by Ed McBain
“You know she does have seven young’uns. She’s used to a house full. Maybe she could set things in order for you.”
George Newton turned the idea over in his mind. Women were better at managing a household and seeing to people’s needs. He had more pressing matters to contend with here at the medical school. He reached into his pocket and pulled out a roll of greenbacks. “Well, we must get you to Charleston,” he said. “Twelve dollars for train fare, isn’t it? And, thanks. I believe I will take your advice and ask Alethea to help me.”
George Newton’s problems went out of his head as soon as the door shut behind him. He went off to the depot to wait for the train, and he wanted no thought of Augusta to dampen his visit to Rachel.
Three days later he walked into Alethea Taylor’s parlor near suppertime, and found that one of the family was missing. “Where’s Miss Mary Frances?” he asked as they settled around the big table.
Young Joseph waved a drumstick and said, “Oh, Mama sent her over to Dr. George’s house. You know how he’s been since Mr. Tuttle passed. People just running all over him, asking for things right and left. And Mr. George he can’t say no to anybody, and he has about as much common sense as a day-old chick. He asked Mama to come help him, but she’s too busy with her sewing work. So we sent Fanny instead.”
Jane, who was ten, said, “Mama figured Fanny would put a stop to that nonsense. She’ll sort them all out, that’s certain. Ever since she got back from that school in South Carolina she’s been bossing all of us something fierce, so I’m glad she’s gone over there. It’ll give us a rest.”
“But she’s what—seventeen?”
Joseph laughed. “Sixteen going-on-thirty,” he said. “Those folks at Newton’s will think a hurricane hit ’em. Fanny’s got enough sand to take on the lot of them, and what’s more she won’t need a pass to go there, either.”
Harris nodded. No, she wouldn’t need a pass. Fanny Taylor was a gray-eyed beauty, whiter than some of the French Creole belles he’d seen in Charleston. With her light skin, her education and her poise, she could go anywhere unchallenged, and she had the same fire and steel as Miss Alethea, so he didn’t think she’d be getting any back talk from the Newton household.
“She’s living over there now?”
Jim laughed. “No-oo, sir! Mama wouldn’t sit still for that.” He glanced at his mother to see if it was safe to say more, but her expression was not encouraging.
“She’ll be home directly,” said Anna. “She goes first thing in the morning and she comes home after dinner time.”
Miss Alethea spoke up then. “Children, where are your manners? Pass Mr. Harris those fresh biscuits and some gravy, and let him talk for once. Hand round the chicken, Jim. Mr. Harris, how was your journey?”
“The day was fine for a train ride,” he said, careful to swallow the last bit of chicken before he spoke. The Taylors were sticklers for table manners. “Though we did have to stop once for some cows had got out and would not leave the track.”
Miss Alethea was not interested in cows. “And your wife, Mr. Harris? I hope you found her well?”
“She’s well enough.” He hesitated. “She is with child.”
Miss Alethea glanced at her own brood, and managed to smile. “Why, don’t say that news with such a heavy heart, Mr. Harris. This will be your first born, won’t it! You should be joyful!”
He knew it was his child. The old miss would never permit any goings-on in her house. Not that he thought Rachel would have countenanced it anyhow. But a child was one more millstone of Charleston to burden him. He couldn’t be with his child, couldn’t protect it. And the old missus professed to be delighted at this new addition to the household, but he was afraid that a baby on the premises would be more annoying to her than she anticipated. He thought of Dr. George’s fractious household. Might the old missus part with Rachel and the infant to restore her house to its former peacefulness? Was it any wonder that he was worried?
Miss Alethea gave her children a look, and one by one they left the table, as if a command had been spoken aloud. When the two of them were alone, she said, “It’s not right to separate a husband from his wife. I don’t know what Dr. George was thinking when he brought you here to begin with.”
“No, I asked him to. It seemed for the best. And my Rachel wasn’t to be sold, so there wasn’t any question of bringing her, too.”
“Be that as it may, you have been here now, what? Three years? It is high time that Medical College did something about your situation. And a baby on the way as well. Yes, they must see about that.”
“I suppose the doctors thought—”
“I know what they thought. They thought what all you men think—that you’d replace your wife and be glad of the chance. Folks said that about Mr. Butts, too, but they were wrong. Seven children we had, and he stayed with me until the day he died. Those doctors must see by now that you have not deserted your wife. You going so faithful on the train to see her every chance you get. Well, it’s early days still. The baby not born yet, and many a slip, as they say. Let us wait and see if all goes well, and if it does, one day we will speak to Dr. George about it.”
The anatomy classes did not often want babies. He was glad of that. He thought he might take to drink as old Clegg had done if he’d had to lift shrouded infants out of the ground during the months that he waited for his own child to be born in Charleston.
Women died in childbirth. No one knew better than he. The men he pulled from their shrouds in Cedar Grove were either old husks of humanity, worn out by work and weariness at a great age, or else young fools who lost a fight, or died of carelessness, their own or someone else’s. But the women … It was indeed the curse of Eve. Sometimes the women died old, too, of course. Miss Alethea herself had borne seven babies, and would live to make old bones. She came of sturdy stock. But he saw many a young woman put into the clay before her time, with her killer wrapped in swaddling cloths and placed in her arms.
And the doctors did want those young mothers. Their musculature was better for study than the stringy sinews of old folks, Dr. Newton had told him. “A pregnant woman will make a good subject,” he said, examining the body Grandison had brought in just before dawn. “Midwives see to all the normal births, of course, but when something goes wrong, they’ll call in a doctor. When we attend a birth, it’s always a bad sign. We need to know all we can.”
“But why does birthing kill them?” Grandison had asked. It was when he’d first learned about Rachel, and he wondered if the doctors here had some new sliver of knowledge that might save her, if it came to that. Surely this long procession of corpses had amounted to something.
George Newton thought the matter over carefully while he examined the swollen form of the young woman on the table before them. In the emptiness of death she looked too young to have borne a child. Well, she did not bear it. It remained inside her, a last secret to take away with her. Grandison stared at her, trying to remember her as a living being. He must have seen her among the crowds at the city market, perhaps, or laughing among the women on the lawn outside the church. But he could not place her. Whoever she had been was gone, and he was glad that he could summon no memory to call her back. It was easier to think of the bodies as so much cordwood to be gathered for the medical school. Had it not been for her swollen belly, he would not have given her a thought.
At last Dr. Newton said, “Why do they die? Now that’s a question for the good Reverend Wilson over at the Presbyterian church across the street. He would tell you that their dying was the will of God, and the fulfillment of the curse on Eve for eating the apple, or some such nonsense as that. But I think …” He paused for a moment, staring at the flame of his match as if he’d forgotten the question.
“Yes, doctor? Why do you think they die?”
“Well, Grandison, I spent my boyhood watching the barn cats give birth and the hounds drop litters of ten at a time, and the hogs farrow a slew of piglets. And you know, tho
se mothers never seemed to feel any pain in those birthings. But women are different. It kills some and half kills the rest. And I asked myself why, same as you have, and I wondered if we could find something other than God to blame for it.”
“Did you? Find something to blame besides God?”
Dr. Newton smiled. “Ourselves, I guess. The problem in childbirth is the baby’s head. The rest of that little body slides through pretty well, but it’s the head that gets caught and causes the problems. I suppose we need those big heads because our brains are bigger than a dog’s or a pig’s, but perhaps over the eons our heads have outgrown our bodies.”
He thought it over. “But there’s nothing I can do about that.” he said. “I can’t help Rachel.”
The doctor nodded. “I know,” he said. “Perhaps in this case Reverend Wilson would be more help to you than we doctors are. He would prescribe prayer, and I have nothing better to offer.”
Newton turned to go, but another thought occurred to him. “Grandison, why don’t you come in to class today?” He nodded toward the girl’s swollen body. “She will be our subject today. Perhaps you’ll feel better if you understood the process.”
Grandison almost smiled. It would never occur to the studious bachelor that a man with a pregnant wife might be appalled by such a sight. Dr. George considered learning a cure in itself. Grandison did not think that was the case, but since learning was often useful for its own sake, he would not refuse the offer. And he would take care not to show disgust or fear, because that might prevent other offers to learn from coming his way. Doctoring would be a good skill to know. He had seen enough of death to want to fight back.
He had watched while the doctors cut open the blank-faced woman, and now he knew that the womb looked like a jellyfish from the Charleston docks, and that the birth canal made him think of a snake swallowing a baby rabbit, but the knowledge did nothing to allay his fears about Rachel’s confinement. It was all right, though, in the end. Whether the prayers accomplished their object or whether his wife’s sturdy body and rude good health had been her salvation, the child was safely delivered, and mother and baby thrived. He called that first son “George,” in honor of Dr. Newton, hoping the gesture would make the old bachelor feel benevolent toward Rachel and the boy.
After that he got into the habit of sitting in on the medical classes when he could spare the time from his other duties. Apart from the big words the doctors used, the learning didn’t seem too difficult. Once you learned what the organs looked like and how to find them in the body, the rest followed logically. They were surprised to learn that he could read—his lessons with the Taylor children had served him well. After a while, no one took any notice of him at all in the anatomy classes, and presently the doctors grew accustomed to calling on him to assist them in the demonstrations. He was quiet and competent, and they noticed his helpfulness, rather than the fact that he, too, was learning medicine.
He had been in Augusta four years. By now he was as accustomed to the rhythm of the academic year as he had once been attuned to the seasonal cadence of the farm. He had taken Alethea Taylor’s advice and made himself quietly indispensable, so that at work the doctors scarcely had to give him a thought, except to hand over money for whatever supplies he needed for the task at hand or for his personal use. No one ever questioned his demands for money these days. They simply handed over whatever he asked for, and went back to what they had been doing before he had interrupted.
Sixteen bodies per term for the anatomy class. He could read well now, thanks to the Taylor daughters, although they would be shocked if they knew that he found this skill most useful in reading the death notices in the Chronicle. When there were not enough bodies available in the county to meet this need, Grandison was authorized to purchase what he needed. A ten-dollar gold piece for each subject. Two hundred gallons of whiskey purchases each year for the preservation of whole corpses or of whatever organs of interest the doctors wished to keep for further study, and if he bought a bit more spirits than that amount, no one seemed to notice. It never went to waste.
He tapped on the door of George Newton’s office. “Morning, Dr. George. It’s train time again.”
The doctor looked up as if he had forgotten where he was. “Train time?—Oh, yes, of course. Your family Sit down, Grandison. Perhaps we should talk.”
He forced himself to keep smiling, because it didn’t do any good to argue with a man who could break your life in two. He wasn’t often asked to sit down when he talked to the doctors, and he made no move toward the chair. He assumed an expression of anxious concern. “Is there anything I can help you with, Dr. George?” he said.
The doctor tapped his pen against the ledger. “It’s just that I’ve been thinking, you know. Twelve dollars a month for train fare, for you to go and see your wife.”
“And child,” said Grandison, keeping his voice steady.
“Yes, of course. Well, I was thinking about it, and I’ll have to talk it over with the rest of the faculty—”
I could take a second job, he was thinking. Maybe earn the money for train fare myself …
But Dr. George said, “I shall persuade them to purchase your family.”
It took him a moment to sort out the words, so contrary were they to the ones he had anticipated. He had to bite back the protests that had risen in his throat. “Buy Rachel and George?”
The doctor smiled. “Oh, yes. I shall explain that we could save enough money in train fare to justify the purchase price within a few years. It does make fiscal sense. Besides, I have lately come to realize how much you must miss them.”
Grandison turned these words over in his mind. If one of the cadavers had got up from the dissecting table and walked away, he could not have been more surprised. He never mentioned his wife and son except to respond with a vague pleasantry on the rare occasion that someone asked after them. Why had the doctor suddenly taken this charitable notion? Why not when the baby was first born? Dr. George was a kind man, in an absent-minded sort of way, but he hardly noticed his own feelings, let alone anybody else’s. Grandison stood with his back to the door, the smile still frozen to his lips, wondering what had come over the man.
George Newton rubbed his forehead and sighed. He started to speak, and then shook his head. He began again, “It may be a few months before we can find the money, mind you. It should take about thirteen hundred dollars to buy both your wife and son. That should do it, surely. I’ll write to your wife’s mistress in Charleston to negotiate the purchase.”
Grandison nodded. “Thank you,” he whispered. The joy would come later, when the news had sunk in. Just now he was still wondering what had come over Dr. George.
“I’m going to be moving out one of these days,” he told Alethea Taylor that night after supper.
She sat in her straight-backed chair closest to the lamp, embroidering a baby dress. “You’ll be needing to find a place for your family to live,” she said, still intent upon her work.
He laughed. “The world can’t keep nothing from you, Miz Taylor. Dr. George told you?”
“Fanny told me.” She set the baby dress down on the lamp table, and wiped her eyes. “She’s been after George to bring them here, and he promised he would see to it.”
“I wondered what put it into his head. Saying he was going to buy them, right out of the blue, without me saying a word about it. I can’t make out what’s come over him.”
She made no reply, but her frown deepened as she went on with her sewing.
“I don’t suppose you know what this is all about?”
She wiped her eyes on the hem of the cloth. “Yes. I know. I may as well tell you. Dr. George and Fanny are—well, man and wife, I would say, though the state of Georgia won’t countenance it. Fanny has a baby coming soon.”
He was silent for a bit, thinking out what to say. Dr. George was in his forties, and looked every minute of it. Fanny was a slender and beautiful sixteen. He knew how it would sound to a
stranger, but he had known Dr. George five years now, and for all the physician’s wealth and prominence, he couldn’t help seeing him as a gray-haired mole, peering out at the world from his book-lined burrow, while the graceful Fanny seemed equal to anything. He knew—he knew—of light-skinned women forced to become their owners’ mistresses, but Fanny was free, and besides he couldn’t see her mother allowing such a thing to happen. Miss Alethea did not have all the rights of a white woman, though you’d take her for one to look at her, but still, there were some laws to protect free people of color. Through her dress-making business, Miss Alethea had enough friends among her lady clientele that if she’d asked, some lady’s lawyer husband would have intervened. The white ladies hated the idea of their menfolk taking colored mistresses, and they’d jump at the chance to put a stop to it. Someone would have been outraged by such a tale, and they would have been eager to save Miss Alethea’s young daughter from a wicked seducer. But … Dr. George? He couldn’t see it.
Why, for all his coolness in cutting up the dead, when it came to dealing with live folks, Dr. George wouldn’t say boo to a goose.
“He didn’t … force her?” he asked, looking away as he said it. But when he looked back and saw Miss Alethea’s expression, his lips twitched, and then they both began to laugh in spite of it all.
Miss Alethea shook her head. “Force? Dr. George? Oh, my. I can’t even think it was his idea, Mr. Harris. You know how he is.”
“Well, is Miss Fanny happy?” he said at last.
“Humph. Sixteen years old and a rich white doctor thinks she hung the moon. What do you think?” She sighed. “When a man falls in love for the first time when he’s past forty, it hits him hard. Seems like he’s taken leave of his senses.”
“Oh. Well,” he cast about for some word of comfort, and settled on, “I won’t tell anybody.”