VALDOSTA, 1871
THERE WAS AN OLD PROVERB THAT SAID YOU COULD NEVER GO HOME again, and it had never before made sense to John Henry. But as the Atlantic & Gulf Line Railroad chugged along through the Georgia piney woods and steamed to a stop at the depot in Valdosta, he suddenly understood what it meant. Though he knew that Valdosta was a small place, with its few hundred inhabitants and fewer businesses, he had never before realized how very primitive it was. There were no paved streets in Valdosta, no sturdy brick sidewalks, no horse-drawn trolley cars going anywhere, and no place to go if there were. There were no gas street lamps to light the green darkness of the country nights, and no public waterworks to bring bath and drinking water into the rustic frame cottages where the smell of the outhouses stewing in the summer heat nearly overwhelmed the scent of the honeysuckle. And as far as John Henry was concerned, Valdosta was not only miles away from anywhere worth being, it was years away, as well.
He had a hard time explaining his dissatisfaction to his father, for Henry had seen Philadelphia, too, and thought it crowded and noisy. But Henry had only been a visitor there, come and gone in a week’s time. John Henry had spent ten months of his life there and had grown to enjoy the bustle of the place, with its theaters and restaurants, its music halls and saloons. And that was the problem: he’d grown up in Philadelphia. But now that he was home he was being treated like a child again, expected to obey his father’s every whim.
Henry had his life all planned out for him, of course. In addition to the preceptorship he’d be serving under Dr. Frink, there was work to be done in the Carriage and Buggy business and plenty to do around the home place as well. His father wanted the horses groomed, the barn cleaned out, the buggy polished until the brass fittings shone like mirrors. There were bird droppings to be cleaned from the window sills, squirrel nests to be swept out of the attic, and loose roof shingles to be nailed down before another wind shook them free. And though there were still paid darkies around to do the hard labor, he wouldn’t have been surprised if his father had asked him to clean out the privy, as well. But when he made any mention of the fact that he was halfway through dental school and practically a doctor already and ought to be above such work, Henry only gave him more to do. Responsibility, he called it, and gratitude as well, as though John Henry had never shown either.
Mostly, though, he just wanted to sleep. The long days of dental school and longer nights of studying had left him worn out, and even Rachel commented that he seemed awful tired. It was probably the change in climate that was causing it, she said, being home again where the weather was warm and languid-like. Rocking chair weather, she called it, and enough to make a body feel downright fatigued. His father just thought he was being lazy.
Rachel was right about the weather being warm that summer, even for south Georgia. The temperature stayed near one-hundred degrees for five straight weeks, hardly coming down much at night, and folks slept with their windows wide open, letting in flies and mosquitoes along with whatever cooling breezes might come by. But uncomfortable as the nights were, the days were worse—especially for the town dentist and his apprentice, working all day in a stuffy dental office and properly dressed in wool suits and high-collared shirts. By the end of the day, John Henry was sweating like a field hand and wishing he were down at his old swimming hole skinny dipping in the green waters of the Withlacoochee. And imagining himself there only made him more miserable still. For the swimming hole was where he’d taken Mattie all those years ago when her family had stayed with his at Cat Creek, and thus far he hadn’t yet figured a way to get up to see her, though he’d looked forward to the visit all year long.
The trouble was, he couldn’t just up and announce that he was heading off for a few days to see his sweetheart, as their romance was still a secret as far as he knew. Nor could he leave his preceptorship with Dr. Frink since his attendance was a required part of his dental education. So until he could come up with a reasonable excuse for leaving work and town both, all he could do was cool his heels and curse the heat—and in the end, it was the heat that made his trip possible.
Dr. Frink and his family were originally from the town of Jasper, up towards the Blue Ridge Mountains of north Georgia. So when the weather turned torrid and stayed that way too long, Dr. Frink decided to close down his office and remove his family back to the mountains for a spell, and John Henry was suddenly free to make a trip of his own—and he soon settled on the perfect excuse to make to his father.
“Uncle John’s been wantin’ to know how my dental studies are comin’,” he said one evening after supper, as his father sat out on the front porch sipping at a lemonade and watching the fireflies in the yard. “I reckon I could use the time to go on up to Atlanta and tell him all about it.” And stop off in Jonesboro to see Mattie as well, he thought to himself.
“I reckon you could,” his father said, “but your Uncle John’s not in Atlanta just now. He’s taken the family up to Tennessee to visit your cousin George’s wife’s kin. They’re havin’ a big first birthday party for that new baby of theirs. A good excuse to get out of the city, sounds like to me, away from the heat and the smell both. You think one outhouse is bad in the summer? Atlanta’s got thousands of ‘em, and street garbage as well. Glad I live away out here in the country when the weather is steamy like this.”
But John Henry wasn’t happy to be stuck in the country, nor was he going to be so easily distracted from his plans.
“Well, I suppose I should at least pay a call on Uncle Rob,” he said with a sigh, as though that were the last thing he wanted to do. “He was mighty good to me that summer I stayed in Jonesboro. Seems right to thank him for his generosity.”
“Seems like the thanks is a long time in comin’,” Henry replied, giving him a curious look. “What’s got you so mannerly all of the sudden?”
John Henry shifted uneasily under his father’s steady gaze. “Well, I reckon I’m just growin’ up, Pa, and recognizin’ my responsibilities.”
He chose the words carefully, knowing that the one thing Henry couldn’t deny him was the chance to be responsible. Still, his father took a little long making up his mind, not answering until he’d drunk down the whole lemonade.
“All right,” Henry said finally, “I’ll send a letter to your Uncle Rob, let him know you’re comin’ for a visit. But you make sure to be a good houseguest up there, help out around the place and all. You know Rob hasn’t been doin’ well since the War. I reckon he could use an extra pair of man’s hands, with all those girls he’s sired. Good thing he joined the Catholics when he got married. He’s practically raisin’ a convent up there.”
John Henry smiled a reply, but it wasn’t for his father’s attempted humor. It was the other thing Henry had said, about his Uncle Rob needing an extra pair of hands around the place. For that was the first time, to John Henry’s recollection, that his father had ever called him a man.
His father, it seemed, wasn’t the only one who noticed he was no longer a boy—as he discovered when he finally arrived in Jonesboro and Mattie’s little sisters met him at their front door, giggling.
“What’s that on your face, Cousin John Henry?” Marie asked. “Did a ‘coon lose its tail?”
“Don’t be silly,” Theresa replied, “that’s just a mustache. Like Pa’s, only scraggly.”
“Well it looks like a ‘coon to me,” Marie said again. “And it don’t look right on John Henry.”
But before he could take too much offense at their girlish chatter, Mattie stepped up behind them and said with ladylike kindness, “Why, I think it makes him look real handsome. Welcome home, John Henry.”
The afternoon light coming in through the open door shone like gold on her auburn hair. And though it had been nearly two years since he’d last seen her at Cousin George’s wedding in Atlanta, suddenly it seemed that no time had passed at all.
“‘Afternoon, Mattie,” he said, his heart warming at the sight of her. “How’ve you been?”
It was a needless question, considering all the letters they had exchanged since he went away to school. But he couldn’t very well say what he was feeling—that seeing her again was like coming up for air after staying under water too long—without embarrassing them both in front of her whole family. So for the time being, pleasantries would have to do.
“I’ve been well, Cousin,” she replied politely. “And we’re all so happy you could come to pay us a little visit. Why, I can’t remember how long it’s been since you were last in Jonesboro.”
Her little sisters, however, were not quite as schooled in the social graces as Mattie was, and Catherine blurted out: “Of course you remember, Mattie. Last time John Henry was here, everybody was talkin’ about his tryin’ to blow up that Courthouse. His Pa made him leave town and come on up here . . .”
“That’s enough, Catherine!” Mattie replied firmly. Then she put her hand on John Henry’s arm, “Never mind her, honey. She lives for dramatic moments and we have so few of them here in little Jonesboro. And it is, truly, very good to see you again.” And the way she looked up at him, her eyes filled with more than just family affection, made him forget Catherine’s careless words. “Now why don’t you put your things down here in the hall and come on into supper? Lucy and Roberta and I’ve been cookin’ a nice welcome home meal for you.”
Then, as if overhearing them, his Aunt Mary Anne called from the kitchen at the back of the house, “Suppertime, children! And don’t you let that front door slam behind you, John Henry!”
“Don’t worry Mother, he’s all grown up now!” Mattie called back, and John Henry looked at her quizzically.
“And just what is that supposed to mean?”
But Mattie didn’t answer, only laughing a little as she slipped her arm through his and led him into the dining room. And John Henry decided that, whatever else was said, the only thing that mattered was that Mattie had said he looked handsome.
The old Celtic cross hanging on the wall over the dining table had been given to Mattie’s mother by her own mother, who’d received it as a wedding gift when she was married long ago in Ireland, and Aunt Mary Anne revered it as though it were some sort of saintly relic. Taking her place at the far end of the long trestle table across from her husband, she always stopped a moment to bow her head toward the cross, a quiet gesture of faithfulness. Then she would settle herself onto her slat back chair, skirts draped around her and hands clasped on her overturned supper plate, and lead her family in the blessing on the food.
“In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit,” she would say in her lilting Irish-accented drawl, “Bless us, oh Lord, and these thy gifts which we are about to receive through thy bounty through Christ our Lord, Amen.”
The family would say the holy words along with her, then cross themselves properly before she would allow them to turn their plates over and begin the serving. But that was as far as the solemnity went, for as soon as folded hands were free to pass the bowls of rice and buttered squash and biscuits with gravy, her husband would take over as head of the table and the laughter would begin. For Robert Kennedy Holliday was as lighthearted as Mary Anne Fitzgerald Holliday was serious-minded, always ready with a joke or a funny story about someone in town—which Aunt Mary Anne tolerated with Christian patience and long-suffering.
“Now Rob, dear,” she would say in gentle admonishment, “the Blay-locks are our neighbors. We mustn’t talk about them unkindly.”
“It’s not unkindness,” he would answer between mouthfuls of his supper, “just pointin’ out the truth, that’s all. If a man can’t tell the difference between a bottle of liquor and a bottle of castor oil until he’s drunk too much of one of them, I reckon maybe he’s already had too much of the other. Or ought to build himself a new privy closer to the house so’s he can get there before having to admit his mistake publicly. Pass the stewed prunes, please.”
Though Mary Anne had tried for all the twenty-odd years of her marriage, she had never been able to temper Uncle Rob’s sense of humor. So it was surprising to John Henry that his uncle seemed less jovial now, though his father had mentioned something about Uncle Rob’s not being in the best of health. He did look more worn than usual, tired-out maybe, or troubled.
“So how long are you plannin’ on stayin’, John Henry?” his uncle asked as the family finished supper and started into dessert.
“Only a week or so, Sir,” he replied, “just until Dr. Frink gets his wife and children settled up in Jasper and goes on back to Valdosta. I hope my bein’ here won’t inconvenience you any. My father told me you could use some help around the place, anyhow.” He was careful not to add his father’s comments on Uncle Rob’s place being like a convent—which seemed true enough, with all the praying that went on. Once supper was over and the evening chores had been done, there’d be more praying as Aunt Mary Anne gathered the children around her for evening devotions and the long recitation of the rosary before bed.
“I reckon I could use some help,” his uncle agreed. “That fence around the yard is needin’ some paint for one thing, if you’re willin’.”
“It needs more than just paint,” his Aunt Mary Anne countered, “it needs to be pulled out and rebuilt, that’s what. Why, John Henry would have to spend his whole visit here workin’ to fix it right. Whatever are you thinkin’, Rob?”
“Hard work never hurt a body,” his uncle replied with a shrug. “Besides, I know my brother Henry. He’ll expect to hear I gave the boy too much to do, or he won’t think I’ve been a good host.”
Mattie’s little sisters giggled at that, but John Henry saw nothing funny in it.
“I don’t mind fixin’ your fence, Uncle Rob,” he said earnestly. “I reckon I owe you a debt of gratitude for all you did for me some years back. I hope you’ll let me do whatever you need, to show my thanks.”
He’d prepared that little speech all the way up from Valdosta, but only his aunt seemed much impressed by it.
“Why, isn’t that sweet!” Mary Anne said with a smile. “I do believe Mattie’s right about you, John Henry. You have grown up—and turned into a real gentleman, as well.”
“But Mattie didn’t say John Henry was a gentleman,” Theresa said, eyes looking mischievous. “She said he was handsome,” and the way she drawled out the word made it seem sweet as pulled taffy.
“Is that right?” Uncle Rob said, and shot Mattie a quick look.
But his eldest daughter didn’t catch his glance, her eyes lowered and a blush rising in her freckled face.
“I suppose I said somethin’ like that,” she replied, then quickly changed the subject. “Is it true they really have ten libraries up there in Philadelphia, John Henry? That must have been lovely with all those wonderful books to read.”
“Actually, there’s eleven libraries in the city, if you count the one at the Medical School. But there’s more music halls than libraries, and more taverns even than that.” He regretted the words as soon as he spoke them, as his Aunt Mary Anne said with a disapproving lift of her brows:
“Oh?”
“Though I myself never visited such places, of course,” he added quickly. And as the lie seemed to placate her, he was about to add that he had spent most of his free weekend time at church, when little Jim Bob spoke up.
“Pa’s goin’ to the city,” he said. “He’s gonna live on top of a store.”
“Above a store,” Mattie said, whispering a correction. On top would mean livin’ on the roof, and that’s silly, of course.”
“What are you talkin’ about?” John Henry asked, bewildered by the seemingly meaningless turn in the conversation.
“Jim Bob means I’ve takin’ a position up in Atlanta,” his uncle said casually. “Your Uncle John Holliday has asked me to come up and help awhile in his mercantile partnership with Mr. Tidwell. I’ll be home again soon enough.”
“You’re leavin’ Jonesboro?” John Henry asked in surprise. He could imagine his own father going off from home on business, as Henry regularly traveled to Savannah and Atlanta on buying trips. But Uncle Rob was so much a family man that John Henry could hardly picture him without them, or them without him. “What about your job at the depot?” he went on. “I thought you were Baggage Master for the Macon and Western.”
“I was. But I’m gettin’ to be too old for baggage work, and I used to be in the mercantile business myself once, back before the War. Seems like a good opportunity.”
There was a general silence at the table, then Aunt Mary Anne said a little too brightly, “Well, look at the time! Why, it’ll be past bedtime before we get these supper dishes cleared and washed. Girls, get to your chores. And Rob, do take Jim Bob upstairs and get him ready for bed. Seven-years old is entirely too young for stayin’ up so late.”
Uncle Rob smiled wearily. “You see how it is, John Henry? I’m a henpecked rooster in a hen house. Be good to get away for a while, pretend I’m a single man again. I’ll let Jim Bob here wait on these women. Come on, son,” he said, tousling the boy’s hair, “best not disobey your Mama. And don’t you stay up too late, either, John Henry. You’ll want to start on that fence before the sun gets too hot.”
“Yessir, Uncle Rob. And Sir?”
“Yes, John Henry?”
“Do you still have that saddle horse you used to keep? The one with the russet coat?”
His uncle nodded. “She’s out in the barn if you want to take a look at her. She could use a good groomin’, too, when you get done with that fence.”
“Yessir,” he said again, and gave a casual glance across the table toward Mattie. “Maybe I’ll go out for a ride tonight, once the moon gets high. I always was fond of that pretty mare.”
He hadn’t been riding in Jonesboro since the summer of his exile there, but it was all so familiar still: dusty Church Street that joined up with the Fayetteville Road, the green waters of the Flint River over to the west, the track that led down to Lovejoy off to the south. But he wasn’t riding out of adolescent frustration this time, letting the horse take him where it would, and he had no interest in ending up at the Fitzgerald’s plantation—though he did have a plan in mind. For he hoped that Mattie might have taken his hint and would be waiting for him back in the barn when he returned from his ride. And this time there would be no anger between them, only the sweetness of a few stolen moments of romance in the moonlight.
He could just see how it would be: he’d come in from the ride, feeling flushed and healthy, and Mattie would step out of the shadows with a smile that said she knew what he was thinking of. But lady that she was, she would cast her gaze aside, pretending not to see the eagerness in his face, paying attention to the horse instead.
“She is a pretty thing, isn’t she?” she would ask.
“She’s pretty all right, more than I remembered.”
And when he slid down from the saddle and ran his hand over the horse’s shining flanks, his fingers would meet Mattie’s as if by accident, and hover there.
“You didn’t wait up just for me, did you?” he would ask, teasing, and she would answer with a toss of her auburn hair.
“Of course not. I was just worried about the horse, that’s all.”
But her hand wouldn’t move from under his, and when he closed his fingers around hers and turned her to face him, he would hear her breathing coming fast as a heartbeat.
“I have missed you, Mattie,” he would say, whispering the words, and she would sigh and look up at him with shining eyes.
“I have missed you too, John Henry!”
And when he bent to kiss her lips she’d catch a breath and then melt into his arms. And where it went from there, only the night and the moonlight knew.
That was the plan, anyhow, and thinking of it made him feel light-headed and he raced the horse faster than he should have in the late summer heat. By the time he got the mare back into the barnyard she was working on a lather, and he had to attend to getting her brushed down and watered before he could look for his expected company. But though he waited in the barn for nearly an hour, grooming the horse until her russet coat gleamed, Mattie never did come.
Had she misunderstood his intention? Had he been too obscure for fear of being too obvious? Had something else demanded her attention when she tried to free herself of the house? Or was she simply not interested in meeting him there in the moonlight? His pride wouldn’t let him consider the last possibility, and left him wondering and frustrated with his unfulfilled imagining.
But as he shut up the barn and headed back into the house, past the rows of vegetables in the kitchen garden and the heroes’ graves in the flowerbed, his eyes caught a glimpse of something unexpected. In one of the upstairs windows of the house, a curtain fluttered to a close and an oil lamp went quickly out. And he was certain, with all the surety of youthful passion, that it was Mattie who had been there at the window watching him all along.
But that furtive glance from a window was all the satisfaction he had for his train ride north and his week’s visit in Jonesboro. For with all the family meals and family prayers and the work of mending his uncle’s dilapidated fence, he had no time at all to be alone with Mattie. And if he hadn’t known better, he might have thought there was some kind of conspiracy to it, the way everyone in the family seemed to work together to keep the two of them apart. When Mattie brought him a pitcher of lemonade after his long morning of pulling nails from the old fence boards, her sisters Lucy and Roberta came along to help pour. When she brought him a wet towel to wipe his brow after a hot afternoon of digging post holes, Catherine and Theresa had to help her with the water bucket. And even on his last morning there, when he boldly asked her to walk with him up to the train depot to say goodbye, young Jim Bob was sent to walk along with them.
“I like to watch the trains,” he said, as the three of them trudged up Church Street toward the railroad tracks. “Did you like to watch the trains when you were little, Cousin John Henry?”
“I reckon I did, Jim Bob. I always liked to think of the places a train could take you—far-away places you only heard of.”
“I like the noise,” Jim Bob replied. “And the smoke.”
Mattie smiled over his head at John Henry. “Jim Bob says the train looks like a dragon, the way the steam comes out its nose.”
“Mama says I have a peculiar imagination,” the little boy said. “That’s a funny word, ain’t it? Mama’s always saying funny words like that. And what’s a party-gal, anyhow?”
“A party gal?” John Henry asked with a laugh. “Why, I reckon that could mean a lot of things . . .”
“None of which you need to know about just now, Jim Bob,” Mattie put in primly. “Where did you hear that, anyhow?”
“From Mama,” Jim Bob said, absently kicking at a stone lying in the dirt. “She told Pa that John Henry’s like a regular party-gal, come home again. She said it like it was somethin’ nice, like a black sheep turned white, she said.”
John Henry gave Mattie a glance and saw that she was smiling, too.
“So what’s a party-gal?” Jim Bob asked again, and Mattie answered him patiently, like the schoolteacher she had trained to be.
“I believe the word was prodigal,” she explained, “like the story of the prodigal son in the Bible. You remember Mama tellin’ you that at bedtime when you were little, don’t you? The Prodigal Son is one of the Parables of our Lord, about a rich young man who went off and squandered his inheritance, then repented of his sinful ways. And when he returned home at last, his father gave him a feast and put a fancy new cloak on him.”
Jim Bob took a long look at John Henry, considering. “Are you really rich, John Henry?”
“Only a little,” he replied, laughing at the boy’s literal-mindedness. Of all Mattie’s bothersome siblings, the inquisitive little boy was the most entertaining. But his next words took the laughter right out of John Henry’s heart.
“So if you’re rich and your father gave you a cloak and all, how come you have to wear sheep’s clothes? ‘Cause when Mama said you were a black sheep turned white, Pa said maybe you were really just wearin’ sheep’s clothes. What’s that supposed to mean, anyhow?”
John Henry didn’t answer the question and neither did Mattie, taking a firm hold of Jim Bob’s hand like he’d done something wrong.
“That’s enough questions, Jim Bob,” she said with uncharacteristic sharpness. “Why don’t you take John Henry’s satchel and run ahead and see if the porter can put it on the train?” Then she gave him a push and turned to John Henry. “Don’t listen to him, honey! You know how he is, always makin’ things up. Why, a train’s a dragon to Jim Bob. He probably just misunderstood. I’m sure my father never said anything of the sort . . .”
“I wouldn’t be surprised if he did,” John Henry cut in hotly, “the way everyone’s been actin’ this week, like they can’t trust me to be alone with you. Your father said he felt like a rooster in a hen-house, so I reckon he thinks I’m a wolf, come to steal his chickens away. No wonder he kept me workin’ so hard I never even had a chance to kiss you.” He was so angry at his uncle’s injustice that he didn’t realize what he’d said until Mattie remarked demurely:
“You wanted to kiss me?”
“Hell, yes! What did you think I came all the way up here for, anyhow? Just to fix your father’s broken fence? If all I wanted was a lot of hard work, my father’s got plenty for me to do back in Valdosta. I’ve been waitin’ for over a year to kiss you again, Mattie Holliday, and I hoped you’d been wantin’ the same.”
It wasn’t the romantic speech he’d intended to make nor even a particularly passionate one, more anger than anything. But Mattie blushed prettily like he’d just paid her the nicest compliment in the world, and said softly, “I wouldn’t mind you kissin’ me.”
If there hadn’t been a crowd of people gathered at the platform already and no privacy at all, he would have taken her in his arms and kissed her right then. But Jonesboro was too small a town to make a public show of affection like that without word getting back to Mattie’s folks even before she got home herself. So all he could do was lean down to kiss her on the cheek, like a proper loving cousin.
“I’ll be back again come spring,” he promised. “And then I will kiss you, if you’re still willin’ to have me.”
Mattie nodded a reply, but her words were lost in the scream of the steam engine’s whistle, as Jim Bob came running back toward them with his arms waving.
“John Henry! You better get your ticket before the train leaves. Wish I was goin’ off somewhere on the train!”
And for the first time in his life, John Henry didn’t feel the same way.
He thought about Mattie and that unfulfilled kiss all the way back to Valdosta and for many long summer days after that, which was probably why Miss Thea Morgan became the surprised recipient of his frustrated affections, if only for a brief evening.
Thea had been one of his preceptorship patients that summer, come into the office with a troublesome toothache that ended up as six fillings and three extracted molars. And though it had been a complicated treatment, taking five office visits altogether and causing her several painful nights of recovery, Thea had borne it all bravely—a courage that impressed John Henry. For in most ways Thea Morgan still seemed the same plain and timid girl he had known during their school days at the Valdosta Institute, pale-haired and pale-eyed, with a skinny figure that womanhood had done little to enhance.
She also seemed to have the same infatuation for John Henry that she had harbored during all those school years—though he blamed himself some for that. If he hadn’t taken Sam Griffin’s bet those many years ago and kissed Thea at the spring barn dance, she might have gotten over him as soon as school let out. But he could tell by the way she still turned moony eyes toward him, simpering at his every word, that she had neither forgotten him nor given up her schoolgirl hope of winning him over. But though he didn’t return Thea’s affection any more than he ever had, he did feel flattered that she should hold him in such high esteem. So he wasn’t opposed, as the time drew near for his return to dental school, to accept her invitation to supper at her family’s home as a sort of farewell party for him. Besides, the Morgans still owed him twenty-one dollars for the work he had done on Thea—and the money would come in handy on his return to Philadelphia.
The Morgans lived out at the end of Troupe Street, close to the piney woods at the edge of town, and they didn’t receive too many visitors—especially since Thea’s father had recently passed away and Mrs. Morgan was in her widowhood seclusion. But in spite of their proper mourning, the family seemed pleased to entertain “young Dr. Holliday,” as they kept calling him, even though he explained twice that he wouldn’t receive that title until his graduation in the spring. And when Thea said in a meek voice that, doctor title or no, John Henry was still the best dentist in town and they would all miss him when he left for school again, he found himself enjoying the attention. It was nice to be fussed over and hear that his leaving home meant anything to anybody. For unlike the year before, when he’d left Valdosta with a shiny new set of luggage and best wishes from the whole town, it seemed that folks had gotten used to his being gone and didn’t notice much that he was leaving again.
Thea noticed, though, and when supper was over and she walked him out to the front porch to say goodbye, there were even a few tears in her colorless eyes, and John Henry was grateful enough for the attention that he thought he might manage to give her a quick kiss on the cheek in parting. After all, they were old schoolmates.
But Thea seemed to misunderstand his casual intention as he bent his head toward hers, for just as his lips should have met her cheek, she turned her face and he found himself giving her a real kiss instead.
As a gentleman, he should have turned his face aside, coughed as though he hadn’t noticed the unexpected intimacy, then made a hasty farewell to save them both from an embarrassing moment. As a gentleman, he certainly shouldn’t have taken advantage of the situation for his own gratification. But finding himself in a sudden embrace, with surprisingly willing lips against his, he pushed all gentlemanly thoughts aside and went right on kissing her. And for a few stolen moments in the dark shadows of the Morgan’s front porch, he let himself imagine that it was Mattie he was kissing and who so eagerly kissed him back.
But Thea wasn’t Mattie, and beyond his brief fantasy, he was no more moved by the intimacy than he had been when he’d kissed her behind the barn at the school dance. The truth was, her lips were still too prim and cool for his passions. So once he had satisfied himself that Thea had nothing special to offer him, he stepped back, said his polite goodbye, and walked off into the Valdosta darkness.
If Thea stood smiling at his retreating figure, he didn’t care enough to turn around and look.
There were no fireworks to greet his arrival in Philadelphia as there had been the year before, only the bustle of the busy waterfront and the crowded cobblestone streets, and a dental clinic filled with patients waiting to be seen. He and his classmates were senior students now, supervising the clinic operations and sniggering at the mistakes made by the incoming students. But though their study load was somewhat lighter than before, they still had afternoon lectures to attend and exams to prepare for. And after the Christmas holiday there would be the doctoral thesis to present, as well, the final proof that the students had learned enough to be proclaimed dentists and be awarded their diplomas.
John Henry wasn’t too concerned about the thesis. He’d always been good at composition and quick with a clever phrase, and he figured he’d have plenty of time during Christmas to get the work done. But the regular coursework was becoming more of a challenge, as his lack of preparation compared to the other students became more apparent. While the others seemed to be able to face each week’s exams with only a little review of the information they already knew, John Henry had to work hard to memorize everything. If it hadn’t been for the humbly offered help of Jameson Fuches, the bright young man the others still called “The Professor,” he might not have passed the exams at all, and he counted himself lucky to be one seat down from the best student in the class. But not until the weather turned wintry again did he know how lucky he really was.
The year before had been mild as far as Yankees were concerned, though John Henry had thought the temperatures less than temperate. But that winter of 1871 was too cold even for the hardy people of Philadelphia who complained that it was the worst season they had ever seen. For a boy from south Georgia, used to lazy humid summers and pleasant sunny winters, the cold was nearly deadly.
It started with a heavy rain that November, causing a three-foot rise in the level of the Schuylkill River where the waters turned turbid and the channel was choked with tree limbs and debris. All across the city, fences collapsed and awnings came down, taking out the telegraph lines and leaving Philadelphia deaf and mute for a week.
By Thanksgiving Day, when the Yankee General George Meade made a show of reviewing the troops at Fairmount Park, the rain had turned to sleet, freezing the shallow ponds around the city and filling the street gutters with ice. But the glistening streets didn’t stop the throngs of promenaders from taking their traditional stroll in front of Independence Hall, nor did it dampen the spirits of the laughing children who played in the congealed standing water at the excavation site of the new City Hall. It was early winter, that was all—and only the frozen fire hydrants seemed any real cause for concern.
But when Thanksgiving passed and December began, the weather turned more bitter still. With the temperature hovering just above twenty degrees, the gutters froze over and water pipes burst, flooding the cobblestone streets with ice and mud. The Schuylkill River froze over, too, the ice forming so rapidly that boats were bound fast in it. Even the Delaware was closed above the city, the channel between Philadelphia and New Jersey filled with floating ice.
For the first time since John Henry had arrived in Philadelphia, the streets were nearly deserted of traffic as everyone not needing to venture out stayed indoors enjoying the warmth of Franklin stoves and tight-shuttered windows. But the stuffiness of the overheated rooms made John Henry even more uncomfortable than the cold did. He wasn’t used to so much dry heat, as the hot air parched his lungs and left him with an irritating sore throat. And by the end of the fall session and the last clinic day before Christmas, he was anxiously looking forward to spending an evening walking from one tavern to the next breathing in the stiff cold air and sipping whiskey until his sore throat was numb.
But one night of whiskey didn’t help much and the next morning he woke feeling achy all over, the irritating sore throat turning into a raspy cough. And though he needed to get started on his vacation work of researching, writing, and polishing his doctoral thesis, he couldn’t seem to find the energy to do it. He opened his books and tried to focus on the pages of dental pathology and therapeutics, but his head felt so heavy that he could hardly keep reading. And he was sweltering, even with the window shutters thrown wide open. If only he could get cooled down, wave away the heat that was rising up inside of him, he might be able to get to work . . .
Outside, the thermometer on the wall of the Merchant’s Exchange registered a noon high of ten degrees while Chestnut Hill reported a temperature below zero. It was the coldest December day on record and John Henry slept with his head on his books and the freezing air filling his open-windowed room. But with the fever that raged inside of him, he didn’t feel the chill at all.
It was the pneumonia, his landlady said, when she came in to bank the fire after dark and found him half-conscious there. But when he tried to answer that he really wasn’t ill, just suffering from a sore throat, his words were lost in a fit of coughing that tore at his chest.
He’d never felt such a pain before, like a knife in his side when he breathed. And without Mrs. Schrenk’s helping hand to steady him, he might not have made it to his bed to lie down, though once there, he couldn’t move without the coughing coming on again, leaving him breathless and teary-eyed. She would send for the doctor, she said, as she pulled closed his window shutters and turned down the gaslight. But whether or not one would come out on such a night, and so close to Christmas, she didn’t know.
The doctor came, held a stethoscope to his chest, prescribed a regimen of Tartar Emetic and boiled turpentine vapors for the congestion, then left him to his own nursing. There were pneumonia cases all over the city, he said, and the old folks and babies needed his tending more than a young man who would probably recover just fine on his own. But if the pneumonia should happen to take a turn for the worse, there was always the sick ward at the Medical College—though that thought didn’t give John Henry much comfort. Beneath the Medical College, deep in the dungeon-like basement, was the pit where the anatomy lab cadavers were thrown. And feeling as weak and fevered as he was, he wouldn’t be surprised to find himself there among them soon.
Mrs. Schrenk scoffed at the doctor’s medicines and brought out her own home remedies of Comfrey tea, a fried onion plaster, and a liniment made of camphor and lard rubbed onto his chest and covered by a flannel cloth to ease his breathing. But even her charitable attentions did little to ease his pains and he lay for long days shivering and sweating in his sleep, then waking with a racking cough that brought up rusty-green sputum.
He had odd dreams in those feverish days and nights. He was home again in Georgia, a little boy with a head cold, and his mother was gently tending to him. He was coming in from a long horse ride, breathing hard, and finding Mattie there waiting for him. He was walking into a hot and crowded tavern, where DeMorat kept insisting he finish a tumbler of whiskey.
“One sip, for now. Then we’ll get the rest of it down,” DeMorat said, but as John Henry took a taste of the bitter liquor, he sputtered and choked.
“What is that?” he said aloud, his words waking him from the troubled dream.
“Rat poison,” DeMorat answered. “But it has some efficacy in curing pneumonia.”
John Henry forced his fever-bleary eyes to open and focus, and realized that it was not DeMorat who was pouring the deadly drink down him after all, but pale-haired Jameson Fuches.
“Good,” Jameson commented. “It’ll be easier to take if you’re awake. One teaspoon now, then another every two hours. But no more than two teaspoons at a time, or you’ll end up dead like the rats.”
But John Henry closed his mouth against the poison, shaking his head. “What are you doing here?” he mumbled through pursed lips.
“I came by to wish you a happy New Year. I expected to find you deep into the study of salivary calculus for your thesis, but found you ill instead. Your landlady seemed pleased when I offered to take a look at you. Seems her poultices weren’t working, though better old-wives poultices than the prescription that quack doctor left. Tartar Emetic! Do you know what that is?”
“No,” John Henry answered weakly.
“High doses of ingested antimony potassium tartrate. Induces blood-letting by vomiting. You’d think in a city with four medical colleges there’d be some decent doctors around. Now be a good patient and drink your medicine down.”
But John Henry turned his head aside. “I’m not takin’ rat poison.” What did he know of Jameson Fuches, really? Only that he was brilliant and peculiarly reserved. Maybe his quiet demeanor covered a mind murderously deranged . . .
“I’m not trying to kill you, John Henry,” Jameson said, as though reading his thoughts. “I’m trying to save your life. And blue as your lips are, I’d say you’re cyanotic already and ought to be glad I came along when I did. This particular poison is also an excellent cardiac stimulant and bronchodilator, if taken properly. It’s called Squills, from the bulb of a Mediterranean blue lily. You may recall our Chemistry professor giving a rather thorough description of its properties, first session.”
“All right,” John Henry replied, too tired to keep up the fight. Besides, Jameson had never been wrong about anything scientific so far. He opened his mouth to the medicine, and coughed as it went down.
“Now go back to sleep,” Jameson ordered. “I’ll wake you in two hours for another dose.”
“And what are you gonna do until then?” John Henry asked as he closed his eyes.
“Sit here and work on my thesis. I figure I’ll have to get it done early so you can borrow my notes for your own. It’ll be another week or two before you’re well enough to even think about working again, and that won’t give you much time to finish up.”
John Henry only nodded a reply as he drifted back into his exhausted sleep. If Jameson Fuches really were a murderer, at least he killed with kindness.
The rat poison worked and he began to breathe easier from that very afternoon, though Jameson was right about his recovery. It was weeks before he was able to do more than drag himself out of bed and to school every day, then drag himself back home to collapse in sleep again. And the weather didn’t help any, the bitter cold of that hard winter holding on with long icy fingers that seemed to reach right through his heavy wool overcoat and tightly wrapped neck scarf. Both the rivers were frozen over and the snow was piled so high on the city streets that there was hardly room for single buggies to pass by. And with the cold came a fresh outbreak of house fires around the city as people left their hearths burning too high against the frigid nights. The fire alarms would sound, the fire engines would race to the scene with hoses opened to vainly spray water that turned to ice as soon as it hit the chilled bricks. It was a bad time for Philadelphia, and for anyone recovering from the pneumonia in particular.
But he did recover, and even managed to complete his doctoral thesis on time—thanks, again, to Jameson Fuches. For good as his word, Jameson loaned him his own carefully detailed notes on the various diseases of the teeth, so that they both ended up presenting essentially the same paper. If the professors noticed the similarity, they didn’t make any comment on it, only commended John Henry for having the fortitude to finish the session in spite of his prolonged convalescence. Any other student might have asked to be allowed a sabbatical from the coursework, and finished another year. But then, no other student had the devoted friendship of Jameson Fuches—though why John Henry had earned the honor, he wasn’t quite sure. Until that fortuitous New Year’s visit, he and Jameson had never done any more than study together a little. Since his illness, they seemed to have become true confederates.
But even more than Jameson’s support, John Henry had his father to thank for inspiring him to finish school successfully. For he knew that if he returned to Georgia without having completed his work, his father would never forgive him, and even the very real excuse of illness would not have softened Henry’s displeasure. Illness was weakness, in Henry Holliday’s philosophy, and weakness could never be accepted. So John Henry struggled along and ignored the tiredness that continued to plague him, giving up sleep for long hours of study and finishing the session with such high marks that even Jameson was impressed.
There was more to be done than just a doctoral thesis, of course. There was a specimen box to be delivered to the College Collection, a denture of carved ivory set in vulcanized rubber to be presented to the Professor of Mechanical Dentistry, a completed patient treatment case to be approved by the Professor of Clinical Dentistry. And all of that had to be finished before he would be allowed to stand for a final examination by the entire Faculty. But by the end of February, as the winter finally let loose its icy hold and melted into a muddy early spring, John Henry had finished up with all of it and was ready to become a graduate of the Pennsylvania College of Dental Surgery.
The only challenge he had remaining was his age.
“You knew our policy, of course,” the Dean said apologetically, when John Henry stopped into his office to pay the required $30 graduation fee. “It’s stated clearly in the college handbook: The Candidate must be twenty-one years of age. From your birth date as printed on the application, you are still only twenty years old.”
“But I’ll be twenty-one in just a few months, Sir,” he explained. “My birthday’s August, that’s only six months off.”
“Admittedly,” Dean Wildman replied. “But the rule remains, and for good reason. Most of the states, including Georgia I believe, have now passed dental acts requiring a practicing dentist to be of legal age. It would be pointless for this institution to graduate doctors who could not practice. I’m sure you understand.”
But John Henry didn’t understand and he felt his heart stop cold in his chest. For though he had indeed read the college handbook, somehow he’d thought the age requirement would be waived with all his other work considered. “You mean I won’t be allowed to graduate?”
“Not technically, no. You will, of course, be allowed to participate in the Commencement ceremony and have your name printed on the graduation announcement in acknowledgement of your fulfilling all the other requirements. For which, may I say, you have gained the admiration of this faculty. You have proven yourself a fine student, Mr. Holliday, and will be a benefit to the profession, I am sure. And you ought to take no small pride in the knowledge that you are one of the youngest students we have ever trained here. But we are constrained as to awarding the diploma. At the ceremony you will be presented with a provisional certificate, with the official document being forwarded on to you after you have reached the age of majority. I trust this will cause you no undue difficulty.”
“No, Sir,” he said heavily, “there’ll be no difficulty.” Nothing that the college would have to worry about, anyhow. For his professors wouldn’t have to write Henry Holliday and tell him that his son would only be participating in a ceremony and not receiving the long-awaited diploma. And a ceremony alone would not be enough to make Henry spend the money to travel all the way to Philadelphia when he had his own business to attend to. So after all of John Henry’s long two years of study and sacrifice, he seemed to be getting very little in return.
“But it’s only six months,” Jameson said, trying to console him. “Come August, you’ll be a full-fledged doctor and ready to do some good in the world.”
“And what am I supposed to do until then? Go back to Dr. Frink? Then the whole town will know I’ve failed.”
“I hardly call coming of age failing,” Jameson remarked. “You should appreciate your youth, enjoy yourself while you can. You’ll be old and stolid like me soon enough.” For all his quiet ways, Jameson had a humorously sarcastic streak in him, but John Henry wasn’t in a mood for smiling.
“You’ve never been to Valdosta, Georgia,” he replied. “There’s not a lot of entertainment goin’ on out in the country.”
“Then why don’t you come to St. Louis with me instead?” Jameson asked. “I could use an extra pair of hands in my office. Besides, you know everything I do about the diseases of the teeth.”
It was another of Jameson’s quiet sarcasms, and one that John Henry couldn’t help but smile at, and suddenly the thought of having a few free months seemed appealing.
“All right,” he said, “I accept your invitation. Hell, my father won’t want to see me home again for a while anyhow, once I write and tell him about the graduation. I reckon I might as well have a little adventure until then.”
“Well, I don’t know if I can guarantee you adventure exactly,” Jameson said with a smile, “but at least St. Louis has some of the best beer around. And that’s worth something, I suppose.”
The Sixteenth Annual Commencement of the Pennsylvania College of Dental Surgery was held on the first of March at Musical Fund Hall. And though there’d been another week of wintry weather blowing through, by eight o’clock in the evening when the graduation ceremony began, the snow had ended and the sky was bright with stars. The rivers had finally thawed and with the news that steamboat traffic had begun again, John Henry almost expected to see his father appear in the commencement audience. But that was just a hopeful folly, he knew, for in answer to his letter about the situation of his graduation, Henry had sent only a short note of congratulations, with nodding approval of John Henry’s plan to make a visit to St. Louis before returning home.
“We will, of course, be looking forward to the final receipt of your diploma,” Henry said in closing, as though he looked forward more to that than to the arrival of his son.
But John Henry was determined not to let his father’s cool correspondence detract from the glory of his final night of dental school. And it was a glorious night, with the Germania Orchestra playing a rousing overture while the faculty, alumni, and graduates marched into the Hall and took their places in rows of seats on the gaslit stage. There was an invocation by the Reverend William Blackwood, and a reading of the impressive accomplishment of the graduating class: 5,036 patients treated in the Clinic and 1,591 cases mounted in the Dental Laboratory. Then, one by one, the students stood and walked across the stage to shake hands with Dean Wildman and be awarded the Doctor of Dental Surgery Degree. And though John Henry’s diploma did indeed have the words Provisional Certificate printed where the date should have been, at least his name was written properly, and as it would be known forever more—Dr. John Henry Holliday.
His mother would have been proud.