Chapter 16

THE VISITOR

Noon, November 4, 1884

Cook Teets lifted the cup of cold broth he found in his cell when he was brought back from the courtroom for the noon break. A layer of grease had formed on the offal that floated in the mix. It coated the roof of his mouth when he tried to swallow. He spat the mess onto the stone floor; he had no appetite and his eye was hurting again. Cook heard footsteps in the stairwell leading to the narrow landing outside his cell.

“Visitor for you, Cook,” the guard said. He stood at the cell door. “It’s Mr. Babington, the reporter. Says he wants to interview you.”

Cook shifted uneasily on the cot that hung from an iron frame bolted to the wall. It held a thin mattress of padded straw covered by two grey blankets. The cell was more comfortable than the tiny cubicle where he’d spent his first six months. His lawyer had complained to Governor Miller that it was inhumane to hold a man not yet convicted of any crime in a cell just three feet wide. His new space, atop the second floor of the jail, held a table that served as a combination washstand and resting place for his lunch dish. A toilet pail was lodged on the floor beside it.

A window set high in one wall cast a narrow shaft of light into Cook’s small world. He was barely aware of the difference between night and day. His head ached from the fever of the flu that had sent sweat and chills through his body for a week. His eyes watered and his nose ran. One eye, especially, hurt and he held his handkerchief against it to catch tears that oozed onto his cheek. His stomach ached. He wondered whether he would have the strength to endure another afternoon of testimony. Now this man Babington was standing at his cell door, no doubt planning to write more vile stuff that would turn the public still further against him.

“If you’re going to write more lies I don’t think I want to talk to you,” Cook told Leonard Babington.

“I’m not here to write lies,” Leonard said. “I’m only interested in the truth.”

Cook calculated his chances with Babington. He knew all about him and Rosannah. She’d told him how Leonard had tried to make a lady of her, and how she had resisted his efforts to get her off patent medicines. He was forever after her to take an interest in good literature. She’d called him “the professor.”

Cook struggled to his feet. He stood at his cell door, leaning on its bars. “I’m not sure I should tell you anything,” he said. “But if you want to know the truth you’ll have to let me start at the beginning.”

“Once we got to Vandeleur,” Cook began, “my father started making furniture. I got to be a master craftsman. We did pretty well, and I was able to put aside most of what my father paid me. I remember when my bank account had five hundred dollars. I was really proud.”

“How did people treat you?”

Cook gripped the bars with his hands. He told Leonard people taunted him as he went about the countryside. “That blind fool should stay at home,” he heard neighbours say. Children were especially hurtful. “Suck my teats, Teets,” boys would shout. They’d take turns trying to trip him, often succeeding. Some threw stones at him.

“They say you went to the school for the blind. How did you find it?”

Cook remembered when he first heard that an Institution for the Blind had opened in Brantford. He was forty-four then. “I made up my mind right away I wanted to go there. I was determined to learn anything to make me more normal. They took a dozen of us grown men. I slept in a dormitory with about four-dozen other boys and men. We were segregated from the girls.

“The principal was Mr. Hunter. He said us men were there as a special favour. Officially, he represented the Department of Prisons. That’s where the school gets its money. He told me that because of my lack of sight, I might find it difficult to learn what they were teaching, but that I had to do my best. What a laugh.”

“What did you say when he told you that?”

“I told him I knew how to make furniture. I offered to teach others to work with wood. He told me that wouldn’t be necessary. He said they had programs that would make good workers of the kids. Weaving baskets, if you can believe it.”

“Why did you stay?”

“They had these dogs, German Shepherds and Labrador Retrievers. They were being trained as guide dogs. I wanted to learn how to handle them, to give commands and get the knack of following their lead.”

Cook said that once he got to be pretty good with the dogs, he decided to go back to Vandeleur. “I think they were glad to see me go. They let me take one of the dogs. I chose Cromwell, and I’ve had him ever since.”

“That gave you a lot more freedom,” Leonard said.

“It sure did. I started going to Munshaw’s Hotel, I became a regular in the saloon there. That was where I met Ann Jane Sargent. I married her. I think her parents were willing to overlook me being blind on account of I had a bit of money.”

“But that didn’t work out, did it?”

“I guess I relied too much on her to do little things for me – bring me my clothes, clean up after me, and open doors wherever we went. We’d been married only a few months when she began to sleep in her own bed. That was when we started quarreling.”

“It must have been hard for both of you.”

Cook said his wife complained that he couldn’t do anything for himself. “It never entered my head that she would leave me. My mother said I was too much trouble for a wife.”

Cook moved away from his cell door and sat down on his cot.

“I don’t understand why these things happen to me,” he said. “First I’m blind, and then my wife leaves me, now I’ve lost Rosannah and I’m charged with her murder. I wish somebody could explain why God has done this to me.”

There was nothing Leonard could say about that. Instead, he said he’d like to hear how Cook and Rosannah came to get married. “Molly Leppard testified that you hired her to keep house for you and your mother.”

Cook remembered his mother was cool to Rosannah from the day he had hired her. Rosannah was a good housekeeper, he told Leonard. “She put in a nice garden and used to come back to the barn where I was looking after the animals. She was amazed I was able to care for the livestock. I told her I could make out shapes, and of course I knew my way around there pretty well.”

Sounds are so important to a blind person, Cook reminded Leonard. He used to tell Rosannah that sounds made pictures in his head. He would listen for the wind to get an idea of what kind of day it would be. And smells. Every place smelled a little different. The furniture shed of maple and sawdust. His bedroom smelled of the feathers in the pillows.

“We used to talk about all kinds of things,” Cook said. “About what it would be like to live in the city, or how the Negroes were doing over at Priceville. We had good, intelligent discussions. And we talked about you sometimes, Leonard.”

Cook remembered the time Rosannah told him most men had treated her as if she knew nothing, while Leonard was always trying to get her interested in things she couldn’t fathom and didn’t care about. She wasn’t sure which was worse. She called him The Professor. Cook saw no point in telling Leonard.

Rosannah wanted to marry someone she felt equal to, Cook said. “She found it easy to feel that way with me. She said I needed someone like her to be my eyes. I used to tell her I thought she was wonderful. I wasn’t lying. We were getting pretty chummy together. You know what I mean.”

Cook thought of how it had been with Rosannah that time in the barn. It was as if they were in a world of bliss, freed of all their problems. His blindness was of no account, and he had a woman in his arms.

Cook paced once around his cell. He didn’t want to tell Leonard what had actually happened. That his mother had caught them together, making love. “Is this what I’m paying you for?” his mother had asked Rosannah. Cook felt lost when Rosannah had to leave. That was when he made up his mind to ask her to marry him.

When Cook and Rosannah told her parents they were going to get married, he remembered he was surprised at how quickly her father agreed. Even Rosannah’s mother seemed to go along without too much protest, provided a priest married them. But the more he thought about Molly’s insistence on a Catholic wedding, the more nervous he became. He’d have to learn Catholic rites, and it would take some time to arrange the wedding.

“I said to Rosie,” – and here he used his pet name for her – “are you really sure we need to have a Catholic wedding? What difference does it make as long as we’re married? Let’s go down to Toronto where nobody’s ever heard of us. I told her I knew of a minister who’ll marry us.”

Because Rosannah needed new clothes, Cook remembered, he had taken her to Eliza Carson, the dressmaker. They needed a marriage license and for this they went to Mr. Purdy, the postmaster in Eugenia. It was safe to see him because he knew nothing of each of them having already been married. Mr. Purdy also sold life insurance. He charged Cook eleven dollars for the first year’s premium for a policy on Rosannah’s life. Mr. Purdy sent Rosannah to a doctor in Meaford for a medical examination. Cook recalled that the long drive took most of the day but the examination lasted only a few minutes.

“Rosannah passed the exam just fine, but the doctor said she was pregnant. Well, I wasn’t surprised!”

Leonard interrupted Cook to ask why he had not purchased life insurance on himself.

“I’d thought about it, but I wasn’t sure I could pass the medical. My stomach had been bothering me a lot. One of my eyes hurt so much it drove me crazy. Dr. Griffin gave me morphine, he told me there was no law against it. He charged me ten dollars for a bag of morphine crystals. I used to pour out a few crystals onto the kitchen table, and mash them up with my fingertips. Then I’d wet my fingers and put the powder on my tongue. It was bitter, but it stopped the pain. I decided not to bother about insurance.”

The trip to Toronto went off smoothly, Cook told Leonard. They’d said nothing to his mother or Rosannah’s parents. He’d called for her in a hansom before dawn, in time to catch the morning train to Toronto. That afternoon they walked from Union Station to St. Andrew’s Presbyterian Church on Simcoe Street. The Rev. Macdonnell had preached at the school for the blind, and he remembered Cook. He married them in the manse, with the minister’s brother and a woman from the church as witnesses. Cook gave Rosannah a wedding ring he’d bought in Meaford.

“The minister warned Rosannah that her people would say she’s not married and that she’d be living in sin. Rosannah said she didn’t care. She said she was a Methodist now.”

Cook remembered how excited and happy he’d been. He’d never expected Rosannah to marry him, yet there they were, walking down the street in Toronto arm in arm, husband and wife. “Every man will envy me,” he’d said to her. Cook had felt important, a successful man; life was going to give him everything he wanted.

At the Rossin House Hotel, Rosannah booked their room. She’d shown their wedding certificate and had explained their situation. Cook remembered her words: “My husband’s blind and he’d like to rent a room, we’re just married.”

“That room cost me a dollar and a half,’ Cook said. “That’s because the hotel had an elevator, the only one in Canada. We took the train back the next day and walked to my house from Flesherton Station. It was a beautiful September evening, everything smelled so sweet.

“Mother was none too happy when we told her what we’d done. She said she didn’t want Rosannah in the house and that even if we were married, our wedding certificate didn’t mean a thing. She said there are no seats for Catholics at the Methodist church. I tried to tell her Rosannah was a Methodist now but she wouldn’t listen to me.”

Cook remembered they began the long walk back down the Beaver Valley Road and took the footpath across the river to the Leppard place. It was dark when they got there.

“I waited at the fence while Rosannah went inside. When she came back she was really upset. She said her mother was angry and she didn’t think I should come in. I was sorry I hadn’t gotten a place for us before we were married. So we decided Rosannah would stay with her mother, and I went back home.

“While I was looking around for a place I decided we should make a trip to Michigan to see my relatives in Grand Rapids. They all made furniture there. We stayed a week, had a nice time. When we got back I ran into Joseph Pedlar at the post office and he said he was moving in with his daughter and he’d rent us his house. It was near Eugenia Falls, not far from Rosannah’s place.”

Tired of pacing his cell, Cook sat down on his cot. The springs squeaked as he shifted his weight.

“The last time I saw Rosie alive, I asked her to go with me to Eugenia to see our new home. She didn’t feel up to it, so we sat on that big rock by the fence and talked. It was starting to rain. I gave Rosannah some tobacco and she lit a pipe and smoked it. I could tell by the smell that she was still smoking when she got up to go back inside. It was the last time I saw her alive.”

Leonard asked Cook if Rosannah had ever told him about bring raped by a priest.

“She told me when we were in Michigan. I would have killed the asshole but by then, nobody knew where he was.”

“I understand your feelings,” Leonard said. “But you still haven’t told me if you gave Rosannah strychnine.”

“You know I didn’t,” Cook answered.

“But you had some. What did you do with it?”

“I scattered some in the bush, to kill the foxes that were raiding our chicken pen. I used their pelts to make a cape for my mother. I never got to give it to her. I never let anyone else have any strychnine.”

Before Leonard could ask another question, the door to the corridor opened and the guard brought in James Masson.

“Now your lawyer’s here I may as well tell you,” Cook heard Leonard say. “That piece I wrote about you. It wasn’t entirely fair. I’m sorry. I’m going to publish a clarification.” Cook thought, What good will that do me now?

The guard rattled his keys against the bars of Cook’s cell. “Time to go back to court, Cook, visiting hour’s done.”