The Cole Trilogy: The Physician, Shaman, and Matters of Choice (176 page)

On April 9, Sarah Cole and Lucian Blackmer were married in the First Baptist Church of Holden’s Crossing. The ceremony was performed by the Reverend Gregory Bushman, whose pulpit Lucian would be filling in Davenport. Sarah wore her best gray dress, which Lillian had enlivened by adding a collar and cuffs of white lace that Rachel had finished tatting only the day before.

Mr. Bushman spoke well, obviously taking pleasure in marrying a fellow minister in Christ. Alex told Shaman that Lucian declared his vows in confident clergyman’s tones and that Sarah spoke hers in a soft and trembling voice. When the ceremony was complete and they turned, Shaman saw that his mother was smiling behind her short veil.

After the wedding service the congregation removed to the Cole farmhouse. Most congregants came to the reception with a covered dish, but Sarah and Alma Schroeder had cooked and Lillian had baked all week in preparation. People ate and ate, and Sarah showed her happiness. “We’ve depleted the hams and sausages in the springhouse. You’ll need a spring butchering this year,” she told Doug Penfield.

“My pleasure, Mrs. Blackmer,” Doug said gallantly, the first person to call her by that name.

When the last guest had departed, Sarah took her packed valise and kissed her sons. Lucian drove her in his buggy to the parsonage she would leave within a few days, to move with him to Davenport.

A short time later, Alex went to the hall closet and took out the false leg. He strapped it on without asking for help. Shaman settled down in the study, reading medical journals. Every minute or so, Alex clumped by the open door, traversing the length of the hallway with hesitant steps. Shaman could feel the impact of the false leg being raised too high and then lowered, and he knew the pain that each step brought his brother.

By the time he entered the bedroom, Alex already had escaped into sleep. The stocking and shoe still were on the leg, and the limb stood on the floor next to Alex’s right shoe, looking as if it belonged there.

Next morning, Alex wore the limb to church, a wedding present for Sarah. The brothers weren’t churchgoers, but their mother had asked them to attend
that Sunday as part of her wedding observance, and she didn’t take her eyes from her firstborn as he walked down the aisle to the front-row pew that belonged to the minister’s family. Alex leaned on an ash walking stick that Rob J. had kept to lend out to patients. Sometimes he dragged his false foot, and sometimes he still lifted it too high. But he didn’t lurch or fall, and he made his way steadily until he reached Sarah.

She sat between her sons, watching her new husband lead his congregation in devotions. When it was time for his sermon, he began by expressing gratitude to those who had joined in celebrating his nuptials. He said that God had led him to Holden’s Crossing and now God was leading him away, and he thanked those who had made his ministry so meaningful to him.

He was just warming to the task of mentioning by name some of the individuals who had helped him in the Lord’s work, when a variety of sounds began to enter the church through the half-open front windows. First there was faint cheering, which quickly became louder. A woman screamed, and there were hoarse shouts. Someone on Main Street fired a shot, and there followed an entire fusillade.

The church door opened suddenly, and Paul Williams came in. He hurried down the aisle and up to the minister, to whom he whispered urgently.

“Brothers and sisters,” Lucian said. He seemed to be having trouble speaking. “A telegraph message has been received in Rock Island…. Robert E. Lee yesterday surrendered his army to General Grant.”

A buzz swept the congregation. Some stood. Shaman saw that his brother leaned back in the pew, his eyes closed.

“What does it mean, Shaman?” his mother asked.

“It means it’s finally over and done with, Ma,” Shaman said.

It seemed to Shaman that wherever he went for the next four days, people were drunk with peace and hope. Even the grievously ill smiled and spoke of the better days that had arrived, and there was exhilaration and laughter, as well as sorrow, because everyone knew somebody who had been lost.

When he returned home that Thursday after making his rounds, he found Alex both hopeful and anxious, because Alden was showing signs that puzzled him. Alden’s eyes were open and he was aware. But Alex said the rales in his chest sounded heavier. “And he feels warm to me.”

“Are you hungry, Alden?” Alex asked him. Alden looked at him, but didn’t reply. Shaman had Alex prop him up and they fed him some broth,
but it was difficult because his palsy was worse. They had fed him only soup or gruel for days, because Shaman had been afraid he would aspirate food into his lungs.

In truth, Shaman had little medicine to give him that would do any good. He poured turpentine into a bucket of boiling water and made a tent with a blanket, enclosing both the bucket and Alden’s face. Alden breathed in the fumes for a long time, and ended up coughing so copiously that Shaman removed the bucket and didn’t try that particular course of treatment again.

The bittersweet joy of that week turned to horror on Friday afternoon, when Shaman rode down Main Street. At first glance he knew there had been news of horrible catastrophe. People stood about in small groups and talked. He saw Anna Wiley, leaning against a post on the porch of her boarding-house, weeping. Simeon Cowan, Dorothy Burnham Cowan’s husband, sat on the seat of his buckboard with his eyes half-closed, his mouth pinched between his forefinger and his big chapped thumb.

“What is it?” Shaman asked Simeon. He was certain peace had been called off.

“Abraham Lincoln is dead. Shot last night in a Washington theater by some damn actor.”

Shaman refused to accept such news, but he dismounted and received confirmation on all sides. Although everyone lacked details, it was apparent the story was true, and he rode home and shared the terrible facts with Alex.

“The vice-president will take his place,” Alex said.

“No doubt Andrew Johnson’s already been sworn.”

They sat in the parlor a long time without speaking.

“Our poor country,” Shaman said finally. It was as if America were a patient who had struggled long and hard to survive the most terrible of plagues, and now had hurtled over a cliff.

A gray time. When he made his house calls, faces were somber. Each evening, the church bell was rung. Shaman helped Alex up onto Trude, and Alex rode out; it was the first time he’d been on a horse since before his capture. When he came back, he told Shaman the tolling of the bell drifted far out onto the prairie, a sad and lonely sound.

Sitting alone by Alden’s bedside after midnight, Shaman looked up from his reading to see the old man’s eyes on him.

“You want something, Alden?”

He shook his head, almost imperceptibly.

Shaman leaned over him. “Alden. You remember that time my father was leaving the barn and somebody took a shot at his head. And you searched the woods and couldn’t find anybody?”

Alden’s eyes didn’t blink.

“It was you fired a rifle at my father.”

Alden licked his lips. “… Fired to miss … scare him quiet.”

“You want water?”

Alden didn’t answer. Then, “How you come to know?”

“You said something while you were sick that made me understand a lot of things. Like why you urged me to go to Chicago and find David Goodnow. You knew he was hopelessly insane, and mute. That I wouldn’t learn a thing.”

“… What else you know?”

“I know that you’re involved in this thing. Up to your damn neck.”

Again the tiny nod. “I didn’t kill her. I …” Alden was gripped by a long and terrible paroxysm of coughing, and Shaman held a basin for him and allowed him to spit out a quantity of gray mucus, pink-tinged. When he stopped coughing he was white and spent, and he closed his eyes.

“Alden. Why did you tell Korff where I’d gone?”

“You wouldn’t let it be. Shook em bad in Chicago. Korff sent someone to see me, day after you left. I told em where you went. I thought he’d just talk to you, scare you. Way he scared me.”

He was panting. Shaman had questions crowding his tongue, but he knew how sick Alden was. He sat and struggled between his anger and the oath he had sworn. In the end he watched, and swallowed his words, while Alden lay with his eyes closed, now and then coughing up a little blood or twitching with the palsy.

Almost half an hour later, Alden started speaking on his own.

“I lead the American party here….

“That morning, I helped Grueber … butcher. Left early to meet them three. In our woods. I got there, they’d already … had the woman. She’s just lyin there, heard them talkin with me. I started yellin. Said, how could I stay here now? Told em they were leavin, but the Indian’d get me in terrible trouble.

“Korff never said a word. Just grabbed up the blade, killed her.”

Shaman couldn’t ask him anything just then. He could feel himself trembling with anger. He wanted to scream like a child.

“They just warned me not to talk, and they rode away. I went home, packed a few things in a box. Figgered I’d have to run … didn’t know where. But nobody paid me any mind or even asked me any questions after they found her.”

“You even helped bury her, you misery,” Shaman said. He couldn’t help himself. Perhaps it was his tone of voice that reached Alden more than his words. Alden’s eyes closed, and he began to cough. This time, the coughing wouldn’t let up.

Shaman went to fetch quinine and some black root tea, but when he tried to give it, Alden choked and sprayed, wetting his nightshirt so it had to be changed.

Several hours later, Shaman sat and remembered the hired man as he’d known him all his life. The artisan who made fishing poles and ice skates, the expert who taught them to hunt and fish. The irascible drunkard.

The liar. The man who had abetted in rape and murder.

He got up and took the lamp and held it over Alden’s face. “Alden. Listen to me. What kind of knife did Korff stab her with? What was the weapon, Alden?”

But the eyelids remained closed. Alden Kimball gave no sign that he heard Shaman’s voice.

Toward morning, whenever he touched Alden he felt fever in the upper range. Alden was unconscious. When he coughed, the discharge was foul, and now the sputum was a brighter red. Shaman put his fingers to Alden’s wrist and the pulse ran away from him, 108 beats per minute.

He undressed Alden and was sponging him with alcohol when he looked up and saw that daylight had broken. Alex was peering through the door.

“God. He looks awful. Is he in pain?”

“I don’t think he can feel anything anymore.”

It was hard for him to tell Alex, and harder still for Alex to hear what he was told, but Shaman left nothing out.

Alex had worked closely with Alden a long time, sharing the cruel and dirty daily work of the farm, being instructed in a hundred homely tasks, and depending on the older man for stability during the time when he’d felt
like a fatherless bastard and had rebelled against Rob J.’s parental authority. Shaman knew Alex loved Alden.

“Will you report to the authorities?” Alex appeared calm. Only his brother would know the extent to which he was disturbed.

“There’s no point. He has pneumonia, and it’s moving quickly.”

“He’s dying?”

Shaman nodded.

“For his sake, I’m glad,” Alex said.

They sat and discussed the chances of notifying survivors. Neither of them knew the whereabouts of the Mormon wife and children the hired man had deserted before he came to work for Rob J.

Shaman asked Alex to search Alden’s cabin, and he went to do so. When he returned, he shook his head. “Three jugs of whiskey, two fishing poles, a rifle. Tools. Some harness he was repairing. Dirty laundry. And this.” He held a paper in his hand. “A list of local men. I think it must be the membership of the American party in this town.”

Shaman didn’t take it. “Best burn it.”

“You’re certain?”

He nodded. “I’m going to spend the rest of my life here, taking care of them. When I go into their homes as their doctor, I don’t want to know which of them is a Know Nothing,” he said, and Alex nodded and took the list away.

Shaman sent Billy Edwards to the convent with the names of several patients who needed to be checked at home, and asked Mother Miriam Ferocia to make the house calls for him. He was asleep when Alden died at midmorning. By the time he was awake, Alex already had closed Alden’s eyes, and washed him, and dressed him in clean clothing.

When Doug and Billy were told, they came and stood by the side of the bed for a few moments, and then they went to the barn and began to build a box.

“I won’t have him buried here, on the farm,” Shaman said.

Alex was silent for a moment, but then he nodded. “We can take him to Nauvoo. I think he still had friends among the Mormons there,” he said.

The casket was brought to Rock Island in the buckboard, and placed on the deck of a flatboat. The Cole brothers sat nearby on a crate of plowshares. That day, while a train began to bear the body of Abraham Lincoln
on a long, slow journey west, the hired man’s body was floated down the Mississippi.

At Nauvoo, the coffin was unloaded at the steamboat landing, and Alex waited near it while Shaman went into a warehouse and explained their errand to a clerk named Perley Robinson. “Alden Kimball? Don’t know him. You’ll have to get permission from Mrs. Bidamon to bury him here. Wait. I’ll go ask her.”

He was back presently. The widow of Prophet Joseph Smith had told him she knew Alden Kimball as a Mormon and a former settler in Nauvoo, and that he could be buried in the cemetery.

The small cemetery was inland. The river was out of sight, but there were trees, and someone who knew how to use a scythe kept the grass cut. Two stalwart young men dug the grave, and Perley Robinson, who was an elder, read unendingly from the Book of Mormon while the afternoon shadows lengthened.

Afterward Shaman settled up. The funeral costs came to seven dollars, including $4.50 for the plot. “For another twenty dollars I’ll see he has a nice stone,” Robinson said.

“All right,” Alex said quickly.