The Americans Read online

  iii

  Theo Payne’s sudden passing brought sorrow and consternation to the Kent household. Gideon was greatly upset by the loss of a close friend and invaluable associate.

  Will traveled to New York with his father and stepmother to attend the funeral services. He returned to Boston alone; Gideon and Julia moved into the suite at the Fifth Avenue Hotel, planning to stay until Gideon could find a new editor—no easy job. Miss Vail packed up and joined them.

  Saturday of the third week in November was a bitter, blustery day. Will spent it in a hired wagon heading for the New Hampshire border directly north of Lowell.

  He and Drew had left Boston two hours before daylight. They didn’t reach their rendezvous point until five in the afternoon. By then Will was nearly frozen despite his overcoat, two sweaters, muffler, and gloves.

  Drew pulled the wagon into the shelter of some trees and scanned the autumn-withered landscape. A dirt road led into a large, barren grove just beyond a stone marker at the state line. The sky had the look of dark gray paint.

  “You still haven’t told me who asked you to do this,” Will said.

  Drew rubbed his mittened hands together. “My answer’s the same as it was an hour ago, and two hours before that. It’s better you don’t know.”

  “You mean you can’t tell your best friend where you got the money or directions to this godforsaken spot?”

  “You can be assured it wasn’t from the university corporation. They don’t want to know where the medical school obtains—uh, demonstration material. We wouldn’t be out here freezing our glutei if the damned state legislators could decide once and for all whether the release of bodies was mandatory or discretionary.”

  Will knew that the current wording of the state law, last revised in 1859, said unclaimed cadavers “may be” released to teaching institutions. It did not say “shall be.” At the moment, the Board of Health was not being cooperative. Hence expeditions such as this became necessary.

  Suddenly the cold air came alive with the creak of wheels and the plodding of hooves. Drew maneuvered their wagon out from behind the trees where they’d been concealed. A second wagon had emerged from the grove beyond the stone marker. Driven by a hunched-over man, the wagon was approaching along the road. Another man in a filthy coat and floppy hat rode a spavined horse out in front of it.

  Presently the horseman reined, in. He showed black, toothless gums in an insincere smile. An old musket lay across his thighs. From the seat of the wagon, the driver simpered at Drew and Will. He wasn’t a normally proportioned man at all, but a poor, pitiable creature who looked barely competent to hold the reins. He had the body of an adult and a gigantic head with a strangely flattened and misshapen face. Slitted eyes were barely visible beneath a drooping hatbrim.

  “Brung you two of ’em,” the man on horseback said, “But you ain’t the one who usually picks ’em up.”

  “He’s sick,” Drew said quickly.

  “That a fact.” A moment’s thought. “Mebbe I better tell you what I told him the first time he showed up here. If anybody ever comes to me and says I done this kind of business, I’ll find you and kill you.” His grin was hideous. “I know which school you’re buyin’ ’em for, y’see.”

  Will shuddered. He didn’t doubt for a minute that the man would do exactly as he promised if he were betrayed.

  The two students could not help staring at the pitiable thing on the wagon seat. Saliva trickled out one side of its mouth. It was male, but just barely recognizable as such, so distorted were the features.

  “You understand me, boy?” the man on horseback said suddenly.

  Drew started. “Yes, of course. Completely.”

  “Good. Let’s get this over with. Price is fifty dollars apiece. You take ’em as is, wrapped up.”

  “But surely I get to inspect—”

  “Ain’t got time for no damn inspection,” the man broke in. His horse whinnied and shied. He looked over his shoulder. “They catch us at this, we’ll be prison-bound for sure. Now get your fat ass over here and unload ’em so I can hightail.”

  “Come on, Will,” Drew whispered, heaving his awkward body into position so that he could step down off the spokes of the front wheel. While Will was climbing down, Drew paid the man in gold. The poor creature in the wagon was delighted by the glint of the gold pieces, and began to giggle and finger his drooling lips.

  The two students hurried to the back of the wagon. They dragged the first canvas-wrapped body from under a concealing layer of straw. Will distinctly felt a lifeless arm and a head as he and Drew carried the corpse to their wagon. Then they loaded the second one, and covered both with burlap and scrap lumber they’d brought along.

  The mounted man used his hat to slap the cheek of the witless man-child. After several false starts, the creature got the wagon turned and headed back toward the New Hampshire woods. The mounted man rode alongside with never a backward glance.

  Will climbed to the wagon seat. He wasn’t looking forward to the long ride back to Boston. They’d be lucky to arrive by dawn the next day. But he understood why Drew had asked him to come along. A man like the one they’d just met might have robbed a solitary student, and abandoned the corpses somewhere—or, knowing he’d be safe from prosecution, never brought them at all.

  Drew hawed to the horse. “Someday doctors will understand what goes wrong in the human chemistry to cause a thing like that.”

  “Do you suppose it was his son?”

  A shrug. “Son, brother, nephew—how could anyone tell? There must be a way to prevent such monstrosities. If I didn’t think medicine could eventually find it, I sure as hell wouldn’t be out here. Of course”—Drew sounded disagreeable, perhaps because he was cold and tense, Will thought—“I’m sure I’m boring you by discussing what medicine may one day do for others. You care most about what it can do for you.”

  Will scowled. “Spare me the lecture, will you?”

  “Why should I? Someone needs to wake you up! Someone needs to convince you that the purpose of medicine is to ferret out the causes of disease and heal the sick, not line the pockets of the practitioner.”

  “Oh, for Christ’s sake, Drew—enough! I know the rest by heart anyway. Practice in the city! Do good among the downtrodden! No, thank you. I say every doctor should have the right to choose where he wants to practice, and how. You take the charity hospital, I’ll take a drawing room. In ten years we’ll compare notes and see who’s happier.”

  “All right, your life is none of my business,” Drew muttered. He didn’t sound as if he believed it.

  Both of them were silent for a while. The wagon lurched on along a road already rutted by the first hard freezes of the season. At the outskirts of Lowell they found a tavern. Will guarded the wagon while Drew went inside to buy two mugs of hot rum. When he came back, he uttered a quick, raspy apology which concluded with the words: “I sometimes forget you’re my friend and think of you only as a damn good student—”

  “So that’s the new tack,” Will broke in, sarcastic. “When bullying fails, try flattery?”

  “No flattery. You didn’t hear the rest. I meant to say a damn good student who’s going in the wrong direction.”

  With effort, Will held his temper. “Not the wrong direction, Drew. Just a direction that isn’t the same as yours.”

  Drew managed a laugh. “Amounts to the same thing, doesn’t it? Anyway, I’m sorry. I won’t lecture again.”

  “Good!”

  Will lifted the battered pewter mug, savored the smell of the rum. He’d won a respite but he didn’t really believe Drew’s promise. He’d heard it too many times before.

  iv

  Lecture on principles of asepsis & antisepsis. Dec. 4, 1887. Dr. D. Cheever, Prof. Surg.

  (1) Listerism presaged as early as 1843 in Dr. O. W. Holmes’ paper postulating contagion of puerperal fever & transmission of same by physician’s hands.

  (2) Semmelweis mistakenly given exclusive cr
edit for this idea (Cheever claim!)—

  The lecture notes blurred in front of Will’s eyes. He laid the notes on his desk, stood, and turned away from the wall fixture with the shaded incandescent bulb. About three dozen of the fixtures were now installed throughout the house on Beacon Street. Will didn’t like incandescent light. He found it harsh and unnatural.

  He walked to the window, gazed down at the Common and the sleet slashing through the December darkness. For over two hours he’d vainly been trying to concentrate on his notes. It was well past midnight and he had a great deal of studying yet to do. Tomorrow he had examinations covering the anatomy course and the material from the surgery lectures.

  But he was too upset to study. The morning mail had brought a letter from Carter, addressed to him. It was a short letter, mailed in Denver where his stepbrother was tending bar in a saloon.

  Not exactly the fulfillment of my great ambitions, little brother! Over and over, I learn one lesson. You had better run others or they’ll run you. Unfortunately, as my present low position testifies, I have yet to find a way to move from the latter state to the former. But by Heaven I will—count on it.

  That was the only positive note in an otherwise cynical and despondent missive. Ever since reading it for the first time, Will had debated about showing it to his stepmother. Now he decided against it. He usually shared Carter’s letters, profanity and all, but this one was too dark and defeated in tone. It would probably disturb Julia as much as it disturbed him.

  Distantly, a downstairs clock rang the hour of one. Will rubbed his cheeks. Tomorrow’s beard had already sprouted. He cast a disgruntled eye on the lecture notes and tried to forget Carter.

  “All right, get to it,” he muttered, “or you won’t ever be called doctor.”

  That, unfortunately, made him think of Drew. Even when Will earned a Harvard diploma, Drew probably wouldn’t grant him the right to call himself doctor. Not unless he practiced medicine exactly the way Drew thought it should be practiced.

  Damn his high-flown pronouncements! Will thought, savagely kicking his chair.

  But he was wasting energy. He had examinations to pass tomorrow.

  v

  The two tests were harder than any he’d taken during his first year. This was in keeping with President Eliot’s program to make each year’s curriculum more challenging than the one before, the overall purpose being a general improvement in the reputation of the Harvard medical degree. For this reform, as well as others, Eliot had the backing of a substantial number of progressive faculty members. But he’d also encountered opposition from a group of medical school professors who were more conservative. That opposition was ferocious and unremitting.

  Sometimes Will wondered how Eliot accomplished anything at all. The reactionary forces in the medical school were powerful and well entrenched. Even men of acknowledged intelligence resisted change.

  Henry Bigelow, the former head of the surgical department and now emeritus professor, came to mind. Though Bigelow had a reputation as a fine teacher and an innovative practitioner, he had nevertheless steadfastly refused to accept Listerism for more than two decades, had even refused to grant the possibility of its value and this in a decade in which doctors who didn’t embrace all Lister’s ideas were adopting some of them on a selective basis: carbolic as the preferred antiseptic, for instance; surgical drainage with Chassiagnac’s tube; use of silk or catgut ligatures that were short cut, carbolated, and buried.

  Bigelow had closed his mind against every facet of Lister’s technique. Old hands at the school claimed he hadn’t always been so reactionary. They said he’d been enthusiastic about ether anesthesia when the Boston dentist, Morton, had first demonstrated it. But that was in 1846. Forty-two years ago—

  For his part, Will was thankful that Charles Eliot was trying to make the Harvard degree more prestigious. That should help further his career. He also liked new ideas, and the professors who taught them. He hoped that after forty-two years had passed, he’d still favor innovations, and not be as fossilized as Bigelow.

  At the moment, however, his primary feeling was relief. He’d passed the examinations. He could relax and enjoy the holiday season.

  On Friday night at the end of examination week, some fellow students invited him to go out and celebrate. They were some of the more boisterous second- and third-class men. Drew wasn’t among them.

  Will needed a change in his routine. He accepted the invitation, thinking the others meant to go to a theater, or to a beer hall for supper. Only after a hired hack picked him up on Beacon Street did he learn the actual destination.

  “Nicest little whorehouse in Cambridge. High class. Most of the girls read novels and play the piano—and there’s one Deutscher blonde with a contralto as big as her tits. She can treat you to some Wagner, if that’s your persuasion.”

  The speaker was a frivolous young New Yorker named Joe Marchant. “You’ll have a fine time,” he promised. “You need to let down once in a while, Kent. You spend too much time philosophizing with Deacon Drew.”

  Will laughed. “Is that what you call him—Deacon?”

  “Not to his face,” said another of the students crowded into the hack.

  There was a tremor in Will’s groin when he thought of their destination. In one way, he was more than ready to visit a bordello. But he was apprehensive, too. He must have showed it.

  Marchant said, “The place we’re going is perfectly safe. The crowd’s respectable. Well, most of the time. Occasionally they let in regular Harvard undergraduates. Then everything deteriorates.”

  Laughter.

  “The girls are clean, too. One of us drives over every week to conduct an inspection. Madam Melba, the lady who runs the place, gives payment in trade. There are benefits to medicine you never imagined.”

  “Amen to that,” Will agreed with a smile, hoping to forestall any questions that might reveal the prime cause of his nervousness. He had never been to bed with a woman.

  He’d kept his inexperience a secret even from Drew. It made him feel inferior, especially among the older students, who bragged a lot. Even if half of their claimed conquests were fictitious, they still had impressive records. Though Will was nervous, he was glad Marchant and the others had invited him along.

  The hack rattled on toward the Charles and the bridge at Cambridge Street. It was another foul night, and growing worse. In addition to a drizzle, fog had rolled in from the ocean. It blurred the gas lamps and occasional electric lights in passing houses. Will’s mood became a blend of excitement and dread. He was afraid he’d inadvertently say or do something that would make his innocence apparent to the girls at the brothel.

  His concerns were only for the events of the next few hours. There was no way for him to realize then that the trip to Cambridge, and all that would happen before the night was over, would have consequences affecting his life for years to come.

  CHAPTER V

  TROUBLE AT MADAM MELBA’S

  i

  “HOW OLD ARE YOU, DEAR?”

  The simplest, most familiar tasks had become hard all at once. Taking his left leg, out of his trousers, for instance. He got impossibly tangled and almost fell over.

  At the last minute, he braced his hand against the gaudily papered wall of the windowless cubicle. He answered the red-haired prostitute’s question without looking at her. “Twenty-one.”

  “Come now, I don’t believe that for a minute. You don’t need to hide your real age. It has nothing to do with being able to give a lady a jolly time. Well, almost nothing—here, may I help?”

  Damnably, his left leg was still caught. The woman glided up behind him. In the parlor she’d introduced herself as Aggie.

  She was thirty or so. She had a long fall of red hair that reached to the midpoint of her back. Her nose was large and freckled under a thick layer of powder. Her lips were thin. The bodice of her nainsook camisole, all trimmed with lace and threaded with baby blue ribbon, accented the smallne
ss of her breasts, which were little bigger than ripe peaches. Yet her experienced eyes and her scent—warm skin mingled with perfume—gave her an air of sexuality that was dizzying.

  “I do take back that remark about age,” she said as she reached from behind and grasped him through his linen drawers. He reacted with a quiver. She laughed. “You see? The younger a fellow is, the larger and livelier. Now tell me your true age.”

  “Eighteen, Miss—”

  “Aggie.” Her fingers moved on him, caressing, teasing. “Just Aggie. By the way—when it comes to getting your trousers off, it helps to take your shoes off first.”

  He’d completely forgotten. Scarlet-faced, he lurched to the narrow bed. He sat on the edge and struggled to remove his shoes. One thumped to the floor, then the other. Aggie bore all his grimacing and heavy breathing with professional good humor. Before he knew it, they were both naked and she was drawing him down beside her on the bed.

  With a very slight note of urgency, she said, “We mustn’t be too slow, love. You only paid five dollars. Madam Melba doesn’t like her employees to dawdle.”

  There’d be no dawdling—she saw to that. She began to caress him and slide her mouth across his bare shoulder, his neck, his face. He was astonished that such a thin mouth could feel so warm and wet and passionate.

  He slid into her with amazing ease. The amber bowls on the room’s two small gas fixtures suffused their bodies with a rich, deep light that seemed to brighten and fade—brighten and fade—matching the accelerating tempo of their lovemaking. All too quickly, unstoppable forces were let loose.

  “Oh my God,” he gasped, shutting his eyes.

  A moment later, she said, “That was very nice, dear.” The warm web of her hair touched his shoulder and spread over the small, heavily starched pillow. “Your first time, wasn’t it?”