65

A TELEGRAPH MESSAGE

A letter from her husband had been delivered to Lillian Geiger the day before. Jason wrote that he’d seen the name of Corporal Alexander Bledsoe on a list of Confederate prisoners of war. Alex had been taken by Union forces on November 11, 1862, at Perryville, Kentucky.

“That’s why Washington hasn’t answered our letters asking if they had a prisoner named Alexander Cole,” Sarah said. “He used my first husband’s name.”

Shaman was exultant. “At least he may still be alive! I’ll write straight off, to try to find out where he’s being held.”

“That would take months. If he’s still living, he’s been a prisoner almost three years. Jason writes that conditions are terrible in prison camps on both sides of the war. He says we should try to get to Alex right away.”

“Then I’ll go to Washington myself.”

But his mother shook her head. “I read in the newspaper that Nick Holden is coming to Rock Island and Holden’s Crossing, to speak in favor of Lincoln’s reelection. You go to him, and ask his help in finding your brother.”

Shaman was puzzled. “Why should we go to Nick Holden instead of to our congressman or senator? Pa despised Holden for helping destroy the Sauks.”

“Nick Holden probably is Alex’s father,” she said quietly.

For a moment Shaman was struck dumb.

“… I always thought … That is, Alex believes his natural father is someone named Will Mosby.”

His mother looked at him. She was very pale, but her eyes were dry. “I was seventeen years old when my first husband died. I was all alone in a cabin in the middle of the prairie, on what is now the Schroeder farm. I tried to keep on homesteading by myself, but I didn’t have the strength. The land broke me quickly. I had no money. There were no jobs, and very few people hereabouts, then. First Will Mosby found me. He was a criminal, he’d be gone for long periods, but when he came back, he always had plenty of money. Then Nick started coming around.

“They were both handsome, charming men. At first I thought neither one knew about the other, but when I got pregnant, it turned out both of them knew, and each claimed the other was the father.”

Shaman found it difficult to speak. “They furnished you no help at all?”

She gave him a bitter smile. “Not so you’d notice. I think Will Mosby loved me and would have married me, finally, but he led a dangerous, reckless life, and he chose that moment to get killed. Nick stayed away, although I’ve always thought he was Alex’s father. Alma and Gus had come and taken the land, and I suppose he knew the Schroeders would feed me.

“When I gave birth, Alma was there, but the poor thing gets addled in an emergency, and mostly I had to tell her what to do. After Alex came, for a few years life was very bad. First my nerves went, and then my stomach, and that brought on kidney stones.” She shook her head. “Your father saved my life. Until he came along, I didn’t believe there was such a thing in the world as a kind and gentle man.

“The thing is, I had sinned. When you lost your hearing, I knew I was being punished and it was my fault, and I couldn’t hardly go near you. I loved you so much, and my conscience hurt me so bad.” She reached out and touched his face. “I’m sorry you’ve had such a weak and sinful mother.”

Shaman took her hand. “No, you’re not weak and sinful. You’re a strong woman who needed real courage just to survive. For that matter, it took courage to tell me this story. My deafness isn’t your fault, Ma. God doesn’t want to punish you. I’ve never been so proud of you, nor loved you more.”

“Thank you, Shaman,” she said, and now when he kissed her, her cheek was wet.

Five days before Nick Holden was due to speak in Rock Island, Shaman left a note for him with the chairman of the county Republican Committee. It said that Dr. Robert Jefferson Cole would deeply appreciate an opportunity to talk with Commissioner Holden about a matter of great and urgent importance.

On the day of the first political rally, Shaman went to Nick’s large frame house in Holden’s Crossing, where a secretary nodded when he gave his name.

“The commissioner’s expecting you,” the man said, and showed Shaman into the office.

Holden had changed since Shaman had seen him last. He was stout, his gray hair was thinning, and webs of veins had appeared in the corners of his nose, but he still was a fine-looking man, and he wore assurance like a well-tailored suit of clothes.

“Well, by God, you’re the little one, the youngest son, ain’t you? And now you’re a doctor? I’m certainly glad to see you. Tell you what, I need me a good country meal, you come along to Anna Wiley’s Dining Room and let me buy you a Holden’s Crossing dinner.”

Shaman had read his father’s journal recently enough so that he still saw Nick through Rob J. Cole’s eyes and pen, and the last thing he wanted was to break bread with him. But he knew why he was there, so he suffered being driven to the boardinghouse dining room on Main Street in Nick’s carriage. Of course, they had to get out at the general store first, where he waited while Nick shook hands with each man on the porch, like a good politician, and made certain everyone there was acquainted with “my good friend, our doctor.”

In the dining room Anna Wiley made a fuss over them, and Shaman got to eat her pot roast, which was good, and her apple pie, which was ordinary. And finally he got to tell Nick Holden about Alex.

Holden listened without interruption, then nodded. “Been a prisoner three years, has he?”

“Yes, sir. If he’s still alive.”

Nick took a cigar from his inside breast pocket and offered it. When it was refused, he bit off the end and lighted it for himself, blowing thoughtful little puffs of smoke toward Shaman. “Why’d you come to me?”

“My mother thought you’d be interested,” Shaman said.

Holden glanced at him and nodded. He smiled. “Your father and I … You know, when we were young men, we were great friends. Had some high old times together.”

“I know,” Shaman said dryly.

Something in his tone must have warned Nick away from that topic. He nodded again. “Well, you give your mother my warmest regards. And tell her I’ll take a personal interest in this matter.”

Rob thanked him. Just the same, when he got home he wrote to his congressman and his senator, asking their help in locating Alex.

A few days after their return from Chicago, both Shaman and Rachel told their mothers they had decided to keep company.

Sarah’s lips thinned when she heard, but she nodded without surprise. “You’ll be very good with her children, of course, the way your pa was good with Alex. If you have children of your own, will they be baptized?”

“I don’t know, Ma. We haven’t gotten that far yet.”

“I would talk about it, were I you two.” It was all she had to say to him about the matter.

Rachel wasn’t that fortunate. She and her mother quarreled often. Lillian was polite to Shaman when he came to her house, but showed him no warmth. He took Rachel and the two children out with him in the buggy whenever possible, but nature conspired against him, for the weather turned mean. Just as summer had come early and hot with almost no spring, so winter fell upon the plains prematurely that year. October was frigid. Shaman found his father’s skates in the barn; he bought the children “double runners” at Haskins’ store and took them skating on the frozen buffalo slough, but it was too cold for long enjoyment. There was snow by election day, when Lincoln was easily reelected, and on the eighteenth of the month a blizzard struck Holden’s Crossing, and the ground had a white cover that would last until spring.

“Have you taken note of Alden’s palsy?” his mother said to Shaman one morning.

As a matter of fact, he had been watching Alden for some time. “He has Parkinson’s disease, Ma.”

“What on earth is that?”

“I don’t know what causes the trembling, but the disease affects the way he controls his muscles.”

“Is it going to kill him?”

“Sometimes it causes death, but not often. Most likely, it will slowly keep getting worse. Maybe cripple him.”

Sarah nodded. “Well, poor soul’s getting too old and sick to run this farm. We’ll have to think about putting Doug Penfield in charge, and hire someone to help him. Can we afford it?”

They were paying Alden twenty-two dollars a month and Doug Penfield ten. Shaman did some rapid calculations and finally nodded.

“And then what will become of Alden?”

“Well, he’ll stay on in his cabin and we’ll take good care of him, of course. But it’s going to be hard to convince him to stop doing the hard work.”

“The best thing might be to ask him to do a lot of jobs that don’t require great exertion,” she said shrewdly, and Shaman nodded.

“I think I’ve got one of those for him right now,” he said.

That evening he brought “Rob J.’s scalpel” up to Alden’s cabin.

“Needs sharpenin, does it?” Alden said, taking it from him.

Shaman smiled. “No, Alden, I keep it sharp myself. It’s a surgical knife that’s been in my family for hundreds of years. My father told me that in his mother’s house it was kept in a glass-enclosed frame and hung on the wall. I wondered if you could make a frame for me.”

“I don’t know why not.” Alden turned the scalpel in his fingers. “Good piece of steel, here.”

“It is. It takes a wonderful edge.”

“I could make you a knife like this, should you want another.”

Shaman was intrigued. “Would you try? Could you make one with a blade longer than this one, and narrower?”

“Shouldn’t be a problem,” Alden said, and Shaman tried not to notice how his hand shook as he handed back the scalpel.

It was very hard, being so close to Rachel and yet so far from her. There was no place where they could make love. They trudged in deep snow into the woods, where they bundled into each other’s arms like bears and exchanged icy kisses and well-padded caresses. Shaman grew short-tempered and morose, and he noticed that Rachel was developing dark circles beneath her eyes.

When he left her, Shaman took vigorous walks. One day he trudged down the Short Path and noticed that the portion of Makwa-ikwa’s wooden grave marker that stood above the snow was cracked. The weather had almost obliterated the runelike markings that his father had had Alden carve into the wood.

He felt Makwa’s furious will rise through the earth, through the snow. How much of it was his imagination, how much his conscience?

I’ve done what I can. What more can I do? There’s more to my life than the fact that you can’t rest, he told her crankily, and he turned around and clumped through the snow, back to the house.

That afternoon he went to the home of Betty Cummings, who had severe rheumatism in both shoulders. He tied up his horse and was going to the back door when he saw, just beyond the barn, a double track and a series of curious markings.

He waded through a drift and knelt to examine them.

The marks in the snow were triangular in shape. They sank into the surface six inches or so, and they varied slightly in size, according to their depth.

These triangular wounds in the white were bloodless, and there were many more than eleven of them.

He remained kneeling, staring at them.

“Dr. Cole?”

Mrs. Cummings had come out and leaned over him, her face concerned.

She said the holes were made by her son’s ski poles. He had fashioned the skis and the poles from hickory, whittling the ends into points.

They were too large.

“Is everything all right, Dr. Cole?” She shivered and clutched her shawl closer, and he was suddenly ashamed for keeping a rheumatic old woman out in the cold.

“Everything’s perfectly all right, Mrs. Cummings,” he said, and he stood and followed her into her warm kitchen.

Alden had done a beautiful job on the frame for Rob J.’s scalpel. He had made it of quartered oak and had gotten a small remnant of light blue velvet from Sarah to mount the scalpel on. “Couldn’t find a piece of used glass, though. Had to buy the glass new from Haskins’. Hope that’s all right.”

“It’s more than all right.” Shaman was very pleased. “I’ll hang it in the front hall of the house,” he said.

He was even more pleased to see the scalpel Alden had made to his specifications.

“I forged it from an old brandin iron. There’s enough good steel left over for two or three more of these knives, should you want them.”

Shaman sat down with pencil and paper and drew a probing knife and an amputation fork. “Do you think you could make these?”

“Don’t doubt that I can.”

Shaman regarded him thoughtfully. “We’re going to have a hospital here soon, Alden. That means we’re going to need instruments, beds, chairs—all sorts of things. How would it be if you got somebody to help you make some of those things for us?”

“Well, it would be pleasant, but … Don’t believe I can spare the time for all that.”

“Yes, I can see that. But suppose we hired somebody to work the farm with Doug Penfield, and they just met with you a couple of times a week so you could tell them what to do.”

Alden considered, then nodded. “That might be fine.”

Shaman hesitated. “Alden … how’s your memory?”

“Good as the next person’s, I suppose.”

“Near as you can remember, tell me where everybody was the day Makwa-ikwa was killed.”

Alden sighed heavily and lifted his eyes heavenward. “Still at it, I see.” But with a little persuasion he cooperated. “Well, to begin with you. You was asleep in the woods, I’m told. Your pa was out callin on his patients. I was over to Hans Grueber’s, helpin him butcher in exchange for your pa’s gettin the use of his bullocks to pull the manure spreader in our pastures…. Let’s see, who’s left?”

“Alex. My mother. Moon and Comes Singing.”

“Well, Alex was off someplace, fishin, playin, I dunno. Your mother and Moon … I remember, they was cleanin out the springhouse, gettin it ready to hang meat in when we done our own butcherin. The big Indian was workin with the stock, and then later, workin in the woods.” He beamed at Shaman. “How’s that for memory?”

“It was Jason who found Makwa. How had Jay spent his day?”

Alden was indignant. “Now, how the hell am I supposed to know? You want to know about Geiger, talk to his wife.”

Shaman nodded. “I think I’ll do that,” he said.

But when he returned to the house, all other thoughts were driven from his mind, because his mother told him that Carroll Wilkenson had ridden over with a message for him. It had come to the telegraph office in Rock Island.

His fingers trembled as badly as Alden’s while he tore at the envelope.

The message was concise and businesslike:

Corporal Alexander Bledsoe, 38th Louisiana Mounted Rifles, presently incarcerated as prisoner of war, Elmira Prison Camp, Elmira, New York. Please call upon me if any other way I can be of service. Good luck. Nicholas Holden, U.S. Cmsr., Indian Affairs.