The Road to Wellville

by T. Coraghessan Boyle

  And so, for a consideration, he’d let Will have the right to his patent in order to set up an independent company, the Battle Creek Toasted Corn Flake Company (which Will was already calling Kellogg’s Toasted Corn Flake Company), with the provision that the Doctor himself retain the controlling interest, as director and majority stockholder. It seemed like a good deal. The Doctor got $35,000 in cash and better than fifty percent of the stock—and, most important, he was able to make money without sullying himself with the machinations of commerce or having to answer inconvenient questions about the tax-exempt status of the San and its enterprises. But Will turned on him. His own brother. Turned on him as if he were a stranger, an enemy, a two-headed snake in the road.

  And the irony of it was that Will had taken one of the Doctor’s proudest virtues—his thrift—and turned it against him. For in lieu of salary increases during the past year, the Doctor had issued small blocks of stock to his physicians and staff, as a way of saving himself some ready cash and benefiting his employees with a sort of enforced savings. Fine. So much the better. But Will—and here the Doctor could feel his heart squeeze like a sponge wrung dry—Will got hold of a go-getting St. Louis insurance man, raised some capital, and went round surreptitiously buying up all those shares at something like half their value till he had a controlling interest. Coldly, slyly, like the backstabber he was, he’d waited till they’d sat down to a board meeting, peered out from beneath the brim of the peasant’s cap he always insisted on wearing, and growled, “You’ll make no more decisions in this company, John.”

  It was maddening. Sickening. A real true testimony to the venality and depravity of human nature—and he didn’t just blame Will; he blamed his doctors, too, for selling out. They’d paid the price, though, ten times over. Half a dozen were already gone, and he had his sights set on turning over another little group, too, just as soon as he could find superior replacements.

  Yes. And as if that weren’t bad enough, there was the Sanitarium business. While John Harvey Kellogg couldn’t take credit for inventing that—there had been some fifty spas and water cures operating in the U.S. alone when he’d taken over the Western Health Reform Institute in 1876—he could certainly claim full and undiluted credit for turning the foundering Adventist enterprise from a twenty-bed clapboard dungeon with a handful of rheumatic patients into one of the greatest and most modern surgical hospitals in the world—and turning a nice profit in the process. And what was his reward? No sooner had he done it, no sooner had he single-handedly established the Battle Creek System and made Battle Creek, Michigan, the health mecca of the world, than a dozen imitators, Post and the Phelps brothers among them, sprang up to challenge him. Post’s La Vita Inn was nothing more than a factory adjunct now, a place where they stored old rotary ovens and malt tubs, or so the Doctor’s spies told him. And the Phelpses, operating on the despicable and cynical principle of reversing everything the Doctor stood for—they served meat, beer, spirits; they even had a smoking room—had gone under in less than two years’ time. But the building was still there, just across the street from the San, and the Doctor had to look at it every day of his life. “The world’s biggest fieldstone building,” as they touted it, had been picked up at auction by Charlie Post and leased to Bernarr Macfadden, a harebrained, posturing, bare-chested, dumbbell-thumping parody of a health professional, who’d christened the place “The Macfadden Health Home” and used it as a front to push his own breakfast food, Strengtho. God, how it rankled.

  But it got worse. On the heels of the health prospectors came the confidence men, gypsies, root peddlers and all the rest. A man calling himself Frank J. Kellogg—the “Anti-Fat” Kellogg—showed up one day with a birth certificate validating his right to the name and an alcohol-laced formula for the swill he passed off as “Kellogg’s Safe Fat Reducer.” The Doctor’s attorneys told him there wasn’t a thing he could do about it.

  And now there was this business with George. Not content with the hundred dollars he’d extorted in November, he was back with a new scheme. Earlier in the day—and this was what was getting the Doctor down, this was the source of his funk, George, George yet again—the boy had appeared in his office with two men. The Doctor had just come out of surgery and he was settling down to a quick lunch at his desk, simultaneously dictating some two dozen letters and consulting with Murphy, Lillian’s keeper, over the chimp’s sudden loss of appetite, when there was a knock at the door. The knock itself was unusual: the entire staff and all but the very most important patients knew not to intrude on the Doctor unannounced; only in the direst emergency was he to be disturbed. Dab got up from his stenograph to answer the door, and there they were, an unholy alliance if ever the Doctor had seen one.

  George was a surprise. He was clean-shaven, dressed in nearly presentable clothes, including a pair of boots that were merely scuffed and not yet toe-sprung and down-at-the-heel, and he looked as if he’d actually found his way in and out of a bathtub at some point in the past week. The man to his right was a big blustery older fellow, somewhere in his middle sixties, the Doctor guessed, with a ridiculous beard and a vest made of some sheeny material in a solid gold color. The other one, nearly as young as George and dressed in a cheap but vulgarly fashionable way, had the easy good looks and artificial swagger of the apprentice confidence man. No one moved. No one said a word. George broke out in a smile.

  It took the Doctor a full five seconds to react, running the emotional gamut from surprise to bewilderment to outrage. Dab blanched. Murphy, a sinuous, bony contortionist of a man whose face seemed composed entirely of eyebrow and nose, writhed deferentially in his seat. “What is the meaning of this?” the Doctor sputtered.

  “Begging your pardon, Father,” George said, edging into the room with his escort, “I know I really should have applied for an audience with all the other supplicants, but I felt, well, I felt you’d want to see me.”

  “Want to see you?” The Doctor was incredulous. “See you about what?” The boy infuriated him with his oily grin and the familiar, unctuous way he made his little pronouncements.

  “We have business.”

  The older man, the one with the dyed beard and coruscating vest, made as if to speak, but the Doctor cut him off. Glaring at each of them in succession, an erupting volcano of physiologic fury, Dr. Kellogg spat out his words as if they were about to ignite in his mouth: “I have no business with you. Not now. Not ever.”

  The little group stood uncertainly just inside the door. George rubbed his hands together as if to warm them. His grin was unnatural, hateful, a display of cankered gums and yellowed teeth that was enough to turn the Doctor’s stomach. Finally, he said, “Ah, but Father, there I think you’re mistaken.”

  What followed was one of the sorriest spectacles the Doctor had ever witnessed. Though he waved them impatiently out the door, Dab and Murphy providing enforcement, such as it was, and though he kept them stewing out there in the hallway a good forty-five minutes, it was clear that they had no intention of leaving. Of course, he could have had them forcibly ejected from the premises, but then he ran the risk of having George create a scene. No, he decided, he would have to see them—and listen to them—though it galled him. He took his time with the letters and his advice to Murphy (which was, essentially, to beef up Lillian’s rations with Protose scraps from the kitchen and scour her bowels with psyllium and hijiki), then finally rose from his desk with a sigh and threw back the door to admit the interlopers.

  Murphy made a quick exit, his eyebrows crawling like caterpillars across his face, and Dab took up a defensive posture behind his Chief. George’s smile was gone now, and the trio looked all business as they marched in the door to the strains of “What Child Is This?” echoing down the corridor.

  The Doctor didn’t offer them a seat. “All right, what is it?” he snapped, the smoked eyeshade pulled down over his brow like the visor of a helmet.

  The older one started in right away, words pouring out of him like the gas
from a fermenting tub. He was Mr. Goodloe H. Bender, Esquire, and he was pleased to present his colleagues, a Mr. Something-or-Other—the Doctor was too irritated at this point to concentrate on trivialities—and, of course, the good and celebrated Doctor’s own son, George. “Quite a boy, George,” Bender gassed, “a veritable fountain of business acumen and penetrating wisdom. You must be proud of him.” Was Dr. Kellogg aware that George had joined them in a business venture? No? Well, and here Bender gassed on at such length about breakfast foods and carloads of dent com and factory space and the like that the Doctor found his eyes clouding with rage.

  Again, he cut him off. “Sir,” he snapped, “may I remind you that I am a busy man? How in God’s name can you imagine that any of this concerns me?”

  A conspiratorial glance passed between the older man and his cohort. George’s grin reappeared and it flickered briefly across the lips of the others. “But Doctor,” Bender boomed, “you haven’t even asked the name of our little concern….”

  John Harvey Kellogg gritted his teeth. He had three meetings yet to attend, two hours of patient consultations, his evening lecture to prepare and the typescript of his paper “Nuts May Save the Race” to proofread. All this, and here he was, stalled in his own office, listening to this egregious ass raving on about nothing. “To repeat, sir, since you seem to be hard of hearing—or penetration—I am a busy man and I have no time whatever for—”

  “Kellogg’s,” Bender pronounced, “Kellogg’s Per-Fo Company, Incorporated, of Battle Creek, Michigan. What do you think of that? Catchy, isn’t it?”

  The Doctor had begun pacing behind the desk, but now he pulled up short. “All right,” he demanded, “out with it. What do you want?”

  This seemed to be the other one’s cue. He took a step forward, attempted a nervous smile, worked the brim of the hat in his hand. “We were just interested to know if you’d be interested in backing the company, that is, we can offer you a block of stock, if you’re interested—”

  “At a bargain price,” Bender chimed in. “I really don’t expect that our little company would affect you to any great degree or cause any, uh, shall we say, confusion among the general public….” Here he paused to smack his lips thoughtfully, as if contemplating all those breakfast bowls set out on all those tables across America, an endless plane of polished wood, oilcloth and linen. “But, of course, if your, uh, investment were generous enough, there might be no need to begin manufacturing at all, if you see what I mean—”

  The pitch had been delivered, the strong-arm applied. Dr. Kellogg knew precisely what the odious, blustering, big-bellied and decidely unphysiologic man before him meant, and now he could claim the high moral ground and let his wrath rain down like lightning from the heavens. “Oh, yes,” he said, his voice dropping low to lull them into a false sense of security, “yes, I know just what you’re talking about—saving me some embarrassment, hey?”

  Bender and the younger man nodded eagerly. George gave him a malicious, black-eyed stare, the cocky grin still set immovably in place.

  “Keeping my good name unsmirched?”

  Again the nod, and now the older man appended a wink, as if some unspoken bargain had been concluded.

  “Extortion?” the Doctor continued, his voice rising. “Threats? Blackmail?” He was roaring suddenly, and he slammed his fist down on the desk. “Violations of every principle of human decency and contempt for the law? Am I right, gentlemen?”

  Startled, the little group had involuntarily backed up a step. George’s smirk was gone. The younger man looked frightened. Only Bender seemed unperturbed, leveling a knowing look on the fuming little Doctor.

  The Doctor had picked up the telephone. His tone was curt, professional, and he kept his eyes locked on Bender’s as he spoke into the mouthpiece. “Schroeder? This is Dr. Kellogg. There’s been an emergency in my office. I want five orderlies here at once.” He set down the earpiece as if it were a loaded gun, spread his hands wide and leaned forward on the desk. Beneath the eyeshade, sparks of light glinted from his spectacles. When he spoke again, his voice was measured and calm. “You’ll take your cheap threats elsewhere, gentlemen—and I use the term loosely. I’d suggest my brother Will for starters. He’s been there before you, boys, and appropriated my name all for himself. ‘None Genuine Without This Signature.’ Ha! I say it doesn’t amount to a pile of cold manure. My attorneys will deal with him, and with you, too.”

  No one said a word. The silence was absolute, but for the thump of rapidly approaching footsteps coming up the corridor. The Doctor pointed a finger at his errant son. “As for you, George, your little schemes may have worked in the past—and more than once—but I’m through with you. Try to embarrass me, even think for one minute about sitting out there in the street with your tin cup or harassing my patients in any way, and I’ll have Chief Farrington throw you into the Marshall jail so fast you won’t know what hit you.”

  George muttered an obscenity, and then there was an impatient booming knock behind them and five husky young men, in Sanitarium white, filed in the door. The Doctor shifted his gaze to Bender. “And you, sir, are nothing more to me than an odious inconvenience, as if I’d stepped in something in the street. If I ever lay eyes on you again I won’t hesitate to scrape that something off on the curb—do you get my meaning?”

  Bender began to bluster—his pride was hurt, and the Doctor would be sorry and so on—but Dr. Kellogg waved his hand and his orderlies hustled them out of the office, down the hallway and through the heavy oak doors at the north end of the building. The Doctor watched from the window as the recalcitrant little group was ushered off the premises and into the public street. There was a degree of shoving involved, and the younger man lost his hat, but Dr. Kellogg was able finally to observe them in full and disordered retreat. Blackmail him: the idea of it. Did they think he was born yesterday?

  The Doctor had felt a little surge of triumph—he’d love to be there to see Will’s face when they descended on him—but it quickly dissipated, and he spent the rest of the afternoon brooding over George’s perfidy. Why did the boy hate him so? Where had he gone wrong? He’d tried to be charitable, tried to be a good father, and he’d treated George no differently from the others. Look how well the Rodriguez boys had turned out, and little Nathaniel Himes, the mulatto, and Lucy DuPlage, who never failed to send him a gift on his birthday and came all the way from Boston each summer just to sit and chat with Ella and help with the chores. He went through the afternoon in a haze, turning over the past in his mind, sifting through the debris, trying to recall even a glimmer of brightness—had George ever shown the least bit of gratitude?

  No, he hadn’t. Never so much as a murmur of apology or whisper of thanks. It was sad, the Doctor thought, shoving himself up from the desk and consulting his watch—he was expected in the Grand Parlor in less than ten minutes—it was sad, and it made him feel impotent, as if the failure were somehow his. The empty bowl, sticky with yogurt and crumbs of bran, sat on the desk beside his notes, and as he gazed into it an ineffable weariness stole over him. For perhaps the first time in his life he didn’t feel up to lecturing, and the knowledge ignited a little spark of alarm in him. Here he was, the messiah of health, a pillar of strength, a man who prided himself on his devotion and indefati-gability, and he didn’t feel like mounting the podium—and who would spread the gospel, who would improve the race, if he faltered?

  Damn that George, anyway. He was a curse, a walking curse. Even now, as the audience gathered to hear him, the Doctor couldn’t shake the image of the boy, an image that shrank back over the years to the first full winter he’d spent in the bosom of the Kellogg family. He was seven that year. Seven years old—a sweet and winning age in children,-a time suspended between reason and innocence, a time when they first come fully alive to the sacrament of life and its multifarious joys. Most children, that is; George was different. George hadn’t changed at all as far as the Doctor could see. Shuffling, shambling, head down,
he slouched round the house like a little deaf-mute, neither speaking nor responding when spoken to. Almost a year had passed since he’d come to them and he was as obstinate and inexpressive as ever. And if the lesson of the jacket had proved his obstinacy, his mulishness, his disregard for reason and human sympathy, the coming of Christmas—and the Doctor recalled it vividly—had deepened it, burnished the hate and rebellion in him till it glowed like a precious stone.

  There were twenty children in the house that Christmas, ranging in age from three to eighteen. The Rodriguez boys, already fluent in English, were making top grades at the local school; Lucy DuPlage, then twelve, was showing a real vocation for the piano; Nathaniel Himes, fully recovered from his burns, excelled in carpentry, chess and floor waxing; and Rebecca Biehn, always one of the Doctor’s favorites, had, at five, the most angelic little soprano voice anyone had ever heard. Some nights, before he turned in, the Doctor would tiptoe into the dormitory to listen to the gentle rise and fall of their breathing and catch a glimpse of their untroubled faces as they lay wrapped in their dreams, and the experience soothed him more profoundly than any sedative the pharmacists and pill worshipers could ever hope to concoct. In all, it was a good group of children, a deserving and grateful group who appreciated to the depths of their hearts what Dr. Kellogg and his wife had done for them. And as Christmas approached, though his schedule was as cluttered as ever, the Doctor determined that they should have their reward.

  To begin with, there were the little treats they received at Sunday school after performing their parts in the Christmas pageant—hard candy and the like. John Harvey Kellogg disapproved of the candy—sucrose was no substitute for fructose, and, of course, there wasn’t a grain of roughage in the whole peppermint-flavored sack of the stuff—but he indulged the children and let them do what they would with their teachers’ gifts. In addition, the Doctor and his wife planned to place a handful of English walnuts, an apple, an orange and a bar of sweetened hijiki in each of the children’s stockings, and a jumping jack or rag doll under the tree for the younger ones. The older children, those seven and up, would receive articles of clothing appropriate to their age and stature. And, of course, for Christmas dinner the household staff would serve the children a special meal in their dining hall, a meal replete with a goose fashioned from Protose and gelatin, hazelnut dressing, Mexican tortillas in honor of the Rodriguez and Diaz boys, broiled Nuttolene, a salad of head lettuce and grapefruit with French dressing, and, for dessert, soya-bean pie with whipped cream.