Balm

by Dolen Perkins-Valdez

  “I don’t understand.”

  “Neither do I.”

  “Why is he doing this? Why did he come back?”

  “Madge will bring your coat.”

  He shook his head, unsure whether he meant to clear it or to deny the end of the visit.

  “Dr. Heil?”

  “Yes?”

  “I didn’t know it was him. Had I known, I would have told you.” She seemed as if she were trying to apologize, but she stopped before saying anything further. Then she disappeared through the curtain.

  He leaned back and stared at the ceiling in disbelief.

  12

  IN 1859, MICHAEL’S BROTHER MARRIED KATHERINE afterward declaring the noise loud enough Schneider in a ceremony at her family home in Halifax County, Virginia. The bride wore a simple lace sheath sewn by her mother, and slaves attended every detail of the occasion, cooking and serving the food, cleaning the rooms, while others worked in fields down the hill from the house. The high-spirited command of their servants by the Schneider family created a ripple in the weekend’s merriment, prompting the Illinoisans to muse over the allure of such a system. The mildest of them found it intoxicating; the more principled took offense.

  At dinner, the guests turned to less controversial talk, the Great West, namely Chicago. The Virginians did not know much about the city, only that it was reported that the population was increasing rapidly, the city growing at a feverish pace.

  The night before the wedding, they passed out dishes for the Polterabend. The guests threw the plates one by one at the brick patio, afterward declaring the noise loud enough to scare off malevolent spirits. The bride and groom cleaned up, exchanging smiles as they swept. The next morning the guests assembled on the front lawn where the couple was united. Later, Michael would think of the Virginia cousins he’d met, men who had, undoubtedly, donned gray uniforms and gone off to fight against regiments like those containing his brother. The memory of that day, the hopeful promise of James’s union—the sound of breaking dishes, a marriage blessed—spoiled by a nation determined to sever itself.

  Two weeks after the wedding, Michael traveled back to Chicago. He had finished his medical training at Rush Medical College, and he was eager to set up his practice right away, distribute a fee table, advertise. He had apprenticed with a surgeon for several months, and he stated in his literature that he was equipped to handle everything from dressing wounds to applying leeches.

  When the war started, Michael was not surprised to hear his younger brother announce his decision to enlist. The family expected him to return in a matter of months, so Michael did not travel to Cairo to see his brother off as a newly minted corporal in the Twelfth Regiment. He told himself he was too busy being a man of affairs—working to earn a reputation, courting eligible women.

  All over Chicago, men volunteered, the words of Stephen Douglas in their ears, There can be no neutrals in this war: only patriots—or traitors. Enlistment rallies sprang up in parks and public meeting halls, the sounds of brass bands ringing in the streets. The North’s call for loyalty troubled Michael, and he did not know how to respond when James wrote asking if he planned to join the fight. The day after receiving the letter, Michael walked to the recruitment office and stood outside it, watching man after man enter to get his papers.

  Inside, two soldiers sat at adjacent desks, surrounded by a disorderly queue of men holding hats in their hands. In the corner, a woman waited in a chair with two shabbily dressed children on her lap. Along the opposite wall, a tall counter held paper and lead. Above, a fat-bellied pigeon cooed from an open rafter. Michael looked up at the bird before stepping forward. A boy called out to him.

  “I suppose you are here to enlist,” said the boy. He wore a poorly mended soldier’s jacket. Cording hung from the shoulder of each sleeve. A small flag decorated his lapel.

  “I am a doctor.”

  “Excellent, excellent,” the boy piped. “I’m sure the men could use you.”

  The child spoke as if he had been to battle himself. Michael blinked at the boy’s precocity before fleeing the building. Behind him, he heard the boy cry out Sir? Sir?

  In the days after, he closely followed the movements of his brother’s regiment in the paper. For a while, James was safe. His company stayed in Paducah, Kentucky, for six months before moving south to Tennessee to engage in its first battle. After fighting at Fort Henry, the Twelfth moved on to Fort Donelson. The Union celebrated the capture of the fort, but the paper reported the names of the dead, wounded, and missing. James’s name was not on that list, and Michael rejoiced.

  He struggled to make up his mind. As a surgeon, he might be insulated from the worst. Surgeons received the rank of officer, shielding them from direct conflict, but there was still the dreaded march, the threat of disease. Reports of German American regiments lit up barside conversations. A Tribune article told of the heroic efforts of the all-German Thirty-second Infantry from Indiana fighting with valor at Rowlett’s Station in Kentucky. Michael was both German and American, yet he felt zeal for neither. He was paralyzed by inaction, by the fear that his brother possessed something he did not.

  Briefly, he considered the issue of slavery. At the Schneider plantation in Virginia, he had looked upon the treatment of slaves with disgust. He found the system horrific, but it was a subject he would rather ignore. After all, there was nothing to be done. Surely, the slaves would not be freed, even if the North were victorious in the war. If pressed, he did not believe his reaction would be: Leave the Southerners to their culture, and us to ours. Yet this was exactly where his neutrality left him, his desire to keep his hands clean of it resulting in a clear position nonetheless.

  He buried himself in his practice, spending an inordinate amount of time on patient letters, writing out six, seven, eight pages of advice on how to treat a headache. Spring came, and he enjoyed the outdoors, walking the streets, peering through windows. The city was a bustling hub of progress, and men eagerly sought their fortune. He pictured himself among them: a man of industry, a pioneer. One day, someone grabbed his shoulders, a wild look in his eye: What is the status of your soul? the stranger demanded to know.

  When the telegraph arrived, he was pacing in his parlor, thinking of the latest study on smallpox he’d read. More vaccinations were needed. Outbreaks of smallpox among soldiers were high. Surely there was some way to be of service without enlisting.

  “This is just arrived?” he asked the messenger.

  “I ran all the way here, sir.”

  Michael thanked the boy. He sat down before reading the message:

  Springfield, Ill. May 1862.

  MICHAEL HEIL, Chicago, Ill.

  We must travel to Corinth, MS at once. It is grave.

  S. HEIL

  A week later, the two remaining Heil men stood over a coffin that appeared to have been made for a child. It contained only an arm.

  “I suppose we should take him back to his mother,” the elder said.

  As the men traveled north to Springfield, the youngest Heil’s arm in a box, they said little. There had been a time when all three Heil men were close, but by the time the boys’ voices deepened, the three had succumbed to their differences. More than years separated Michael from a father who had immigrated as a teen, been raised by parents whose English never fully matured, then made his fortune in property. The mother, third-generation American, did not teach her sons to speak the language proficiently, and the subtler aspects of the culture eluded them. Michael imagined that his father’s feelings at that moment were inexpressible in his second language.

  “I don’t want to lose all three of you,” his mother told them after she had inspected her son’s remains. In the days to follow, she tried more than once to bridge the gap between the two men. After the arm was buried and the condolence givers had departed, Michael returned to Chicago.

  EVEN THOUGH HIS BROTHER WAS DEAD, Michael obsessed over the war, scanning the paper for notices of the wounded. At t
he station, he spied upon families waiting for railcars carrying the corpses of officers, watched guns and artillery packed into cars and sent off to be delivered into the hands of soldiers. He listened as men discussed the news in the lobby of the Tremont House. The mood turned somber as someone read the list of dead aloud, each name a slice into the heart of the city. Thousands of men in Chicago had risen to meet the call for troops. Along with war, German men—particularly the socialists—spoke of fires, taxes, steel. The war was impossible to ignore, but in this state, the home of Lincoln, the hope of westward expansion flourished.

  Michael considered his aversion to battle. As a child, his cowardice had been pure. Now, as a man, it migrated into something else, miring itself in a formless politics. As he walked the city streets, he dwelt calmly in this no-man’s-land where neither the narratives he rejected nor the ones he might be willing to embrace could reach him. What he really wanted to do was to disappear into his old life, but the war would not allow that.

  In early 1863 the president freed slaves in the rebellious states. Congress signed the Draft Act. Michael weighed his chances. He landed solidly in the age range of eligible draftees, and he was unmarried. Surely Chicago’s men would not be drafted. Men were still voluntarily enlisting all over Cook County. That summer, Michael read a disturbing opinion in the paper.

  Thursday, June 25, 1863

  Chicago Tribune

  CONSCRIPTION FOR THE WHOLE WAR

  Let the law be equal, and the Federal army a conscripted army. We have, as we lately pointed out, three millions of men yet to draw upon to do our fighting. Let them be conscripted; every man needed.

  Calls for a draft disrupted his sleep. He could not stand it. The second time he entered the enlistment office, it was empty, and Michael walked directly to the desk of the recruitment officer, withdrawing the money from his pocket. He was glad the boy was nowhere in sight. He did not believe he could have done it before those watchful eyes. He filled out the necessary paperwork and sealed it. It was done. Surrogate insurance. He left that day, relieved. Whatever happened, he would not go to war.

  March 27, 1866

  Chicago Tribune

  LOSSES OF ILLINOIS TROOPS

  DURING THE REBELLION

  Total Number of Deaths: 28,842.

  As is known, Illinois furnished for the war, under all the calls, two hundred and fifty-eight thousand, two hundred and seventeen men.

  He put the newspaper on the table and looked up: an accordion player whose foot tapping did little to correct his poor time, a skinny barmaid who inflated prices according to the customer’s appearance, the German barkeep with the arrow-shaped scar across his cheek. Michael sat at a long table near a fire pit, a couple dancing nearby. The crowd clapped as the woman danced around her partner. Michael’s father had succeeded in raising two American sons, but German culture still ignited something within him. He would have liked to believe his own dispassionate brew of American patriotism connected to some far-off affection for his father’s home, but truthfully he could claim no such thing. The oom-pah pounded in his chest, the yodel rose and fell in his leg, the polka did a quick step in his knee. And yet he remained outside of it. When he entered Nord Seite, they viewed him as a visitor, a masquerader. His accent was passable, but it was a broken German at best. A bratwurst sandwich did the job, satisfied the empty belly. His last name spoke of his heritage, but his tailored American style of dress marked him as something else. Perhaps his German-ness lay in the fact that it was Sunday, and he did not feel the least compunction about sitting in a beer garden.

  Just the sound of the widow’s voice was a companionship he had not known he yearned. Only the driver knew where he went on those late afternoons. Then the driver took ill, and Michael was unable to save him. A bad leg left unattended. Michael had not even known the man was in pain, let alone near death. The widow’s driver had recommended a friend from his church, a man with a strange name. Michael had hired the man without even checking a reference. He did not care.

  He visited her regularly. Over two months, he saw her six times. Each visit, a little more added to the story here, a bit more there, the words coming quicker than he could hear them. If Michael closed his eyes, he could make it appear: the squint against dust, the prayer for victory, the walk into the woods to relieve himself. He had come to her hoping to be connected to his brother, not knowing that his brother was the great spirit itself.

  The couple before him moved naturally to the music, and the audience clapped good-naturedly. He stood and walked through a pair of trees. He opened his pants and a hot stream flowed into a hole. He fastened up and turned around. As he walked through the crowd, he stepped on someone’s toe. The man cursed him. Sometimes Michael hated this city. Surely there were other cities he could have settled upon after leaving Springfield. The hardscrabble winters. The sewer stench. Gambling houses on Hairtrigger Block, where men wagered at games of faro, keno, poker, and bunko. Dance houses where women requested twenty-five cents a dance.

  He sat down again, picked up a nearly empty glass of beer, and brought it to his lips, clanging his teeth against the glass. The noise vibrated in his head as if a bell had been struck. In his mouth, the taste of ale bubbled, rising. A woman at the bar eyed him. He looked the other way. One of the two people dancing had begun to emit an objectionable odor, and as they whirled near him, he edged the scent from his nose with a final suck of beer. He licked his lips, the taste of wheat on his tongue.

  He thought of entering local politics. If blacksmiths, bakers, butchers, and tailors could declare themselves involved in the city’s future, surely he could. The war had been over almost a year, and men of all ranks were running for elected office. He had strolled past the Arbeiter-Halle on Twelfth Street, counted groups of German workers streaming through its doors. He’d considered joining a social organization: the Turnverein or Freimannerverein or Arbeiterverein, but his cowardly burden cast a screen between him and most plebeian causes. The Staadts Zeitung had never interested him with its strident views. He thought he believed in this “new Fatherland” but he was unsure. Caught in a web, fluttering his wings back and forth in a trap of indecision, he sulked. He had come of age in a city shaped by war politics, but when thousands had gathered in the wigwam on the city’s waterfront in 1860 for the Republican convention, he had stayed out of it, refused to vote. Easily, he’d worn his well-cultivated indifference, and now that the war was over, he found it difficult to shed. He reached for his coat, slung over the back of a chair like a black streak.

  “Ist everything Ordnung?”

  The barkeep extended a hand. Michael took it, the man’s cool skin inching back and forth, reptilian. His hairline formed a crooked M.

  Why had Michael come to this place? For relief. But he’d found none.

  “Ja,” he clipped.

  He put on his coat, walked outside. A hand on his arm. A woman. He wrenched himself from her grasp. She lost her balance and stumbled. He suspected the barkeep had sent her out after him. The street was empty. Earlier, he’d sent his driver home. Somewhere beyond the buildings stretched that impenetrable dark lake.

  He squatted in the alley. His feet planted on the dirt floor, he leaned into the wall, succumbing to the fog of alcohol in his head.

  13

  IT WAS MICHAEL’S SUGGESTION THAT HE ACCOMPANY Sadie during her entranced talks. He had been faithfully visiting the parlor for several months, and she’d grown to trust him. At least he was respectful, avoiding her eyes when he could. Besides, the spirit was his brother. If anyone could help her, Michael could.

  While Michael spoke with the audience, Sadie peeked out from a side room, blowing at her upper lip to cool her face behind the veil. Madge stood beside her.

  “It sure is a lot of them,” Madge whispered.

  “I think I’m going to be sick.”

  “I’d be scared, too.”

  Michael spoke over a din of noise. “Is there anyone here who would like to select the top
ic for tonight’s lecture?”

  The doctor paced back and forth, picking man after man. One, two, three. You there. Gentleman in the brown hat. You with the red beard. You. You. In the back there. Down they came, settling into two rows of chairs set out front. Ten men conferred, murmuring. Their words floated in the air. Politics? Religion? Literature? Finally, the botanist among them convinced them to settle upon his specialty for a topic. The man would confirm the veracity of her facts. He’d taught at Oberlin. His books were well known. The others assented, clapping each other’s backs as they anticipated victory. It struck Sadie that none of them cared about speaking to loved ones on the other side. They only wished to celebrate her demise, prove her fraudulence. She was an actress, and they would be the ones to expose her. The selection of a jury ensured that her speech was not prepared.

  Sadie’s business had flourished. Her residence just north of the river allowed those who lived south or west to seek her out. They need only cross a bridge. Many paid her. Others kissed her hands, blessing her, fingering wooden rosaries around their necks as they prayed their gratitude. Others left gifts: fruit, coffee, potatoes. They came to hear a word from the fallen, widows hoping anxiously to hear from dead husbands, mothers bringing children to hear a father’s voice. Although spiritualists had existed before the war, Sadie discovered that the time generated an even greater thirst for her services. They had marched into her parlor, searching uncertainly for the right words, the right memories to uphold their families, the widows carefully appraising their prospects, this new, untested autonomy like an ill-fitting dress. Within the vast city, the manlessness of wartime had lain them bare. Thousands of casualties meant that death had become more than a personal grievance: it required an entirely new way of thinking. Scores of mediums claimed to physically manifest spirits: pale faces, arms appearing from cabinets in dark corners. Others used planchettes. Some rapped out messages. Sadie gained prominence as a trance speaker, her voice offering something more than the others. The bereaved hungered for the specificity of words, assurances from the mouths of loved ones. A succession of the aggrieved stumbled out of their nests and answered her call. Many came to her parlor in widow’s attire, relaxing at the sight of her own dress, the central portrait of Samuel in his uniform. At first the women told her little, sat erect in the chair as if to say: Prove it. Prove to me you are what you say. And Sadie responded, first with a hesitancy of her own, and then with more successes. One woman lamented upon sitting at the table that she had lost four sons to the war. Another woman lost her first husband to cholera in ’54 and the second to the war. Before she spoke, Sadie saw the woman’s fate plainly written on her threadbare clothing. Impoverished by the second husband’s death, destitution was imminent.