The Cole Trilogy: The Physician, Shaman, and Matters of Choice

by Noah Gordon

  She nodded thoughtfully. Despite his effort, they were quieter on the way home.

  Two days later, when he went to her cabin, there was yet another man, a tall, cadaverously thin peddler named Timothy Mead, who regarded the world out of mournful brown eyes and spoke respectfully when introduced to the doctor. Mead left her a gift of four colors of thread.

  Rob J. took a thorn out of Alex’s bare foot and noted that summer was coming to an end and the boy didn’t have proper shoes. He took a tracing of the feet and next time he was in Rock Island stopped at the shoemaker’s and ordered a pair of child’s boots, taking great pleasure in the errand. The following week, when he delivered the small footwear, he saw that the gesture flustered Sarah. Still, she was a puzzle to him; he couldn’t tell if she was gratified or annoyed.

  The morning after Nick Holden was elected to the legislature he rode into the clearing by Rob’s cabin. In two days’ time he would travel to Springfield to make laws that would help the growth of Holden’s Crossing. Holden spat contemplatively and turned the conversation to the common knowledge that the doctor was riding out with the Widow Bledsoe. “Ah. There are things you should know, old buck.”

  Rob looked at him.

  “Well, the child, her son. You’re aware he’s a wood’s colt? Born almost two years after her husband’s death.”

  Rob stood. “Good-bye, Nick. You have a good trip to Springfield.”

  There was no mistaking his tone, and Holden clambered to his feet. “I’m just trying to say it’s not necessary for a man—” he began, but what he saw in Rob J.’s face made him swallow the words, and in a moment he swung into his saddle, said a discomfited farewell, and rode away.

  Rob J. saw such a puzzling mixture of things in her face: pleasure at seeing him and being in his company, tenderness when she would allow it, but also at times a kind of terror. The evening came when he kissed her. At first her open mouth was soft and glad and she pressed against him, but then the moment went bad. She twisted away. To hell, he told himself, she didn’t care for him, and that was that. But he forced himself to ask her gently what was the matter.

  “How can you be attracted to me? Haven’t you seen me wretched, in a beastly condition? You have … smelled my filth,” she said, her face aflame.

  “Sarah,” he said. He looked into her eyes. “When you were ill, I was your doctor. Since then, I’ve come to see you as a woman of charm and intelligence, with whom it gives me great pleasure to exchange thoughts and share my dreams. I’ve come to desire you in every way. You’re all I think about. I love you.”

  Their only physical contact was her hands in his. Her grip tightened, but she didn’t speak.

  “Perhaps you could learn to love me?”

  “Learn? However could I not love you?” she asked wildly. “You, who handed me back my life, as if you were God!”

  “No, damn you, I’m an ordinary man! And that’s how I need to be—”

  Now they were kissing. It went on and on, and it wasn’t enough. It was Sarah who prevented what might easily have followed, pushing him roughly, turning away and arranging her clothing.

  “Marry me, Sarah.”

  When she didn’t answer, he spoke again. “You weren’t meant to slop hogs all day on a pig farm or to stumble about the countryside with a peddler’s pack on your back.”

  “What is it I was meant for, then?” she asked in a low, bitter voice.

  “Why, to be a doctor’s wife. It’s very plain,” he said gravely.

  She didn’t have to pretend to be serious. “There are those who will rush to tell you about Alex, about his lineage, so I want to tell you about him myself.”

  “I want to be Alex’s father. I’m concerned about him today, and tomorrow. I don’t need to know about yesterday. I’ve had terrible yesterdays too. Marry me, Sarah.”

  Her eyes filled, but she had yet another side to reveal to him. She faced him calmly. “They say the Indian woman lives with you. You must send her away.”

  “ ‘They say.’ And ‘There are those who will tell you.’ Well, I will tell you something, Sarah Bledsoe. If you marry me, you must learn to tell them to go to hell.” He took a deep breath. “Makwa-ikwa is a good and hardworking woman. She lives in her own house on my land. To send her away would be an injustice to her and to me, and I won’t do it. It would be the worst way for you and me to begin a life together.

  “You must take my word that there is no reason for jealousy,” he said. He held her hands tightly and wouldn’t let her go. “Any other conditions?”

  “Yes,” she said hotly. “You must change the names of your mares. They’re named for women you have ridden, is that not so?”

  He started to smile, but there was real anger in her eyes. “One of them. The other was an older beauty I knew as a boy, a friend of my mother’s. I ached for her, but she thought of me as a child.”

  She didn’t ask which horse was named for which woman. “It’s a cruel and nasty male joke. You’re not a cruel and nasty man, and you must change the mares’ names.”

  “You’ll rename them yourself,” he said at once.

  “And you must promise, no matter what may happen between us in the future, never to name a horse for me.”

  “I so vow. Of course,” he couldn’t resist noting, “I intend to order a pig from Samuel Merriam, and …”

  Fortunately, he was still holding her hands, and he didn’t let go of them until she was returning his kiss in a very good way. When they stopped, he saw she was weeping.

  “What?” he said, burdened by the uneasy intimation that being married to this woman would not be easy.

  Her wet eyes glowed. “Letters posted by coach will be a terrible expense,” she said. “But finally I can send positive word to my brother and sister in Virginia.”

  21

  THE GREAT AWAKENING

  It was easier to decide on marriage than to find a clergyman. Because of this, some couples along the frontier never bothered about formal vows, but Sarah refused “to be married without being married.” She had the ability to speak plainly. “I’ve known what it means to bear and raise a fatherless child, and it will never happen to me again,” she said.

  He understood. Yet autumn had arrived, and he knew that once the snows locked the prairie, it might be many months before an itinerant preacher or circuit-riding minister would make his way to Holden’s Crossing. The answer to their problem appeared one day in a handbill he read at the general store, advertising a week-long revival meeting. “It’s called the Great Awakening and will be held at Belding Creek township. We have to go, Sarah, because there will be no shortage of clergymen there.”

  When he insisted they bring Alex with them, Sarah agreed eagerly. They took the buckboard. It was a trip of a day and a morning over a passable, if stony, road. The first night they stopped in the barn of a hospitable farmer, spreading their blankets on the fragrant new hay in the loft. Next morning Rob J. spent half an hour castrating the farmer’s two bulls and removing a growth from the flank of a cow, to pay for their lodging; despite the delay, they arrived at Belding Creek before noon. It was another new community, only five years older than Holden’s Crossing but already much larger. As they drove into town, Sarah’s eyes widened and she sat close to Rob and held Alex’s hand, for she was unaccustomed to the sight of so many people. The Great Awakening was held on the prairie next to a shady willow grove. It had attracted people from throughout the region; everywhere, tents had been pitched for protection against the midday sun and the autumn wind, and there were wagons of all types, and tethered horses and oxen. Entrepreneurs serviced the crowds, and the three travelers from Holden’s Crossing drove past open fires over which vendors were cooking things that gave off mouth-watering smells—venison stew, river-fish chowder, roast pork, sweet-corn, broiled hare. When Rob J. tied the horse to a bush—she who had been called Margaret Holland, now renamed Vicky, short for Queen Victoria (“You have never ridden the young queen?” Sarah asked)—they wer
e eager for dinner, but there was no need to spend money on vended food. Alma Schroeder had supplied the little party with a hamper so large that the wedding feast could have lasted a week, and they dined on cold chicken and apple dumplings.

  They ate quickly, caught up in the excitement, staring at the crowds, listening to the cries and the babble. Then, each holding one of the little boy’s hands, they walked slowly about the meeting. It was really two revival meetings in one, for there was nonstop religious warfare, competitive preaching by Methodists and Baptists. For a time they listened to a Baptist minister in a clearing within the grove. His name was Charles Prentiss Willard, and he shouted and howled, making Sarah shiver. He warned that God was writing their names in his book, who should have everlasting life and who should have everlasting death. What would win a sinner everlasting death, he said, was immoral and unchristian conduct, such as fornicating, shooting a fellow Christian, fighting and using bad language, drinking whiskey, or bringing illegitimate spawn into the world.

  Rob J. looked grim and Sarah was trembly and pale as they went out onto the prairie to hear the Methodist, a man named Arthur Johnson. He wasn’t nearly so powerful a speaker as Mr. Willard, but he said salvation was possible for everybody who did good deeds and confessed their sins and asked God’s forgiveness, and Sarah nodded when Rob J. asked if she didn’t think Mr. Johnson could do the marrying. Mr. Johnson looked pleased when Rob approached him after the preaching. He wanted to marry them before the entire open meeting, but neither Rob J. nor Sarah wanted to become part of the entertainment. When Rob gave him three dollars, the preacher agreed to follow them outside of town, and he arranged them under a tree on the bank of the Mississippi River, with the little boy seated on the ground and looking on, and a placid fat woman Mr. Johnson introduced only as Sister Jane to serve as witness.

  “I’ve a ring,” Rob J. said, digging it out of his pocket, and Sarah’s eyes widened, because he hadn’t mentioned his mother’s wedding band. Sarah’s long fingers were slim and the ring was loose. Her yellow hair was tied back with a dark blue ribbon Alma Schroeder had given her, and she took the ribbon off and shook her hair until it fell loose around her face. She said she’d wear the ring on the ribbon around her neck until they could get it sized. She held Rob’s hand tightly as Mr. Johnson led them through the vows with the ease of long practice. Rob J. repeated the words in a voice whose huskiness surprised him. Sarah’s voice trembled, and she looked slightly disbelieving, as if she couldn’t credit that this actually was happening. After the ceremony, they were still kissing when Mr. Johnson began trying to convince them to return to the revival, because it was at the evening meeting that the most souls came forward to be saved.

  But they thanked him and said good-bye, turning Vicky in the direction of home. The little boy was soon cranky and whining, but Sarah sang lively songs and told stories, and several times when Rob J. stopped the horse she took Alex down from the buckboard and ran and jumped with him, playing games.

  They shared an early supper of Alma’s beef-and-kidney pies and pound cake with a sugary frosting, washed down with brook water, and then had a sober discussion regarding the kind of accommodations to seek for that night. There was an inn a few hours away, and the prospect obviously pleased Sarah, who never had had the money to stay at a hostelry. But when Rob J. mentioned bedbugs and the general uncleanliness of such establishments, she quickly agreed with his suggestion that they stop at the same barn in which they had slept on the previous night.

  They reached it at dusk and, receiving ready permission from the farmer, climbed up into the warm darkness of the loft almost with the welcome feeling of returning home.

  Worn out by his exertions and the lack of a nap, Alex fell at once into a sound sleep, and when he was covered they spread a blanket nearby and reached for one another before they were fully undressed. He liked it that she didn’t pretend to innocence and that their hunger for one another was honest and knowledgeable. They made thrashing and noisy love and then waited for some sign that they had awakened Alex, but the little boy slept on.

  He finished undressing her and wanted to see. It had grown black in the barn, but they crawled together to the little door through which the hay was hoisted into the loft. When he opened the door, the three-quarter moon threw a rectangle of light in which they examined one another at length. In the moonlight he studied gilded shoulders and arms, burnished breasts, a crotch-mound like the silver nest of a small bird, and pale, ghostly buttocks. He would have made love in the light, but the air was seasonable and she feared the farmer’s eyes, so they closed the door. This time they were slow and very tender, and just at the moment of the best ripe undamming he cried to her exultantly, “This will make our bairn. This!” and the sleeping little boy was awakened by his mother’s rattling groans and began to cry.

  They lay with Alex cuddled between them, Rob’s hands stroking her lightly, brushing away bits of chaff, memorizing.

  “You mustn’t die,” she whispered.

  “Neither of us, not for a very long time.”

  “A bairn is a child?”

  “Yes.”

  “You believe we’ve already begun a child?”

  “… Maybe.”

  Presently he heard her swallow. “Perhaps, to make certain, we should keep on trying?”

  As her husband and as her physician, he thought it a sensible notion. On his hands and knees he crawled in the blackness across the fragrant hay, following the ripe glimmer of his wife’s pale flanks away from their sleeping son.

  PART THREE

  HOLDEN’S CROSSING

  November 14, 1841

  22

  CURSING AND BLESSINGS

  From mid-November the air was bitter. Heavy snows came early, and Queen Victoria floundered through high drifts. When Rob J. was out in the worst weather, sometimes he called the mare Margaret and her short ears pricked up at her old name. Both horse and driver knew their ultimate goals. She struggled toward heated water and a bag full of oats, while the man hurried to return to his cabin of warmth and light that came more from the woman and child than from the hearth and oil lamps. If Sarah hadn’t conceived during the wedding trip, it was soon after. Wrenching morning sickness didn’t quench their ardor. They waited itchily for the little boy to sleep and then clapped together, bodies almost as quickly as mouths, with an eagerness that remained constant, but as her pregnancy progressed he became a cautious and wooing lover. Once a month he took pencil and notebook and sketched her naked next to the comfort of the fire, a record of the development of the gravid female that was no less scientific because of the emotions that found their way into the drawings. He made architectural renderings too; they agreed on a house with three bedchambers, a large kitchen, and a sitting room. He drew construction plans to scale so Alden could hire two carpenters and begin the house after spring planting.

  Sarah resented Makwa-ikwa’s sharing a part of her husband’s world that was closed to her. As warming days turned the prairie first into a quagmire and then a delicate green carpet, she told Rob that when the seasonal fevers came, she’d go with him to nurse the sick. But by the end of April her body was ponderous. Tortured by jealousy as well as pregnancy, she stayed home and fretted while the Indian woman rode out with the doctor, to return hours—sometimes days—later. Sodden with fatigue, Rob J. would eat, bathe when possible, steal a few hours of sleep, and then collect Makwa and ride out again.

  By June, Sarah’s last month of pregnancy, the fever epidemic had eased sufficiently for Rob to leave Makwa at home. One morning while he rode through heavy rains to tend a farmer’s woman who was dying in agony, back in his own cabin his wife came to term. Makwa placed the biting stick between Sarah’s jaws and tied a rope to the door and gave her a knotted end to pull on.

  It was hours before Rob J. lost his struggle with gangrenous erysipelas—as he would report in a letter to Oliver Wendell Holmes, the fatal illness was the result of a neglected cut in the farm woman’s finger, made
while she chunked seed potatoes—but when he got home, his child still hadn’t been born. His wife’s eyes were wild. “It’s splitting my body, make it stop, you bastard,” she snarled as he came through the door.

  Hostage now to Holmes’s training, he scrubbed his hands until they were raw before approaching her. After he had examined her, Makwa followed him away from the bed. “Baby’s comin slow,” she said.

  “Baby’s coming feetfirst.”

  Her eyes clouded, but she nodded and returned to Sarah.

  The labor went on. In the middle of the night he forced himself to take Sarah’s hands, fearful of their message. “What?” she said thickly.

  He could feel her vital force, diminished but reassuring. He murmured of love, but she hurt too much to acknowledge words or kisses.

  On and on. Grunting and screaming. He couldn’t resist praying unsatisfactorily, frightening himself by not being able to bargain, feeling both arrogant and a hypocrite. If I’m wrong and you do exist, please punish me some other way than by harming this woman. Or this child struggling to escape, he added hastily. Toward dawn, little red extremities appeared, big feet for an infant, the proper number of toes. Rob whispered encouragement, told the reluctant baby all of life is a struggle. Legs emerged inch by inch, thrilled him by kicking.

  The sweet little prick of a man-child. Hands, the proper number of fingers. A nicely developed baby, but the shoulders stuck and he had to cut Sarah, more pain. The small face was pressed into the wall of the vagina. Worried that the boy would suffocate in maternal flesh, he worked two fingers inside her and held the canal wall away until the indignant little face slid into the topsy-turvy world and at once issued a thin cry.

  With trembling hands he tied and cut the cord and stitched his sobbing wife. By the time he rubbed her belly to contract the uterus, Makwa had cleansed and swaddled the infant and set him on his mother’s breast. It had been twenty-three hours of hard labor; for a long time she slept as though dead. When she opened her eyes, he held her hand tightly. “Good job.”