The Resurrectionist (3 page)

“We need to seal this area off. You and your men can take the day until I notify you.”

“Losing a day's going to cost us, you know. It'll fuck everything up.”

“I'm aware of that. Leave it to me.”

“I stand to lose a lot here, getting set back.”

“I said I'm aware of that. I'll speak to the dean personally.”

Bowman drops his cigarette and snuffs it with a boot heel. Almost as an afterthought, he spits on the ground before turning toward the stairway.

And then Bowman too is gone and Jacob is left with the clay and the musty darkness and the scattered bones. Like shards of ivory littering the earthen floor, so many of them.

T
HE FIRST CHANCE
Jacob gets to meet with the dean is no chance at all—McMichaels has breezed into the auditorium of the Chapel Clinic at three minutes to one o'clock, when the white-coat ceremony is set to begin. He presses Jacob's hand as he passes the dais of faculty and administrators and steps to the podium. He does not need to call for order; after the immediate burst of applause that greeted him, the assembly has quieted to a funereal hush. After flashing them all a big-toothed smile, his face assumes a somber expression, and he begins.

“Ladies and gentlemen, we have convened today for a sacred rite: the ceremony that symbolizes your first step on the journey that will culminate—for many of you, but not all—in the realization of a dream dear not only to your hearts but to our faculty's as well, and beyond that, to the hearts of our state and our nation. Those of you who prevail in the next four years will emerge as physicians, as healers. It is a great responsibility—indeed, a universal one. For there is no man so lofty that he does not welcome the presence of the physician in his hour of need.

“To those of you who seek fortune, I counsel another path, because ours is a sacred profession, ladies and gentlemen, and I do not use the word lightly. History has enshrined physicians in the roster of humanity's greatest achievements: Hippocrates, Galen, Lister, Pasteur, and Salk. The very names echo with the gravity of their contributions to the human family. It is our responsibility, however meager our means may seem compared to these men, to uphold that tradition and carry it forward.”

McMichaels pauses for a moment, letting his words sink in to the bright minds seated in front of him.

“We may note with some pride that our own institution has played a role in that great tradition. The state-of-the-art clinic in which we have gathered is named for but one of many illustrious forebears at the Medical College of South Carolina—George Chapel, who performed the first open-heart surgery in the South, a bold operation carried out with characteristic precision in spite of rudimentary equipment and daunting odds. Seated behind me—and still very much among the living,” he adds with a smile—“is Kirstin Reithoffer, author of the internal medicine textbook you will soon be using as the manual for your first year—a text used in every medical school in the nation as a benchmark of medical scholarship. More distant to us through the mists of time, but no less important, is the figure of Frederick Johnston, the founder of our institution. Our present administration building, once the school's sole facility, bears his name in tribute. For it was Doctor Johnston, casting the long shadow of his influence, who assembled in this city a faculty of intrepid physicians committed to advancing the medical arts. We can thank those pioneering men for our presence here today.”

McMichaels pauses again, taking a moment to look at each expectant face before closing. “It is time now for you to step forward and join our tradition.”

Awed to silence, the first-years begin to file down the aisles as the new associate dean of admissions, Malloy, assuming his position, steps forward to hand McMichaels the first of two hundred lab coats he will dispense this afternoon. The speech, even by McMichaels's standards, has been a good one. And it is made more so for Jacob by his seeing that there is nothing on the podium before the dean but a creased and grease-stained takeout menu from Pete's Barbeque. The students begin passing in line, the dean draping a starched coat on each set of shoulders, one by one. Jacob smiles, then his face sobers—not only out of a sense of decorum, but because he is thinking again of the basement. Telling McMichaels about it, he knows, is going to ruin the dean's banner day.

Fernyear: 1857

F
REDERICK
A
UGUSTUS
J
OHNSTON STRODE
down the aisle, savoring the sound of each creaking board beneath his feet. With his mustache waxed, the gold chain of his pocket watch gleaming, and his hands hooked into his vest pockets, he looked the very embodiment of the best the Carolina College of Medicine and Physic could produce. Behind him, the faculty entered the room in double file, all six of them, and took their places against the walls of the room, flanking the incoming class seated in the center.

The new class was raw material, to be certain. Country boys, most of them, arrayed on the rude benches in various attitudes of untidy poise. Johnston was pleased, however, to note that most of them straightened as he made his slow progress toward the front of the room, their crimson necks flushing a shade deeper to be in the presence of the noted Doctor Johnston, who had studied under the great Benjamin Rush at Pittsburgh—now one of South Carolina's leading medical men, lately arrived in the capital to found the new school. They had come here expecting him to shape and mold them after his model. And that he would do, God willing. Provided they could endure ten months of rigorous study and training, they too could attain the heights of medical science.

As Johnston neared the first row, one of the boys leaned over and expelled a long stream of tobacco juice onto the new plank floor, not even bothering to aim for the spittoon placed at the end of each row expressly for that purpose. Johnston flinched.
Raw material,
he reminded himself,
and each of them important to our mission.
Indeed, a good deal was riding on this class. The new building, impressive as it was, was threatening to sink the young college in a sea of red ink. The faculty needed every tuition dollar these boys could bring them.

Johnston took his place in front of the slate chalkboard, leaning back a little on his heels. “Gentlemen,” he began, “you are the third class of the Carolina College of Medicine and Physic. It is my privilege and honor to welcome you here today. You come seeking an honorable trade, and we are prepared to supply you with one. Our mission is to provide this great and sovereign state with as many doctors as we can produce, within reason, and to make open the road for poor boys to learn a lucrative profession. To that end, we can offer you the finest facilities in Columbia for medical instruction. Allow me to elaborate.

“Our Negro hospital is the first of its kind in the South and the envy of the region. Through it we have access to a range of patients offering you a wealth of clinical experience, ranging from gunshot wounds to childbirths. Administered by Doctor Evans”—Johnston nodded toward his bearded colleague—“the hospital will advance your education most expeditiously.”

Johnston stepped to the corner of the room, where a microscope and a half-dozen slides rested on a small table set in front of a skeleton suspended from the ceiling. “Our chemical equipment is of the latest manufacture from London,” he said, resting a hand on the fragile-looking piece. “I trust several of you have had the chemistry course in high school?”

One of the boys nodded.

“Very well, then. Doctor Winston will guide you through the mysteries of chemistry.” Winston's spectacles winked in the light as he nodded to the young men.

“Last and perhaps greatest, taught by the entire faculty collectively, is the ancient art of human anatomy.” Johnston placed a hand on the skeleton's shoulder. “This fellow, along with our female manikin for obstetrical instruction, will soon become a close associate of yours as we guide you through the intricacies of skeletal and muscular structure.” He noticed that a few of the students were looking out the windows, their interest flagging. He turned the skeleton around so the bullet hole in the back of its skull came into view. “A veteran of the Mexican War, gentlemen,” he said, “and unfortunately for him, a Mexican.”

As the laughter subsided, Johnston strode across the room to a closed door adjacent to the slate board. “First things first, however. Today you embark on the road of dissection—this morning, this very hour. Your course of study begins in the room beyond, our dissection room, where you will first taste the exquisite elixir, the sublime experience, of gross anatomy.” As he expected, the students were on the edge of the benches now. With a sweep of his arm, Johnston threw open the door.

If the third class of the Carolina College had been bracing for their first sight of a human cadaver, they were soon either sorely disappointed or vastly relieved. What greeted them in the next room was the sight of a half-dozen slate tables on which had been arranged the bodies of as many dead goats. Some lay on their sides, staring out toward the lecture hall with glassy eyes, but most, already stiffened from the embalming process, lay on their backs, short horns against the slate, little hooves pointing to the ceiling.

Johnston could almost feel the silence behind him. “We begin with small mammals,” he said under his breath, then, turning to face the students, he cried, “Gentlemen, to the goats!”

T
WO HOURS LATER
the faculty was again convened. Despite Johnston's efforts, two of the incoming class had stomped out of the dissecting room within minutes of making the first cut on their animals, muttering about dental school. Four others had followed, leaving him half his original enrollment. Worse still, the last defectors had thought to ask for a refund of their tuition, which Johnston reluctantly granted. Now he was embroiled in the first heated faculty meeting of the year—on the first day of the semester.

“Gentlemen,” Evans was saying, “this day's debacle has convinced me that small mammals simply will not do for a proper anatomy course.”

Ballard, the new man from Boston, sniffed. “I must say, I had no idea conditions were so primitive in the South.”

“We are not alone in using animals for the anatomy course,” Winston said. “Mississippi has used pigs for years.”

“Cats in Chattanooga, I have heard.”

“Chattanooga is a third-rate diploma mill, Stanton.”

“Which places us in the second tier, I suppose?”

Ballard's voice rose above the others in his clipped Yankee accent. “At some point these boys will be turned loose on bipedal mammals. We must have cadavers.
Human
cadavers.”

“And how will you get them?” Stanton said between puffs on his meerschaum. “Mister Ballard, you may be too recently arrived to be aware of the fact, but the South Carolina legislature made human dissection illegal years ago.”

“It is true, Ballard,” Evans said. “A lamentable fact, but we are limited by law to executed convicts and deceased slaves. I provide what I can from the colored hospital, but that procurement is difficult work. There is the matter of discretion, and this is not a large town.”

The room fell silent for a moment. Then Johnston spoke for the first time.

“Today's misfortunes lie entirely at my feet, gentlemen. We have had a run of bad luck with the unseasonably cool July and August. In a normal year we could expect two or three fresh cadavers from malaria or sunstroke, but Doctor Evans's charges have been few, and as of late, fatalities nil. We've fared no better with dead hands from the plantations out of town. I hazarded on the goats, and lost. Although I maintain that a lower mammal is perfectly sufficient for limited instruction, our students quite clearly think otherwise.”

Ballard drummed his fingers on the table. “What about the Scottish way?”

Evans snorted. “These boys? They come here to put an end to physical labor, digging included.”

But Ballard would not be dissuaded. “Edinburgh as recently as the twenties required each student to procure his own cadaver—it was viewed as a sort of rite of passage. Each man brought his own
Gray's
and his own body to the course.”

“And you, in Boston? Did you?”

“I would have, had it been required.”

“Our boys would revolt at the idea.”

“What about a Negro?” Winston said in his quiet voice. “I mention it because we seem to be at an impasse on the issue of the labor of the thing. I too doubt the boys would find the task agreeable, nor can I imagine any of ourselves doing the work. But a boy procured for the purpose —”

Evans laughed. “Bully for you, Winston! A nigger body snatcher! An African sack-'em-up man!”

“I want no part of my own remuneration sacrificed to buy a slave,” Ballard said. “Entirely too much expense.”

“Expensive, no doubt,” Winston said, “but also a permanent solution. Our present trouble would be resolved in perpetuity.”

“A boy fit to do the work of cadaver procurement could cost a thousand dollars.”

“True,” Johnston said, and the others turned to look at him. “Goats are cheaper. But we also lost half of our student body this morning. Their tuition money followed them. I think Winston's proposal is valid. These are desperate times, and may require desperate measures.”

“So we will recruit again,” Stanton said, shaking his head. “No one has been across the river in a year or more, nor to the coast. Simply recruit as we have done, I say, and the cost-to-profit ratio will remain in our favor.”

“You know well that Chapman's running a school in Charleston that offers the degree in six months,” Evans said. “We cannot compete with him. And Georgia . . .” He trailed off, as though Georgia were beyond explanation. “Perhaps this cuffy could also serve as a kind of manservant, or as janitor for the school. Would that not improve your ratio?”

“It might. A butler for functions would enhance our profile in the community.”

“I saw a notice yesterday of an estate auction near Camden,” Winston said. “Rock Meade Plantation, a total loss after the fire. There will be upwards of two hundred slaves on the block.”

Johnston cleared his throat. “Colleagues, if we move to proceed on this proposal, no vulgar display at auction will be necessary. I had a wire not an hour ago from All Saints Parish, Windsor Plantation. An old friend of mine with whom some of you have acquaintance, Robert Drake, has lately had a rough encounter with a fox trap and requests my attentions immediately. He owns four or five hundred hands and may be able to spare a boy for a reasonable amount.”

Stanton laughed and twisted his fingers into his beard. “Ah, Johnston,” he said, “you are always a step or two ahead of the game. What dealings do you have in mind at Windsor?”

“Drake's telegraph mentioned gangrene. He may find himself increasingly amenable to a fair transaction.”

“At Camden they will be selling some by the pound,” Winston said worriedly. “The notice said as much.”

“If the faculty will vote their trust in me, I will bring back someone ideal for the job, whether priced by the pound or in a round figure. We yet have some credit remaining with the Columbia Bank.”

Stanton relit his pipe, smoke clouding his face. “All right, then, damn it. I had my heart set on a new barouche for the springtime, but I suppose it can wait another year. I stand with Johnston and move to vote. Any further discussion, gentlemen?”

A second motion was made for a vote, and Johnston emerged victorious. He would leave for Windsor in the morning in the school's two-horse phaeton, to see what could be done about bringing back in it a school slave.

T
HE SANDY ROAD
wound through the outskirts of All Saints Parish under cypress and live oak that hung low enough to form a cavern of branches over the white lane. The sun, so fierce elsewhere, was here subdued, filtered through the millions of dense small leaves so that the road at midmorning seemed steeped in twilight. Crickets chirred in the shadows, a soft counterpoint to the hissing of the wagon wheels in the sand and the muted plod of the horses' hooves out front of the phaeton.

On the bench, Johnston slept. In one hand he held a volume of Cicero, a finger marking the place where he had acceded to sleep. He held the reins loosely in the other. His head nodded in time with the bobbing of the horses' manes. Like any good country doctor, he could ride for an hour or two at a stretch like this, letting the pair of animals yoked in front carry him to whatever house call awaited at whatever distant hamlet and back again. And like most of those country doctors, he had known the bemused dislocation of waking before a strange tavern or commissary, the sonorous motion of wheels replaced by the sound of his mares lapping at the trough out front, only to find that he had a mile—or two or three—to retrace back to some crossroads where his equine pilots had taken the wrong fork in the road. But for now he slept in the soft doze of the low-country afternoon.