by Paul Boor
“In here, sir.”
Adam sat on a narrow bed jammed against the wall, his legs crossed, a thin blanket thrown over his shoulders. His seaman’s chest was set on end in the corner. Nicolas stepped in; there was barely enough room to stand. Large brown insects dashed under the bed to make way.
“It’s settled, Adam. I fetched a good price for the bodies. Better than New Orleans. Did the unloading go as planned?”
“Smooth enough.”
“The men saw nothing?”
“There was mumblin’ but the bottom layer’s untouched.”
“Delivery’s set for ten o’clock tonight at the medical college’s dock. You’ll have assistance.”
Adam nodded. “I hired my two strongest longshoremen to come back tomorrow to unload the ice that’s left in that bottom layer.”
“We’ll have those corpses out of there soon enough.”
Outside of Molly’s Rooms, Nicolas drew a breath redolent with the wharf smells of damp wood, salt, and tar. Gusts off the bay spun wisps of cotton around his feet. The sky was mottled and the feel of impending rain hung in the street as Nicolas walked clear of the harbor and hailed a carriage to carry him to his hotel to await nightfall.
With the evening’s nerve-wracking delivery to the medical school drawing near, Nicolas decided he needed a stiff drink; lately, he’d found it difficult to relax without one. He strode up to the Majestic’s finely appointed bar.
“What’s your pleasure, sir?” the barkeep, a man the color of dark chocolate, asked.
Nicolas planted his boot on the brass rail and described a concoction of whiskey with a distinctive fragrance he’d experienced only in New Orleans.
“That’d be their style o’ whiskey cocktail,” the barkeep replied. “Nothin’ to it.” Flashing a smile, the barman doused a tumbler with yellowish liquor and spun the glass high overhead to coat its inner surface. “In the original, they used the absinthe of Sazerac de Forge et Fils,” he said with authority in matters of tipular fixings. “Pity, years back the fever wiped out the family, sons and all.”
“Yellow fever, was it?”
“Epidemic of ’78, sir. Hit New Orleans a disastrous blow.” The barman clicked the tumbler on the mahogany and poured.
Nicolas sipped. “Ah . . . Excellent. It’s got a bite.”
The barman smiled and stepped away to another patron. Here was a man Nicolas could admire, a fellow so different from himself and yet accomplished, well schooled, and in command of his profession. A mixologist of the highest caliber.
Nicolas studied his weary reflection in the bluish mirror behind the bar. A bath would be welcome. He badly needed a shave—hadn’t been to a barber since Saint Louis. His mustache had grown wild, and his normally clean-shaven cheeks and chin were covered with a dusky thatch.
He tossed back the last of the cocktail and strode to the hotel’s east parlour for a cigar. Leaning over the rail on the beachfront veranda, Nicolas smoked and admired the vast, restless water, so different from the lakes he’d left behind frozen hard as stone. But the panatela he’d chosen grew bitter. Suddenly weary, he retired to his room, stretched out on the bed, and dozed.
In recent years, when sleep finally found Nicolas, his repose was too often dashed by woebegone visions of his first son, Ethan—the one he’d lost to the woods as a young boy. On this evening, though, the cocktail he’d imbibed did its work, his recurring nightmare was held at bay, and he enjoyed some minutes of dreamless sleep.
Nicolas was wakened by the clatter of hail against the windowpanes. The room was dark as pine pitch. He lit a lamp at the bedside and opened his watch—still time for some supper to bolster him for the delivery.
In the hotel’s main dining room he chose a plate of fried fish topped with browned almonds. A loaf of crusty French bread and a dish of greens, mightily spiced, were set on the table. Nicolas ate in haste, forgoing coffee and brandy. Delivery time was near. “Waiter!” he called. “Do me the kindness of calling a carriage.”
Nicolas was pelted by a burst of rain and hail as he climbed into a covered cab at the hotel entrance and asked to be taken to the medical college. The driver had the attitude all these locals seemed to voice. “Mister,” he said, raising an eyebrow, “might I ask what ya’d be doing out there at this time of night?”
“I’m a man of commerce. My business is ice.”
“At the medical college?”
“Ice, my good man, has many uses in today’s world.”
When Nicolas climbed down from the carriage, the rain abated, but roiling black clouds obscured the moon. The palm trees were battered by gusts off the bay, creating an awful racket. A perfect night for the task at hand.
Professor Keiller waited on the narrow dock at the back of the red building. He wore a heavy rubber slicker buckled tight under his chin. Two brawny men flanked him: one a short, stout Chinaman whose deformed humpback had him perpetually looking to his left; the other a dark-skinned Goliath of South Seas origin, nearly seven feet tall, his bare arms and chest covered with sea serpents, anchors, and ships at full sail. Keiller linked arms with Nicolas, and this uncommon mix of men watched in silence as Van Horne’s steamer came smoking in from Pier 22.
They made her fast and Adam climbed down. The harbor pilot who’d guided the steamer on its short passage was handed a dollar and, informed of the nearest tavern’s whereabouts, set off on foot. Canvas coverings were unfurled. The frost on the faces of those wedged between the blocks of ice quickly turned to dew.
Keiller took charge, crying, “Straight to the vats with ’em! All but the child. Where is that boy?”
Though the corpses were icy cold, they weren’t frozen solid, nor were there any remnants of rigor mortis; rather, the bodies were like grey, pliable lumps of clay dragged out from their resting places in the ice. A few were still dressed in burial clothes. Adam, aided by Keiller’s sturdy, misshapen Chinaman, whom Keiller called Lee Ching, lowered the first bodies to the dock. The nautical giant then loaded the corpses, three at a time, into a wheelbarrow and rolled off to a low, steel door on the ground floor at the back of the college.
Keiller peered into the hold as Adam hauled up the boy, the fresh one, in his arms. “Yes!” Keiller grabbed Adam by the arm. “This way.”
Sudden staccato bursts of lightning illuminated the look of sheer joy that shone on the old professor’s face, and rain poured down.
“To the research laboratory with this one,” Keiller shouted, his slicker awash, his hair pasted down by the torrent. “Give a hand here, Lee Ching.”
Nicolas had turned up his jacket collar and pursued Keiller down the dock when a macabre thought struck him. “Professor,” he called to Keiller. “You’re not trying to bring the boy back to life, are you? With electricity or some such?”
“No, we’re after his cells,” Keiller called back with a maniacal cackle. “Only his cells. Like I told you.”
“Oh, yes. Cells. But how do you get these cells?”
“Why, we extract ’em from his lymphoid glands, of course. Didn’t I explain that?” The professor entered the heavy steel door at the back of the college and pulled off his slicker. “Renée’s the expert there,” he added. “She’s prepared everything.”
Nicolas dripped like a wharf rat. He fully realized, though, that the shiver rattling his spine wasn’t entirely from the ghastly weather. All this excitement over the boy’s fresh corpse had him riled. Those boys, pulled from a snowdrift.
“Come along, Van Horne.” Keiller took Nicolas’s elbow, stirring him from his dark thoughts. “Let me show you our storage facilities. Then we’ll talk further in my office and drink to your successful delivery.”
They stood in a large, windowless basement room that held the largest ceramic vats Nicolas had ever seen, each eight feet in diameter and shoulder high to a man, with barely space to walk between them. Keiller’s assistants pulled the wooden covers off the vats, then began checking the corpses for signs of deterioration on a nearby marble slab. Any remaining b
urial clothes were cut away with a razor. A numbered label was tied on the big toe of each before it was slid into the murky fluid in the vats. Once the last corpse was on the slab, Keiller slammed the steel door shut and slid its bolt with a thud. The odor of formaldehyde became overpowering.
“The smell’s a bit strong,” Keiller explained, “because our vats are uncovered.”
Chilled to the core, Nicolas watched bodies splash into the vats. The sight of a hand with dainty, bright red fingernails bobbing on the foul grey surface jangled his nerves. It was a whore, a woman who’d walked the streets of Forestport and died a miserable death during childbirth in her single room. Once the county coroner had given her a once-over, Thomas Chubb had diverted her from a pauper’s grave.
Nicolas couldn’t catch his breath. “How . . . how long in the vats, Professor?”
“A wee bit more than a month, for complete fixation. I’m pleased with their condition, Mr. Van Horne.” Keiller felt the coolness of a passing death mask with the back of his hand. “The preservation is excellent.” Keiller smiled at the corpse. “A perfect temperature, and our vats will complete their perfection.”
Nicolas’s eyes welled over with tears. He fought to keep from choking. “Gad, man—it’s vile in here!”
“This way, then.” Keiller squeezed between the vats to a second steel door on the opposite wall. Nicolas followed into a long, narrow room, lit by electricity and bright with lime wash. “We store ’em here till we use ’em,” Keiller said.
Heavy steel rails were secured around the walls of the room with bolts; sharpened hooks, like those used in an abattoir, were attached to each rail. Eight or nine corpses, hooked through the shoulder or back, dangled from the rails.
Nicolas did a double take. Colored people, he thought. The corpses were all colored people. Moreover, male or female, these corpses looked poverty stricken—malnourished, badly scarred by life, with hands thickened by the coarsest labor.
“This is all that’s left from our previous acquisition,” Keiller said. “And I doubt our unscrupulous pair of resurrectionists will be in business much longer.” The professor tapped a leathery corpse and set it gently swinging on its hook. “Ye see, hanging ’em like this helps air out the formaldehyde before we dissect ’em. My students will be working on these fellows shortly.”
Nicolas shuddered in his clammy woolens. His shoes squished as he followed Keiller to the door at the far end of the room.
“We’ll get a breath o’ air on the upper level,” Keiller said, taking a narrow, darkened set of stairs to the entrance vestibule and central staircase of the college. “See, now, it’s better here. My men will tend to matters down below.”
Nicolas took deep breaths. He tried to still his shivering as he followed Keiller’s slow progress up the circular central stairs of the college. The steady rumble of rain on the building’s tile roof and the rattling of the skylights grew louder as they neared the upper landing, where Nicolas was surprised to see the smoky glass of the door to the anatomy laboratory brilliantly lit.
“Dissecting at night, are they?” he asked.
“Ha! That they are,” Keiller laughed. “I’ll wager there’s no night dissectin’ in Saint Louis or New Orleans, eh? It’s sad, but most of these medical colleges springing up everywhere are more interested in bloodletting and water cures than they are in truth and learning.” Keiller paused. “I’d be pleased to show you, Mr. Van Horne. A man of reason such as yourself should find a dissection in progress of great interest.”
“I confess, I’ve never seen what it’s all about.”
“Come along, then. You’ll understand better how my students profit from your specimens.” Keiller swung his game leg toward the door. “There’s normal anatomy, of course, but more important are the variations in structure, the growths, the morbid alterations of disease.”
Keiller threw the door of the anatomy laboratory open. Nicolas was forced to squint, his eyes shocked by a line of powerful electric lightbulbs hung over three shiny, metal tables. The whitewashed walls, haphazardly strung with thick, black wires, added to the harsh brilliance.
“As ye see,” Keiller said proudly, “we are totally illuminated by electricity.”
Students draped with heavy black aprons surrounded two of the tables. At the nearest table, four students, their bare hands glistening, leaned over a freshly opened corpse, flaying the flesh from the belly and chest as if cleaning an enormous fish. At the next table two students encircled an advanced dissection of a severed arm with muscle, tendon, and bone exposed. The furthest table held a dismembered torso and single female breast awaiting another evening of study.
An explosion of laughter came from the two students dissecting the arm. Nicolas watched as one of them jerked on a central tendon, forcing the corpse’s hand into an obscene gesture.
“This is”—Van Horne gasped—“the first I’ve seen what becomes of them.”
“Think of it,” Keiller said, gesturing at the youths. “It’s nearly midnight and my students are still at their studies.”
“They enjoy it more than I imagined.”
“Perhaps they’re a bit giddy with the late hour and the vapours. Gents!” Keiller said, raising a hand. “Take a break if ya like.”
Knives and scissors clattered down on stainless steel. The young dissectors, their hands and apron fronts splattered with grey bits of tissue and glistening, yellow fat, abandoned their work and exited the dissecting room. Several carried a rattling bag of dried bones for later study.
Nicolas identified other human parts scattered on the stone floor—a complete pelvis, its bone scraped clean, and the severed head of an infant with the face dissected to expose the delicate muscles and nerves of its tiny eyeballs. In the corner, a mound of unrecognizable offal.
“We’re still having a bit o’ difficulty with disposal,” Keiller said, shaking his head. “We’ve been dumping barrels of their earthly remains in the gulf, but it tends to wash up on the beach, which is a bit disturbin’ to the local folks.”
Van Horne’s stomach churned. “I’m impressed with your operation, Professor,” he said, his voice a near-whisper. “Very impressed, indeed.”
A metallic, oily taste blossomed at the back of his mouth. Nicolas realized the plate of fried fish he’d eaten at supper was threatening to come up. “But, Professor . . . I believe . . . I’m beginning . . . to tire.” There was a dull drumming in his ears, the pound of blood at his temples . . . and fatigue . . . such unspeakable fatigue . . .
Nicolas Van Horne’s last thought, before his eyes rolled up toward the skylights, was how uncommonly good it felt to be sitting on the cool stone floor of the anatomy laboratory.
Then, nothing.
7
A Second Lesson in Science
It was hot, stifling hot and suffering damp. A hand gently cooled his cheek, his forehead, the back of his neck. When he opened his eyes he found himself wobbling in the oaken chair in Keiller’s overheated office. A single bright light burnt overhead. A horrible ammonia smell…he snapped his head back and…was this an apparition? An angel leaning over him? He was looking into the dark eyes of a beautiful woman, like staring into a deep, still well. As his senses returned, Nicolas noted with unexpected pleasure the fine flecks of green light that radiated at the edges of her lovely, nearly black irises.
“Are you feeling better, Mr. Van Horne?” Renée Keiller, the professor’s niece, asked.
“I . . . I fainted?”
Renée nodded, her eyes averted, then flashed a thin, understanding smile.
The elder Keiller was at Nicolas’s side. “Come now, my good man,” he said, settling a bony hand on Van Horne’s shoulder. “Men faint, you know. It’s strictly a matter of the vagus nerve. Nothing that a bit o’ whiskey won’t remedy.”
Renée straightened. “Excuse me, gentlemen,” she said, tightening the cap on the smelling salts. “We’re at a critical step with the cells, and I’m sure your visitor will do fine, Uncle.”
She smiled warmly and opened the office door, allowing cooler air and the laboratory smells of sulfur and carbolic acid to drift in.
“You, sir, are in need of a drink,” Keiller said, once the door had clicked shut behind his niece. He lit an oil lamp, then walked to the wall and twisted the electrical switch off. “I prefer the gentler light,” he said as the single overhead lightbulb flicked out. “Perhaps I’m old-fashioned.” He pulled the bottom drawer of his desk open. “Will Scotch whiskey do ye, Mr. Van Horne? I’ve a wee taste here from the highlands, a distiller near my childhood home above Dundee.”
“Haven’t had the Scotch stuff since my college days,” Nicolas replied.
Keiller took two common laboratory beakers marked “150 milliliters” from a shelf and poured generous splashes. “And what college was it you attended?”
“Harvard, class of ’68.”
“Ah, Boston. I wisht I’d seen more of it. I was offered a position in Boston when I first came from Edinburgh, a fresh, young professor of morbid anatomy, you understand. But my research took me to Havana for a number of years, then here to Galveston, to the frontier.”
“To build a successful school, I must say.”
Keiller raised his beaker in the yellow lamplight. “Shall we, Mr. Van Horne? Here’s to success—for your ice, our college, and future shipments.”
“Yes, I’ll drink to that, Professor . . . and to hell with these economic panics the past few years.”
“Seems to me you’ve gained a reasonable degree of success.”
“Production varies from winter to winter, which is worrisome, but my ice is of exceptional purity, and should my luck hold, I might expand . . . in fact, just today I’ve toyed with the idea of building my own icehouse on the island.”
With another “wee taste” or two, the bottle of Scotch was emptied and Keiller again searched his desk. “I’ve another in here somewhere”—he produced a dark brown bottle—“aha!”
Van Horne removed his sodden jacket and hung it over a chair near the hearth. He pulled off his tie and starched white collar, limp from the deluge. They raised their glasses, their tongues loosened, and the formalities of “sir” and “professor” relaxed and were replaced by first names.