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

by Noah Gordon

  On a still, sultry evening that ended in a thunderstorm, Shaman went to bed feeling the vibrations of an occasional thunderclap of heroic proportions, and opening his eyes whenever the room was transformed by the white illumination of lightning. Finally his weariness transcended the natural disturbances and he slept, so deeply that when his mother shook his shoulder it took him several seconds to realize what was happening.

  Sarah held her lamp to her face so he could see her lips. “You must get up.”

  “Someone with measles?” he asked, already pulling on his outer clothing.

  “No. Lionel Geiger is here to fetch you.”

  By that time he had slid into his shoes and was outside. “What is it, Cubby?”

  “My sister’s little boy. Choking. Tries to suck up air, makes a bad sound, like a pump can’t send up water.”

  It would have taken too long to run over the Long Path through the woods, too long to hitch the buggy or saddle one of his own animals. “I’ll take your horse,” he told Lionel, and did so, galloping the animal down their lane, up the quarter of a mile of road, and then up the Geigers’ lane, clutching the medical bag so he wouldn’t lose it.

  Lillian Geiger waited by the front door. “In here.”

  Rachel. Seated on the bed in her old room, with a child in her lap. The little boy was very blue. He kept weakly trying to bring in air.

  “Do something. He’s going to die.”

  In fact, Shaman believed the boy was close to death. He opened the child’s mouth and stuck his first and second fingers into the small throat. The back of the child’s mouth and the opening of his larynx were covered by a nasty mucous membrane, a killing membrane, thick and gray. Shaman stripped it away with his fingers.

  At once the child pulled great shuddering breaths into his body.

  His mother held him and wept. “Oh, God. Joshua, are you all right?” Her night-breath was strong, her hair was disheveled.

  Yet, incredibly, it was Rachel. An older Rachel, more womanly. Who had eyes only for the child.

  The little boy already looked better, less blue, his normal color flooding back as oxygen reached his lungs. Shaman placed his hand on the child’s chest and held it there to feel the strength of the heartbeat; then he took the rate of the pulse and for a few moments held a small hand in each of his own large ones. The little boy had started to cough.

  Lillian took a step into the room, and it was to her that Shaman spoke.

  “What does the cough sound like?”

  “Hollow, like a … a barking.”

  “Is there a wheeze?”

  “Yes, at the end of each cough, almost a whistle.”

  Shaman nodded. “He has a catarrhal croup. You must start boiling water and give him warm baths for the rest of the night, to relax the respiratory muscles of his chest. And he has to breathe steam.” He took one of Makwa’s medicines from his bag, a tea of black snakeroot and marigold. “Brew this and let him drink it sweetened and as hot as possible. It will keep his larynx open, and help with the cough.”

  “Thank you, Shaman,” Lillian said, pressing his hand. Rachel didn’t appear to see him at all. Her bloodshot eyes looked crazed. Her gown was smeared with the child’s snot.

  As he let himself out of the house, his mother and Lionel came walking down the Long Path, Lionel carrying a lantern that had attracted an enormous swarm of mosquitoes and moths. Lionel’s lips were moving, and Shaman could guess what he was asking.

  “I think he will be all right,” he said. “Blow out the lantern and make sure the bugs are gone before you go into the house.”

  He went up the Long Path himself, a route he had taken so many times the dark wasn’t a problem. Now and then the last of the lightning flickered and the black woods on both sides of the path sprang at him in the brightness.

  When he was back in his room, he undressed like a sleepwalker. But when he lay on his bed, he was unable to sleep. Numb and confused, he stared up at the murky ceiling or at the black walls, and wherever he looked, he saw the same face.

  61

  A FRANK DISCUSSION

  When he went to the Geigers’ house next morning, she answered the door wearing a new-looking blue housedress. Her hair was neatly combed. He smelled her light, spicy fragrance as she took his hands.

  “Hello, Rachel.”

  “… Thank you, Shaman.”

  Her eyes were unchanged, wonderful and deep, but he noticed they were still raw with fatigue. “How is my patient?”

  “He appears to be better. His cough isn’t as frightening as before.” She led him up the stairs. Lillian sat next to her grandson’s bed with a pencil and some sheets of brown paper, entertaining him by drawing stick figures and telling stories. The patient, whom Shaman had seen only as an afflicted human being the night before, this morning was a small dark-eyed boy with brown hair and freckles that stood out in his pale face. He looked about two years old. A girl, several years older but with a remarkable resemblance to her brother, sat at the foot of his bed.

  “These are my children,” Rachel said, “Joshua and Hattie Regensberg. And this is Dr. Cole.”

  “How do you do,” Shaman said.

  “Ha do.” The boy regarded him warily.

  “How do you do,” Hattie Regensberg said. “Mama says you don’t hear us, and we must look at you when we speak, and say our words stinctly.”

  “Yes, that’s true.”

  “Why don’t you hear us?”

  “I’m deaf because I was sick when I was a little boy,” Shaman said easily.

  “Is Joshua going to be deaf?”

  “No, Joshua definitely isn’t going to be deaf.”

  In a few minutes he was able to assure them that Joshua was much better. The baths and steam had broken his fever, his pulse was strong and steady, and when Shaman positioned the stethoscope bell and told Rachel what to listen for, she could hear no rales. Shaman placed the earpieces in Joshua’s ears and let him hear his own heart beating, and then Hattie took a turn with the stethoscope and placed the bell on her brother’s stomach, announcing that all she heard was “guggles.”

  “That’s because he’s hungry,” Shaman said, and advised Rachel to put the boy on a light but nourishing diet for a day or two.

  He told Joshua and Hattie their mother knew some very good fishing spots along the river, and he invited them to visit the Cole farm and play with the lambs. Then he said good-bye to them, and to their grandmother. Rachel walked him to the door.

  “You have beautiful children.”

  “They are, aren’t they!”

  “I’m sorry about your husband, Rachel.”

  “Thank you, Shaman.”

  “And I wish you good luck in your impending marriage.”

  Rachel appeared startled. “What impending marriage?” she asked, just as her mother came down the stairway.

  Lillian passed through the foyer quietly, but the high color in her face was like an advertisement.

  “You have been misinformed, I have no marriage plans,” Rachel said crisply, loud enough for her mother to hear, and her face was pale when she said good-bye to Shaman.

  That afternoon as he was riding Boss toward home, he overtook a solitary female figure trudging along, and when he drew closer he recognized the blue housedress. Rachel wore stout walking shoes and an old bonnet to guard her face from the sun. He called out to her, and she turned and greeted him quietly.

  “May I walk along with you?”

  “Please do.”

  So he swung down from the saddle and led the horse.

  “I don’t know what got into my mother, to tell you I was to be married. Joe’s cousin has shown some interest, but we won’t marry. I think my mother is pushing me toward him because she’s so anxious for the children to have a proper father again.”

  “There seems to be a conspiracy of mothers. Mine neglected to tell me you were back, purposely, I’m sure.”

  “It’s so insulting of them,” she said, and he saw t
ears in her eyes. “They assume that we’re fools. I’m aware I have a son and a daughter who need a Jewish father. And certainly the last thing you’re interested in is a Jewish woman who has two children and is in mourning.”

  He smiled at her. “They’re very nice children. With a very nice mother. But it’s true, I’m not an infatuated fifteen-year-old anymore.”

  “I thought of you often, after I was married. I so regretted that you’d been hurt.”

  “I got over it very quickly.”

  “We were children, thrown together during difficult times. I dreaded marriage so, and you were such a good friend.” She smiled at him. “When you were a little boy you said you’d kill to protect me. And now we’re adults, and you’ve saved my son.” She placed her hand on his arm. “I hope we’ll remain steadfast friends forever. As long as we live, Shaman.”

  He cleared his throat. “Oh, I know we will,” he said awkwardly. For a moment they walked in silence, and then Shaman asked if she would like to ride the horse.

  “No, I prefer to continue my walk.”

  “Well, then, I’ll ride him myself, because I have a good deal to do before I can eat my supper. Good afternoon, Rachel.”

  “Good afternoon, Shaman,” she said, and he remounted and rode away, leaving her walking purposefully down the road behind him.

  He told himself she was a strong and practical woman who had the courage to face things as they were, and he determined to learn from her. He needed the company of a woman. He made a house call to Roberta Williams, who was suffering from “women’s troubles” and had begun to drink to excess. Averting his eyes from the dressmaker’s dummy with the ivory buttocks, he asked after her daughter and was told that Lucille had married a postal worker three years before, and lived in Davenport. “Has a youngun every year. Never comes to see me unless she needs money, that one,” Roberta told him. Shaman left her a bottle of tonic.

  At just the moment of his deepest discontent, he was hailed on Main Street by Tobias Barr, who sat in his buggy with two women. One of them was his diminutive blond wife, Frances, and the other was Frances’ niece, who was visiting from St. Louis. Evelyn Flagg was eighteen years old, taller than Frances Barr but blond like her, and she had the most perfect female profile Shaman had ever seen.

  “We’re showing Evie about, thought she’d like to see Holden’s Crossing,” Dr. Barr said. “Have you read Romeo and Juliet, Shaman?”

  “Why, yes, I have.”

  “Well, you’ve mentioned that when you know a play, you enjoy attending a performance. A touring company is in Rock Island this week, and we’re getting up a theater party. Will you join us?”

  “I would like that,” Shaman said, and smiled at Evelyn, whose answering smile was dazzling.

  “A light supper at our house first, then, at five o’clock,” Frances Barr said.

  He bought a new white shirt and a black string tie, and reread the play. The Barrs also had invited Julius Barton and his wife, Rose. Evelyn wore a blue gown that suited her blondness. For a few moments Shaman struggled, trying to remember where he’d seen that shade of blue recently, and then he realized it had been in Rachel Geiger’s housedress.

  Frances Barr’s idea of a light supper was six courses. Shaman found it difficult to carry on a conversation with Evelyn. When he asked her a question, she was inclined to answer with a quick, nervous smile and a nod or a shake of her head. She spoke twice of her own volition, once to tell her aunt that the roast was excellent, and a second time during dessert, to confide in Shaman that she doted on both peaches and pears and was very grateful they ripened in different seasons so she wasn’t forced to choose between them.

  The theater was crowded, and the evening was hot as only the end of summer can be. They arrived just before the curtain rose, because the six courses had taken time. Tobias Barr had bought the tickets with Shaman in mind. They sat in the center section of the third row, and they were scarcely settled before the actors were speaking their lines. Shaman watched the play through opera glasses that allowed him to lip-read quite well, and he enjoyed it. During the first intermission he accompanied Dr. Barr and Dr. Barton outside, and while waiting in line to use the privy behind the theater, they agreed the production was interesting. Dr. Barton thought that perhaps the actress playing Juliet was pregnant. Dr. Barr said Romeo was wearing a truss beneath his tights.

  Shaman had been concentrating on their mouths, but during Act Two he studied Juliet and saw no basis for Dr. Barton’s supposition. There was no doubt about the fact that Romeo wore a truss, however.

  At the end of Act Two the doors were opened to a welcome breeze, and the lamps were lit. He and Evelyn remained in their seats and tried to talk. She said she often went to the theater in St. Louis. “I find it inspiring to attend the plays, don’t you?”

  “Yes. But I seldom go,” he said absently. Curiously, Shaman felt he was being watched. With his opera glasses he studied the people in the balconies on the left side of the stage, and then on the right. In the second balcony, on the right, he saw Lillian Geiger and Rachel. Lillian wore a brown linen dress with great bell-like sleeves of lace. Rachel sat just beneath a lamp, which caused her to brush at the moths that swooped about the light, but it gave Shaman a chance to examine her closely. Her hair was carefully done, brushed up behind her in a gleaming knot. She wore a black dress that appeared to be made of silk; he wondered when she would stop wearing mourning in public. The dress was collarless against the heat, with short puff sleeves. He studied her round arms and full bosom, and always came back to her face. While he was still looking, she turned from her mother and glanced down at where he was sitting. For a full moment she observed him looking up at her through his glasses, and then she glanced away as ushers turned down the lamps.

  Act Three seemed unending. Just as Romeo said to Mercutio, Courage, man. The hurt cannot be much, he became aware that Evelyn Flagg was trying to say something to him. He felt her slight warm breath on his ear as she whispered, while Mercutio replied, No, ’tis not so deep as a well, nor so wide as a church door; but ’tis enough, ’twill serve.

  He took the glasses from his eyes and turned toward the girl who sat next to him in the dark, mystified because small children like Joshua and Hattie Regensberg could remember the principles of lip-reading, while she wasn’t able to.

  “I cannot hear you.”

  He was unaccustomed to whispering. Doubtless his voice was too loud, because the man directly in front of him in the second row turned and stared.

  “I beg your pardon,” Shaman whispered. It was his earnest hope that his words were softer this time, and he put the glasses back up to his eyes.

  62

  FISHING

  Shaman was curious about what allowed men like his father and George Cliburne to turn their backs on violence, when others couldn’t. Only a few days after the theater party he found himself riding to Rock Island again, this time to speak with Cliburne about pacifism. He could hardly credit the journal’s revelation that Cliburne was the cool and courageous person who had brought runaway slaves to his father and then picked them up to take them to their next station of hiding. The plump, balding feed merchant didn’t look heroic or appear the kind of person who would risk everything for a principle in defiance of the law. Shaman was filled with admiration for the steely secret man who inhabited Cliburne’s soft storekeeper body.

  Cliburne nodded when he made his request at the feed store. “Well, thee can ask thy questions about pacifism and we shall talk, but I expect it will be good if thee begins by reading about the subject,” he said, and told his clerk he’d be back presently. Shaman rode after him to his house, and soon Cliburne had selected several books and a tract from the library. “Thee might wish to attend Friends’ meeting sometime.”

  Privately Shaman doubted he would, but he thanked Cliburne and rode home with his books. They turned out to be something of a disappointment, being mostly about Quakerism. The Society of Friends apparently was started
in England in the 1600’s, by a man named George Fox, who believed “the Inner Light of the Lord” dwelt in the hearts of quite ordinary people. According to Cliburne’s books, Quakers supported one another in simple lives of love and friendship. They weren’t comfortable with creeds or dogmas, they regarded all life as sacramental, and observed no special liturgy. They had no clergy, but believed that laymen were capable of receiving the Holy Spirit, and it was basic to their religion that they rejected war and worked toward peace.

  The Friends were persecuted in England, and their name originally was an insult. Hauled before a judge, Fox told him to “tremble at the Word of the Lord,” and the judge called him “a quaker.” William Penn founded his colony in Pennsylvania as a haven for persecuted English Friends, and for three-quarters of a century Pennsylvania had no militia and only a few policemen.

  Shaman wondered how they had managed to handle the drunkards. When he put Cliburne’s books away, he had neither learned much about pacifism nor been touched by the Inner Light.

  September came warmly but was clear and fresh, and he chose to follow river roads whenever he could while making his calls, enjoying the glitter of the sun on the moving water, and the stilt-legged beauty of the wading birds, fewer now because many already were flying south.

  He was riding slowly on his way home one afternoon when he saw three familiar figures under a tree on the riverbank. Rachel was removing the hook from a catch while her son held the fishpole, and when she dropped the flapping fish back into the water, Shaman could see from Hattie’s stance and expression that she was angry about something. He turned Boss off the road, toward them.

  “Hello, there.”

  “Hello!” Hattie said.

  “She doesn’t let us keep any of the fish,” Joshua said.

  “I’ll bet they were all catfish,” Shaman said, and grinned. Rachel hadn’t ever been allowed to bring catfish home because they weren’t kosher, lacking scales. He knew that for a child the best part of fishing was watching your family eat the fish you caught. “I’ve been going up to Jack Damon’s every day, because he’s poorly. Well, you know that spot where the river turns sharply at his place?”