Comes a Time for Burning

by Steven F Havill

  She accepted the bottles. “The pastor and Dr. Haines did not see eye to eye,” she whispered. “Nor with Alvi, either. But that’s a grudge that should be long gone.” Gert lowered her voice even more, and Thomas had to watch her lips to catch what she said. “His first wife, you see.”

  “Patterson’s first wife?”

  She nodded, but before she had time to answer, Roland Patterson appeared from a back room, a stout cane in his hand. The cane was not intended as a weapon, Thomas could see. Patterson did not stride with his usual iron-backed posture, but sidled into the room, moving as if he’d aged half a century. One hand was thrust into his trousers at the gut. His eyes were bright, and locked on Thomas.

  “What do you want?”

  “The children are ill. Will you let me tend them? They should be taken to the clinic immediately.”

  “My wife has died,” Patterson said, his voice surprisingly soft. “A good, strong woman.” He pushed himself up a bit, keeping most of his weight braced by the cane. “She died within a day after you began your barbaric treatment.”

  “Barbaric?”

  “Those are my words, young man. Your intrusions, your narcotics, your potions…”

  “You consider modern medicine barbaric?”

  “I do. And you took Elaine. You took her after I expressly forbade it.”

  “Elaine came to the clinic of her own free will, Mr. Patterson.”

  “She has no free will, young man. She is but fourteen.”

  “Mr. Patterson, if you remain in this house, it is more than likely that you will all die.” He took a breath, and the odor came to him, making his skin crawl. “Is that what you want? Gert says that the two little ones are ill. And it’s obvious that you are suffering, sir. There is no way of knowing how many of your congregation have been infected by the cholera. When it strikes, few are spared. You’ve witnessed that yourself.”

  “And I say again—it is ridiculous to think that this is cholera, the scourge of the filthy, the Godless…”

  “This is nonsense,” Thomas interrupted, and he turned toward Gert. “Where are the children?”

  “This is my house, and this is my family. I will not have a man who lives in sin telling me what I must do!” Patterson roared, a show of his former strength. He thumped the cane hard on the floor, but didn’t lift it to threaten Thomas.

  “I neither know nor care about what you imply,” Thomas said. “But I do know that human ignorance opens the way for such plagues as the cholera. If you had half a wit, you would understand that. Now, you struck my associate.” Thomas stepped closer to Patterson. He could see the darkness under the eyes, the weariness that sapped the pastor’s strong physique. The once neatly pressed clothing hung wrinkled and rank. “That’s all the striking you will do. Threaten me, and Constable Aldrich will arrest you. He awaits outside. Three things must happen, sir, and will happen. You have your wife’s corpse.” The harsh word jolted Patterson. “That must be buried immediately. The sick must go to the clinic for proper treatment, and this house cleaned from top to bottom, purged of the contagion. No one must be allowed back inside for at least two weeks. And the church as well. The church shall be quarantined…cleaned from top to bottom, and locked for two weeks.”

  “You compare my home and my church to the rude streets of Calcutta? And you think to lock the house of God?” Patterson gasped.

  “That’s exactly what I think.”

  “The Lord has been my life,” Patterson cried. “You think I am to turn my back on the very place where…” He didn’t finish, but glared at Thomas. “My children are recovering, thanks be to God. The good Miss James has come to offer her assistance.” He held up both hands, palms toward himself as if inspecting his fingers. “I shall fashion a final resting place for my wife with these hands. Thomas heard a grunt outside from Ted Winchell, who along with the constable was certainly listening to the exchange. “And then she will have a proper service in her church, and be prepared to meet the Lord.”

  “She’s already there, sir. And you’re more ill than you know.”

  “Don’t you dare preach to me,” Patterson said. “There is such a swelling of gratitude for the gift of health to my children that it actually brings some upset. It is nothing and will soon pass.”

  “May I look in on them?”

  “They rest now, after a troubling night. To disturb them is the sort of foolishness at which you are apparently so adept.”

  For a moment, Thomas was too angry to reply. “Gert, are the children resting comfortably?” Comfort was not a word easily associated with the cholera.

  “I am afraid for them,” she whispered.

  “The Lord will assuage your fears,” Patterson said, and coughed loudly.

  “When was the last time either took nourishment or fluids?”

  “I have been here since three,” Gert said. “They have managed nothing since then. I cannot speak for the time earlier.”

  “Sir,” Thomas said, “This disease is an issue of very public health. A single case puts the entire community at risk. I must insist. I will examine the children, with your leave or not.” He hefted the massive medical bag, so heavy that a single swipe with it would flatten Roland Patterson.

  “If only to satisfy you, a single look. And then you will leave the house.”

  Gert had moved toward the hallway, and when Thomas looked at her, she shook her head in despair. For a moment he wondered what sort of comforting message someone with the common sense of Gert James found in Roland Patterson’s sermons.

  “Where are they?”

  Patterson extended a hand, and Thomas followed him from the vestibule. In the parlor, the sheeted form of Patterson’s wife lay on a long table, the linen covering drawn so flawlessly, so neatly, that he assumed that had been Gert’s first task that night. He cringed, thinking of the risk to her. They passed down a short hallway, and Patterson stopped at the first doorway, turned the knob, and held it open. In the dark, it was impossible to make out who might be inside.

  “A lantern, if you please?”

  It was Gert who appeared behind him with a coal oil lantern, its wick turned high. Thomas took it and entered the bedroom. A tiny girl lay curled on one narrow bed, obviously sleeping. Though the small bed was tidy and clean, Thomas could smell the cholera’s foul presence. The child’s breathing was quick and shallow. Thomas looked at her sunken eyes, hollow cheeks, and pallid skin. Touching the back of his hand to her cold cheek, he turned to Patterson.

  “When were the first symptoms?”

  “I told you…she sleeps easily now. With the morrow, she will be well.”

  Thomas sighed and pushed himself erect. “Do you care for this child, sir?”

  “You have no right to ask that. I care for my children as for life itself.”

  For a moment, Thomas simply stood and gazed at the man. “You care for them? Then tell me when the first symptoms were.”

  “Perhaps sometime yesterday.”

  “Perhaps.” Across the room, another child lay in bed, flat on his back, head turned toward the wall. Thomas raised the lantern and groaned. Hoping that he was wrong, he placed a finger to the side of the child’s neck. “Gert?”

  “Yes, Doctor?”

  “This child is dead.” He turned to look at the older woman. “Was he dead when you arrived earlier this morning?”

  “Just, I think.” She let out an odd little groan. “The dear, dear little boy.”

  “My God. So fast?”

  “Todd was not a hale and hearty little soul,” Gert whispered. “His heart was frail. More than once, Dr. Haines suggested…”

  “I do not care what a man who has given his soul to the needle and the bottle suggests,” Patterson spat. “And the child is not dead.”

  “And what do you call it, sir? When the heart stops and the brain ceases to function and the cold blood settles to the lowest points of the body?” He could see that his words stung, but he couldn’t stop. “And when decay begins
the process of taking the body back to dust? Just what do you call that, sir?”

  Patterson tried to bleat something, his eyes tortured, but Thomas had stopped listening to him. “Gert, where is Eleanor? Have you been able to speak with her?”

  “Across the hall, Doctor.”

  “She is ill?”

  “In a manner.” She touched her own temple.

  “Show me.”

  Following close behind, he entered a small room and saw a figure sitting by the window. It was Eleanor, wrapped in a shawl that was pulled tightly around her shoulders. Thomas knelt beside her. The back of her free hand, listless on her lap, was cool. He reached up and laid two fingers to her neck. The pulse was listless.

  “Eleanor?” The girl didn’t respond. She sat much as she had in the timber, beside Ben Sitzberger’s body. “Eleanor, it’s Doctor Parks.”

  She ignored him, lost somewhere over the spread of the inlet outside her window.

  “I fear for her,” Gert whispered in Thomas’ ear.

  “For them all,” he replied. “Eleanor, can you stand for me?” The girl remained inert, focused far, far away. He rose to leave the room and was confronted by Patterson, who had sagged against the wall in the hallway. “Get out of my way, sir,” Thomas snapped, and to his surprise, the man did.

  Outside, the air tasted so wonderfully fresh that he paused for a moment to drink in half a dozen breaths.

  “Bad?” Winchell asked.

  “Indeed. He has laid out his wife’s corpse in the parlor, awaiting a proper funeral. His son is dead. The smallest child…she looks but five or six…is alive but desperately ill. Eleanor has collapsed in a state.”

  “This does not surprise me,” Aldrich said. “I saw her earlier. A desperate young woman. For a time, she was wandering down at the hotel. It looked like she wanted to help in some way, but couldn’t. Piteous, I think. What about Patterson?”

  “He is also ill, although still ambulatory. It won’t be long.”

  “What must we do?” the constable asked.

  “First of all, the three of them must be taken to the clinic—the surviving child, Eleanor, and the pastor. There is nothing for it but that.”

  “You’ll hog-tie him?” Aldrich asked, only half in jest. “He will not listen to you.”

  “Then he can stew in his own juices until he is too ill to complain,” Thomas said. “The wife and son must be buried with all dispatch. A deep grave, heavily treated with corrosive sublimate, as you’ve been doing.” He held out his hands. “That’s what must be done. Whether the Pastor approves or not.”

  “And if he stands in the way? This is the man’s home, after all,” Aldrich said.

  “We must do what must be done.” Thomas looked off toward the rest of the village. “When news spreads of Mrs. Patterson and the child, half the village will be trooping down here to offer condolences. They’ll hear Patterson’s nonsense that the disease is not exactly what it is, and bolstered by that, they’ll bring food.” He lowered his voice so Gert couldn’t hear. “That’s what people do. And we’ll have hands mixing and kneading and feeding and being oh, so helpful. The bacilli will have a grand old time. The cholera will not have to find them. They will come to it.”

  Chapter Thirty

  “My suggestion was permanganate of potash,” Ted Winchell said. He regarded Thomas with his habitual amused expression. How he could find the light-hearted aspect of each dreadful situation, Thomas could not fathom, but he appreciated the undertaker all the more for it. “See, I thought that would give the hotel’s cedar siding a nice purple hue, don’t you know. Damn fashionable.”

  He yawned and glanced at the wall clock. Much of the morning had fled since their visit to Patterson’s, and the time had been a blur. “We don’t have much permanganate,” Winchell continued, “but Lindeman’s got sacks of Perlman’s Privy Purifier, and that’ll sure as hell work. Mostly chloride of lime, if I remember right.”

  The undertaker lounged in the doorway of the clinic’s dispensary, watching Thomas compound yet another supply of what had come to be called “gut brew”, the concoction of chamomile infusion, tannin, laudanum, and gum arabic. From his demeanor, one might guess that the man had spent a day of complete leisure, rather than behind the hammer, saw, and then shovel.

  “Schmidt says it’s going to ruin his pump, but he says that’s okay,” Winchell added. “What’s the count now?”

  “Four more brought in from the camp,” Thomas said, decanting the brew carefully into the large amber bottle.

  “Will they live?”

  “You want an honest answer, or a hopeful one?”

  “Hopeful doesn’t help me any,” Winchell replied.

  “Continue your carpentry and your digging, then,” Thomas said. “Of the four, I am willing to gamble that two will survive.” He glanced at Winchell. “We have four more from the Clarissa—a fisherman and three of the ladies. But you knew that already.”

  “Yes.” Winchell’s face went sober and tired.

  Thomas stopped pouring and closed his eyes. “Mary and…” He shook his head in despair. “God, she was taken ill, died, and I can’t even remember her name.”

  “Constance.”

  “You knew her, then?”

  “If I say yes, you’ll wonder about me,” Winchell replied. “But yes…a delightful young lady. Both she and Ida Jorgenson.”

  “Ida is hanging on,” Thomas said. “My understanding is that she worked in the kitchen.”

  “Yes. That’s not good, is it.”

  “No,” Thomas said. “It’s not good. In fact, it’s as bad as it gets. And Ted, this is what irks me.” He inserted the bottle’s stopper and brought down the wire bale. “I am convinced that had they received treatment from the first sign of discomfort, the prognosis could be entirely favorable. As advanced as their condition is now, they must have been suffering symptoms at the very moment when you and I and the Constable were at the Clarissa. Their rooms were empty. When we found them downstairs and spoke with them, they confessed to no ill feelings.”

  “Yet Lucy is still with us.”

  “Lucy Levine is a remarkable young lady.” Thomas glanced up at Winchell. “She sleeps most of the time now, and that’s good. The trick is to keep the vital systems fortified. We can do that even as she sleeps.”

  “Little Janie Patterson?”

  Thomas grimaced. “She is a tiny thing, Ted, without the natural resiliency.” He straightened and rubbed his back. “I fear for her. She has little more resilience than her brother. The autopsy on the boy was hurried, but enough to show that he had a damaged valve in the heart, you know. I’m surprised that he reached his fifth birthday, Ted.”

  “Damn shame.” The undertaker stretched, joints popping, and patted his gut.

  “And how are you, by the way?” Thomas regarded the undertaker critically.

  “Sound as oak,” Winchell said, expelling a loud breath.

  As Thomas turned, he caught a characteristic bouquet from Winchell’s clothing. The undertaker saw the wrinkled nose and chuckled.

  “They have pots of sulfur smoking in all the rooms, just like Doc Hardy told ’em. Most God-awful thing I ever smelled. Couple hours of that and I wouldn’t think there’d be a thing alive on that floor…man, rat, or bacilli.”

  “You’d be surprised, my friend. The sulfur is good for this,” and he tapped his head. “People are encouraged to see such a thing. But the smoke cannot reach into the fabrics, the rugs, the furniture, into every crack and cranny. That must be tackled by hand. As long as everyone who works on the hotel understands the dangers and takes appropriate precautions.”

  “Eleanor still wanders?”

  “Most puzzling.” Thomas sighed. “She lies in bed, staring at the ceiling.” He shrugged. “Perhaps she will find the answers there. I don’t know. Her sister tends her, as Elaine does so many others.” He started to pass Winchell, who stepped to one side.

  “What else can I do?” the undertaker asked.
>
  Thomas smiled ruefully. “Keep up with us. Who works with you?”

  “Jake has assigned four from the mill to me,” Winchell replied. “They work the laundry with him, and for me when I need them. Everyone works without question or complaint. Well, not exactly without complaint, to be honest. The last thing those brawny boys want right now is to be digging holes in the ground. But they do it. And that’s all I can ask.”

  Thomas nodded. “Did you see this?” He stepped across the dispensary and picked up a poster printed on rough, brown paper. Winchell took it and nodded.

  “Aldrich has posted these all over town,” he said. “You can’t turn around without seeing them.” In enormous, florid print, the poster announced:

  Constable George Aldrich’s name had been added to the bottom of the poster, underneath Thomas’ own.

  “Do I always speak in exclamation points?” Thomas mused, and Winchell laughed.

  “Maybe it attracts attention that way. By nightfall, there won’t be a single person in Port McKinney who doesn’t know of the cholera. We will know who is ill, and who is not. And of course,” Winchell added, “there won’t be a ship that stops, or a coach that approaches within fifty miles.”

  It all sounded so optimistic, Thomas thought. Still, he always felt better after talking to the gregarious undertaker, and when Winchell left the clinic, the young physician took a moment with his notes. Scientific journals would demand an accounting report, and he set about the work with diligence.

  If Thomas’ mood had been buoyed by Winchell’s visit, it was dashed shortly after seven that evening.

  Chapter Thirty-one

  No threat of disease prevented Maurice Frye from pounding on the door of the clinic. Adelaide Crowell happened to be passing through the men’s ward when the ruckus began, and she opened the front door to find Maurice wide-eyed and panicky, hopping from one foot to the other, face so drained of color that the nurse’s first thought was that another victim of the cholera had made it to their doorstep.