by Noah Gordon
Although he didn’t move and made no sound, somehow she sensed his wakefulness. For a moment as she stood before him, their eyes met. Then she faced away from him, turned her back. Not, he felt, to hide the dark, tangled triangle so much as to protect from him the mysterious symbols on the priestly bosom. Sacred breasts, he told himself wonderingly. There was nothing sacred about her hips and buttocks. She was large-boned but he wondered why she was called Bear Woman, for in her face and suppleness she was more like a powerful cat. He couldn’t guess her age. He was afflicted by a sudden vision of taking her from behind while grasping in each hand a thick braid of greased black hair, like riding a sensual human horse. He contemplated with amazement the fact that he was planning to be the lover of a red-skinned female savage more wonderful than any James Fenimore Cooper had been able to imagine, and became aware of a vigorous physical response. Priapism could be an ominous sign, but he knew the manifestation was caused by this woman and not by an injury, and therefore presaged his recovery.
He lay quietly and watched as she put on a fringed garment of deerskin. From her right shoulder she hung a strap composed of four strands of colored thongs, ending in a leather pouch painted with symbolic figures and a circlet of large bright feathers from birds unfamiliar to Rob, the pouch and circlet falling on her left hip.
In a moment she had slipped outside. Soon, as he lay there, he heard her voice rising and falling, certainly in prayer.
Heugh! Heugh! Heugh! they answered her in unison, and she sang some more. He didn’t have the slightest idea what she was saying to their god, but her voice gave him chills and he listened hard, peering up through the smoke hole of her lodge at stars like chunks of ice that somehow she had set on fire.
That night he waited impatiently for sounds of the Crane Dance to end. He dozed, awoke to listen, fretted, waited some more, until the sounds were done, the voices dwindled and fallen silent, the festivities over. Finally he was alerted by the sound of someone entering the longhouse, of the rustling of clothing removed and dropped. A body settled beside him with a sigh, hands reached out and found him, his hands discovered flesh. All was accomplished in silence save for indrawn breaths, an amused grunt, a hiss. He needed to do little. If he wanted to prolong pleasure, he could not, for he had been too long celibate. She was experienced and deft, he was urgent and quick, and afterward, disappointed.
… Like biting into wonderful fruit to find it not what he had hoped.
Taking inventory in the dark, it now seemed to him that the breasts drooped more than he remembered, and under his fingers their walls were smooth and scarless. Crawling to the fire, Rob J. took a stick and waved the glowing end to cause it to burn.
When he crept back to the mat with the torch, he sighed.
The broad flat face that smiled up at him was in no way unpleasant, only he had never seen the woman before.
In the morning, when Makwa-ikwa returned to her longhouse, she wore again her customary shapeless costume of faded homespun. Clearly the Crane Dance festival finally was over. While she prepared the hominy to break their fast, he was sullen. He told her she must never send a woman to him again, and she nodded in a bland, noncommittal way she doubtless had learned as a girl when the Christian teachers had talked to her severely.
The female she had sent him was named Smoke Woman, she said. As she cooked, she told him without emotion that she herself couldn’t lie with a man, for to do so would be to lose her medicine.
Bloody aborigine nonsense, he thought in despair. Yet obviously she believed it.
But he considered it as they ate, her harsh Sauk coffee tasting more bitter than ever to him. In fairness, he acknowledged how quickly he would shun her if slipping his penis into her would mean an end to his doctoring.
He was forced to admire the way she had handled the situation, making certain the fires of his ardor had been banked before telling him simply and honestly where things stood. She was a most unusual woman, he told himself, not for the first time.
That afternoon, Sauks crowded into her hedonoso-te. Comes Singing spoke briefly, addressing the other Indians instead of Rob, but Makwa-ikwa translated.
“I’neni’wa. He is a man,” the big Indian said. He said that Cawso wabeskiou, the White Shaman, ever more would be a Sauk and a Long Hair. For all their days all Sauks would be the brothers and sisters of Cawso wabeskiou.
The Brave Man who had hit Rob on the head after the ball-and-stick game had been won was pushed forward, grinning and shuffling. He was a man named Stone Dog. Sauks didn’t know about apologies, but they knew about reparations. Stone Dog gave him a leather pouch similar to the one Makwa-ikwa sometimes wore, only decorated with wood-pig quills instead of feathers.
Makwa-ikwa said it was to hold his medicine bundle, the collection of sacred personal articles called a Mee-shome, never to be shown to anyone, from which every Sauk draws strength and power. To allow him to wear the pouch, she gave him a gift of four dyed sinews—a brown, an orange, a blue, and a black—fastening them to the pouch like a strap so he could wear it from his shoulder. The cords were called Izze cloths, she said. “Wherever you wear them, bullets can’t hurt you, and your presence will help the crops and cure the sick.”
He was moved, yet embarrassed. “I am happy to be a brother to the Sauks.”
He had always had a hard time expressing appreciation. When his uncle Ranald had spent fifty pounds to buy him the post of dresser at University Hospital so he could gain surgical experience while a medical student, he had scarcely been able to utter thanks. Now he didn’t do better. Fortunately, the Sauk were not given to displays of gratitude either, or to farewells, and nobody made anything of it when he went out and saddled his horse and rode away.
Back at his own cabin, at first he made a game of selecting objects for his sacred medicine bundle. Several weeks before, he had found a tiny animal skull, white and clean and mysterious, on the floor of the woods. He thought it was a skunk’s, it seemed the right size. All right, but what else? The finger of a birth-strangled child? Eye of newt, toe of frog, wool of bat, tongue of dog? Suddenly he wanted to assemble his medicine bundle with great seriousness. What were the objects of his essence, the clues to his soul, the Mee-shome wherein Robert Judson Cole derived his power?
He placed in the pouch the prize heirloom of the Cole family, the blue steel surgeon’s knife that the Coles called Rob J.’s scalpel and that always went to the oldest son who became a physician.
What else could be drawn from his early life? It wasn’t possible to put the cold air of the Highlands in a bag. Or the warm security of family. He wished he owned a likeness of his father, whose features he had long forgotten. His mother had given him a Bible when they had said good-bye, and for that reason he treasured it, but it wouldn’t go into his Mee-shome. He knew he wouldn’t see his mother again; perhaps she was already dead. It occurred to him to try to put her likeness to paper while it was still familiar. When he tried, a sketch came easily except for her nose, then it took anguished hours of failure until finally he had her right, and he rolled up the paper and tied it and placed it in the pouch.
He added the score that Jay Geiger had transcribed so he would be able to play Chopin on the viola da gamba.
A bar of strong brown soap went in, symbol of what Oliver Wendell Holmes had taught him about cleanliness and surgery. That started him thinking along new lines, and after some reflection he removed everything from the pouch but the scalpel and the soap. Then he added rags and dressings, an assortment of drugs and medicinals, and the surgical instruments he needed when he made house calls.
When he was done, the pouch was a medicine bag that carried the supplies and tools of his art and craft. Therefore it was the medicine bundle that gave him his powers, and he was extremely happy with the gift the blow to his hard head had won from the White Paint named Stone Dog.
16
THE DOE HUNTERS
It was an important event when he bought his sheep, because the blatting wa
s the last detail needed to make him know he was at home. At first he worked the merinos with Alden, but it was apparent that Kimball was as capable with sheep as with other animals, and soon Alden was docking tails, castrating male lambs, and watching out for scab all by himself, as though he’d been a shepherd for years. It was well Rob wasn’t needed on the farm, because as word spread about the presence of a good doctor, patients summoned him to ride greater distances. Soon, he knew, he’d have to limit the area of his practice, because Nick Holden’s dream was working, and new families kept arriving in Holden’s Crossing. Nick rode over one morning to inspect the flock and pronounce it odoriferous, and stayed “to let you in on something promising. A grist mill.”
One of the new arrivals was a German named Pfersick, a miller from New Jersey. Pfersick knew where he could buy milling equipment, but he had no capital. “Nine hundred dollars should do it. I’ll put up six hundred for fifty percent of the stock. You put up three hundred for twenty-five percent—I’ll advance what you need—and we’ll give Pfersick twenty-five percent for running the business.”
Rob had paid back less than half the money he owed Nick, and he hated debt. “You’re putting out all the money, why not just take seventy-five percent?”
“I want to feather your nest until its so soft and rich you won’t be tempted to fly. You’re as much a commodity to a town as water.”
Rob J. knew it was true. When he and Alden had gone to Rock Island to buy sheep, they’d seen a handbill Nick had distributed, describing the many advantages of settling in Holden’s Crossing, among which the clinical presence of Dr. Cole had been prominent. He couldn’t see that going into the grist-mill business would compromise his position as a physician, and in the end he nodded.
“Partners!” Nick said.
They shook hands on the deal. Rob refused a huge celebratory cigar—using stogies to administer nicotine anally had dampened his appetite for tobacco. When Nick lit up, Rob said he looked the perfect banker.
“That’ll come sooner than you expect, and you’ll be among the first to know.” Nick blew smoke at the sky in satisfaction. “I’m going doe hunting in Rock Island this weekend. Care to join me?”
“Deer hunting? In Rock Island?”
“Not deer. People of the female persuasion. What do you say, old buck?”
“I stay away from brothels.”
“I’m talkin about choice private goods.”
“Sure. I’ll join you,” Rob J. said. He had tried to speak casually, but doubtless something in his voice revealed he didn’t treat such matters lightly, because Nick Holden grinned.
The Stephenson House reflected the personality of a Mississippi River town where nineteen hundred steamboats docked annually and where rafts of logs a third of a mile long often floated past. Whenever rivermen and lumberjacks had money, the hotel was noisy and sometimes violent. Nick Holden had made arrangements that were both expensive and private, a two-bedroom suite separated by a sitting-dining room. The women were cousins, both named Dawber, pleased by the fact that their patrons were professional men. Nick’s was Lettie, Rob’s was Virginia. They were small and pert, like sparrows, but they shared an arch manner that set Rob’s teeth on edge. Lettie was a widow. Virginia told him she’d never married, but that night when he became familiar with her body, he saw she’d borne children.
Next morning when the four of them met at breakfast, the women whispered together and giggled. Virginia must have told Lettie about the sheath Rob called Old Horny, and Lettie must have told Nick, because as they rode homeward, Nick mentioned it and laughed. “Why bother with those blamed things?”
“Well, disease,” Rob said mildly. “And to ward off fatherhood.”
“Spoils the pleasure.”
Had it been all that pleasurable? He acknowledged that his body and spirit had been eased, and when Nick said he had enjoyed the companionship, Rob said so had he, and agreed that they must go doe hunting again.
The next time he rode past the Schroeders’ place he saw Gus in a meadow wielding a scythe despite the amputated fingers, and they exchanged salutes. He was tempted to go right on past the Bledsoe cabin, because the woman had made it clear she considered him an intruder and the thought of her put him out of sorts. But at the last moment he turned the horse into the clearing and dismounted.
At the cabin he held his hand back before his knuckles could strike the door, because he could plainly hear from within the wailing of the child and hoarse adult screams. Bad sounds. When he tried the door, he found it unlocked. Inside, the smell was like a blow and the light was dim, but he could see Sarah Bledsoe on the floor. Next to her the baby sat, his wet face screwed up in terror so great at this final blow, the sight of a huge stranger, that no sound came from his open mouth. Rob J. wanted to pick up the child and comfort him, but as the woman screamed again, he knew his attention must go to her.
He knelt and touched her cheek. Cold sweat. “What is it, madam?”
“The cancer. Ah.”
“Where does it hurt, Mrs. Bledsoe?”
Her hands, long fingers spread, went like white spiders to her lower abdomen on both sides of her pelvis.
“A sharp or a dull pain?”
“Stabbing! Piercing! Sir. It’s … terrible!”
He feared her urine spilled from her through a fistula caused by child-bearing. If so, he could do nothing to help her.
She closed her eyes, for the evidence of her constant incontinence was in his nose and lungs with every breath.
“I must examine you.”
Doubtless she’d have objected, but when she opened her mouth, it was to cry out in fresh pain. She was stiff with tension but tractable as he molded her into a semiprone position on her left side and chest, her right knee and thigh drawn up. He could see that there was no fistula.
He had in his bag a small container of fresh white lard that he used as lubricant. “You must allow yourself no distress. I’m a physician,” he told her, but she wept more from humiliation than discomfort as the middle finger of his left hand slid into her vagina while his right hand palpated her abdomen. He tried to make the tip of his finger an eye; at first it could see nothing as he moved and probed, but as it came close to the pubic bone he found something.
And then another.
Gently he withdrew and gave her a rag to wipe herself, and went out to the brook to wash his hands.
In order to talk to her, he led her blinking into the harsh sunshine outside, and seated her on a stump with the cosseted child in her arms.
“You don’t have cancer.” He wished it could stop there. “You suffer from bladder-stone.”
“I shan’t die?”
He was held to truth. “With cancer you’d have little chance. With bladder-stone there’s decent chance.” He explained to her about the growth of mineral stones in the bladder, caused perhaps by unchanging diet and prolonged diarrhea.
“Yes. I had diarrhea for a long time after his birth. Is there a medicine?”
“No. No medicine to dissolve the stones. The little stones sometimes pass from your body with the urine, and often they have sharp edges that can tear tissue. I believe that’s why you’ve experienced bloody urine. But you have two large stones. Too large to pass.”
“Then will you cut me? For God’s sake …” she said unsteadily.
“No.” He hesitated, deciding how much she had to know. Part of the Hippocratic Oath he had taken said: I will not cut a person who is suffering from a stone. Some butchers ignored the oath and cut anyway, slicing deep into the perineum between the anus and the vulva or scrotum to open the bladder and get at the stones, leaving a few victims who eventually recovered, and many who died of peritonitis, and others who were maimed for life because an intestine or bladder muscle had been severed. “I’d go into the bladder with a surgical instrument through the urethra, the narrow canal through which you pass water. The instrument is called a lithotrite. It has two little steel pincers, like jaws, with which to remove or c
rush the stones.”
“Would there be pain?”
“Yes, mostly when I inserted the lithotrite and removed it. But the pain would be less than what you now suffer. If the procedure should succeed, you could be totally cured.” It was difficult admitting the greatest danger was that his skill might prove inadequate. “If, in trying to grasp the stone in the jaws of the lithotrite, I were to pinch the bladder and break it, or if I should tear the peritoneum, likely you would die of infection.” Studying her drawn face, he saw flashes of a younger, prettier woman. “You must decide if I am to try.”
In her agitation she held the baby too tightly and the boy began to cry again. Because of that, it took Rob J. a moment to realize what the word was that she had whispered.
Please.
He knew he’d need help while he performed the lithocenosis. Remembering the rigidity of her body during examination, he felt instinctively that his assistant should be a woman, and when he left Sarah Bledsoe he rode straight to the nearby farmhouse and had a talk with Alma Schroeder.
“Oh, I cannot, no never!” Poor Alma blanched. Her consternation was made worse by her genuine feeling for Sarah. “Gott im Himmel! Oh, Dr. Cole, please, I cannot.”
When he saw it was so, he assured her it didn’t diminish her. Some just couldn’t stand to see surgery. “It’s all right, Alma. I’ll find someone else.”
Riding away, he tried to think of a female in the district who might assist him, but he rejected the few possibilities, one by one. He had had enough of weeping; what he required was an intelligent woman with strong arms, a woman with a spirit that would allow her to remain steadfast in the face of suffering.
Halfway home, he turned the horse and rode in the direction of the Indian village.