Transgressions, Volume 4

by Ed McBain

  She shrugged. “I am a free person of color. Mostly white, but not all. They’ve told you my name is Alethea Taylor. I’ll thank you to call me Miz Taylor.”

  “You sure look white,” he said. Act it, too, he thought.

  She nodded. “My mama was half-caste and my daddy was white. So was my husband, whose name I ought to have. But it was Butts, so maybe I don’t mind so much.”

  She smiled at that and he smiled back.

  “We married up in Carolina where I was born. It’s legal up there. I was given schooling as well. So don’t think this house is any low class place, because it isn’t. We have standards.”

  The new lodger looked around at the tidy little parlor with its worn but elegant mahogany settee and a faded turkey carpet. A book shelf stood beside the fireplace, with a big leather Bible on top in pride of place. “Your white husband lives here, too?” he asked.

  “Of course not.” Her face told him that the question was foolish. “He was rich enough to buy up this whole town, Mr. Butts was. But he’s dead now. Set me and our children free, though, when he passed. Seven young’uns we had. So now I do fine sewing for the town ladies, and my boys work to keep us fed. Taking in a lodger helps us along, too. Though I’m particular about who I’ll accept. Took you as a favor to Dr. George Newton. Would you tell me your name again?”

  “Grandison Harris,” he said. “I guess the doctors told you: I’m the porter at the college.”

  She gave him a scornful look. “’Course you are. Dr. Newton’s uncle Tuttle is my guardian, so I know all about the college.”

  “Guardian?”

  “Here in Georgia, freed folk have to have white guardians.”

  “What for?”

  She shrugged. “To protect us from other white men, I suppose. But Mr. Isaac Tuttle is a good man. I can trust him.”

  He watched her face for some sign that this Tuttle was more to her than a disinterested legal guardian, but she seemed to mean no more than what she said. It made no difference to him, though. Who she shared her bed with was none of his business, and never would be. She had made her opinion of him plain. He was a slave, and she was a free woman, his landlady, and a friend of his owners. You couldn’t cross that gulf on a steamboat.

  “It’s late,” she said, “But I expect you are hungry as well as tired. I can get you a plate of beans if you’d care to eat.”

  “No, ma’am, I’m good ’til morning. Long day.”

  She nodded, and her expression softened. “Well, it’s over now. You’ve landed on your feet.”

  “The college—It’s a good place, then?” he asked.

  “Hard work,” she said. She paused as if she wanted to say more, but then she shook her head. “Better than the big farms, anyhow. Dr. George is a good man. Lives more in his books than in the world, but he means well. Those doctors are all right. They treat sick black folks, same as white. You will be all right with them if you do your job. They won’t beat you to show they’re better than you.” She smiled. “Doctors think they are better than most everybody else, anyhow, so they don’t feel the need to go proving it with a bull whip.”

  “That’s good to hear.”

  “Well, just you mind how you treat them,” she said. “You look like you wouldn’t be above a little sharp practice, and those doctors can be downright simple. Oh, they know a lot about doctoring and a lot about books, but they’re not very smart about people. They don’t expect to be lied to. So you take care to be straight with them so that you can keep this good place.”

  He followed her meekly to a clean but spartan room. A red rag quilt covered the bed, and a chipped white pitcher and basin stood on a small pine table next to a cane-seat chair. Compared to the faded splendor of Miz Taylor’s parlor, the room was almost a prison cell, but he was glad enough to have it. Better here with a family than in some makeshift room at the medical college. He wasn’t sure whether the doctors kept sick people around the place, but he didn’t like the thought of sleeping there all the same. In a place of death. The best thing about this small bare room was what it did not contain: no shackles, no lock on the door or barred window. He was a boarder in a freedman’s house.

  He turned to the woman, who stood on the threshold holding the lamp.

  “Aren’t they afraid I’ll run off?” he asked.

  She sighed. “I told you. They don’t have good sense about people. I reckon they figure you’d be worse off running than staying here. You know what happens to runaways.”

  He nodded. He had seen things in Charleston, heard stories about brandings and toes lopped off. And of course the story of Denmark Vesey, whose rebellion had consisted mostly of talk, was never far from the surface of any talk about running or disobedience.

  She set the lamp beside the basin. “I’ll tell you what’s the truth, Mr. Harris. If you give satisfaction at the college—do your work and don’t steal, or leastways don’t get caught at it—those doctors won’t care about what you do the rest of the time. They won’t remember to. They don’t want to have to take care of a servant as if he were a pet dog. All they want is a job done with as few ructions as possible, and the less trouble you give them, the happier they’ll be. You do your job well, you’ll become invisible. Come and go as you please. You’ll be a freedman in all but name. That’s what I think. And I know the doctors, you see?”

  “I won’t give them no trouble,” he said.

  “See you don’t. Can you read, Mr. Harris?”

  He shook his head. There had been no call for it, and the old miss in Charleston wasn’t averse to her folks getting book learning, but she had needed him to work.

  “Well,” she said, “I school my young’uns every evening. If you would like to join us, one of my girls can start by teaching you your letters.”

  “I thank you.”

  She nodded and turned to leave. “Reading is a good skill,” she said as she closed the door. “You can write out your own passes.”

  He had seen fine buildings in Charleston, but even so, the Medical College on Telfair Street was a sight to behold. A white temple, it was, with four stone columns holding up the portico and a round dome atop the roof, grand as a cathedral, it was. You stepped inside to an open space that stretched all the way up to the dome, with staircases curving up the sides that led to the upper floor rooms. The wonder of it wore off before long, but it was grand while it lasted. Soon enough the architectural splendor failed to register, and all he saw were floors that needed mopping and refuse bins that stank.

  For the first couple of days he chopped firewood, and fetched pails of water when they needed them.

  “Just until you are settled in,” Dr. Newton had said. “Then we will have a talk about why you are here.”

  He didn’t see much of the doctors during the couple of days they gave him to get acquainted with his new surroundings. Perhaps they were busy with more pressing matters, and, remembering Alethea Taylor’s advice about giving no trouble, he got on with his work and bothered no one. At last, though, clad in one of the doctors’ clean cast-off suits, he was summoned into the presence, a little shy before the all-powerful strangers, but not much afraid, for they had paid too much good money for him to waste it by harming him.

  For a night or two he had woken up in the dark, having dreamed that the doctors were going to cut him open alive, but this notion was so patently foolish that he did not even mention it to his landlady, whose scorn would have been withering.

  George Newton was sitting behind his big desk, tapping his fingers together, looking as if his collar were too tight. “Now Grandison,” he began, “you have settled in well? Good. You seem to be a good worker, which is gratifying. So now I think we can discuss that other task that your duties entail.”

  He paused, perhaps to wait for a question, but he saw only respectful interest in the man’s face. “Well, then … This is a place where men are taught to be doctors. And also to be surgeons. A grim task, that: the cutting open of living beings. Regrettably
necessary. A generation ago there was an English surgeon who would vomit before every operation he performed. Do you know why?”

  The listener shook his head.

  “Because the patient is awake for the operation, and because the pain is so terrible that many die of it. We lose half the people on whom we operate, even if we do everything right. They die of shock, of heart failure, perhaps, from the pain. But despite these losses, we are learning. We must learn. We must help more people, and lessen the torture of doing so. This brings me to your function here at the college.” He paused and tapped his pen, waiting in case the new servant ventured a question, but the silence stretched on. At last he said, “It was another English surgeon who said, we must mutilate the dead in order not to mutilate the living.” Another pause. “What he meant was that we physicians must learn our way around the human body, and we must practice our surgical skills. It is better to practice those skills upon a dead body rather than a living one. Do you see the sense of that?”

  He swallowed hard, but finally managed to nod. “Yes, sir.”

  George Newton smiled. “Well, if you do understand that, Grandison, then I wish you were the governor of Georgia, because he doesn’t. The practice is against the law in this state—indeed, in all states—to use cadavers for medical study. People don’t want us defiling the dead, they say—so, instead, out of ignorance, we defile the living. And that cannot be permitted. We must make use of the dead to help the living.”

  “Yes, sir,” he said. The doctor still seemed lost in thought, so he added encouragingly, “It’s all right with me, sir.”

  Again the smile. “Well, thank you, Grandison. I’m glad to have your permission, anyhow. But I’m afraid we will need more than that. Tell me, do you believe that the spirits of the dead linger in the graveyard? Object to being disturbed? That they’d try to harm anyone working on their remains?”

  He tried to picture dead people loitering around the halls of the college, waiting for their bodies to be returned. This was a place of death. He didn’t know whether to smile or weep. Best not to think of it at all, he decided. “They are gone, ain’t they?” he said at last. “Dead. Gone to glory. They’re not sitting around waiting for Judgment Day in the grave, are they?”

  Another doctor sighed. “Well, Grandison, to tell you the truth, I don’t know where the souls of the dead are. That is something we don’t teach in medical college. However, I don’t believe they’re sitting out there in the graveyard, tied to their decaying remains. I think we can be sure of that.”

  “And you need the dead folks to learn doctoring on?”

  Dr. Ford nodded. “Each medical student should have a cadaver to work on, so that he can learn his trade without killing anyone in the learning process. That seems a sufficiently noble reason to rob graves, doesn’t it?”

  He considered it, more to forestall the rest of the conversation than anything else. “You could ask folks before they dies,” he said. “Tell them how it is, and get them to sign a paper for the judge.”

  “But since the use of cadavers is against the law, no judge would honor such a paper, even if people could be persuaded to sign it, which most would not. I wish there were easy answers, but there aren’t. You know what we must ask of you.”

  “You want me to bring you dead folks? Out the graveyard?”

  “Yes. There is a cemetery on Watkins Street, not half a mile from here, so the journey would not be long. You must go at night, of course.”

  He stood quite still for some time before he spoke. It was always best to let white folks think you took everything calmly and agreed with them on every particular. To object that such a deed would frighten or disgust him would make no difference. The doctor would dismiss his qualms as fear or superstition. The doctors had explained the matter to him, when they could have simply given him an order. That was something, anyhow. At last he nodded. The matter was settled, and the only considerations now were practical ones. “If I get caught, what then?”

  “I don’t suppose you-will get caught, as you put it, if you are the least bit clever about it, but even if you should, remember that slaves are not prosecuted for any crime. They are considered property and therefore not subject to prosecution. The authorities simply hand them back over to their masters.” Newton smiled. “And you don’t suppose that we would punish you for it, do you?”

  The others nodded in agreement, and the matter was settled.

  He was given a lantern and a shovel, and a horse-drawn cart. Dr. Newton had written out a pass, saying that the bearer, Grandison Harris, servant of the medical college, was allowed to be abroad that night to pick up supplies for the doctors. “I doubt very much that the city’s watchmen can read,” Newton had told him. “Just keep this pass until it wears out, and then one of us will write you a new one.”

  He kept the pass in his jacket pocket, ready to produce if anyone challenged him, but he had met no one on his journey from Telfair Street to the burying ground. It was well after midnight, and the sliver of moon had been swallowed by clouds, so he made his way in darkness. Augusta was a smaller place than Charleston. He had walked around its few streets until he knew it by day and by night, and he had been especially careful of the route to Cedar Grove, where the town buried its slaves and freedmen. Now he could navigate the streets without the help of the lantern. Only the horse’s footfalls broke the silence. Nearer to the town center, perhaps, people might still be out drinking and wagering at cards, but no sounds of merriment reached him here on the outskirts of town. He would have been glad of the sound of laughter and music, but the silence blanketed everything, and he did not dare to whistle to take his mind off his errand.

  Do you want me to dig up just any old grave? he had asked the doctor.

  No. There were rules. A body rots quick. Well, he knew that. Look at a dead cat in the road, rippling with maggots. After two, three days, you’d hardly know what it was. Three days buried and no more, the doctor told him. After that, there’s no point in bringing the corpse back up; it’s too far gone to teach us anything. Look for a newly-dug grave, Newton told him. Flowers still fresh on a mound of newly-spaded earth. Soon, he said, you will get to know people about the town, and you will hear about deaths as they happen. Then you can be ready. This time, though, just do the best you can.

  He knew where he was going. He had walked in the graveyard that afternoon, and found just such a burial plot a few paces west of the gate: a mound of brown dirt, encircled by clam shells, and strewn across it a scattering of black-eyed susans and magnolia flowers, wilting in the Georgia sun, but newly placed there.

  He wondered whose grave it was. No mourners were there when he found it. Had there been, he would have hesitated to inquire, for fear of being remembered if the theft were ever discovered. There was no marker to tell him, either, even if he had been able to read. The final resting place of a slave—no carved stone. Here and there, crude wooden crosses tilted in the grass, but they told him nothing.

  He reached the cemetery gate. Before he began to retrace his steps to the new grave, he lit the lantern. No one would venture near a burying ground so late at night, he thought, and although he had paced off the steps to the grave, he would need the light for the task ahead.

  Thirty paces with his back to the gates, then ten paces right. He saw the white shape of shells outlining the mound of earth, and smelled the musk of decaying magnolia. He stood there a long time staring down at the flower-strewn grave, a colorless shape in the dimness. All through the long afternoon he had thought it out, while he mopped the classroom floors and emptied the waste bins, and waited for nightfall. His safety lay in concealment: No one must suspect that a grave had been disturbed. No one would look for a grave robber if they found no trace of the theft. The doctor had told him over and over that slaves were not jailed for committing a crime, but he did not trust laws. Public outrage over this act might send him to the end of a rope before anyone from the college could intervene. Best not to get caught.


  He would memorize the look of the burial plot: the position of the shells encircling the mound, and how the flowers were placed, so that when he had finished his work he could replace it all exactly as it had been before.

  Only when he was sure that he remembered the pattern of the grave did he thrust his shovel into the soft earth. He flinched when he heard the rasp of metal against soil, and felt the blade connect with the freshlyspaded dirt. The silence came flowing back. What had he expected? A scream of outrage from beneath the mound? When he had first contemplated the task before him, he had thought he could endure it by thinking only of the physical nature of the work: It is like digging a trench, he would tell himself. Like spading a garden. It is just another senseless task thought up by the white people to keep you occupied. But here in the faint lantern light of a burying ground, he saw that such pretenses would not work. The removing of dirt from a newly-filled hole was the least of it. He must violate consecrated ground, touch a corpse, and carry it away in darkness to be mutilated. He could not pretend otherwise.

  All right, then. If the spirits of the dead hovered outside the lantern light, watching him work, so be it. Let them see. Let them hear his side of it, and judge him by that.

  “Don’t you be looking all squinty-eyed at me,” he said to the darkness as he worked. “Wasn’t my doing. You all know the white folks sent me out here. Say they need to study some more on your innards.”

  The shovel swished in the soft earth, and for a moment a curve of moon shimmered from behind a cloud, and then it was gone. He was glad of that. He fancied that he could make out human shapes in the shadows beneath the trees. Darkness was better. “You all long dead ones don’t have no quarrel with me,” he said, more loudly now. “Doctors don’t want you if you gone ripe. You all like fish—after three days, you ain’t good for nothing except fertilizer.”

  He worked on in the stillness, making a rhythm of entrenchment. The silence seemed to take a step back, giving him breathing room as he worked. Perhaps two hours now before cock crow.