There Is a River

by Thomas Sugrue

  Edgar was stuck.

  “All right,” he said.

  At first Layne came twice a month. Soon the visits became weekly. It was a chore to ease Beazley out of the room every Sunday afternoon so the readings could be given. Edgar dared not tell any of his young doctor friends about it, or anyone in Bowling Green, for that matter. He was afraid. When he was with Beazley, the Blackburns, and his other new friends, or when he was with Gertrude, he knew exactly what he wanted. He wanted to live a normal, simple, ordinary Christian life, married to the girl he loved, living in the town he liked, with the friends he had chosen. He didn’t want to be “queer” or “different.” He didn’t want to be a psychic medium, or a somnambulist, or a “mystic healer.”

  But when Layne talked about having increasing success with his patients, he was disquieted. Suppose he had a real power, and the use of that power for sick people was his mission? It seemed so simple: the vision, the ability to sleep on books and know their contents, the loss of his voice, its recovery through the discovery of his real power.

  If only he could be sure. If only the doctors believed it, instead of Layne, with his correspondence school knowledge and his magnetic treatments.

  Late in the summer, on a sticky August day, he received a telephone call from Hopkinsville. It was from Mr. C. H. Dietrich, former superintendent of the Hopkinsville public schools.

  “Mr. Layne has told me of the things you have done for some of his patients,” Mr. Dietrich said. “I have a little girl who’s been ill for a long time. No one seems to be able to help her. There’ll be a ticket waiting for you at the railroad station if you’ll come over here Sunday and see what you can do for her. My wife wants you to come, too. I’ll meet you at the station.”

  Edgar said he would go. Mr. Dietrich was one of the most eminent and respected men in Hopkinsville. He must know what he was doing. Still, it might be that he was at the end of his hope, ready to try anything. In that case, if all the doctors had given the child up, there was nothing to be lost by trying a reading.

  At the station Edgar fingered the ticket curiously. It was the first material thing he had ever received for the use of his power.

  Could the thing really be worth something?

  In Hopkinsville Mr. Dietrich, a small, quiet, reserved man, met him at the station with a carriage. On the way to the house he explained that his daughter, Aime, had been ill for three years. She was now five, and since the age of two, after an attack of grippe, her mind had not developed. She had been taken to many specialists; none had been able to cure her or even stop the convulsions which attacked her in increasing numbers. Her mind was a blank.

  “She is at home now,” Mr. Dietrich said. “We have had some treatments here, but she just gets worse—twenty convulsions a day, sometimes.”

  When they got to the house, Mr. Dietrich took him in to see the child. She was in her playroom, sitting on the floor with her building blocks. She looked like any normal, healthy girl of her age. A nurse sat in a chair nearby, watching her.

  “Do you want to examine her?” Mr. Dietrich asked.

  “No,” Edgar said. She looked healthier than he felt.

  In the living room Mrs. Dietrich was talking to Layne. Edgar, anxious to get it over with, lay down on the sofa and put himself to sleep. When he awakened, Mrs. Dietrich was weeping.

  “Mr. Cayce,” she said, “you’ve given us the first hope we’ve had for a normal baby. You’ll just have to stay and see whether Mr. Layne makes the adjustments properly.”

  Edgar stared at her. “What did I say?” he asked.

  “You told us that she slipped and struck the end of her spine while getting out of the carriage, a few days before catching grippe. The grippe germs settled in her spine and caused the attacks. Mr. Layne is to make some osteopathic adjustments, and she will recover.”

  Edgar looked at Layne and thought about jail. “Mail Order Osteopath and Somnambulist Partner Jailed For Medical Fraud,” the papers would say.

  “I’ll telephone your employer and ask him to let you off,” Mr. Dietrich said.

  Edgar looked at Mrs. Dietrich. She was watching him, waiting for his answer.

  “I’ll stay,” he said, in a voice that was barely audible.

  He went to his home for dinner and spent the evening with Gertrude. Next morning he went to Dietrich’s and gave a reading. When he awakened, Mrs. Dietrich smiled at him. “You’ll have to stay a little longer,” she said. “The adjustments have not been made quite correctly.”

  When he was able to get Layne alone, Edgar asked him if he knew what he was doing.

  “Of course,” Layne said, “but it’s a difficult thing to get right the first time, and I’m being particularly careful and gentle, so the spine won’t be bruised or hurt.”

  Layne tried again, and in the afternoon another reading was taken. The treatment was more nearly as it was desired, but still imperfect. Layne tried again, and next morning another “check reading,” as Layne called it, was taken. This time the adjustments had been properly made.

  Edgar left that afternoon for Bowling Green. Layne was to continue the treatments every day for three weeks.

  “But I’ll be over next week to see you,” he told Edgar at the station.

  When Layne arrived the following Sunday he had good news. The Dietrich child was responding. She had suddenly called the name of a doll of which she had been fond before her attacks began. A day after that she had called her mother by name, then her father.

  “She’s picking up where she left off,” Layne said. “Mrs. Dietrich says her mind is in the state of development it had attained just before it went blank.”

  At the end of three weeks Layne took a check reading on the case. The child, Edgar reported, was developing normally and would continue to do so. The condition which had caused the illness was corrected. No further treatments were necessary.

  After three months Mrs. Dietrich told Layne that her daughter was normal in all respects and was rapidly covering the educational ground that separated her from other children of her age. There had been no recurrence of the attacks.

  Edgar was pleased and relieved, but he warned Layne not to publicize the case and continued to keep the meetings at Bowling Green a secret. He still had a single goal: marriage to Gertrude, with a natural, normal life thereafter in Bowling Green.

  What he needed to realize this ambition was money. He was saving part of his salary, but he dreamed of making a big sum, so that he could buy a house and have it all furnished for his bride. During the winter he came close to getting just what he wanted.

  He was placed on the entertainment committee at the Y.M.C.A., and along with an art teacher of the public schools, a man named F. O. Putnam, planned parties and dances for the members. For one of these affairs Putnam suggested that they devise a new card game. Edgar, who listened every evening at the dinner table to discussions of the wheat market in Chicago, worked out something he called “Pit,” or “Board of Trade.” The cards represented quantities of grain, and the idea was to corner the wheat market.

  It was so popular at the entertainment for which it had been invented that special decks of cards were printed for “Y” members. Edgar sent a sample to a game company. He received a cordial letter, thanking him for the idea. Soon Pit games flooded the country. Edgar received a dozen decks of the cards, with the company’s compliments.

  He protested. He went to a lawyer. The company pointed out that it owned the copyright, and reminded him that he could be prosecuted if he attempted to print and sell the cards himself.

  “You should have had a reading on it,” Layne told him. “It would have warned you to copyright the game before sending it to the company.”

  “A lawyer would have told me the same thing, if I had had sense enough to ask him,” Edgar said.

  “Listen,” Layne said, “I want to tell you what yo
u’ve just done.”

  It was Sunday afternoon. Edgar had awakened from his sleep. Layne pointed to the notebook in which he had put down the suggestions for his patients which Edgar had given while asleep. “One of these patients was in New York. His name is P. A. Andrews. According to his stationery he’s managing director of the Mechanicsburg Railroad. He heard about you from Dr. Quackenboss. You see, I’ve been sending reports to the doctor.”

  He paused, waiting for Edgar to be impressed.

  “What did I say about him?” Edgar asked.

  “You gave a fine diagnosis, although I don’t know whether it fits the case. You outlined treatments, too.

  “What I’m driving at is that this man wants to pay you. He expects that you’ll charge for your services. That’s natural. You should. In no time at all you can make more money than you ever would have got from a card game.”

  Edgar shook his head.

  “That’s out,” he said. “I’ll have to solve it some other way!”

  “What are you going to do?” Layne asked.

  Edgar gazed out the window. It was spring. The birds were chattering in the trees on Fountain Square. The leaves were coming out. The odor of quickened earth drifted in to him.

  “I’m going to get married anyhow,” he said.

  Layne stared absently at his notebook.

  “Did you ever hear of clary water?” he said.

  “No.”

  “You gave it for Mr. Andrews. It’s probably some patented tonic. When are you getting married?”

  “In June.”

  They were silent then. Across the street a mockingbird was building a nest in a tree in Mrs. McCluskey’s yard.

  EIGHT

  They were married on Wednesday, June 17, 1903, at the Hill. Dr. Beazley and Bob Holland accompanied Edgar from Bowling Green, to give him moral support. With Hugh and Lynn, Gertrude’s brothers, they formed a committee of four to serve as best man. The squire, with his wife and four daughters, arrived with Harry Smith, minister of the Christian Church in Hopkinsville, who was to perform the ceremony. Carrie Salter, Stella, Aunt Kate, and Mrs. Evans all crowded into the bride’s room to help her dress. Will and Hiram, assisted by Porter and Raymond, were hosts to the men. It was a lovely spring afternoon. They all gathered in the living room.

  “I was afraid we were never going to make it,” Edgar whispered to Gertrude.

  “I always knew we would, someday,” she said.

  It was six years, three months, and three days since they had become engaged.

  After the ceremony the committee serving as best man bundled them into a buggy and escorted them, in a second carriage, to Guthrie, one of the villages near Hopkinsville. There the party had dinner; afterward Gertrude and Edgar took the train to Bowling Green.

  He had rented a room for them at Mrs. McCluskey’s, just across the street from Mrs. Hollins’s place. They were to take their meals with Mrs. Hollins. The McCluskey house was a large frame building; Gertrude walked up to it with her eyes fixed on the circular staircase that was visible through the open front door. She felt that it was a good omen. Her grandfather had come to Hopkinsville to build a circular staircase; he had stayed there and raised a family.

  Their room looked toward the square. Gertrude leaned out the window, inhaling the fresh odor that drifted to her from the trees and the gardens that had come to life around the fountain.

  “You were right, Edgar,” she said. “This is the place for us.”

  Next day she walked through the neighboring streets, fed the birds in the square, and wrote to her mother that, “I didn’t believe there was such a lovely place in Kentucky.”

  On Sunday when she and Edgar crossed the street to Mrs. Hollins’s for dinner she saw a familiar figure in the reception room.

  “Edgar, what’s Layne doing over here?” she asked.

  Edgar explained, but he realized that his reasons sounded lame. Gertrude was ruffled.

  “He could at least have stayed away today,” she said. “This is the first Sunday of our married life.”

  At the dinner table she was cool to Layne. Judge Roup, an occasional boarder who rode a circuit as magistrate and was also a newspaperman, noticed it. He was curious about Layne, having seen him at the table on many Sundays.

  “Mr. Layne,” he said casually, “they tell me you’re a doctor.”

  John Blackburn looked up; James Blackburn looked up; Beazley looked up. Edgar became very busy with his mashed potatoes.

  “Yes,” Layne said.

  “Tell me,” Roup went on, “how is it that you favor Bowling Green with a visit almost every Sunday?”

  “I come to see Edgar,” Layne said.

  “Is he sick?” Roup asked. “We have several fine doctors here—” he nodded toward the Blackburn boys and Beazley—“can’t they help?”

  Edgar looked at his plate. Gertrude stared straight at Layne.

  “Well,” Layne said, “Edgar doesn’t like to talk about it, but I come here to ask him about my patients.”

  Everyone looked at Edgar.

  “Ask him about your patients?” Roup said. “Is Edgar a doctor? What’s he been keeping from us?”

  “He is gifted with a very unusual power,” Layne said. “He has the ability to hypnotize himself, and while in that state he is clairvoyant. He can see other people and diagnose their ailments. He cured himself of aphonia after being unable to speak above a whisper for a year. He cured me of an illness that had bothered me for years. He has helped many others.

  “If you wish, I will let you see a demonstration this afternoon. I am sure you will say it is the most unusual thing you have ever seen.”

  Nobody spoke. The meal was finished in a hurry. Roup finally managed to say, “I’d like to see it.” Gertrude fled across the street and went to her room in tears.

  They went upstairs to Beazley’s room, and while Edgar waited for his dinner to settle—though he was sure this was one meal he would never digest—Layne told the story of his experiments, including the Dietrich case. The boys asked lots of questions, particularly John Blackburn, the physician.

  Finally Edgar put himself to sleep. When he awakened his friends looked at him with speculation and wonder. John Blackburn spoke to Layne.

  “Dr. Layne,” he said, “the first person you asked about was given certain medicines to take. Are you going to give those medicines?”

  “I am,” Layne said.

  “The second patient was advised to take electrical vibrations. Are you going to give them?”

  “Yes,” Layne said.

  “The third person,” said Blackburn, “was told to have osteopathic adjustments. Are you going to give those?”

  “Yes,” Layne said.

  Blackburn smiled blandly.

  “Dr. Layne,” he asked, “what medical school did you attend?”

  Layne blushed.

  “I haven’t been to any school—yet,” he said. “I’ve studied a lot, by myself, but most of what I know has come from Edgar during the past two years, while he’s been asleep.”

  “You have been treating patients?”

  “Yes.”

  “You have an office?”

  “Yes, in Hopkinsville.”

  “Your patients always improve or get well from these treatments?”

  “Invariably, if they do as they are told.”

  “Tell me this. Why does Edgar mix up his treatments so? There are many schools of medicine—allopathic, homeopathic, naturopathic, osteopathic. Edgar seems to use them all. That doesn’t make sense.”

  “I think it does. Some people need one form of treatment, some need another. No one school has all the remedies.”

  They talked on and on, until Layne had to leave to catch his train. Then they questioned Edgar. When he returned to Mrs. McCluskey’s he was tired and b
ewildered. Gertrude had got over her own feelings. She put her arms around him.

  “I’m glad it’s out, and they know,” she said. “You can’t hide a thing like that. Just promise me that you won’t let it take you away from me or from the things you want to do.”

  “I won’t,” he promised. “Someday I would like to know just what it is, and what I am supposed to do with it. I felt like such a fool in front of those boys—Jim and John and Hugh, all doctors with degrees and offices. And me telling people how to take osteopathic treatments and dictating prescriptions while I’m asleep! It’s fantastic!”

  She kissed him.

  “Don’t worry about it,” she said. “Just don’t use it for an evil purpose, and I’m sure it won’t do you any harm.”

  But she wasn’t sure. Neither was he.

  “My mother says”—he was talking to convince both of them—“that if it’s a thing of God, it will do only good. If it’s a thing of the devil, it won’t succeed.”

  “The devil has many disguises,” Gertrude said. “I hope we recognize him when he comes.”

  The next evening there was an article in the Bowling Green Times-Journal, by Judge Roup, telling of the previous day’s experiment. The Nashville papers copied the story. Edgar prepared to be peered at, questioned, and pointed out, as he had been in Hopkinsville during the time that Hart worked on him.

  “I reckon I’m in for it,” he said to Gertrude.

  She laughed.

  “You should see the ladies look at me!” she said.

  Layne made two more visits to Bowling Green. Then, at the request of the medical authorities of the state, he closed his office and discontinued practice.

  “We can’t have a man like that treating people,” John Blackburn explained to Edgar. “He hasn’t the knowledge or training. Even if there is something in what you’re doing, a qualified doctor ought to be administering it.

  “Or,” he added, “a flock of them. You don’t seem to have any prejudices.”

  Layne wrote Edgar that he was leaving immediately for Franklin, Kentucky, to enter the Southern School of Osteopathy and prepare himself to be a collaborator with the readings. A week later Edgar began to lose his voice again.