Chapter 9
In a higher world it is otherwise, but here below to live is to change, and to be perfect is to have changed often.
Joseph wondered what color he was. He suspected he had passed pink quite some time ago and turned downright crimson. Not only his cheeks but his entire body felt as if it were on fire, and it had nothing to do with the temperature of the air.
“Do you have any questions?” came Papa’s voice from the other side of his desk.
Joseph shook his head and kept his eyes on his shoes. He’d thought that painting of the Virgin’s breast was the most dangerous thing in Papa’s office. He’d been wrong. Spread out between them now were half a dozen proximate occasions of sin: distressingly detailed anatomical diagrams.
“I know I’ve made you uncomfortable, son, and your modesty does you credit.
I considered waiting another year. But your body is starting to change, and you’ve such a keen, curious mind.
I would rather give you the truth early than have you grow up gathering lies the way other boys do.
And believe it or not, what I’ve just told you is a fraction of what you’ll need to know before your wedding night. ”
Already Joseph’s head was swimming. Mama said taking pleasure in anything except God was a sin. But Papa spoke as if a husband’s pleasure was inevitable and his wife’s pleasure was his responsibility. How could a man ask a woman to let him do—that to her unless he made it pleasant?
“Would you like to borrow any of these books?”
Joseph shook his head again. Perhaps too quickly: Papa understood that he really wanted to nod.
He chuckled. “If you can’t stop thinking about women’s bodies, son—even if blood has gone somewhere besides your cheeks—that isn’t a sin. It’s perfectly natural. It’s necessary!”
If such a thing was possible, more blood rushed to Joseph’s face. There was none left to go anywhere else.
Joseph heard Papa closing books. “Or, if you can’t imagine yourself doing such a thing, that’s perfectly natural too. Just come to me when you’ve changed your mind. Will you do that, Joseph?”
He nodded. At the edge of his vision, he watched Papa stack the last volume. Joseph felt both relief and disappointment.
Papa’s hands lingered on the book, but he seemed to have forgotten its contents. “I know I’m gone more than I’m here…”
Jealousy stabbed Joseph in the stomach. When Papa was home, Joseph wished he wouldn’t spend so much time talking to their slaves. But Joseph understood why Papa often left early and returned late. “Your patients need you. I know that.” Joseph looked up. “Your work is important.”
“You are important too, Joseph.” Papa held his eyes till Joseph believed him.
The mantle clock chimed then. Papa raised his eyebrows. “Tempus fugit, indeed. If you’re sure you don’t want to ask anything, I need to pay a call on a botanist friend. I promised your mother I would find out why there are black spots on the leaves of her roses.”
“May I come with you?”
Papa seemed to hesitate. “My friend’s garden is up on the Neck. It will be a long, hot trip.”
“I don’t mind.” Joseph did have a question to ask.
Papa glanced toward the parlor. He looked worried. “I suppose your mother and sisters are still over at the Grands’.”
Right now, the thought of being in the same room with a woman—any woman—was terrifying. But Joseph didn’t want Mama to fret. “Should I tell them I’m going with you?”
“No—don’t.” The response was surprisingly quick and sharp, more like a prohibition. Papa tried to soften it: “Henry can tell them when they come back.”
Papa brought his medical satchel—he took it everywhere, whatever his plans—and they retrieved their hats from the hall. Henry had already harnessed their old mare to the chaise.
“Thank you, Henry!” Papa called with a wave as the black man closed the gate behind them.
When they’d turned onto Coming Street, Joseph asked: “Papa, did you ever serve at Mass?”
“No…”
“Yesterday, Father McEncroe spoke to our class—about how we might think we have nothing to give to Our Lord, because we’re only boys, but we do: we can assist His Priests. Father McEncroe said we should ask our parents first. I haven’t talked to Mama yet, but I know she’ll say yes.”
“Of course she will,” Papa answered without taking his eyes from the mare.
“M-May I, Papa?”
“I was hoping you were going to ask me something about women,” he murmured. “You’re already in the choir. Why do you want to be an altar server too?”
Joseph stared at Papa. Because God made me, and you, and everything—because He died for me—and I’ve done so little to thank Him! Because Holy Communion will help me fight my wickedness! He was deciding what to say aloud when Papa interrupted his thoughts:
“Oh, Joseph—I’m so sorry.”
He followed Papa’s eyes. They had passed outside the city and were approaching the Lines. The walls were empty now, but Joseph looked away quickly. He would see those twenty-two hanging men until the day he died.
“I came this way without even thinking…” Papa urged their mare past the ruins.
“It’s all right,” Joseph murmured, even though lying was a sin.
“Hélène told me how you comforted her that day. I have never been prouder of you, Joseph. Your mind is exceptional—everyone tells you that. We should also tell you how impressive your heart is.”
“You were prouder about my comforting Hélène than you were at my Confirmation?”
Papa sighed. “If you want to be a server, you have my blessing. But there are more important things than saints and Sacraments, Joseph.”
If lightning struck them right now, would Papa go to Hell?
“You are certainly your mother’s son. She wanted to become a nun. Did you know that?”
Joseph shook his head. “Why didn’t she?”
“I wish I could say she chose me instead. The truth is, no order would accept her. Can you believe that? Your mother is the most devout woman I know. And who would keep the Great Silence better than a deaf-mute? Those nuns were blind: they couldn’t see past medieval ideas that deafness is proof of God’s displeasure, that it ‘prevents faith.’ One Mother Superior said your mother could live in their community as an act of charity, but not as a postulant.
Those nuns humiliated her. I told your mother: ‘You are perfect just as you are. Take your vows with me.’ That is the Church you are so eager to serve. ”
“But it was a Priest who started the National Institute for Deaf-Mutes.”
“The schools and the hospitals the Church has established—absolutely commendable. I’m not saying it’s entirely bad. But neither is the Church all good.”
Joseph had planned to argue, but a noise in the woods up ahead distracted him.
Faint but distinct, it sounded like a bell—not a church or plantation bell, but the kind put on animals.
No human voice accompanied it. Their mare lifted her head and turned an ear toward the bell too.
Joseph hoped it wasn’t attached to a bull or anything dangerous. “Papa, do you hear that?”
He pulled back on the horse’s reins, making her slow to a walk.
The jangling continued, sounding faster now, almost frantic, but they couldn’t see its source through the trees.
“A loose sheep, probably.” Papa raised the reins to urge the mare back into a trot—and then the cracking of a branch and a human groan came from the woods.
“Is someone hurt?” Papa called, stopping their horse.
No response from the trees.
“I’m a doctor,” Papa explained. When the stranger still didn’t answer, he added: “I keep my patients’ secrets.”
The silence continued till Joseph was certain the groan had been some trick of the wind. Then a deep voice replied, almost too quiet to carry across the distance: “You know how to set bones?”
“I do.” Papa handed Joseph the reins and jumped out of the chaise.
The voice inquired, “You alone?”
“My son is with me.” Papa led their mare to one of the pines nearby, where he tied her. “He can keep a secret too.”
Joseph frowned at his father as he leaned in to retrieve his medical satchel.
“Would you prefer to stay here?” Papa asked.
Joseph shook his head and accepted Papa’s hand to help him down from the carriage.
“I ain’t close to the road, understand.”
“We’ll come to you,” Papa replied. “If you think something is broken, try not to move.”
“It’s my arm,” the man explained, the slow clang of the bell punctuating his words. “I gots to move a little, so as you can hear me, I reckon.”
Papa chuckled. “Just keep talking. We’re on our way.”
The man did not offer his name. They picked their way through the trees for several long minutes before Joseph saw the bells—two of them, suspended from a pair of arched iron bars that resembled horns.
The bells were brass perhaps, round with slits at the bottom and swaying slightly, but Joseph could hear only one ball rattling.
His eyes followed the horns downward. They sprouted from the shoulders of a young, bushy-haired, dark-skinned negro, from either side of the iron collar around his neck.
He sat on the fallen trunk of a dead tree, cradling his bloody right arm in his lap.
Joseph stopped. He felt a little sick. Much as he admired Papa, Joseph knew he could never be a doctor himself.
The negro glanced up at the bells. “I was tryin’ to be careful, but one of ’em caught on somethin’, and I fell wrong.”
On the dead tree, next to this wild negro, Papa set down his medical satchel as calmly as if they were in a Charleston bedchamber.
Joseph kept his distance while Papa peered at his patient’s arm and the raw flesh of his palm.
“What I need to do will hurt before it helps.” He offered the negro a leather strap from his bag. “You might want to bite down on this.”
“I don’t suppose your regular patients would appreciate that much.” The negro accepted the strap but only gripped it in his good fist.