by Ed McBain
“And the mistress, you know, she cried and carried on to see me go. And she swore that she would never part with my wife.”
I nodded. It is regrettable that such things happen. Money is the tyrant that rules us all. I said, “I am the dean of a medical college in Augusta. In Georgia. Do you know where that is?”
“A good ways off, sir.”
“Half a day’s journey south by train. Over the Savannah River and into the state of Georgia.”
“A college. That sounds like a fine situation indeed, sir. What kind of place is it?”
“We teach young men to be doctors and surgeons.”
“No, sir,” He smiled again. “The place. The position you’ve come here wanting to fill.”
“Oh, that.” I hesitated. “Well—Porter, I suppose you’d say. General factotum about the college. And something else, for which, if the man were able to do it, we should pay.” I did not elaborate, but I thought he could read expressions much better than I, for he looked thoughtful for a few moments, and then he nodded.
“You’d pay . . . Enough for train fare?”
“If the work is satisfactory. Perhaps enough, if carefully saved, to make a larger purchase than that. But the extra duty . . . it is not pleasant work.”
He smiled. “If it was pleasant, you wouldn’t pay.”
And so it was done. It was not the sordid business of buying a life, I told myself, but more of a bargain struck between two men of the world. True, he would have to leave his wife behind in Charleston, but at least we were saving him from worse possible fates. From cane fields farther south, or from someone who might mistreat him. He could do worse, I told myself. And at least I saved him from one ordeal—that of standing upon the block not knowing what would become of him. I thought the man bright enough and sufficiently ambitious for the requirements of our institution. It may seem odd that I consulted him beforehand as if he had a choice in his fate, but for our purposes we needed a willing worker, not a captive. We needed someone dependable, and I felt that if this man believed it worth his while to join us, we would be able to trust him.
They must have thought him wonderfully brave the next day. On the block, before upturned white faces like frog spawn, peering up at him, he stood there smiling like a missionary with four aces. It was over in the space of a minute, only a stepping stone from one life to the next, crossed in the blink of an eye.
Seven hundred dollars bid and accepted in the span often heartbeats, and then the auctioneer moved on to the next lot, and we went out. As we counted out the gold pieces for the cashier, and signed the account book, Lewis Ford was looking a little askance at the whole procedure.
“So you’re certain of this fellow, Newton?”
“Well, as much as one can be, I suppose,” I said. “I talked at length with him last evening. Of course I did not explain the particulars of the work to him. That would have been most imprudent.”
Lewis Ford grunted. “Well, he has the back for it, I grant you that. And, as you say, perhaps the temperament as well. But has he the stomach for it? After our experience with Clegg, that’s what I wonder.”
“Well, I would, Dr. Ford. If my choice in life was the work we have in store for this fellow or a short, hard life in the cane fields further south, by God, I would have the stomach for it.”
“Indeed. Well, I defer to your judgment. I don’t suppose what we’re asking of him is much worse than what we do for a living, after all.”
“We’ll be serving the same master, anyhow,” I said. “The college, you know, and the greater good of medicine.”
“What is the fellow’s name, do you know?”
I nodded. “He told me. It is Grandison. Grandison Harris.”
“Odd name. I mean they have odd names, of course. Xerxes and Thessalonians, and all that sort of thing. People will give slaves and horses the most absurd appellations, but I wouldn’t have taken Grandison for a slave name, would you?”
I shrugged. “Called after the family name of his original owner, I should think. And judging by the lightness of his skin, there’s some might say he’s entitled to it.”
Grandison Harris had never been on a train before, and his interest in this new experience seemed to diminish what regrets he might have about leaving his home in Charleston. When the train pulled out of the depot, he leaned out the window of the car and half stood until he could see between the houses and over the people all the way to the bay—a stand of water as big as all creation, it looked from here. Water that flowed into the sky itself where the other shore ought to be. The glare of the afternoon sun on the water was fierce, but he kept on twisting his head and looking at the diminishing city and the expanse of blue.
“You’ll hurt your eyes staring out at the sun like that,” I said.
He half turned and smiled. “Well, sir, Doctor,” he said, “I mean to set this place in my memory like dye in new-wove cloth. My eyes may water a little, but I reckon that’s all right, for dyes are sot in salt. Tears will fix the memories to my mind to where they’ll never come out.”
After that we were each left alone with our thoughts for many miles, to watch the unfamiliar landscapes slide past the railway carriage, or to doze in relief that, although the future might be terrible, at least this day was over.
Instead of the sea, the town of Augusta had the big Savannah River running along beside it, garlanded in willows, dividing South Carolina from the state of Georgia. From the depot in Hamburg they took a carriage over the river into town, but it was dark by then, and he couldn’t see much of the new place except for the twinkling lights in the buildings. Wasn’t as big as Charleston, though. They boarded him for the night with a freed woman who took in lodgers, saying that they would come to fetch him in the morning for work.
For a moment in the lamplight of the parlor, he had taken her for a white woman, this haughty lady with hair the brown of new leather and green eyes that met everybody’s gaze without a speck of deference. Dr. Newton took off his hat to her when they went in, and he shook her hand and made a little bow when he took his leave.
When he was alone with this strange landlady, he stared at her in the lamplight and said, “Madame, you are a red bone, not?”
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. Is
aac 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 gr
aveyard? 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?”