Open Wound: The Tragic Obsession of Dr. William Beaumont

by Jason Karlawish

  The American soldiers lined the fort with rifles ready and pitch pots smoking beside the swivel cannons. The Indians outnumbered them three to one. In time, the Indians moved off to a field, and there they kindled a fire. Rumor spread that they roasted and ate the heart of the murdered Fox chief. They departed before nightfall.

  That evening, when Beaumont returned to the room where Deborah and the children were kept, he found her sobbing. Her sewing was a confused bundle on the tabletop. The pepperbox pistol he had left for her sat beside it.

  “We must leave this place,” she begged him. Her face was swollen, her eyes red. “We must.”

  He held her close. He stroked her head.

  “We will,” he murmured. “I promise you. I'll figure out a way.”

  BY JUNE, reports of Indian hostilities and threats upon the settlers came regularly. The Indians argued that the treaty of 1804, the first treaty and the foundation of subsequent agreements and treaties, was coerced from them, unjust, and thus all subsequent treaties were null and void. The settlers and farmers along the Illinois River demanded the governor call out the militia. Sauk Indians inspired by Blackhawk were tearing down their fences, stealing livestock and potatoes, claiming the Americans stole their land. Similar stories came from the lead mines in Iowa. Troops were dispatched throughout the region, and the garrison at Fort Crawford doubled its size. Colonel Taylor ordered the work crews on extra shifts. He wanted the new fort completed by July.

  The heat became oppressive, swarms of blackflies swept in like thunderclouds, and the place was soon covered in a fine red dust stirred up by the horses and wagons, the soldiers and merchants and officials with the Indian agency. For much of June, Beaumont accompanied a party of soldiers sent on a mission north in pursuit of a rumored war party of Sioux braves. Young Badger was left in charge of the hospital. The terrain soon became sufficiently difficult that they abandoned the supply wagon, divided up the goods and carried them by pack. They scuttled their ten-pounder cannon, stuffing its barrel with dirt and rocks, smashing the wheels and pounding lead into its firehole. They tossed the shot into a pond.

  They rode through fields thick with weeds that reached to their horses' necks, traversed swamps with mud holes that sucked a man to his waist. Snakes fell from trees. In the evenings, they wrapped their heads in cloth and tried to sleep as they coughed the smoke of green-wood fires, anything to drive away the blood-hungry mosquitoes.

  After two weeks marching, Beaumont's guts ached. His bowels ran. There were rumors of cholera in the territories. He dosed himself with laudanum and counted his years, backward to his birth in Lebanon, Connecticut. Forty-five. Too many with too little accomplished. One night, he used a finger length of wood from the fire as a carbon and scratched in his notebook, I am running out of time. After four weeks of wandering, the captain in charge ordered the mission aborted. It was mid-July when they returned to Prairie du Chien, their mounts blown, their uniforms shredded, much of the powder they carried turned to clay.

  AT THE END OF JULY, one afternoon, Beaumont paused his work organizing the hospital records of the last several months. His desk had papers scattered across it. Badger was an able hand at physic and surgery but inept with records.

  Beaumont reached for a rag to wipe his forehead. He wiped his arms as well to keep their dampness from smearing the ink on the pages before him. His shirtsleeves were rolled high above his elbows. He was fanning himself with a folded pamphlet one of the newly arrived officers had pressed upon him. It presented an illustrated attack on President Jackson and his administration, complete with cartoons of Indians suckling on the Treasury Pap and the Little Magician Martin Van Buren directing President Jackson with a wand.

  He had been thinking about the results from that winter's experiments. The rule describing the ratio of the gastric juice to aliment seemed less logical. It would surely vary as a consequence of the purity of the aliment, and the admixture of aliment and juice would vary as well with other secretions, other articles of aliment. In the weeks since Alexis stormed out of the barn in a rage and before the Indian hostilities began, he had managed only few short experiments.

  “You fool,” he said to himself. “You ambitious fool. You should just sail away from here.”

  He needed time. Time he did not have. And he needed control over Alexis. He tossed the pen. Its ink stained the curled paper.

  He looked up. He gasped. Alexis was standing at the threshhold of the open door.

  “Alexis, how long have you been there? Dammit, what's the matter?”

  Alexis surveyed the crowded desk.

  “I remember your office in Mackinac. It had those things on it. The green stones you said came from a man's insides.”

  “Much of those things are still packed away since the move. I've substantial paperwork to tend to now. What is it?”

  “Marie—my wife—she, wants to leave. My wife wants us to go back to Canada.”

  Beaumont nodded. He gestured politely to the chair.

  “Sit down, Alexis. Please. Just put those things on the floor.” Beaumont motioned to the only chair beside his in the office. It was stacked with papers and ledgers.

  Alexis set them on the floor, and the stack toppled and spread out like a line of waxed playing cards spilled from its pack.

  “Oh, mon dieu. I am so sorry.” He began to gather them back into a stack.

  “Never the mind about that, Alexis. Just leave them be.”

  Alexis looked up at the doctor.

  “Just leave them there. There. Leave them. Now sit. Sit, please. What's this about leaving? When?”

  “As soon as we can.”

  “You can't be serious. Why?”

  “The Indians, Doctor. She is terrified.”

  “So is Madame Beaumont. We're all terrified. But Prairie du Chien is secure.”

  “Doctor, she is not happy. Since we arrived, she has not been happy. I try, but she is too sick for home. She wants me to go back to farming. She says this is no place to raise a family. I beg your leave.”

  Beaumont exhaled through his nose.

  “She's right of course,” he said plainly. “She should go. This frontier is not a proper place for civilized women and children such as ours. Perhaps in another decade it shall be, but not now. But I wouldn't leave now, not now with the Indians as warlike as they are. There is no telling who they will attack next. Or where. But I have a plan. I have a plan for us to leave.” Beaumont took in a great breath as he regarded Alexis. His heart was thumping into his throat. “Alexis,” he asked, “have you ever heard of Paris?”

  “Paris?”

  “Yes. The capital of France. Of all of Europe. Where Bonaparte ruled.”

  Alexis nodded.

  “I propose we go there. It shall be better travels than those as a voyageur. And more lucrative and certainly better work than work as a farmer.”

  “Which is what I do now.”

  “Alexis, those won't be your chores once we are on a great ship across the ocean. You won't have any chores. And you shall be paid. Paid a good wage.”

  “Away?”

  “Paris is where medical science reigns supreme.”

  Beaumont had no idea where this inspiration came from, but he liked it as he listened to it. He stood up and dragged his chair around the desk and set it before Alexis.

  “Alexis, listen to me. I know you are frustrated. So am I. This is no place for our work. No place for our wives and children. But we must be patient. You leave now, and you will very well find you and your wife and children taken hostage into an Indian camp. I've been in the wilderness, and I have felt the fear. You take your family back to Canada now, you put them at grave risk. But when it is safe to travel, I can easily arrange it with the company, at no expense, in a convoy. I will follow with my family to settle them in Plattsburgh, New York, with my cousin Samuel. When I arrive there, I'll send word through the company. Join me there, and we will depart for Paris.”

  “But my wife, she would p
rotest this.”

  “Protest the money and her being among her kin?”

  “Protest my absence.”

  “Just as you would be if you were a voyageur, which is what you want to be, right, not some farmer?”

  Alexis regarded his doctor for several moments.

  “I could bring them.”

  “No. No, I don't think you will. You know you don't want her along. One year in Paris, Alexis. You will never, in all your life, have such a chance as this. You will see palaces where kings have lived, where Bonaparte was crowned emperor. Father Didier once lived there, you know. Do you remember him?”

  Alexis nodded.

  Beaumont smiled. “He told me of his years there at the monastery. You could visit there too.”

  “And what if I choose to stay in Canada?”

  “You'll be a farmer,” Beaumont pronounced.

  “I can work as a voyageur.”

  Beaumont looked into the teepee of his hands pressed palm to palm as if in prayer. Then he looked at Alexis. He still looked like a boy, his face oddly unblemished and smooth, but he was not a boy anymore.

  “Don't be silly, Alexis. Heavens, but sometimes I feel I'm not just your doctor but your father too. The only men entitled to happiness are those who are useful. I pay better money than the company, and they won't hire you. You know that. Not the Hudson Bay people either. It's a big territory, but it is a small world. Look, Alexis, I don't want to argue with you. I propose this one year, you and I together, good wages for you, all expenses paid, and then it is done.”

  Alexis looked over at the dirty window. Several blackflies, some near the size of coins, walked along the pane as others futilely flew against it. The small thud of their flight halted by the wall of glass. The corpses of a few lay along the gray sill.

  “Sometimes,” he said, “I wish I had let you sew it up. Sometimes too I wish that my prayer was not answered, that I had just died.”

  “Alexis.”

  Alexis looked back at Beaumont.

  “You know that Negro man Dred? The one who served the doctor with the fancy clothes?”

  Beaumont nodded.

  “He called me a white nigger.”

  Beaumont sneered, waved one hand before his face as if to rid the air of a stench.

  “Alexis, you're a free man. I bought your indenture so I could destroy the document. I pay you good wages. And better wages soon. Dred's a slave. Three-fifths a man. Besides, think of all that I did for you. On the day of your shooting, they wanted you to be in the storeroom. But I resisted them. They wanted you cast off in a boat when your wound still spilled food like a spigot and you were scarcely able to hold a hatchet. But again, I came to your aid. I always have, and I always will. First and foremost, you're my patient.”

  Alexis laughed. “You have me there. And here too. You are very clever, mon Docteur Beaumont. And I am your servant.”

  The two men looked at each other for some time.

  “When might we leave?” Alexis asked.

  “I have to make arrangements. I shall speak with Misters Dousman and Rolette. In time, you and I shall be sailing to Paris.”

  After Alexis left, for several minutes Beaumont remained in his seat, staring at the chair where Alexis had sat. He rubbed his face. This plan was intemperate, to be sure, but it felt right and proper, like the morning when he tossed his pen down and ordered Elias Farnham to come with him to the company store and fetch the wounded trapper.

  THIRTY-FIVE

  THREE DAYS LATER, HE TOLD DEBORAH HIS PLANS. It was a Sunday, after church and before supper at the Taylors'. The morning was clear and cool. They were walking through a mown field, their daughters running ahead. Deborah held her Bible up to her chest, the strip of red felt ribbon lapped over the leather cover. Her faced was shaded by a wide straw bonnet. When Beaumont finished talking, Deborah continued walking. After a minute, she spoke.

  “I said I would follow you anywhere, even here, but why must it be Paris?”

  “Considering the expenses, it would just be Alexis and me. But Paris is just an idea, Deborah, a plan really, to allow you and the children to get away from here and back to civilization. The surgeons corps is short of doctors. Given my lack of seniority, I've little chance of persuading them that I deserve a posting back east, but I do have Alexis. If I can persuade Dr. Lovell of the value of devoting myself to studying Alexis instead of trying to fit that work together with my regular duties, I'll complete the book. First, I need to secure our leave so that we can return to Plattsburgh, and you and the children can settle there. I'm certain my cousin Samuel would take us in. For at least a year.”

  “Why not perform your studies in Plattsburgh?”

  “He'll be less than two days' journey from his family there. He'll simply take the money and flee north.”

  Deborah shuddered. She made to speak, then caught herself.

  “What is it, dear? You don't want me to go, I know.”

  “You think you will be done with him after a year?

  “Done?”

  “With the experiments.”

  “I would expect yes, if I can diligently apply myself without the interruption of practice and the duties of a garrison. I need Alexis alone and without the distractions of his family. That wife of his is . . .”

  Deborah interrupted him. “You know she's pregnant.”

  “He's not said a word. How did you know?”

  “You can't tell? Look at her face, her chest. All the signs are there.”

  “Honestly, I've not paid notice. The woman avoids me.”

  They walked for several minutes.

  “So much the better then,” Beaumont announced.

  “What's that?”

  “That he is to be a father again. Now he'll have four mouths to feed. An infant shall require him to remain here until at least next spring and further obligate him to his family. He doesn't want to be a farmer. He can't be a voyageur. What skills does he have? His only thing of value is his wound. If virtue and wisdom do not let him see the debt of gratitude he owes me, then let the duties of family and fatherhood compel him.”

  “Do you like Alexis?”

  Deborah had stopped walking and raised her head so that the shadow of her hat lifted from her face.

  “Like him?”

  “Yes, like him.”

  He stammered. “Honestly, Deborah, I often wish that someone such as Captain Hitchcock had suffered that wound. He'd be right here by my side, intent on discovering the secrets that will improve the lot of man. Eager to repay his debt for my efforts. To do something of value.”

  “Would he have a debt?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I'm not sure, really. Would a man such as Captain Hitchcock have required our charity in Mackinac?”

  “Deborah, I haven't the slightest idea. Perhaps not.”

  “The captain is our friend, William.”

  “And perhaps, too, he is wise enough to see the value of being studied by the greatest medical minds rather than dithering with some country doctor in a barn on the edge of civilization.”

  She said nothing but looked at their daughters.

  “I'm on the edge of greatness, Debbie. I think how far I have come since I was a mere surgeon's mate during the war, often ignored and expected to stand against the wall while the doctors gathered about the table to discuss cases. If I can persuade Lovell to grant me this leave, I shall be seated at that table among the leaders of the surgeons corps. I had occasion several nights ago to review the notes I took from those first four experiments. I've managed considerable progress, despite my amateur skills. The wealth of knowledge that wound has to offer is tremendous. And it is mine.”

  “It is. I know that,” she said. “And I know Lovell supports you, since you were in the army, like you were his son.”

  She stopped talking.

  “Why do you chuckle?” she asked.

  “We are of the same age.”

  “Lovell?”

/>   “Aye. In fact, I'm older by three years. And yet when we met in the surgeons corps in the war he was my commander. Surgeon-in-chief, graduate of Harvard College with a doctorate in medicine, and I a mere surgeon's mate. Apprentice trained. You're right, of course. It's just queer, given our ages.”

  “Well then, I'd surmise he's like a brother to you. Look at all that he's done for you. As you say, and have said before, we have come this far; just a little farther, and we will have made our fortune. But Paris?”

  “Debbie, a man such as Lovell is born into the world with all kinds of advantages, but a man such as I has to make his way by dint of hard work and diligence and daily application of body and soul. I wish that I had the opportunities of a man such as Lovell, but I was not so fortunate to be born of a fine Boston family. I must go away to do this work. Think of this as war, Debbie. I was called away for one month in the futile pursuit of those Sioux, and I very well may be called away again. These experiments I have done and still need to do upon Alexis are of the same kind of duty; I am just as bound to see their success as I am to serve in a war. This research is like war. But there is one difference. Just one. Do you know what that is?”