Canal Town

by Samuel Hopkins Adams

  “You think she’s still carrying it?”

  “I hardly know what to think. Last April, you say?”

  “All the evidence points to that date.”

  “Except the final proof.”

  “Which should have come in December.”

  “Ah, yes. Too far overdue, eh? You didn’t say who the lover is.”

  “He’s dead.”

  Dr. Vought whistled. “It’s a pickle, ain’t it! No help from him, then. And where’s your proof?”

  “I’ll get it,” answered Horace doggedly.

  “How?”

  “I don’t know. But I’ll get it.”

  “As it doesn’t promise to prove itself, I reckon you’ll have to. Well, God speed you, lad.”

  Before the commission caught coach from town, the gist of their report had leaked. They had recommended cancellation of Dr. Horace Amlie’s diploma and withdrawal of his privilege of medical practice within the bounds of New York State. Three weeks later, at the spring meeting, the State Medical Society adopted the report without change.

  Horace Amlie was a practitioner without a practice.

  – 13 –

  The fourteen-foot batteau skimmed briskly westward along the canal, under the impulsion of a beam wind. Its leg-of-mutton sail, sagging unhandily at the leach, testified to amateur fitting. The boat itself was of rough, sturdy construction, equipped with oars as well as a mast, and held against sidewise drifting by leeboards. Amidships a strongbox, covered with sow-hide against the weather, occupied the breadth of the bottom, except for a narrow space where was stowed a small tent. In the stern, sheet in one hand, tiller in the other, Horace Amlie, M.D., smoked his pipe.

  June was high in the land. Horace contemplated with lazy pleasure the vista of lush woodland and flowering swamp. He was hard and lean and weather-brown. His face, grown older than his years, was set in lines of endurance and obduracy. A reader of character would have said at a glance that Horace Amlie was a hard man. Many a sufferer along the Erie route would have given him the lie.

  A Durham boat, light in cargo, hove in sight around the bend. As the two craft neared, the captain’s whistle shrilled in signal to the hoggee on the towpath, who obediently whoaed his tandem. At the same time, the sailor luffed up against the berm and let his sail slat in the breeze. A hail came from the high deck.

  “Ahoy, Doc!”

  “Ahoy, Genesee Rover!”

  “How’s trade, my boy?”

  “Can’t complain. How’s freights?”

  “I’m light, as you see. Taking on planking at Bushnell’s Basin. Got some calls for you.”

  The physician opened a locker and brought out a ledger. “Let’s have ’em.”

  “Woman in labor near Batt’s Landing.”

  “How long?”

  “Since yesterday noon.”

  Horace made a note. “If the wind holds, I’ll be there in two hours.”

  “Won’t be none too soon, I guess. There’s been a free-for-all at Malkey’s Tavern.”

  “Shooting?”

  “Yeah. And knifing. One fella got it through the belly. Plenty bumps and chewed ears for you.”

  “That’s a foul ken,” commented Horace, making another entry. “Anything else?”

  “Usual shakes along the bank. They’re waitin’ on you. Behind your runnin’ time, ain’t you, Doc?”

  “I had an amputation ten miles back. Tree jumped. Smashed the leg like a ripe pippin.”

  “Them woodcutters never learn. Could you fix him?”

  Horace shook his head sadly. He wanted to forget that ugly experience of blood, agony, shrieks and writhing under the knife. And the smell of burning flesh when he applied the cautery to the stump. All useless, probably. Nearly all those comminuted fractures died of gangrene. A too familiar backwoods tragedy. Poor Tim Harkness! A stout young fellow of twenty-three with a wife and two babies. Well, there was always a chance that the strong young blood would prevail against the deadly rot. In any case, he had done what he could.

  “Thank you, Cap,” he called.

  “Good luck, Doc.”

  The sail bellied out again. The prow piled up a little white wavelet, and with that bone in her teeth the boat made a handsome six knots. The four-knot passenger packets and the slower Durhams, heavy in freight, slacked their tow to give her free passage. Even the clumsy rafts, perennially at feud with all that went down to the canal in ships, nosed the bank in favor of the itinerant physician. For Horace Amlie, M.D., after two months of this new and experimental practice, was a recognized institution along the western reaches of the Big Ditch and the wild lands contiguous. The toughest of the canallers gave him consideration if for no other reason than—well, how could they tell when they, themselves, might be in sore need of his ministrations?

  At Craven’s Creek Lock the keeper passed him through without toll, which was strictly illegal, accepting the gift of a segar with aplomb, and requesting and receiving a soothing ointment for his piles. Two miles below, a man came running up the berm toward the sloop.

  “Godsakes, Doc! Hurry on. She’s almost gone.”

  “I’m coming as fast as the wind’ll take me. Hop aboard.”

  He ran in close, and the woodsman leapt to the gunwale, almost upsetting them. His story was a familiar one. Alarming symptoms as labor drew near; no aid except a slovenly and dirty squaw; so the husband had brought his wife jolting over six miles of corduroy road in his oxcart, and she now lay under an improvised shelter of boughs, waiting and hoping.

  Arrived at the spot, Horace went to work. He did not dare have the patient carried aboard the boat, as was his custom to evade the prohibition which forbade his practicing anywhere upon terra firma in New York State. In this case he must take the risk of prosecution. The husband and the squaw carried the sow-hide chest of medicines and instruments to the bedside.

  Three hours later, Horace had the reward of knowing that he had saved two lives. It was his only reward. The woodsman had no money, not so much as a fip. He offered payment in stored grain or stock on the hoof, but bulky barter was of no use to the itinerant. He could not transport it. The debt was entered in his running account where Dinty would later discover it and scold.

  Better returns attended his call at the tavern. The roisterer with the bullet through his belly was beyond help. But Horace patched up several stab-wounds, removed the pendent remains of an ear which had suffered an expert mayhem, treated a half-dozen contusions of varying degrees, and went on his way with six shillings cash besides a gallon of rum and two horns of gunpowder.

  Sundry stops along towpath and berm followed. The friendly breeze sank with the sun. Horace bent to his oars, for he was now in a marshy stretch where he had no mind to spend a mosquito-tormented night. Four miles farther there was an inn. But inns cost money. He traveled on a rigidly economical basis. He rowed until the land lifted from the valley in shaly hills. There he pitched his tent and lighted his fire. His all-purpose woods-knife extracted several white, fat grubs from around the roots of a maple. With these as bait he had no difficulty in catching a couple of plump bullheads which, roasted on an iron prong, served him well for supper.

  The useful blade was now turned to cutting hemlock boughs for his bedding. His keen nose directed him to a clump of wild pennyroyal with which he anointed himself carefully in case any vagrant winged creatures might be about. He took a swallow of his rum, set his rifle within hand-reach, pulled his blanket to his chin, and sank into well-earned slumber after a full day’s work.

  Between Rochester and the developing townlet of Black Rock, there was but one physician, a rheumatic, ague-shaken, undereducated, overworked wreck, already old at forty-two, who lived at Lock Port. The rest of the field was free for Horace. Could he have had full range, he might have prospered well in that wide opportunity. But restriction to the breadth of the canal limited his resources. Even here, his legal status was questionable.

  The state medical authorities, prodded by Genter Latham and
his subservient politicos, had already attempted to make trouble in Albany, only to be roundly told by the Canal Commission that Erie Water was no affair of theirs and that Dr. Amlie was free to practice as he chose anywhere between path and berm. Back of this stiffnecked attitude was the powerful clique of captains with whom Horace was a favorite.

  Not only their moral support, but their active aid was at the young doctor’s call. Against adverse winds, a tow would usually be offered to him. When the weather turned violent, a freighter would slack up, swing out a crane and tackle, and swing his craft and himself bodily inboard, where he could smoke comfortably in the captain’s deck-cabin until his next port-of-call was reached. Tactfully the rough canallers would manage to develop a sore throat, an inflamed joint, a more or less imaginary temperature so that the popular but touchy “Doc” might feel that he was earning his passage.

  With all these favors, it was still a hard life. Horace was toughened to it and would have enjoyed it, but for the separation from Dinty. He was lucky if his duties left him four days out of the month at home.

  The wife’s was the harder part. She must hold the fort, served by Unk Zeb and watched over by the faithful Teapot, facing a life which daily constricted about her. For now the wearing punishment of ostracism was being visited upon her for her husband’s sins. Inevitably the essential truth about the Latham-Amlie feud had leaked out. It was bruited about boldly that Dr. Amlie had perpetrated a false and slanderous diagnosis; that, without evidence or warrant, he had declared Wealthia Latham to be in the family way; that when time refuted his disgraceful error, he had stuck to it and defamed the character of an innocent maiden to her own and her father’s face. Public opinion held that Genter Latham would have been justified in getting down his musket and shooting the slanderer on sight.

  Horace’s stauncher friends stood by the Amlies. Silas Bewar, not to be intimidated by any man, was a frequent visitor, with his prim Quakeress. O. Daggett and Decker Jessup refused to have any part in the anti-Amlie campaign, and suffered in their trade from the ill will of the town magnate. The Reverend Theron Strang was an unswerving ally. To Horace’s surprise, that volatile and light-minded humorist, Carlisle Sneed, made a practice of dropping in to ask if he could be helpful, and frequently was. Several others of the smithy coterie stood by loyally. But most of the Best People of Palmyra turned a cold shoulder upon the young wife. They got little satisfaction of it.

  Dinty’s bright beauty took on pride and courage under the petty persecution. She held her head high. She returned hauteur with hauteur, sniff for sniff. If at times she suffered from loneliness, she never permitted her husband to see it. Of each homecoming, she made a little, loving festivity, with something special of her own cooking or brewing. It became the central principle of her management to maintain an unchanged front.

  The best she could do was not quite good enough to fool Horace. Adversity had made him more perceptive. He sensed the strain under which Dinty was living. In the face of her valor and cheerfulness, his determination weakened. At the close of a particularly unremunerative tour, he came home to find that she had quarreled with her mother. She airily refused to give any details, merely remarking that Ma was a fussbudget and said things she didn’t mean. Horace knew that she was hurt. Loosing his cash-bag from his belt, he slammed it down on the office table, with a sadly thin effect, threw himself into his chair and glowered at the wall.

  “This won’t do,” he said.

  “What won’t, darling?” Dinty smiled at him with the maternal aspect which an indulgent mother bestows upon a difficult child.

  “All of it.”

  She lifted the bag, thoughtfully weighing it. “Didn’t you do well, this trip?”

  “Seven dollars, scant, and one of those an uncurrent note.”

  “Why, I think that’s pretty good!” said she brightly.

  “Good enough to live on?”

  “Oh, well! You’ll do better next time.”

  “Damn this town and all its people!” he burst out. “God damn them for a lot of Pharisees! God damn them …!”

  “Doc! Doc!” She stopped his speech with the pressure of her own soft lips. “Don’t. It isn’t like you. You frighten me.”

  “I’ve had enough of it. I can earn a living for you elsewhere.”

  “You’re earning it here.”

  “What kind? How long since you’ve had a new gown?”

  “How long since you’ve had a new coat?”

  “That doesn’t matter. It’s you.”

  She cocked an impudent head at him. “Don’t you like me the way I am?”

  “I love you like hell. That’s what hurts.”

  “Don’t let it hurt, darling. I’m happy.”

  “Happy!”

  “I am,” she insisted. “The only unhappy part is our being separated so much.”

  “There’s an opening for a qualified medical man in Pennsylvania. At Bethlehem.”

  She gaped at him. “Pennsylvania? Way down there? Leave Palmyra?”

  “Are you so enamored of it?” he asked harshly.

  “I ha—” She swallowed the word. “Why do you want to go?”

  “I told you. I’m sick of this.”

  “On my account.”

  “What of it? Isn’t that reason enough?”

  “Horace Amlie,” said she clearly, “I know you. If you quit the town now, everyone will say that Genter Latham drove you out. And that’ll fester inside you the longest day you live. You can’t give up, that way. Not unless you were wrong.”

  He regarded her intently. “Suppose I were wrong?”

  “Then you must go to Mr. Latham like a man and beg his forgiveness and Wealthy’s,” she said instantly.

  “I’ll see him in hell first.”

  “Then you don’t believe you were wrong.”

  “I know I’m right.”

  “Then we stay right here.”

  “On seven dollars a week?”

  “On seven cents!”

  Horace’s most pitiful and least profitable clientele was that of the towpath. Here plodded the hoggees, the friendless apprentice boys, taken on under indenture for the season, neglected or maltreated, and turned off at the close of traffic with ten dollars for their total wage—if, indeed, they were not mulcted of that by pretext or bullying. Whatever the weather, they must trudge behind their tandem, permitted the respite of an occasional ride only by the more humane captains. They were orphans, foundlings, bastards, halfbreeds, ranging from a precocious fourteen to a backward twenty-one years of age. On their watch off, they slept in foul and infested corners of the hold. A more straitened and wretched existence would be hard to conceive.

  One hoggee, whom he had once or twice seen but never treated or spoken to, enlisted his curiosity by reading a book as he drove. The lad was tallish, stringy, emaciated and unusually dark for an Indian, as the observer judged him to be. He worked on a small freighter of no special model, engaged in short-stretch pick-up traffic on the western run. It was a cheap outfit with a bad name. Horace asked his friend, Captain Ennis, about the lad.

  “Hoggee on the Merry Fiddler? You mean the half breed? That’ll be Whistlebone.”

  “Who is he?”

  Ennis shrugged. “Who are any of ’em? Nobody knows about a hoggee. Why?”

  “I noticed him reading a book.”

  “Never heard of a hoggee that could read. Captain Tugg’ll take that out of him with a rope’s end.”

  “Has Tugg got the Merry Fiddler?”

  “Yes. Got jounced from the line boats. Drunk too often.”

  Horace knew Eleazar Tugg only by reputation, which was unsavory. He was one of those who gave canalling a bad name. “Grouncher” Tugg, a grouncher being one who worked his hands to exhaustion and paid them only under compulsion of the law. In worst case of all with such an employer was the hoggee who received no pay until the end of his term. Under such brutality, the unhappy lad was generally too browbeaten and cowed to stand for his rights
. If he exhibited that temerity, he was only too liable to meet a trumped-up charge of incompetency or insubordination, and to be flung into the canal as the final argument, while the captain pocketed his wage.

  A favoring wind carried the Amlie batteau past the slow-moving freighter one bright morning. Captain Tugg, acting as his own helmsman, gave a malicious touch to his tiller, to threaten the little craft with a squeeze. Knowing his evil disposition, the watchful navigator eluded the menace, and gave him a civil good day, to which the canaller responded with a grunt and a spurtle of tobacco-juice overside. His suffused face indicated a hard night.

  Drawing abreast of the team, Horace slackened sail. He saw that the driver was limping painfully. One of his shoes, hardly more than a rag of leather, was bound on with a thong. Horace hailed him.

  “Hi, sonny! Sore foot?”

  The lad nodded, half averting his face. Horace thought that he had a stealthy, scared look. Then he noticed the swollen redness of recent tears in the eyelids. He was surprised. Indians do not cry. He edged in closer and got a second and shocking surprise. The hoggee was Tip Crego.

  “Tip! What are you doing here?”

  The hoggee said fearfully, “Don’t tell them! Don’t tell them!”

  “Tell them what?” For the moment Horace was puzzled.

  “Don’t tell them about me,” the boy besought again. “They’d put me in jail.”

  It came back with a rush now; the dead man with Tip’s feathered dart in his throat, whence Horace had plucked it. He said gently, “Nobody is going to put you in jail, my boy.”

  “The man’s dead.”

  Horace told a simple, straightforward, and effective lie. “Drowned,” he said. “You had nothing to do with it.”

  A light of hope gleamed in the reddened eyes. “Can I come back home?”

  “Any time you like.”

  Depression settled again on the thin face, “He won’t let me. I ran away once. They caught me and he beat me nearly to death.”