal. It gives the patients confidence
if they hear people being called ‘doctor’ all the time. But I don’t think
that’s the kind of confidence you need.”

“Okay, Jack.
I’m Harry.”

“That’s better.
Nice to know you, Harry.”

I swallowed
some more bourbon. “Jack,” I said, “have you stopped to consider exactly what
we’re doing here and why we’re doing it? I don’t know Karen Tandy much better
than I know you. I just sometimes think, what the hell am I doing driving to
Albany and back for someone I don’t even know.”

Jack Hughes
grinned. “Don’t you think that isn’t a question that everybody who helps other
people
ask
themselves? I ask myself that question ten
times a day. When you’re a doctor of medicine, you’re taken for granted. People
come to you when they’re sick, and think you’re terrific, but as soon as
they’re well again, you cease to be interesting. Some patients are grateful. I
get Christmas cards every year from some of them. But most of them wouldn’t
even recognize me if I bumped into them on the street.”

“I guess you’re
right,” I said.

“I know I’m
right,” replied Jack. “But I think this case is something different. I’m not
interested in this case for the usual reasons. The way I see it, this thing
that’s growing in Karen Tandy represents a whole medical and cultural problem.”

“What do you
mean?”

Jack Hughes
stood up and came over to sit on the edge of his desk right next to me.

“Look at it
this way,” he said. “The fascinating thing about America is that it was always
supposed to be a brand new nation, free of oppression and free of guilt. But
from the moment the white man settled here, there was a built-in time bomb of
guilt. In the Declaration of Independence, there is even an attempt to gloss
over this guilt, you remember? Jefferson wrote about the ‘merciless Indian
Savages, whose known rule of warfare is an undistinguished destruction of all
ages,
sexes and conditions.’ Right from the beginning, the
Indian has not counted as an individual who is endowed by his Creator with
those certain inalienable rights.