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

by Noah Gordon

  He was saying he had no medical schools to send letters of application to, Shaman realized. The Sauks and the Mesquakies were a remnant, robbed of their religion, their medicine, and their past.

  He had a brief terrifying vision of a green-skinned horde sweeping down on the earth’s white race and leaving only a few haunted survivors with nothing but rumors of a former civilization, and the faintest echoes of Hippocrates, and Galen, and Avicenna, and Jehovah, and Apollo, and Jesus.

  It seemed as though the entire village heard of the child’s birth almost at once. They weren’t a demonstrative people, but Shaman was aware of their approval as he walked among them. Charles Keyser came to him and confided that the girl’s case was similar to the childbirth that had killed his wife the previous year. “The doctor didn’t get there in time. The only woman there was my mother, and she didn’t know any more than I did.”

  “You mustn’t get to blaming yourself. Sometimes we just can’t save somebody. Did the baby die too?”

  Keyser nodded.

  “You have other children?”

  “Two girls and a boy.”

  Shaman suspected that one of the reasons Keyser had come to Tama was that he was looking for a wife. The Tama Indians seemed to know and like him. Several times people who passed them greeted him, calling him Charlie Farmer.

  “Why do they call you that? Aren’t they farmers too?”

  Keyser grinned. “Not my kind. My daddy left me forty acres of the blackest Iowa soil you ever did see. I till eighteen acres and plant most of it in winter wheat.

  “When I first came here, I tried to show these people how to plant. Took me a while to understand they don’t want a white man’s farm. The men who sold them this land must have thought they were cheating them, because the soil’s poor. But they pile brush and weeds and garbage on small gardens and let them rot out, sometimes for years. Then they put down seeds, using planting sticks instead of plows. The gardens give them plenty of food. The land is full of small game, and the Iowa River gives good fishing.”

  “They really have the old-time life they came here looking for,” Shaman said.

  Keyser nodded. “Sleep Walker says he’s asked you to do some more doctoring. It would please me to help you, Dr. Cole.”

  Shaman already had Rachel and Sleep Walker to assist him. But it occurred to him that although Keyser looked like the other inhabitants of Tama, he wasn’t fully comfortable, and perhaps needed the company of other outsiders. So he told the farmer he’d appreciate his help.

  The four of them made a strange little caravan as they went from cabin to cabin, but soon it was obvious they complemented one another. The medicine man gained them acceptance and chanted his prayers. Rachel carried a bag of boiled sweets and was especially good at gaining the confidence of children, and Charlie Keyser’s big hands had the strength and gentleness that enabled him to hold someone still when steadiness was required.

  Shaman pulled a number of rotten teeth and was treated to the sight of patients spitting stringy blood, but smiling because a source of ongoing torture was suddenly gone.

  He lanced boils, he removed a blackened infected toe, and Rachel was kept busy listening with the stethoscope to the chests of coughers. Some of them he dosed with syrups, but others had consumption, and he was forced to tell Sleep Walker there was nothing that could be done for them. They also saw half a dozen men and several women who were stuporous with alcohol, and Sleep Walker said there were others who would be drunk if they could get the whiskey.

  Shaman was aware that far more red men had been wiped out by white man’s diseases than by bullets. Smallpox, especially, had laid waste to the woodland and Plains tribes, and he had brought with him to Tama a small wooden box half-filled with cowpox scabs.

  Sleep Walker was plainly interested when Shaman told him he had medicine to prevent smallpox. But Shaman took great pains to explain exactly what was involved. He would scratch their arms and insert tiny pieces of cowpox scab into the wound. A red, itchy blister would develop, the size of a small pea. It would turn into a gray sore shaped like a navel, with a large area around it that was red, hard, and hot. After the inoculations, most of the people would be ill for about three days with cowpox, a far milder and more benign disease than smallpox, but one that would provide immunity from the deadly disease. Those inoculated would most likely have headaches and fevers. After the brief illness, the sore would become larger and darker as it dried, until the scab dropped off at about the twenty-first day, leaving a pink, pitted scar.

  Shaman told Sleep Walker to explain this to the people and determine if they wanted to be treated. The medicine man was gone only a short time. Everyone wanted to be protected from smallpox, he reported, and so they settled down to the task of inoculating the entire community.

  It was Sleep Walker’s job to keep a line of people moving toward the white doctor and to make certain they knew what to expect. Rachel sat on a tree stump and used two scalpels to shave very small pieces from the cowpox scabs in the small wooden box. Whenever a patient reached Shaman, Charlie Keyser would take the person’s left hand and raise it, exposing the inner part of the upper arm, the place that was least likely to suffer accidental bumping or scraping. Shaman used a pointed scalpel to make shallow, scarifying cuts in the arm, and then placed a tiny bit of the scabrous material into each cut.

  It wasn’t complicated, but it had to be done with care, and the line moved slowly. When finally the sun was setting, Shaman called a halt. A quarter of the people of Tama still had to be inoculated, but he told them the doctor’s office was closed and to come back in the morning.

  Sleep Walker had the instincts of a successful Baptist preacher, and that night he called the people together to honor the visitors. A celebration fire was built and lighted in the clearing, and the people gathered about it, seated on the ground.

  Shaman sat on Sleep Walker’s right. Little Dog sat between Shaman and Rachel, so he could translate for them. Shaman saw that Charlie was sitting with a slender smiling woman, and Little Dog told him she was a widow who had two small boys.

  Sleep Walker asked that Dr. Cole tell them about the woman who had been their shaman, Makwa-ikwa.

  Shaman was aware that undoubtedly everyone there knew more about the massacre at Bad Ax than he did. What had happened where the Bad Ax River met the Mississippi must have been described to them around thousands of fires, and would continue to be. But he told them that among those killed by the Long Knives had been a man named Green Buffalo, whose name Sleep Walker translated as Ashtibugwa-gupichee, and a woman named Union-of-Rivers, Matapya. He told how their daughter of ten years, Nishwri Kekawi, Two Skies, had taken her baby brother beyond the fire of the United States Army’s rifles and cannon by swimming down Masesibowi while holding the soft flesh of the infant’s neck in her teeth to keep him from drowning.

  Shaman told how the girl Two Skies had found her sister Tall Woman, and how the three children had hidden in the brush like hares until the soldiers had discovered them. And how a soldier had taken the bleeding baby away and he had never been seen again.

  And he told them that the two Sauk girls were carried off to a Christian school in Wisconsin, and that Tall Woman had been impregnated by a missionary and was last seen in 1832, when she was taken to become a servant in a white farm beyond Fort Crawford. And that the girl named Two Skies had escaped from the school and made her way to Prophetstown, where the shaman White Cloud, Wabokieshiek, had taken her into his lodge and guided her through the Seven Tents of Wisdom and given her a new name, Makwa-Ikwa, the Bear Woman.

  And that Makwa-ikwa had been the shaman of her people until she was raped and murdered by three white men in Illinois in 1851.

  The people listened soberly, but nobody wept. They were accustomed to stories of horror about those they loved.

  They passed a water drum from hand to hand until it reached Sleep Walker. It wasn’t Makwa’s water drum, which had disappeared when the Sauks had left Illinois, b
ut Shaman saw that it was similar. They had passed a single stick along with the drum, and now Sleep Walker knelt in front of the drum and began to beat it, in bursts of four rhythmic strokes, and to chant.

  Ne-nye-ma-wa-wa,

  Ne-nye-ma-wa-wa,

  Ne-nye-ma-wa-wa,

  Ke-ta-ko-ko-na-na.

  I beat it four times,

  I beat it four times,

  I beat it four times,

  I beat our drum four times.

  Shaman looked around and saw that the people sang with the medicine man and that many of them were holding gourds in both hands and shaking them in time to the music, the way Shaman had shaken the marble-filled cigar box in music class when he was a boy.

  Ke-te-ma-ga-yo-se lye-ya-ya-ni,

  Ke-te-ma-ga-yo-se lye-ya-ya-ni,

  Me-to-se-ne-ni-o lye-ya-ya-ni,

  Ke-te-ma-ga-yo-se lye-ya-ya-ni.

  Bless us when you come,

  Bless us when you come,

  The people, when you come,

  Bless us when you come.

  Shaman leaned over and placed his hand on the water drum just below the hide cover. When Sleep Walker struck it, it was like holding thunder between his palms. He watched Sleep Walker’s mouth and saw with pleasure that the chant was now one he knew, one of Makwa’s songs, and he sang along with them,

  … Wi-a-ya-ni,

  Ni-na ne-gi-se ke-wi-to-se-me-ne ni-na.

  … Wherever you are going,

  I walk with you, my son.

  Someone came with a log and threw it on the fire, sending a column of yellow sparks swirling into the black sky. The radiance of the fire mingled with the heat of the night and made him dizzy and faint, ready to see visions. He looked for his wife, concerned for her, and saw that Rachel’s mother would have been furious at her appearance. She was bareheaded, her hair was mussed and awry, her face was shiny with sweat, and her eyes were gleaming with delight. She had never seemed more womanly to him, more human, or more desirable. She saw his glance and smiled as she leaned past Little Dog to speak. A hearing person would have lost her words in the booming of the drum and the chanting, but Shaman had no trouble in reading her lips. It’s as good as seeing a buffalo!

  The next morning, Shaman slipped away early without waking his wife and bathed in the Iowa River while swallows swooped to feed and tiny fingerlings with dull gold bodies darted in the water at his feet.

  It was a little after sunup. Children already called and hooted to one another in the village, and as he went past the houses he saw barefoot women and a few men planting their garden patches in the morning cool. At the edge of the village he came face-to-face with Sleep Walker and the two of them stood comfortably and conversed like a pair of country squires meeting during their morning constitutionals.

  Sleep Walker asked him questions about Makwa’s burial and grave. Shaman wasn’t comfortable about answering. “I was only a boy when she died. I don’t remember a lot,” he said. But from his reading of the journals he was able to say that Makwa’s grave had been dug in the morning, and she’d been buried in the afternoon, in her best blanket. Her feet had pointed west. The tail of a buffalo cow had been buried with her.

  Sleep Walker nodded approvingly. “What is located ten steps northwest of her grave?”

  Shaman stared. “I don’t remember. I don’t know.”

  The medicine man’s face was intent. The old man in Missouri, the one who had been almost a shaman, had taught him about the deaths of shamans, he said. He explained that wherever a shaman is buried, four watawinonas, the imps of wickedness, take up residence ten steps northwest of the grave. The watawinonas take turns being awake—one imp is always awake while the other three sleep. They can’t harm the shaman, Sleep Walker said, but while they are allowed to remain there, she can’t use her powers to aid living people who ask for her help.

  Shaman stifled a sigh. Perhaps if he’d grown up believing these things, he could summon more tolerance. But during the night he had been awake wondering what was happening to his patients. And now he wanted to finish his work here and start home early enough so they could camp for the night at the good river cove where they had camped on the way up.

  “To drive away the watawinonas,” Sleep Walker said, “you have to find their sleeping place and burn it.”

  “Yes. I’ll do that,” Shaman said shamelessly, and Sleep Walker appeared relieved.

  Little Dog came by and asked if he could take Charlie Farmer’s place when the arm-scratching resumed. He said Keyser had left Tama the night before, right after the fire had been allowed to die.

  Shaman was disappointed Keyser hadn’t said good-bye. But he nodded to Little Dog and said that would be fine.

  They began early to do the rest of the inoculations. It went a little faster than the day before, because Shaman had grown adept with practice. They were almost finished when a pair of bay horses pulled a farm wagon into the village clearing. Keyser was driving, and there were three children in the back of the wagon, gazing at the Sauks and the Mesquakies with great interest.

  “I’d appreciate it if you’d scratch them against the pox too,” Charlie said, and Shaman said he’d be glad to.

  When the rest of the people and the three children had been inoculated, Charlie helped Shaman and Rachel gather up their things.

  “I would like to bring my children to visit the shaman’s grave sometime,” he said. Shaman told him they’d be welcome.

  It took little time to pack Ulysses. They received a gift from Climbing Squirrel’s husband, Shemago, the Lance, who came with three large whiskey jugs full of maple syrup, which they were happy to receive. The jugs were tied together with the same kind of vine that had made Sleep Walker’s snake. When Shaman lashed them to Ulysses’ pack, it appeared that he and Rachel were on their way to an enormous celebration.

  He shook hands with Sleep Walker and told him they’d return the following spring. Then he shook hands with Charlie, and with Snapping Turtle, and with Little Dog.

  “Now you are Cawso wabeskiou,” Little Dog said.

  Cawso Wabeskiou, the White Shaman. It gave Shaman pleasure, because he knew that Little Dog wasn’t simply using his nickname.

  Many of the people raised their hands, and so did Rachel and Shaman as they and the three horses went down the road along the river, out of Tama.

  74

  THE EARLY RISER

  For four days after they reached home, Shaman paid the price exacted of physicians who have taken a holiday. His dispensary was crowded with patients every morning, and each afternoon and evening he visited the home-bound patients who were his responsibility, to return to the Geiger house late at night, and tired.

  But by his fifth day home, a Saturday, the tide of patients had ebbed until he was more or less normally busy, and on Sunday morning he awoke in Rachel’s room to the delicious realization that he had a breathing space. As usual, he was up before anyone else, and he gathered his clothes and carried them downstairs, where he dressed quietly in the parlor before letting himself out the front door.

  He walked down the Long Path, stopping in the woods where Oscar Ericsson’s laborers had cleared a site for the new house and barn. It wasn’t the spot where Rachel had stood as a girl and yearned; unfortunately, the dreams of young girls don’t take drainage into account, and Ericsson had inspected that site and shaken his head. They’d settled on a more suitable place a hundred yards away, which Rachel declared was close enough to her dream. Shaman had asked permission to buy the building lot, and Jay insisted it was a wedding gift. But he and Jay were treating one another with warmth and exquisite consideration these days, and the matter would be settled gently.

  When he reached the site of the hospital, he saw that the cellar hole was almost completely dug. Surrounding it, piles of dirt made a landscape of giant anthills. The hole looked smaller than he had imagined the hospital building, but Ericsson had said that the hole always looked smaller. The foundation would be of gray stone quarried b
eyond Nauvoo, taken up the Mississippi on flatboats, and brought here from Rock Island by oxcart, a dangerous prospect that made Shaman fret, but which the contractor faced with equanimity.

  He walked down to the Cole house, which Alex soon would leave. Then he took the Short Path, trying to imagine it being used by patients who would come to the clinic by boat. Certain changes had to be made. He contemplated the sweat lodge, which suddenly was in the wrong place. He decided to make a careful sketch of the placement of each flat rock, and then take up the rocks and rebuild the sweat lodge behind the new barn, so Joshua and Hattie would have the experience of knowing what it was like to sit in the remarkable heat until it was impossible not to run into the redeeming waters of the river.

  When he turned to Makwa’s grave, he saw that the wooden marker had become so cracked and weather-bleached that the runelike markings no longer could be detected. The inscriptions were preserved in one of the journals, and he determined to get a more permanent marker and to place some sort of barrier around the grave, so it wouldn’t be disturbed.

  Spring weeds had made inroads. As he pulled bluestem grass and prairie dock that had worked its way between the clumps of day lilies, he found himself telling Makwa that some of her people were safe in Tama.

  The cold anger that he’d felt here, whether or not it had come from deep within himself, was gone. All he could feel now was quietude.

  But … There was something.

  He stood and fought the impulse, for a while. Then he located true northwest and began to walk from the grave, counting his steps.

  When he had gone ten paces, he was in the middle of the ruins of the hedonoso-te. The longhouse had deteriorated through the years and now was a low, uneven pile of narrow logs and strips of moldering tree bark, with cordgrass and wild indigo poking through.

  It didn’t make sense, he told himself, to spruce up the grave, move the sweat lodge, and leave this unsightly heap. He walked down the path to the barn, where there was a large crock of lamp oil. It was almost full, and he carried it back and emptied it. The material in the pile was wet with dew but his sulfur match caught the first time he tried, and the oil ignited and flared.