To Sail Beyond the Sunset (10 page)

I couldn’t believe it.

I asked, “Father, what do I do now?” I expected him to tell me to forget it, as he had been dubious as to the usefulness of these letters. I awaited his response with anticipated relief.

“Send each of them the tough one and mark it, ‘Second Notice.’”

“You think that will do it, sir?”

“No. But it will do some good. You’ll see.”

Father was right. That second mailing brought in no money. It fetched a number of highly indignant replies, some of them scurrilous. Father had me file each with its appropriate case record, but make no reply.

Most of those seventy patients never showed up again. This was the good result Father expected. He was cheerful about it. “Maureen, it’s a standoff; they don’t pay me and I don’t do them much good. Iodine, calomel, and Aspirin—that’s about all we have today that isn’t a sugar pill. The only times I’m certain of results are when I deliver a baby or set a bone or cut off a leg.

“But, damn it all, I’m doing the best I know how. I do try. If a man gets angry at me simply because I ask him to pay for my services…well, I see no reason why I should get out of a warm bed to physic him.”

Eighteen ninety-seven was the year that the Katy ran a line not a mile from our town square, so the council extended the city limits and that put Thebes on the railroad. That brought the telegraph to Thebes, too, which enabled the
Lyle County Leader
to bring the news to us direct from Chicago. But still only once a week; the
Kansas City Star
by mail was usually quicker. The Bell telephone reached us, too, although at first only from nine to nine and never on Sunday mornings, because the switchboard was in the Widow Loomis’s parlor and service stopped when she was not there.

The
Leader
published a glowing editorial: “Modern Times.” Father frowned. “They point out that it will soon be possible, as more people subscribe, to call for a doctor in the middle of the night. Yes, yes, surely. Today I make night calls because somebody is in such trouble that some member of the patient’s family has hitched up in the middle of the night and driven here to ask me to come.

“But what happens when he can rout me out of bed just by cranking a little crank? Will it be for a dying child? No, Maureen, it will be for a hangnail. Mark my words; the telephone signals the end of the house call. Not today, not tomorrow, but soon. They will ride a willing horse to death…and you will see the day when medical doctors will refuse to make house calls.”

At New Year’s, I told Father that I had made up my mind: I wanted him to put my name in to the Howard Foundation.

Before the end of January I received the first of the young men on my list.

By the end of March I had received all seven of them. In three cases I did go so far as to avail myself of the privilege of the sofa…although I used the couch in Father’s office, and locked the door.

Wet firecrackers.

Decent enough young men, those three, but…to marry? No.

Maureen felt glum about the whole matter.

But on Saturday the second of April Father received a letter from Rolla, Missouri:

“My dear Doctor:

“Permit me to introduce myself. I am a son of Mr. and Mrs. John Adams Smith of Cincinnati, Ohio, where my father is a tool and die maker. I am a senior at the School of Mines of the University of Missouri at Rolla, Missouri. I was given your name and address by Judge Orville Sperling, of Toledo, Ohio, Executive Secretary of the Howard Foundation. Judge Sperling tells me that he has written to you about me.

“If I may do so, I will call on you and Mrs. Johnson on Sunday afternoon the seventeenth of April. Then, if you permit, I ask to be presented to your daughter Miss Maureen Johnson for the purpose of offering myself as a possible suitor for her hand in marriage.

“I welcome any investigation you care to make of me and I will answer fully and frankly any questions you put to me.

“I look forward to your reply.

“I remain, sir, “Faithfully your servant, “Brian Smith”

Father said, “See, my dear daughter? Your knight comes riding.”

“Probably has two heads. Father, it’s no good. I shall die an old maid, at the age of ninety-seven.”

“Not a fussy old maid, I trust. What shall I tell Mr. Smith?”

“Oh, tell him Yes. Tell him I’m drooling with eagerness.”

“Maureen.”

“Yes, Father. I’m too young to be cynical, I know.
Quel dommage
. I will straighten up and give Mr. Brian Smith my best smile and approach the meeting with cheerful optimism. But I have grown a bit jaundiced. That last orangutan—”

(That ape had tried to rape me, right on Mother’s sofa, just as soon as Mother and Father went upstairs. He then left abruptly, clutching his crotch. My study of anatomy had paid off.)

“I’ll tell him that we will welcome him. Sunday the seventeenth. That’s two weeks from tomorrow.”

I greeted Sunday the seventeenth with little enthusiasm. But I did stay home from church and prepared a picnic lunch, and grabbed the chance for an extra bath. Mr. Smith turned out to be presentable and well spoken, if not especially inspiring. Father grilled him a bit and Mother offered him coffee; about two we got away—Daisy and a family buggy, with his livery stable nag left in our barn.

Three hours later I was certain that I was in love.

Brian made a date to come back on the first of May. He had final examinations to get out of the way in the meantime.

One week later, Sunday the twenty-fourth of April, 1898, Spain declared war on the United States.

Exit from Eden

This is not a bad jail, as jails go. I was in a much worse one, in Texas, seventy-odd years back on my personal time line. In that one the cockroaches slugged it out with each other for a thin chance of finding a few crumbs on the floor, there was no hot water at any time, and the screws were all cousins of the sheriff. Bad as that joint was, wetbacks used to sneak across the Rio and break a window or two in order to get themselves locked up, so they could fatten up for the winter. That says something about Mexican jails that I don’t care to investigate.

Pixel comes to see me almost every day. The guards can’t figure out how he does it. They all like him and he has given several of them his conditional approval. They fetch tidbits in to him; he deigns to eat some of their tribute.

The warden heard about Pixel’s Houdini talents, came to my cell, happened to show up when Pixel was making a call on me, tried to pet him and got nipped for his presumption—not hard enough to break the skin, but the message was clear.

The warden told me (ordered me) to be sure to let him know ahead of time when Pixel went in or out; he wanted to see how Pixel managed to sneak past and not set off alarms. I told him that no mortal man or woman could predict what a cat would do next, so don’t hold your breath, buster. (Guards and trusties are okay, in their place, but a warden is not my social equal. Apparently Pixel realizes this.)

Dr. Ridpath has been in a couple of times, to urge me to plead guilty and throw myself on the mercy of the court. He says that I would be certain to get no worse than a suspended sentence, if I convinced the tribunal that I was truly contrite.

I told him that I was not guilty and would rather be a
cause célèbre
and sell my memoirs for an outrageous sum.

He told me that I was apparently unaware that the College of Bishops had passed a law years back under which any profits arising out of a case of sacrilege went to the Church, after the fee for disposing of the body was paid. “Look, Maureen, I’m your friend, although you don’t seem to know it. But there is nothing I or anyone can do for you if you won’t cooperate.”

I thanked him and told him that I was sorry that he was disappointed in me. He said to think it over. He didn’t kiss me when he left, so I conclude that he really is vexed with me.

Dagmar has been in almost daily. She doesn’t try to coerce me into confessing, but what she did do last time had more effect on me than Dr. Eric’s reasonableness: She smuggled in a Last Friend. “If you are going to be stubborn about confessing, this will help. Just break off the tip and inject it anywhere. Once it takes hold—five minutes or less—even a slow fire won’t hurt…or not much. But for Santa Carolita’s sake, ducks, don’t let anyone find it!”

I’ll try not to.

I would not be dictating this if I were not in jail. I don’t necessarily have publication in mind, but the discipline of sorting it all out may show me where I went wrong…and that may show me how to straighten out the mess and go right.

▣

The Battle of New Orleans was fought two weeks after the War of 1812 was over. Poor communications—But in 1898 the Atlantic Cable was in use. The news of Spain’s declaration of war went from Madrid to London to New York to Chicago to Kansas City to Thebes almost with the speed of light—only the delays of retransmission. Thebes is about eight hours west of Madrid, so the Johnson family was in church when the dreadful news arrived.

The Reverend Clarence Timberly, our pastor at Cyrus Vance Parker Memorial Methodist Episcopal Church, was preaching and had just finished fourthly and was digging into fifthly when someone started ringing the big bell in the county courthouse cupola.

Brother Timberly stopped preaching. “Let us suspend services for a few moments while the Osage Volunteers and members of the bucket brigades withdraw.”

Ten or a dozen of the younger men got up and left. Father picked up his bag and followed them. Being a doctor Father did not serve on the volunteer fire team but, being a doctor, he usually did go to fires if not actively engaged in treating a patient when the bell rang.

As soon as Father closed the church door behind him our preacher got back to work on “fifthly”—what it was I don’t know; during sermons I always tried to look alert and attentive, but I rarely listened.

On down Ford Street someone was shouting; he could be heard right through Brother Timberly’s loud voice. Those shouts came closer.

Presently Father came back into the church. Instead of returning to his pew he walked up to the chancel rail and handed a sheet of newspaper to our pastor.

I should interject that the
Lyle County Leader
was a four-page single sheet, printed on what was then called “boiler plate”—newsprint printed on one side with international and national and state news, and shipped that way to small country papers, which would then fill the inside pages with local news and local advertising. The
Lyle County Leader
bought “boiler plate” from the
Kansas City Star
with the
Leader
’s own masthead printed on it.

The sheet Father handed to Brother Timberly was of that sort, with the same local stuff inside as had been in the
Leader
’s weekly edition dated Thursday, April twenty-first, 1898, except that the upper half of page two had been reset in large type with one short news story:

SPAIN DECLARES WAR
!!!

By wire from the
New York Journal
April 24 Madrid—Today our Ambassador was summoned to the office of the Premier and was handed his passport and a curt note stating that the “crimes” of the United States against His Most Catholic Majesty have forced His Majesty’s government to recognize that a state of war exists between the Kingdom of Spain and…

Reverend Timberly read that one new story aloud from the pulpit, put the paper down, looked solemnly at us, took out his handkerchief and wiped his brow, then blew his nose. He said hoarsely, “Let us pray.”

Father stood up, the rest of the congregation followed. Brother Timberly asked Lord God Jehovah to lead us in this time of peril. He asked Divine guidance for President McKinley. He asked the Lord’s help for all our brave men on land and sea who now must fight for the preservation of this sacred, God-given land. He asked mercy for the souls of those who would fall in battle, and consolation and help in drying the tears of widows and orphans and of the fathers and mothers of our young heroes destined to die in battle. He asked that right prevail for a speedy end to this conflict. He asked for help for our friends and neighbors, the unfortunate people of Cuba, oppressed for so long by the iron heel of the king of Spain. And more, about twenty minutes of it.

Father had long since cured me of any belief in the Apostles’ Creed. In its place I held a deep suspicion, planted by Professor Huxley and nurtured by Father, that no such person as Jesus of Nazareth had ever lived.

As for Brother Timberly, I regarded him as two yards of noise, with his cracks filled with unction. Like many preachers in the Bible Belt, he was a farm boy with (I strongly suspected) a distaste for real work.

I did not and do not believe in a God up there in the sky listening to Brother Timberly’s words.

Yet I found myself saying “Amen!” to his every word, while tears streamed down my cheeks.

At this point I must drag out my soap box.

In the twentieth century Gregorian, in the United States of America, something called “revisionist history” became popular among “intellectuals.” Revisionism appears to have been based on the notion that the living actors present on the spot never understood what they were doing or why, or how they were being manipulated, being mere puppets in the hands of unseen evil forces.

This may be true. I don’t know.

But why are the people of the United States and their government always the villains in the eyes of the revisionists? Why can’t our enemies—such as the king of Spain, and the kaiser, and Hitler, and Geronimo, and Villa, and Sandino, and Mao Tse-tung, and Jefferson Davis—why can’t these each take a turn in the pillory? Why is it always our turn?

I am well aware that the revisionists maintain that William Randolph Hearst created the Spanish-American War to increase the circulation of his newspapers. I know, too, that various scholars and experts later asserted that the USS
Maine
, at dock in Havana harbor, was blown up (with loss of 226 American lives) by faceless villains whose purpose was to make Spain look bad and thereby to prepare the American people to accept a declaration of war against Spain.