Cate Campbell (9 page)

He stayed in the hut behind the gray house. He kept going to the Baptist school, because he had promised his mother on her deathbed. He spent his evenings begging odd jobs, or just begging. One or two eating places, now owned by free Negroes, fed him their leftovers. When the school closed, the Freedmen’s Bureau helped Abraham find work on an indigo plantation.

Not until he arrived at it did Blake realize it was old Franklin Blake’s place. The master was still there, stooped and white-haired, resentful now of the Negroes who worked for him. When he learned Abraham’s name, the boy became a special target.

Franklin Blake often withheld Abraham’s pay on the basis of some complaint. He gave the boy the worst jobs, the dirtiest jobs, and he criticized everything he did. No one intervened when the old man took his cane, Carolina pine with a marble lion’s head on its top, to Abraham’s back. Abraham tried getting help from the Freedmen’s Bureau, but it was a loose organization, and there was no one to counsel him. He grew into a lanky, bone-thin young man, solitary and silent.

He went on working for Franklin Blake because he didn’t know what else to do. As the old man weakened, his temper grew less and less stable. What was left of his family had dispersed, leaving him alone to descend into despair and madness. He spent his nights drinking. His cook and housekeeper locked themselves in their rooms at night to avoid his rages. One clear, star-filled night, he came looking for someone on whom to vent his ire, and he found eighteen-year-old Abraham and Old Billy, a middle-aged former slave, stirring the work vats. Abraham wore a bandanna around his face against the stench of the indigo.

Franklin thundered at them, “Whatcha all think you’re doin’? There’s too much lime in that vat!”

Old Billy knew Franklin Blake’s ways. He dropped his paddle without a word, and fled into the darkness. The paddle spun once in the noisome brew, and started to sink. Abraham tried to catch it with his own, but it slipped away, disappearing below the surface. Franklin strode toward him, shouting, “Now see what y’all done! Now see! Ya Goddamn nigras can’t do anything right without an overseer, and I can’t be ever-place at once!”

Abraham lodged his paddle in a holder, so it wouldn’t join the other one at the bottom of the vat. He turned slowly to face Franklin, hoping the old man would calm down. “Suh, we wasn’t the ones measured the lime.” He ducked his head, but kept an eye on the lion’s head cane in Franklin’s right hand.

Franklin was right in front of him now, his left hand like a blue-veined claw on the edge of the vat, his right hand brandishing the cane above Abraham’s head. “Fish it out! Fish it out!” the old man shrieked in a voice as high and thin as an old woman’s. He snatched the bandanna from Abraham’s face, scratching his cheek with his ragged nails, washing him in bourbon-laced breath.

Abraham reached for his paddle to comply, but Franklin gave him no chance. His arm trembled with rage as he lifted the cane, ready to bring it down on Abraham’s head.

There was nothing new in the scene. Abraham had lost count of the times Franklin Blake had struck him, or whipped him, or shoved him to the ground in a fit of temper.

But Abraham was eighteen now. He wasn’t a boy anymore. He was a man, a hungry, friendless man. He was a head taller than Franklin, and forty years younger.

He seized the cane with his left hand, stopping its downward trajectory. Franklin struggled to take it back, cursing and spitting. He staggered, and his face purpled as he gripped the cane with both hands and pulled.

With a nearly casual tug, Abraham yanked the cane from the older man’s hands. He didn’t threaten Franklin, didn’t try to hit back or push him with it. He only held it high above his head, out of Franklin’s reach. Franklin choked, “Goddamn it, boy, give—” but he never finished the sentence. His eyes bulged, and his mouth opened and closed spasmodically, like a gasping fish.

Abraham staggered back in horror as Franklin reeled and fell. The old man collapsed on his back, sightless eyes staring upward. The boy didn’t need to touch him to know he was dead. He stood over him, shocked into stillness, the cane still in his hands, his own mouth hanging open.

When he looked up, dry mouthed and stunned, he found Old Billy standing in the door of the shed. Two men were with him, white men. Old Billy had gone to the next farm for help.

No one cared that Abraham swore he hadn’t touched Franklin Blake. No one wanted to hear how many times that cane had bruised his back and shoulders, had brought bumps to his skull and contusions to his wrists. The old plantation owner was dead, and though everyone knew it was his own mean nature that killed him, it looked better to have someone to blame. They blamed Abraham.

 

Blake sighed, and pushed aside his empty coffee cup. It did no good to think about the old times, the bad times. He should know better. He got up, straightening carefully around the twinge in his back.

When he looked up, he found Hattie watching him. She gestured with her buttery spoon. “Ain’t no use havin’ a doctor in the house if you won’t let her help you.”

“I don’t like to trouble Dr. Margot.”

“That girl loves you, Blake,” Hattie said, turning back to her counter to pour sugar into the bowl. “She’d swear it ain’t no trouble.”

“I know.” He crossed the kitchen to the little porch that served as a back entrance. He kicked off his house shoes, and put on a pair of work boots. He pulled on a worn canvas coat. “I’ll be in the garage, Hattie.”

“Got your gloves?” she called from the kitchen.

He smiled to himself. Hattie had the instincts of a mother goose, and no chick was too old or too big to be sheltered under her wing. She was a bad cook, as Blake and the whole family knew, but she was a good woman. “I’ve got them, Hattie. Thank you.”

Hattie had scolded him, in the early years, for changing his accent. She said he was being uppity. Pretending to be something he was not. Blake never explained to her the real reason he shed his Southern drawl and prison slang. He had one, though, a good one. He spent a great deal of time with the Benedict children, Dick and Margot and Preston. He didn’t want the children—only in the privacy of his own thoughts did he call them
his
children—to speak like slaves, or like inmates of the Chatham County Convict Camp. He wanted them to speak like their parents, in neutral Pacific Northwest accents.

He pushed through the swinging screen door and walked outside with a little rush of satisfaction at his place in life. A man never forgot, he supposed, what it was like to lose his freedom. Six years in Chatham County Convict Camp had taught him to appreciate going in and out of doors at will.

They had also taught him how to use the lion-headed cane to defend himself. He had managed to keep the cane by hiding it in his trouser leg, and it was the only stroke of fortune he was to experience for some years. The camp was a brutal place where only the toughest and meanest survived. Abraham had gone in as a young man, still tender with hope. He came out a hardened warrior who knew how to fight for his life. He was tall and strong and tough. He killed twice during his years in prison, without pleasure, but also without regret. It had been necessary.

Released at last from Chatham County, aided by a kindly lawyer, Abraham needed work. There were plenty who wouldn’t even interview an ex-convict, but Dickson Benedict had looked at his record, asked one or two questions, and never mentioned it again. He also never asked about the lion-headed cane Abraham carried along with his cardboard valise.

Abraham cherished a deep hope, when Mr. Benedict hired him, that he would have no need ever again to fight for his life, but he kept the cane just the same. It was part of his past. He had held it through his years in the camp, and he carried it with him to Seattle, never letting it out of his sight on the long train ride, when he slept in a baggage car with other black men moving north. The cane was a symbol and a reminder of who and what he was.

As he collected bleach and a scrub brush and bucket from the storage closet in the garage, Blake remembered those first weeks in his apartment over the garage of Benedict Hall, weeks in which he would wake in the middle of the night, sweating, shaking with anxiety, only to remember that the real nightmare was over. No more work gangs, lice-ridden cells, meals of rice and bad meat, prison bosses wielding whips from horseback. No more fellow convicts sneaking up on him to steal what little he had, food or clothes or the cane he kept hidden under his mattress.

He was free. And he was grateful to his very soul for Mr. Benedict’s trust.

If a man committed himself to a life of service, he thought, he might as well be the best servant he could. His life may not have fulfilled his mother’s hopes, but it was a good life, and the affection of the Benedict children—two of them, in any case—had been an unexpected grace. A blessing for which he was humbly thankful. He was happy enough. Too happy to let a nasty-mouthed Brit ruin his day.

He poured bleach on the grease spot on the cement, and began to scrub.

Margot found Sister Therese drowsing in her whitewashed iron bed, with another of the Holy Names sisters perched on a stool beside her. The visitor’s black robes pooled around her on the tiled floor, and the white of her wimple gleamed under the bare electric light of the ward. The patient, bereft of her habit, wore a white scarf wrapped around her head that made her look round eyed and vulnerable, like an infant. She roused to give Margot a wan smile. “Dr. Benedict,” she said faintly. “You’re so kind to come and see me every day.”

“Good morning, Sister Therese.” Margot set her bag down at the end of the bed, and nodded to the other nun. She cast a quick look over the ward. There were eight beds, but only half were occupied. The radiator clanked quietly to one side, but otherwise the room was quiet. She bent over her patient, and folded back the bleached chenille coverlet. “How do you feel? Any pain?”

“Oh, no, no pain.”

The other nun scowled. “She was in pain. They gave her an injection, but it made her awful sleepy.”

Margot nodded. “It was scopolamine. Being sleepy is fine. Rest is what she needs now.” She loosened the bandage over the surgical site, and pulled it away to reveal a nicely healing incision, the edges well matched, the skin pink and cool. “Did the injection help?”

“Oh, yes.”

Margot pressed lightly with her fingers, finding the belly soft to the touch.

“Dr. Whitely did such a good job, didn’t he?” Sister Therese said. She craned her neck a little to see the incision. “Such neat stitches.”

Margot smoothed the bandage back over the incision. “Actually, these stitches are mine. But yes, your surgeon did a good job.”

“Your stitches?” the visitor said suspiciously. “We understood the doctor would do the operation.”

“Sister!” Sister Therese hissed. “Dr. Benedict
is
a doctor.”

“Well, I know, but—”

“Sister!” the patient said again. Drops of anxious perspiration appeared on her forehead.

“Never mind, Sister Therese.” Margot replaced the chenille blanket over her patient, and took her wrist to feel the steadiness of her pulse. “Your incision looks good. I’ll take these stitches out tomorrow, and as long as your appetite is good and you have no problems with your bowels, you can go home next week.”

Sister Therese caught Margot’s hand in her own small ones, and held it. “I felt so much braver knowing you were there with me, Dr. Benedict. God bless you.”

Margot’s heart gave a little leap of pleasure. It was for moments like this she had wanted to be a physician. Even if Sister Therese had no idea how close she had come to disaster, it gave Margot a rush of satisfaction to feel the pressure of those cool little hands, to see the spark of life shining in her patient’s eyes. She gently released herself, and straightened, smiling down at the little nun. “If you have any more pain, tell Matron to call me.”

“I will. And I’ll pray for you.”

Margot paused in the act of picking up her bag from the foot of the bed. “Thank you, Sister Therese. I appreciate that.”

As she left the ward to go upstairs to see another patient, she wondered if Whitely had bothered to see Sister Therese postoperatively. She doubted it. She had heard him boast more than once that a surgeon should avoid close involvement with his patients. In this case, Margot was more than happy to have him keep his distance.

She had just put her hand on the latch of the door to the children’s ward when someone called her name. “Dr. Benedict! Wait a moment.”

Margot dropped her hand, and turned. “Good morning, Matron.”

“Good morning, Doctor.” The surgical matron for Seattle General was an old-fashioned nurse with strict ideas about comportment of both nurses and physicians. She still wore the voluminous apron and long skirts of an earlier day. Her gray hair was rigidly controlled in a tight chignon beneath her starched cap. The student nurses in her charge trembled at the sound of her step coming through the wards, and even a doctor or two had been known to duck into a closet or stairwell to avoid being collared by the stiff-necked Nurse Cardwell.

Margot herself, during her internship, had received a sound scolding from Matron for having dropped a surgical glove outside the operating theater and failed to pick it up and properly dispose of it. Nurse Cardwell’s steely eye still caused a quiver in her belly. “Is there a problem?” Margot asked, striving for a confident tone, but fearing that her voice quivered, too.

Alice Cardwell, lips pursed, rustled toward her, carrying a sheaf of papers. Margot couldn’t recall ever seeing the nurse without something in her hands—instruments, files, blankets, an emesis basin. The pockets of her apron bulged with cotton, a stethoscope, a pair of bandage scissors. She reached Margot, and looked up into her face with a grim expression. “A warning, Doctor.”

“A—a warning?” Margot hated feeling as if she were a student again, struggling to satisfy patients and supervising physicians and senior nurses who knew far more than she did. She recalled Nurse Cardwell’s skeptical tone when she’d addressed Margot as “Doctor” for the first time.

She folded her arms, and stiffened her own neck, reminding herself she was a fully qualified physician with her own practice. She really shouldn’t be cowed by a nurse, no matter how competent.

The older woman took her arm, and pulled her a step or two away from the door. Her fingers were strong and warm. “I wasn’t in the operating theater the other night,” she said. “But I heard about it from my nurses.”

“Sister Therese’s appendectomy,” Margot said.

“That’s the one.”

“And what’s the trouble, Matron?”

Nurse Cardwell’s eyes were like flint. “Dr. Whitely was impaired during surgery, I’m told. Your patient could have been seriously harmed.”

“She could indeed. It was a very good thing I was present.”

“Yes. But that’s not good enough, Dr. Benedict. You should have filed a complaint with the board of directors.”

Margot’s heart sank like a stone settling to a riverbed. “Oh, Matron.” She sighed, and her neck bent as she rubbed her forehead with her fingers. “I didn’t think it would do any good. And the directors would be furious with me.”

Nurse Cardwell raised one gray eyebrow. “This isn’t about you, Dr. Benedict. This is about your patient.”

Margot dropped her hand, turning the palm up in a gesture of conciliation. “You’re right, of course. I know that. The board wouldn’t listen to me, though, Matron. And they would very likely revoke my hospital privileges.”

“It’s not the first time Dr. Whitely has come into my operating theater under the influence.” Margot’s lips twitched at the words “my theater,” but she pressed them together. “You were able to protect your patient this time, Doctor, but what if you or some other physician isn’t able to do that next time?” Cardwell dropped her hand from Margot’s arm, and riffled the files she held with an impatient finger.

“Why has no one else complained, Matron?”

Cardwell sniffed, and looked away. “Like you, they’re afraid of Dr. Whitely’s influence with the board.”

Margot said, an edge creeping into her voice, “So, Matron. You’re saying that I—the newest physician on staff, and a woman to boot—should be the one to take the plunge?”

Cardwell brought her eyes back to Margot’s, and Margot thought she detected a glimmer of sympathy in them. “Well, Doctor. Sister Therese is your patient. From what I’m told, Dr. Whitely very nearly killed her.”

“I won’t argue with you about that. But I will have other patients, and they will also need surgeons. I tried to choose a prudent course.”

She received a brief nod. “I take your point,” Cardwell said. “But I hope I can count on you—if someone else lodges a complaint—to support me if I ask for censure for Dr. Whitely.”

Margot expelled her breath. “Yes, Matron. I will. Although I won’t like having to explain why I didn’t complain myself.”

“No.” Nurse Cardwell ordered her files, and tucked them under her arm. “No, my nurse said precisely the same thing.” She smoothed her already-sleek hair. “I do wonder, Dr. Benedict, if we women shouldn’t try to help one another more.”

Margot couldn’t help a short, rather bitter laugh. “Matron! You were harder on me than any of the other interns. I assumed that was
because
I’m a woman!”

Nurse Cardwell pursed her lips before she said, “Exactly so. You and the other women physicians carry the future of all of us on your shoulders.” She stepped back, and nodded toward the door to the children’s ward. “Well, Doctor. I believe you have a patient to see. Thank you for speaking with me, and good morning.” She turned, her back straight as a ramrod, and swished efficiently down the corridor, leaving Margot to go into the children’s ward in a fog of bemusement.

Once she finished her rounds, she walked down Madison to Post Street. It was raining, or rather it was misting, the sort of falling damp that left hair and eyelashes coated with moisture, but wasn’t really heavy enough for her to unfurl her umbrella. She unlocked the door to her office, and stood just inside, brushing the fine wet film from the fox collar of her coat. Next time she had a surgical case, she promised herself, she would insist on a different surgeon. But Alice Cardwell had given her something to think about.

 

The six stories of the Times Square Building soared above Fifth Avenue, a cliff of rose-buff terra-cotta dominating the urban plaza beneath. Preston passed the typographers working at long lines of linotype machines, and climbed the stairs to the newsroom. The carts called turtles rattled down the aisles, and the pneumatic tube system hissed and clicked above his head. People shouted at one another across the room or over the telephone. Preston wound his way through the bustle to his desk, freshly outfitted with a telephone and a typewriter and a fresh new blotter.

Blethen had given him
carte blanche,
more or less, to write his column the way he wanted to, and he had a year’s trial to build his readership. He had decided to call it “Seattle Razz.” It would be full of gossip, society news, theater reviews, all reported in a jaunty and slightly snide tone. He meant it to be breezy and gay, very modern.

He liked the way it looked, printed in blue ink on ivory card stock. It would be his entrée to every society event in the city. It would give him access to the best parties, the most exclusive homes, and the prettiest women. Everyone would want to speak with him, to be mentioned in his column, to be singled out. He would be sardonic, like Dorothy Parker in
Vanity Fair
. He would make fun of some people, and flatter others when it suited him. “Seattle Razz” would be the place everyone looked first to know what was in and what was not. The whole idea was brilliant.

He spent the morning looking up telephone numbers and making a list of contacts. At lunchtime, he took his umbrella from beneath his desk, and strolled through a light rain to his father’s office in the Smith Tower. He nodded to one or two men he recognized in the onyx-paneled lobby, then rode up to the eighteenth floor in the steel-cage elevator. As he stepped out, nodding his thanks to the operator, he wondered why his father couldn’t have taken offices in the tower itself. Surely those were the spaces with the most cachet. But Dickson Benedict was never one for ostentation. Except for the sprawling Edwardian mansion he had built in the first flush of his success, he liked to live quietly.

Preston let himself into the office, and smiled at the receptionist in her fashionable drop-waist dress. “Hullo, Eleanor,” he said. “Is the old man in?”

Eleanor gave him a cool upward glance, and pushed herself away from the Underwood typewriter. “I’ll see if he’s free,” she said, her voice and face glacial.

Ah, Preston thought. A challenge.

“I would appreciate it,” he said. “Lovely dress you’re wearing, by the way. You couldn’t have bought that in Seattle.”

Her eyes flicked down over her dress as if she had forgotten what she was wearing. “I do all my shopping here, as it happens, Mr. Benedict. Frederick & Nelson has an excellent businesswoman’s department.”

He opened his mouth to compliment her on her taste, but she was already gone, her heels clicking across the marble lobby. As the door shut behind her, he thought, Just wait, sweetheart. Wait until you have a chance to be mentioned in “Seattle Razz.” You’ll talk to me then.

Eleanor was back a moment later. “Mr. Benedict can see you,” she said. “This way, please.” She turned and walked back toward his father’s office, and Preston followed. He could have found his own way across the lobby, of course, but it was nice walking behind her, admiring the sway of her hips in the thin wool crepe.

The chill of his reception evaporated when he stepped into his father’s domain. Dickson rose and came around his desk, smiling, his hand out. “Preston, good to see you, son. How’s your first day?”

“Good, good,” Preston said. He shook hands with his father, and sat down in the wide leather chair opposite him. Dickson took his chair behind the desk, and pushed a stack of papers to one side. Preston leaned forward, and placed one of his new cards in the cleared space. “Here’s what I’ll be doing, Father. A pulse-of-the-city column. News, gossip, society reports.”

Dickson picked up the card and read it. “ ‘Seattle Razz’? I don’t think I know what that means, son.”

“It’s slang,” Preston said, with a breezy wave. “You know, jazzy, up-to-date. That’s the sort of column it will be.” He tried to hold his smile as he watched his father’s brow furrow. He couldn’t help seeing that Dickson was slow to look up at him, that he laid the card down with a little snick of the corner, as if he didn’t mean to pick it up again.