“Not again, please,” George squeaked, his voice hoarse and cracking. He sat in the chair next to the nightstand with his back to the wall. Along his right, set atop the nightstand, was a tin cup of water. He struggled to swallow his own spit, even wincing a little as he did. A drink would soothe, but it wasn’t his cup. In fact, he had brought it for Miss Kate as a part of her breakfast nearly four hours ago. The square of sunlight coming in from the high, dirty window had shifted from her waist all the way to the edge of the wall. He had watched it drift as he had sung about Old Coyote till his throat ached.
“Take a drink,” Kate said. She sat up in bed, sandwiching pillows between her back and the wall. Her left side faced George who sat on the other side of the nightstand. She watched as he drank, as he held the tin cup up and tilted it incrementally, slowly, so that the water could flow gently. Her right arm, the area of amputation, was no longer swollen. It had taken another full week, but finally, her shoulder wasn’t burning or bulbous, and when at last Dr. Boone removed the beehive of bandages, she grinned at first, seeing that it wasn’t purple either, but had returned to normal. But that grin was like a flash in the pan, sizzling into a sneer, and her big nose wrinkled as she looked down at what remained of her right arm.
Why had I even thought that word, ‘normal’? She thought.
It was anything but. It wasn’t even an arm. Three inches of useless skin and bone. The pinched sausage end of a nub. She moved it as George drank, flapping it like a baby bird’s wing.
She huffed. “You finished?”
George swallowed, still holding the tin cup close to his mouth. “I have other chores. There’s a new patient. I’ve been singing all morning.”
“And you don’t know who taught you that song?”
“Miss Kate, please. I’ve answered your questions the best I can already.”
“Just one more time, George.”
The color drained from the Indian boy’s face. A look of misery as the compassionate heart buckled under the burden of charitable duty. He lifted the cup and drank. Slower than before.
“George,” Kate said.
“Why? You know it,” He snapped and went back to the cup.
There came a knock at the door. George put the tin cup down on the nightstand and sprang from the chair as the door creaked open, squeezing his way through the jamb and Dr. Boone. The boy’s footsteps faded as he ran away through the operating room.
Dr. Boone adjusted his glasses. He held a large parcel by the twine that wrapped the brown paper. “Why do you hold that poor boy prisoner, Miss Kate?”
Her big nostrils puffed like the cheeks of a croaking toad. The answer rested right there behind the wall of her teeth, situated on the tip of her tongue, blaring like a siren in her mind, but she kept it all in. It was hers. A gold nugget found in a dry river bed. A gold vein deep in a dark mine that was her secret and hers alone for even the thought of sharing caused her mouth to foam with feverish jealousy. It was all too precious. What she knew now. What she had discovered. And she was afraid of what it might mean. Afraid to tell someone else before she understood the depths of the new knowledge, the reach of her secret. She was pulling on a mysterious cord buried within miasmic sands of her mind and she wanted to know where it led before she told another. Though all her consciousness was consumed by it, she held her peace and kept her secret.
For now, it would only be her that knew about her brother. Her brother that she had burned on the pyre.
But, it wasn’t her own doing, her own digging that unearthed the buried memory. It had been George. She had the notion. The vague feeling, but it was George that coaxed it out of her. With a song of Old Coyote, he tugged the loose thread, pulling and pulling till at last she unraveled and she could see clearly the memory of the pyre, relive the flames and smoke and the soft melody of the song of goodbyes sung by her Hunters. She knew it was her brother that they burned, releasing his soul to be carried by the ever flowing breeze into the Spirit World. Yet, aspects of the memory remained shrouded. And, that’s why she begged the boy to sing the tale of Old Coyote, again and again, hoping that the boy’s song would unravel more of the mystery of her past. However, it didn’t work. For the past week, George came everyday and sang. Hours he’d sing, but there was no new spark to light the dark corridors of her mind. Only the flames of the pyre, consuming her brother.
There on the bed, she turned her gaze from Dr. Boone and looked up at the dirty window. “I assume George is an orphan.”
Dr. Boone stepped into the room. The leather soles of his shoes tapped on the floor. “Yes. We met when he begged me for the bones of the chicken leg I just ate.”
“He told you that he was an orphan?”
“He mentioned his parents. Outcasts of the tribe. His father was killed by a rockslide while hunting. His mother died from grief. That he buried them the old way out in a cave.”
“No siblings.”
“No.”
“His tribe?”
“He didn’t say,” Dr. Boone said. “Why the fascination with George’s history? Why not ask him?”
It was the song that unlocked the memory, she thought. The song that woke the recollection. Not the boy. But, the song’s power was gone. The melody all used up. Squeezed of every last drop. Kate had hoped for other songs and had asked George if he knew any other stories like the one of Old Coyote, but he hadn’t. That was the only one he knew. She had hoped to find out where he had learned it, but that trail, after hearing what Dr. Boone had to say, was a dead end.
He had stepped closer as they had spoken and he stood next to the bed looking down at her. A smile tucked in the bushy frost of his beard. She shifted her eyes to the parcel in his hand.
“Clothes?”
“Yes, yes,” he said, the brown paper crinkling as he passed it into her hands. “I apologize for not providing you with clothes that fit your rustic fancy,” he said.
The dress still lay folded over the back of the chair where George was once sitting. She didn’t want that to be the first thing she put on. Dresses were for show. For display. Like petals of a flower, they are about the beauty of color and form, about grabbing attention and holding a gaze. Kate wanted clothes that she could work in, being laid up so long had got her ancy.
She undid the twine and unwrapped the parcel. “I’ll be able to do chores around here now.” She unfolded the white button up and the brown britches, took a pleasant stock of the long underwear and the socks. “My boots?”
“We still have your old ones. But, chores? What do you mean?”
“To pay off the debt I owe you.”
“There is no debt.”
“I asked you to return the money to Mr. Magnus.”
Dr. Boone adjusted his glasses. “You requested that of me while you were in an overly emotional state. I agreed to it simply to humor you. Surely, you see the ludicrous nature of the request? That you have asked me to refund the entirety of my earnings so that you, who has no money nor means of earning an income, can slowly and incrementally pay off a debt, and not by monetary means I might add, but by the completion of day-to-day chores? A swept floor and streak-free windows don’t buy medical supplies, Miss Kate.”
Kate chewed on her bottom lip. “I did not fancy you a man motivated by money.”
“I am not, Miss Kate. But, we must be practical.”
She began to fold the long underwear, realizing that she had begun as though she still had two arms. She paused there a minute, blinking, a sleeve in her left hand, the rest of the garment gathered in her lap. She tried to hold the neck hole between her chin and chest, then folded the sleeve across, but when she reached for the other sleeve, the sleeve she had folded fell back out of place. Again, she tried to make the effort, now tucking the sleeve under her chin as well, but when she went for the second sleeve, she lifted her chin very slightly to cram that sleeve into place, but all the folded cloth fell into a crumpled mess on her lap.
“May I?” Dr. Boone asked.
Kate didn’t look up, but glared at her lap, as the crumbled garment was taken from her lap like she was an incompetent child and then the nice and neat folded long underwear was placed gently back on her lap. She half expected a cooing, “there you go,” and a gentle pat on her head, which she would have snapped at with gnashing teeth like a feral mutt.
“At least, allow me to work for the clothes,” she said, not raising her head from her lap.
“Your Good Samaritan has struck again,” he said with a sigh.
Slowly, she lifted her head, turning to look up at Dr. Boone. Her brow knotted, her eyes burned like molten iron, while that smile of Dr. Boone’s remained. A little grin in the graying beard.
“It was awfully kind of him, wasn’t it, Miss Kate? Whatever kind of man he was before you arrived under my care seems to be far removed from the charitable figure he is now. Perhaps it was the change of suits? From white to black? From a liar cloaked in light, to an honest man bedecked in sorrows?” He huffed at his own words. “I doubt it. The liar and the honest man wrestle within the same body. For now it is the honest man we see. Tomorrow, it could be the liar.”
“He conned me,” Kate said. “Took my money.”
“And from the paper, I read he saved your life.”
“What life?” She raised her right nub.
Dr. Boone glanced at it, then back at her. “Precisely. What life, Miss Kate? Will it be one of bitterness, of resentment, a brooding cynicism that casts a stormy shadow over all that you behold? Or, will it be one of gratefulness, of thanksgiving, of a hope that somehow things are how they are supposed to be? That maybe the loss of your arm will lead to an exponential gain? Will your life be one that builds up, that encourages, that continues to share that seed of hope? Or will it be one that plucks the seed and lets it wither in the burning gaze of your judgment? Will your life be glad for charity, for kindness when it is shown to you? Or, will you toss it out with the contents of the latrine? What life? That is precisely the question that we all must answer.”
Dr. Boone, noticing his excessive hand motions and that his voice had raised cleared his throat. “I have been cruel to Cornelius, I mean, Mr. Hazeleton.”
“Bart Hazeleton,” Miss Kate sneered. “Another alias.”
“That is between him and God at this point. I can only affect what I have power over and that is my disposition toward him.”
“You two are friends now?”
“No,” he said. “But I am more open to the prospect than when he first arrived. People can change for the better. When they are willing to forget themselves, they can change for the better.”
And with that, Dr. Boone turned and left Kate alone in the little room. She sat on the bed, silent, brooding over the long underwear on her lap. It lay there, perfectly folded along the seams, the sleeves and legs nice and even. A full body garment fit into a fine square of simple precision by deft movements.
She tore the long underwear from her lap, flinging it toward the door. She paused. Her chest heaved and then she yelled, throwing the rest of the clothes of the bed. She slammed her left fist into the bed. Again and again. And then she sat silent. Breathing heavy through her parted lips. She glanced toward the door, praying that Cornelius Magnus, Bart Hazeleton, whatever the Hell he was calling himself, would walk through that door, so that she could fling her rage on him, punching and clawing with her single hand, but the door remained shut. And she was alone in the room.
What life?
Pretentious doctor, she thought. He didn’t lose his livelihood. He wouldn’t be preaching the same nonsense if he had lost an arm.
A stupid question. What life? He thinks I gained something.
She laughed in the little room by herself. It was the mirth of a cynic, however, though her eyes sparkled and a smile dimpled her cheeks, the sparkle was like that of broken glass on the nursery floor and the smile was like that of a hissing ape. The laugh itself didn’t spill or flood a room like a true happy, jovial laugh, but it shot in spurts, popping off like rapid gunfire, as if she was trying to gun down the metaphysical essence of hope left by Dr. Boone.
But then the pyre burned in her mind. A little dot at first, till she actually looked at it and then it consumed all her inner sight.
Outwardly, she gazed at the nub of her right arm. It was that sense of loss of her limb and George’s song that triggered the memory.
Another laugh, yet now it fell in tones of disbelief and not spite, but to prevent the self-reflective thoughts, the reassessment of Dr. Boone’s words to creep across her mind, she got up out of the bed and picked the long underwear up. She still forced the smile, forced the laugh, as if to stave off the surrender to an idea that she had once ridiculed as incoherent, but now was slowly realizing was the underlying principle of reality.
My dead brother, she thought.
Magnus. I mean, Bart Hazeleton.
Mr. Doolin.
The names spun in her head as she began to change clothes. The faces. The pyre. The body in the pyre. The body of a dog.
Still more questions, yet… of course.
Mr. Doolin’s séance.
Kate stood there in the little room, the nightgown half pulled over head, when she remembered Mr. Doolin’s séance. It was an odd sight to say the least, and if Dr. Boone would’ve knocked and entered at that moment, he would’ve stood mouth open at the sight of Kate, the nightgown draped over her head like she was a child pretending to be a ghost, leaping and laughing about the room.
Quickly, she disrobed, but fumbled while pulling on the long underwear. She had to sit down, put one leg in at a time, then stand, pull it up and slip her full arm and nub into the sleeves. A lot of sleeve dangled at the end of the nub. And it was a strange sight, to behold something that would normally be filled, but only to forever remain empty. Deflated. But, that peculiar feeling was dulled by the wonderful realization that she was about to call on Mr. Hazeleton to perform one of Cornelius Magnus’ famous séances.