The Resurrectionist: A Novel Part 14

"You know I cannot overpower you, Nemo. Allow me to appeal to your reason," Johnston said behind him. "And you, Fitzhugh, put down that scalpel or I shall expel you this afternoon."

Nemo and Johnston hung poised in the strange embrace as Fitzhugh reluctantly tossed the scalpel aside. One of the students handed him a cloth and he mopped at his face with it, then wiped his hands on it violently.

"Your future, Nemo," Johnston whispered in his ear. "Think of the opportunities you will squander with this violence." The doctor squeezed Nemo's arm almost tenderly. "I implore you to use your reason," he said.

Slowly, by degrees, Nemo allowed his muscles to relax. When he felt Johnston's hand slip away, he placed the knife back in his pocket and lifted his hand to the long cut on his chest, a.s.sessing its depth. His eyes never left Fitzhugh's face.

"You saw that, Doctor Johnston," Fitzhugh was saying. "With your own eyes. He took up a weapon against a white man, sir, with a clear intent to murder. I demand you contact the authorities this instant."

"Oh, shut up, Fitzhugh," Johnston said. "We are the only authority needed here." He stepped around Nemo and toward Fitzhugh. He glanced at the open abdomen of the dead woman and his gaze stopped there, as though his intellect had been aroused despite the uproar. He picked up a scalpel and prodded the tissue, his brows knitting. "Tragic. What kind of abortifacient was used, one can only imagine," he said. "Probably chemical. Come here, Fitzhugh, and have a look at the fetus."

"I don't want to see it," Fitzhugh said sullenly.

"No. Of course you do not." He turned and stretched to his full height, until his eyes were level with Fitzhugh's. "That is because you are an imbecile. Another student with even a hint of scholarly curiosity would have treated this scenario as an opportunity. You, however, have rendered it an occasion for unmanly complaint and common violence."

Fitzhugh's mouth dropped open. Beneath the table, Stonewall whined sympathetically.

Johnston looked down at the dog and gave it a sharp kick. "Out, out with this cur. I have let things go too far. Mister Fitzhugh, you will accompany the animal out of the building. If you choose to grace our hall with your presence again, it will be at seven o'clock sharp tomorrow morning. I will supervise the remainder of your dissection practice myself."

Fitzhugh stood as if struck dumb until Johnston made a flicking motion with his hand. Then he bent and took a handful of the dog's ruff and dragged him away. A few paces from the doorway he turned and shouted, "I'll have your job yet, boy! I'll get my justice!"

"You might," Nemo said quietly. "You just might have it yet." He looked down at his chest. The cut was not deep, but he knew it would scar.

In the heavy silence that followed, one of the students cleared his throat. "The boy did a.s.sault a white man, sir."

"And was he not a.s.saulted first? Round and round we go, and where does it get us? Surely I do not need to furnish you with an answer. Today's business goes no further than this room, gentlemen. Am I clearly understood?"

There were murmurs of a.s.sent, most of them reluctant. Johnston turned to Nemo.

"And you, Nemo, will atone for your lapse of judgment by having another female specimen on this table by seven tomorrow."

Now it was Nemo's jaw that slackened.

"But Doctor Johnston," he said. "This poor woman-"

"Is dead, Nemo. Neither our pity nor our sympathy can help her one iota." He raised his voice to address both Nemo and the students. "Our business, as I have told each of you a hundred times, is the living."

"The living," Nemo said.

"Yes, the living. The dead teach us, yes. But beyond that, their value is negligible."

Johnston seemed to be waiting for Nemo's a.s.sent. But Nemo only stared at the floorboards beneath his feet. On one of them lay a fragment of gossamer tissue, white and delicate as a dogwood petal.

One of the students, Mullins, finally broke the heavy silence. "Alma Bodifer died Sunday. They buried her yesterday. I know because her sister cleans my room."

"And of what value is that?" Johnston said too quickly. His eyes were still on Nemo's face.

Mullins glanced at the others, looking as if he wished he had not spoken. "I just mention it because she's white, sir. And, uh . . ." Parks strained to find the proper words. "And not likely to have gotten into this kind of condition. She was common, but she was a churchwoman. That's what her sister says."

"Thank you, Mister Mullins," Johnston said. "Nemo, I trust you can manage the procurement?"

Nemo sniffed once and nodded his head.

"That's my good man," Johnston said, smiling, and reached out to pat him on the shoulder. "Please see to it that she is here and in good condition for tomorrow morning."

"I'll give it my full attention, Doctor Johnston. And I want to thank you, sir."

"For what?"

"For teaching me what I know."

Johnston blushed, and Nemo thought he saw his s.h.i.+rtfront puff out a fraction of an inch. When he turned back to the remaining students, he was already rolling up his s.h.i.+rtsleeves. "Gentlemen," he began, his voice restored to its former composure, "we now return our attention to the great art of anatomy."

Nemo could hear the whittling of the blades clear out the rear door.

ROBERT MULLINS WAS standing beside the dissecting table with the sc.r.a.p of newsprint in his hand, scanning its four lines of close type, when he and the others heard Albert Fitzhugh's whistling outside the building, followed closely by the sound of the dog pattering across the packed-dirt yard behind its master. Quickly he tucked the clipping back under the woman's left shoulder where he had found it and returned to his own table. Alma Bodifer had enjoyed no such greeting as her predecessor the day before, and little wonder, he thought, as he took another glance at the new cadaver: she was as ample as her surviving sister, the fact made even more evident by her nakedness in the unforgiving morning light. Against the black slate, her abundant flesh seemed ghastly white, grossly pallid, with her ponderous b.r.e.a.s.t.s sagging toward her armpits and the excess skin on the backs of her arms and legs pressed flat against the tabletop. Beneath the edges of the handkerchief over her face, Mullins saw her cheeks drooping downward as well, gravity pulling the fat there earthward.

"What time have you got, McEwan?" he said as he took up his scalpel.

"Ten till. He made it, by G.o.d."

"He'll not make it ten minutes when Johnston gets here."

"Now, Turner," Mullins said, grinning, "Old Fitz may just pull through yet."

"So long as his next check don't bounce."

Mullins was casting about for a response when the laboratory door flew open, framing Fitzhugh in its bright opening. He paused a moment for the dog to precede him, but the animal stopped at the threshold as though galvanized, with its head raised and its long tail poised erect over its hindquarters. Fitzhugh looked down at it for a moment, then burst into a laugh.

"My G.o.d, what a dog! Do you see that, boys? He remembers. Memory like an elephant's." He bent and scratched behind the dog's ears. "Of course you will wait outside, old boy. What a good dog he is." He made cooing sounds of approval, then shut the door slowly, its lower panels stopping an inch shy of the dog's rigid snout.

Fitzhugh strode into the room magisterially and up to the table where his third obstetric cadaver lay. "What have we here? Quite the heifer," he said. There was a smattering of laughter as he picked up the obituary.

" 'Alma Bodifer, aged forty-two,' " he read. "Says she made the best cornbread in Cotton Town." He chuckled as he wadded up the paper and tossed it aside. "Can you believe that?"

"Looks like she ate every bit of it."

"Heifer means more cutting, Fitz."

"By G.o.d, there is a lot of her, but I'm ready, boys. This is my last day with these b.i.t.c.hes."

"Third time's the charm, Fitz," Mullins said from between the splayed brown legs of his cadaver.

"The next time I explore the female nether regions, gentlemen, it will be on my own time and at my own leisure."

The ensuing laughter stopped abruptly with the sound of the door being opened again. Fitzhugh blushed as he looked up to see Johnston shutting the door on the immobile dog with a quizzical look on his face.

"Mister Fitzhugh," he said, "I trust you have already begun your incision into the abdominal wall?"

"No, sir. I was just a.s.saying my equipment."

Mullins snorted into the perineum of his cadaver. Johnston's neck flushed as he looked down at the Bodifer woman.

"First the legs must be spread to access the perineal region," he said. "Proceed."

Fitzhugh struggled for a moment with the heavy thighs, then looked up at Johnston meekly. "Her hips don't seem to move right."

"Stand aside, then." Johnston pushed against the cadaver's thighs, trying to spread them. Neither leg would budge.

"Ideally, the thigh and gluteal region would have already been dissected," he said between breaths, "affording easier articulation. We must be able to abduct the thighs to expose the perineum." He stood and nodded at the tray of instruments at the foot of the table. "Two incisions through the thigh muscles near the genitalia, Mister Fitzhugh, to render the right hip mobile."

Fitzhugh made the incisions in the right thigh. When Johnston nodded, he pushed at the leg again. It spread open with a cracking sound.

"Doubtless Nemo has been over this ground with you before, but next is the abdominal incision." He watched intently as Fitzhugh carved a foot-long crescent on the cadaver's lower belly, pulling back against the flesh as he cut deeper through the layers of orange fat. A film of sweat formed on Fitzhugh's upper lip when the tissue of the uterine wall came into view.

"Good, then. Now, a light incision into the membrane of the uterus." He winced as his student cut deeply into the organ.

"If this were in fact an actual cesarean operation, the uterus would be enlarged, with far more vascular tissue."

"Swollen, you mean?"

"Enlarged enormously, yes. Which would give you a bigger target, would it not? Perhaps then you would need st.i.tches only for the mother, and not her newborn as well."

If Fitzhugh heard the insult, he ignored it as Johnston went on. "In practice you would follow with the removal of the fetus, cutting of the umbilicus, closing the uterus, et cetera."

Fitzhugh looked relieved and moved to set his scalpel back on the tray.

"Now," Johnston said. "Two birds with one stone. Proceed with a hysterectomy, as you would if you were to encounter tumors or a naturally ruptured uterus."

"Nemo never said nothing about a hysterectomy."

Johnston looked at him evenly. "You failed under Nemo's tutelage. Now you are under mine." He picked up a long needle and began threading a length of suturing through its eye. "Dilate the opening in the vesicouterine pouch laterally."

Fitzhugh looked at his tray of tools helplessly. Johnston leaned over the body's open cavity impatiently and stuck his hand inside it. "With your fingers, thusly," he said. "The uterus remains attached to its surrounding organs by the broad ligaments alone. See?"

Almost imperceptibly, Fitzhugh nodded. Several of the other students were now standing in a loose circle around the table, anxious to see the next step of the surgery. Johnston handed Fitzhugh the needle dangling its length of catgut. "Pa.s.s this needle through the ligaments and set a firm ligature for each. Mind you steer clear of the Fallopian tubes for the third suture."

The room was silent as Fitzhugh labored through the procedure. A bead of sweat dropped from his forehead into the open abdomen as he worked.

"Your suturing should be more expeditious," Johnston said. "Imagine a live woman under your knife. In her place, would you not want the operation to proceed more rapidly?"

"This is quite difficult enough as it is, sir."

"Not nearly so difficult as watching you perform it, Mister Fitzhugh."

But Fitzhugh pressed on, sweating freely now, and even Johnston began to nod as he finally pressed the needle through the last gray band of ligament and tied it off firmly. Johnston handed him a pair of steel snips and he clipped the tissue cleanly.

"Very nice," Johnston said as Fitzhugh lifted the pear-shaped uterus clear of the orange fat and set it down on the slate. "Final suturing of the peritoneum and abdomen is next. Carry on." He pulled out his pocket watch and consulted it while his student made the final st.i.tches. "Eight minutes. A frankly amateurish time, but you will improve with practice," he said, his voice trailing off as he completed the sentence. A minute later Fitzhugh looked up at him expectantly, and clearly considerably relieved, as he tied off the last knot on the cadaver's belly.

"The final step is to plug the v.a.g.i.n.a with gauze," Johnston said, "to stanch the drainage."

"We have no gauze, sir," Fitzhugh said in a light voice.

"Where the devil is Nemo when we need him?" Johnston said as he pulled the handkerchief from the cadaver's face and handed it to Fitzhugh.

But Fitzhugh did not take the cloth proffered to him. His eyes were fixed on the face of the cadaver lying before him, and they widened and contracted as if the muscles around them had become suddenly spasmodic.

"That's not the Bodifer woman," Mullins said quietly.

Fitzhugh's jaws were working like those of a man trapped underwater. Johnston looked down at the face of the dead woman, at the flesh sagging beneath the high cheekbones, with a faint sense of recognition, then turned back to his student. Fitzhugh was gasping now, and sounds of choking came forth from deep within his throat. Still his eyes stuck fast to the cadaver's face. For an instant they left it, darting down the naked torso to the crosshatched lines of sutures on the abdomen and the pubic mound below them, and back to the face again. The sounds in his throat redoubled in volume, and he turned aside and vomited onto the floor with one hand set out for balance on the table. When he straightened, he saw that his fingertips were splayed against the dissected uterus.

"Her womb," Fitzhugh said in a quavering whisper.

His throat hitched again, but he did not retch, only drew in a great shuddering lungful of air and pressed a hand to his face as he stepped backward and screamed, "Mother! Oh G.o.d, Mother!"

Fitzhugh's eyes rolled backward and his body followed them, arms thrown out as he collapsed, dragging down a tray of clattering scalpels and forceps as he fell. A long second of silence pa.s.sed before Johnston and the others moved to a.s.sist him and the laboratory filled with their cries and the sounds of Stonewall scratching against the door, his barking panicked at first, then rising by degrees to a crescendo of hysterical fury.

He was still barking when they carried Fitzhugh out.

Friday.

THE SLATE-BLUE CROSS ATOP THE steeple of Ebenezer M.B.E. sputters and hisses, its old neon coursing through the gla.s.s tubes wearily, as though the chemical reaction between the neon and the electricity has reached its last half-life. Its glow, so bright through the darkest predawn hours, is now giving way to the sunlight filtering through the trees and bungalow roofs to the east. By degrees the streets are illuminated in hues of gray below the church set high upon its little knoll at the corner of Hardin and Pulaski, looking down regally on the barren landscape of inner-city blight that surrounds it.

Across the street, Jacob's car idles in the lot of an old service station with boarded windows, beside the abandoned gas pumps. The top is up, the air conditioner running, its condenser kicking in every few minutes as the fan drones and fills the car with cool air. Inside, Jacob has cranked his seat back as far as it will go, and he lies against the cool leather, dozing fitfully. The manila file folder he spent most of the night reading and rereading lies closed in his lap, a smear of grease on its tab still damp from its short tenure in his kitchen garbage can, where he had thrown it just after midnight. Three hours later, finally giving up on the prospect of sleep, he had risen and showered and s.n.a.t.c.hed it out of the can and climbed into his car, bone-weary but anxious to have this errand over with before he could give it more thought.

The digital clock on the BMW's dashboard s.h.i.+fts over to six-thirty as the engine's fan whirs to life again. Jacob twists in his seat, sweating despite the rush of cool air. He is deep within a dream.

He is walking from the school toward the house where he grew up in West Columbia. It stands alone with the vast plain of the Midlands stretched out behind it, the scrub pines and rolling hills forming a scant topography, as though huddled, cringing, beneath the merciless sun. The rest of the neighborhood, the whole town, is gone. Between him and the house, the Congaree winds and flows, a big lazy ma.s.s of water on which the curls of eddies and waves glint like copper in the sunlight. There is no sound. His family is gathering on the front steps as if they intend to meet him. But no-there, with the surreal logic of the unconscious mind, is Jacob himself as a boy of five, the last out the storm door to stand on the brick porch with his parents. Jacob waves to himself as he comes down the hillside toward the river, his stride impossibly long and limber, like the gait of an astronaut on the moon. He is stopped by the water and waves again, his family's features somehow clear across the distance over the currents. His father gathers his mother and the young Jacob around him on the front steps. The wind is up and the collar of his father's plaid s.h.i.+rt flaps against his chin; under his callused hand, tufts of the boy's white-blond hair lift in the breeze.

Jacob can see no color in them through the metallic atmosphere of the dream; the scene is in sepia except for the sky above-a magenta backdrop against which the c.u.mulus clouds scud and scurry in cottony haste, harried by the wind.

There is a camera in his hand, and he realizes the reason for this tableau: his father has brought them out to be photographed. The camera is a relic, older even than the Polaroid his father let him play with back in the seventies until he broke it. It is a nineteenth-century contraption of wood and gla.s.s, a tripod-mounted box complete with a black curtain to s.h.i.+eld the photographer and his exposures from sunlight. Jacob sets it up and checks his family's position through the gla.s.s. When he is satisfied with their pose, he pauses to look on this vision of himself from those years long ago.

Such a beautiful boy! Jacob thinks. The cheekbones so delicate, the skin so clear and firm, seamless.

But his family stands there looking as dour as Puritans. His father will not meet his eyes; his mother seems distracted, as if worried that she has left the gas stove alight or a door unlocked. The boy looks at him as though he doesn't think much of what he sees.

Jacob pushes aside the camera's curtain and looks at them directly, trying to encourage them to make a good portrait. "Smile!" he shouts over the water, flapping his arms, but their expressions do not change. He gives up and tucks his head under the cloth once more, looking through the viewfinder again to be sure they have not moved out of the frame. "Suit yourself," he says, and clasps the bulb that will discharge the flash. He is just about to take the picture when the boy speaks.

"I never hurt you," he says to the grown Jacob through the camera's lens.

"Christ!" Jacob spits as he bolts upright in his seat, b.u.mping his head against the metal frame of the convertible's top. He raises one hand to his forehead and the other to his eyes, rubbing them. "Christ," he says again as the dream's force dispels in his mind.