The Cole Trilogy: The Physician, Shaman, and Matters of Choice

by Noah Gordon

  Rachel smiled at him. “That bend where there are lots of rocks?”

  “That’s the spot. I saw some boys taking very nice small bass beyond the rocks the other day.”

  “I’m obliged. I’ll bring them there tomorrow.”

  He observed that the little girl’s smile was very much like hers. “Well, nice seeing you.”

  “Nice seeing you!” Hattie said.

  He tipped his hat at them and turned the horse.

  “Shaman.” Rachel took a step toward the horse, looking up at him. “If you’re going up to Jack Damon’s tomorrow around midday, come share our picnic lunch with us.”

  “Well, I might just try to do that, if I’m able,” he said.

  Next day when he fled Jack Damon’s laborious breathing and rode to the bend in the river, he saw her mother’s brown buggy right away, the gray mare tethered in the shade and cropping sweet grass.

  Rachel and the children had been fishing off the rocks, and Joshua took Shaman’s hand and pulled him to where six black bass, just the right size for eating, were swimming on their sides in a shaded shallow, with a fishline threaded through their gills and tied to a tree branch.

  Rachel had taken a piece of soap as soon as she saw him, and was scrubbing her hands. “Lunch is apt to taste fishy,” she said cheerfully.

  “I won’t mind a bit,” he said, and didn’t. They had deviled eggs and pickled cucumbers, and lemonade with molasses cookies. After lunch Hattie announced seriously that it was sleepytime, and she and her brother lay on a blanket nearby and took their nap.

  Rachel cleaned up after the meal, placing things into a carpet bag. “You can use one of the poles and fish a bit, if you’re inclined.”

  “No,” he said, preferring to watch what she was saying instead of tending a fishline.

  She nodded and looked out over the river. Upstream, a large flock of swallows, probably passing through from far north, wheeled and glided as if they were one bird, and kissed the water before darting away. “Isn’t it extraordinary, Shaman. Isn’t it fine to be home?”

  “Yes, it is, Rachel.”

  They talked for a time about life in the cities. He told her about Cincinnati and answered her questions about the medical school and the hospital. “And you, did you like Chicago?”

  “I liked having theaters nearby, and concerts. I played my violin in a quartet every Thursday. Joe wasn’t musical, but he indulged me. He was a very kind man,” she said. “He was very careful with me when I lost a child, the first year we were married.”

  Shaman nodded.

  “Well, but then Hattie came, and the war. The war took whatever time my family didn’t need. We had less than a thousand Jews in Chicago. Eighty-four young men joined a Jewish company and we raised funds and completely outfitted them. They became Company C of the Eighty-second Illinois Infantry. They have served with distinction at Gettysburg and other places, and I was part of that.”

  “But you’re Judah P. Benjamin’s cousin, and your father’s a fervent Southerner!”

  “I know. But Joe wasn’t, and neither am I. The day my mother’s letter arrived that told me he’d gone to the Confederates, I had a kitchen full of the Hebrew Ladies Soldier Aid Society rolling bandages for the Union.” She shrugged.

  “And then Joshua came. And then Joe died. And that’s my story.”

  “Up to now,” Shaman said, and she looked at him. He’d forgotten the vulnerable curve of her smooth cheek beneath the high facial bones, the soft fullness of her lower lip, and how the darkness of her brown eyes contained lights and shadows. He didn’t mean to ask the next question, but it was wrenched from him somehow. “So you were happy in your marriage?”

  She studied the river. For a moment he thought he had missed her answer, but then she looked back at him. “I would like to say satisfied. Truth is, I was resigned.”

  “I’ve never been satisfied or resigned,” he said wonderingly.

  “You don’t give in, you keep struggling, that’s why you’re Shaman. You must promise you’ll never allow yourself to become resigned.”

  Hattie woke up and left her brother sleeping on the blanket. She came to her mother and snuggled into her lap.

  “Promise me,” Rachel said.

  Shaman smiled. “I promise.”

  “Why do you talk funny?” Hattie asked.

  “Do I talk funny?” he asked, more of Rachel than of the child.

  “Yes!” Hattie said.

  “You’re more guttural than you were before I left,” Rachel said carefully. “And you seem less in control of your voice.”

  He nodded, and told her of his difficulty when he’d tried to whisper during the performance at the theater.

  “Have you been keeping up your exercises?” Rachel asked.

  She looked stricken when he admitted he hadn’t given much thought to his speech since leaving Holden’s Crossing for medical school.

  “I had no time for speech drills. I was too busy trying to become a doctor.”

  “But now you mustn’t be comfortable! You must go back to your exercises. If you don’t do them from time to time, you’ll forget how you’re supposed to speak. I’ll work with you on your speech, if you’d like, the way we used to do.” Her eyes were earnest as she sat and looked at him, the river breeze ruffling her loose hair, and the little girl with her eyes and her smile leaning into her breasts. Her head was high, and her taut and lovely neck reminded Shaman of pictures he’d seen of a lioness.

  I know I can do it, Miss Burnham.

  He remembered the young girl who had volunteered to help a small deaf boy speak, and he recalled how much he had loved her.

  “I’d be grateful, Rachel,” Shaman said steadily, careful to emphasize the first syllable in “grateful” and to drop his voice at the end of the sentence.

  They had decided to meet at a central point on the Long Path between their homes. He felt certain she hadn’t told Lillian she’d be working with him again, and he saw no reason to mention it to his own mother. The first day, Rachel appeared at the appointed hour of three o’clock accompanied by both children, whom she set to gathering hazel nuts along the path.

  Rachel sat on a small blanket she had carried with her, her back against an oak tree, and he sat dutifully facing her. The drill she chose was to speak a sentence to Shaman, who would read her lips and repeat it with the proper intonation and emphasis. To help, she held his fingers and squeezed them to show where a word should be stressed or a syllable accented. Her hand was warm and dry and as businesslike as if she held a pressing iron or laundry that had to be washed. His own hand felt hot and sweaty to him, but he lost self-consciousness when he turned his attention to the tasks she set him. His speech had developed even more problems than he had feared, and contending with them was no pleasure. He was relieved when finally the children came, struggling with a bucket almost half-filled with hazel nuts. Rachel said they’d crack them with a hammer when they got home and take out the meats, and then they’d bake a nut bread to share with Shaman.

  He was due to meet with her the following day for more speech exercises, but next morning when he finished at the dispensary and rode out on his calls, he found that Jack Damon was finally caving in to the consumption. He stayed by the dying man, trying to ease him. When the end came, it was too late to get back in time to meet Rachel, and he rode home moodily.

  The day after that was Saturday. In the Geiger home a strict Sabbath was observed and there would be no meeting with Rachel that day, but after Shaman had finished in the dispensary, he ran through the vocal exercises by himself.

  He felt rootless, and somehow, in a way that had nothing to do with his work, he was dissatisfied with his life.

  That afternoon he went back to Cliburne’s books and read more about pacifism as a Quaker movement, and on Sunday morning he rose early and rode to Rock Island. The feed merchant was just finishing breakfast when he got to the Cliburne place. George accepted back the books and served him a cup of coffee,
and nodded without surprise when Shaman asked if he could go along to the Quaker meeting.

  George Cliburne was a widower. He employed a housekeeper, but she had Sundays off, and he was a neat man. Shaman waited while he washed his own breakfast dishes, and he allowed Shaman to wipe. They left Boss in the barn and he rode with Cliburne in his buggy, and on the way George told him a few things about meeting.

  “We enter the meetinghouse without speaking and take a seat, men on one side, women on the other. That’s so there’ll be fewer distractions, I guess. People sit in silence until the Lord lays on someone the burden of the world’s suffering, and then that person just gets up and speaks.”

  Cliburne tactfully advised Shaman to sit in the middle or the rear of the meetinghouse. They wouldn’t sit together. “It’s custom for the elders, who’ve done the society’s work for many, many years, to sit up front.” He leaned forward confidentially. “There are Quakers who call us Weighty Friends,” he said, and grinned.

  The meetinghouse was small and plain, a white frame structure without a steeple. Inside were white walls, a gray floor. Dark-stained benches were arranged against three walls to form a square, shallow U that would enable everyone to face one another. Four men already were seated. Shaman took a place on a rear bench, close to the door, like someone testing deep waters by putting a toe in the shallowest shallows. Opposite him sat half a dozen women, and there were eight children. All the elders were elderly; George and five of his Weighty Friends sat on a bench atop a little platform, a foot high, in the front of the room.

  There was a repose to match the silence in Shaman’s world.

  From time to time people came and took bench seats without speaking. Eventually, no one else came, and there were eleven men, fourteen women, and twelve children, by Shaman’s count.

  In silence.

  It was restful.

  He thought of his father and hoped he was at peace.

  He thought of Alex.

  Please, he sent into the perfect silence he now shared with others. Out of the hundreds of thousands of the dead, please spare my brother. Please bring my crazy, lovable, runaway brother home.

  He thought of Rachel, but he didn’t dare pray.

  He thought of Hattie, who had her mother’s smile and her eyes, and who talked a lot.

  He thought of Joshua, who said little but who always seemed to be looking at him.

  A middle-aged man arose from a bench only a few feet away. He was thin and fragile, and he began to speak. “This terrible war is finally beginning to come to an end. It’s happening very, very slowly, but now we perceive it can’t go on forever. Many of our newspapers are calling for the election of General Frémont as president. They say President Lincoln will be too easy on the South when peace comes. They say it isn’t a time for forgiveness, but a time for vengeance upon the people of the Southern states.

  “Jesus said, ‘Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.’ And he said, ‘If thine enemy hunger, feed him, and if he thirst, give him drink.’

  “We must forgive the sins committed by both sides in this terrible war, and pray that soon the words of the psalm will be true, that mercy and truth are met together, and righteousness and peace have kissed each other.

  “‘Blessed are they that mourn, for they shall be comforted.’

  “‘Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth.’

  “‘Blessed are they which do hunger and thirst after righteousness, for they shall be filled.’

  “‘Blessed are the merciful, for they shall obtain mercy.’

  “‘Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called the children of God.’ “

  He sat, and then there was more white silence.

  A woman arose almost directly opposite Shaman. She said she was seeking to grant forgiveness to a person who had done her family a grievous wrong. She desired her heart to be free of hatred and wished to show forbearance and merciful love, but she was engaged in a struggle with herself, for she didn’t wish to forgive. She asked her friends to pray that she be given strength.

  She sat, and another woman stood, this time in the far corner, so Shaman couldn’t see her mouth well enough to have any idea what she spoke about. After a while she sat, and people were silent until a man stood at a bench near the window. He was a man in his twenties, with an earnest face. He said he had to make an important decision that would affect the rest of his life. “I need the Lord’s help, and thy prayers,” he said, and he sat.

  After that, no one spoke. Time drifted on, and then Shaman saw George Cliburne turn to the man next to him and shake his hand. It was the signal for the breaking of the meeting. Several people near Shaman shook his hand, and there was a general movement to the doors.

  It was the strangest church service Shaman ever had attended. On the way back to Cliburne’s house, he was thoughtful. “Is a Quaker expected to show forgiveness, then, for every crime? What about the satisfaction when justice prevails over evil?”

  “Oh, we believe in justice,” Cliburne said. “We just don’t believe in revenge, or in violence.”

  Shaman knew his father had longed to avenge Makwa’s death, and he certainly yearned to do so himself. “Would you be violent if you witnessed someone about to shoot your mother?” he asked, and was put out when George Cliburne chuckled.

  “Sooner or later, that question is asked by anyone who thinks about pacifism. My mother’s long gone, but if I ever get in that kind of situation, I trust that the Lord will point out the right thing for me to do.

  “See here, Shaman. Thee’s not going to reject violence because of anything I say to thee. It’s not going to come from here,” he said, touching his lips. “And it’s not going to come from here.” He touched Shaman’s forehead.

  “If it happens, it must come from here.” He tapped Shaman’s chest. “So until then, thee must continue to strap on thy sword,” he said, as if Shaman were a Roman or a Visigoth instead of a deaf man who had been refused for military service. “When and if thee unbuckles the sword and casts it from thee, it will be because thee has no other choice,” Cliburne said, and his tongue made a clucking motion as he shook the reins to make the horse go faster.

  63

  THE END OF THE JOURNAL

  “We are invited to have tea this afternoon at the Geigers’,” Shaman’s mother told him. “Rachel says we must come. Something to do with the children, and filberts?”

  So that afternoon they walked the Long Path and sat in the Geigers’ dining room. Rachel brought in a new fall cloak of soft forest-green wool to show Sarah. “Spun from Cole fleeces!” Her mother had made it for her because her year of mourning was over, she said, and everyone complimented Lillian for fashioning a lovely garment.

  Rachel observed that she would wear it the following Monday on a trip to Chicago.

  “Will you be there long?” Sarah asked, and she said no, she would be gone only a few days.

  “Business,” Lillian said in a tone that spoke volumes of disapproval.

  When Sarah remarked hurriedly on the fulsome flavor of the English tea, Lillian sighed and said she felt fortunate to have it. “There’s almost no coffee in the entire South, and no decent tea. Jay says either coffee or tea sells for fifty dollars a pound in Virginia.”

  “Then you’ve heard from him again?” Sarah asked.

  Lillian nodded. “He reports he is well, thank God.”

  Hattie’s face beamed when her mother carried in the bread, still warm from the oven. “We made it!” she announced. “Momma put in the things and stirred them up, and Joshua and me poured in the nuts!”

  “Joshua and I,” her grandmother said.

  “Bubbie, you weren’t even in the kitchen!”

  “The nuts are simply delicious,” Sarah told the little girl.

  “Me and Hattie got them,” Joshua said proudly.

  “Hattie and I,” Lillian said.

  “No, Bubbie, you weren’t there, it was on the Long Path and me
and Hattie picked up the nuts while Momma and Shaman sat on the blanket and held hands.”

  There was a moment of silence.

  “Shaman has been having small difficulties with his speech,” Rachel said. “He just needs some practice. I’m helping him again, the way I used to. We met on the wood path so the children could play nearby, but he’ll be coming to the house so we can use the piano in the exercises.”

  Sarah nodded. “It will be a good thing for Robert to work on his speech.”

  Lillian nodded too, but stiffly. “Yes, how fortunate you are home, Rachel,” she said, and took Shaman’s cup and refilled it with the English tea.

  The next day, although he’d made no appointment with Rachel, when he returned from his home visits, he walked out on the Long Path and met her walking the other way.

  “Where are my friends?”

  “They were helping with fall house cleaning and missed sleepytime, so they’re having late naps.”

  He turned and walked along with her. The woods were full of birds, and he saw, in a nearby tree, a cardinal issuing an imperious silent challenge.

  “I’ve been quarreling with my mother. She wanted us to go to Peoria for the High Holidays, and I refused to go there and be placed on display for the eligible bachelors and widowers. So we’ll spend the holidays at home.”

  “Good,” he said quietly, and she smiled. The other quarrel, she told him, was brought on because Joe Regensberg’s cousin was marrying someone else, and had made an offer to buy the Regensberg Tinware Company, since he hadn’t been able to acquire it through marriage. That was why she was going to Chicago, she confided—to sell the company.

  “Your mother will calm down. She loves you.”

  “I know she does. Would you like to do some exercises?”

  “Why not?” He extended his hand.

  This time he could detect a slight trembling of her hand as it held his. Perhaps the exertion of the house cleaning had exhausted her, or the quarreling. But he dared to hope it was more than that, and he recognized a current of awareness pass between their fingers, so that his hand involuntarily moved in hers.