Obediah was waist deep, not swimming, but running again, like he was taking giant steps on top of the water and throwing great sparkling splashes. Murphy jumped out of the skiff and ran across the sandbar to the far shore, but Obediah gained a good twenty yards. When he was still a long rifle shot away, Obediah stopped running, sighted along the squirrel rifle and pulled back the hammer. That gun had a hair trigger that took only the slightest touch to set it off. Obediah moved the barrel, following Murphy with the bead sight until Murphy got to the shore. Murphy stopped and sighted his Henry rifle at the Negro. With fifteen shots, Murphy had an advantage, but the Henry wasn’t that accurate at long range. The old squirrel rifle was good out to two hundred yards.
Both of them, the black man and the renegade white raised their guns and took aim. The two shots and two puffs of smoke came right together. Murphy doubled over, fell at the water’s edge, then got half way up and crawled into the brush. Obediah went off running and splashing, holding the empty gun and the powder flask high over his head.
“No, no, don’t kill him,” I yelled. I ran into the river, went under, took in a stomach full of river water and then swam to the other side. When I got there, Obediah sat on top of Murphy, twisting the thong tied to Young Isaiah’s gold tooth. The thong dug into Murphy’s neck like a hanging noose. “White man die, now die, now,” Obediah sobbed.
“No, don’t kill him. Leave him for the marshal and the law,” I said.
Obediah made a terrific jerk on the thong, pulled the tooth free, held it in both hands high over Murphy. He let out a long piercing, hair raising scream that ended with a drawn out sob. Then, Obediah rolled over in the mud and cried like his heart was broke.
“I done shot a white man, dey gonna hang me for sure,” he said.
Murphy was gasped and grabbed at his neck, then held his stomach.
“Kill me now, for God’s sake, I can’t stand the pain,” he sobbed. He clawed the ground like a dying animal and tore at his bloody shirt.
“Shut up, damn you. Hold still so I can see where you got shot,” I said.
The ball went in just above his belly button. “You are gut-shot,” I said.
Obediah’s eyes weren’t focused and his shoulders jerked when I shook him hard. “Get the skiff.”
Murphy hollered and clutched his belly while we rowed back across the river to Mr. Mackey and the vigilantes. Nobody had any sympathy. Mr. Mackey’s men carried him on a stretcher made out of poles and coats to a wagon at the Indian camp.
Chapter Twenty Nine
We got him to Doc’s place by noon. Murphy howled until a dose of morphine settled him down. “Are you going to operate?” I asked.
Doc rolled up his sleeves and Odette set out the instruments. He spent a long time poking and prodding and he even sniffed at the holes in Murphy’s belly.
“It’s never been done before that I know of, but since the professor in Chicago recommended an operation, we’ll do it,” he said.
It was early afternoon and there was good light when we put him on the table. Murphy carried on something awful when he seen those surgical instruments and knew I was going to give him the ether.
“Don’t kill me, I never meant to hurt you, honest. I was working for the sheriff and didn’t mean no harm to any man or boy,” he whimpered.
Mr. Mackey held him down on the table while I dripped ether on a cloth over his face. He struggled and fought so much it took almost a whole bottle before he went under. Odette had learned how to soak instruments in the carbolic solution and helped Doc get ready. Some of the vigilantes crowded around the operating table but you could have heard a pin drop when Doc sliced into the belly with his keenest bistoury. He stopped cutting long enough to clamp bleeding veins and laid two towels soaked in carbolic along the edges of the wound.
“Tom, mind the anesthetic,” he said.
An evil-smelling poison leaked out of the abdomen when he went through the last layer. Doc mopped out the mess and pulled a long piece of gut out of the belly. “Must be leaking from the small bowel,” he said Doc sewed the holes with silk threads just like the Chicago professor done in the dog. He stood up and rested both hands on Murphy’s belly. “That’s the best I can do.”
Murphy came out of the ether ready to fight and hardly turned a hair from the operation. A week later, he was well enough to go to jail. Mr. Birt sent a story about the operation to the Chicago papers on the telegraph wires. The professors said it was the first time in Illinois that a victim of a gunshot wound to the belly had lived after an operation. The reporters paid no attention to the operation, but went to the jail and interviewed Murphy. He showed the reporters his scars and told a lot of lies about how he had been a hero in the war. The stories whipped up sympathy for him.
Doc testifid but the jury didn’t put much stock in the story about .44 slugs in Young Isaiah. The trial lasted almost all day and at the end, they ordered that Murphy be hang by the neck for stealing cattle. According to the jury, cattle-stealing was a worse crime than killing a darky. It wasn’t right. Old Isaiah and his boys were just as good as any white man and better than most. I said so, too, but most folks thought I was soft in the head.
People came from miles around and jostled to be in the front row to see Murphy hang. Folks got drunk on corn likker and had a high old time. They pushed and shoved and even little kids got up close to the gallows. At the last minute, Murphy refused a black hood over his head. When he dropped, his eyeballs bulged and his mouth opened. His black tongue stuck out and the body kicked for about a half a minute,then was still. He was a heavy man and his neck must have snapped almost instantly.
According to the law, doctors could dissect criminals. Doc was powerfully interested in seeing the inside of the belly. All the local doctors were there when Doc cut him open. The intestine where Doc had sutured the holes had healed just fine. He sawed open the skull and sliced the brain. There was a deep scar on the brain under where Murphy had been hit on the head. Maybe he wasn’t born bad, but the lick on the head had made him mean.
Judge Parsons appointed Mr. Mackey to be the sheriff. He squired Bessie to concerts and socials, but she was a confirmed spinster lady at heart. Mr. Mackey helped Billy Malone get in the military academy at West Point.
A month after the hanging, Doc and Odette went away on the train to Chicago and got married. When they came back, Mr. Birt had a big party at the Camp House. The military band played until after midnight. Old Isaiah made juleps and there were bottles of bubbly wine that went right to your head. Even Bessie and Aunt Alice drank about half a glass and got real giggly. Doc wore a new set of clothes and polished his shoes. Odette glowed in the candle light. You never saw a prettier woman and Doc was happy as he could be. I was lonesome and couldn’t help but think about Rachel.
Mike did most of the chores and I was busy with chemistry and Latin at the academy. Doc said I would be ready to start medical college in the summer, but money was still in short supply on account of the depression. One fine spring morning, two state bank examiners got off the train and spent all day going over bank records. That night, Mr. Farnum skipped out of town. Officers in Chicago caught him just before he got on a train to New York with a suitcase full of money. Judge Parsons said that before he was hung, Murphy admitted to working for the banker. Mr. Farnum was sentenced to ten years in the state prison.
One day, Judge Parsons came to the house. When he got settled in the parlor, he opened a leather case and brought out a stack of papers and adjusted his spectacles. “Mr. Farnum cheated your father when he foreclosed the mortgage on the house and store. The examiners calculate that the bank owes you three hundred dollars,” he said.
My hand shook when I took the check. Pa had fretted night and day over the mortgages, and here, was enough money to have eased his worries. Doc put a friendly hand on my shoulder. “Tom, that’s enough for medical school and passage to Europe.”
It didn’t look like Sandy Ford had changed. The stores and the park and th
e horse trough were just like always. The band even played the same tunes on Saturday night. Maybe it was just that I was older and happier, or because Rachel still wasn’t married. It was planting time again and the prospects for crops looked good. Folks were paying with greenbacks instead of produce and Doc had more work than he could handle, even when I helped out. Aunt Alice bloomed on account of she had another woman in the house. Odette and Doc carried on like they were young lovers, but he and Mr. Birt still had toddies at the Camp House and Doc played poker with the drummers now and then.
That summer went by pretty fast. I learned to read and write in Latin and knew most everything in the chemistry book. I showed Mike all the good swimming holes and where to find mushrooms and the best places to hunt squirrels. Billy Malone left for West Point.
Doc and Mr. Birt helped me write the letter to Rush Medical School. It must have been a good letter, on account of the college said I could start that fall.
Aunt Alice sewed shirts, knitted socks and patched my regular clothes. Doc gave me a stethoscope and a long lecture about how important it was to study hard and not to sass the professors.
I hadn’t expected a grand send-off, on account of Aunt Alice was my only relative. Doc acted kind of mysterious and said we had to be at the train station real early. I forgot all about not crying but tears came because Mr. Birt and Caleb the blacksmith and just about everyone else in town was there to see me off. Old Isaiah with his whole family were there and called me ‘Dr. Tom’, just like I had already been to school. The ladies gave me a sack full of fried chicken, biscuits and apple pie.
It was all fine, but I had been hoping and even praying that Rachel might be there too. Maybe it was one of those mirages, but from a long ways, I could see a buggy rolling along down Western Avenue. I rubbed my eyes, then saw her hair like corn-shucks in October. Rachel was with Bessie and Mr. Mackey. I got all tongue tied and my face got red and my collar got too tight.
“Tom, aren’t you even going to hand me down?” she said.
I took her hand and she stepped down so she was right close. “I’m going to live with Miss Bessie and study to be a schoolteacher,” she said.
Away in the distance, the train whistled. We walked down the tracks a ways, not saying anything. I was happy to see a smile on her lips, and her blue eyes were all shiny and happy-looking.
“Tom, you ain’t going to pay attention to those girls in the city, now are you?”
I blushed and stammered and nearly tripped over my own feet. “Rachel, I ain’t got eyes for any girl but you.”
When sooty smoke from the train rolled over us, it seemed like a good time to hold her close and give her a big kiss. She didn’t seem to mind one bit.
The following books provided background for “The Doctors Apprentice”
1. Black Reconstruction in America; W.E.B. DuBois. Studies in American Negro life, Atheneum, 1972, New York
2. Reconstruction [1865-1877] Edited by Richard N. Current. Prentice Hall, Inc. Englewood N.J. 1965
3. The Story of Illinois; Theodore Calvin Pease Third edition, revised and enlarged Marguerite Jenison Pease, University of Chicago Press, Chicago and London 1965
4. Good Medicine The first 150 Years of Rush-Presbyterian-St. Lukes Hospital Jim Bowman, Chicago Review Press, 1987
5. Henry, Best Town in Illinois by a Dam Site. Helen G. Raffensperger M and D Printing Company, Inc. Henry, Illinois
6. Natural Medicine, Plants That Heal, Joel Swerdlow, National Geographic
John Raffensperger, MD
4771 Tradewinds
Sanbel, Fl. 33957
Email [email protected]
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