The Death and Life of Zebulon Finch, Volume 1

by Daniel Kraus

  Meat etiquette was not inspired by mere nightmare. It was formulated upon the pioneering work of physiologist and obstetrician Luigi Galvani. Galvani, I gathered, was the Carlo Gesualdo of eighteenth-century science, whose scandalous experiments had been all but discredited by generations of cognoscenti. Leather, contrarian to his core, had modernized Galvani’s ideas—twisted them, one might say—beginning with the concept of elettricità animale, the idea that massive sources of self-sustaining electricity hid among internal organs.

  Leather’s hypothesis was that my superior electrical flow originated with my brain but was patterned into my every cell, not unlike the way a waffle iron imprints its lattice into batter. His job was to agitate the samples that filled the Revelation Almanac, box by box, to exaggerate this code until it could be reproduced.

  He was deep into the rabbit hole, the singularity, the labyrinth, and I, despite my growing fear for the doctor’s sanity, continued to hold the map.

  Winter 1906: I remember them well, those wide Erlenmeyer flasks in which slivers of my skin darted about catalytic solution like minnows; the electrified heating plates, too, upon which the diced cubes of my muscle fiber popped with life like bacon in a pan. My body offered none of the satisfaction of spilled blood, but my tissue incinerated and boiled and froze well enough to placate Leather, with every ensuing emission of smoke or steam seeming to me like Indian smoke signals. What was this figmental tribe trying to tell me? To trust in my father’s wisdom? Or to flee from his horrors?

  Summer 1907: had only you been there to see this one, Reader! The lobe of my right ear was sacrificed to Leather’s scalpel so that it could be bolted with zinc to the underneck of an ethered cat. The unfortunate feline was girdled for the passage of electricity and when the lever was thrown it did catly things, quilling its hackles and yowling and looking as discombobulated as any cat in the history of cats. My earlobe, however, acquired no pulse, and like a sad grape withered on its feline vine.

  Autumn 1908: while the first of Henry Ford’s Model Ts were being manufactured in Detroit, Leather was putting the finishing touches on his own paradigmatic machine. Equipment of longheld primacy—the hemoglobin scale, the blood oven, the stacks of litmus paper—were shoved about the perimeter to make room for what he called the “Voltaic Bed,” a wide sheet of metal studded with copper rivets. When powered, it hummed with such force that dust danced an inch off the floor. I, of course, was too delicate for this uncomfortable bedding. Enter Miss Nine Days, hailing from the People Garden via first-class wheelbarrow. Leather had a hunch that when the current reached critical level, her cadaver would achieve a deathless state akin to my own.

  Instead she roasted like a duck. Meat etiquette was a speculative business.

  While gods and devils fought for supremacy upon the third floor, Mary took advantage of the inattention paid her. She kept to her word and poured her energies into teaching Gladys lessons she might one day need to live a normal life apart from this madness. Mary and I still saw each other most days. She would ask me how I was and I would try not to shiver while lying that I was well, very well indeed. It was a pointless game; my problems, unlike hers, did not evolve. She was raising a girl, soon to be a young woman, while I was, ever and anon, a lost and fearful boy.

  I did go on reminding myself to blink, though there was no one left to appreciate it.

  IX.

  FEW RECOGNIZE THE MOST IMPORTANT events of their lifetime as they occur, so occupied are we with silly complications and sillier distractions. Chart the roadmap of your life and you will find a profusion of overlong routes and hellish switchbacks, salted patches of Earth crossed repeatedly until stomped to ruin, while the pastures of pleasure are but skirted, peed onto from the side of the road without you having an inkling of their majesty or significance.

  So it was that in April 1910 a piece of my past came home to me.

  Visitors were uncommon at Jefferson Street but I was hardly disturbed when I heard the late-night clanging of the brass door knocker. Dixon, slow and deaf though he’d become, remembered the path to the front door and I was comforted by the usual disapproving tone of his voice and the ensuing slam.

  The following morning was drizzly but nevertheless heralded the return of the stubborn visitor. Dixon, too, knew how to be stubborn. But the visitor returned again during stormy midday, and again at showery suppertime, and then once more amid the pounding rain of night. When Dixon cleared his throat outside the laboratory door, I was shirtless and supine on an unwashed table with Leather poised to tweezer a bit of white matter from my eyeball. The room stank of smoke and cold corpse blood.

  Go away, old man, thought I. This is no place for the living.

  But Leather grumbled, set aside his tool, and cracked open the door.

  “Out with it.”

  “Do forgive me, sir,” said Dixon. “But a young lady insists upon being seen.”

  “Who is she?”

  “She will not say, sir.”

  “This is hardly a dignified hour.”

  “She is not a dignified young lady, if I may be so bold, sir.”

  “Do you require a reminder on how to do your job?”

  “I have issued warning upon warning, sir. This is her fifth visit in two days. I know you frown upon bringing police to this house but I am at wit’s end.”

  “No doubt she is a relative of a patient who died on my table. Extend the usual sympathies but inform her that I am utterly indisposed.”

  Leather began to close the door but Dixon raised an arthritic hand.

  “The young lady does not ask for you, sir. She asks for Master Finch.”

  I slid from the operating table and stood. Plasma, someone else’s, oozed down my spine. A guest? Me? I seized the idea with unexpected enthusiasm. A reprise from hell’s chimney, even for a mistaken call, was worth taking.

  Leather shot me an impatient look.

  “A devotee of your sideshow act?”

  “Show her in,” said I.

  “Do not show her in, Mr. Dixon. Whoever she is, she is after money.”

  Seventeen was more than old enough to stand against any father figure! I snapped up my shirt, buttoned it, threaded my arms through jacket tweed, and, as was instinct, patted the pocketed Excelsior.

  “Put her in the parlor, Dixon,” said I. “I shall be down directly.”

  I had to endure history’s most violently gritted teeth, but endure them I did, and ten minutes later I was stealing down the stairs breathless (I know; it makes no sense) with the sensation of a pounding heart (again, a lack of sense). Dixon, wheezing from effort, was exiting the parlor, and I tipped an invisible hat to him before sliding into the room’s bourbon light.

  The girl heard me enter. She stood in a puddle of water and whipped around so fast her hair sprayed the bookcase with rain. The hair was black with damp but I could see that in its natural state it was light brown. I took a step closer. She was around my age and beautiful, though skinny, with regal cheekbones and nose, enthralling eyes, and a determined underbite. I grinned and it felt good—the old Zebulon Finch charm, thought I, emerging from hibernation.

  Instead of reacting in kind, her brow tightened in bewilderment and she took a hesitant step forward as if trying to see me in a better light.

  “It can’t be you,” whispered she.

  I extended my grin.

  “Zebulon Finch, at your service. Have we met?”

  She prowled lightly, as if upon clawed paws.

  “Impossible,” said she. “How are you so young?”

  The question set off a bell of warning. My smile faltered and she appeared to take it as an admission. She thrust a hand inside her topcoat, a shabby thing sized for a grown man and slathered along its bottommost inches in mud, and withdrew a square of paper. With damp fingers she began to unfold it. It was old, rubbed pale, splitting apart at the creases, b
ut with walloping shock I recognized it before she held it up for me to see. After all, I’d kept my own copy in a scrapbook twenty-four years earlier.

  It was my favorite “Wanted” poster from 1895, the one that made me look like John Wesley Hardin. My first reaction was a bloom of elation as if spotting an old friend; seconds later, the feeling downturned, for the vibrant young man in the picture was but fourth or fifth cousin to the crippled dead thing I’d become. Finally I felt apprehension, for while there were numerous reasons one might track down a Black Hand rowdy, none of them were good.

  I took a step toward the door.

  “You are without towel,” said I. “Allow me to fetch one.”

  The girl shook her head. More rain spattered my skin and burned like hot oil. She lurched closer and I stumbled against the humidor. Her eyes lit up as if sensing weakness.

  “You think I wanted to come?” asked she. “Crawling like a mutt for your mercy? I would do anything to avoid it. But I’m hungry. I’m starving. Look at me.”

  With her wrongly gendered coat, faded dress, bony shoulders, mud-crescented nails, and overall uncleanliness, the evidence was indeed damning. But in these crimes against her, what part had I played?

  “Miss,” said I, “I believe there has been a misunderstanding.”

  “Misunderstanding? No. Misfortune, yes. Of the father to whom I was born!”

  She’d come so near that her sharp cheekbones and underbite threatened my neck. I might have presumed that we were about to kiss were it not for the look of her eyes. In them waged a battle between pleading and resentment over having to plead. This iron mask of stubborn pride was a strangely familiar sight.

  All at once, I recognized it.

  I’d seen it before in mirrors.

  This girl was my daughter.

  I cried out, an unbidden bleat, and elbowed past her bony arms so that I could bury myself into the fainting couch. That aquiline nose and those patrician cheeks—I admired them because they were my own! That underbite, though, owed its existence to none other than Wilma Sue. It was she who I saw in the girl’s beguiling body and cunning face; she I smelled, that aroma of black tea and cheaply laundered sheets; she I tasted in the air, face powder, and fresh rain; and she I touched—only, no, this was not Wilma Sue I touched, it was our spawn, grabbing me by the shoulders, trucking me from one nightmare to the next.

  “Leave me be!” demanded I. “Liar! Deceiver! Gorgon!”

  “She’s dead,” said the girl. “Do not pretend that you care.”

  “But I do! I loved her!” Once it was out of my mouth, I believed it. Had it always been true? I tried it again: “I loved her. Yes—I did!”

  “You paid her. That’s not love.”

  In the heyday of my carnality, I’d allowed the possibility of impregnating a whore or two, given drunken lapses and the primitive state of prophylactics. But cathouse cabals had methods of addressing such sticky wickets; few prostitutes would be so gauche as to pester the inseminating customer. The idea of having a child? A real, live child? It cudgeled me with confusion, hammered me with panic. I was but seventeen!

  I weaseled myself to sitting position. “It wasn’t like that. I gave her far more money than required. It was to help her. I was trying to—”

  “Is that right? Explain to me how you helped her. How you loved her so much. I’d enjoy hearing about that. About everything that you did right.”

  “But why in heaven did she not tell me? Why—”

  “That I can tell you. I’ve heard the story a thousand times. She planned to. The last night she saw you, she tried to tell you. But you—”

  I pressed my palms over my ears.

  “Stop, stop, stop!”

  No repetition of denial, regardless of volume, can eclipse a memory that awakes screaming. I was back in Wilma Sue’s arctic chamber, bleeding from the head, only this time when she called to me from her warm bed, it was not just for tea but to divulge to me a secret that must have been eating her alive. She was pregnant and knew that it was mine. What did this mean? That she had stopped sleeping with other men. And what did that mean? That she trusted me, believed in me, was risking life and livelihood on my reaction. And what had been my reaction?

  To run out on her. To vanish. To prove that I was a delinquent punk more interested in cracking skulls for petty cash than forging any relationship beyond the casual. Wilma Sue left because it was the only logical path forward. She was alone and always had been.

  Oh, this cloudburst of repellent truths! How long had it been since I’d felt even a twinge of guilt for those whose lives I’d ruined? In a savage minute this wicked girl had reminded me that no one, including you, Dearest Reader, should ever make the mistake of rooting for me.

  “How?” begged I. “How did she . . . ?”

  “Die? Was it painful? Was it from slow disease? Could it have been prevented had we had any money? Yes, yes, and yes! Would you like me to paint a more colorful picture? The weakness and the sores, the not sleeping and the total confusion? All of that came well before death.”

  “Did you not consult a doctor?”

  She struck the pillow next to my head.

  “Don’t you dare give me advice!” Spittle clung to her lip. “There was the matter of payment, don’t you know? Though the doctors were happy enough to offer scoldings while carting away her body.”

  “No more. I solicit you.”

  “No more—yes, I’ve tried saying that myself. To those who threw us out of our home. Who wouldn’t help her when she was sick. Who wouldn’t help me when I was picking through trash on the street. Why else would I come here? There is no one on Earth left for me to beg.”

  She craned her neck to take in the ceiling fresco, the gilt metal chandeliers, the etched crystal shades. Such affluence had become banal to me, but I saw the surroundings through desperate eyes. To this girl, each accent of refinement signified money, warmth, food, and safety. The ramifications frightened me.

  I could be assured, at least, that so glorious a residence contained pockets of solace where I could mourn my darling Wilma Sue out of range of this virulent woe-bringer. I attempted to stand but the girl crooked her body over mine, her muddy coat flapping like buzzard wings, her claws digging into the cushions. Her bright birdie eyes, I hated to see, were the same as mine.

  The “Wanted” poster, Wilma Sue’s sole heirloom, crinkled against my ear.

  “You owe her, don’t you think? But she’s gone. I’m the one left behind. So now you owe me. And you’re going to pay up. Mr. Mystery. Mr. Jefferson Street. Mr. Zebulon Finch. Or should I call you Aaron?”

  X.

  WILMA SUE HAD NAMED OUR daughter Merle Ruby Watson. As names go it was sturdy enough, though it was the “Watson” that moved me. Wilma Sue Watson. Her full name, I knew it at last. Surely a more alluring one has yet to be concocted—go on, say it aloud. The pronunciation forces the lips and tongue to kiss, gasp, and kiss again.

  The four shots blown through me by Pullman Larry were nothing next to the twin impacts of Wilma Sue’s death and Merle Ruby’s birth. Just as I tried to come to grips with one idea, the other one took me by the throat, as a dog does a rabbit, and gave a killing shake. The wounds therefore remained fresh as I bumbled through breakfast, during which the stoic Mary explained the entire situation to the doctor. I felt like a teenager caught in the act—which, I suppose, I was.

  “Some girl off the street? In this house?” Leather was baffled. “Finch, have I taught you nothing? Human offspring carries no more inherent worth than does a beslimed tadpole or fresh spot of fungus. I see no reason to open our doors. Not to mention that there is not one court in the land who would believe you fathered this girl, considering your similar ages.”

  Mary’s longstanding control over household affairs was nevertheless a difficult token to rescind. After much berating, Leather regarded me acro
ss the table as he chewed. I squirmed. His eyes had of late narrowed to red coals, yet I detected a scintilla of sympathy. If Zebulon was the son, Merle was the granddaughter. Leather would endure her presence for my sake and, by extension, the sake of our experiments.

  “For a short time, then,” said he. “Short. Indicate, both of you, that you understand.”

  He left for the college, whistling Gesualdo for inspiration.

  I considered running out the same door.

  I considered forcing the girl from the house at knifepoint.

  I considered many a malicious reaction. But each confirmed Merle’s meanest presumptions—that I was capable of only the most irresponsible of behaviors, and therefore belonged inside this fine home no more than she. Because there was truth in that, and plenty of it, I instead chose to honor Wilma Sue by displaying kindness toward our daughter. Within reason, of course.

  Merle had been stashed in a chamber down from the master bedroom. When I dared peek across the threshold, I was greeted by a vision. In place of the scraggly diabolist had materialized a young icon of porcelain skin and cornsilk hair prettily arranged with ribbon, sporting a dress too short for her tall, hungry frame but nonetheless stunning. She was wiping a languid finger along the bureau as if mesmerized by the absence of dust when I pushed open the door.

  “You enter a lady’s room without invitation?” She gave me an unreadable smile. “How brash of you, Papa.”

  I grimaced. What a word! Overnight she had come to accept my impossible youth. Perhaps, in the scheme of her wretched life, it was not the most inconceivable thing she’d encountered.

  “Last night you had me at disadvantage,” said I. “Now we shall talk sensibly.”

  Merle shrugged and ambled about the chamber, petting this and pawing that, looking for all the world like a princess deciding which items to purchase and have sent back to her castle. With her new clothing had come, it seemed, a new persona.