“Believe me,” Elizabeth says, “I understand. My first dissection filled me with dread. I can remember being sleepless with worry the night before, and then when Abraham made the first cut, the whole process was remarkably scientific. And beautiful.”
Whitman ponders this, then says: “What about all the accounts of medical students desecrating the bodies?”
“Ah, of course.” Miss Blackwell nods. “Lena herself told me of the time she witnessed a medical student prank. One evening, shortly after they first met, Abraham asked her to meet him in the dissection lab at New York University Medical College. The room was dark, and so she lit a candle. A half dozen half-dissected cadavers came into view, but no Abraham. She shined her light on a corpse dressed like a doctor, his head propped up with a wooden rod. A sign around his neck read Happy Birthday. The Stowes decided that night never to condone the mistreatment of the human body, and made that vow part of the Women’s Medical College of Manhattan’s mission. We will make medical progress through anatomical dissection while respecting the human body.”
“That’s a start,” Walt admits, even while thinking that the war of public opinion might be too lopsided to overcome.
“We must keep at it,” Elizabeth says. “Will you accompany me to a meeting tomorrow with a possible cadaver supplier?”
He’s about to say yes, of course, when a knock at the back door startles them.
Lena’s family has arrived.
Darlene Hathaway is a thin, delicate woman about the same size as Lena. In her early sixties, her dark hair has grayed and her posture stooped. Her skin has that worn quality that comes with years, but she is fit and strong, as her daughter was. She says nothing as she steps past Walt and Elizabeth. Lena’s two brothers, in their forties, follow their mother into the room, with a pine casket on their shoulders. Both wear black pantaloons, white shirts, and dark wool coats, and Walt knows from his conversation with Lena that both her brothers are married, that they each have four or five children, and that they live near Mrs. Hathaway to help her maintain the family farm. Lena’s father died of cholera a decade earlier.
When they see Lena’s body, they let out a groan.
“Mrs. Hathaway.” He holds out his hand. “My name is Walt Whitman. Lena asked me to help run the college in her absence.”
But the woman ignores him.
The brothers set the casket down next to the table and join their mother in front of the body.
“Let us pray.” Darlene Hathaway bows her head and waits for the others to do likewise. Her voice is strong, confident. “To thee, Lord, we commend the soul of your handmaid Lena, and her daughter, that being dead to this world they may live to thee; and whatever sins they have committed in this life through human frailty, do thou in thy most merciful goodness forgive. Through Christ our Lord. Amen.”
“Amen,” Walt says.
Mrs. Hathaway looks at him as if he has just done something horrible. “Jeb, Nathaniel,” she says. “Be careful with your sister.”
Jeb, the taller of the two brothers, takes hold of Lena’s feet. He’s thick and muscular, his hands big and powerful. Nathaniel is short and stocky, his hands pudgy, and he bears little resemblance to Lena, her mother, or Jeb. Must look like his father, Walt thinks. Nathaniel slides his arms underneath Lena’s shoulders, and as they lift the body off the table, it bends at the hips. The pressure pops off the two top buttons in the back, and the dress opens enough to expose the black thread holding the chest together.
Her mother rushes to cover her daughter’s skin. “How could you?” She helps her sons lower the body into the casket, then tucks the loose fabric underneath.
“Her body is material now,” Miss Blackwell says. “Her soul is with God.”
“I wouldn’t talk about God in this room,” Mrs. Hathaway says. “Not if I were you.”
“We loved your daughter, Mrs. Hathaway,” Whitman says. “We wouldn’t do anything to harm her.”
“No church will take her body now.” Mrs. Hathaway lifts her veil. “That’s what you’ve done to her.” She takes a step closer to Walt. In this light, Mrs. Hathaway looks so much like an older Lena, with the same full lips and china-doll face, and Walt knows he shouldn’t, but he can’t help himself: He reaches out and touches her cheek. Mrs. Hathaway slaps him so hard he sees tiny flashes of light. “Stay away from me.”
Mrs. Hathaway leans over Lena, rubs her forehead. “My daughter.” Her fingers trace the outline of her nose, eyebrows, and cheeks. Her fingers stop just short of the stitches in her head.
Jeb puts his arm around his mother. “Let’s take her home.”
Nathaniel prepares to lift the casket. “Jeb’s right, Mother. It’s time.”
Jeb slides his hands under the pine box. The brothers nod at one another and lift.
Walt steps in front of them. “I’m going to prove that Lena didn’t kill Abraham.”
“That man.” Mrs. Hathaway hesitates, then covers her face again with the veil.
The brothers carry the coffin around Whitman, then Miss Blackwell, and out of the college. Mrs. Hathaway gently takes the bundled fetus into her arms and follows.
Walt calls out, “It wasn’t easy for us, either.”
The Hathaways don’t turn around.
“We have to press on,” he continues. “Lena understood that.”
The footsteps trail off and the door shuts. From the window, Walt watches them load the body, then drive away. The wagon disappears around the corner, and they are alone again.
An emotional Miss Blackwell excuses herself to her room upstairs, which leaves Walt in the dissection room alone. When he closes his eyes, all he hears are the chants outside. Dissection stops the resurrection. Dissection stops the resurrection.
He has had enough.
Chapter 13
Walt Whitman steps out onto the porch, his eyes blinded by the sun’s reflection off the snow piled high on the sidewalk. The Hathaway visit has left him feeling empty and angry, and he wants a confrontation. The protestors’ chants grow louder at the sight of him. Dissection stops the resurrection! Still blinded by the sunlight, Walt feels for the railing beside him, steadies himself, and raises his voice. “For God’s sake, leave them alone!”
The protestors recede, and Father Allen steps forward in the company of a strong bald man. Across the street, a gaggle of men with empty eyes and long, cold faces skulk in the shadows of the grog house, as they do every day, watching.
“My son,” Father Allen says, “you don’t understand what you do.” His coat is too small for his long, muscular arms.
“What I do understand is that you’ve turned the city against this college,” Whitman says. “Any hope we had of saving Mrs. Stowe was crushed by your movement.”
“Whoever sheds the blood of man, by man shall his blood be shed; for in the image of God has God made man.”
“But she didn’t kill anyone.”
Father Allen says, “God works in mysterious ways.”
Walt descends the staircase to the sidewalk, his boot pressing into the snow.
The priest steps closer to meet him. “God commanded me to gather his people here to call you to repentance.”
“What these students do here,” Walt says, “is important to the future of all people.”
“Important enough to desecrate the human body?” the bald man says.
Whitman takes a deep breath. “Without anatomical dissection, medical knowledge will never progress.” He’s trying to remember Elizabeth’s argument. He hopes the students cannot overhear. “They might have stopped the cholera breakout a few years ago.”
“Progression at the expense of the human soul,” the bald man says, “is not progress at all.”
“God gives us what we need,” the priest says. “The cholera outbreak was a means to an end.”
Walt steps so close he can sm
ell the priest’s tobacco breath. “Are you saying that thousands of people dying is God’s will?”
“I am saying that I don’t need to understand God’s plan,” the priest says. “Only that it is his plan.”
“Abraham and Lena Stowe’s deaths were not part of God’s plan.” Whitman is shaking now.
The priest puts his hand on Walt’s shoulder. “I am not the enemy here,” he says. “God loves you. He loves those medical students, misguided as they are.” The priest smiles now, a warm and welcoming smile. “God wants them to stop. That’s why we’re here. To get them to stop.”
For a moment, Walt almost believes him. He feels love and concern emanating from the priest, not hate and intolerance. These folks believe in their cause. That’s what makes them so dangerous.
Whitman pulls back from Father Allen.
The priest says, “You know what I’m saying is true, don’t you?”
“No,” Walt starts, and then something’s wrong. He closes his eyes. He’s sweating. Maybe it’s the lack of sleep or the stress or the grief, but he stumbles backward, his vision blurs, and he loses consciousness—
—until he hears familiar voices, not those of the priest or protestors but those from beyond, and when he opens his eyes, Abraham and Lena Stowe are floating in a bright light, dressed in white robes, their chest cavities gone, their hearts nothing but pulsating light, singing:
O living always, always dying!
O the burials of me past and present,
O me while I stride ahead, material, visible, imperious as ever;
O me, what I was for years, now dead, (I lament not, I am content;)
O to disengage myself from those corpses of me, which I turn and look at where I cast them,
To pass on, (O living! always living!) and leave the corpses behind.
Walt closes his eyes, then opens them again.
“Are you okay, sir?” Father Allen leans over him.
“How did you do that?”
“Let’s get you inside,” Father Allen says.
The protestors place their hands on Whitman, lift him high above their heads, and carry him through the front door of the women’s college and into the classroom, where they lay him on the floor. The priest bends down, places his hand on Walt’s forehead. “You’re not well,” he says. “You need rest.”
“I’m fine,” Walt says even though he is not. His body feels hollow, his head hurts, and he can’t stop shivering. He tries to stand, but the priest stops him.
“Rest,” Father Allen says.
The protestors encircle him, and Whitman can sense their anxiety, and with their numbers in the small classroom space, it hits him all at once that this is exactly what they’ve wanted all along. They’re here to cleanse the earth, and he’s the only one who can stop it.
Behind the priest, Walt hears the bald man say, “Father, the Lord has delivered this place into our hands.”
A growl ripples through the protestors, and then they thump their feet on the wood floor. Whitman sits up, calls for them to stop, but his own protests are drowned out by the rumbles.
Above him, upstairs, he hears a commotion. The students know something is happening. Their footsteps scramble as they move toward the back of the college.
“No, Jedediah,” Father Allen says to the man. “Not this way.”
“But God has told me as much in my heart.” Jedediah Matthews is several inches taller than the priest, and the other protestors recognize him as a leader too. He pulls them closer and he raises his voice. “The Lord has commanded me to destroy this place so that they may do no more evil unto the children of men.”
“But the students live here,” Walt says. “Have you thought about them?”
Matthews ignores Whitman. “Father, this is what we’ve been praying for.”
“Out,” Father Allen says, his voice betraying panic. “All of you.”
The two men glare at each other, and then Matthews exhorts the protestors. “What will you do? Will you let this opportunity pass? Will you turn your backs on God?”
The group stills.
Father Allen stands on a chair. “Brothers and sisters. God has said through his servant Paul: ‘Therefore thou art inexcusable, O man, whosoever thou art that judgest: for wherein thou judgest another, thou condemnest thyself; for thou that judgest doest the same things.’ We protest with our hearts and words, not with violence and destruction.”
Whitman pushes himself to his feet and tries to step in between the two leaders and their followers, but Matthews blocks his way. He’s stronger than Walt first thought, and he knows how to fight.
“You have lost your way, Father Allen,” Matthews says. “You must have the courage of the Lord to do as he commands. He has not brought us to this moment today to retreat.”
Matthews knocks the priest to the floor.
That leaves Whitman. He steps in front of Matthews. “I won’t let you do this.”
The man lunges at him. Walt ducks, then hits him in the mouth.
Matthews kicks Whitman in the ribs and shoves him to the ground next to the priest.
And then they come. From under the dissection sign march the students arm in arm. Elizabeth Blackwell, Marie Zakrzewska, Karina Emsbury, Olive Perschon, and Patricia Onderdonk. Their faces are haggard but fierce. The protestors might take the college, but they’ll have to go through these women first.
Walt pushes himself to his feet, and Matthews gets ready for more. The whole room is about to explode, when comes a swirl of voices:
Elizabeth Blackwell: “We’ve done nothing to deserve this—”
Father Allen: “My brothers and sisters, please—”
Jedediah Matthews: “The Lord has delivered this place into our hands—”
A beautiful woman, pale and thin, with shiny blue eyes, steps forward from the crowd: “They dissected my husband,” she cries. “They damned his soul!”
The protestors heave. They shove tight, and become one body—
—and the mob attacks the college with full force. They overturn tables, empty jars, and shred books. Walt fights them as they come, deterring them as he can, but he and the students are simply outnumbered, and so he focuses on protecting them, helping Miss Blackwell move them to safety while the mob smashes the instruments of medical education. They are ripping textbooks to bits, tearing the anatomical drawings from the wall. They make a pile in the center of the room, stuff the crumpled-up book pages in the cracks, and douse them with whiskey. The young widow tosses a lit match into the center, and all they can do is watch as the fire leaps to the ceiling.
And then it happens—
Azariah Smith bursts through the entryway, calling for them to stop. Surprised, everyone turns around, and in lumbers a man with a flushed face and straggled auburn hair. Isaiah Rynders. A long scar starts between his eyebrows and runs up over his forehead. He limps inside and goes straight to Matthews, who instantly stops.
“Mr. Rynders.”
“Put the fire out.”
Rynders directs the protestors to the well behind the college, and together they pass buckets of water from the back, in through the kitchen, and into the dissection room and classroom, tossing water on the fire until it is out.
When it is, Rynders turns on Matthews, face red and yelling. “What the hell are you on about? I got the whole city of New York to worry about and now you’re making more trouble.”
“But, Mr. Rynders, this college—”
“Shut your gapper, you hear me? These poor young women, after everything they’ve been through, and here you are making things worse.” He stands on his tiptoes, makes eye contact with Elizabeth Blackwell. “Miss, my apologies for the overexuberance of these fellows. They, and those who follow them, are obviously idiots, and I’m grateful to young Azariah here for alerting me to the seriousness of the si
tuation so I might put an end to it. It goes without saying that I will cover the costs of damages.”
Whitman can’t believe Azariah is with Isaiah Rynders. All the events of the past couple of days come back to him with a new understanding: Rynders planted Azariah in the jail after Walt tried to save Lena Stowe, which means Rynders knows everything Whitman has done since. He turns to Azariah, but the boy looks away.
“But, sir,” Matthews tries again.
Rynders need only make eye contact to shut him down.
“Where’s the priest?”
Father Allen calls out from the back corner.
Rynders goes to him, helps him to his feet. “Why don’t you take these folks home, Father? I think you’ve done enough here for one day.”
The priest can only nod in shock. He gestures to the protestors to follow him, and they all do, maneuvering around the smoldering fire, save Jedediah Matthews, who remains standing in the same spot opposite Whitman. It takes several minutes for the protestors to clear out, and when they have all gone, Rynders approaches the bald man, shaking his head. “What am I going to do with you?”
“Mr. Rynders, I was only following orders.”
“That’s the one thing you clearly were not doing. I want to see you in my office in one hour. Understand?”
The man nods.
“Now leave.”
Matthews hesitates only a moment before he exits through the front door.
All who remain in the room are the students, Whitman, Rynders, and Azariah.
Mr. Rynders approaches Elizabeth Blackwell. “Let me personally apologize for the events of today, and may I also offer my condolences for the deaths of Lena and Abraham Stowe. It is a real tragedy, and I admire the strength and fortitude you’ve displayed since their deaths. May God be with you, and should anything threaten your well-being, please contact me personally. No such calamity shall reoccur. Now please excuse me.”
Rynders nearly runs into Walt. “Ah, Mr. Whitman. How nice to see you again.”
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