XVIII
“Alec!” Mary Pomeroy called. “Don’t you dare pull the cat’s tail. If he scratches you or bites you, it’s your own fault.”
Mouser was, on the whole, a patient cat. Little boys, though, were liable to drive even patient cats past the limits of what they’d put up with. Mouser had bitten Alec only a couple of times, but he scratched whenever he thought he had to. Alec was still learning what would annoy him enough to bring out the claws. Sometimes his experiments seemed deliberately hair-raising.
Mary turned on the wireless just ahead of the hour to catch the news. The lead story was a bomb that had blown up a police station in Frankfort, Kentucky. Seventeen policemen were dead, another two dozen wounded. A group called the American Patriots—a group, the newscaster said sarcastically, that no one had ever heard of till they committed this outrage—was claiming responsibility.
And the president of the Confederate States was all but foaming at the mouth. Jake Featherston claimed the bombing proved Kentucky was full of pro-U.S. fanatics who refused to accept the results of the plebiscite. The newscaster poured more scorn on that idea. Mary was willing to believe it, simply because this smooth-voiced stooge for the Yanks didn’t.
“In another bombing case,” the broadcaster went on, “investigators continue to probe the ruins of a Berlin, Ontario, apartment building, seeking clues to the perpetrator of the atrocity. A mother and child, Laura and Dorothy Moss, are confirmed dead. Several other persons were injured in the blast, and three remain missing… .”
A mother and a child. That wasn’t how Mary had thought of them. A traitor and her half-American brat was more what she had in mind. That way, she didn’t have to remind herself that the woman who’d been born Laura Secord—born with the name of a great Canadian patriot—had been a person as well as a political symbol. She didn’t want to think of the late Laura Moss as a person. If she did, she had to think about what she’d done.
She couldn’t remember the last time she’d physically hurt anyone, aside from spanking Alec when he needed it. Maybe when she was little, in a fight with her older sister. But Julia had several years on her, so she might not have managed it even then.
Well, she’d managed it now. She’d blown a woman and her little girl to kingdom come, and she’d hurt some other people with them. Not bad for a package she’d mailed from Wilf Rokeby’s post office. Not bad? Or not good?
This is war, she told herself. Look what the Americans did to my family. Why should I care what happens to them, or to the people who collaborate with them?
Had the Americans blown up women and children? Mary nodded defiantly. Of course they had, with their bombs and their artillery. She didn’t feel guilty. She paused, too honest to go on with that. The trouble was, she did feel guilty. Unlike the Yanks—or so she insisted to herself—she had a working conscience. At the moment, it was working overtime.
“No one has claimed to be responsible for the murderous attack in Berlin,” the newsman continued. “Attention is, however, focusing on several known subversive groups. When the truth is known, severe punishment will be meted out.”
Mary laughed at that. The Yanks were liable to grab somebody, say he was guilty, and shoot him just to make themselves look good. She remained certain that was what they’d done with her brother, Alexander, Alec’s namesake. Her conscience twinged again. Did she want them to punish someone else, someone who hadn’t done anything, for what she’d done?
She wanted them to get out of Canada. Past that, she didn’t—or tried not to—care.
“Ironically, the victims’ husband and father, barrister Jonathan Moss, though a U.S. aviation ace during the Great War, was well known in Ontario for his work on behalf of Canadians involved in disputes with the occupying authorities,” the man on the wireless said. “Only desperate madmen who hate Americans simply because they are Americans would have—”
Click! “Why’d you turn it off, Mommy?” Alec asked.
“Because he was spouting a lot of drivel,” Mary answered.
Alec laughed. “That’s a funny word. What does it mean?”
“Nonsense. Hooey. Rubbish.”
“Drivel!” Alec yelled, alarming Mouser. “Hooey!” He liked that one, too. The cat didn’t, at least not yelled in its ears. It fled. Alec ran after it, screeching, “Drivel! Hooey! Hooey! Drivel!”
“Enough,” Mary said. He didn’t listen to her. “Enough!” she said again. Still no luck. “Enough!” Now she was yelling, too. Short of clouting Alec with a rock, yelling at him was the only way to get his attention.
She didn’t usually turn off the wireless in the middle of the news. She found she missed it, and turned it back on, hoping it would be done talking about what had happened in Berlin. It was. The newscaster said, “King Charles XI of France has declared that the German Empire is using Kaiser Wilhelm’s illness as an excuse for delay on consideration of returning Alsace-Lorraine to France. ‘If strong measures prove necessary, we are not afraid to take them,’ he added. Prime Minister Churchill of Great Britain voiced his support for the French. In a speech before Parliament, he said, ‘High time the Germans go.’ ”
Music blared from the speaker. A chorus of women with squeaky voices praised laundry soap to the skies. When Mary first listened to the wireless, she wanted to go out and buy everything she heard advertised on it. She was vaccinated against that nonsense these days. She did sometimes wonder why a singer with a voice good enough to make money would choose to sing about laundry soap. Because she couldn’t make money with her voice any other way? Sometimes that didn’t seem reason enough.
I killed two people, one of them a little girl who never did anybody any harm. The thought didn’t want to go away; even if she hadn’t watched them die, they were as dead as if she’d taken them to a chopping block and whacked off their heads with a hatchet, the way she had with so many chickens on her mother’s farm. Laura Secord betrayed her country. Mary had no doubt of that. But who appointed you her executioner? she asked herself.
Her back stiffened. She was damned if she’d let herself feel guilty for long. Who appointed me her executioner? The Yanks did. If they hadn’t shot Alexander, her father never would have felt the need to go on the war path against them. She was entitled to revenge for that. She was entitled to it, and she’d taken it.
She nodded to herself. Nothing was going to make her feel sorry about ridding the world of Laura Secord. Every so often, though, she couldn’t help feeling bad about Dorothy Moss. She wished she’d blown up the girl’s father instead. Yes, the newsman went on and on about how he struggled for Canadians’ rights, but that overlooked several little details. First and foremost, no Yank should have had any business saying what rights a Canadian had or didn’t have. And Jonathan Moss had been one of the Yanks who’d beaten Canada down during the Great War. And he was still a combat flier; she remembered the newspaper stories about him. Yes, better the bomb should have got him.
She was cutting up a chicken for stew in the kitchen when two trucks pulled to a stop in front of the diner. They looked like the sort of trucks in which U.S. Army soldiers rode, but they were painted a bluish gray, not the green-gray she’d known and loathed since she was a little girl. The men who piled out of the back of the trucks were in uniforms cut about the same as those U.S. soldiers wore—but, again, of bluish gray and not the familiar color. Mary wondered if the Yanks had decided to change their uniforms after keeping them pretty much the same for so long. Why would they do that?
The soldiers all tramped into the diner. That will make Mort happy, Mary thought. Soldiers ate like starving wolves. These days, they also paid their bills. The occupation was more orderly than it had been during the war and just afterwards. That made it very little better, not as far as Mary was concerned.
Forty-five minutes later, the soldiers came out and climbed into the trucks again. The engines started up with twin roars. Away the trucks went, beyond what Mary could see from the window. She reminded herself to ask Mort about the men when he came back to the flat, and hoped she wouldn’t forget.
As things turned out, she needn’t have worried about that. When her husband got home, he was angrier than she’d ever seen him. “What’s the matter?” she asked; he hardly ever lost his temper.
“What’s the matter?” he repeated. “Did you see those trucks a couple of hours ago? The trucks, and the soldiers in them?”
Mary nodded. “I wanted to ask you—”
He talked right through her: “Do you know who those soldiers were? Do you? No, of course you don’t.” He wasn’t going to let her get a word in edgewise. “I’ll tell you who they were, by God. They were a pack of Frenchies, that’s who.”
“Frenchies? From Quebec?” The news made Mary no happier than it had Mort. She was damned if she would call their home the Republic of Quebec, though, even if it had been torn away from Canada for twenty-five years now.
“That’s right,” Mort answered. “And do you know what else? They’re going to be part of the garrison here. At least the United States beat us in the war. What did the Frenchies do? Nothing. Not one single thing. They don’t even talk English, most of ’em. I swear to God, honey, I’d sooner have a pack of niggers watching over us than those people.”
“What’s even worse is, they’re Canadians, too,” Mary said. Her husband gave her a look. “Well, they are.” Even to herself, she sounded defensive. “They used to be, anyhow.”
“Maybe,” Mort said. “They sure don’t act like Canadians now, though. They sat there in the diner jabbering back and forth in French like a bunch of monkeys. The only one who spoke enough English to order anything for them was a sergeant who’d been in the Canadian Army once upon a time. And he sounded like the devil, too.”
“That’s terrible,” Mary said, and Mort nodded. She asked him, “Why are there Frenchies here? Did you find out? Would they say?”
“Oh, yes. They aren’t shy about talking, even if they don’t do it very well,” he answered. “Reason they’re here is, some of the U.S. soldiers who’ve been on garrison duty are going back to the States.”
“That doesn’t explain anything,” Mary said. “Why would the Yanks want to do a thing like that after all these years?” The USA had occupied Rosenfeld since she was a little girl. No matter how much she hated that, it was in a way part of the natural order of things by now.
“I don’t know for sure. The Frenchies didn’t say anything about that,” Mort replied. “But I know what my guess would be—that the Yanks are starting to worry about that Featherston fellow down in the Confederate States.”
“You think they’re moving men to stop him?” Mary asked. Her husband nodded again. Excitement blazed through her. “If you’re right, we’ve got a chance to be free!” And maybe this has been a war all along, and I don’t have to think I’m a murderer. Maybe. Please, God.
Cincinnatus Driver watched a spectacle he had hoped he would never see, a spectacle he’d gone to Kentucky to keep from seeing: Confederate troops marching into Covington. He was, by then, just starting to get up on crutches and move around. He supposed he was lucky. The auto that hit him could easily have killed him. There were times, when he’d lain in the hospital and then back at his parents’ house, that he wished it would have.
His mother took care of him as if he were a little boy. She plainly thought he was. All the years that had gone by since might as well not have happened. She didn’t even realize anything was wrong. That, to Cincinnatus, was the cruelest part of her long, slow slide into senility.
And his father took care of both of them, with as much dignity as he could muster and without much hope. Some of the neighbors helped, as they found the chance. His mother wandered off a couple of times, but she didn’t get far. People watched her more closely than they had till Cincinnatus got hit. That was funny, in a bitter way.
Getting out of the house for a little while felt good to Cincinnatus. He’d stared at the cracked, water-stained plaster of the ceiling for too long. He was weak as a kitten and he still got dreadful headaches that aspirin did nothing to knock down, but he was alive and he was upright. When a little more strength returned, he would figure out how to get himself and his father and mother back to the USA. Meanwhile …
Meanwhile, he stumped along the neglected sidewalks of the colored district of Covington toward the parade route. The whole district seemed even more rundown than it had when he came back to Covington. It also seemed half deserted, and so it was. A lot of Negroes had already fled to the United States.
He glanced over to his father, who walked beside him, ready to steady him if he stumbled. “You sure Ma be all right while we’re gone?”
“I ain’t sure o’ nothin,” Seneca Driver answered, “but I reckon so.” He walked on for a few paces, then said, “One thing I ain’t sure of is how come you wants to see these bastards comin’ back.”
Cincinnatus wasn’t altogether sure of that himself. After a little thought, he said, “I got to remind myself why I want to git back to Iowa so bad, maybe.”
“Maybe.” His father sounded deeply skeptical.
Seneca had reason to sound that way, too. Only a handful of blacks headed for the parade route. Most of the people who came out to see this underscoring of the return of Confederate sovereignty were white men with Freedom Party pins in their lapels—or, if they didn’t wear lapels, as many didn’t, on the front of denim jackets or wool sweaters. Cincinnatus hadn’t been the target of looks like the ones they gave him for many years. People in Des Moines thought Negroes curious beasts, not dangerous ones.
One of the blacks on the street was a familiar face: Lucullus Wood. He’d visited Cincinnatus at the hospital, and several times at his parents’ house. As far as a Negro could be, Lucullus was a man to reckon with in Covington. A generation earlier, his father had been, too.
Seeing Cincinnatus and Seneca, Lucullus came across the street to say hello. “Ain’t this a fine day?” he said. A Freedom Party man might have used the same words. A Freedom Party man might even have used the same tone of voice. But the words and the tone would have had a very different meaning in a Freedom Party man’s mouth. Lucullus understood irony—blacks who’d been born in the CSA understood irony from the moment they could talk—and no Party stalwart ever would.
“Never thought I’d see it,” Cincinnatus agreed.
None of the plump, eager white men in earshot could have taken exception to his words or tone, either. In fact, one of them turned to another and said, “You see? Even the niggers is glad to have the damnyankees gone.”
“They know they was well off before,” his friend replied.
Cincinnatus didn’t look at Lucullus. Neither of them looked at Seneca. He didn’t look at them. None of them had any trouble knowing what the other two were thinking. Remarking on it would have been a waste of breath.
Off to the south, Cincinnatus heard a peculiar noise: partly musical, partly a low, mechanical rumble. Both pieces of the noise got louder as it came closer. Before too long, Cincinnatus recognized the music. A marching band was blaring out “Dixie,” playing the tune for all it was worth.
“That there song used to be against the law here,” Lucullus said. By the way he said it, he thought it was too bad “Dixie” had been illegal. Cincinnatus knew better. A casual listener—a white listener—wouldn’t have.
“Wonder what ever happened to that Luther Bliss,” Cincinnatus said. “Reckon he ain’t never gonna show his face here no more. Don’t miss him one damn bit.” Since the former head of the Kentucky State Police had thrown him in jail, most of him meant that. The rest, though, couldn’t help remembering how hard and how well Bliss had fought Confederate diehards—and anyone else he didn’t care for.
“Reckon you’s right,” Lucullus answered. Cincinnatus sent him a sharp look. A casual listener wouldn’t have heard anything wrong with his words there, either. Cincinnatus wondered if he knew more than he was letting on.
Here came the band. The Freedom Party men—and the smaller number of women with them—burst into applause. A lot of them began to sing. Cincinnatus couldn’t applaud, not with his hands on the crutches. His father and Lucullus did. He couldn’t blame them. Better safe than sorry.
Behind the band marched several companies of Confederate soldiers. Their uniforms didn’t look much different from the ones C.S. troops had worn during the Great War, but there were changes. Most of them had to do with comfort and protection. The collars on these tunics were open at the neck. The cut was looser, less restrictive. Their helmets came down farther over the ears and the back of the neck than the Great War models had. They weren’t the steel pots U.S. soldiers wore, but they weren’t much different from them.
The rifles they carried … “Funny-lookin’ guns,” Cincinnatus said to Lucullus in a low voice.
“Gas-operated. Don’t need to work the bolt to chamber a round after the first one in the clip.” Lucullus spoke with authority. “They’s new. Not everybody’s got ’em. They is very bad news, though.”
Not even all the parading soldiers carried the new rifles. Some had submachine guns instead. Cincinnatus didn’t see any with ordinary, Great War–vintage Tredegars. The Confederate States couldn’t arm as many men as the United States. They seemed to want to make sure the men they did have would put a lot of lead in the air.
The barrels that grumbled and clanked up the street were different from the ones Cincinnatus remembered from the Great War, too. They carried their cannon in a turret on top of the hull. They also looked as if they could go a lot faster than the walking pace that had been their top speed a generation earlier.
Trucks towed artillery pieces. Fighters and bombers with the C.S. battle flag on wings and tail roared low overhead. More marching soldiers finished the parade.
“Wonder what they think o’ this on the other side of the Ohio,” Cincinnatus said. The city that was nearly his namesake lay right across the river from Covington.
“If they’s happy, they’s crazy,” Lucullus said after looking around to make sure no white was paying undue attention. “Jake Featherston, he promised there wouldn’t be no Confederate soldiers in Kentucky for twenty-five years. He jump the gun just a little bit, I reckon.”
Cincinnatus’ father looked around, too. “We done seen the parade,” he said. “What I reckon is, we better git back to our own part o’ town.”
He was bound to be right. Even Negroes who weren’t doing anything to anybody were liable to be fair game in Covington. Moving on his crutches made Cincinnatus sweat with effort and pain in spite of the chilly day, but he moved anyhow. Once back inside the colored district, he said, “We got to get out of here. Ain’t easy no more, now that this here is a Confederate state, but we got to.”
“Best thing you kin do is jus’ walk right across the bridge to Cincinnati,” Lucullus said. “Ain’t quite legal like it was, but the U.S. soldiers don’t bother niggers much.”
Since neither Cincinnatus nor his mother was up to much in the way of walking, he and his parents took a taxi to the nearest bridge two days later. His mother stared out the window as if she’d never been in an auto in her life. As far as she could remember, she hadn’t.
They didn’t get across. No one got across. To protest the Confederates’ military occupation of Kentucky, the USA had sealed the border between the two countries. Cincinnatus thought of getting a boat and crossing the Ohio any way he could. He thought of it, but not for long. He remembered too many stories about Negroes trying to cross into the USA getting turned back at gunpoint or sometimes just shot. He couldn’t take the chance, especially since his mother, with her wits wandering, was liable to give them away.
When U.S. forces pulled out of Kentucky, a consulate had opened in Covington. Hoping the official there might help, Cincinnatus visited the place. That turned out to be another wasted trip. A large sign on the window said, CLOSED INDEFINITELY DUE TO ILLEGAL CONFEDERATE ACTION. Frustrated and frightened, Cincinnatus went back to his parents’ house.
“Dammit, I’m a citizen of the USA. I live in Iowa,” he raged. “How come I can’t get home?”
“Be thankful it ain’t worse,” his father said: the philosophy of a man who’d spent the early years of his life as a piece of property. No matter how bad things were, he could easily imagine them worse.
Not so Cincinnatus. “Bein’ stuck here in Covington is as bad as it gits,” he said.
But Seneca was right. A few days later, the Covington Courier ran what it called, A NOTIFICATION TO THE COLORED RESIDENTS OF THE CONFEDERATE STATE OF KENTUCKY. It told them they had to be photographed for passbooks, “as is the accepted and required practice for Negroes throughout the Confederate States of America.”
Seneca took the order in stride. “Had to do this afore the war, I recollects,” he said.
That was so. Cincinnatus remembered his own passbook. But he said, “I done without one o’ them things the last twenty-five years. Don’t you recollect what it’s like to be free?”
“I recollects the trouble you finds if you don’t got one,” his father answered.
“I ain’t no Confederate nigger. I ain’t gonna be no Confederate nigger, neither,” Cincinnatus said. “I’m a citizen of the United States. What the hell I need a passbook for?”
“You don’t want to get in trouble with them Freedom Party fellas, you better have one,” his father answered.
That was all too likely to be true. Cincinnatus raged against it anyhow. Raging against it did him exactly no good. For the time being, he was stuck here in Kentucky. Sooner or later, he expected things to get back to normal and the border between the CSA and the USA to open up again. He also expected to get the cast off his leg and to learn to walk without crutches once more. And he expected to take his father and mother back to Des Moines with him. He always had been an optimist.
For a long time, Dr. Leonard O’Doull had been satisfied—no, more than satisfied, happy—to live in a place like Rivière-du-Loup. The world forgetting, by the world forgot. He couldn’t remember where he’d seen that line of poetry, but it suited the town very well. And it had suited him, too.
But, however much he sometimes wanted to, he couldn’t quite forget that he was an American, that he came from a wider world than the one in which he chose to live. Reading about the gathering storm far to the south—even reading about it in French, which made it seem all the farther away—brought that home to him. In an odd way, so did the passing of his father-in-law.
To Leonard O’Doull, Lucien Galtier had stood for everything he admired about Quebec: a curious mix of adaptability and a deeper stubbornness. Now that the older man was gone, O’Doull felt as if he’d lost an anchor that had been mooring him to la belle République.
His wife, of course, had other feelings about the way her father had died: one part shock, O’Doull judged, to about three parts mortification. “Did it have to be there?” she would say, over and over again. “Did he have to be doing that?”
“Coronary thrombosis comes when it comes,” O’Doull would reply, as patiently and sympathetically as he could. “The exertion, the excitement—they could, without a doubt, help bring it on.”
Patience and sympathy took him only so far. About then, Nicole would usually explode: “But people will never let us live it down!”
Knowing how places like Rivière-du-Loup and the surrounding farms worked, O’Doull suspected she was right. Even so, he said, “You worry too much. Many of the people I’ve talked to say they’re jealous of such an end.”
“Men!” Nicole snarled. “Tabernac! What do you know?” That was unfair to half the human race, not that she cared. Then she went on, “And what of poor Éloise Granche? Is she jealous of such an end?”
That, unfortunately, wasn’t unfair, and was very much to the point. Éloise wasn’t jealous. She was horror-stricken, and who could blame her? To have to watch someone die at such a moment … How would she ever forget that? How could she ever want to get close to another man as long as she lived?
O’Doull said, “Your father didn’t leave us … unappreciated.” He needed to pause there to pick the right word. After another moment, he went on, “Would you rather it had happened while he was mucking out the barn?”
“I’d rather it didn’t happen at all,” Nicole answered. But that wasn’t what he’d asked, and she knew it. Now she hesitated. At last, she said, “Maybe I would. It would have been more, more dignified.”
“Death is never dignified.” O’Doull spoke with a doctor’s certainty. “Never. Dignity in death is something we invent afterwards to make the living feel better.”
“I would have felt better if it had happened while Papa was in the barn,” Nicole said. “Whether he—” She broke off, not soon enough, and burst into tears. “ ’Osti! Do you see? Even I’m starting to make jokes about it. And if I do, what’s everyone else doing?”
“The same thing, probably,” O’Doull said. “People are like that.”
“It’s not right!” Nicole said. “He wouldn’t have wanted to be remembered—this way.” She cried harder than ever.
Although Leonard held her and patted her and did his best to comfort her, he was far from sure she was right. He’d known his father-in-law for a quarter of a century. Wouldn’t Lucien Galtier have taken a certain wry pride in the reputation that grew out of his end? Lucien might even have taken a pride that wasn’t so ordinary. Any number of ways to go. To how many, though, was it given to go like a man?
Which brought him back to the question Nicole had asked. What about Éloise? She was wounded, no doubt about it, and Lucien wouldn’t have wanted that. He’d cared for her, even if he hadn’t necessarily loved her. But would things have been any easier for her if he’d dropped dead while they were dancing, not after they’d gone back to her farmhouse? Maybe a little. Maybe a little, yes, but not much.
One of these days, O’Doull told himself, yes, one of these days, I’ll have to pour a few drinks into Georges and find out what he really thinks about this. The time wasn’t ripe yet. He knew that. But it would come. A lot of things for which the time hadn’t been ripe looked to be coming. Most of them were a lot less appetizing than lying down with a nice woman and being unlucky enough not to get up again.
That evening, the newscaster on the wireless gave an account of a speech President Smith had made at Camp Hill, Pennsylvania. “The president of the United States spoke with just anger regarding the Confederate States’ violation of their pledge not to send soldiers into Kentucky and the state formerly known as Houston.” The French-speaker made heavy going of the place names. He continued, “The president of the United States also reminded the president of the Confederate States that he had pledged himself to ask for no more territorial changes on the continent of North America. If he ignores this solemn undertaking, President Smith said, he cannot seriously expect the United States to return to him the portions of Virginia, Arkansas, and Sonora to which he has referred.” He had trouble pronouncing Arkansas, too. And why not? Arkansas was a long, long way from the Republic of Quebec.
Al Smith finally seemed to have decided he couldn’t trust Jake Featherston. As far as O’Doull could see, the U.S. president had taken longer than he might have to figure that out. He had it down now, though. More than what he’d said, where he’d made the speech spoke volumes. Almost eighty years ago now, Robert E. Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia had crushed McClellan’s Army of the Potomac at Camp Hill, ensuring that the Confederate States would triumph in the War of Secession. No president of the United States would have anything to do with the place these days unless he wanted to tell his own people, We’re in trouble again.
Nicole didn’t understand any of that. Neither did little Lucien, who was anything but little these days. O’Doull found himself envying his wife and son for being so thoroughly Quebecois. He also found himself reminded that, no matter how long he’d lived here, he was at bottom an American. He’d sometimes wondered about that. He didn’t any more.
When he went to his office the next morning, newsboys were hawking papers by shouting about President Smith’s speech. Papers in Quebec always seemed to back the USA to the hilt: more royalist than the king, more Catholic than the Pope. Again, why not? The Great War had touched lightly here, which it hadn’t anywhere else between Alaska and the Empire of Mexico.
O’Doull’s receptionist was already at the office when he got there. She smiled at him and said, “Bonjour, monsieur. Ça va?”
“Pas pire, merci,” he answered, which made her smile. Nobody who spoke Parisian French would have said, Not bad, thanks, like that. O’Doull had put down deep roots here, and he knew it. He went on, “When is the first appointment?”
“Half an hour, Doctor,” she said.
“Good. I’ll see what I can catch up on till then.” He went into his private office to skim through medical journals. He wished he had time to do more than skim. He had never known—had never imagined—such an exciting age in medicine. Back when he was a boy, immunization and sanitation had begun to cut into death rates, which had kept on falling ever since. Now, though, some of the new drugs on the market were doing what quack nostrums had promised since the beginning of time: they really were curing diseases that could easily have been fatal. How many times had he watched someone die of infection after surgery that would have succeeded without it? More than he cared to recall, certainly. Now, with luck, he—and his patients—wouldn’t have to go through that particular hell any more.
And here was an article about some new medicine that was said to be even more effective than the sulfonamides, which had been the last word for the past year or two. Drugs that killed germs without poisoning people were, to him, far more exciting than fighters that flew twenty miles an hour faster and five thousand feet higher than previous models.
Not everybody thought so, though, which meant new models of fighters came out more often and got more fanfare than new drugs did. They were liable to be used, too, which worried him.
“Madness,” he muttered, and went back to reading about this fungus with what seemed a miraculous ability to murder microbes.
His first patient was a pregnant woman due in about six weeks. He’d always liked working with women who were going to have babies. Their condition was obvious, and usually had a happy outcome. He only wished the rest of what he did were as easy and rewarding.
Then he saw a child with mumps. He couldn’t do anything about that despite the new drugs in the medical journal. The little boy was very unhappy, but he would get better in a few days.
A man with a bad back came in next. “I’m sorry, Monsieur Papineau,” he said, “but aspirins and liniment and rest are the most I have to offer you.”
“Tabernac!” Papineau said. “Can’t you cure it? If you could put me under the knife for it, I would go in a minute. I can’t pick up my children or make love to my wife without feeling I’m breaking in two.”
Dr. O’Doull considered. Papineau was younger than he was, and might not be shocked at a suggestion. On the other hand, he might. Rivière-du-Loup was a straitlaced place in a lot of ways. Still, worth a try … “Since you mention it, monsieur, it could be that you might have less pain during intimacy if your wife were to assume the, ah, superior position.”
There. That sounded properly medical. Was it too medical for Papineau to understand? Evidently not, for he turned red. “What? You mean her on top? Calisse!”
“I didn’t mean to offend,” O’Doull said hastily. “I offered the suggestion only for reasons of health and comfort. You were the one who mentioned the, ah, difficulty, after all.”
“Well, so I did.” His patient looked thoughtful. “For reasons of health, maybe. I wonder what Louise would say.” Papineau left the office rubbing his chin. O’Doull managed to hold in a snort of laughter till he was gone. Then it came out.
He was still smiling when his next patient, a little old lady with arthritis, came in. “What’s funny, Doctor?” she asked suspiciously.
“Nothing to do with you, Madame Villehardouin,” he assured her. “I was just … remembering a joke I heard last night.” She gave him a fishy stare, but couldn’t prove he was lying. He had only aspirins and liniment to offer her, too. As far as things had come in the past few years, they still had at least as far to go.
A few days later, he ran into Papineau in a grocery. As usual, the man moved in a gingerly way, but he greeted O’Doull with a smile. “That was a wonderful prescription you gave me, Doctor,” he said. “Wonderful!”
“Well, I’m glad it did you some good,” O’Doull said. Papineau nodded enthusiastically. O’Doull was pleased at helping him, and his pleasure diminished only a little when he reflected that Hippocrates could have given the same advice. Yes, medicine still had a long way to go.