The Healer's Daughter

by Charlotte Hinger

  Estelle’s bony little chest expanded. She cleared her throat. “We are thrilled to accept your kind offer, Mr. Potroff.”

  Both men stared at her. Potroff had not counted on Estelle wanting to be part of the operation. But she had possibilities. She could organize. The temperance ladies were like a vigilante society in this town. Best of all, she hated black people.

  “As Mr. Potroff pointed out, Josiah, you know how to manage slaves. You used to be good at that.” Estelle’s voice quavered. “And I think I know a few uppity niggers around here that need to be taken down a notch or two.”

  Potroff nodded, cocked his head to one side, and touched the tips of his fingers together as he studied the couple. He had never seen skin the color of Estelle’s before. It looked like the oiled buffalo skins folks used in the place of window glass.

  “Well now, Miss Estelle, I do declare. I believe you’re going to be a wonderful asset in this venture. A social column, perhaps? Tips for the ladies? Your opinions on a variety of issues?”

  Her pale eyes gleamed with a crusading light.

  Doomed, Josiah looked at Potroff. “When do we start?”

  “I’ll send you to Topeka next week. And Miss Estelle? Would you like to go also? I understand you have folks back there?”

  “Yes, a cousin,” she said. “Oh yes, sir, I would. I would like to go. I would indeed. And while I’m there, I could go to a temperance meeting. A real meeting.”

  “It will be arranged, then,” Potroff said.

  “Oh, I don’t think you need to burden yourself with a long trip at this time, Mother.” Josiah’s Adam’s apple bobbed like it had been dunked in a tub of water. “It would strain your health, and someone should keep the store open.”

  “Nonsense, Josiah. I’m sure one of the temperance ladies will be glad to fill in.” Estelle quickly walked over to the bolts of fabric sitting on the far shelf. “I need a new dress,” she murmured, dismissing the men.

  “Aaron,” Josiah said softly, flinching at the thought of a long trip with Estelle. “Have you ever thought of simply buying out the Millbrook and Nicodemus folks? If it worked, it would be mighty simple.”

  A week later, three men came to Nicodemus with plenty of money to spend. Potroff had already drawn up maps of the most strategic farms to buy out. It would be painless and simple. It wouldn’t make any enemies, and it wouldn’t rile folks up. There were other ways, but like Josiah had said, this would be the easiest.

  At the end of the first day, Eric Keegan came back and announced that the first man had laughed at him. “Had a notion to shoot the bastard. Don’t much cotton to being laughed at.”

  The second man, Ted Duvall, had better luck. At least the homesteader had told him he wanted to think it over. The third man didn’t come back at all. Potroff gave them a couple more names. Too late, he learned that it aroused suspicion when men suddenly came around wanting to buy up basically worthless farms.

  Two weeks later, Norvin Meissner wrote in the Millbrook Wildhorse:

  Citizens, beware! There are scalawags loose in this area who would deprive you of your worldly goods for a mere pittance. There are men who are attempting to buy our precious land when we are on the verge of a bonanza. It is with trembling wonder that we inform the citizens of this soon to be county that a railroad will be coming through the town of Millbrook and, by extension, Nicodemus, Kansas.

  Shocked, Potroff stared at the words. He cursed the stubborn stupidity of the ignorant homesteaders who didn’t know when they were licked. Buying them out should have been simple. A blessing. Good American dollars for their no-count, miserable hovels on their sorry, rock-hard piles of useless dirt. Folks who wanted to leave could have been helped on their journey.

  His next steps were ones he didn’t want to take. Not because he worried about the harm they would cause, but because of the risk to his reputation as a benevolent person dedicated to doing good.

  He took out his watch and studied the hands as though they had some relevance to his moves. He slowly turned it over and looked at the inscription on the back. The casing was a soft rose gold with a beautiful luster. The words engraved there were To Hiram from your loving Emily.

  The watch had been given to his grandfather by his grandmother. At times he was comforted by this watch, this sense that he had come from people who had done right well. But lately, he was seized with melancholy when he looked at it. It was a reminder that there was no love, no Emily, in his life and no prospects that he could see. No one to care what kind of person he was.

  He was forced to take this path. He had tried buying the niggers out. Violence would attract far too much attention. There was a gentler way. He’d try that first, then if he had to ratchet it up a bit, they’d brought it all on themselves. He tucked his watch back in his pocket and considered all the whites who were taking their business to Nicodemus. Ruin the blacks’ cash intake and he would ruin the system that was driving their town. He decided to go after them, one by one.

  He tossed a coin into the air and deftly caught it as an idea struck. Their biggest moneymaker of all was the doctoring. The little wench with prideful ways and her conjuring mother took in money that should have been in Wade City. He had to bring in a white doctor.

  There were no medical standards, no state licensing agencies. Nebraska had proposed a law making new physicians register at the county clerk’s office. That state would be the first to require that new registrants graduate from a two-year medical school. Those who were already doctors would not be burdened by such strenuous requirements.

  Trained doctors were nearly impossible to come by because the prairie starved them out. It was only natural that a doctor would go where he could make a living. Sometimes, however, the prairie attracted visionary practitioners with inquiring minds who filed claims, loved their patients, and rejoiced in the raw energy of the empty waiting land. But to the prairie also came the charlatans, the drunks and opium addicts, the down and outs, and the filthy-handed rejects from society.

  Hands with broken, filthy nails. Careless hands. Bruising hands. Cruel hands.

  Such was the kind of doctor Aaron Potroff managed to locate.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  Norvin Meissner couldn’t decide which was worse: mornings when the sun came up pulsating with a fiery blaze that paralyzed the mind, the air, the grass; or days beginning with an eerie wind, when searing gales blasted the earth and nothing alive could escape the reach of their heat. A peculiar uneasiness came over him when the wind blew. He could not complete the simplest task. He lost his train of thought. He misplaced things. Broke things. Hated himself. Hated his life.

  He picked up his bucket, went outside, and braced himself for the trek to the lone well in the center of Millbrook. A sorry old well and still a bone of contention. It took a long time to find this water. The well digger had to go down one hundred feet.

  He poured water down the pipe to prime the pump, then wearily began pumping, pumping, pumping, growing more anxious with each stroke. If this well failed, they were finished.

  Millbrook was just a miserable little wide spot in the road. Wade City had doubled its population when Baynard moved in. Nicodemus was exploding. Meissner had no idea where Nicodemus was finding Negroes who had some means to see them through the first year. But it was a common sight now to see families coming across the plains, heading for that black town. When they arrived, there were people to greet them, expecting them, or so he had heard from the man who delivered lumber to Millbrook.

  None of the white towns had developed such a set-up. The Nicodemus newcomers were fed, assigned to a house, allowed to rest and get on their feet. Then everyone pitched in to erect a building to suit their occupation.

  Most of the white folks who came to the area were farmers or merchants and jacks-of-all-trades, independent cusses by nature. Wicked rivals who didn’t mind helping a neighbor as long as the neighbor didn’t get ahead of them. The people attracted to Nicodemus came from a slave back
ground. They were used to being servants, putting their own egos aside, and pooling their resources. It had worked against them in the beginning, but it was their biggest asset now.

  Also, many of the ex-slaves had been specialists on large plantations. No one could touch Jim Black as a blacksmith. But that was all the man had ever done. His giant arm pounded, pounded the living steel. Even those who hated blacks on general principle found themselves going to Nicodemus for blacksmithing.

  No one could sew as fast or as well as Dolly Redgrave, so white women ended up going there to have dresses made. Nicodemus had a man who did nothing but make wagons and a man who made harnesses and had never done anything else.

  They demanded cash in advance of work done, and a percentage of their money was pooled and used to help a new family get started. Meissner snorted as he tried to imagine forcing that rule on his white counterparts.

  One of the most familiar figures on the prairie now was Teddy Sommers crossing the land on his ancient mule, carrying God only knew what to the land office at Oberlin, to the courthouse at Stockton, to this businessman, to that politician. You’d think Nicodemus was a miniature of Topeka with all its government doings and comings and goings.

  Water trickled from the spout. Relieved, he turned his back to the wind and continued to pump.

  Meissner turned when a horse whinnied. The Samson family was coming toward him in a broken-down wagon piled high with everything they owned. They had arrived in Kansas with a fine team. Now there was just one horse left, and its coat was dull, its gait listless.

  Hiram Samson pulled up; his wife, Susan, and their little daughter huddled beside him on the seat.

  Meissner removed his hat and held it close to his chest as though he were paying respects to the dead. “Wish you folks could stay,” he said wistfully.

  “Goodbye,” said Hiram heavily. His lips worked, and he touched his hat. That was all.

  Susan Samson stared straight ahead, her lips a thin red line in her white face, like Meissner personally had ordered up the wind, the heat, the lack of water, the dead garden, the swarms of insects, their constant gnawing hunger.

  The wind whistled angrily, as if trying to stop their departure as they plodded on down the street. Meissner’s throat tightened. He wanted to call them back. Make them stay.

  When he turned back to the well, he had lost his momentum, and the pump wouldn’t work anymore without being primed anew. He accidentally knocked his bucket off the spout, spilling the precious bit of water he had worked so hard to accumulate. Furiously, he kicked the bucket into the angry wind, set it sailing down Millbrook’s only street, and headed back to his soddy.

  “Lose something?”

  Meissner turned. The wind was so loud he hadn’t heard anyone ride up. He looked up into the gray eyes of a tall Negro man standing beside the most beautiful horse Meissner had ever seen. He handed Meissner the bucket. “Mr. Meissner, I’m Jed Talbot.”

  Meissner shook his hand. Although they hadn’t met, he knew at once who Talbot was. Everyone was talking about the smart black lawyer who beat out the best minds in the county and managed to sneak a township right under their noses.

  “I’m Norvin Meissner. It’s a pleasure. A pleasure indeed. Do come inside my humble abode, sir, where we’ll be out of the wind and you can tell me the nature of this unexpected visit.”

  Just a short time ago, Meissner wouldn’t have had this wretchedly awkward feeling every time he saw someone from Nicodemus. But ever since the night he received the thorough trouncing, he had felt like a street urchin watching a happy family pass by his rat-infested alley.

  Inside the soddy, he hustled around, moved some books off a chair, and gestured for Jed to sit down. “I’d offer you some coffee, but I couldn’t stand the thought of starting up the stove this morning. Hot enough already.”

  “No need to trouble yourself,” Jed said.

  Meissner sneaked looks as he cleared papers off an upright stump and sat down. Talbot wore homespun pants and a blue shirt of coarse cotton, but Meissner had heard all about the fine suit the man had worn to Stockton—his elegant bearing, his melodious voice.

  “I would like to come straight to point of my visit.” Jed reached into a bag he had slung across his shoulder. “Have you seen this?” He handed Meissner a newspaper.

  Meissner unfolded it and began reading. He stopped, looked up at Talbot, and read the masthead again. The color drained from his face. “I don’t believe this. I simply don’t believe it.”

  “It’s true.”

  “Josiah Sinclair, editor. Who would have thought? It stands to reason Wade City would conjure up an editor sometime. But I thought it would take a while. Never dreamed they would recruit someone from their own ranks.”

  Meissner’s shoulders slumped. Dazed, he looked around the cluttered soddy as though seeing it for the very first time. Every shelf was crammed with tools and type and paper. Strings of dried food hung from the ceiling. He could hardly locate his own bed at night. He had given up a wife and life in the East for this?

  “Everyone knows Potroff owns that whole town. Lock, stock, and barrel, Mr. Talbot. Wade City’s not like Millbrook, where we have a whole town company behind us. I’ve always been up front about that.” He picked up the paper again and scanned the insides. “And a woman’s column,” he said wistfully. “With housekeeping hints. Written by that stringy mean-spirited wife of his. A real paper. God, women will love these little social items. This will put Wade City in prime shape to go after the county seat. Two towns now, Wade City and Millbrook.”

  “You’re forgetting about the third town,” Jed said. “Or maybe I should say the first town. We were here first. Nicodemus.”

  Meissner stopped before he blurted out that Nicodemus didn’t actually count. He didn’t want to alienate this man. His face sagged. “Of course. Forgive my oversight, Mr. Talbot. I was thinking out loud. It’s just that I barely had the wherewithal to put up a decent fight against Wade City before they had a paper. I don’t know how I’ll do it now. The folks backing me want results. They want to see Millbrook grow.” He rose and began to pace, his hands clasped behind his back. Sweat popped out on his tightened forehead. “I’m at my wits’ end. I can’t find people and can’t keep them. Why are you here, Mr. Talbot? Surely not just to bring me a newspaper that I would have seen anyway.” He glanced over at his volume of Tennyson. “I got off on the wrong foot with your people a while back. I reckon you’ve heard all about it.”

  “Yes, I did.”

  “I did not mean to offend anyone. I swear to God, I’m the best friend you people have got in this county.”

  “I know that, Mr. Meissner. I’m here to see if we can work together. There’s nothing wrong with you wanting to protect your interests.”

  “I don’t want to hurt anyone. Or exploit anyone. I just want to make a life out here. I would like to have a little peace. And a little life. A little rest at the day’s end.”

  “That’s exactly what we want, sir. A little life and a little peace. That’s why I’ve come to you. You can help us. We can help you.”

  “Have you seen Wade City lately?”

  “No, I can’t say as I feel very welcome there. We all generally go to Stockton. It’s where we do all our business anyway, and they’ve made us welcome.”

  “Well, Wade City’s growing like Topsy.” Meissner flushed. “I didn’t mean . . .” Even his freckles reddened.

  “Please! You don’t have to weigh every word with me. Speak your mind!”

  “What I meant was, Wade City is growing like a weed. Potroff is coming up with plenty of money for lumber, cloth, grain, anything the people want. My little burg doesn’t change. It’s shrinking, if anything. But I’ve heard Nicodemus even put in a second well. By any measurement, you have the most organized town in these parts.”

  “Which brings us to the purpose of my visit. I’m a practical man. Until last month, no one regarded Nicodemus as competition. That changed when we petit
ioned for a township. Now white folks are scared to death of us. But you and I both know there’s no chance at all that a black town will be voted in as county seat.”

  “I repeat, why are you here, Mr. Talbot?”

  “We intend to back Millbrook as county seat if you’ll help us.”

  Meissner rose and crossed over to his precious lines of type sitting against the wall. He ran a finger over the metal. His face flushed with excitement. He couldn’t believe his luck. Just last week, he had gotten word from his town company that when it came time to vote on the county seat it had better, by God, be Millbrook that won. Colored folks could swing the vote.

  He turned to Talbot. “Sir, you honor me.”

  “How many people are there in Millbrook now? No booming. I’m way past being susceptible to propaganda.”

  “About twenty families and a few bachelors and widowers. Say about one hundred people. We lost two more families to Wade City this month, and most of the rest would leave in a heartbeat if they had enough money to go.”

  “And why would that be, do you think?”

  Meissner forgot he was talking to a colored man. A man who could make or break him. His frustration had been building ever since Hiram Samson’s wife had ignored him like he was a loathsome insect.

  “Because,” he said tersely, “because I lied to them. Nothing I thought was going to be true was true, or came true.” He swallowed like his misery was a lump of bread stuck in his gullet. “There’s hardly enough water to go around. The heat. The flies. Ground as hard as steel. No trees.” He teared up. “And the wind. This goddamn wind.” He picked up a piece of paper and crumpled it in his hands. “Of course they’re leaving. Of course.”

  “Do you want to leave?” Jed asked.

  “No, of course not. Your place, Nicodemus proves that it can be done. It can, if people will stay.”

  “Then you weren’t lying,” Jed said. “You were simply telling them future truths.”