Shaman

by Noah Gordon

  “No, Shaman. With due respect, you will never know. Those two children have the blood of high priests. They must be raised as Jews.”

  “They will be. We’ve talked at length. Rachel won’t give up her beliefs. Joshua and Hattie can be taught by you, the man who taught their mother. I’d like to learn Hebrew with them. I had a little in college.”

  “You’ll convert?”

  “No … actually, I’m thinking of becoming a Quaker.”

  Geiger was silent.

  “If your family were locked away in a town of your own people, you might expect the kind of matches you want for your children. But you led them into the world.”

  “Yes, I take responsibility. Now I must lead them back.”

  Shaman shook his head. “They won’t go. They can’t.”

  The expression on Jay’s face didn’t change.

  “Rachel and I will marry. And if you wound her mortally by draping your mirrors and chanting the prayer for the dead, I’ll ask her to take the children and go with me, far away from here.”

  For a moment he feared the legendary Geiger temper, but Jay nodded. “She told me this morning she’d go.”

  “Yesterday you said my father was closer in your heart than your brothers. I know you love his family. I know you love me. Can’t we love each other for what we are?”

  Jason was pale. “It seems we must try,” he said heavily. He stood and held out his hand.

  Shaman ignored the hand and swept him up in a great embrace. In a moment he felt Jason’s hand rising and falling on his back, bestowing comforting pats.

  In the third week of April, winter came back to Illinois. The temperature dropped, and it snowed. Shaman worried about the tiny buds on the peach trees. Work ceased on the building site, but he and Ericsson walked through the Cole house and determined where the contractor would build shelves and instrument cases. Happily they agreed that very little structural work would have to be done to convert the house into a clinic.

  When the snow stopped, Doug Penfield took advantage of the cold to do some spring slaughtering, as he had promised Sarah. Shaman passed the outdoor abattoir behind the barn and saw three pigs, tied and hung from a high rail by their rear legs. He realized three were too many; Rachel wouldn’t be using hams or smoked shoulder in their house, and he smiled at this evidence of the interesting complexities his life was beginning to assume. The pigs already had been bled, gutted, dipped into vats of boiling water, and scraped. They were pink-white, and as he passed them he was stopped short by three small, identical openings in the large veins of their throats, by which they had been bled.

  Triangular wounds, like the holes left in new snow by the tips of ski poles.

  Without having to measure them, Shaman knew that these wounds were the right size.

  He was standing transfixed by them when Doug came with his meat saw.

  “These holes. What did you use to make them?”

  “Alden’s pig-sticker.” Doug smiled at him. “That’s the funniest thing. I’d been asking Alden to make me one, ever since the first time I butchered here. Asking and asking. He always said he would. He said he knew sticking pigs was better than cutting their throats. Said he used to own a sticker and lost it. But he never made one for me.

  “Then we tore down his cabin, and there was his, on a joist under the puncheon floor. He must have set the thing down for a minute while he repaired one of the floorboards, and forgot about it, and put the floorboard right back over it. Didn’t even need much of a sharpening.”

  In a moment it was in Shaman’s hand. It was the instrument whose use had baffled Barney McGowan when he had tried to picture it in the pathology laboratory of the Cincinnati hospital, working from only a description of Makwa’s wounds. It was about eighteen inches long. Its handle was round and smooth, easy to hold. As Shaman’s father had guessed during the autopsy, the last six inches of the triangular blade tapered, so that the more the blade was pushed into tissue, the larger the wound would be. The three edges gleamed dangerously, and it was obvious that the steel took a fine edge. Alden had always liked to use good steel.

  He could see the arm rising and falling. Rising and falling.

  Eleven times.

  She wouldn’t have screamed or cried out. He told himself she would have been deep within herself, at the place where there was no pain. He fervently hoped that was true.

  Shaman left Doug at his work. He carried the instrument down the Short Path, holding it in front of him carefully, as though it might be transformed into a serpent and rear back to bite him. He went through the trees, passed Makwa’s grave and the ruined hedonoso-te. On the riverbank he drew back his arm and flung.

  The thing turned and turned, swimming through the spring air, glittering all the way in the bright sun, like a thrown sword. But it wasn’t Excalibur. No God-sent hand and arm rose out of the depths to catch and brandish it. Instead, it knifed into the current in the deepest water with scarcely a ripple. Shaman knew the river wouldn’t give it up, and a weight he’d carried for years—so long a time that he had lost awareness of it—lifted from his shoulders and was gone like a bird.

  72

  BREAKING GROUND

  By the end of April no snow was to be found, even in the secret nooks where the river woods produced deep shade. The tips of the peach trees had been blasted by frost, but new life struggled beneath the blackened tissue and pushed the green buds toward blossom. On May 13, when there was a formal groundbreaking ceremony at the Cole farm, the weather was mild. Shortly after noon, the Most Reverend James Duggan, Bishop of the Diocese of Chicago, alighted from the train at Rock Island, accompanied by three monsignors.

  They were met by Mother Miriam Ferocia and two hired carriages that drove the party to the farm, where people already had assembled. The group included most of the area’s doctors; the nursing nuns of the convent and the priest who was their confessor; the town fathers; assorted politicians, including Nick Holden and Congressman John Kurland; and a number of citizens. Mother Miriam’s voice was firm as she welcomed them, but her accent was more marked than usual, which happened when she was nervous. She introduced the prelates and asked Bishop Duggan to give the invocation.

  Then she introduced Shaman, who led a walking tour of the land. The bishop, a portly man with a ruddy face framed by a great mane of gray hair, clearly was pleased by what he saw. When they reached the site of the hospital building, Congressman Kurland spoke briefly, describing what the presence of a hospital would mean to his constituents. Bishop Duggan was handed a shovel by Mother Miriam and excavated a helping of earth as if he had done it before. Then the prioress used the shovel, and next Shaman, followed by the politicians, and then several other people who would be pleased to be able to tell their children they’d broken the ground for the Hospital of Saint Francis.

  Following the groundbreaking, everyone went to a reception at the convent. There were more tours—of the garden, of the flock of sheep and the herd of goats in the fields, of the barn, and finally of the convent house itself.

  Miriam Ferocia had had a narrow line to walk, wishing to honor her bishop with fitting hospitality, yet aware that she mustn’t appear a spendthrift in his eyes. She had managed admirably, using the products of her convent to bake small cheese pastries that were served warm on trays to accompany tea and coffee. Everything appeared to go very well, but it seemed to Shaman that Miriam Ferocia was growing increasingly anxious. He observed her staring pensively at Nick Holden, who sat in the upholstered chair next to the prioress’s table.

  When Holden got up and moved away, she seemed to wait expectantly, glancing again and again at Bishop Duggan.

  Shaman had met and talked with the bishop at the farm. Now he moved closer, and when the opportunity arose, spoke to him.

  “Your Excellency, do you observe, behind me, the large upholstered chair with the carved wooden arms?”

  The bishop appeared puzzled. “Yes, I do.”

  “Your Excellency, tha
t chair was carried across the prairie in a wagon by the nuns when they came here. They call it the bishop’s chair. It was their dream that someday their bishop might come to visit, and that he would have a fine chair in which to rest.”

  Bishop Duggan nodded seriously, but his eyes twinkled. “Dr. Cole, I believe you will go far,” he said. He was a circumspect man. He went first to the congressman and discussed the future of the chaplains of the army now that the war was over. After a few minutes had passed, he approached Miriam Ferocia. “Come, Mother,” he said. “Let us have a little talk.” He pulled a straight chair close to the upholstered one, into which he sank with a pleased sigh.

  Soon they were engrossed in conversation about the affairs of the convent. Mother Miriam Ferocia sat erect in the straight chair, her eyes taking in the fact that the bishop sat the chair well, almost regally—his back supported, his hands resting comfortably over the ends of the carved arms. Sister Mary Peter Celestine, serving pastries, took note of her prioress’s glowing face. She glanced at Sister Mary Benedicta, who was pouring coffee, and they both smiled.

  The morning after the reception at the convent, the sheriff and a deputy drove a buckboard to the Cole farm, bearing the body of a plump middle-aged woman with long dirty brown hair. The sheriff didn’t know who she was. She had been discovered dead in the back of a closed freight wagon that had brought an order of bagged sugar and flour to Haskins’ store.

  “We figure she crawled into the back of the wagon in Rock Island, but nobody there knows where she came from, or anything else about her,” the sheriff said. They carried her into the shed and put her on the table, then nodded and drove away.

  “Anatomy lesson,” Shaman told Alex.

  They undressed her. She wasn’t clean, and Alex watched as Shaman combed nits and chaff from her hair. Shaman used the scalpel Alden had made for him, to make the Y incision that opened the chest. He worked the rib-cutter and removed the sternum, explaining what everything was, and what he was doing, and why, and when he glanced up, he saw that Alex was struggling with himself.

  “No matter how soiled the human body is, it’s a miracle to be marveled at and treated well. When a person dies, the soul or the spirit—what the Greeks called anemos—leaves it. Men have always argued about whether it dies too, or it goes elsewhere.” He smiled, remembering his father and Barney delivering the same message, and inordinately pleased that now he was passing the legacy himself. “When Pa studied medicine, he had a professor who told him the spirit leaves the body behind the way someone leaves a house he’s lived in. Pa said we have to treat a body with dignity, out of respect for the person who used to live in the house.”

  Alex nodded. Shaman saw that he leaned over the table with genuine interest, and that color had begun to return to Bigger’s face as he watched his brother’s hands.

  Jay had volunteered to tutor Alex in chemistry and pharmacology. That afternoon they sat on the porch of the Cole house and reviewed the elements, while Shaman read a journal nearby, and occasionally dozed. They were forced to put away their books, and Shaman to abandon all hope for a nap, by the arrival of Nick Holden. Shaman saw that Alex greeted Nick politely but without warmth.

  Nick had come to say good-bye. He was still commissioner of Indian affairs, and he was returning to Washington.

  “Has President Johnson asked you to stay on, then?” Shaman asked.

  “Only for a time. He’ll put in his own bunch, never fear,” Nick said, making a face. He told them all Washington was agog with the rumor of a connection between the former vice-president and President Lincoln’s assassin. “They say a note to Johnson has been discovered, bearing the signature of John Wilkes Booth. And that on the afternoon of the shooting, Booth called at Johnson’s hotel and asked for him at the desk, only to be told that Johnson wasn’t in.”

  Shaman wondered whether reputations were assassinated in Washington as well as presidents. “Has Johnson been asked about these stories?”

  “He chooses to ignore them. He merely acts presidential and talks about funding the deficit caused by the war.”

  “The greatest deficit caused by the war can’t be funded,” Jay said. “A million men have been killed or wounded. And more will die, because there are pockets of Confederates who still haven’t surrendered.”

  They contemplated the terrible thought. “What would have happened to this country had there been no war?” Alex asked suddenly. “What if Lincoln had allowed the South to go in peace?”

  “The Confederacy would have been short-lived,” Jay said. “Southerners place their faith in their own state and mistrust a central government. There would have been squabbles almost at once. The Confederacy would have fractured into smaller regional groups, and in time these would have broken down into the individual states. I think that all the states, one by one and at their own humiliated and embarrassed request, would have come back into the Union.”

  “The Union’s changing,” Shaman said. “The American party had very little effect on the last election. American-born soldiers have seen Irish and German and Scandinavian comrades die in battle, and they’re no longer willing to listen to bigoted politicians. The Chicago Daily Tribune says the Know Nothings are finished.”

  “And good riddance,” Alex said.

  “It was just another political party,” Nick said mildly.

  “A political party that fanned into life other, more ominous groups,” Jay said. “But never fear. Three and a half million former slaves are spreading out to seek jobs of work. There will be new terror societies aimed against them, probably with the same names on their membership rolls.”

  Nick Holden rose to take his leave. “By the way, Geiger, has your good wife received any word from her celebrated cousin?”

  “If we knew Judah Benjamin’s whereabouts, Commissioner, do you believe I would tell you?” Jay said quietly.

  Holden smiled his smile.

  It was true he had saved Alex’s life, and Shaman was grateful. But gratitude never would enable him to like Nick. Deep in his heart he fervently hoped his brother had been fathered by the young outlaw whose name had been Will Mosby.

  It didn’t enter his mind to invite Holden to the wedding.

  Shaman and Rachel were married May 22, 1865, in the parlor of the Geiger house, with only their families attending. It wasn’t the wedding their elders would have wanted. Sarah had suggested to her son that since his stepfather was a clergyman, it would be a gesture toward family unity if Lucian were asked to perform the ceremony. Jay offered his daughter the opinion that the only way a Jewish woman could be married was by a rabbi. Neither Rachel nor Shaman argued, but they were married by Judge Stephen Hume. Hume couldn’t handle pages or notes with one hand unless he had a lectern, and Shaman had to borrow the one in the church, a task made easier by the fact that a new minister hadn’t yet been hired. They stood before the judge with the children. Joshua’s sweaty little hand grasped Shaman’s index finger. Rachel, in a wedding dress of blue brocade with a wide collar of cream-colored lace, held Hattie’s hand. Hume was a fine man who wished them good things, and that came through. When he pronounced them husband and wife and bade them to “Go in joy and peace,” Shaman took him literally. The world slowed, and he experienced a rising in his soul such as he’d felt only once before, when he had walked the tunnel between the Cincinnati Polyclinic Medical School and the Southwestern Ohio Hospital for the first time as a physician.

  Shaman had expected Rachel to want to go to Chicago or some other city for their wedding trip, but she had heard him say Sauks and Mesquakies had come back to Iowa, and to his pleasure she’d asked if they could visit the Indians.

  They needed an animal to pack their supplies and bedding. Paul Williams had a big good-natured gray gelding in his stable, and Shaman rented him for eleven days. Tama, the Indian town, was about one hundred miles away. He figured four days or so traveling time each way, and a couple of days for the visit.

  A few hours after they were married
they rode away, Rachel on Trude, Shaman on Boss and leading the packhorse, whose name Williams had said was Ulysses, “no disrespect to General Grant.”

  Shaman would have stopped for the day by the time they got to Rock Island, but they were dressed for rough travel, not for a hotel, and Rachel wanted to spend the night on the prairie. So they brought the horses across the river by ferry and rode about ten miles beyond Davenport.

  They followed a narrow dusty road between great plowed expanses of black soil, but there were still patches of prairie between the cultivated fields. When they reached a stretch of unbroken grass, and a brook, Rachel rode close and waved her hand to gain his attention. “Can we stop here?”

  “Let’s find the farmhouse.”

  They had to ride about another mile. Closer to the house, the grass became cultivated field that doubtless would be planted to corn. In the barnyard a yellow dog lunged at the horses, barking. The farmer was putting a new bolt on the share of his plow, and he frowned with suspicion when Shaman asked permission to camp by the brook. But when Shaman offered to pay, he waved his hand. “Gonna build a fire?”

  “I had thought to. Everything’s green.”

  “Oh, yes, it won’t spread. Brook’s drinkable. Follow it a ways, there’s dead trees where you can get wood.”

  So they thanked him and rode back to a good spot. They took off the saddles together and unloaded Ulysses. Then Shaman made four trips to carry wood, while Rachel laid out the camp. She spread an old buffalo robe that her father had bought years ago from Stone Dog. Brown leather showed through where it was missing clumps of fur, but it was just the thing to have between them and the earth. Over the buffalo robe she spread two blankets woven of Cole wool, because summer was a month away.

  Shaman piled wood between some rocks and lit a fire. He put brook water and coffee into a pot and set it on to brew. Sitting on the saddles, they ate cold leftovers from their wedding feast—pink sliced spring lamb, brown potatoes, candied carrots. For a sweet they ate white wedding cake with whiskey frosting, and then they sat near the fire and drank their coffee black. The stars showed up as night fell, and a quarter-moon lifted itself above the flat land.