by William Gear
She spared him an inquisitive look. “And why did you choose Boston?”
“The best medical schools are there.” Doc concentrated as he separated the thick web of ligaments around the knee. Synovial fluid drained like water as he punctured the joint. To his relief, the sepsis hadn’t spread past the calf muscles. “After completing my studies I wanted to come home. The first ship bound for a Southern port was headed to New Orleans. Which brings me to your back room and Eli’s gangrenous leg.”
“Eli lives under the stairs,” she told him. “He’s harmless, mostly. Just moon-touched crazy. Sees things that aren’t there. Carries on conversations with invisible people. But you tell him to clean the floor? He pitches in and cleans and cleans. No letup until it’s spotless. If I tell him to comb the carpets in the salon, or dust the shelves, it’s done. And best of all, he’s never pestering the girls for as much as a yank on his johnson.”
“How did this happen?” Doc indicated the gangrenous lower leg.
“Moving a new cast-iron cookstove into the kitchen. Eli’s not the strongest of men. He was on the downstairs end. Dropped it.” She quickly added, “He wouldn’t countenance the notion of having someone look at it. Didn’t know how bad it really was till we cut his shoe off the next morning. Should have called for a physician then. But he insisted we leave him be. That it would heal.”
“It might not have made any difference, as badly as his foot is crushed.”
She raised an expressive eyebrow. “He kept insisting it was getting better, and I had more important things to do than keep track of his foot.”
Doc’s quick hands cut the last of the ligaments, and he caught the deadweight of the severed limb. He gently lowered it into a bucket placed conveniently beneath the table. One that had no doubt caught many an unwanted fetus.
A muffled bang, as if from a pistol shot, carried from the street. Then another and another. Meg stepped to the door, opened it a crack, and called, “Hattie? Go see what the commotion is about. If it’s a fight, lock our front door.”
“Yes’m.”
The lower leg looked oddly forlorn where it canted in the bucket. “Well, there you go, Eli. The leg’s gone, and the world is just the same as it was before.”
Meg grunted. “I guess I can’t very well order Eli to carry his own leg out, can I?”
“I’ll see to it,” Doc told her as he slipped silk suture over his tenaculum, the surgical hook. He used it to fish the arteries from the surrounding muscle. Sliding the surgical silk down, he carefully used it to ligate each of the major blood vessels.
She pursed her lips as if the notion were just sinking in. “How long until he can work again?”
“Maybe a month if there are no complications. The stump will have to heal. Keep him quiet and immobilized in a well-aired room to prevent the development of noxious effluvia. Expect fever for the next week or so. Dressings will need to be changed until the pus stops draining. It should be clear. You’ll know from the smell if anything goes amiss. At the end of the month, you’ll have to fit him with a prosthesis to—”
“A what?”
“A peg leg.”
Her lips soured. “But he can still work?”
Doc pulled the flap taut and began to suture. “Physically he’ll be a little slower. Expect him to be clumsy for the next six months. It takes a while to learn to balance and move with a prosthesis.”
She turned her thoughtful gaze on him. “That was quickly done. I didn’t know a leg could come off that fast.”
“I grew up on a farm. Butchering pigs, deer, sheep, and cattle. Paw had me learning anatomy from a medical book, cutting up critters and comparing their innards with human internal organs.” He smiled, delighted with himself. She apparently had no idea how nervous he’d been. “There’s not that much difference.”
“You thinking of staying in New Orleans? Having just lost our old physician to the yellow fever, I’d be willing to offer you regular work here, checking the girls, dealing with our … special needs?”
Me? Service a bawdy house? Never again.
He finished his last knot. Bent down. Studied his suture. After wiping his hands on his apron, he slowly began unscrewing the tourniquet. A faint weeping of blood oozed along the incision’s margins. This was the critical moment. Would the ligated arteries hold?
“Let me guess,” Meg said tartly. “Your mother also taught you how to sew?”
“My father, actually. Harnesses, moccasins, and such. Life beyond the frontier taught him the skill, and he swore no son of his would ever be in a position where he couldn’t ‘repair his possibles’ should the need arise.”
Doc made quick work bandaging Eli’s stump.
“Quite the man, this brigand father you so despise. Returning to my query. My girls are in need of a new physician. Young and handsome as you are—”
“I’m honored by your offer,” he lied.
I’ll see myself in hell before I lower myself to working in a brothel!
He’d never so much as set foot in a whorehouse before—and before God and the angels, he’d be damned if he’d ever do so again. That was Paw’s realm, after all.
He began picking caked blood from his fingers, still alert for the sudden rush should one of his ligatures fail. “Hopefully, I’m only going to be in New Orleans long enough to find a boat headed upriver. With the uncertainty of secession, I’d like to see my family again. It’s been more than four years.”
Then he added, “Assuming, that is, that Father’s not home. Which, I must admit, is a high probability given his affinity for being anywhere else.”
She smiled faintly, an amused look on her face. “But Arkansas?”
“Even worse, western Arkansas.” Doc paused at her expression. “And it’s true: as appalling as travel is in Arkansas, the politics are, indeed, even worse. Now, if someone could bring me a pan of water, I’d like to clean my instruments and hands.”
“Of course.” She opened the door, calling to someone out of sight. Then she turned back. “So that’s it? Off to wild Arkansas to become a surgeon? They don’t pay. Not even in Little Rock with its … what? Three thousand people? New Orleans, especially with the secession, will become the most powerful city in the Confederacy. Probably even become the capital as soon as this asinine notion of placing it in Montgomery over in Alabama wears off.”
“I’ve no doubt that you’re right. My dream, Madam de Elaine, is a small surgical practice. One where I can be close to the country. Hunt, fish, raise a family, and perhaps dabble in good-blooded horses.”
He smiled at her as he checked Eli’s pulse and breathing. “If I share anything with Paw, it’s that I need a bit of wilderness. Paw settled in Arkansas, so he says, because it still has mountains and Indians, but with warmer winters and closer access to trade goods.”
She vented a disbelieving sigh. “Well, what will it be then? Cash?” She narrowed her eye into a near wink. “Or could we interest you in a bit of trade? You, being a surgeon and all, should know your way around a female body. I’ll have the girls—”
“Again, no disrespect, but cash would be preferred.” He paused. “If I catch the spring-full rivers just right, I might make it all the way to Little Rock by boat.”
“Very well.” She nodded politely before stepping out. On her heels a young mulatto woman entered and set a pan of water on the rickety chair. Doc began washing the blood off his equipment and hands. He glanced at Eli, slumbering in drugged bliss.
What was it about the insane that they concocted such peculiarities of imagination?
Not my problem. I’m a surgeon. Destined to deal with medicine’s higher and most noble calling.
Out in the hall, a young woman shouted, “It’s war! In Charleston they’re firing on Fort Sumter!”
Doc buckled up his surgical bag and reached down for the bucket with Eli’s leg. He’d need a place to discard it, wishing the brothel had a garden. The outhouse would have to do.
“Hooraw!” another
woman shouted in the hallway.
Bag in one hand, bucket in the other, Doc stepped out into the hallway.
“They’re bombarding the Yankees!” one of the more buxom of the belles cried. She was a round-faced blonde, her cheeks rouged. “They’re shouting it in the streets. The South Carolinians are going to war!”
“Get your rest while you can, girls,” a thin black-haired young woman called drolly. “The loyal gentlemen of New Orleans will be primed for celebrating until long after dawn. And very free with their money, if I’m any judge.”
“War in the distance,” a redhead chortled, “profits in hand.”
Doc glanced down at the bucket where the limp leg leaked blood and fluid.
2
May 6, 1861
Sounds of spring filled the forest: chirring insects; a mixed melody of birdsong; and occasional chattering from the squirrels as they leaped through the high branches. The fragrance of redbud and blooming dogwood permeated the Ozark highlands, enriched by the fresh smell of new leaves and early grass.
Billy Hancock flicked a thumb to dislodge the biting fly that had settled on his shooting hand and was fit to gorge itself. He glanced slyly at his companion; the big Cherokee lay unmoving on his right.
His large body dappled by the shadowing leaves, John Gritts cupped his hands, head slightly extended; the gobble that issued from his throat perfectly imitated the challenge call of a tom turkey.
Billy Hancock licked his lips and ran his fingers down the polished wooden stock on his rifle. Where he sat, his back to the hawthorn, his skin and clothing obscured by leaf shadows, he might have been invisible. The rifle, like all of his possessions, had been handed down. It had been Paw’s to begin with—a .36-caliber cap-lock conversion. Despite care, the metal around the nipple had pitted over the years. The stock and forearm exhibited dents and dings, and the rifling had been shot out to the point that patches had to be thin and tight around the ball—and powder charges light—lest it blow right past the shallow grooves.
For fourteen-year-old Billy Hancock, the shot-out gun remained his most prized possession. His grip tightened on the rifle’s wrist as a tom gobbled in response from behind the plum bushes across the small clearing.
John Gritts grinned at him, dark eyes flashing. Gritts was nearing forty, his long black hair gleaming and braided to hang down over his worn buckskin shirt. Thick muscle corded in the man’s shoulders, and he shifted among the shadows like a cougar as he cupped his hands around his mouth and uttered his turkey call again.
Billy eased his knee up to prop his left arm where it supported the rifle. His right thumb eased the hammer back, his finger holding the trigger to keep the action from clicking. At full cock, he released the trigger and eased the hammer forward until it came to rest in the notch. An ant tickled his calf as it climbed past his moccasin top and started up under Billy’s worn trousers. He ignored it.
Billy lowered his cheek to the rifle’s comb as the first of the hens broke cover and stepped hesitantly out past the plum bush. With the slightest shift, Billy placed the silver front sight blade on the hen turkey’s body.
Then another hen, and another, stepped out, their eyes gleaming and blinking as their heads jerked this way and that. One by one Billy sighted on them, finger barely caressing the trigger as he mentally shot them down. Someday someone was going to invent a rifle that would let a fella shoot and shoot. Not like Paw’s slant-breech Sharps that had to be reloaded with a paper cartridge, but one after another, bang, bang, bang. When they did, a good hunter like Billy could really shine.
As it was, he lived for this moment. There they were: wily turkeys—and no more than a pebble’s toss away. Unaware, completely at ease.
Exhilaration and power filled Billy’s soul; euphoria spread a grin over his lips. His blood surged and ran hot with delight. Nothing, not even Maw’s praise, filled him with excitement like this.
I got you!
Life and death … his to dispense. In that moment, he controlled the universe.
Gritts gobbled again. The hens stepped forward warily, heads bobbing. Then the tom emerged, searching for its potential rival. In full display, the tom drummed, speckled wing feathers dragging, tail spread into a full fan. April sunlight gleamed in the bird’s feathers; the bright eyes twinkled.
The beat of Billy’s heart settled as he studied the tom over the rifle’s sights. He loved turkey hunting. The thrill of calling the birds in, of beating them at their own game, rushed in his very blood. The slightest movement, the wrong call, a glint of reflected light or the clink of metal, and the tom would bolt.
Gritts gobbled, and the tom froze, feathers puffing in irritation as it turned its stunning blue head. Sunlight flashed in the red wattle. Then the bird tilted its tail feathers in a dominant display, puffing and strutting.
Billy steadied his breathing as the big bird stepped warily through the spring grass. The feathers caught the sun just right, burning iridescent, shining copper, and almost purple.
No more than ten feet from Billy’s hiding place, the bird hesitated. Billy put the last bit of pressure on the trigger, knowing where it would break.
The old squirrel rifle flashed fire and smoke, the loud bang silencing the birdsong and chirring insects. The hens exploded in flapping confusion.
Through the blue, sulfuric smoke, Billy watched the tom leap into the air, and then collapse to the ground. There it thrashed with a hollow popping of wings; the feet pumped, claws ripping at the grass.
“Nice shot,” John Gritts told him. “I was wondering if you were going to let him walk down the barrel and stare you in the eye.”
“Called him good, John,” Billy told him. “Ain’t nobody better in all the world. I swear, you’re part turkey yourself.”
“I’m Wolf Clan.” He said it deadpan, the faintest of smiles on his broad lips.
“Yeah, and wolves eat turkeys, too.”
“Only when they can catch ’em.”
Crawling clear of the hawthorn, Billy stood in the April sunlight and walked over to the dying tom.
“Took out its spine at the base of the neck,” Gritts noted as he picked up the heavy tom. The head and neck hung by the skin.
Billy slapped through his pants at the ant, now biting his thigh. He made a face and flipped his blond hair out of his eyes. “It was a choice. Lose the bullet, or take a chance on souring the meat with a body shot.”
From the patch box he took a bit of cloth, plopped it into his mouth to wet it, and began swabbing his rifle barrel.
“Four shots, four birds. Your pap will buy you more lead.” Gritts stared around the spring clearing, bounded on one side with redbud and with a stand of sassafras on the other. Behind it rose the billowed majesty of oak, hickory, and sycamore forest. Varying shades of green marked the different trees.
“Speaking of which,” John said, “we better get these birds back to your maw. Warm as it is, you bring sour meat home, maybe I’m wrong and your paw won’t buy you no more lead.”
“Aw, hunting’s good. Reckon another day out here wouldn’t … Don’t give me that disapproving look.” Then Billy sighed. “I know. I promised Maw I’d be back.”
“Promises is promises, boy.” Gritts narrowed an eye, studying Billy’s broad shoulders and strapping arms. “You think you can carry the four of them?”
“Nope,” Billy lied with mock sincerity as he poured thirty grains of powder down the barrel. “But if you’d help, I’m betting Maw’d make sure you got a meal for your labor. Reckon we can throw a couple of these birds into the smokehouse for you. Paw will be home, too.”
Billy squinted up at his friend, a devilish smile bending his lips. “And you’d best be a-gittin’ it soon, ’cause with war talk, Paw ain’t gonna be lounging around the farm for long.”
Gritts seemed to be thinking hard as he attended to the bird. “Might be, too, that you’re thinking that me being there is gonna keep your maw from going after you with a pitchfork for beating up Matt Al
sup.”
Billy cut his patch and short-seated a ball before he rammed it home. “He needed a beating.”
“What do you care if Alsup’s sweet on Sarah? They got bottom, them Alsups. Julichayasdi. Tough men … if the Fleetwoods don’t kill ’em all. That feud up north of the line could cook itself into a bigger war than secession. Utana dinidahnawi. Big enemies.”
“Them Alsups got Union leanings.” Billy narrowed an eye as he capped his rifle and settled the hammer to half cock.
“So does your paw. You keep beating up Sarah’s gentlemen callers, she’s gonna be a old … What’s that word white men use?”
“Old maid?”
“Sgida. That’s it.” Then he changed the subject. “When is your brother Butler going to be coming home?” Gritts threw the bird over his shoulder, holding it by the long legs. Together they skirted the plum bushes to a trail that led back into the shadows beneath the tall oaks and hickories. There, in a hollow between the roots, lay two toms and an incautious hen who’d stepped in front of Billy’s rifle.
“Butler? Hell, he may already be there. He was due a week ago. But you know travel in Arkansas. Can’t figger Butler. Never could. What kind of feller sits in a cabin reading about long-dead folks when he could be out huntin’ squirrels and critters.”
Gritts gave him a deadpan stare. “We have had this talk. He’s the kind that feels things, dreams the spirit roads, and sees other worlds than this one. A different spirit power. He should have been born Cherokee. Your white men are going to break something inside him before it’s all done. You’ll see.”
Billy’s squint tightened. “So, what do you think of Sarah?”
Gritts chuckled, throwing another of the turkeys over his shoulder to join the first. “Your sister is an unburned fire.”
Billy heaved two toms over his right shoulder, and bent down to grasp his rifle. “An unburned fire?”
“You know of Selu?”