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Open Wound: The Tragic Obsession of Dr. William Beaumont

Page 4

by Jason Karlawish


  He turned and walked up the road toward the fort. His hospital stood at the midpoint of the hill between the village and the fort, like a kind of fulcrum between the powers of the United States government and the company. After he passed through the gates of the fort, he walked along a lane lined on each side by parallel lines of low blockhouses. The rain had turned the dust into pasty red mud that sucked at his boots. He stepped past deep puddles. Although the atmosphere was ripe with the odors of smoke, sweat, horses and garbage, it was the thought of Captain Pearce that caused his guts to tighten.

  When Beaumont entered the captain's headquarters, an aide took his raincoat and shook it out briskly before he hung it on a peg, then admitted him into Captain Pearce's office.

  Pearce was standing behind his desk with his arms outstretched so that he was leaning with all his weight upon the flat of his palms. His head was bent. He was reading something. The aide discreetly closed the door.

  Beaumont stood three steps from the edge of the desk. His shoulders were rolled back, hands folded carefully at the small of his back, and his uniform coat buttoned to the collar. Pearce did not move. The chatter of the men in the outer office had ceased.

  At the center of the desk was Beaumont's circular protesting the company's plan to expand its warehouse into the garden. It was kept unfurled by means of the captain's unsheathed saber. The saber was an elegant weapon with a lion-headed pommel atop a brass hilt, silver and ivory grips. The candlelight turned the deep bluing of its blade opalescent.

  Pearce made a clucking noise with his tongue, and began smoothing his right hand over the circular in a gesture oddly reminiscent of a baker spreading flour upon a tabletop.

  “What's up with that Gumbo of yours? He die?”

  Beaumont shook his head vigorously.

  “No sir, he lives. It's a complicated wound, but I was able to clean and stabilize it. As you saw, it engages both stomach and lung.”

  The captain raised his head.

  “I bet you've seen worse.”

  Beaumont nodded slowly.

  “I hear, Doctor, and I hope I hear wrong, that he ain't where we agreed to leave him.”

  Beaumont swallowed. “He's at the hospital, sir.”

  The captain's eyes narrowed.

  “The hospital?” he yelled. A bit of spittle flew onto the desktop. “The hospital? What in the Sam Hill? Did we not agree he would remain at the store? Or among his kind on the beach? We all agreed upon a plan.”

  Beaumont shook his head. “I thought it best to have him near my care rather than in the supply room or in a tent on the beach,” he said firmly.

  “You thought it best to have him near your side,” Pearce hissed.

  Beaumont nodded. He stood like a soldier at attention.

  “Did I not say, Assistant Surgeon Beaumont, did I not say as we all stood in Crooks's store that . . .”

  Beaumont interrupted him. “I'm sorry, sir, but the duty of doctor is to his patient.” He paused. “To speak plainly, I felt compelled to act. My professional duty demands it.”

  Pearce shook his head slowly.

  “Well, I suppose that just fixes your flint. You don't leave me much choice now, do you, Doctor? What am I to do, send over a few soldiers to carry the man back to the storeroom or the beach? You've humiliated me. Do you understand that? Do you?”

  He pointed at Beaumont, then he rubbed his eyes.

  “You know Crooks won't pay a penny for that man's care. No reason to think he should once you moved the man to the hospital. You. Not Crooks but you. I just don't understand this. If you'd a come to me, we might have jiggled some cash out of that cheap Scotsman. But you didn't. So now if this Gumbo lives, I got that to worry about.”

  The captain began to pace back and forth behind his desk. He began to speak of loyalty and duty and the value of taking a man at his word. He spoke of reputation and shame. He invoked the nobility of the Romans and before them the Greeks. When he finished, he stood with his hands gripping the back of his chair. He held his head high as he regarded Beaumont, then sank heavily into his chair. He ran his forefinger along the length of the sword. Upon that blade was inscribed the motto To defend constitutional liberty and property. He gazed at these words, and then he looked at the doctor. His voice was now a low whisper.

  “Listen to me. I don't object to you doctorin' who you see fit, when you see fit. It's who's paying for that doctorin' and room and board, that's my concern. Maybe Reverend James will have the town take him on as a charity case until we can send him on a bateau to Canada. Let me assure you that this will be in my monthly report. You may be the great doctor, but you're the insubordinate doctor as well.”

  Beaumont swallowed hard.

  “It's my duty as commander. Didn't think of that, did you?” He was smiling. “Let me ask you something. You think he'll live?”

  “I think so. For now.”

  The captain exhaled slowly through his nose.

  “You think so. You all are no more precise than a blunderbuss at fifty yards. No more stunts like this. What's got into you, William?” Pearce gestured to the circular that lay open before him. “This circular.” He read its title slowly. “On the destruction of the garrison's garden and its consequences for the diet and health of the island's inhabitants. You're quite serious about this?”

  “Of course, Captain. It's my duty.”

  Pearce cocked his head. “Your duty? Your duty to stir things up over what you divine is right, never mind the rest of us.”

  Beaumont spoke, his tone confident.

  “A proper diet is essential for the health of the garrison, and vegetables are critical. Absolutely critical, sir.” He leaned forward. “It's clear from my correspondence with Surgeon General Lovell that there's a growing consensus on the matter among the surgeon's corps. The records we've assembled since the war, the experience of the war. I'm especially concerned with the loss of the land to grow wheat. You see, Captain, I think we can use that to brew a simple ale to substitute for the whiskey ration.”

  Pearce leaned back in his chair, and regarded his doctor as he stroked his mustache with one hand. “I respect your work, Doctor. I truly do. But sometimes I wonder if you and I are in the same damn army. Do you really think we can just do away with the whiskey ration?”

  “We can't not try.”

  Pearce shook his head. He mouthed the words can't not, and then he spoke. “You know what I think of this?”

  “No, sir.”

  “Never mind,” Pearce said flatly. “I'm a soldier, not chief constable or gardener, and not a grogshop keeper. Four years ago I asked for a post out around the Dakotas. The Sioux are positively fierce there. That's some grand fighting. Positively grand. Can you temper your right to free speech? This kind of thing just stirs everyone up. Talk with me first. Can you manage that?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Pearce opened a drawer and produced a bottle. He glanced at Beaumont and swung his chin in the direction of the door. “Well, go on. Back to your Frenchman. Back to your wife and baby.”

  Beaumont was at the doorway when Pearce called out to him.

  “Say, Doctor.”

  Beaumont turned.

  “You got something for sleep? One of your tonics. I haven't slept right in, what, years. And don't just say stop drinking or dose me with some bitter purge.” The captain gestured with the bottle so that its contents sloshed.

  “I use the time. If I'm awake, I'm awake. So back to work until I tire.”

  “Until ye tire.”

  “That's right, sir.”

  “Well then, I'll give that a try then. Early to bed, early to rise. I bet that's your habit. Wealthy and healthy.”

  “Yes, Captain, Dr. Franklin recommended it. It has its many benefits. Good evening then, Captain.”

  “Say, Doctor.”

  Beaumont turned again to face the captain. The captain swallowed his drink, and stared at Beaumont.

  “He's your patient, you say? Yes?”
r />   Beaumont nodded. “Yes, of course, Captain.”

  “Well then, if they don't pay, the reverend and all, you got a charity case on your hands.” The captain laughed. “Your purse,” he added. “Not mine. Not the company's. Yours.” Then he set the bottle once more to his lips.

  FIVE

  BEAUMONT RETURNED HOME AFTER DARK. His dog Rex trotted out from the shadows of the tall pines to greet him. Beaumont squatted and scratched the hound's soft ears. The dog sniffed his pants legs carefully, blowing and snorting, licked its pink chops and then moved off into the night.

  “Evenin', Doctah.”

  Beaumont turned to face the voice. It was Edgar, one of the island's vagrant workers who carved out a living as a nightsoil man.

  He walked past Beaumont with his long muscled arms draped over the length of a shiny pole balanced across his shoulders like some walking crucified. At the ends of that pole were suspended his stinking pails. He was stripped to his skinny waist, exposing an arcuate display of tattoos that covered him from neck to his navel. Those along his back were deranged by a lattice of scars.

  Edgar had been on Mackinac since he was a boy, left over, some said, from when the British held it. Others said he was a deserter from the American army, a robber, an abandoned peg boy. At first, he worked as a low clerk to the company, but over time, as his tales grew stranger and more fantastic and more suspicious, the company assigned him increasingly solitary tasks until he settled into emptying the slop buckets. His dress became disheveled, his beard unkempt, and he seemed content to sleep under porches like some troll. He spoke of living on other islands inhabited by men with tattoos twice as elaborate as his. Sometimes he spoke to himself in a language of no discernable origin.

  They tolerated him, made a joke out of him as he carried away their slops, until, one evening, he appeared at the officers' mess wet from the rain, near naked save for a kind of loincloth. He was reeling drunk. With his greasy locks flying about, he called them out as a lot of killers who were no better than the buckets of shit he slung. He fought them until he was bloody and broken and had to be tied down to a board. When they whipped him, he made not so much as a whimper, and then they left him for dead in the jail. Beaumont and Elias came that night, having tendered a bottle for the key to the cell. They carried him back to the hospital, calmed him with laudanum, wine and arrowroot, mended his wounds and cut his hair.

  Company, garrison and village were united in wanting the man expelled. But Beaumont successfully pled to Ramsay Crooks, Captain Pearce and the Reverend James to drop the punishment. Mercy, he knew, would not move them. Instead, he argued that the man had value. Though his mind was diseased, his work was essential to the inhabitants' health. He convinced them Edgar was a strange but necessary employee to keep the air from turning foul and thus ward off the fevers.

  “Evening, Edgar. Quite a rain today.”

  Edgar did not pause.

  “Falls on us all, Doctah'. The just and the unjust.”

  “Yes, it does. It most certainly does.”

  “Fine work with that young trapper,” Edgar said as he trudged on toward the woods.

  BEAUMONT SLIPPED INTO THE SMALL BEDROOM in his stocking feet. He found Deborah asleep. The flame of a single candle upon the bedside table cast her shadow large upon the wall. She sat in a chair. Before her was the basinet where the infant Sarah slept.

  He took up the candle and stood before the basinet with his palm cupped before the flame. He gazed at his daughter, now three weeks old. She slept with her forearms flexed and her hands close to her chin. Her tiny fingers slowly balled up into a fist. And then they relaxed.

  Deborah roused. She looked at her husband. Her round face was framed by a bonnet.

  “William.”

  He set down the candle and kissed her on her forehead.

  “How are you?”

  She closed her eyes. “Tired.”

  “How's Sarah?”

  She leaned forward and looked into the basinet. It was a gift from Ramsay's wife, Emilie Crooks. The inside was lined with a goose-down-filled pillow covered in soft robin's-egg-blue silk.

  “She's asleep. I fed her just an hour ago.”

  Beaumont reached into the basinet and used his pinky to brush a lock of hair from the child's forehead.

  “Such a lot of hair for such a little girl. Look how even more has grown since yesterday.”

  Deborah rose from her chair, and they embraced.

  “I love you, William.”

  “I love you too.”

  He shed his jacket and trousers, extinguished the candle and lay carefully beside her on the bed. She reached out and found his hand. Her fingers were thick, but their skin was soft.

  “Forgive me, I'd have come home sooner, but Captain Pearce ordered my presence.”

  “Was he angry?”

  “Angry?”

  “About the boy. The one who was shot this morning at the company store.”

  “He's more a lad, I should say. Perhaps eighteen. How did you know?”

  “Everyone knows, William. Abigail Matthews came calling this afternoon. She says Theodore holds you in the highest of esteem for what you did. You're the great hero of our small island. I'm so proud of you.”

  He exhaled slowly.

  “Pearce has his temper, but all is in order now. The lad is resting, and I'm home now. Home with our daughter. I'd like to forget Captain Pearce with his rages and threats. Ramsay and his company.”

  The noise of a chat bird carried into the room as they lay side by side, gazing into the darkness.

  “Ramsay Crooks can be so callous,” she said. “You'd think the lad was an injured horse.” She turned on her side to face her husband. “How is he? What's his name?”

  “Alexis Samata. I think. His English is unintelligible. It's a bad wound, but he's alive and as well as can be expected.” He yawned. “I did my best.”

  “I know you did. Emily said it was terrible, that you could see the man's very innards. Do you think he'll live?”

  “That's hard to say. To be honest, I'm surprised he's still alive. The wound is deep and complex.”

  “Where is it?”

  Beaumont took up her hand and placed it upon the spot on his body. “Into his side. I did the best I could. All I can do now is let nature chart his course.”

  “Of course you did.” She stroked his stomach. “Did Captain Pearce punish you for moving Alexis?”

  “No, no punishment. But you know how he can carry on. He yelled and hollered like a stuck hog that I should have asked his permission and threatened to report me as insubordinate, but then his bottle calmed him. In a way, I can't fault him. Mercy may be mightiest in the mightiest, but mighty men like Ramsay would indenture mercy herself to the highest bidder. Can you forgive me for being tardy?”

  “Of course,” she said. “You've nothing to apologize for. You did your duty.”

  He set his hand upon hers. “It's got me thinking of the war.”

  “Don't,” she whispered.

  “I know.”

  NEITHER ASLEEP NOR AWAKE, Beaumont listened to his wife's and daughter's sonorous breathing. How fickle is Fortune, he thought. The young man stepped into the blast. Had he not taken that step, he'd be asleep among his fellow voyageurs on the lakefront, and Beaumont would not be awake worrying about whether the man lived, the cost of his care, his own reputation.

  He stared into the blackness. Upon him was the responsibility to see that his family rose up from their humble situation and achieved the life they desired. His father had left his family only debts. He desired to leave his family wealth. He expected years would pass before they attained their aspirations and sat before their own snug fireside in a carpeted parlor. The room would be lit brightly by a whale oil lamp and decorated with lithographs of American heroes. In time, they would have a piano and a music tutor for their children. He would hear the chime of the hour from his pocket watch, a watch finer even than Ramsay Crooks's. Guests would then ris
e from their seats to listen to Deborah on the piano. The men would run admiring hands along the top of a mahogany sideboard with its companion cellaret.

  As he lay in his tiny cottage with his firstborn child asleep in a borrowed basinet, he worried whether he, the hero of this day, had pushed too hard for the French lad, whether he had sullied his reputation. He had done something noble, he thought, and yet the boy with the hole in his side might die a worse death than if he had done nothing. And if the boy died, he would be remembered as the doctor who disobeyed an order in a futile and vain gesture to rescue a dying fur trapper. Crooks and Pearce would have every reason to call him intemperate and insubordinate. But to set the life and the cost of the care of the wounded fur trapper upon one pan, and to set his aspirations for his family upon the other, and then to put on some blindfold and raise that scale and ask what were good to be done, that seemed wrong, even though it was the calculus of this day.

 

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