Race for the Dying
Read Race for the Dying Online
Authors: Steven F Havill
Race for the Dying
A Dr. Thomas Parks Novel
Steven F. Havill
Poisoned Pen Press
Copyright © 2014 by Steven F. Havill
First E-book Edition 2014
ISBN: 9781615954483 ebook
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in, or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise) without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the publisher of this book.
The historical characters and events portrayed in this book are inventions of the author or used fictitiously.
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Contents
For Kathleen
The author gratefully acknowledges the assistance of the following muses, whose arguments and debates filled the room, but who claim no responsibility for how the author made use of their knowledge and guidance:
Dr. George B. Wood (1855)
Dr. R. V. Pierce (1883)
Dr. John B. Roberts (1890)
Dr. Thomas S. K. Morton (1890)
Dr. William Pepper (1895)
The sea reminded Thomas Parks of his father's neglected tea service. Had sunshine polished the waves and swells, they would have gleamed like lively pewter. But sky met Pacific gray on gray like a sheet of lead. Had there been a way to settle dust on the swells, the match with the pewter service would have been perfect.
Thomas grasped the handrail along the slippery deck until his knuckles were white. Mist soaked his face, plastered his dark hair to his forehead, and found openings in his slicker, running under his woolen shirt to puddle behind his broad leather belt.
It wasn't the gentle roll of the steam schooner that made him nervousâit was knowing that the coastline might be no more than a pistol shot off to starboard. He turned and glanced back toward the quarterdeck. The captain stood with another sailor, his pipe belching rhythmic plumes of smoke. A tousle-headed youngster tended the wheel with a serenity best reserved for sunshine, gentle breezes, and unlimited visibility.
At any moment, a great black rock dripping with foam and kelp and seals would rise out of the sea, and they would never turn away in time. Thomas concentrated on the gray depth ahead, waiting for the first shadow, ready to vault free as the ship splintered and crashed under his feet.
The
Alice
churned on without concern, without interruption of the captain's enjoyment of his pipe, without crashing into the rocks. At one point, Thomas heard the lethargic bell of a buoy come and go, but never saw it.
“We'll be docking within the hour,” a voice behind him said, and he turned without releasing his grip on the handrail to see Newell Bassier's pleasant, lined face, water running down the creases and dripping from his gray whiskers. “Thought you might want to fetch your gear,” Bassier added. “We're headed on up the coast, and won't be stopping in Port McKinney long.” Able seaman, mate, bosunâThomas had never understood the hierarchy of the ship's crewâBassier appeared to spend most of his time carving spare belaying pins into elegant figurines.
“I have but the two bags,” Thomas replied. “And they're ready and waiting.”
“Ah. You travel light, then.”
“More is on the way,” Thomas conceded. “Shipped overland. A mountain of things, believe me.”
“Ah,” Bassier said again. “Well, then. About an hour. The fog is lifting quickly enough.”
“Quickly?” Thomas said skeptically, and Bassier laughed.
“This is near a sunny day for these parts,” he said. “You'll get used to it. Look to the east, there,” and he thrust his chin toward the bow. To the east was gray like everywhere else, but now Thomas could see a slender line, a color breaking above the waves.
“Enjoy the hour, Doctor.” Bassier turned. “Shortly you'll be slogging through mud, soaked to the bone, and wishing for a warm bottle.” He seemed to be the only one on board who concerned himself even in passing with the needs of the passengersânot that the three paying fares were high maintenance.
One passenger, a priest whose name Thomas had never learned, kept to himself. But the third passenger, a short, florid man named Efrim Carlisle, had bunked with Thomas, and his bulkhead-rending snores had been a wonder. On several occasions the young physician had rested in the darkness, imagining each of the structures in the man's throat as they vibrated and roared to produce such an odd symphonyâ¦one that never awoke the composer, of course.
An accountant by profession, Carlisle impressed Thomas as an odd duck. To hear him talk, Carlisle dealt with the intricacies of paperwork, but his hands were those of a bricklayer. Stubby fingers, cracked and broken nails, calluses that made his palms dry and hard, he looked no more the part of an office-bound cipher than did the salt-preserved captain of the
Alice
, Robert Kinsman.
As his destination approached, Thomas forced himself to relax. If the crew was not worried, why should he be? He contented himself with watching the constantly changing colors of the water as it broke around the bow. He could not pinpoint the time when they had turned eastward from their northerly route up the Pacific coast. The water told no secrets. From the time they rounded Cape Flattery, leaving the Pacific for the Strait of Juan de Fuca, until the
Alice
docked at Port McKinney, more than a hundred miles would have passed under their hullâ¦and he had seen not a single landmark for reference.
When he awakened before dawn that day, long before Carlisle stirred, he dressed quickly and hurried on deck, hoping for the first sight of the new country under a morning sun. Instead, he had been greeted by the soggy wet wool of the coastal air.
The ship's steam horn vented a note so impossibly long and exquisitely loud that Thomas shut his eyes until the blast died. That symphony was repeated with regularity as they drew closer, although closer to what, Thomas could only guess.
A blink, a glance away, and then his pulse leaped with excitement. The rich line of emerald green, caught by the sun as it finally burned through the fog, outlined the coast perhaps five miles ahead. Thomas could draw no closer to the rail without tumbling overboard, and his eyes ached with the strain. Bit by bit, the coast gained definition. The sun touched his right cheek, and he realized with a disoriented start that the
Alice
was now actually making headway south. The ghosts of other watercraft appeared moored here and there, and a great, curving spit of land hooked out into Admiralty Inlet ahead of them.
Once, the strong aroma of burning wood tinged his nostrils, an odd sensation in the middle of the wet gray strait. The gulls wheeled noisily overhead, sometimes hidden in the fog, sometimes diving down to hang on the air currents just above the waves, tiny bright eyes regarding the ship with interest.
Another buoy appeared dead ahead, and the ship swung hard to starboard, its horn bellowing. The hull kissed the bobbing marker. The gentle throb of the steam engine changed pitch, and Thomas felt the deck shudder as the
Alice
slowed, its bow turning away from the open water. They headed toward a dull, dark little community at the base of the curved spit, passing through a fleet of moored ships of varying tonnage and rigging.
The hodgepodge of wharf pilings thrust black and slimy out of the water, and dockside, Thomas could see half a dozen people, some fishing, some no doubt waiting for the
Alice
. A hundred yards down the shore, a trio of children and two mutts played near the water. One of the boys appeared to be flailing at the others with a strand of kelp. Looking again to the wharf, Thomas tried to make out the imposing figure of Dr. John Haines, who had promised a royal welcome.
The
Alice
shuddered again. Black coal smoke belched from the single stack, lifting and mixing with the gray fog. Whoever pulled the steam whistle cord was diligent, and Thomas flinched each time.
The crew galvanized into action at the last moment as the
Alice
sidled her 102 feet of keel and 260 tons up to the wharf as gently as if she were a tiny skiff. Out of habit, Thomas hauled out his watch and snapped it open: 3:17 p.m. on this Saturday, the twelfth day of September, 1891. He had shaken his father's hand in the doorway of his Leister, Connecticut, home at ten minutes after seven on the morning of August 26.
“Absolutely remarkable,” he said aloud. The enormous size of the continent, studied and annotated on a score of maps in his father's den, had shrunk to thisâeighteen short days, including visiting for two full days with a cousin in St. Louis.
With a final salute from its steam whistle, the
Alice
's gunwale thudded against the bumpers of Jones' Wharf at Port McKinney, Washington. The schooner rode easy in the dark, greasy water, and Thomas Parks strode back along the deck toward his stateroom, pulse pounding with excitement.
Efrim Carlisle greeted him at the door with a hearty handshake. “So we've made it this far, and we haven't drowned off some terrible reef after all,” he announced. He patted his considerable girth. “And the crew tells me we won't be here even long enough for a decent meal.”
“I'm the only one to disembark, I think.” Thomas extended his hand, surprised once again at the power and hardness of Carlisle's grip. “I hope the remainder of your trip is more pleasant, sir. Drier, perhaps.”
“It appears that way,” Carlisle said. They made their way back on deck, and Thomas saw that the
Alice
's bowsprit practically nudged the bay side of a gray-black building, the side facing the wharf open to the weather.
“Charming place, don't you think?” Carlisle asked. “You say your father's to meet you?”
“A friend of my father's,” Thomas corrected.
“Ah. Well, then, good luck to you, Dr. Parks. I manage to visit Port McKinney now and then. Perhaps our paths will cross again.”
Another shattering bellow of the
Alice
's horn brought a grimace. “I'd best be off,” Thomas said. The gangplank was steep and wet, and he waited while two men climbed aboard, neither with baggage. They both nodded at the seaman, Newell Bassier, and one of them shook hands with Efrim Carlisle. The three disappeared toward what passed for staterooms on the
Alice
.
Hefting his black medical bag and the bulky duffel, Dr. Thomas Parks stepped off the
Alice
and set foot on the rough planks of Jones' Wharf. Nothing here matched the genteel, manicured landscape of Leister, Connecticut. No elegant white fences, no smoothly worn cobblestone streets, no houses of cobble or clapboard that had been built before the war of the Revolution, no stately barns. Not a lawn, not a flower bed.
What he could see was brown and gray, dismally wet, wretchedly muddy, and ramshackle, with temporary buildings thrown up in the haste of commerce, many of them no more than canvas tents with slabwood siding. Turning in place, he looked down the coast, his gaze following the curving spit of land. A forest of stumpage studded the hills down to the rocky shoreline. In one sheltered cove, the water itself was brown and corduroy with an enormous floating island of logs that covered a dozen acres. Crowning the tip of the spit itself was another large welter of buildings, perhaps a fishing village.
Port McKinney crowded the harborage, but a scattering of rude shacks stretched farther up the hillside. Dr. John Haines lived somewhere in this settlement of two thousand people, and in his vest pocket, Thomas carried the small card with the addressâ101 Lincoln Street.
The
Alice
shrieked again and Thomas felt the wharf shudder as the schooner's hull butted it, pulling backward to begin the next leg of the voyage up the coast.
Two fishermen sitting on the opposite side of the wharf watched Thomas with interest. “Could you tell me where I might find Lincoln Street?” he said to the nearest man.
“Lincoln,” the man repeated. “This be Lincoln.” The fisherman jerked his head to the foot of the wharf. “From the warehouse up through town to the good doctor's house on the hill. That's all Lincoln Street.” He grinned, showing only one tooth. “Step off the wharf, and there you are.”
“Dr. John Haines?”
“That be the one.” The man's eyes inventoried Thomas from head to foot, taking in the black medical bag with interest. “You kin, are you?”
“Family friend,” Thomas replied. “Are you having luck today?”
The man shrugged and glanced at his stubby cane fishing pole. “Nothing for lunch yet, if that's what you mean. Starfish eat the bait more often than not.” He waved a hand toward the heavens as if the answer could be found in the fog. “Good day to you, then,” he said, and turned back to his contemplation of the black water a dozen feet below.
The wharf served as a walkway along the flank of the shed complex, and Thomas strolled the length of the building, duffel over one shoulder, able to savor steady footing for the first time since the
Alice
departed San Francisco. That pleasure ended between two enormous pilings marking the entry to Lincoln Street.
His leather boots squelched down into the muck, and he hesitated, both arms spread wide for balance. Half of the Lincoln Street businesses had boardwalks, half did not, and when the street began its steep ascent up the bluff, it was more rock than mud.
Except for the fishermen on the wharf and the children playing near the water down the shore, the village appeared deserted. Thomas trudged across to a length of boardwalk fronting a building marked McKinney Rural Telegraph. He stamped mud off his boots and pushed open the door. Sunshine blasted through one dirty window, and Thomas could see a visored head working behind a large desk.
“Sir,” he said politely.
“Yeeeessss,” the voice replied, drawn out like leaking steam. The man stood up, tall and gangling, still squinting at a sheet of paper. He approached the counter. “And what might I do for you, young man?”
“I just arrived on the
Alice
,” Thomas said, and thrust out his hand.
“Well, I'm sorry,” the man replied before Thomas could introduce himself, and then chuckled at his own joke. He extended his hand. “She arrived in one pieceâthat's the important thing.” His grip was both bony and limp. “Carter Birch, and I hope to be pleased to make your acquaintance.”
“I would hope so. I'm Thomas Parks,” the young man said. “Dr. Thomas Parks. I've come from Connecticut to work with Dr. John Haines.”
“Is that a fact?” The tall man looked sideways at Thomas and tossed the paper he had been reading on his desk. “Does the good doctor know you're here?”
“Not yet. I just stepped off the ship. I'm on my way up there now. What I'd really like to do is send a telegram to my father in Connecticut. He'll want to know that I'm on dry land, I'm sure.”
“He'll be relieved, certainly.” Birch slid a lined form across the counter and handed Thomas a pencil. “Pleasant trip, on the whole?”