Southern Son

by Victoria Wilcox

  But Thea wasn’t Mattie, and beyond his brief fantasy, he was no more moved by the intimacy than he had been when he’d kissed her behind the barn at the school dance. The truth was, her lips were still too prim and cool for his passions. So once he had satisfied himself that Thea had nothing special to offer him, he stepped back, said his polite goodbye, and walked off into the Valdosta darkness.

  If Thea stood smiling at his retreating figure, he didn’t care enough to turn around and look.

  There were no fireworks to greet his arrival in Philadelphia as there had been the year before, only the bustle of the busy waterfront and the crowded cobblestone streets, and a dental clinic filled with patients waiting to be seen. He and his classmates were senior students now, supervising the clinic operations and sniggering at the mistakes made by the incoming students. But though their study load was somewhat lighter than before, they still had afternoon lectures to attend and exams to prepare for. And after the Christmas holiday there would be the doctoral thesis to present, as well, the final proof that the students had learned enough to be proclaimed dentists and be awarded their diplomas.

  John Henry wasn’t too concerned about the thesis. He’d always been good at composition and quick with a clever phrase, and he figured he’d have plenty of time during Christmas to get the work done. But the regular coursework was becoming more of a challenge, as his lack of preparation compared to the other students became more apparent. While the others seemed to be able to face each week’s exams with only a little review of the information they already knew, John Henry had to work hard to memorize everything. If it hadn’t been for the humbly offered help of Jameson Fuches, the bright young man the others still called “The Professor,” he might not have passed the exams at all, and he counted himself lucky to be one seat down from the best student in the class. But not until the weather turned wintry again did he know how lucky he really was.

  The year before had been mild as far as Yankees were concerned, though John Henry had thought the temperatures less than temperate. But that winter of 1871 was too cold even for the hardy people of Philadelphia who complained that it was the worst season they had ever seen. For a boy from south Georgia, used to lazy humid summers and pleasant sunny winters, the cold was nearly deadly.

  It started with a heavy rain that November, causing a three-foot rise in the level of the Schuylkill River where the waters turned turbid and the channel was choked with tree limbs and debris. All across the city, fences collapsed and awnings came down, taking out the telegraph lines and leaving Philadelphia deaf and mute for a week.

  By Thanksgiving Day, when the Yankee General George Meade made a show of reviewing the troops at Fairmount Park, the rain had turned to sleet, freezing the shallow ponds around the city and filling the street gutters with ice. But the glistening streets didn’t stop the throngs of promenaders from taking their traditional stroll in front of Independence Hall, nor did it dampen the spirits of the laughing children who played in the congealed standing water at the excavation site of the new City Hall. It was early winter, that was all—and only the frozen fire hydrants seemed any real cause for concern.

  But when Thanksgiving passed and December began, the weather turned more bitter still. With the temperature hovering just above twenty degrees, the gutters froze over and water pipes burst, flooding the cobblestone streets with ice and mud. The Schuylkill River froze over, too, the ice forming so rapidly that boats were bound fast in it. Even the Delaware was closed above the city, the channel between Philadelphia and New Jersey filled with floating ice.

  For the first time since John Henry had arrived in Philadelphia, the streets were nearly deserted of traffic as everyone not needing to venture out stayed indoors enjoying the warmth of Franklin stoves and tight-shuttered windows. But the stuffiness of the overheated rooms made John Henry even more uncomfortable than the cold did. He wasn’t used to so much dry heat, as the hot air parched his lungs and left him with an irritating sore throat. And by the end of the fall session and the last clinic day before Christmas, he was anxiously looking forward to spending an evening walking from one tavern to the next breathing in the stiff cold air and sipping whiskey until his sore throat was numb.

  But one night of whiskey didn’t help much and the next morning he woke feeling achy all over, the irritating sore throat turning into a raspy cough. And though he needed to get started on his vacation work of researching, writing, and polishing his doctoral thesis, he couldn’t seem to find the energy to do it. He opened his books and tried to focus on the pages of dental pathology and therapeutics, but his head felt so heavy that he could hardly keep reading. And he was sweltering, even with the window shutters thrown wide open. If only he could get cooled down, wave away the heat that was rising up inside of him, he might be able to get to work . . .

  Outside, the thermometer on the wall of the Merchant’s Exchange registered a noon high of ten degrees while Chestnut Hill reported a temperature below zero. It was the coldest December day on record and John Henry slept with his head on his books and the freezing air filling his open-windowed room. But with the fever that raged inside of him, he didn’t feel the chill at all.

  It was the pneumonia, his landlady said, when she came in to bank the fire after dark and found him half-conscious there. But when he tried to answer that he really wasn’t ill, just suffering from a sore throat, his words were lost in a fit of coughing that tore at his chest.

  He’d never felt such a pain before, like a knife in his side when he breathed. And without Mrs. Schrenk’s helping hand to steady him, he might not have made it to his bed to lie down, though once there, he couldn’t move without the coughing coming on again, leaving him breathless and teary-eyed. She would send for the doctor, she said, as she pulled closed his window shutters and turned down the gaslight. But whether or not one would come out on such a night, and so close to Christmas, she didn’t know.

  The doctor came, held a stethoscope to his chest, prescribed a regimen of Tartar Emetic and boiled turpentine vapors for the congestion, then left him to his own nursing. There were pneumonia cases all over the city, he said, and the old folks and babies needed his tending more than a young man who would probably recover just fine on his own. But if the pneumonia should happen to take a turn for the worse, there was always the sick ward at the Medical College—though that thought didn’t give John Henry much comfort. Beneath the Medical College, deep in the dungeon-like basement, was the pit where the anatomy lab cadavers were thrown. And feeling as weak and fevered as he was, he wouldn’t be surprised to find himself there among them soon.

  Mrs. Schrenk scoffed at the doctor’s medicines and brought out her own home remedies of Comfrey tea, a fried onion plaster, and a liniment made of camphor and lard rubbed onto his chest and covered by a flannel cloth to ease his breathing. But even her charitable attentions did little to ease his pains and he lay for long days shivering and sweating in his sleep, then waking with a racking cough that brought up rusty-green sputum.

  He had odd dreams in those feverish days and nights. He was home again in Georgia, a little boy with a head cold, and his mother was gently tending to him. He was coming in from a long horse ride, breathing hard, and finding Mattie there waiting for him. He was walking into a hot and crowded tavern, where DeMorat kept insisting he finish a tumbler of whiskey.

  “One sip, for now. Then we’ll get the rest of it down,” DeMorat said, but as John Henry took a taste of the bitter liquor, he sputtered and choked.

  “What is that?” he said aloud, his words waking him from the troubled dream.

  “Rat poison,” DeMorat answered. “But it has some efficacy in curing pneumonia.”

  John Henry forced his fever-bleary eyes to open and focus, and realized that it was not DeMorat who was pouring the deadly drink down him after all, but pale-haired Jameson Fuches.

  “Good,” Jameson commented. “It’ll be easier to take if you’re awake. One teaspoon now, then another every two hours. But
no more than two teaspoons at a time, or you’ll end up dead like the rats.”

  But John Henry closed his mouth against the poison, shaking his head. “What are you doing here?” he mumbled through pursed lips.

  “I came by to wish you a happy New Year. I expected to find you deep into the study of salivary calculus for your thesis, but found you ill instead. Your landlady seemed pleased when I offered to take a look at you. Seems her poultices weren’t working, though better old-wives poultices than the prescription that quack doctor left. Tartar Emetic! Do you know what that is?”

  “No,” John Henry answered weakly.

  “High doses of ingested antimony potassium tartrate. Induces blood-letting by vomiting. You’d think in a city with four medical colleges there’d be some decent doctors around. Now be a good patient and drink your medicine down.”

  But John Henry turned his head aside. “I’m not takin’ rat poison.” What did he know of Jameson Fuches, really? Only that he was brilliant and peculiarly reserved. Maybe his quiet demeanor covered a mind murderously deranged . . .

  “I’m not trying to kill you, John Henry,” Jameson said, as though reading his thoughts. “I’m trying to save your life. And blue as your lips are, I’d say you’re cyanotic already and ought to be glad I came along when I did. This particular poison is also an excellent cardiac stimulant and bronchodilator, if taken properly. It’s called Squills, from the bulb of a Mediterranean blue lily. You may recall our Chemistry professor giving a rather thorough description of its properties, first session.”

  “All right,” John Henry replied, too tired to keep up the fight. Besides, Jameson had never been wrong about anything scientific so far. He opened his mouth to the medicine, and coughed as it went down.

  “Now go back to sleep,” Jameson ordered. “I’ll wake you in two hours for another dose.”

  “And what are you gonna do until then?” John Henry asked as he closed his eyes.

  “Sit here and work on my thesis. I figure I’ll have to get it done early so you can borrow my notes for your own. It’ll be another week or two before you’re well enough to even think about working again, and that won’t give you much time to finish up.”

  John Henry only nodded a reply as he drifted back into his exhausted sleep. If Jameson Fuches really were a murderer, at least he killed with kindness.

  The rat poison worked and he began to breathe easier from that very afternoon, though Jameson was right about his recovery. It was weeks before he was able to do more than drag himself out of bed and to school every day, then drag himself back home to collapse in sleep again. And the weather didn’t help any, the bitter cold of that hard winter holding on with long icy fingers that seemed to reach right through his heavy wool overcoat and tightly wrapped neck scarf. Both the rivers were frozen over and the snow was piled so high on the city streets that there was hardly room for single buggies to pass by. And with the cold came a fresh outbreak of house fires around the city as people left their hearths burning too high against the frigid nights. The fire alarms would sound, the fire engines would race to the scene with hoses opened to vainly spray water that turned to ice as soon as it hit the chilled bricks. It was a bad time for Philadelphia, and for anyone recovering from the pneumonia in particular.

  But he did recover, and even managed to complete his doctoral thesis on time—thanks, again, to Jameson Fuches. For good as his word, Jameson loaned him his own carefully detailed notes on the various diseases of the teeth, so that they both ended up presenting essentially the same paper. If the professors noticed the similarity, they didn’t make any comment on it, only commended John Henry for having the fortitude to finish the session in spite of his prolonged convalescence. Any other student might have asked to be allowed a sabbatical from the coursework, and finished another year. But then, no other student had the devoted friendship of Jameson Fuches—though why John Henry had earned the honor, he wasn’t quite sure. Until that fortuitous New Year’s visit, he and Jameson had never done any more than study together a little. Since his illness, they seemed to have become true confederates.

  But even more than Jameson’s support, John Henry had his father to thank for inspiring him to finish school successfully. For he knew that if he returned to Georgia without having completed his work, his father would never forgive him, and even the very real excuse of illness would not have softened Henry’s displeasure. Illness was weakness, in Henry Holliday’s philosophy, and weakness could never be accepted. So John Henry struggled along and ignored the tiredness that continued to plague him, giving up sleep for long hours of study and finishing the session with such high marks that even Jameson was impressed.

  There was more to be done than just a doctoral thesis, of course. There was a specimen box to be delivered to the College Collection, a denture of carved ivory set in vulcanized rubber to be presented to the Professor of Mechanical Dentistry, a completed patient treatment case to be approved by the Professor of Clinical Dentistry. And all of that had to be finished before he would be allowed to stand for a final examination by the entire Faculty. But by the end of February, as the winter finally let loose its icy hold and melted into a muddy early spring, John Henry had finished up with all of it and was ready to become a graduate of the Pennsylvania College of Dental Surgery.

  The only challenge he had remaining was his age.

  “You knew our policy, of course,” the Dean said apologetically, when John Henry stopped into his office to pay the required $30 graduation fee. “It’s stated clearly in the college handbook: The Candidate must be twenty-one years of age. From your birth date as printed on the application, you are still only twenty years old.”

  “But I’ll be twenty-one in just a few months, Sir,” he explained. “My birthday’s August, that’s only six months off.”

  “Admittedly,” Dean Wildman replied. “But the rule remains, and for good reason. Most of the states, including Georgia I believe, have now passed dental acts requiring a practicing dentist to be of legal age. It would be pointless for this institution to graduate doctors who could not practice. I’m sure you understand.”

  But John Henry didn’t understand and he felt his heart stop cold in his chest. For though he had indeed read the college handbook, somehow he’d thought the age requirement would be waived with all his other work considered. “You mean I won’t be allowed to graduate?”

  “Not technically, no. You will, of course, be allowed to participate in the Commencement ceremony and have your name printed on the graduation announcement in acknowledgement of your fulfilling all the other requirements. For which, may I say, you have gained the admiration of this faculty. You have proven yourself a fine student, Mr. Holliday, and will be a benefit to the profession, I am sure. And you ought to take no small pride in the knowledge that you are one of the youngest students we have ever trained here. But we are constrained as to awarding the diploma. At the ceremony you will be presented with a provisional certificate, with the official document being forwarded on to you after you have reached the age of majority. I trust this will cause you no undue difficulty.”

  “No, Sir,” he said heavily, “there’ll be no difficulty.” Nothing that the college would have to worry about, anyhow. For his professors wouldn’t have to write Henry Holliday and tell him that his son would only be participating in a ceremony and not receiving the long-awaited diploma. And a ceremony alone would not be enough to make Henry spend the money to travel all the way to Philadelphia when he had his own business to attend to. So after all of John Henry’s long two years of study and sacrifice, he seemed to be getting very little in return.

  “But it’s only six months,” Jameson said, trying to console him. “Come August, you’ll be a full-fledged doctor and ready to do some good in the world.”

  “And what am I supposed to do until then? Go back to Dr. Frink? Then the whole town will know I’ve failed.”

  “I hardly call coming of age failing,” Jameson remarked. “You should appreci
ate your youth, enjoy yourself while you can. You’ll be old and stolid like me soon enough.” For all his quiet ways, Jameson had a humorously sarcastic streak in him, but John Henry wasn’t in a mood for smiling.

  “You’ve never been to Valdosta, Georgia,” he replied. “There’s not a lot of entertainment goin’ on out in the country.”

  “Then why don’t you come to St. Louis with me instead?” Jameson asked. “I could use an extra pair of hands in my office. Besides, you know everything I do about the diseases of the teeth.”

  It was another of Jameson’s quiet sarcasms, and one that John Henry couldn’t help but smile at, and suddenly the thought of having a few free months seemed appealing.

  “All right,” he said, “I accept your invitation. Hell, my father won’t want to see me home again for a while anyhow, once I write and tell him about the graduation. I reckon I might as well have a little adventure until then.”

  “Well, I don’t know if I can guarantee you adventure exactly,” Jameson said with a smile, “but at least St. Louis has some of the best beer around. And that’s worth something, I suppose.”

  The Sixteenth Annual Commencement of the Pennsylvania College of Dental Surgery was held on the first of March at Musical Fund Hall. And though there’d been another week of wintry weather blowing through, by eight o’clock in the evening when the graduation ceremony began, the snow had ended and the sky was bright with stars. The rivers had finally thawed and with the news that steamboat traffic had begun again, John Henry almost expected to see his father appear in the commencement audience. But that was just a hopeful folly, he knew, for in answer to his letter about the situation of his graduation, Henry had sent only a short note of congratulations, with nodding approval of John Henry’s plan to make a visit to St. Louis before returning home.