Pa’s books were gone and Doc didn’t have anything on cancer remedies. I was stumped until I remembered Mr. Cromwell’s natural history library. I hunted through those books every afternoon for a week, looking for healing plants. I remembered most of them from Pa’s books, but found a new one, Catharanthus Roseus. It was a periwinkle that had been transplanted from Madagascar to the West Indies. According to “Beales Natural Remedies”, the natives in Madagascar healed skin cancers with a paste made from the ground up plant. I ran all the way home to tell Doc.
“It said so, right in the book. Periwinkle heals cancer,” I said.
“Tom, herbal remedies mostly just treat symptoms. There is nothing that will cure cancer. Forget about it.”
“But you said you would try anything.”
“First of all, we don’t have Periwinkle, and second, it’s just the word of some native halfway around the world,” Doc said.
I was mad at Doc and the whole world and had that desperate feeling like when there ain’t nothing to look forward to and the sky is falling. It didn’t help when warm weather brought out buds on the trees, the daffodils sprung up and skunk cabbage was peeping out from under last year’s leaves. It was the time of the year when the sap runs and a fella should really feel good. I was all empty inside and the big black cloud hangin’ over my head wouldn’t go away. Being a doctor was somehow all tangled up with Rachel and now the whole thing was busted. I moped around and couldn’t get interested in school or anything, not even when I helped Doc with operations. There wasn’t nothin’ that looked good to eat even after Aunt Alice dosed me with rhubarb. Doc said I looked peaked and fixed a tonic with iron and strychnine but nothin’ helped the miseries.
Part of it could have been that I didn’t feel like a kid no more. Aunt Alice let out my clothes on account of I kept growing taller and my shoulders were bigger. Now, when I looked in the mirror, there was about enough fuzz on my upper lip for a razor. Maybe these changes had something to do with why I couldn’t get Rachel out of my mind. I was daydreaming about opening up the top of her nightgown when Mr. Cromwell asked a fool question about the periodic table of chemical elements. I said it didn’t make any difference and I din’t know a damn thing about it and didn’t want to. He got red in the face and made a fist, like he was going to give me a punch. Instead he said I wasn’t worth a pot to piss in, was too dumb to ever amount to anything and it wasn’t worth his trouble to teach a complete idiot. He was still raving when I left the classroom and slammed the door. Goin’ to California or Colorado and prospecting for gold looked like the onliest thing to do. There wasn’t no one in Sandy Ford, except Aunt Alice, who would remember that I was even alive.
I didn’t eat hardly anything. I held my head in both hands and imagined how sorry Rachel would be if I was killed by Indians. Doc didn’t have no pity, “Tom, you haven’t split kindling wood for two days, the horses haven’t been groomed and Mr. Cromwell said you sassed him in school today. You lay around like a sick cat that needs a double dose of castor oil.”
Doc handed me a glass of water with a spoonful of whiskey, leaned back in his chair, sipped his toddy and got that thoughtful look, like when he was thinking up ways to do an operation. “You ain’t been right ever since we called on Mrs. Bontrager and fell in the snowdrift. It’s got something to do with that girl.”
I took down about half the whisky and pretty soon my head was spinning. It was plumb uncanny how he knew what ailed people. Rachel was my secret. Billy Malone didn’t even know about my plans for getting married. I figured that no one else in the whole world felt that way about a girl. It could have been the whisky or maybe I just needed to talk. I got to blabbering. “Ain’t nothing for me here, I’m going out west to fight Indians or find gold,” said I.
“It’s even worse than I thought. You got a bad case of puppy love.”
“Puppy love? I ain’t no dog.”
“When I was about your age, I just plumb worshipped a little red haired girl and thought I was about to die when she went off with an older fellow. Then about a month later, I felt the same way about young lady who sang in the church choir. Sometimes, the first one isn’t right and you got to keep trying until you find the right woman. I still have strong feelings for that woman in New Orleans, but it doesn’t do me any good to mope around. Is Rachel the only one you love?”
That set me back a little, on account of that night in bed with Mary, but that was somehow different. I let Doc’s question slide past and nodded, like I meant to say yes.
“The Bontragers have powerful religious beliefs and mostly speak a different language. You don’t do a lot of praying and churchgoing like those folks.”
That had worried me some, especially those times when the old man spent fifteen minutes praying over every meal. “I’d go to church with Rachel.”
“You might for a while, but how long would it last? Anyway, you can’t start out for California until summer. You have some time to think it over. How would you like to go to Chicago next week? You can see the sights while I visit Rush medical school and the county hospital.”
I grumped around for a day or too and got the chores done. Doc always made good sense and going to Chicago seemed like a durn good idea. We left the next day.
When the early morning train got to Bureau Junction, the Chicago Flyer was chuffin’ and getting up steam on the next track. A Negro conductor shouted, “All aboard”. We climbed on the first class carriage that was like nothin’ I ever dreamed about. The seats were soft as a feather pillow and you could fold them back, like a bed. Some people had come all the way from San Francisco, sleeping and eating on the train. The real rich folks had rooms all to themselves with a bed and washbasin and breakfast brought right to the door. The train had no more got started when a big black man in a white coat come around and said the dining car was open for breakfast. When she had got up to top speed, it was just plumb dizzying how fast the land went by. “Some trains go forty or even fifty miles an hour on straight stretches,” Doc said.
The dining car had real tables and chairs, fastened to the floors, and believe me, no one ever saw such fine eats as they had on that train. The forks and spoons were made out of pure silver and the dishes all had little gold rims, just like the plates that kings and queens eat off of. We started out with sweet coffee, smoky ham and eggs, biscuits with gravy, and at the end, a big piece of apple pie with a slice of cheese. I was just fuller’n a tick when I finished off that meal. Doc settled in and read a medical book. The towns and rivers whizzed by the window so fast things were a blur. Everything was new and powerful interesting and we hadn’t even got to Chicago.
Most of the people on the train were men, but there were a few women. There was a Pinkerton detective with a gun in his belt on the lookout for train robbers. It struck me that ridin’ the train and saving beautiful women from being robbed would be a noble profession. All those folks had fancy clothes, fine manners and talked different from ordinary folks. They looked awful rich, like they had struck gold in Californy. It was just plumb dizzying to hear them talk about how much money they had. Things would have to look real good in Chicago before I would change my mind about going to Californy to find gold or kill Indians.
Doc had on a fine new blue coat, gray pants and a clean shirt. I was feeling a mite shabby in my homemade clothes. Aunt Alice had let out the coat but it was still tight across the shoulders and the sleeves didn’t come no more than halfway past my elbows. The pants stopped a couple of inches above my ankles. That heavy wool was built to last, but it itched something terrible.
The train slowed for road crossings and bridges when we got near Chicago. It looked like we were right in the city, but it was just the outskirts. That city just went on and on, like as if every other town in the state was all set down side by side.
I was expecting a little depot like the one in Sandy Ford, but the train slid into a dark, long tunnel under a metal roof. The depot covered a whole city block with shops and boys shining shoes and peddling newspapers. There were Chinamen with pigtails that hung halfway down their backs and even red Indians in town for a show. There was a lot of jangling and noise and confusion with people running this way and that to catch trains.
It looked like just about every human being in the whole world lived in Chicago. There were more people on one block than in our whole town. We had to push our way through crowds just to get to the street. I expected to see burned houses, but there were brand new shops and stores and brick buildings everywhere you looked. Some of them were three or four floors high and there was talk of building one up to ten stories. The men all dressed like millionaires with top hats and gold watch chains. The streets were full of horses and buggies and wagons hauling most everything you could think of. The most amazing thing was to see young fellows riding on two-wheeled velocipedes about as fast as a horse. My eyeballs just about sprung out of their sockets from lookin’ at the women. They out there in the middle of the day, looking in the store windows, chattering and all dressed in bright silk and satin dresses and big hats, like they were going to a party. Their titties busted out at the top of their gowns that were so short you could see their ankles. Some of those women had heels on their shoes so high it was a wonder they could even walk. One lady with a painted face gave me a big smile. Doc said she was a trollop. I didn’t know what he meant, but she sure was pretty. I couldn’t get over the jewelry stores, cosmetic shops and places that sold female finery. It looked as if the whole city was there just to please women.
We walked down the street and signed in at the brand new Palmer House hotel. Doc left his valise, but we didn’t go up to the room. He was anxious to get out to the hospital to see an operation.
Doc hailed a horse cab and away we went flying out to the County Hospital at 18th and Arnold Street. That part of the city hadn’t been burned and old tenement houses for poor folks were still there. The hospital was built of dirty red bricks in a low marshy place with mud puddles and trash all around. There was rubbish and even a dead dog in the street by the hospital. The meatpacking houses shed a powerful stink over the whole south side of the city.
The hospital was so crowded a person couldn’t get between the beds that were filled with poor, sick people, mostly vagrants and immigrants. Doc said the relatives of politician’s ran the place. Aunt Alice could have done a better job by herself. The operating room wasn’t near as clean or as nice as the one we had at home, but there were a lot of doctors and students waiting to see the operation. The patient was a little child, not more than two or three years old, with an ugly hole in the middle of his face. Doc said it was a harelip. The child let out a cry when the intern, a young fellow in a dirty white coat, clapped the ether mask over his face. Another intern held the poor thing on the table until he quit struggling and went to sleep. Doc said three interns lived in the hospital and didn’t get paid, but they got to study all kinds of diseases and did the autopsies. That news was bothersome on account of it meant another year or so on top of the two years of school, without no pay. The surgeon was an older man with gray whiskers and hands that weren’t all that clean. He didn’t roll up the sleeves of his frock coat and as near as I could tell, he hadn’t washed or even soaked the instruments in carbolic acid. I was about to say something. Doc poked me in the ribs. “Hush, Tom, don’t say anything and just watch.”
It was a neat job and fast, too. He sliced away tissue on either side of the hole and then drew the two sides together with stitches. The child’s face looked almost normal when he was done. It was a fine operation, but I wondered why he didn’t wash his hands or soak the instruments. When the operation was over, he showed pictures of other patients he had operated on. For a while I forgot all about my troubles. When he was finished, we all trooped off to see what the students called ‘interesting cases’. There wasn’t much that was new because Doc had already taught me about pneumonia, broken bones and heart trouble. The professor spent a long time at the bedside of a man whose leg was amputated, explaining how this was an example of bad pus instead of laudable pus. The poor patient was out of his head with a high fever.
I couldn’t hold back anymore. “Sir, the wound got infected because you didn’t use the carbolic acid treatment,” I said.
There was dead silence for about thirty seconds. The professor got red in the face and erupted like a volcano.
“Carbolic acid, carbolic acid, damn foolishness, damn European foolishness. Young man, are you saying that these hands, these healing hands, carry germs that caused this man’s illness?”
There was a lot of foot shuffling and some of the other doctors said, “yes, yes, damned foolishness.”
Doc grabbed the scruff of my neck and I scrunched down to get out of sight. It was hard to understand how such a simple question could cause such an uproar. When we got outside, Doc explained about how American doctors still thought that disease was spread by bad air or moral weakness and not by germs. I think Doc was secretly sort of pleased by what I said because he had been arguing for the same thing. It was pretty puzzling, because you would think that doctors would be willing to try a new treatment, just to see if it worked.
We got another horse-cab and rolled away to the center of the city and stopped before a store with a big sign:
BROOKS AND WETHERSPOON
MEN’S HABERDASHERY
“Tom, it’s time you stopped looking like a country hick,” Doc said.
The man in the store made me strip down to my drawers and measured my chest and arms and legs. A clerk brought pants and coats in different colors. Doc said I could pick out whatever I wanted. The pants and coat fit just fine and the cloth was smooth and didn’t even itch. Doc must have spent a big bundle of cash, because when we left that place, I was wearing pants with gray and blue stripes and a light blue jacket with brass buttons, a new pink shirt and a blue necktie with red spots. I ain’t never seen anything so grand. Right then, I wouldn’t have traded those fancy duds for a horse and a saddle.
We were getting a mite hungry, since we hadn’t had a bite since the big breakfast on the train. Doc got us another cab and we went flying away to a part of town near the river. The cab driver said it was the levee. There were a lot of saloons and bath- houses and other places that didn’t have no signs out in front. We stopped in front of a grand three story brick building. Doc looked me square in the eye. “Tom, this is a gentlemen’s club. Don’t you mention this place to your Aunt Alice or anyone in Sandy Ford. You understand?”
“Yes sir.”
“Miss Maggie is an old friend. Don’t scratch or pick your nose and if you don’t know which fork to use, watch how the ladies eat. Mind how much you drink. If someone offers you a glass, just take little sips. I’m going to stay a while and play poker. Right after dinner you go on back to the hotel and don’t get in any trouble on the way. You know how to get there?”
Before I could answer, a black man stuck his mug out of a little window in the door. “What’s your bizness?”
Doc handed in his card and said, “My compliments to Miss Maggie.”
Pretty soon the black man came back with a big smile and let us into a grand room that was bright as daylight with gas chandeliers. Right in the middle of the room was a statue of a naked woman with water spouting out of her mouth into a pool big enough to go swimmin’. There were mirrors and pictures of more naked ladies on every wall and the windows were covered with red velvet drapes. When I took in all them pictures of naked flesh, my mouth hung open. Some fella was banging away at a piano and another was sawin’ on a violin with his head goin’ up and down. It must have been a new tune, because they never played it at the band concerts in Sandy Ford. Important looking men were drinking and smoking big seegars and carrying on with women. There was a lot of loud talk and giggling and one old fellow was nuzzling an almost naked girl on his lap.
I was all bug-eyed and thought sure we were in the wrong place when a real pretty lady in a tight pink dress with one of those bustle things sticking out of her rear end run up and gave Doc a big kiss. Her shoulders and most of her chest were bare except for a pearl necklace hanging right down the middle. All her hair was piled up on top of her head in little ringlets.
“Maggie,” Doc gave her a big hug. “Meet Tom Slocum, my assistant. This is his first trip to Chicago.”
“My, what a handsome young man. He will have a fine time.”
Miss Maggie gave me a big smacker with lips that smelled like peppermint and perfume. I’ll swear Doc winked, but I couldn’t be sure, on account of there were so many other things to see. Miss Maggie was pretty as a picture and about the friendliest person I ever saw. She put her arms around both of us and we went up the big staircase between two brass railings to a smaller room that had couches around the walls and a table set with four places. She pulled on a little cord and a darky came in with a big bottle setting in a bucket of ice. He popped a cork and poured what looked like apple cider into glasses with long stems. Miss Maggie said it came all the way from France and cost a lot of money. It tasted really fine but the bubbles tickled my nose. The darky had no more than left when this pretty red-haired girl sashayed into the room and shined her big blue eyes and flapped her eyelashes like I was the onliest person in the whole world. She made one of those little curtsey things and held out her hand. “I’m Dianna.”
I was just about tongue tied and must have turned red because my face got real hot and it took a while to get my tongue untangled. “Dianna, gosh, that’s about the nicest name, I ever heard.” I finally got around to taking her hand. “I’m Tom.”
Her hand was soft like it wasn’t nothing at all. Her skin was white and milky and there was a lot of it showing, on account of she was wearing a dress that was about as fragile as mosquito netting. She put her mouth up close to my ear and whispered in a little voice, like she didn’t want anyone else to hear. She touched my ear with her tongue. It was like an electric shock. “Dianna is my stage name, I’m an actress.”
“Gosh, do you act in real plays?”
She tugged at her red curls and her face lit up in a big smile. “Mostly, I do leg shows, high kicks and shimmies. I can even dance the grizzly bear and sing.”
I didn’t know about leg shows, but it sure sounded interesting. She had me sit on one of the couches and poured another glass of bubbly wine. I took little sips, just like Doc said, but it went down just slicker than anything and in about a minute, she poured another glass. All the time, she was runnin’ her hand up and down my arm and shoulder and didn’t seem to mind when I snuck an arm around her waist. Meanwhile, Doc and Miss Maggie were talking and laughing to beat the band. Doc had finished off the first bottle and was working on another when a Negro in a black suit rolled in a cart covered with trays of food.
Dianna clapped her hands. “Oh, supper time,” she said.
The table was covered with a white cloth with a silver candle holder in the middle. I was bug eyed at the half dozen plates and saucers and different sized glasses and a bunch of bright and shiny forks, spoons and table knives that were on the cloth. Doc dug into the platter and scooped up an oyster. I seen ‘em before at the Camp house, but never had one. Dianna speared one with a little fork, mopped up some sauce and popped it in my mouth. At first it was sort of slimy and slid around over my tongue. The sauce was peppery, then I got a briny taste like what I supposed the ocean was like. It was real good and I had about a dozen. When the oysters were all gone, the darky came back with a dish of meat and a platter of what looked like potatoes, but Dianna said they were pommes de terre. Doc said the meat was from a canvasback duck and the sauce was made out of lemons and honey. I didn’t dig in until I saw which fork Dianna used. The duck was real tasty and so were the mashed potatoes. I figured supper was about over, when the darky cleared away the dishes and brought a platter of beefsteaks and string beans. Dianna said they were haricots verts. She just took little bites, but I ate a whole steak and some of the beans that were covered with a creamy sauce and cut up nuts. I didn’t even want to think of more food and was kind of dizzy when the darky passed out plates of ice cream and chocolate sauce. There wasn’t nothing to do but make room for the ice cream and a glass of what Doc called an after dinner drink. It tasted a lot like whisky, but Dianna said it was brandy.
By that time, there seemed to be about double the number of candles on the table and the rest of the room was fuzzy. I was running my hands over Dianna, finding all sorts of new anatomy, when Doc and Miss Maggie cleared out.
“There’s a big game tonight and I’ll be late. You go straight back to the hotel,” Doc said.
Dianna put out all the lights except for a candle. “You don’t really have to leave so soon, do you Tom?”
“It sure is nice and I’d like to stay, but it’s pretty warm,” I said.
She snuggled in closer and began working on my coat and tie. “Well, honey, why don’t I just help you get out of some of these hot old clothes?”
Once she got the coat and tie off, she began working on my pants buttons, and before, I knew what was happening, I was down on the couch, feeling real peaceful and dreamy with nothing on but my drawers that hadn’t been washed for a week.
“Would you like to see my birthmark,” she said.
“I would like that just fine.”
She shucked off that gauzy little dress in no time and out popped both titties. One had a little red mark off to one side.
“You can kiss it if you want,” she said.
I couldn’t think of nothing better. She had a giggling fit and stuck out her tongue. “I’ll bet this is the first time you been with a girl.”
My head was spinning like I was on one of those merry go rounds, but I didn’t let on about Mary, even if nothing much happened. I was plumb bug-eyed on account of a lot of female anatomy didn’t show up in the books.
I figured we were going to get right to it, like the older boys talked about, then she kind of changed. “You can look, but if you want anything more, it will cost five dollars.”
I had five dollars to spend on presents for Aunt Alice and maybe something for Rachel even though she wasn’t my girl no more.
Things got all blurry. There were two candlesticks, where there had been just one. Out of nowhere, I heard Aunt Alice scolding something awful. “If you touch her, no decent girl will come near you,” she said.
Of course, it really wasn’t Aunt Alice, but right then, I didn’t care on account of my head was spinning, my stomach was bustin’ and the oysters were crawling back up in my throat. I tried to swaller it down, but all those oysters and steak and that fizzy drink came gushing out. I threw up all over the floor and the couch. Instead of being helpful and kindly, Dianna smacked me across the face with the palm of her hand.
“Get out, get out, right this minute,” she yelled.
She pulled the cord and the big Negro came running into the room before I got my pants half on and dragged me by the scruff of my neck to the door. He gave me an awful kick that sent me wobbling into the street.
I leaned against a light post, buttoned my shirt and wondered which way was the hotel. I was plumb lost and sick. When my head stopped spinning, I asked a fellow for directions. “Mister, where’s the Palmer House hotel?”
He pointed down the street, but kept on going.
The next fellow, a shabby sort, poked his hand out. “Mister kin you spare a nickel?”
“Here’s a nickel. Where’s the Palmer House Hotel?”
“Go two blocks that-a-way, turn right. It’s six or seven blocks until you come to Clark Street, then it’s another block.”
Walking in the fresh air cleared my head and getting rid of supper settled my stomach some. I was feeling pretty good when I came to Clark Street. Men carrying torches and banners were marching down the street, singing and making a lot of noise. One banner said, “eight hour week or strike” another said “Knights of Labor” and another “Down With Useless Grant” In the middle of the marchers, a band was playin’ and drums were beating. It was exciting and I thought I might join up and see the fun, but a column of policemen with bllly clubs and pistols marched from the other direction. When they were about to collide, a nice-looking man grabbed my arm. “When them Socialist Bohunks get into it with the cops, there’s gonna be trouble. We better beat it, kid.”
We went around the corner to a place called, The Working Man’s Tavern.
I hung back, but the fella said it was a fine place and there was nothin’ to worry about. Men were backed up three or four deep at long bar, all talking and shouting or singing at once. It was high class on account of the spittoons were bright and shiny and the sawdust was fresh.
We elbowed up to the bar next to big platters of salami, roast beef, cheese and bread. Anyone with a nickel could get a beer and a free lunch. When the bartender plunked down two big mugs of foamy beer, my new friend put three walnut shells and a pea on the bar. He was wearing a bright red shirt and a fancy checked coat. I figured he was rich. He stuck out his hand. “I’m Bill. If you can guess which shell has the pea, I’ll pay for the beer.”
He moved the shells around, but I spotted the pea right away.
“I’m Tom, Tom Slocum” It’s under the middle shell,” I said.
“That’s right, you get a free beer. Hey, you are a smart boy. What brings you to Chicago?”
“I’m visiting the County Hospital with Doctor Steele.”
“A medical doctor? Well, those fellows make a fortune course most anyone can make money in Chicago. Shucks, any man who can who lay bricks or pound nails makes piles of money. They spend it pretty freely, too. Business in Chicago ain’t never been better. Are you looking for work? Say, we need another beer.”
I watched him real close and easy as pie, guessed which shell had the pea and didn’t have to pay for the second beer. By then, I was getting right dizzy again and so filled up, it was hard to get the beer down. I didn’t want to disappoint Bill, on account he was so helpful and friendly. “I better git along to the hotel, if you don’t mind. I ain’t feelin’ so good,” I said.
“Oh pshaw, ‘nother drink will fix you up just fine.”
He ordered two whiskies and ran the pea and the shells around on the bar and had me guess again. I put my finger right on the shell with the pea.
“My, my, ain’t no one ever guessed right three times in a row. Tell you what, if you want to make real money, let’s just bet quarters instead of drinks.”
I don’t remember drinking the whiskey, but won the first quarter. Things got real hazy after that and pretty soon, I lost.
“Well, your string of bad luck will break, so let’s up the ante to half a dollar.”
Pretty soon Bill won all my money and faded into the crowd. I never saw him again. When I didn’t order no more beer, two rough characters hustled me out of the saloon. I heaved up the beer and whiskey all over my new clothes and laid down in the gutter until someone threw a bucket of dishwater out the front door. I roused up and got pointed toward the hotel. The next thing I knew, Doc was shaking me awake. I didn’t want to do nothing but lay there and die on account of it felt like my head was coming loose and I had to throw up again. “Leave me alone, I’m about to die,” I groaned.
My mouth was dry and sticky and the words came out like a bullfrog croaking. As soon as got off the bed, I had a spell of heaving, but there wasn’t nothing left to throw up.
Doc didn’t show a bit of mercy. “Get out that bed and wash off the mess while I get coffee.”
I clung to the wall with both hands and crawled down the hall to the bathroom and drank about a gallon of water. That came back up, but then I drank some more that stayed down. I stuck my head in a basin of cold water and almost felt like living, but didn’t see how I could face Doc.
“Drink this,” Doc said
I held onto the cup with both hands and took a swallow of coffee that burned my tongue. I got the whole cup down and got back in bed. Doc had other ideas. “Now, you wet a towel and clean the mess off your clothes.”
I did like he said, but it felt like my head was coming apart.
“Hurry up, there’s a lecture at the medical school.”
My new clothes were still a mess. I had to sit down to pull on the pants and Doc did up the buttons on my shirt. It was plumb awful. It was worse, when I found out there wasn’t no money in my pockets and I wouldn’t have nothing to take home to Aunt Alice. The whole night came back, like one of those awful nightmares. “Doc, I’m awful sorry,” That’s what I tried to say, leastwise, but the words got stuck in the back of my throat.
He didn’t say any more, but we walked all the way to the school. It was all I could do to stand up, what with artillery shells bursting inside my head.
When we got inside the lecture hall, Doc went off to talk shop with a professor while I found a seat in the third row. I thought medical students would be solemn and pucker-faced like those young gentlemen studying to be preachers. Instead, these boys laughed, joked and shelled peanuts. All at once, they yelled and grabbed a boy down in front and hauled him to the back of the room.
I nudged the boy next to me. “Do you always have this much fun?”
He looked surprised. “Why shucks, this ain’t nothin’. You ought to see the fun we have in the anatomy lab. Just last week, some of the boys cut off an ear and put it in their landlady’s soup.”
I was cheered somewhat by all the tomfoolery but got worried again. “Does the school charge a lot of money?”
“Why of course, it ain’t cheap. It’s sixty dollars for each term and ten dollars a course. Then it costs five dollars to cut up a body for anatomy. ‘Course, anatomy ain’t so important if you learn the right doses for medicine.”
I was digesting this news when the professor strode into the hall like a general of the army and gave those boys a look that would have curdled milk. They settled down and paid attention.
Doctor Senn,a big man with a handlebar mustache and a foreign accent lectured about gunshot wounds of the abdomen and his experimental work on suturing holes in the bowel. The students paid attention when he said that death was caused by poison leaking out of the bowel into the peritoneal cavity. I knew enough anatomy to follow along and pretty well understood even though I was about to die with a pounding headache. He talked for an hour; two students brought in a fair sized hound that was already anesthetized with ether. Doctor Senn pulled a little pistol out of his pocket, took aim at the dog. “Bam”. When that pistol went off, everyone jumped half out of their seats. Doctor. Senn was some showman. I paid close attention when he cut the dog open and sutured holes in the bowel with little silk stitches. When that was over, he went back to lecturing and said that if surgeons would do the operation early, we could save more people with gunshot wounds.
Doc raised his hand. “Would Lister’s carbolic acid treatment help?”
Dr. Senn looked thoughtful. “It is important to clean out the poison. Yes Lister’s treatment might help.”
At least, Doctor. Senn didn’t make fun of Doc. Maybe it was on account of he came from Europe and had up to date ideas.
Once we got on the train for home, I figured Doc would let loose and give me hell. Instead, he gave me a look, like I was a rotten tomato, and read a book. I slept and felt like I might live when we got home. Aunt Alice said I looked terrible and that big cities were dangerous for boys. She didn’t know the half of it. She made me drink a cup of tea and then I crawled into bed and slept until the rooster crowed.
When I got to the kitchen, Doc was about finished with his breakfast. He looked at me like I was a piece of dirt. “You made a damn fool of yourself.”
I hung my head. “Yes sir.”
“I thought you were old enough to know better than to behave like a drunkard. Did you fool around with that girl?”
I didn’t know what he meant by fooling around, but I had kissed her tittie.
“Not much,” I replied.
“You better hope you don’t come down with a venereal disease.”
“What kind of disease is that?”
“Disease that you get from girls like that Dianna. It’s damn lucky you didn’t get killed on the street. After all that hell raising you still want to fight Comanches?”
“No, sir.”
I hadn’t thought about Indians or Rachel or much of anything else, except that girl Dianna and the operations at the medical school. Mostly, I was hungry, on account of not having anything stay in my stomach for two days.
“Are you ready to apologize to Mr. Cromwell and go back to school?”
I hung my head. “Yes, sir, if he will have me.”
“I asked one of the professors at Rush if he had heard of treating cancer with periwinkle. He not only had heard of it, but had brought a jar of the paste back from the West Indies. I will send it with Miss Pendelton, when she goes to the Bontrager place.”
I perked right up and lit into bacon, eggs, hominy and coffee.
Soonest I finished eating, I went to the bookshelf and looked up venereal disease. I never read anything so scary. There was a disease called gonorrhea that burned something awful when you took a leak and syphilis that gave you the blind staggers and made men go crazy. There wasn’t no cure, you just suffered and suffered until you died. The book made it sound like as if only you touched the wrong girl, you could get a disease. I wasn’t going to ever have anything to do with women. For the next month, I inspected my private parts for signs of infection.
Mr. Cromwell sent me to see Professor Wilson. I told him I was sorry, but the Professor got so mad his jowls jiggled and spit drooled out his mouth. “You insulted our fine school and upset the young gentlemen. Hold out your hand,” he said.
He whacked my knuckles with a birch stick ten times so hard my hand bled and hurt something awful. I didn’t cry.
“You can start back to school when you learn the Latin lessons,” he said.
I set to work and learned stuff like, “homo solus animal implume bipus”. It didn’t make much sense because everyone knows that men have two feet and don’t have feathers. The way things were going, the professor was right when he said, “in hic valle lacrimarum”. Life was sure getting to be a valley of tears.