The Cole Trilogy: The Physician, Shaman And Matters Of Choice Part 100

49.

THE CONTRACT SURGEON.

It took Rob J. most of the summer to plan. His first thought had been to make it financially attractive for another doctor to take over in Holden's Crossing, but after a time he had to face the fact that this was impossible, because the war had created an acute shortage of physicians. The best he could do was arrange for Tobias Barr to come to the Cole dispensary every Wednesday, and for emergencies. For less serious matters the people of Holden's Crossing would make the trip to Dr. Barr's office in Rock Island or consult the nursing nuns.

Sarah raged-as much because Rob J. was joining "the wrong side" as because he was going off, it seemed to him sometimes. She prayed and consulted with Lucian Blackmer. She would be defenseless without him, she insisted. "Before you go, you must write to the Union Army," she said, "and ask them if they have records to show that Alex is their prisoner or a casualty." Rob J. had done this months before, but he agreed it was time to write again, and he took care of it.

Sarah and Lillian had become closer than ever. Jay had worked out a successful system of sending mail and Confederate news through the lines to Lillian, probably with river smugglers. Before the Illinois newspapers published the story, Lillian told them Judah P. Benjamin had been promoted from the Confederacy's secretary of war to its secretary of state. Once Sarah and Rob J. had dined with the Geigers and Benjamin when Lillian's cousin had come to Rock Island to confer with Hume about a railroad lawsuit. Benjamin had seemed intelligent and modest, not the kind of man to seek out an opportunity to lead a new nation.

As for Jay, Lillian said her husband was safe. He had the rank of warrant officer and was a.s.signed as steward, or administrator, of a military hospital somewhere in Virginia.

When she heard Rob J. was going to the Northern army, she nodded carefully. "I pray you and Jay will never meet while we're at war."

"I think it highly unlikely," he said, and patted her hand.

He said good-bye to people with as little fuss as possible. Mother Miriam Ferocia listened to him with almost stony resignation. It was part of a nun's discipline, he thought, to say farewell to those who had become part of their lives. They went where their Lord ordered; in that respect, they were like soldiers.

He was wearing the Mee-shome and carrying one small suitcase on the morning of August 12, 1862, when Sarah saw him off at the steamboat dock in Rock Island. She was crying, and she kissed him on the lips again and again, almost wildly, oblivious of the stares of the other people on the dock.

"You are my own dear girl," he told her gently.

He hated to leave her that way, yet it was a relief to board the boat and to wave good-bye as the craft tooted two short signals and a long one and moved into the pull of midstream, and away.

He stayed out on deck most of the trip downriver. He loved the Mississippi and enjoyed watching the traffic in its busiest season. To date, the South had had fighting men with more recklessness and dash, and far better generals than the North. But when the federals had taken New Orleans that spring, they had linked the Union's supremacy over the lower and upper sections of the Mississippi. Along with the Tennessee and other lesser rivers, it gave federal forces a navigable route straight at the vulnerable belly of the South.

One of the military jumping-off centers along that water road was Cairo, where Rob J. had started his voyage on the War Hawk, and it was here that he disembarked now. There were no floods in Cairo in late August, but that was scant improvement, for thousands of troops were camped on the outskirts, and the detritus of concentrated humanity had spilled over into the town, with garbage, dead dogs, and other rotting offal piled in the muddy streets in front of fine homes. Rob J. followed the military traffic to the encampment, where he was challenged by a sentry. He identified himself and asked to be taken to the commanding officer, and soon was led to a colonel named Sibley, of the 176th Pennsylvania Volunteers. The 176th Pennsylvania already had the two surgeons allowed it by the army's table of organization, Colonel Sibley said. He said there were three other regiments in the encampment, the 42nd Kansas, the 106th Kansas, and the 201st Ohio. He volunteered that the 106th Kansas had an opening for an a.s.sistant surgeon, and it was there Rob J. went next.

The commanding officer of the 106th was a colonel named Frederick Hilton, whom Rob J. found in front of his tent, chewing tobacco and writing at a small table. Hilton was eager to have him. He spoke of a lieutenancy ("Captain, soon as possible") and a year's enlistment as a.s.sistant medical officer, but Rob J. had done a good deal of investigation and thinking before leaving home. If he had chosen to take the surgeon general's examination, he would have qualified for a majority, a generous quarters allowance, and posting as a medical staff officer or as a surgeon at a general hospital. But he knew what he wanted. "No enlistment. No commission. The army employs temporary civilian doctors, and I'll work for you on a three-month contract."

Hilton shrugged. "I'll draw up the papers for acting a.s.sistant surgeon. You come back here after supper, sign em. Eighty dollars a month, you supply your own horse. I can send you to a uniform tailor in town."

"I won't be wearing a uniform."

The colonel appraised him. "You'd be advised to. These men are soldiers. They're not going to jump at orders from a civilian."

"Nevertheless."

Colonel Hilton nodded blandly, spat tobacco juice. He called for a sergeant and instructed the man to show Dr. Cole to the medical officers' tent.

They hadn't gone far down the company street before the first bugle notes signaled retreat, the ceremony for lowering the colors at sundown. All sound and motion ceased as men faced the flag and snapped into salute.

It was his first retreat, and Rob J. found it strangely moving, for he sensed it was akin to a religious communion among all these men who held the salute until the last quavering note of the far-off bugle had fallen away. Then the activity of the camp resumed.

Most of the shelters were pup tents, but the sergeant led the way into an area of conical tents that reminded Rob J. of tipis, and stopped in front of one of these. "Home, sir."

"Thank you."

Inside, it was just two sleeping places on the ground, under cloth. A man, doubtless the regimental surgeon, lay in sodden sleep, giving off sour body odor and the heavy smell of rum.

Rob J. put his bag on the ground and sat next to it. He'd made many mistakes and had played the fool more than some and less than others, he thought. He could but wonder if perhaps now he wasn't taking one of the most foolish steps of his life.

The surgeon was Major G. H. Woffenden. Rob J. quickly learned that he'd never attended medical school, but had apprenticed for a while "under ole Doc Cowan" and then struck out on his own. That he'd been commissioned by Colonel Hilton in Topeka. That a major's pay was the best regular money he'd ever earned. And that he was content to devote himself to serious drinking and let the acting a.s.sistant surgeon handle daily sick call.

Sick call took almost the entire day, every day, because the line of patients seemed unending. The regiment had two battalions. The first was up to strength, five companies. The second battalion had only three companies. The regiment was less than four months old, and had been formed when the fittest men already were in the army. The 106th had taken what was left, and the second battalion had taken the dregs of Kansas. Many of the men who waited to see Rob J. were too old to be soldiers, and many were too young, including half a dozen who seemed barely into their teens. All of them were in extremely poor condition. The most prevalent complaints were of diarrhea and dysentery, but Rob J. saw a variety of fevers, heavy colds involving the chest and lungs, syphilis and gonorrhea, delirium tremens and other signs of alcoholism, hernias, and lots of scurvy.

There was a dispensary tent containing a U.S. Army medicine pannier, a large wicker-and-canvas chest containing a variety of medical supplies. According to its inventory list, it should also have contained black tea, white sugar, coffee extract, beef extract, condensed milk, and alcohol. When Rob J. asked Woffenden about these items, the surgeon appeared to be offended. "Stolen, I suppose," he snapped, too defensively.

After the first few meals, Rob J. could see the reason for so many stomach problems. He sought out the commissary officer, a harried second lieutenant named Zearing, and learned that the army gave the regiment eighteen cents a day to feed each man. The result was a daily ration of twelve ounces of fat salt pork, two and one-half ounces of navy beans or peas, and either eighteen ounces of flour or twelve ounces of hardtack. The meat was liable to be black on the outside and yellow with putrefaction when cut, and the soldiers called the hardtack "worm castles" because the large thick crackers, often moldy, were frequently tenanted by maggots or weevils.

Each soldier received his ration uncooked and prepared it himself over the flame of a small campfire, usually boiling the beans and frying both the meat and the crumbled hardtack-even frying flour-in pork fat. Combined with disease, the diet spelled disaster for thousands of stomachs, and there were no latrines. The men defecated anywhere they chose, usually behind their tents, although many with loose bowels made it only as far as the s.p.a.ce between their tent and their neighbors'. About the camp was an effluvia reminiscent of the War Hawk, and Rob J. decided the entire army stank of feces.

He realized he could do nothing about the diet, at least at once, but he was determined to improve conditions. Next afternoon, after sick call, he walked to where a sergeant from Company C, First Battalion, was drilling half a dozen men in the use of the bayonet. "Sergeant, do you know where there are some shovels?"

"Shovels? Why, yes, I do," the sergeant said warily.

"Well, I want you to get one for each of these men, and I want them to dig a ditch," Rob J. said.

"A ditch, sir?" The sergeant stared at the curious figure in the baggy black suit, the wrinkled s.h.i.+rt, the string tie, and the wide-brimmed black civilian hat.

"Yes, a ditch," Rob J. said. "Right over here. Ten feet long, three feet wide, six feet deep."

This civilian doctor was a large man. He appeared very determined. And the sergeant knew he had simulated rank of first lieutenant.

The six men were digging industriously a short time later, while Rob J. and the sergeant watched, when Colonel Hilton and Captain Irvine of Company C, First Battalion, came down the company street.

"What the h.e.l.l is this?" Colonel Hilton said to the sergeant, who opened his mouth and looked at Rob J.

"They're digging a sink, Colonel," Rob J. said.

"A sink?"

"Yes, sir, a latrine."

"I know what a sink is. Their time is better spent at bayonet practice. Very soon these men will be in battle. We're showing them how to kill rebels. This regiment is going to shoot Confederates, and bayonet them, and stab them, and if it's necessary, we will s.h.i.+t and p.i.s.s them to death. But we will not dig latrines."

From one of the men with shovels came a guffaw. The sergeant was grinning, watching Rob J.

"Is that clearly understood, Acting a.s.sistant Surgeon?"

Rob J. did not smile. "Yes, Colonel."

That was on his fourth day with the 106th. After that, there were eighty-six more days, and they pa.s.sed very slowly and were counted very carefully.

50.

A SON'S LETTER Cincinnati, Ohio January 12, 1863 Dear Pa, Well, I claim Rob J.'s scalpel!

Colonel Peter Brandon, a princ.i.p.al aide to Surgeon General William A. Hammond, delivered the commencement address. There were those who said it was a fine talk, but I was disappointed. Dr. Brandon told us that doctors have tended to the medical needs of their armies all through history. He gave a lot of examples, the Hebrews of the Bible, the Greeks, the Romans, etc., etc. Then he told all about the splendid opportunities the wartime United States Army offers a doctor, the salaries, the gratification one receives when serving his country. We yearned to be reminded of the healing glories of our new profession-Plato and Galen, Hippocrates and Andreas Vesalius-and he gave us a recruitment speech. Moreover, it was unnecessary. Seventeen of my cla.s.s of thirty-six new physicians already had arranged to enter the Medical Department of the Army.

I know you will understand when I write that although I would dearly have loved to see Ma, I was relieved by her decision not to attempt the trip to Cincinnati. Trains, hotels, etc., are so crowded and dirty nowadays that a woman traveling alone would have to suffer discomfort, or worse. I especially missed your presence, which gives me another reason to hate the war. Paul Cooke's father, who sells feed and grain in Xenia, came to commencement and afterward took the two of us for a grand feed, with wine toasts and nice compliments. Paul is one of those going directly into the army. He's deceptive because he's so full of fun, but he was the brightest in our cla.s.s and was awarded his degree summa c.u.m laude. I was of help to him in the laboratory work, and he helped me earn magna c.u.m laude, because whenever we finished a reading a.s.signment he asked me questions that were a lot fiercer than any our professors ever asked.

After dinner, he and his father went to Pike's Opera House to hear Adelina Patti in concert, and I went back to the Polyclinic. I knew precisely what I wanted to do. There is a brick-lined tunnel that runs under Ninth Street between the medical school and the main hospital building. It is for the use of physicians only. In order that it is clear during emergencies, it is off-limits to medical students, who must cross the street aboveground, no matter how inclement the weather. I went into the bas.e.m.e.nt of the medical school, very much still the student, and entered the lamplit tunnel. Somehow, when I walked through on the other side into the hospital, for the first time I felt like a doctor!

Pa, I've accepted a two-year appointment as a house officer of the Southwestern Ohio Hospital. It pays only three hundred dollars per annum, but Dr. Berwyn said it will lead to a good income as a surgeon. "Never downplay the importance of income," he told me. "You must remember that the person who complains bitterly about a doctor's earnings usually is not a doctor."

Embarra.s.singly, and to my wonderful fortune, both Berwyn and McGowan squabble about which of them shall take me under his wing. The other day, Barney McGowan outlined this plan for my future: I shall work with him for a few years as a junior a.s.sociate, then he will arrange an appointment for me as a.s.sociate professor of anatomy. Thus, he said, when he retires, I'll be ready to take over the mantle as professor of pathology.

It was too much, they both set my head to spinning, because my own dream always has been simply to become a doctor. In the end, they worked out a program that is advantageous to me. Just as I did during my summer employment, I'll spend mornings in the operating theater with Berwyn and afternoons on pathology with McGowan, only instead of doing dirty work as a student, I'll function as a doctor. Despite their kindness, I don't know whether I'll ever want to settle in Cincinnati. I miss living in a small place where I know the people.

Cincinnati is more Southern in feeling and sentiment than Holden's Crossing. Billy Henried confided to a few trusted friends that he would join the Confederate Army as a surgeon after graduation. Two nights ago I went to a farewell dinner with Henried and Cooke. It was strange and sad, each of them aware of where the other was going.

News that President Lincoln has signed a proclamation granting liberty to the slaves has caused lots of anger. I know you don't care for the president because of his part in destroying the Sauks, but I admire him for freeing the slaves, whatever his political reasons. Northerners hereabouts seem able to make any sacrifice when they tell themselves it is to save the Union, but they don't want the goal of the war to become the abolition of slavery. Most seem unprepared to pay this terrible blood-price if the purpose of the fighting is to free the Negroes. The losses have been terrifying at battles like Second Bull Run and Antietam. Now there is news of slaughter at Fredericksburg, where almost thirteen thousand Union soldiers were mowed down while trying to take high ground from the South. It has produced despair in many of the people with whom I have talked.

I worry constantly about you and Alex. It may irk you to know I've begun to pray, although I don't know to whom or what, and I ask regularly only that both of you will come home.

Please do your best to care for your own health as well as that of others, and remember that there are those who anchor their lives on your strength and goodness.

Your loving son,

Shaman

(Dr.! Robert Jefferson Cole)

51.

THE HORN PLAYER.

It wasn't as hard as Rob J. had feared to live in a tent, to sleep on the ground again. What was more difficult was dealing with questions that haunted him: why in the world he was there, and what the outcome of this terrible civil war would be. Events continued to go badly for the cause of the North. "We can't seem to win for losing," Major G. H. Woffenden observed in one of his less-drunken moments.

Most of the troops Rob J. lived among drank hard when off-duty, especially following payday. They drank to forget, to remember, to celebrate, to commiserate with one another. The dirty and often drunken young men were like pit dogs on a leash, apparently oblivious of impending mortality, straining to get at their natural enemy, other Americans who doubtless were just as dirty and just as often drunken.

Why were they so eager to kill Confederates? Very few of them really knew. Rob J. saw that the war had taken on substance and meaning for them that went far beyond reasons and causes. They thirsted to fight because the war existed, and because it had been officially declared admirable and patriotic to kill. That was enough.

He wanted to howl and scream at them, to lock the generals and politicians in a dark room like errant, foolish children, to take them by the scruff of their collective necks and shake them and demand: What is the matter with you? What is the matter with you?

But instead, he went to sick call every day and doled out the ipecac and the quinine and the paregoric, and he was careful to look at the ground wherever he walked, like a man who made his home in a giant kennel.

On his final day with the 106th Kansas, Rob J. sought out the paymaster and collected his eighty dollars and then went to the conical tent and slung his Mee-shome over his shoulder and picked up his suitcase. Major G. H. Woffenden, curled up in his rubber poncho, didn't open his eyes or mutter good-bye.

Five days before, the men of the 176th Pennsylvania had marched raggedly onto steamboats and were carried southward toward combat in Mississippi, according to rumor. Now other boats had disgorged the 131st Indiana, which was raising its tents where the Pennsylvanians lately had lived. When Rob J. sought out the commanding officer, he found a baby-faced colonel still in his twenties, Alonzo Symonds. Colonel Symonds said he had his eye out for a doctor. His surgeon had concluded a three-month enlistment and had gone back to Indiana, and he never had had an a.s.sistant surgeon. He questioned Dr. Cole closely and seemed impressed by what he learned, but when Rob J. began to indicate that certain conditions had to be met before he could sign on, Colonel Symonds' face showed doubt.

Rob J. had kept careful records of his sick calls for the 106th. "On almost any given day, thirty-six percent of the men were on their backs or in my sick line. Some days the percentage was higher. How does that compare with your daily sick list?"

"We've had a lot of them sick," Symonds conceded.

"I can give you more healthy men, Colonel, if you will help me."

Symonds had been a colonel only four months. His family owned a factory in Fort Wayne where gla.s.s lamp chimneys were made, and he knew how ruinous sick workers could be. The 131st Indiana had been formed four months before, raw troops, and within days had been thrown into picket duty in Tennessee. He considered himself fortunate that they'd had only two skirmishes serious enough to be called contact with the enemy. He had lost two killed and one wounded, but on any given day he had had so many down with fever that the Confederates could have waltzed through his regiment without trouble, had they known.

"What do I have to do?"

"Your troops are raising their tents on the s.h.i.+tpiles of the Pennsylvania 176th. And the water's bad here, they drink river water that's spoiled by their own runoff. There's an unused site less than a mile on the other side of the encampment, with clean springs that should give good water through the winter, if you drive pipes into them."

"G.o.d Almighty. A mile's a long way to go to confer with the other regiments. Or to expect their officers to come if they want to see me."

They studied one another, and Colonel Symonds made up his mind. He went to his sergeant major. "Order the tents to be struck, Dougla.s.s. The regiment's going to move."

Then he came back and talked business with this difficult doctor.

Again Rob J. turned down a chance to be commissioned. He asked to be hired as acting a.s.sistant surgeon, on a three-month contract.

"That way, you don't get what you want, you can leave," the young colonel observed astutely. The middle-aged doctor didn't deny it, and Colonel Symonds considered him. "What else do you want?"

"Latrines," Rob J. said.

The ground was firm but not yet frozen. In a single morning the sinks were dug and logs were fixed on one-foot posts at the edge of the trenches. When the order was read to all companies that defecating or urinating anyplace but in designated sinks would result in swift and severe punishment, there was resentment. The men needed something to hate and ridicule, and Rob J. realized he had filled that need. When he pa.s.sed among them, they nudged one another, their eyes raked him, they grinned cruelly at the ridiculous figure he made in his ever-shabbier civilian suit.

Colonel Symonds didn't give them a chance to spend much time thinking about grievances. He invested four days in labor details that built a series of spare, half-excavated huts of logs and sod. They were damp and poorly ventilated, but they gave considerably more shelter than tents, and a small fire made it possible for the men to sleep through a winter's night.