The Cole Trilogy: The Physician, Shaman, and Matters of Choice (132 page)

“What kind of accident? Break any bones, you think?”

“No. Well, don’t know for certain. Mebbe. Shot. Up here,” he said, stroking his left arm near the shoulder.

“Losing much blood, is he?”

“No.”

“Well, I’ll come, but I’ll drop the boy at home first.”

“No,” the man said again, and Rob J. looked at him. “We know where you live, other side of the township. We got a long ride to our friend, this direction.”

“How long a ride?”

“Most of an hour.”

Rob J. sighed. “Lead away,” he said.

The man who had done the talking did the leading. It wasn’t lost on
Rob J. that the other two men waited until he had followed and then rode well behind, boxing in the doctor’s horse.

In the beginning they rode northwest, Rob J. was certain of that. He was aware they doubled back and twisted against their own route from time to time, the way a hounded fox is supposed to. The stratagem worked, for he was soon confused and lost. In half an hour or so they came to a stretch of wooded hills that rose between the river and the prairie. Between the hills were sloughs; frozen passable now, they would be impregnable mud moats when the melt came.

The leader stopped. “Gotta blindfold you.”

Rob J. knew better than to protest. “Just a moment,” he said, and turned to face Shaman. “They’ll cover your eyes, but don’t you be afraid,” he said, and was gratified when Shaman nodded. The bandanna that blinded Rob J. was none too clean and he hoped Shaman’s luck was better, hating the thought of a stranger’s sweat and dried snot against his son’s skin.

They put Rob J.’s horse on a lead. It seemed a long while that they rode on between the hills, but probably time passed more slowly for him while blindfolded. At length he felt the horse beneath him begin to climb one of the slopes, and presently they drew up and came to a halt. When the blindfold was removed he saw they were in front of a small structure, more shack than cabin, beneath large trees. Daylight was fading, and their eyes quickly adjusted. He saw his child blinking. “You doing fine, Shaman?”

“Just fine, Pa.”

He knew that face. Searching it, he saw Shaman was sensible enough to be quite scared. But as they stamped their feet to bring back their circulation and then entered the shack, Rob J. was half-amused to see that Shaman’s eyes gleamed with interest as well as fear, and he was furious at himself because he hadn’t somehow found a way to leave the boy behind, out of harm’s way.

Inside, there were red coals in the fireplace and the air was warm but very bad. There was no furniture. A fat man lay on the floor propped against a saddle, and by the firelight Shaman could see he was bald but had as much coarse black hair on his face as most men have on their heads. Rumpled blankets on the floor indicated where others had slept.

“Took you long enough,” the fat man said. He was holding a black jug, and he took a swallow from it and coughed.

“Didn’t tarry any,” the man who had ridden the lead horse said sullenly. When he took off the scarf that had protected his face, Shaman saw he had a small white beard and looked older than the others. He put his hand on Shaman’s shoulder and pushed. “Sit,” he said as if talking to a dog. Shaman squatted not far from the fire. He was content to stay there because he had a good view of the wounded man’s mouth, and his father’s.

The older man took his pistol from its holster and pointed it at Shaman. “You better fix up our friend
real good
, Doc.” Shaman was very frightened. The hole at the end of the barrel looked like an unblinking round eye that stared directly at him.

“I don’t do anything while somebody holds a gun,” his father said to the man on the floor.

The fat man appeared to consider. “You get out,” he told his men.

“Before you go,” Shaman’s father told them, “bring in wood and build up the fire. Put water on to boil. You have another lamp?”

“Lantern,” the old man said.

“Get it.” Shaman’s father put his hand on the fat man’s forehead. He unbuttoned the man’s shirt and drew it aside. “When did this happen?”

“Yesterday morning.” The man looked at Shaman out of hooded eyes. “This is your boy.”

“My younger son.”

“The deef one.”

“… Appears you know a few things about my family.”

The man nodded. “It’s the older one some say is my brother Will’s get. Anything like my Willy, he’s already a damn hellion. You know who I am?”

“I can make a good guess.” Now Shaman saw his father lean forward just an inch or two and fix the other man with his eyes. “They’re both my boys. If you’re talking of my elder son—he’s
my
elder son. And you’re going to stay away from him in the future, just as you have in the past.”

The man on the floor smiled. “Now, why shouldn’t I claim him?”

“Most important reason is he’s a fine, straight boy with every chance for a decent life. And if he
was
your brother’s, you don’t ever want to see him where you are right now, lying like some hurt and hunted animal in the dirt of a stinking little hideout pigsty.”

They looked at one another for a long moment. Then the man moved and grimaced, and Shaman’s father began to doctor him. He took away the jug, got the man’s shirt off.

“No exit wound.”

“Oh, the bastard’s in there, coulda told you that. Gonna hurt like hell when you probe, I reckon. Can I have another jolt or two?”

“No, I’ll give you something, put you to sleep.”

The man glared. “I ain’t goin to sleep so you can do whichever the hell you want, and me helpless.”

“Your decision,” Shaman’s father said. He gave the jug back and let the man drink while he waited for the water to finish heating. Then with brown soap and a clean rag from his medical bag he washed the area around the wound, which Shaman couldn’t see clearly. Dr. Cole took a thin steel probe and slipped it into the bullet hole; and the fat man froze and opened his jaw and stuck out his big red tongue as far as it would go.

“… It’s in there almost at the bone, but there’s no fracture. Bullet must have been nearly spent when it hit.”

“Lucky shot,” said the man. “Sumbitch was a good distance away.” His beard was matted with sweat and his skin was gray.

Shaman’s father took a foreign-body forceps from his bag. “This is what I’ll use to remove it. It’s a lot thicker than the probe. It’s going to hurt a lot more.

“Best trust me,” he said simply.

The patient turned his head and Shaman couldn’t see what he said, but he must have asked for something stronger than the whiskey. His father took an ether cone from his bag and motioned to Shaman, who had watched ether being administered several times but never before had helped. Now he held the cone carefully over the fat man’s mouth and nose while his father dripped the ether. The bullet hole was larger than Shaman had expected, with a purple rim. When the ether had taken, his father worked the forceps in very carefully, a little bit at a time. A bright red drop appeared at the edge of the hole and spilled over to run down the man’s arm. But when the forceps were withdrawn, they gripped a lead slug.

His father rinsed it clean and dropped it on the blanket for the man to find when he came around.

When his father called the men in out of the cold, they brought in a pot of white beans they’d been keeping frozen on the roof. After they thawed it on the fire, they gave some to Shaman and his father. It had bits of something in it that maybe was rabbit, and Shaman thought it would have profited from molasses, but he ate it hungrily.

After supper his father heated more water and commenced to wash clean his patient’s entire body, which the other men at first regarded with suspicion and then with boredom. They lay down and one by one drifted off, but Shaman stayed awake. Soon he was watching the patient’s awful retching.

“Whiskey and ether don’t mix happily,” his father said. “You go to sleep. I’ll tend to it.”

Shaman did, and gray light was coming through the cracks in the walls when his father shook him awake and told him to put on his outside clothes. The fat man was lying there watching them.

“It will give you a fair amount of pain for two, three weeks,” his father said. “I’m leaving you some morphine, not much, but all I have with me. Most important thing is to keep it clean. If it begins to mortify, you call me and I’ll come back right away.”

The man snorted. “Hell, we’re gonna be long gone from this place afore you can come back.”

“Well, if you have trouble, you send for me. I’ll come to wherever you are.”

The man nodded. “You pay him good,” he told the man with the white beard, who took a wad of bills from a pack and handed them over. Shaman’s father peeled off two singles and dropped the rest on the blanket. “Dollar and a half for the night home visit, fifty cents for the ether.” He started to leave but turned back. “You fellas know anything of a man named Ellwood Patterson? Sometimes travels with a man named Hank Cough and a younger man named Lenny?”

Their faces looked at him blankly. The man on the floor shook his head. Shaman’s father nodded, and they went out, into air that smelled of nothing but trees.

This time only the man who had ridden lead came with them. He waited until they were mounted before he fixed the neckerchiefs over their eyes again. Rob J. could hear his son’s breathing become faster and wished he had spoken to the boy while Shaman could see his lips.

His own ears were working overtime. Their horse was being led; he could hear the hooves ahead of him. There were no hooves behind. Still, it would be easy for them to have someone waiting on the trail. All he would have to do was let them ride past, lean forward, place a gun only a few inches from a blindfolded head, and pull the trigger.

It was a long ride. When finally they stopped, he knew if a bullet was going to come, it would be now. But their blindfolds were pulled off.

“You just keep riding that way, hear? Presently you’ll come to landmarks you know.”

Blinking, Rob J. nodded, not telling him he already recognized where they were. They rode off in one direction, the gunman in another.

Eventually Rob J. stopped in a copse so they could relieve themselves and stretch their legs.

“Shaman,” he said. “Yesterday. Did you watch my conversation with that fellow who was shot?”

The boy nodded too, looking at him.

“Son. Did you understand what we were talking about?”

Nodded again.

Rob J. believed him. “Now, how come you understand talk like that? Has somebody been saying things to you about …” He couldn’t say “your mother.” “… your brother?”

“Some boys in school …”

Rob J. sighed. An old man’s eyes in such a young face, he thought. “Well, Shaman, here’s the thing. I think what happened—our being with those people, treating that man who was shot, and especially what he and I talked about—I think those things should be our secret. Yours and mine. Because to tell your brother and your mother about it, that could hurt. Cause them anxiety.”

“Yes, Pa.”

They got back on the horse. A warm breeze had started to blow. The boy was right, he thought, the spring thaw was coming at last. Streams would be running in a day or two. In a little while he was startled by Shaman’s wooden voice.

“I want to be just like you, Pa. Wanna be a good doctor.”

Rob J.’s eyes prickled. It was the wrong time, facing away from Shaman in the saddle, with the boy cold, hungry, and tired, to try to explain to him that some dreams were impossible to realize if you were deaf. He had to content himself with stretching his long arms behind him and pulling his son forward, close to him. He could feel Shaman’s forehead pressed into his back and he just stopped tormenting himself and for a while let himself nibble at sleep like a starving man afraid to gulp a plateful of fudge, as the horse plodded along and took them home.

33

ANSWERS AND QUESTIONS

Stars and Stripes Religious Institute
282 Palmer Avenue
Chicago, Illinois
May 18, 1852

Robert J. Cole, M.D.
Holden’s Crossing, Illinois
Dear Dr. Cole:

We have received your inquiry concerning the whereabouts and address of the Reverend Ellwood Patterson. We are sorry, but we cannot be of service to you in this matter.

As you may be aware, our Institute serves both the Churches and the American Workingmen of Illinois, bringing God’s Christian Message to the honest Native-Born Mechanics of this state. Last year Mr. Patterson contacted us and volunteered to help in our ministry, which resulted in his visit to your community and its fine church. But he has since moved from Chicago and we do not have any information regarding his whereabouts.

Rest assured that if such information should find its way to us, we shall send it to you. In the meantime, if there is some matter with which you may be helped by any of the other fine Ministers of God who are our associates—or some Theological Matter with which I may personally assist you, do not hesitate to contact me.

I am yours in Christ,
(signed)

Oliver G. Prescott, D.D., Director
Stars and Stripes Religious Institute

The answer was more or less what Rob J. had expected. He sat down next and wrote, in the form of a letter, a factual account of the murder of Makwa-ikwa. In the letter he reported the presence of the three strangers in Holden’s Crossing. He wrote of his finding samples of human skin under three of Makwa’s fingernails during the autopsy, and of Dr. Barr’s having
treated the Reverend Ellwood R. Patterson, on the afternoon of the killing, for three severe tearings on his face.