Canal Town

by Samuel Hopkins Adams

Homeward bound, of a Tuesday, Horace had accepted a tow for the last five miles from the lordly packet-boat, Chief Engineer. As they approached the upper lock, Jim Cronkhite descended to the berm, hailing the captain.

  “Hey! I can’t lock you through.”

  “What’s the matter?”

  “Orders.”

  “Orders out against the Chief Engineer?” said the stupefied navigator.

  “I can lock the Chief Engineer,” said Cronkhite, “but I can’t take your tow.”

  Captain Ingram struck an attitude worthy of Nelson at Trafalgar.

  “You can’t take my tow! You can’t take the Chief Engineer’s tow! Why, you shrimp! You mudchick! You stinkfish! Do you know who the hell you’re talkin’ to? I’m the Erie Canal Navigation Line.”

  Horace cast off and slewed in to the berm. “What’s this, Jim?” he asked quietly.

  “Commission’s instructions, Doc. Sorry.”

  “What are the instructions?”

  “You and your boat are henceforth barred and proscribed from all waters, banks and locks appertainin’ to the Erie Canal. Papers just come in. Want to see ’em?”

  “Stick your damn papers up your pants-leg,” roared Captain Ingram, tempering his language to the attentive ears of the passengers on his deck. “Swing out your tackles,” he snapped to the crew.

  They sprang to the work. The ropes were affixed and the batteau snugged smartly inboard.

  “Now, you puddlepup! Do you refuse to take my freight?”

  Cronkhite hurried back and bent to his handlebars. Horace and his batteau were freighted home on what he knew to be their last voyage.

  A few weeks earlier so stern a reversal of fortune would have shattered him. Now he had regained the old fighting spirit. His only dismay was over the effect upon Dinty.

  “They’re going to be sorry for what they did to you in this town,” she declared when she heard the news. “There’s a lot of sickness.”

  “Since when?”

  “Since you left on this last trip. It came with the warm spell. Old Murch can’t handle it alone. And that fat pig from Geneva who thought he was going to step into your place, got drunk and mixed his doses and nearly killed a lot of people. So he can’t come till they let him out of jail, and I hope that’s never.”

  “I’ll just sniff around after supper,” he said.

  His nose told him much. Freed from the nuisance of his officious and impertinent interference, the village had lapsed into its old, typical slovenliness; once again it was foul and contented. Warm aromas rose from drainage, pools and offal piles. Along Main Street manure had been washed into the gutters and shoved into conical heaps which sweated and stank. In sunlight they would be reeking with life. Perhaps with death, as well.

  Horace wagged his head ominously. It was none of his affair. He had been officially discharged of all authority and responsibility in the matter. Nevertheless every instinct within him revolted at the peril which he foresaw. He prophesied dire things to Dinty, who tossed her head and said it would serve ’em right.

  In the middle of the night, she awoke to the uneasy feeling of being alone. She put out a hand to where the partner of her bed should have been; the hollow in the goosedown mattress was empty though still warm. She hopped out and threw a wrap over her shoulders. Someone was moving in the office below. She went to the stairhead.

  “Doc! Horace! Dr. Amlie!”

  The door opened. “A call, Dinty.”

  “Where?”

  “The Pinch.”

  “Do you have to go at this hour?”

  An urchin whom she recognized as a canal-rat thrust forth his head.

  “It’s the twins, ma’am,” he piped. “One’s dead an’ t’other’s twitchin’.”

  “You see,” said Horace.

  “You’ll be arrested again.”

  “They’ll have to jail me, then. I can’t stand by and do nothing.”

  Argument against that mood was waste of breath. She ran down, carrying his coat, helped him arrange his medicines, and saw him out into the night, accompanied by the ragamuffin.

  It was broad day when he returned. He was haggard. To his wife’s inquiry he shook his head.

  “Too late,” he said. “And they’d been sick less than forty-eight hours. There’s a twelve-year-old girl down, too. I think I’ve checked her case.”

  “But what is it?”

  “Intestinal. Filth and flies. It strikes like cholera.”

  “Oh, Doc! It isn’t the cholera!”

  “Might almost as well be. Give me a bite of breakfast, Dinty, and I’ll get some sleep. I’m a used-up man.”

  So peacefully was he sleeping at noon that she at first refused to rouse him at the urgent instance of Sam’l Drake, whose fifteen-year-old son, Adam, had been stricken.

  “Get Dr. Murchison,” she said with a degree of saturnine satisfaction, for the wheelwright was one of those who had testified against Horace.

  “He’s sick with it, himself. For the pity of God, Mrs. Amlie!” His voice rattled, high and hysterical in his throat. “My boy looks like dying.”

  “Tell him I’m coming,” shouted Horace from above.

  He hurried away with the father and was able to check the deadly drain of the dysentery with blackberry brandy and Jamaica Ginger. Two other calls were on the slate when he got back; one from the Eagle, the other a maltster’s apprentice in Vandowzer’s brewery. By nightfall he had attended eleven patients. It was an epidemic. Dinty said, with unaccustomed hardihood, that Palmyra was getting what it deserved and that her Doc was a fool to lay himself liable to further prosecution.

  “May as well be hanged for a sheep as a lamb,” he retorted. “I’m taking no fees. So far, I’m clear.”

  “Working yourself to death for nothing!” she returned wrathfully.

  The disease spread on wings. Children fell to it quickest and with the least resistance, but no age was exempt. The village fathers, convened in emergency meeting, voted to bring in outside help. But whom?

  Private exchange of ideas brought out the fact that most of them wanted Dr. Vought but hesitated to suggest it before Genter Latham. The autocrat, however, made no objection when the subject was timidly broached. Although he lost his case before the commission, the Rochester man had impressed the clearheaded business element of Palmyra with his decisiveness and capacity. An appropriation from village funds was agreed upon. They invited the veteran to make an inspection and advise what was to be done.

  Dr. Vought made his inspection mainly with his nose. At least, this was the impression of the special sub-committee which accompanied him on his rounds. He wrinkled his nostrils disgustedly all over their fair village. Chairman Levering offered a half-hearted apology for conditions, allowing that they had grown a little careless, maybe, but smells did not mean much, anyway. The visitor fixed him with a glassy stare.

  “Death stinks,” he observed succinctly.

  “Do you consider this visitation a miasmatic disease, Doctor?” asked Deacon Dillard.

  “Home-grown miasma,” barked the visitor. “What do you folks think God gave you noses for?”

  As nobody had a theory to offer, he continued, “To scent danger. If something smells bad, that’s a warning. Even your dog’s nose knows that much.”

  “But what is the nature of the disease?” asked Mr. Van Wie anxiously.

  “False cholera.”

  There was a breath of relief. J. Evernghim thanked God audibly and was transfixed by an eye like a red bead.

  “You’ve had deaths, I believe,” said the physician.

  “Three thus far.”

  “And they’re just as dead as if they’d died of true cholera, ain’t they?”

  The fact, being undeniable, was tacitly allowed.

  “Then don’t talk like a dithered lunk,” said Dr. Vought.

  “Dok-tor Amlie vos alvus pesterin’ us to clean up,” volunteered Simon Vandowzer.

  “Ah! Amlie. There’s a man with brains in his
head.” Dr. Vought looked about him as if challenging his hearers to produce any other with such desirable equipment. “I shall need his professional aid.”

  The escort glanced at one another uneasily.

  “Well, what’s the matter now?” snapped the visitor.

  “I fear the gentleman is no longer available,” said Mr. Levering. “There are reasons.”

  “Such as?”

  “Mister Amlie is no longer an M.D. He is prohibited from practicing here.”

  “Well, well, well!” said the other, elaborately sardonic. “You tell me that! Hark ye, village fathers of a bastard community, I want Dr. Amlie and I propose to have Dr. Amlie. No Horace Amlie, no John G. Vought. Is that clear?”

  It was as clear as silence could make it.

  “No dissenting voice? Good! We shall now proceed.”

  A messenger was dispatched for Horace and the tour was resumed. As its close the consultant delivered his opinion.

  “The type is unmistakable. Not Asiatic cholera. Bad enough, though. You’re going to suffer for your sins, my friends. Fetch me four stout laborers with shovels and picks and we’ll get to work.”

  Palymra accepted the cleansing as meekly as an urchin before the Sunday morning washtub. The two physicians worked night and day, aided toward the end by Murchison who had made a good recovery. Within ten days the number of new cases was on the decline; in a month the onset was over, with a total of thirteen deaths, mostly young children. The last case was a dubious one; that of Tim Mynderse, the constable, who washed down a quart of black cherries with ale followed by whisky, went to bed, writhed and died, leaving the office vacant.

  In his farewell meeting with the trustees, Dr. Vought addressed to them some admonitions in very unpalatable terms, told them that they were unfaithful curators, and departed with his considerable fee in his pocket. His last call was at the Amlies’ and was signalized by his plunking down upon Horace’s desk the handsome sum of twenty-five dollars, representing a fair half of his emolument. More moved than he cared to show, Horace refused it, whereupon the old gentleman cursed him in seven categories for the seven different kinds of fool he was, went out the front gate and in the back and found Dinty.

  “Your husband,” he pronounced, “doesn’t deserve you.”

  “He’s the best husband in the world,” said Dinty with conviction.

  “He’s the fool of his conscience. I’ll warrant you’re more sensible.”

  Dinty dimpled. “Thank you.”

  “Well, are you or ain’t you?”

  “I don’t know until my conscience has the facts.”

  “Twenty-five dollars,” said the old gentleman, and waved the bills before her dazzled vision. He supplemented the action with explicit facts. “What about your conscience now?”

  “It’s asleep.”

  “Wise child. I thought you’d see it my way.”

  “I wouldn’t if I didn’t think Horace had earned it.”

  “He’s earned it, and better.” He regarded her intently. What was coming now, Dinty wondered.

  “Watch that Horace of yours, my dear.”

  “You think he’s liable to do something foolish?” asked she, astute and alarmed.

  “I’m afraid of it. He’s in a dangerous frame of mind.”

  “Who wouldn’t be!” said the wife, her eyes snapping. “They’ve turned him out of his profession.”

  “He’s got the gristle to stand up to that, because he knows he’s in the right. It’s the Latham affair.”

  “I know,” said she miserably. “He talks of it in his sleep.”

  “Therein he’s afraid he’s wrong,” pursued the mentor. “That’s rank poison to a man of his temper. He’s a mind possessed, Dinty.”

  “Sometimes it scares me,” she admitted.

  “What? You don’t look easy to scare.”

  “The fear that maybe he is wrong. Dr. Vought, is he right or wrong?”

  “Damned if I can figure. But he mustn’t do anything without consulting me.”

  “What kind of thing?”

  “How can you tell, with a man like him? Kidnap the girl, maybe, to make an examination for himself. He’s surely brooding something. I wish he could ease his brain of it.”

  “So do I,” said the wife fervently.

  He scrutinized her concerned face. “What else have you got on that restless mind of yours, child?”

  For reply she got the Eclectic from Horace’s office and presented it, opened to the significant page.

  Dr. Vought read, snorting as his brisk mind assimilated the purport. “Well? What of it? What’s the relevancy?” he demanded.

  “I want to know if it’s true. It’s very important for me to know.”

  The little physician stared. “What! You don’t mean to tell me that Horace …”

  “No!” she blazed. “How dare you think such a thing, you—you wicked-minded old man!”

  “Hoity-toity! I’m a medical practitioner. Don’t try to bullyrag me, young lady. What’s your concern with this? Out with it.”

  “I can’t tell you. Is it true or not?”

  “Passel of damned lies backed up with fraud. This man, Dorpener”—he tapped the paper with a horny finger—“writes himself down an ignoramus, a quack and an impostor. Why, he isn’t even an M.D. Everything in his silly article has been blown to bits by better men with fuller data. Still,” he added with an attempt at justice, “a-plenty of sound medical men believed his trumped-up figures. Your Horace ain’t any worse than a lot of better men.”

  Dinty received this extraordinary statement with disfavor. “There aren’t any better men,” she averred stoutly. “Good-bye, and thank you, dear Dr. Vought. And I’m sorry for what I said about your mind being wicked. Would you mind not telling Horace about his mistake? Not yet, anyway.”

  She secreted the twenty-five-dollar honorarium (as she chose to consider it) in a place more private than the pickle-jar. It was to be their final recourse in the thin times which she saw in prospect.

  Politics fermented beneath Palmyra’s placid surface. There were private convocations at Simon Bewar’s smithy, conferences among the elite of the ninepin alley, strategies in the inner circle of the Horse Thief Society. Shortly before the special election for the office of constable, Tom Daw, with a healthy bribe in his pocket, manned the foot-treadle Ramage press of Messrs. Grandin & Tucker under cover of night, and ran off a batch of broadsides and ballots. Thus set in motion, the campaign gathered too much headway for the Latham-Levering-Vandowzer faction to head it off.

  Horace Amlie, ex-M.D., was elected town constable by the notable plurality of fifty-seven votes. That meant a dollar a day for the tenure. It was not luxury, but it was a living.

  – 16 –

  Through the spring and summer a further change was evident in Wealthia Latham. It manifested itself in the outer as well as the inner woman. Though her figure had never recovered its old butterfly poise and lissome slenderness, her beauty, so long subdued, glowed again. She ordered the newest and costliest modes. She coquetted gaily with her swains. Her good works fell in arrears. That shell of reserve which she had put on for a defensive armor was abandoned. No longer did she trouble to avoid Horace Amlie. When they met on the streets, she greeted him politely, though with what seemed to him a remnant of timidity.

  Observant Dinty thought and feared that she knew the reason for her friend’s revived spirits. The Jolly Roger was back on the old run. Once she was walking with Wealthia on Winter Green Knob when the peal of Silverhorn’s bugle, serving notice from afar on the lock-keeper, stirred the echoes. The girl stopped in her tracks; her eyes became heavy, her mouth tremulous. Her breath quickened. Had she confessed in so many words that she and the canal man were meeting once more, Dinty could not have been more certain. Before this she had noticed that the fancy boat laid over in the Palmyra basins more frequently than other craft, and that it specialized in the local freights, hemp, mint and merino wool.

  On other oc
casions Wealthia would come out of a dreamy silence to make some obscure remark, quite unconnected with what had gone before.

  “It’s silly to let things frighten you,” was one of them, and “If you let yourself be scared by what others think, what do you get out of life?”

  Dinty took that up. “I wouldn’t presume that there’s much you’re afraid of, Wealthy.”

  “Not any more. I’ve had my bad time.”

  Again, she said, “Dinty, do you realize I’m almost twenty?”

  “How cruel old that used to seem!” smiled the other.

  “When I’m twenty-one, I’ll have my own money. That isn’t long to wait.”

  “For what?”

  “Nothing,” was the hasty rejoinder. Too hasty, Dinty thought.

  Promise-bound, she must not relay her apprehensions to Horace She did, however, skirt the subject.

  “Doc, do you see anything of Captain Ramsey nowadays?”

  “Every time he’s in town. Why, Puss?”

  “Is he still married to his rich widow?”

  “Very much so. She doesn’t let him forget it, I gather.”

  “You’ve become quite friendly, haven’t you?”

  “He did me a good turn, you know, in what you are pleased to call ‘that disgraceful brawl,’ ” he returned with his provocative grin.

  On his constabulary wage, the Amlies were making ends meet, though only by virtue of Dinty’s most expert economies. Powerful friends and allies were at work trying to get the ousted physician’s case reopened before the full State Board: Dr. Vought with his fellow townsman, the influential Dr. Levi Ward, Dr. Hosack, the honored Dr. Alexander Coventry of Oneida County and now old Dr. Avery who had become convinced that his commission had wrought an injustice. Genter Latham was finding it more and more difficult to hold his political opposition in line.

  Meantime Constable Amlie was doing a good job and, profiting by experience, doing it tactfully and almost inoffensively. Opposition dwindled. The false cholera had been a stern and salutary lesson. Palmyra made a discovery which, in a century of subsequent experience and education still fell short of universal acceptation, that it is cheaper to be clean than dirty; more profitable to be careful and healthy than careless and sick. Carly Sneed, that gay wag, paid O. Daggett a dollar to fabricate a sign which they put up at the head of Main Street.