by David Nickle
“You ain’t gonna fight,” he said. “You ain’t gonna run, neither.”
“I won’t do that either.”
“Well get up.”
Andrew lowered his good hand and propped himself up with it against the bare rock. He drew his feet under himself and stood. He had been resting on the lichen-covered shelf of rock, partway up a steepening slope he’d spent the early part of the morning scaling. It should not have been a difficult climb, and—reflecting back on it with the perfect wisdom that comes to a man staring down the barrel of a rifle—Andrew thought it was not a necessary one either.
But Andrew’s exhausted mind had fixed on the idea that he could find the riverbank he had lost the day before by climbing above the tree-line and looking for it; and his exhausted body had made that walk up the slope of a hill into an ascent of a mountain. He was thinking about opening the doctor’s bag, sticking himself with a syringe full of morphine, letting it work its magic, when the man with the rifle came upon him.
“I am up,” said Andrew. “Now tell me what you want.”
“You the nigger doctor,” said the hill man. He glanced down at the bag, which Andrew had not gotten around to opening when he came. “From the log town. You got your doctoring fixings there. ’M I right?”
“Dr. Andrew Waggoner,” he said. “Yes. I’m the doctor.”
“Pick it up,” said the hill man. “I’ll get the other one. You come now. Got work for you.”
They climbed for a short distance, then came upon a beaten path through the underbrush that followed the contour of the hillside. Andrew was glad: it helped him catch his breath, put his thoughts together.
“What’s your name?” he said then.
The hill man said something that sounded like “Ink.”
“Well, Ink,” said Andrew between gasps, “you said you had work for me. Someone sick?”
“Sick,” he said, nodding, and prodded Andrew’s back with the gun barrel. Andrew took the hint: he didn’t ask any more questions, although he had plenty.
Over his time in Eliada, Andrew had only had a little contact with the folk who lived in the hills to the west. They were old families—some of them here since the 1830s, settler families whose wagons had travelled north—and they did not come to Eliada much. When they did, the hospital would see to them; Andrew himself had stitched up a couple of cuts, splinted a fracture or two.
As they climbed over rocks, he wondered: might not some of those Klansmen who tried to hang him and Mister Juke have come from shacks up the hillside from Eliada? How did Ink know that he was the “nigger doctor?”
“Here w’are,” said Ink, and they climbed a short rise in the path, and stepped into the compound of Andrew’s captors.
It was a homestead, built on a cleared-out plateau and surrounded by tall pine trees. There were four buildings, all cut from logs with low sod roofs, arranged in a semicircle with their front doors facing downslope.
Ink hollered something that Andrew couldn’t understand, and the front doors of two of the other buildings swung open. An enormous man strode out from one, and two younger boys came out the other.
“Set your bag down,” said Ink. Andrew did, and found himself falling to his knees.
The boys took up the bag. One of them opened it and had a look inside. He reached in, pulled out a scalpel, turned it in a filthy hand and set it back. Then he pulled out a bottle of iodine, twisted off the top and gave it to the other to sniff.
“Put it back,” said Ink. “This here’s the doctor.”
The boy did like he was told, and squinted at Andrew.
“Don’t look like the doctor,” he said.
“Different doctor, but he do the job,” said Ink. He sounded irritated to Andrew. “Take his bag inside. To Loo’s bed.”
Andrew looked back over his shoulder. Ink had lifted his rifle so its barrel pointed up to the treetops. Seeing Andrew turn, the hill man nodded.
“You can get up,” he said. “Look like you’re going to wet y’ trouser.”
Andrew got to his feet. He was shaky and his vision greyed a bit, but he was feeling better. He was certainly not going to wet his trousers because this was far from the worst he’d imagined. These weren’t Klansmen.
These were hill people with a sick relation.
Ink motioned with his hand, and walked ahead of Andrew to the doorway. He disappeared into the dark, and Andrew followed.
The house was a single room, with light coming in mainly through the spacing between badly fitted timber. A little kettle-shaped stove warmed things, and next to it was a crude mattress, held in a box made of pine, like a great crib. Or a casket.
One of the boys opened the wood stove and stuck a candle in. He brought the flame near the bed, and Andrew bent down.
“Oh my,” he said softly, peering down into the sweat-covered face, the skin that even in the warm candlelight seemed deathly pale. “How long has she been sick?”
“Two week,” said Ink.
“This is Loo, am I right?”
“Loo,” said Ink.
Andrew looked close. Loo’s dark hair was thin—Andrew could make out patches of bare white scalp. Beneath it, her face was slack—so much that at first he feared that she was in a coma. But her eyes were open, and they followed him as he examined her. Andrew put his fingertips to her cheek, and found it warm to the touch. He asked if a window might be opened, and one was.
“Hello, Loo,” he said, as the girl’s eye squinted in the light. “Can you tell me how you’re feeling?”
Loo licked her lips with a tongue that seemed swollen. She took a breath. Then she closed her mouth and looked away.
“She can’t,” said a woman’s voice. “She’s too simple. She’s feeling awful though. You should be able to tell that by looking.”
She stood beside the open window, wearing long dusty skirts and her hair tied in a dark bun from which individual hairs strayed like thin branches. This woman was lean, and quick, and old. Lines were on her face like rivers.
“You are feeling awful too,” said the woman, looking at him, glancing in particular at his bad hand. “Hank do this to you?”
“I—I’m sorry,” said Andrew. “Hank?”
“Ink,” said Ink, who was standing by the door, rifle tucked away at his elbow now.
“Hank,” said Andrew. He smiled weakly and turned back to the woman. “No. He didn’t.”
“Well you’re in no shape to do us any good now,” she said. “Look at your hands. They shakin’ like a drunk’s, and one’s bound up. No cuttin’ for you, Doctor sir.”
Andrew sighed. “I know. I’m not going to do anything but look right now. Look, and ask questions. If you could tell me, ma’am, what you think’s ailing her, that would help. Then I can get a look, and we can talk about what to do next.”
“Sounds fair,” said the woman.
“Fine then. First things. This is Loo. She’s the patient. My name’s Andrew Waggoner. I’m the doctor. And you, ma’am . . . ?”
“My name’s Norma. I’m Loo’s cousin, let’s put it that way. And you asked what’s wrong with her?”
“Yes?”
Norma tucked her chin into her blouse.
“Raped,” she said, her face pinched angry.
“Raped,” said Andrew. “By anyone—”
He didn’t know how to put it gracefully, but Norma spared him.
“No one in this room,” she said. “No one here now.”
At that, Hank spoke up.
“She was raped by the Faerie King,” he said, standing on his toes so he could see over Norma’s shoulder. “He planted his seed, and now—now, we got to stop that.”
“That’s enough, Hank,” said Norma.
“Got to stop it,” he said, eyes wider than they should be. “Before it eats her up. ’Fore it turns us all Feeger.”
§
Andrew Waggoner set to work on Loo Tavish. He checked her fever, and it was a shade over 100. Her heartbeat: regular. She was
breathing easily, and although she wasn’t talking, her eyes followed his fingers when he moved them and her foot jumped when he tapped her knee. He started to look under the blankets, to see about this rape, this pregnancy—the talk of the Faerie King and Feegers and everything else—but that was when Norma put a stop to it.
“No more ’til you get some food in you and your hands stop shakin’,” she said.
Andrew’s hands were shaking—and he had to admit, thinking straight about the problem was beyond him now. If he did anything, it would be as likely to harm her as help her.
So he accepted Norma’s invitation to come up to her cabin for a bowl of fiddlehead-and-rabbit stew. Apparently, the hill folk saw nothing wrong with a Negro having a meal alone with their lady cousin, because he and Norma hurried alone through the rain along a path that wound between some woodsheds and up a little slope to a small log building with a bowed roof. Even Hank and his rifle let them be.
As he stepped inside through the low front door, Andrew remarked on that fact. “Suddenly, I’m no longer at gunpoint,” he said. “It’s refreshing.”
Norma shrugged as she opened her own stove, lit a twig and brought the flame to candles mounted along the walls. “Up to me,” she said, “wouldn’t have brought you here at point of a gun. Would’ve asked nice. But Hank’s jumpy, and don’t care much for the folk in the mill town.”
“You know better.”
Norma laughed. “You’re hurt,” she said. “Not much trouble, and not much use either. Why don’t you sit down, Dr. Waggoner.” She motioned to a table with a couple of chairs.
Andrew sat. He liked this little house. It wasn’t exactly civilized—but held against the shack where Loo was staying, this was fine. It seemed cleaner, more orderly—and the rich smell coming from the stove promised a fine meal.
Norma pulled out a couple of metal plates and cutlery, and ladled the stew into them. She put one in front of Andrew, and watched as he set to it. It was delicious, and it warmed him through.
“You manage to get out of town without them killing you,” she said as Andrew spooned another mouthful.
He sat up, swallowed and looked at her. “Now why do you think they were going to kill me?”
“Look at you.” She pulled a small bone from her mouth and set it on the plate. “You di’n’t get that from fallin’ down a hill. Fact is, a nigger in that place shouldn’t have lasted any time at all. A doctor nigger? My.”
“Wasn’t a problem,” he said, “until the end.”
“Never is,” she said. “Not ’til the end.”
Andrew let out a breath, and leaned back. He thought he was coming back to himself, now the food was working its magic. More than anything, he wanted to go to sleep. But as he sat back, the question formed itself and he spoke it before he knew:
“What does ‘Feeger’ mean?” he asked.
Norma set down her spoon.
“Hank said it. Before I started the examination. He said, what was it? . . . get rid of it, before it eats her up—and turns all of you . . . Feeger.”
“He said that?” she said. “Maybe he meant feeble. Maybe he thinks it’s catching. Hank tends t’ mumble.”
“Mmm.” Andrew didn’t think that Hank had been mumbling. But he didn’t press her on it. “Faerie King. Was that more mumbling?”
Norma made a humourless smile. “You’ll think we’re crazed,” she said.
“No,” said Andrew, “I don’t think I will.” He waited for Norma’s reply, and when it didn’t come, he smiled and shrugged.
“Let’s finish eating,” he said. “How about that? When we’re done, I’ll help you clean up and then . . . I’ve something to show you.”
Andrew cleaned his plate and stowed the bones in the garden bin, and good as his word, after helping clean the dishes he went to the doorstep, where he’d stowed his doctor’s bag.
Norma watched with interest as he dug among the ampoules of morphine and jar of iodine, and finally pulled out the small glass jar that Jason had given him before he fled.
He brought it to candlelight. Norma drew close, squinted through the glass.
“Where’d you get these?” she asked.
“A woman,” said Andrew. “After she died. They were on the inside. In her womb.”
Norma took the jar from him and twisted open the top. She made a face as a whiff of formaldehyde came out, and before Andrew could say anything reached in and pulled one of the tiny spheres out on her fingertip. “Ah,” said Andrew, “best leave the rest.”
Norma nodded. “She alive?”
“No,” said Andrew. “I told you. She died.”
“All the way dead, I guess you meant. Well that’s too bad. No baby inside, then.”
“I—beg your pardon?”
“In years past, when the Faerie King took a bride, he left the mother half-dead when he done with her and her babe. That’s only if she’s already with child. Takes most from the baby, only a bit from ma. If she be barren . . .”
Andrew stepped back and stared. He must have been making a face to frighten children, for this grown woman took a look at him, set the jar down on next to the candle, folded her arms and stepped away.
“You want to sit down?” she said.
“If she’s barren,” said Andrew, putting together this story with what he’d found in the autopsy, “the Juke eats her from the inside, killing her completely.”
“The Juke?”
“The Faerie King,” said Andrew. He followed the notion further. Assembling it together with what he had observed in Loo’s cabin.
“Is that the trouble with Loo?” he asked. “She’s barren?”
Norma nodded. “Not born barren. But thanks to your hospital and that fine doctor there, she be so now.”
Andrew picked up the jar and screwed the top back on. “Norma,” he said, “I think it’s time to talk about Loo’s case in more detail. I’ll sit down now, if you will.”
Norma talked. And through the rest of the afternoon, at Andrew’s gentle prodding, they put together a case history of Loo—who’s proper name was Lou-Ellen Tavish, and who had never done a wrong thing in her life save on her birthday, when she killed her mama.
§
Her mama’s name was Rose, and she’d had three other children, all by her husband Will. That may have been part of the trouble. Rose was old, near forty, when she lay down with Will in the summer of 1894. It was winter when the child came due, and Rose was that much older, and more things went wrong than the midwife could make right. She bled to death on the earthy floor of their cabin, while Will held his quiet baby girl close at his coat and screamed blue murder to the rafters.
As the days wore on, old Will’s screams quieted, and little Lou-Ellen—she stayed quiet. Lou-Ellen didn’t cry in her blankets, she didn’t laugh or coo when her brothers and sister would wiggle their fingers at her. By the time she was two, everyone had worked out that Lou-Ellen had been born simple and she might never be able to look after herself. It led to some awful talk among the families, about how a girl ought to be able to pull her weight. But it was only talk and it didn’t go on for long. Lou-Ellen was kin, everybody’d liked Rose and only a few didn’t care for Will. So they all cared for Lou-Ellen as she grew. They fed her even when food was scarce, gave her hugs and played with her, and when she got so she could make some words, they rechristened her Loo, which was something she could say back.
She managed to make herself useful, too. By the time the folks from Eliada came, she was tending goats and cleaning kills and minding the garden patch.
There were three men that made the trip up the hill. Two of them carried Winchester rifles on their backs and made it clear that they were not to be trifled with. A third was a fat old doctor (when Andrew asked if the name Nils Bergstrom rang a bell, Norma thought that might’ve been it).
The doctor talked to a couple of them and said he was there to provide free medicine—that some people out east had decided it was a good way to spend thei
r money, to make sure that folks who couldn’t afford it got properly looked after by doctors.
There were some in the families who were suspicious, but they were quiet about it. The two riflemen looked like they had other friends besides this doctor, and no one wanted to have those ones drop by. So the riflemen set up a tent and started inviting folk inside for examinations.
No one was sure what sort of conversation went on when Loo was in the tent, but others from the families reported that the doctor just asked a lot of questions, looked into their eyes and listened to their hearts with a stethoscope.
The doctor heard many complaints, but by the time he packed up his tent and headed back to town, he’d offered little to cure them that the family couldn’t figure for themselves.
He did, however, offer what he called “preventative medicine.” His last day there, he invited a few people back, who’d had no complaints at all. It was mostly the younger folk—Loo, her sisters and brothers, and the two boys. He was, he said, going to give them a special operation that would make it easier on them. Loo, he said, would go into the tent first.
She would also be the last to go in.
Loo never spoke of that operation, but her cousin Jacob got the whole story for them. Jacob was little for his age, but fast and smart. While he was waiting his turn outside the tent, he managed to slip away and get around the back side, and stick his head underneath the cloth to see what was going on.
Loo was strapped down to a bench, and struggling a bit. The doctor held what looked like a shoe over her face, and she stopped moving. Then he took a shiny knife, and started cutting away at her middle—her privates. There was a bit of blood, and although she was quieter, Jacob could tell by the way she moved that it still hurt.
Before the doctor was done with her, Jacob had relayed all this to the rest of the family—and when the doctor came out, he found himself faced with Norma, Hank, and Karl ( the giant that Andrew had seen coming in, Norma explained).
There might have been shooting, but the doctor seemed anxious to avoid it. He begged the families to trust him, that he was doing this work for the good of everyone. When Karl wondered what he meant by that, he explained:
“I am doing you a service,” he said. “Your daughter Lou-Ellen was born feebleminded. If she had children of her own, the chances are that they would be feebleminded too. Now, there is no danger of that.”