Open Wound: The Tragic Obsession of Dr. William Beaumont

by Jason Karlawish

  She stood before Alexis enumerating these items as he sat staring into the small fire that burned in their rusted stove. He dangled a flyswatter made from a length of dowel and a square of found matting. He had given up the hunt. The black specks crisscrossed among the crumbs on the table-top. She wanted a proper door for the stove, a pot that could fit snug into the cooking hole, new sand for the kitchen space, screens for the windows to keep the flies out, fresh straw for the mattresses, a proper latch for the outhouse door, a broom, a bucket that did not leak like the bad one the doctor's wife had lent them.

  “That's enough,” he snapped.

  “I have one more hand to go.” She held up her hand and balled her fingers into a fist.

  “I said that's enough, woman. I'll talk to Dr. Beaumont.”

  The baby began to cry.

  “When?” she insisted.

  “As soon as I can. We just arrived.”

  He slapped the flyswatter on the tabletop and leaned forward with his elbows upon his knees. “Goddamn, this chair hurts my ass. Aren't you tired from the journey?”

  “I'm exhausted,” she said. Then she burst into tears.

  THIRTY-ONE

  THE TWO MEN WERE SEATED, FACING EACH OTHER, Beaumont on a milking stool, Alexis on the edge of a cot. A low table stood beside them. The oil lantern glowed and winked. Beaumont had set these furnishings up in a corner of the barn adjacent to his house. It seemed the proper place to inspect the wound and to conduct experiments. It was close enough to Beaumont's house to permit Alexis to easily interrupt his chores, but also separate from both house and hospital, where Beaumont was certain one and twenty distractions would divert him from his work with Alexis. In the summer, the space was cool as the barn was among the oldest buildings in Prairie du Chien, with two-foot-thick walls constructed from flat stones. In the winter, a stove kept it passably warm.

  It was just after dawn, four days after Alexis and his family had arrived.

  “Now then, why don't we have a look? Your shirt.”

  Alexis pulled off his shirt, tossed it in a heap on the cot and sat with his hands gripping the edge of the cot, his elbows flexed outward.

  “Sit up a bit, please.”

  Beaumont directed the lantern light to better illuminate Alexis's chest.

  A saucer-sized area of flesh below his left breast was dark, thick and twisted with scar tissue. It undulated with the tempos of Alexis's heartbeat and his breathing. At its center was a pucker of pink tissue, like tiny lips signaling for a kiss. The unmistakable surface of the outer coating of the stomach gathered into the valve.

  “You don't dress it?”

  Alexis shook his head. “I thought today not to do so as we would be together.”

  “But usually?”

  “I wrap a cloth about it.”

  “Does it bother you?”

  “Bother?”

  “Hurt?”

  Alexis looked down at the wound.

  “No, Doctor. Not at all. No pain. My wife, she says it is ugly. I have to wear a shirt when we are together.”

  “Well, that's not unusual. I'm sure she doesn't understand it as we do. Lie back on the cot, please.”

  Beaumont tapped the surface of the thin mattress.

  “Mr. Mathews mentioned a Dr. Caldwell. In Montreal or thereabouts. Did he do anything with the wound?”

  Alexis became demonstrative with his hands as he lay on the cot. “No sir,” he said. “I would not let the man touch it. No man has touched this except you. You are the one I trust. I promise to God that only my savior Dr. William Beaumont can touch this.”

  Beaumont nodded. “Right then. Just keep your arms at your side. Let's have a closer look.” He scooted the stool closer to the edge of the cot.

  It was just as he had last seen it five years ago. He put his left hand on Alexis's side; the diameter of the hole fit like a coin between the tips of his outstretched thumb and forefinger. Alexis flinched.

  “Does that hurt?”

  “No sir.” He giggled. “Just tickled a bit.”

  Beaumont moved his thumb and forefinger. The lips slightly opened as if to speak. There was at least some give in the tissues. He put the tip of the index finger of his right hand on the pink tissue. He pressed gently. The tissue was soft, smooth and warm. His finger easily passed to the first knuckle.

  Alexis made a kind of grunt.

  Beaumont kept the finger in place. “What's that?”

  “That, that sense.”

  “The tender cuticle of the edge,” Beaumont explained. “It will pass.” He continued to advance his finger until its entire length was inserted into the warm and moist cavity of Alexis St. Martin's stomach.

  “How are you?”

  “Bien.” Alexis said softly. His left forearm was crossed over his face so as to cover his eyes, and his head was slightly turned to the wall.

  “Bien,” Beaumont repeated.

  When he drew the finger out, the valve was only partly closed. He directed the lamplight closer to the cavity. The pink and folded tissue of the inner lining of the stomach was visible. It was glistening, and it was beautiful.

  He set the lamp back. “The wound looks good.”

  “Thank you, Doctor.”

  “Cough please.”

  “Comment?”

  “Never the mind.”

  The release of the valve had allowed the gastric tissue to flower through the hole. The tissue blossomed until it presented itself like some shining, rugated, pink rose. Beaumont gazed at this for several minutes. He ran the pad of his index finger over the warm, slick surface and touched that to the tip of his tongue. The taste was slightly acrid. Then he applied three fingers to the center of the bloom and gently eased the tissue back into its hole. This done, he pushed his stool away from the edge of the cot.

  “Up, up,” he commanded.

  Alexis swung his legs over the edge of the coat. The pink tissue of the valve fell into place and entirely covered the hole. Beaumont gazed at the wound for several moments. When he spoke he had to clear his throat; his voice sounded low and hoarse.

  “There it is as it was. Well then, why don't you put your shirt on? I want to show you our garden plot, and we can take some tools there. It's in dire need to weeding and such, and I've got some netting that needs to cover the lettuce.”

  Alexis finished tucking his shirt into his trousers. He pushed his hair behind his ears. “What about this?”

  “About what?”

  He pointed to his left side.

  “Not today. I have to be at the hospital. Tomorrow, meet me here in the morning before your breakfast. And here.” He reached over to the peg where he hung his coat and took from the pocket a folded piece of paper. “This is half your first month's payment. I thought it sensible to grant this to you now so you can get settled. Buy things you need for the house and such.”

  Alexis snatched the paper and opened it. He counted the bills.

  “Doctor, if you please, I would like the rest of the month's pay?”

  “The rest?”

  “For as you say the costs of things here. My wife, she has a long list.”

  Beaumont pointed to the cash Alexis had stuffed into the pocket of his trousers. “Why don't you see how that does you, and we can discuss that later? You need to learn to exercise frugality. And I nearly forgot, when Mrs. St. Martin's done with her cleaning, please return the mop and bucket she borrowed.”

  “It leaks. The bucket leaks.”

  AFTER THE FIRST EXAMINATION, Beaumont managed a few quick observations of Alexis, no more than measurements of the temperature and the flow of the clear liquor from the empty cavity. But these efforts were hasty. He had no time to dedicate to his research. All the tribes were now assembled at Prairie du Chien.

  The agents had doled out some twenty thousand dollars to the Indians in goods—barrels of flour, pork, corn, pipes and tobacco—and cash with promises for at least another fifteen thousand dollars of the same. The place was now a
seething mass of sun-baked men and animals. The Indians greeted the arrival of steamboats full of goods with fusillades of rifle and musket shot.

  In time, the idle braves grew bored and insisted their daily allotment of the meat of two oxen be delivered alive. They took these massive beasts to the prairie and set them loose under the pursuit of riders mounted bare-backed on ponies and horses, some of the mounts painted like their riders.

  Armed with spears, bows and arrows, they pursued the oxen across the prairie, at times in a running line, then fanned out, then back in line, one hundred braves, pursuing the oxen until one of the beasts stumbled forward, flipped on its snout and lay heaving upon its side, a bleeding mass of prickled arrows and spears. Its companion turned and lowered onto its forelegs as if to make a stand. The Beaumonts and the St. Martins were among the crowd of cheering soldiers and residents of Prairie du Chien who witnessed the warriors circling their quarry. A Sauk chief dismounted and with a war club in hand, walked smartly up to the heaving creature and smote it upon the crown so that the head exploded in a spew of blood. Then the creature came down in one exhausted, blood- and mud-covered heap. Colonel Taylor banned the sport.

  Beaumont's work at the hospital doubled and doubled again. He and Young Badger set up a second hospital tent. The sight of an idle Alexis was like beholding an incomplete chore brought to life. He was determined not to see his funds wasted and assigned Alexis more and more chores at the Beaumont house and garden plot. He ordered him to weed and trim plants, cut irrigation ditches and carry water up from the river by donkey to fill the barrels, cover the corn with netting to keep away the birds, plant a crop of winter potatoes. He brusquely criticized the work even as he assigned him more.

  Alexis grew despondent, his clay-dusted face streaked with sweat and tears of anger. Many evenings, he shuffled home from the grog shop numb with drink. Marie waited for him with her arms crossed upon her stout chest, her hair matted with sweat. Regardless of the heat, she kept the house closed up, the great doorway latched, a musket at the ready. The Indians terrified her. By the last week of July, they had run out of the money Beaumont had advanced them and were living on vegetables from the garden, catfish and the charity of Pierre Reynard's daughter for milk.

  Marie shuddered. “We traveled all this way, all of us, so you could be a peasant farmer?” Her dark eyes were wide with anger. “We gave up all chance of settling in Berthier, an entire growing season, and here we are now doing exactly what you could have done at our home, among our family, our people, who care about us, instead of here among strangers, savages and a landlord who treats us as common servants. You working side by side with Negroes. Me begging for milk, playing the meek one to coax the doctor's cold wife for laundry soap.”

  “That is enough! Enough!”

  “It is not enough,” her voice was lowered but sharp. “I smell your breath. You drink away all our money. You promised me that there would be money to have here. Easy, quick money and no labor other than a few chores. And that we would be gone before the freeze, and what do you tell me? That we are here for the season to harvest his potatoes? And he has not once done any of his tricks with your stomach? Why are you not then a voyageur? If you wish to travel, leave us in Berthier where we are safe, not here among the copper-colored niggers!”

  He stared at his wife for some time. He shuddered as he exhaled.

  “Because I can't find a job as a voyageur. No one will take me on. You know that. They found me. They know my name. They know who I am. The moment that Mathews man found me, they never stopped calling. It's like they are searching for me. You would think that in all of Canada, the Northern territories, a man could strike out and get away from his past and his name, but I cannot. I can wear a shirt, but even then I cannot hide this.”

  He gestured to his side.

  “Even if I lie about who I am, they will see this asshole in my side, and then it's done. The doctor has some great power. I swear to you, Marie, the hand of God works through him. He can find me and draw me here. But once we're here, I cannot control the things he does to my stomach.”

  “When will he be done?”

  “He hasn't even started.”

  “Why?”

  “I do not know, Marie! He's been working. Some days he does not even speak to me. I come here, and he is as my best friend, draws off a few vials of the water, and now he can scarcely tolerate my presence.”

  “So then we harvest potatoes and hide in this house from the Indians? Come winter we freeze and beg for food because you drank it all.”

  “Marie, you know I don't want to be a farmer. It ruined my father in body and soul. I am a voyageur. A proud Blackfeather, but if I cannot do that, then I shall do what I can to make good money for my family. Eight hundred livres is some good money. It's my hope, my prayer, that Dr. Beaumont gets what he wants from the wound, finishes his tricks, and we get our money. Then it is all done, my debt is paid, and I can return as a voyageur and shall never have to see him again. This will not go on forever. I will be free of him.”

  She stared at him. He was gazing at the floor. He was weeping.

  “And I hope too, some days, that he might heal me.”

  Marie sneered and waved her hand as if to swat at a fly.

  “He saved my life, Marie. The man is brilliant. God worked though him. I cannot just spurn him.”

  “And God has left him. A fallen angel.”

  THE AUGUST SUN WAS RELENTLESS, drying out the ponds and swamps and turning the fields brown and dusty. By noon, the smell of rotting fish and vegetable matter was so intense that even the dogs avoided the marshes. In the evenings, the fires were lit, and the sounds of singing, drums and pipes would last long into the night. The Indian agents' insistence on a strict policy of no whiskey sales to the Indians only raised the price on a barrel, so that within weeks some tribes had exhausted their presents and were begging for corn.

  Beaumont began to quarrel with the St. Martins over items borrowed and not returned, the cause of a broken bowl, the damage to a carving knife blade. Alexis demanded his salary paid early. Beaumont refused it. He forbade Lucretia and Sarah from speaking French. One Saturday morning, he ordered Marie St. Martin to cease her chatter and slammed his door on her reddened, tear-stained face.

  Distant prairie fires burned. In the evenings their glow was visible from the hills above the village, and the haze of smoke obscured the sun until it became a pale yellow disk that no more burned a man's eye than a guttering candle. Bits of ash fell like negatives of snowflakes.

  In the middle of August, the great council began. The army set up a large canopy beside the fort, and Beaumont joined the officers and Indian agents arrayed in their finest dress uniforms. The collection of white men and Indian dressed, ornamented and painted was like some burlesque show of Babylonian dimensions. They were a display of gold braids, crimson fringes, plumed caps, brass and polished black leather. The officers and soldiers joked that old rough-and-ready Taylor was now fancy, dandy and diplomatic. The Indian chiefs dressed in robes of ermine or buffalo. They braided beads and feathers into their hair, or tied their hair up in a kind of pompadour and struck it through with porcupine quills. Silver armlets circled their great biceps, and their spears and bows and ax handles were ornamented with shells and feathers and colored ribbon. Some had their faces painted white or red, and others displayed handprints on their backs and chests.

  THIRTY-TWO

  AT THE END OF SUMMER, A MAN APPEARED at the hospital dressed in the uniform of the surgeons corps. His trousers and jacket were unusually clean and well fitted, and he kept his mustaches in the great flowing style that was the fashion among St. Louis gentlemen. He carried a black leather doctor's bag with the initials J.D.E. embossed in gold beneath its handles. Behind him was a Negro who pushed a dogcart piled with trunks and cases. He stood at the doorway and inspected the hospital structure. Beaumont stepped forward to greet the man.

  “I'm William Beaumont, surgeon of the garrison.”


  “Dr. John Emerson, Third Regiment.”

  The two doctors shook hands.

  “Welcome to Fort Crawford. We've been waiting for some time for you.”

  Beaumont followed Emerson's gaze to the rafters and the patchwork of ceiling repairs. “I don't deny it's a shabby space. Colonel Taylor promises a new structure.”

  Emerson nodded. “They sent me directly here, but I don't hazard this is where you live?”

  “No, this is the hospital. This and the tent out back for the overflow. My wife and children and I live yonder in that house. We long ran out of beds once the fevers began. Rains started a week ago. Like clockwork in the afternoon.”