The Uncollected Stories of Allan Gurganus Read online

  “Now, this.” And again she awkwardly angled off the stool, finally scooping up the painting and clamping its lower edge against the glass-counter between us. “This portrait of Petrie came to me, it’d be just five weeks back. Been hanging up in the public library on the Square since our town fathers commissioned his portrait, 18 and 50. For a while, during the sickness, it seemed like folks could trust just one fellow only—especially a ‘new person,’ as they’d say. ‘Doc is new,’ they’d say, like he was store-bought-clean and still unused as some of the gear in his bag here.”

  Theodosia finally placed into my hands the unframed oil painting. His image was pulling away from the old yellow pine stretchers still marked as from a shop in Cedar Rapids. I could finally study his face held inches before mine, a face shown when only four years my senior.

  “They kept telling him, ‘We just trust you, Doc.’ Like offering a contract. See, that’s where magic gets next to you—when you’re so scared it’ll be you next. To see a houseful of loved ones die like that, all spilling like some hogs with the pox, and telling their last secrets just to have those told to somebody. And here’s Petrie, finer-looking than any preacher in buggying-distance and with a deeper voice. People felt like med school must charge up a fellow’s battery with good health!

  “This painting, see, was done from a daguerreotype they got his mother to send. Talented local lady painted it, one Miss Beech, a teacher who’d gone to his church the few times he set foot in there before they applauded him off. Those stories about the girls, I thought you’d like that part. Just crazy enough to be true. Instead of keeping their daughters off from a man soaked through with it at day’s end … poorer farmers dropped off girls in Easter pinafores for a boy already such a hero, they were betting on his free ride clear to Springfield as governor some few years down the pike. And their own girl on his arm. Good fortune, that. But he’d not yet got anyone in or near La Verne to let him be just ‘Mark,’ which I bet is how his mother called him.

  “Well, one day ’bout four weeks into the worst of it, he was out at the Brinsleys’ again (mighty demanding, Brinsleys), and their little daughter they thought he’d saved and had paid him so good for saving, she was down and looking but poorly again. Petrie bends over her asleep, and shakes his head and says to her rich parents, ‘I just don’t like her color.’ And instead of agreeing or mumbling thanks, instead, both the Brinsleys point. Just point at him, saying, ‘What? —Her color? Pot comin’ in here callin’ our dear little kettle black!’ Folks claim he walked toward a mirror was hanging in her room, and when he saw it plain, him already sweating bad, they say young Markus threw up across their new rose wallpaper, like he’d been waiting the permission of others’ noticing. Boy must’ve guessed already. Maybe it was his going back on the little Brinsley girl’s health one week after her recovery had given other folks such hope. But Petrie apologized for making a mess and he at once excused himself and stepped into the hall so’s he could buggy home, clean up. At their fine front door with stained glass cut in it, those Brinsleys gave him mighty wide berth and wouldn’t shake Petrie’s acid-black hand as thanks. Oh no, not now. His mistake was ever letting people see him sick. Especially Brinsleys, born talking, every one.

  “Soon people said as how a native son so fine as Sandy Woolsey could not have brought all this much badness down on us. No, more likely Petrie had. Look at your calendar. Didn’t it all turn up about a week or two after this standoffish young doctor did? And aren’t you always reading in the papers about certain firemen that set the fires themselves so they’ll get the headlines and bonuses? Well? Local rumor added as how young Markus Petrie’s own case of the cholera—what with his having been around those many others—his degree of sick, it had to run you twelve to fifty times worse, way more potent than others’. Some said his ran up to seventy-five times more catching! And that’s why they one-by-one stopped leaving food, and now the girls were nowhere to be seen. And even the dying quit sending for Petrie. Which meant, since he lived out here most of three miles from town and so alone, not anybody knew what-all exactly was happening to him. Might could be getting stronger? or going down toward worse? Did he have sufficient food, so forth, what with his being a bachelor and all? Well, let’s say the interest in him tapered right off. And even as the number of cases did. People said more than ever that he’d been the agent of it, spreading it amongst us, then trying to take credit for being so kind. ‘New here,’ after all, and, in the end, what’d we really know about strangers? Coming in here like a rooster among our fine local white hens and turning girls’ heads.

  “Finally, with no word, no sight of him, about ten days in, they found his horse broken loose and chewing the neighbor-lady’s dahlias. That’s when our mayor that’d helped hire Petrie, he organized ‘a fact-finding expedition,’ the local paper called it. And they went in to check how he was faring, after all. One of the wives’d packed a few sandwiches as a false reason for their visit. Petrie had at least put together the Health Alliances, etc. You had to give the boy that. They found him in the back room.

  “He’d tied himself into his own bed with the last of that orange rope, hog-tied himself owing to the shakes maybe. Or could-be just to keep himself from rushing off in search of others, at the end. All La Verne had hoped for a good young country doctor, and maybe that was his last wish, too.

  “He’d tied himself not so much to keep from going for anybody’s help. (Because who could help, once it had you?) No, more because, even if you’ve lived your life alone, you want to at least perish within the sight-and-sound of other folks. Don’t you? And, even as by-myself as I still live here in La Verne that counts me somewhat odd, I know I hope to at least end up in earshot of company. (Of course, maybe that’s just me.)

  “So, once the local sick either started improving or went real quick to white ash on the pyres they’d put out past the fairground to contain it, once farm folks’ worst fear ended, and they’d unpinned his Petrie Alliances newspaper rules off kitchen walls, they did what they’ll always do when they’ve forsaken somebody who dies helping them, someone they failed to honor at all while still alive. Why, a sacrificed doctor looked different, now their own health was back. Boss Brinsley’s pet-daughter recovered, after all. And the child, if no one else did, recalled as how Doctor Handsome’s house-calls had saved her. So the Brinsleys held a late ceremony and put up oil-portrait money and, in two months, why, they’d made a hero out of our abandoned Frederick Markus Petrie, MD. Hung his painted picture in the library. And he became the new-here country doctor, the boy that’d singlehanded saved most of 1849’s La Verne! … is who-all’s face you got aholdt of there, young man.”

  IV.

  IT’D GROWN SO DARK—even with her candle guttering—I had to clutch his picture nearer. Canvas all but touched my nose. So I sniffed it then, front and back. My fingers knew his paint was lightly flaking. And yet—even with its crackly over-all-ness—his face would continue looking that civic, if just as sad. The photographic image that inspired this painting had been taken earlier (maybe during graduation?). But young Petrie’s features already seemed to diagnose some complex fate ahead. And yet, his eyes looked half-willing to accept whatever medieval beliefs awaited modern-medicine out here in these wheat fields.

  “But,” I asked a little too loud, “who authorized taking his portrait down? After, what? a-hundred-and-twenty-odd years, why would your town park him out here with you with orders to sell?”

  “‘Cause nobody remembers him anymore! Nobody but me and the daughter of the youngest of those Mortensens he saved. And even she claimed the library just couldn’t ‘keep’ him, since that last remodel made the place be real ‘contemporary.’ They redid La Verne’s downtown library, put in round skylights, plants big as trees. The young hotshot librarian phoned. Calls me ‘Teddy’ (which is all they’ve ever thought to call me hereabouts). She explains how, in the middle of their new yellow walls and mirrors, young Petrie here, he sure looks ‘kinda gloomy.’ He
r very words, son. Besides, his picture needs some restoration, crusty, it was not ‘clean enough.’ So, well, here he is, on consignment-like. ‘For whatever he brings.’ Brings!

  “Funny, I’m out here near the little house Doc paid his first two months’ rent on. They’ve shipped him right back to his old neighborhood where he hardly even got unpacked. But, what does it smell like? ’Cause I admire you thought to nose that out. See, my sense of smell, I lost most of it during the temperatures I had from childhood scarlet fever. Was six months old, just so much cartilage. Those fever spikes rolled through me, messed me up pretty good, as you can see. So, not too much of a sniffer left. One sense shy of a load. My mind’s okay but I’d have enjoyed it, too, I think. Smell is one thing I’ve missed in m’ life. Well, one the ones.”

  “Miss?” I held it near my nose again. “The picture and Petrie, I guess, smell of tar and … maybe day-old bacon-grease likely cooked over a wood fire. Smells of dust and maybe oil paint’s linseed oil. But, too, of, I swear, Bactine! Funny, there’s really something medicinal about it. Though this was surely painted months after they buried him.”

  “Burned him, you mean. And all those odors still in there, hunh? You don’t say.” Theodosia finally fell silent. Slouching as if exhausted by some marathon.

  Then I risked it. Told her I didn’t suppose she’d willingly part with him, even considering his slightly flaking-condition. But I did vow, hand in air, no caretaker would ever hold on to him longer or be surer to never let Markus and his story get lost the next time around.

  I admitted, “Stupidly I bought some comical junk earlier, whole Jeepful. But stuff outside for class was to make others laugh. Not really for me. This’d be mine. So, but all I have is twenty dollars cash…. But if you’ll trust me to send you a personal check, it won’t bounce, I swear….”

  “Now you know his story, don’t you?”

  I nodded.

  “And, after my giving you that? You figure I could take a penny for him? Why, that’d be like … like sellin’ some other … human. —No, it’s yours. He is. Was hoping you might notice when you come in here hunting just toys. Toys aren’t the half of it. They’re the way we want it to be, not how things turn out. And, well, you found him. But your smelling it’s what put you over the top, boy. Made me know you’d guard him pretty good. Might could, you’ll someday even remember to talk about him. La Verne never deserved our fine young Petrie here. Did not deserve him, alive or dead.”

  I stared at his picture, then again at the lady armored in cricket-clicking watches. “You saw him,” she nodded. “Most my customers come ringing through that door like elephants-herds hunting Depression glass. Right name for the stuff, the way it gets me down. —Take him. In La Verne, if we act too kind or smart or interested in much, they’ll make us pay. And pay. And pay. Yeah, take him quick. ’Fore I need to hold him back behind this counter with me. Get, or else I’ll change my mind, boy. —And not to worry … I’ve saved enough to where in six months, no more winters for Theodosia, who tends to fall on ice. Moving to San Diego, seventy-two degrees, year-round, they tell me. Now, skedaddle. Don’t let me be going back on this. Get him finally clear of us. Misery loves company but help me not be selfish at the end! Said, Go!”

  So I lifted it and, flinching through her door chimes, yelled my thanks and ran him to the Jeep. Felt like hostage-rescue. With his frame propped in my passenger seat, I snapped the safety-belt across him at a kindly angle that’d leave his dark eyes free.

  And, only then, round midnight, in a Jeep full of junk from earlier, we achieved escape velocity. Night country smelled of growing corn. Seemed I was saving him from the town he’d saved then paid for saving. With both our faces aiming west, that Jeep held steady at eighty-five. Once we passed the Iowa line, we had moonlight all the way.

  V.

  THEODOSIA’S LIKELY DEAD. Even with San Diego’s warming help, she’d be up on to a hundred. (And yet I can picture her, infirm if cogent, stretched out on a terrace, wearing wing-sunglasses, telling tales to some tattooed young candy-striper. Theodosia, far happier out West overlooking the Pacific, with nothing left to peddle though plenty still to tell.)

  Till that night, toys had been my specialty. Since childhood, actually. But once I started guarding Petrie’s image, I somehow put aside childish things. The homemade treasures that’ve attracted me since? They’re more about work than play. They are what my small collection is best-known for.

  It now boasts six hundred and ten portraits of anonymous working American citizens (1710–1937). They are all shown on-the-job in their aprons or welding goggles, shown manning their forges, minding their pharmacies, curating their pyramids of wholesale pumpkins. Some of these are masterpieces. Most were painted by artists as unknown as their subjects. —Art? Yes, I consider it art, if only of the folk kind.

  His portrait still presides over my desk here. Even a hundred and seventy-some years after he died alone, the boy-doctor’s presence feels half-healing. Seems we’ve recognized and befriended each other across time. How do I know that it’s a sort of love? —Because it’s daily.

  Money-wise, of course, he’s far from this collection’s most valuable item. But, in case of fire, I’d save him first.

  Five decades into our cohabitation I found a better frame for him. And last summer—when even this new one split from radiator-heat—I was trying to mend it when an old calling card slid out from under the wooden stretcher. Some librarian’s fine penmanship attested:

  Dr. Frederick M. Petrie, b. 1820–d. 1849, saved town, Cholera. Caught it.

  Since he is from the nineteenth century, I’d never thought to Google him before. But, what first came alive on-screen? His original full-page La Verne Bugle proposal for surviving a plague. Those neighborhood organizations he helped found are still in use. His bulletins are yet considered models of improvised public health. So now, I can give good young Petrie the last word.

  Fulfilling the duties assigned by fellow-citizens in acknowledgment of the Epidemic Cholera now being so sadly among us, I, the Committee’s newest member, submit the following report, June 11, 18 and 49. Grateful that, after being somewhat modified, it was unanimously adopted. To wit:

  In consideration of our being presently uneasily visited by The Cholera, I recommend to my neighbors the following program intended as defensive and preparatory:

  —Please undertake a strict course of temperance and regularity in diet, drink and exercise. I urge on you, friends, the spare use of meats, vegetables and fruit, and more particularly if the bowels be to any degree disordered, avoid fresh pork, spiritous liquors, green corn, cucumbers and melons, excessive fatigue, wet and night exposure. Insure your keeping comfortably clothed especially during sleep.

  —Should any sickness of the stomach occur while the disease be locally prevailing, consider it a commencement that may easily be cured, but if neglected might kill infants and our elderly.

  —Go to bed between blankets and be pretty warmly covered. This course has, in other communities, proved sufficient to heal in almost all cases when commenced in time. Attention: Latest medical beliefs now question bleeding’s value.

  —Be assured my new town-and-farm-friends, all such steps, if efficiently administered early, prevent death in most known cases.

  So try resting easy, please.

  The singular symptom likeliest to undo us is an interfering terror.

  —I further observe, with Committee support, that our La Verne citizens will be exposed to less danger by calmly remaining in their homes, than by flying from them. I therefore urge families, in groups of five or ten, to take care in securing Good Help, to regularly visit each other, attending to each other’s arising needs. Friends will, in their hour of need, stand fast, not flee.

  —Stay we must, however strong be our sinful urge to solely save ourselves. Certainly our very notion of Civilization depends on our group-determination that not one among us, even the most solitary and least loved, go left untended.
r />   In this and all things, looking toward our healthier future, I remain your most respectful new neighbor,

  Frederick Markus Petrie, M.D.

  —Mark

  THE MORTICIAN CONFESSES

  RALEIGH—A former funeral home employee charged with having sex with a body he was transporting pleaded guilty Wednesday after a psychiatrist testified that the man had sexual problems and that the incident probably was an isolated one.

  Superior Court Judge Davis Cashwell sentenced John Bill Whitehead, 60, of Falls, NC, to two years in prison, then suspended the sentence and placed him on five years’ probation. Cashwell also ordered Whitehead to serve 30 days in the county jail, to undergo a psychiatric evaluation and to complete 100 hours of community service.

  “There is not a single thing I can possibly do to make it hurt any less,” the judge said before handing down the sentence.

  Whitehead, a thin man with carefully combed brown hair and thick glasses, said nothing during the proceedings other than answering “Yes sir” or “No sir” to Cashwell in a near-whisper.

  On Feb. 22, Person County sheriff’s deputies said they found Whitehead in a funeral home station wagon several hundred yards off US 401 in Tuscarora County. Occupying the vehicle with Whitehead was the body of a 40-year-old woman he had picked up at Dorothea Dix Mental Hospital and was supposed to deliver to Nowell-Johnstone funeral home of Falls.