Thoreau at Devil's Perch

by B. B. Oak

  The mere mention of ladies changed Peck’s demeanor, and he coolly looked about him. “You are quite right, Doctor,” he said in the charming, easy manner he has come to be known for since removing to Plumford. He bowed to me, ignored Thoreau entirely, and strode away, Badger in his wake.

  Henry did not seem the least perturbed by his argument with Peck. Perhaps he is used to contentious discussions. “I have gleaned no additional information concerning our Negro this evening,” he told me. “Everyone I spoke to expressed mild sympathy that a black man had met with an accident in Plumford and much puzzlement as to why he would have come here in the first place. He was not seen alive by anyone.”

  I had expected as much.Yet as futile as our investigation has been thus far, we agreed to continue our inquiries rather than give up. I was called to take my turn at bat, and Henry bade me farewell, declaring that he’d had enough of Plumford for the time being. He did not seem to think much of our fair little town.

  And he would have thought far less of it had he stayed. It was drawing dark, and the score was ninety-eight to forty-three, with my side ahead, when Rufus Badger came to bat again. Perhaps I was a mite too confident, for I gave the man an easy throw. He struck the ball with such a force it looked to take the leather cover off. It soared far down the Green, but a scout on my team got to it and launched a throw toward mighty Ira Munger, who was in position near third to soak Badger as he rushed toward home stake. Ira stands a good head taller than most of us, and in his high-crowned straw hat he looks a mythical Gigantes. He could well be the strongest man in town. In his butcher shop down below the dam he swings his heavy cleaver so hard through meat and bone I can hear it in the office, and Grandfather has more than once called on Ira to hold down men for painful surgery.

  The flight of the ball carried Ira near Sgt. Badger’s path, and as Ira extended his hands to meet the throw Badger purposely rammed into him to divert his run. The force of the blindsided collision was most powerful, but as Ira fell backward, he managed to take hold of Badger, twist him around in the air, and smash to the ground on top of him. Hands tight around Badger’s throat, he butted his head down on the sergeant’s forehead. I calculated another blow like that would open both men’s skulls, so I ran to them and pulled Ira off. He looked at me with such blind rage that I should have feared getting the same rough treatment as Badger. But as I have grown up knowing Ira, who often came to Tuttle Farm to slaughter pigs, I was not affrighted.

  “Go easy,” I told him in a low voice.

  Ira nodded, and I saw the ire wane from his eyes. Without another look at Badger, he started to walk away. It was over for him.

  Badger, however, heaved himself up and took a blackjack from his coat. In the next instant I managed to divert a crushing blow to Ira’s skull with a blow of my own to Badger’s shoulder. He glowered at me and raised his weapon again.

  “Sergeant Badger! Halt!” I heard Capt. Peck shout with the full authority of a military officer. Badger obeyed the command on the instant and stood stiff and still.

  Capt. Peck marched over to us but not with his usual firm stride. Noticing his slight limp, I looked at him more closely than I had earlier in the evening. To my professional eye, he appeared physically deteriorated. Not only was he moving in some pain, but his handsome countenance, usually lit up with a debonair smile, was gray and pinched.

  “Pardon Sergeant Badger’s hot head,” he said to me. “He misses battle and goes looking for it in the wrong places.”

  “Swinging a blackjack at an unarmed man is in itself wrong,” I said.

  “Not always,” Capt. Peck replied, but he took from Badger the length of leather with a ball of iron wrapped at its tip. “Rufus, go and cool down with a mug of cider.” He tossed his man a coin, and Badger lurched off.

  The rest of the players resumed their positions, and my team won the game shortly thereafter. But the fight had taken the fun out of the play, and all trudged quietly away, sobered, I think, by this glimpse into the violent side of our natures so easily let loose by just a game. Thoreau’s point had been proven without his even being present to make it.

  JULIA’S NOTEBOOK

  Friday, 7 August

  Molly could not be found in the kitchen this afternoon. That girl avoids work like the plague. When first I came to Plumford, she seemed eager enough to cook and clean, but of late she has been so sluggish and tardy-gaited that I am at my wits’ end. What do I know about keeping house or keeping servants? Not that I would dare call Molly Munger a servant to her face. She is the “hired girl,” free to come and go as she likes. Unfortunately, she likes to go home early and come here late.

  But hope springs eternal in the human breast, and with the hope that Molly had not left early and was doing something useful about the house, I went in search of her. I found her in the doctor’s office beyond the kitchen, sitting at her ease and tittering whilst Adam amused her by dangling his pocket watch in front of her broad, smooth face.

  “Pardon me for interrupting your sport, Molly,” I said, trying to sound as sarcastic and scolding as Grandmother Walker used to sound when dealing with her household help (or my own young self, for that matter).

  Apparently I lacked sufficient gravitas, for Molly made no attempt to stifle her glee. “Oh, I don’t mind the interrupt, Miss Julia. But Doc Adam might.”

  “Not at all,” Adam assured me. “I was about to end my experiment anyway. Molly cannot stop giggling long enough to focus her attention.”

  “Well, I can’t help but find your notion comical,” she retorted, pert as you please.

  “What notion is that?” I said.

  “Why, Doc Adam thinks he can put me to sleep by waving his watch afore my eyes. Don’t that beat all get out?”

  I found it quite fascinating. “Did you mean to mesmerize her, Adam?”

  “No, I give no countenance to such humbug as the curative power of magnets. It is the curative power of the mind that interests me.”

  Apparently it did not interest Molly. “A good dose of calomel might cure me better.”

  “Calomel is a preparation of mercury, and mercury is a powerful poison,” Adam informed her patiently. “You are too young to habituate yourself to such a strong remedy for such a common ailment as constipation.”

  “But I am uncommonly blocked up, Doc!”

  “I shall make you a preparation that can do you no harm, Molly,” he said. “Castor oil mixed with cassia, fennel, and half a dram of jalap for good measure. Stop by for the potion before you go home.”

  Molly thanked him and languidly made her way back to the kitchen.

  “She will most likely take her customary midday nap in the buttery now,” I told Adam. “If constipation is the reason Molly Munger has been so indolent of late, let us hope your potion works.”

  “I had hoped hypnotism would.”

  “But how, Adam?”

  “When Molly was in a hypnotic state, I planned to instill in her mind the idea that her bowels would soon perform the desired action.” He must have seen doubt in my eyes. “Really, Julia, such a method has been proven to be amazingly effective in curing a great many maladies.”

  “You have used it before?”

  “In point of fact, no. But I have been reading a highly advanced scientific book on the subject. It was published in London two years ago.” He lifted the tome off his desk and handed it to me. The title read Neurypnology; or the Rationale of Nervous Sleep. “The author is Dr. James Braid. He invented the term hypnotism to describe his method of inducing nervous sleep. He explains his procedure in this book, and I was attempting to follow it with Molly. Unfortunately, she could not take me seriously.”

  “Nor can I,” I admitted, handing back the book.

  “I had hoped you of all people would understand, Julia.”

  He looked so disappointed that I attempted to defend myself. “Why expect me to understand the latest medical methods, Adam? My training has been solely in art.”

  “And
as an artist you must appreciate the mind’s ability to produce thoughts of a highly creative nature. Well, the mind has the ability to produce thoughts that control physical functions too.”

  I considered this a moment and recalled the only time in my life that I had been seriously ill. “I am reminded of Magic,” I said.

  Adam looked even more disappointed. “What I am talking about has nothing to do with magic, Julia.”

  “Does it not? Do you remember how ill I became after my mother died?”

  “Yes, of course. Grief incapacitated you to such a degree that you could not leave your bed. Grandfather feared that you too had fallen victim to Consumption.”

  “You would visit me every day, smelling of fresh air and grass,” I said.“And one morning you brought me a poor, sickly kitten from the farm.You told me she had been abandoned by her mother and needed my tender attentions or she would perish.”

  “Ah, yes,” Adam said. “You named the kitten Magic.”

  “And so absorbed did I become in making Magic well that I ceased to dwell on my recent loss and soon became well myself.”

  “You are right, Julia,” Adam acknowledged. “Magic’s effect upon you is an excellent example of what I am talking about. The workings of the mind influence the workings of the body, and I would much prefer to induce my patients to use their own thoughts to cure themselves than dose them with harsh drugs. I do not put much stock in purgatives and opiates, but most doctors have great faith in their healing power. Hence their patients do too. Dr. Braid calls this the power of suggestion. When he put his patients in a hypnotic state, this same power of suggestion actuated healing without medicines of any sort. Severe headaches and seizures were cured. Even rheumatic pain and epilepsy.”

  “That is indeed most remarkable, Adam.”

  “Furthermore, a good many minor surgical operations have been performed painlessly during hypnosis.”

  “The more I hear, the more impressed I become.”

  “Then hark this, Julia. One of Dr. Braid’s patients was a young mother who was breast-feeding. She was producing too little milk to feed her babe, and Dr. Braid hypnotized her to secrete more. He began with only one breast, and after it filled with milk she complained of feeling lopsided. So he hypnotized her again and suggested she increase secretion in the other breast. And so she did!” Adam smiled sheepishly. “Forgive me, Julia. You must find such medical frankness indelicate.”

  I suppose I should have, but I did not. “Please continue,” I urged.

  “Well, enough about mammary functions. Dr. Braid also discovered that hypnosis produces an extraordinary revival of the memory. He calls this hypnotic hypermnesia. His subjects can recall, in the greatest detail, long-forgotten incidents from their childhoods.”

  “How pleasing that must be,” I said. “My most cherished memories are those of my mother before she became ill. Unfortunately, they have dimmed over the years.”

  “Perhaps I could help you revive them by means of hypnosis, Julia.”

  “Can that really be possible?”

  “Surely it is worth a try.”

  I could see how eager he was to experiment. Indeed, I too was eager to give it a try. But I would not give in so easily. “Let us negotiate, Adam. I will agree to be your subject if you agree to be mine. Allow me to paint your portrait.”

  From the way he winced one would have thought I had suggested pulling out all his strong, white teeth. “You do not want to waste your fine talent on a likeness of me,” he said. “Nor can I spare the time to sit for you.”

  Determined to capture his features before I left Plumford, I persisted. “Then let me at least make a plaster cast of your face, Adam. That would take half an hour at most.”

  “Very well,” he conceded. “But I believe you to be the winner of this bargain. I shall have my poor mug smothered in wet plaster, whereas you shall have pleasant remembrances of your mother.”

  He sat me down in the consultation chair by the desk and extracted his timepiece from his waistcoat pocket. “Dr. Braid has subjects focus on his lancet case, but I think a watch is less intimidating,” he said. He held the watch about a foot from my face, dangling it by its chain. “All you have to do is keep your body relaxed, your eyes fixed on the watch, and your mind riveted on its movement, Julia. You will not lose consciousness. You will simply descend into a deep, restful state of mental concentration. You will hear my voice and obey my instructions. And at the end of this session I will clap my hands, and you will immediately come out of the hypnotic state.”

  I did as I was told, and it wasn’t long before my lids began to close involuntarily. From that moment on I remember nothing till I heard the sharp sound of a clap near my ear. My eyes flew open, and I saw Adam kneeling before me.

  “Please tell me all is well with you, Julia,” he said.

  “Why should it not be?”

  “Because I have acted imprudently.” He handed me his handkerchief. “Dry your eyes and try to forgive me.”

  I touched my cheek. It was moist from tears. “Whatever happened?”

  “I asked you to go back to when you were a girl so that you could relive happy times with your mother. Instead, you began to relive her last agonizing hours. Go back farther, I kept urging you, and at last you did.”

  “To before she became ill?”

  “Long, long before that.”

  “Over twenty years ago when I was but a babe?”

  “To before you were even born.”

  “You speak in riddles, Adam.”

  “I do not mean to. But your recollection was so unexpected and confusing.”

  “Just tell me what I told you.”

  “You claimed you were in a garden encircled by colonnades and filled with fig and olive trees.You said it overlooked the Tiber River, and you could see a large amphitheater in the distance.You must have been recalling Rome.”

  “But I have never been there,” I told Adam. “Nor to any part of Italy. My father never obtained a portrait commission there, and we could ill afford to travel for our own amusement. Besides, we speak not a word of Italian between us.”

  “Yet you speak Latin quite fluently.”

  “I know nothing of that ancient language, Adam.”

  “You must have picked up a smattering of Latin somehow,” he insisted. “You rattled off a few phrases of it whilst in a hypnotic state.”

  “Really? What exactly did I say?”

  Adam shrugged. “My own Latin is not as good as it could be. I know just enough to understand medical terms.”

  “Well, never mind about that. Recount more of this vision of mine.”

  “You said there was a statue of Dionysus in this garden, overlooking a shallow pool.”

  “Were there other people about?”

  He hesitated. “There were a number of them.”

  “Did I describe them?”

  “You said the men were wearing togas and the women stolas.”

  “How wonderful! Pray, who were these antiquated people?”

  Adam looked away from me. “The rest of what you said was rather vague.”

  “But my description of the garden sounds so explicit. Can you not tell me more details?”

  “I cannot,” Adam said. “You suddenly started crying again, and I clapped my hands to awaken you.”

  “Why can I not recall any of this?”

  “Most likely because I did not instruct you to. And that was for the best. Otherwise you would have been left with fresh memories of your dear mother’s passing.”

  “But now I am left most curious about my Roman remembrance. Could that too have been dredged up from my past?”

  “I thought you said you have never been to Rome, Julia.”

  “Well, not in this life. Perhaps in a previous one, though.”

  “Nonsense,” Adam said. “It was merely a dream made more vivid by your unnatural sleep.”

  “Well, whatever it was, you must hypnotize me again and bring me back there, Ada
m. Only this time pray instruct me to remember the visit.”

  He stood up abruptly and frowned down at me. “I will do no such thing. This experiment should not be repeated. Who knows where it could lead us.”

  “That is what makes it so exciting!”

  “No, Julia. That is what makes it so perilous. Please do not argue with me about it anymore.”

  I did not. I have found that arguing with Adam only makes him dig in his heels all the deeper. We are much alike in that regard, he and I. But I have not given up trying to persuade him to hypnotize me again. How I wish he would cease being so protective toward me. It can be most irritating.

  ADAM’S JOURNAL

  Saturday, August 8th

  Julia rushed into the barn whilst I was grooming Napoleon this morning. “Come quickly, Adam. There’s a badly injured man outside.”

  Went out to see a lathered nag hitched to a rickety buckboard in front of the house. A farmer I knew to be Mr. Herd was standing by the horse, and his son Hiram was standing in the wagon. They both looked to be all right. Hiram beckoned with great energy, and I ran to the wagon along with Julia. There I saw an insensible man lying on the wagon platform, bleeding from the head. I lifted myself into the back of the wagon and began to examine him. It was difficult to see his head injury through the matted, blood-soaked hair covering it.

  “Our bull got loose,” young Hiram said. “Found him in the far pasture. This poor fellow was lyin’ close by him.”

  “He was trespassin’!” Farmer Herd shouted.

  The boy ignored his father. “Sultan must have gored him, and I fear he is dying.”

  “Is he still breathing, Adam?” Julia said.

  “Yes. Therefore he might still be saved.”

  Herd and his boy helped me carry the man into the office as Julia cradled his head. We put him onto the examination table and stripped him of his coat, waistcoat, and shirt.

  “Looks to be an Injun,” Herd said when the man’s ruddy torso was revealed.