IT WAS AN UNREMARKABLE DAY in December when I met the man who would shape the next hundred years of my life.
I was meditating upon my cot several hours after that night’s performance when I heard a scraping in the dirt outside my tent. Were it an attempt at ambush, it was a clumsy one. I could have fired upon the creeper with leisure enough to fashion a smiley-face pattern from the holes, provided I still had my good old 1873 Peacemaker.
Instead I said, “Do come in.”
The sly noises stopped, there was a pause, and then the curtain parted to allow the curt entry of a short, fresh-faced man of the most unexpected trappings. He wore a top hat of distinguished altitude and a silk frock coat tailored to such specifications that he looked as well-folded as an envelope. He wore black gloves, fine buttoned boots with white uppers, and carried a leather doctor’s valise. More striking than any of this was that his cheeks were shorn of hair, a style you did not see on Pageant grounds unless upon a child, woman, or, well, me. He was twenty-six, twenty-seven—no older.
He cleared his throat and offered me a polite grimace. Where were my manners? It had been some time since I’d shared space with a nobleman.
“Please,” said I, nodding an invitation.
He took all sorts of liberties at once, snatching a crate of salve to sit upon. The top hat came swooping off, the valise went between his seated feet, and one of his hands dove into his coat pocket to retrieve what I identified straight away as my favorite edition of the Atlanta Constitution. He slapped it smartly against his opposite palm and gave me a thin-lipped smile.
“Dr. Cornelius Leather, at your service.”
Two details were of note. He spoke with an English accent. He did not offer his hand.
“Mr. Stick,” replied I.
Irritation sundered his forehead.
“Please. Time is short.”
The truth was drawn straight out of me. I steadied myself.
“Zebulon Finch. At your service.”
Leather’s eyes flashed in the moonlight.
“Men of uncivil disposition are threading the grounds as we speak. My guess is that these men will not look kindly upon my unannounced appointment.”
“You guess correctly.”
Again that smile: tight, nervous, but pleased. It was my impression that this was a rare outdoor adventure for an indoors gentleman. He vibrated with the thrill of trespass.
“As I said, time is of the essence. Permit me to be terse. I am a surgeon. I teach anatomy at the Medical School of Harvard College. You have no doubt noticed my elocution. The British Empire lost me for the same reason it loses so many: to the pursuit of freedom, of both idea and practice, and not at the behest of a crown nor a royal society of physicians, which will hold back, indefinitely if possible, exploration into the dark matter where resides the greatest of secrets. Forgive me. I am no longer being terse. I shall only say the following. For such opportunities I gave up an enviable position in society, stockpiles of gold, and the woman of high standing I was intended to marry. All for the chance, Mr. Zebulon Finch, of conjuring miracles from science. Indicate to me that you are following along.”
I was but barely. The man needed to be slowed.
“Making miracles from science,” said I. “We do that here every day.”
Leather drew a face of such repugnance that I believed he might spew vomit.
“Games take time to play, Mr. Finch. We have not that luxury. What you do at this hell-hole is stir fevers, irritate skin, rot intestines, and, in worst cases, incite the mortal arrest of vital organs—nothing, I assure you, about which to jest. If we have to discuss this moronic point we will get nowhere. Can we move along?”
Fascinating, no? I crossed my arms and nodded.
“America has been good to me. My students listen, or at least stroke their chins convincingly, and when during dissection I sever something that their texts say is not to be severed, rarely do they rush for the constable. That is much appreciated, as I rather despise explaining gross anatomy to men whose greatest accomplishment is firing a nugget of metal into living tissue so that men like me are tasked with extracting that nugget and massaging that tissue back to life.
“Again, I find I am not being terse. Let me skip ahead. I have a laboratory in Boston. It is mine alone. It is situated on the top floor of my home on Jefferson Street. Half of my time is dedicated to my experiments. Half of my time, Mr. Finch! It was the crux of the deal struck with the college. Up there I do what few men of the saw dare, which will make me the cause célèbre of the medical world if allowed to reach completion or will have me swinging from a noose should it be discovered tomorrow. Indicate that you understand.”
“I do,” said I, a bit flustered.
“Doctors read journals written by other doctors. I do not begrudge it. It is helpful if what you seek is a tighter suture or a smarter dose of ether. But doctors staring at doctors will result in what, Mr. Finch? Imitations. Replications. We shall see more veins, more vessels, not the hands that wove them in the first place. So I extend my reading to the shameful. Magazines filled with fantastic tales, attacks of Himalayan ape-men, clairvoyance, the dashing rescue of women from the clutches of exotic monsters. I seek out the rare diamonds of truth among the dull stones of these concocted fabrications, and then I do what men like myself ought to. I stick those diamonds in my gas flame, submerge them in liquids both corrosive and peptic. Report, Finch, report.”
“Yes,” sputtered I. “I am listening.”
“The article about your jailing was rubbish. But the advertisement. Now, that carried with it the breath of conviction. So I took a leave from the college to travel, tracked you down, bought my ticket, and spent the intervening hours walking the countryside, so disgusted was I by the lethal concoctions being bottled and sold by your army of crackpots. Every one of you should be behind bars. I digress. I took in your show. I sat in the front row.”
“I am following along.”
“Stop interrupting. I watched carefully. I know where needles can be inserted without harm. This man working on stage with you, he is no doctor. He is a butcher. You should be dead, Mr. Finch. You should be drowned in your own blood. What I saw tonight was so aberrant, so unprecedented, so bloody insane, that I found myself non compos mentis.
“It is your insanity I have waited for. You are my lunatic. Let me be terse. Come with me. Now. Under this cloak of night. Not a mile away waits a driver, four horses, and a carriage. Come to Boston, let me study you, and let us make the world at last retch religion and superstition and embrace science as the successor to Gød. We shall save humanity. Listen to those words. Compare them to your current mission. I repeat, Mr. Finch: We shall save humanity.”
Leather paused and raised his eyebrows.
“Indicate that you understand.”
“I—well, yes, but—”
“Then there is nothing more to discuss. We move now. Are you ready? Is there anything you wish to bring?”
He was already on his feet, situating his top hat and ducking toward the tent flap to scout for the Barker’s night soldiers. Now that his tautologous assault was finished, up swept my pride. This palaverous crank wished to remove me from my livelihood of being prodded with needles in order to—what? Prod me with other needles? The Gallery of Suffering at least offered the warm pleasure of rapt eyes, the sustaining promise of stardom.
“I will not come,” said I.
Dr. Leather let the flap fall. He looked surprised, even wounded. Were I one of his students I felt sure he would deliver a stinging retort. But this was not a highfaluting Harvard dissecting theater. This was the Pageant of Health in all of its gritty, grueling glory.
“Nonsense. Up from that bed.”
“I will not rise.”
He chewed on his cheeks for a moment.
“I see you use a walking stick. Do not let that be a deterrent. I will assist you.”
“I regret you have traveled so far, Doctor.”
“No more interruptions. I told you about the carriage. The moon is clouded. Now is the time.”
Dr. Cornelius Leather was nothing if not perceptive. It did not take long for him to recognize his fateful disadvantage. Everything about his attitude wilted, though he kept his shoulders high in a final effort to turn the tide. His smile, though weakened, remained shrewd.
“Too bad, Mr. Finch. I so wanted to show you my People Garden.”
So unexpected was this phrase that it jarred me from my vow of silence.
“People Garden?”
It was coy how he angled his head.
“You will have to come and see for yourself, now, won’t you?”
Light jocularity did not suit a man of such forthright dynamism. The twist of his lips, meant to be razzing, came off as petulant. Still, I admired the effort. I reverted my expression into one of cool patience.
Leather drew himself to full height, which was not much, and nodded, a gesture I took as a bit of self-encouragement. He slipped his manicured fingers into his coat and removed a business card of creamy ivory flecked with gold and textured with the subtle striations of maplewood. In embossed letters were printed the doctor’s name, title, and home address.
When I tore my eyes away from it, the doctor was peeking through the tent flap.
“My truest hope is that we meet again, Mr. Finch. Forget nothing that I have said.”
Sensing an ebb in watchmen, Leather forwent further farewells and darted away like a doe. The wall of the tent rippled for a minute as if he had instead dived into dark waters. Indeed the whole conversation with Leather had the atmosphere of a strange dream. I let the four sharp corners of the business card bite into my palm. Dr. Whistler’s did not travel to populous cities. Boston was not in my future.
Yet I kept the card in the same pocket where resided the Excelsior and the page from the Constitution, perhaps because the card was of quality and I wished to have printed some of my own. Or perhaps as a reminder of alternate futures, and indignities, left unrealized.