There Is a River

by Thomas Sugrue

  It was another two days before the town dug itself out of the storm. The squire, while walking to the office, had slipped and fallen, breaking his kneecap. He was put to bed, and a reading was given for him. Ketchum conducted the reading, and the subsequent ones taken at the office for regular patients.

  Frequently he dispensed with the stenographer at the time of the reading, took notes, and then dictated his own version of what had been said. Looking over one of these reports Edgar had a hunch. He had been feeling badly after the readings; his head often ached. He wrote a letter to the patient, a woman, saying that he hoped her reading was proving of benefit. She replied that she had not received a reading. She had applied for one, but no appointment had been made, and nothing so far had been sent to her.

  Edgar faced Ketchum with the letter. Ketchum tried to explain.

  “We need money,” he said. “We always have enough to get along on, of course, but we want to get ahead so we can build a hospital. We’re handicapped now because so many of our patients can’t get the treatments carried out properly.

  “All the rich people we’ve tried give us only promises. The scientists look wise and shake their hands and go away. Look at Münsterberg. There’s money at Harvard that has been set aside to study such things as this. But did he offer to do it? We haven’t heard a word from him. Not even a note of thanks.

  “I expected a committee of doctors to come here and test you. I hoped that the medical profession would back us. But the doctors didn’t come. They were afraid, probably, that they’d have to admit something they don’t want to admit.

  “So we’ve been going along, getting five, ten, twenty dollars . . . sometimes more, and a lot of times less, for readings. If we let you have your way, you’d give them all away. You never turn anyone down.

  “We’ll never get anyplace that way. We can stay here the rest of our lives, giving readings that are not followed out properly, sending them to people on whom we can’t check up . . . what will we ever prove or accomplish?”

  “So?” Edgar said.

  “So we haven’t taken some of the readings you think we have. I wrote those reports for you, so you wouldn’t worry.

  “We’ve been taking other readings. We’ve been gambling a little . . . just finding out, you know . . . getting a few tips . . .”

  Edgar put the letter down on the desk, picked up his hat and coat, and left.

  At home he found Gertrude sitting up, feeling better. “I’ve quit Ketchum and Noe,” he said.

  “I’m glad,” she said, “very glad.”

  “Do you think you’re well enough so that I can go to Alabama and get a job with Tressler? I’ll send you check readings as often as you need them.”

  Gertrude smiled.

  “I know I’m going to be all right now,” she said. “You go ahead. I’m glad this business is all over.”

  He packed and came to kiss her good-bye. His face was like a thundercloud.

  “Don’t worry about it,” she said. “I’ll join you soon.”

  He bought a ticket for Montgomery and caught the St. Louis-New Orleans flyer.

  THIRTEEN

  The man ran out into Broad Street carrying the screaming child in his arms. He raced to the corner and turned down Dallas Avenue, going as fast as he could.

  Doors and windows popped open. It was a cool, gloomy January day in Selma, Alabama, and most people in the business district were indoors. The child’s piercing, agonized cries brought them out. When the man reached the office of Dr. Eugene Callaway, the eye specialist, the doctor was out in the street. He led the man inside, turning to shout to two other doctors who had come out of their offices across the street.

  “Come on over!” he called.

  When they got there, the man was explaining what had happened, shouting to Dr. Callaway above the pitiful shrieking of the child.

  “It’s flash powder! I found him on the floor of the workroom. He must have made a big pile of it and put a match to it! It exploded in his face!”

  They tried to examine the boy, but it was difficult to hold him still. Finally they got a dressing on his eyes, and some bandages. The man picked him up and carried him back up the avenue. People who had gathered in the street watched sympathetically. “It’s Edgar Cayce, the photographer, and his little boy Hugh Lynn,” they whispered to newcomers. “The boy burned his eyes with flash powder.”

  Back in the studio that looked down over Broad Street Gertrude was waiting. She led the way to her room, and Edgar laid his burden on the bed. In a little while the doctors came in, one by one. A conference was held in the reception room. None had any hope for the child’s sight.

  A week passed. Hugh Lynn was worse. One of the doctors said that an eye would have to be removed if his life was to be saved. The others agreed. They asked Edgar to tell the boy. He went into the bedroom, with the doctors following timidly behind, looking as if they were attending a funeral.

  “The doctors say they will have to take one of your eyes out, Hugh Lynn,” Edgar said.

  Hugh Lynn’s head was swathed in bandages. He could see nothing, but he knew the doctors were there. He spoke to them directly. “If you had a little boy, you wouldn’t take his eye out, would you?” he asked.

  “I wouldn’t take any little boy’s eye out if I could help it,” one of the doctors said. “We’re only trying to do what is best for you.”

  “My daddy knows what is best for me,” Hugh Lynn said. “When my daddy goes to sleep, he’s the best doctor in the world.”

  He groped for his father’s hand.

  “Please, Daddy, will you go to sleep and see if you can help me?” he asked.

  Edgar looked at Dr. Callaway. Dr. Callaway nodded his head. “Go ahead,” he said. “We can’t offer much. We’ll listen and do what we can afterward.”

  An hour later the reading was taken. Word of it had got abroad. There were more than thirty people in the big reception room. Many of them were members of the Christian Church, which the Cayces attended. One of them suggested that they pray. While Edgar went to sleep they recited, in subdued voices, the Lord’s Prayer. The suggestion was given. Edgar began to speak. He could see the body. Sight was not gone. The solution used by the doctors was helpful, but to it should be added tannic acid. Dressings should be changed frequently and applied constantly for fifteen days, during which the body was to be kept in a darkened room.

  After that the eyes would be well.

  When Edgar awoke the doctors told him that tannic acid was too strong for use on the eyes. However, they were sure that sight was gone, so their objections were technical. They agreed to make the new solution and apply it. The operation could be postponed temporarily.

  As soon as the fresh bandages were put on his eyes Hugh Lynn said:

  “That must be daddy’s medicine. It doesn’t hurt.”

  The studio emptied slowly. Edgar did not move. He sat on the edge of the couch, staring out the window at the sluggish, swirling waters of the Alabama River, as they came into view at the end of Broad Street.

  In a little while Gertrude came out of the bedroom and sat down beside him.

  “He’s asleep now,” she said.

  Together they watched the life of Broad Street as it moved below them. Selma was a quiet, happy place. They liked its atmosphere, its people, its broad, tree-lined streets. They had been happy there.

  It was 1914, two years since Edgar had come to the busy city of 20,000 that marked the head of all-year navigation on the Alabama River. Selma had been the arsenal of the Confederacy. It was now an important freight center and the seat of Dallas County. Through its streets ebbed and flowed the purchasing power of a rich agricultural district. Its business streets were lined with wholesale warehouses; at its docks river steamers were constantly being loaded and unloaded.

  Edgar was an agent of the H. P. Tressler Company wh
en he arrived. He opened a branch studio for the company, but after a year bought it for himself. In the spring of 1913 Dr. Jackson declared Gertrude well, and in the autumn she came south. She liked Selma as much as Edgar did, and they decided to make it their home. Edgar had already joined the Christian Church and was teaching a Sunday school class. On the roster of the church it was the Seven Class, and soon it became famous, for young people from all the other churches joined it. The class published a weekly paper called the Sevenette, which everyone in town took to reading.

  The story of the readings did not follow them from Hopkinsville. Gertrude conducted the check readings that were regularly sent to friends and relatives in Hopkinsville. Before Gertrude came, her brother Lynn, who was working in Anniston for the Louisville and Nashville Railroad, came to Selma on weekends and conducted.

  The doctors who looked after them in Selma—Dr. Callaway, the eye specialist, and Dr. S. Gay, a former army surgeon—learned about it eventually and listened in at times. They expressed no opinion one way or the other.

  What would they say now, if the reading were right?

  Edgar and Gertrude got up from the couch. They had been stricken by the same thought. What if the reading were wrong?

  “I’d better see about dinner,” Gertrude said.

  The days dragged by. On the sixteenth morning after the reading, a white mass sloughed off with the bandages. Two brown eyes looked up at two anxious faces.

  “I can see,” Hugh Lynn said.

  They gave him dark glasses and made him stay inside for another week. He was forbidden to go into the workroom.

  It was not a great hardship. There was plenty of room elsewhere for play. The studio occupied the entire second and third floors of 211/2 Broad Street. On the second floor was a giant reception room with showcases, tables, easy chairs, and a big desk. Next to it were the workroom and the stockroom. A back stairway led up to the family entrance of the living quarters. There was a small bedroom for Hugh Lynn, a large one for his parents, a dining room and a kitchen. The main stairway led to the big room with the skylight, where the pictures were taken. The darkroom was behind this, and then came a dressing room. Another dressing room was in the main hallway. It was an ideal setup for playing Cowboy and Indian.

  Down at the bottom of the main stairs, above the street entrance, was a large clock. When wound, it ran for eight days. Edgar put photographs on all the numerals, and let the clock run down. When it stopped, the persons whose photographs were nearest the two hands won prizes. Everyone wanted to be eligible, so everyone had his picture taken.

  When he was finally allowed to return to school and to play out of doors in the afternoons, Hugh Lynn returned to his greatest love—the river. He liked to sit and watch the steamers dock; he would count the bales of cotton that came until the numbers got too big for him to handle. In summer, when the water was shallow, he roamed along the banks and played on the sand bars. In spring, when the floods came, he went with his father to make pictures from the bridge of the high water. The lowlands across the river were flooded then, and on his way to school, passing the big red-brick houses of the old families of Selma, he saw the magnolia trees in bloom and smelled the sweet bud shrubs. In summer he went with his mother to Hopkinsville, to visit at the Hill, and his father spent the hot months canning fruits and vegetables. He liked to do that better than anything except making pictures, and there were always plenty of good things to eat in the winter.

  At the Hill he played with his cousins, Tommy House and Gray Salter. He liked them, but he was always glad to get back to Selma to see his father and to enjoy the autumn, when the older boys played football and there were lots of people coming to the studio to have their pictures made.

  —

  A few weeks after Hugh Lynn’s recovery Edgar developed symptoms of appendicitis. Dr. Gay treated him, but said there was no reason for operating. An X ray showed that the condition demanding surgery was not present. The symptoms remained, however, and on March 8th a reading was taken. It advised an appendectomy within twenty-four hours; the case, it said, was strangular.

  “Will you operate?” Edgar asked Gay.

  “That’s my business,” Gay said. “If you have the money, I’ll operate.”

  He was a friendly man, with a round stomach, a lean face, sparse gray hair, and glasses that magnified his eyes and made them seem to twinkle.

  “We’ll do it this afternoon,” he said.

  The operation was performed successfully. The diagnosis of the reading was found to be correct.

  The convalescents, Hugh Lynn and Edgar, enjoyed the spring. Hugh Lynn had developed into a checker shark, and under Edgar’s management engaged the cigar store champions along Broad Street. He won all his matches.

  Edgar did the cheering and coaching, and succeeded in losing his voice. He got one of his friends to conduct a reading; Gertrude was in Anniston for the day. The conductor, in giving the suggestion, said the body of Edgar Cayce would be found “at 221/2 Broad Street,” which was the address of the building across the street.

  “We do not find the body here,” Edgar said.

  “The body is there,” the conductor said, staring at Edgar. “We do not find it,” Edgar said.

  “Describe the room,” the conductor said.

  Edgar did so. The room described resembled the studio not at all. The conductor reached to the desk, looked at a piece of Edgar’s stationery, and saw his mistake. When the description of the room at 221/2 was completed, he suggested that the body be sought at 211/2.

  “Yes, we have the body now,” Edgar said. “This we have had before. Now as we find . . .”

  When he awakened, the conductor told him what had happened and showed him the description of the room at 221/2, which he had taken down. The second floor had been specified. They could see its window from where they stood. They went downstairs, crossed the street, and entered 221/2. Upstairs, in a room answering in every detail to the description Edgar had given, a bookkeeper was working. His appearance, even to the color of his suit, had been described without error.

  Ordinarily readings were few and far between. Most of them were for friends or friends of friends, and there was seldom any remuneration: none was ever asked. Edgar and Gertrude preferred it that way. They worked for their living, as did all honest people. In addition they helped friends who were in trouble, as did all good Christians. In this way of life they found happiness.

  They asked nothing more. Edgar was completely wrapped up in his Sunday school class and his Christian Endeavour work. His group in Christian Endeavour had the largest number of “junior experts” ever credited to a single class in the history of the movement. He was proud of that, and of the constant growth of the Seven Class. He also enjoyed the letters he received from members of his old class in Hopkinsville. Many of them were serving as missionaries, and they described their activities for him. Often they asked for readings—for themselves, their friends, or their charges. The first readings for people in foreign countries were given at the request of these former pupils. Edgar was pleased to find that he could locate an address in Mexico or England as easily as one in the United States. Once he was asked to locate “Signora Adelaide Albanese Ruggiero, Piazza del Campo alle Falde Pellegrino, Villino Albanese, Palermo, Cicilia . . . house is northeast and east . . . she sleeps on the ground floor.”

  It took no longer to find her than had she been in the room. Soon Edgar was saying, “We have in this body conditions well fitted to demonstrate the power of mind over matter, for the principal strength in this body is derived from the actual flexes and reflexes from the brain itself . . . the condition has been brought about first by that condition that has existed in the body for a long time, especially in the pelvis and along the excretory organism in this region . . . the nerves and reflexes of the kidneys . . .”

  Eventually all his friends in Selma heard about the readin
gs, and many tried them for themselves and members of their families. One of these cases was the talk of the town for a while.

  A sister of one of Edgar’s Sunday school pupils went out of her mind suddenly. The reading said she was only temporarily upset, owing to an impacted wisdom tooth which had not come through. It suggested certain sedatives and advised that a dental surgeon take out the tooth. The girl was taken to Tuscaloosa, where her jaw was X-rayed in the presence of her aunt, who was a nurse. A physician was also present. The impacted tooth showed in the X ray and was removed. After eight days the patient’s mind returned to normal.

  Most of the people for whom check readings were regularly given had troubles of long standing; their illnesses were complicated, and their readings outlined many treatments. There was always diet, and there were usually medicines, plus massage or some other means of stimulating areas where circulation was poor. Often osteopathic adjustments were advised; sometimes patients were instructed to take medicines or adjustments in cycles, on certain days of the week, or at stated intervals.

  Whether they followed these instructions Edgar never knew. They wrote to tell him that they were feeling better, that they had found one of the aids mentioned to be very efficacious, that they were planning to start all of the treatments soon. It was obvious that some of them needed supervision; others needed cooperation. Few were carrying out the readings to the letter and getting the results which were possible. Nothing was being proved, and almost no one was being cured. It made Edgar think of Ketchum, who had been right in his ideas, if not in his methods; it made him think of Frank Mohr and the hospital he had begun at Nortonville.

  But all that was behind him. He was living the life he wanted to live at last. Dragging up old dreams would only spoil his happiness. Yet someone was always dragging him up.