Mankillers

“Not as much as you might think,” he answered in an attempt at humor. “Screaming and yelling tends to take one’s mind off pain. Maybe that’s why we do it.”

She gave him a generous spoonful of the medicine. He settled back, more relaxed, though the narcotic hadn’t yet had a chance to take effect. As soon as it did, Buck more carefully examined the torn suture.

“For God sakes, why did you pull out the stitch?”

Still clenching his jaw, Rex replied. “I was hoping the bastard might be distracted by the sight of my bloody stump. I certainly didn’t expect Ruth to be squeamish and faint.”

“Momma? Squeamish?” Sarah asked in a mocking tone. “Not in my lifetime.”

The older woman moved up behind her daughter. “I’ve probably seen almost as much blood as the doctor here. I was the one who was acting.”

“You fooled me, Mrs. Greenwald.” Buck removed his suture kit from the canvas bag in which he’d stored the laudanum. “You should consider a thespian career.”

“Actually, doctor, in my youth I appeared for an entire season on the stage of the Dock Street Theater, once with Junius Booth.”

“Momma, you never told me you knew the Booths.”

“It was a long time ago, my dear, and I don’t intend to ever mention it again, not after what his son John Wilkes did.”

“While we’re waiting for the laudanum to take effect,” Buck said, looking back over his shoulder, “I’ll attend to . . .”

Everyone followed his gaze to the cadaver on the floor behind them.

Buck knelt beside the body and aligned it parallel with the edges of the oriental rug. He’d just killed the husband of the woman he loved.

When he’d finished rolling up the dead man, he returned to his patient, replaced the suture and bandaged the amputation.

“This time,” he told Rex, “please leave my neat little stitches alone, will you?”

His words slurred from the narcotic, the man in the bed replied, “I will if you promise to keep out the riffraff.” Glassy-eyed he gazed up at Ruth. “I’m sorry about the hole in your wall.”

“Pish.” She patted his shoulder maternally. “I think I’ll leave it there as a souvenir.”

Pounding came from the cellar door.

“Mercy.” Ruth clucked her tongue. “I forgot about Duncan and Rosie.” She walked briskly to the staircase portal and opened it.

The butler came out first, looking bewildered, then relieved.

Rosie crept out behind him. “Sweet Jesus, Miz Greenwald, I feared you was all dead.” She looked through the doorway, saw the boots sticking out of the rolled carpet, and with a gasp clutched her folded hands to her chest.

“Miz Greenwald, ma’am, you want me to fetch Mr. Jeffcoat?” Duncan asked, less shaken—or pretending to be.

“At once. Tell him to come quickly. I don’t want this vermin in my house a moment longer than necessary.”

Sarah stood over the shrouded body of the man who had been her husband. “How could I have ever felt anything positive for him?”

“He fooled us all.” Ruth murmured, wrapping her daughter in her arms once more.

#

Later that night, as Buck lay alone in his bed in the John C. Calhoun suite of the Sand Hills Hotel in Columbia, South Caroline, he reviewed the events of the day. He’d made a vow not to perform any more amputations and not to use his marksmanship abilities to kill another man, yet within the past twenty-four hours he’d done both. Still he was unable to see how he could have avoided either. One man’s well-being depended on his surgical skills. The other had threatened the very survival of those he loved. He’d handled the two missions with cold precision, but it would be wrong to think he hadn’t felt anything. He was grateful for both skills, as a physician and as a marksman.

He couldn’t predict what the future held. He earnestly hoped his days of surgery were over, that he could spend the rest of his life helping men live honest, honorable and well-balanced lives. He also knew, however, he would do anything and everything fate demanded to protect those he loved. He remembered something the rabbi had told him, wisdom he was only now begi

His mind no longer troubled, he slept.

Tomorrow a new life would begin.

EPILOGUE

One Year Later:

Buck sat on the box of his new phaeton, the reins in his hands, Job beside him. A maroon phaeton. Sarah had been emphatic that it be maroon.

“The color suits you,” she said.

He didn’t understand why. As far as he was concerned, one color was as good as another, though he would have baulked if she’d campaigned for the canary-yellow. Nevertheless he had to admit maroon was attractive. Not as formal as the shiny black he’d automatically gravitated toward, but still not frivolous.

“Stately,” she’d called it.

He wasn’t sure what that meant either, but it sounded nice. More important, it pleased her, and he’d do anything in the world to please his wife—he smiled to himself—except buy a yellow carriage.

She and Janey were seated behind him, facing each other. They’d talked incessantly for the first hour of this trip to Jasmine, grown silent the second.

Buck’s practice with Dr. Meyer in Columbia was thriving. Over the last several months he’d been treating men home from the war who were suffering from what some called nostalgia or melancholy, and others referred to as Soldier’s Heart, a vague indefinable lethargy, and he’d begun to make real progress with them by listening and by learning to better guide their narratives. So far his only surgery had been lancing a small boil. Professionally his ambitions were being realized.

His personal world had settled down and expanded as well. He’d resumed shooting, his targets were again only paper and pine cones. In another year or two he’d begin teaching Job to shoot. He looked forward to the paternal role. Buck had never expected to use the word happy, but it was the only one that came close to the emotion that filled his heart every day.

Six months ago he and Sarah had been married in a private ceremony, attended by the Graysons and a few other close friends. They’d honeymooned in Charleston where Sarah and he had rediscovered the pleasure and tranquility of sailing.

“You’re almost as good as Aaron,” she’d claimed.

He’d appreciated the compliment but hesitated to pursue it. Sarah had apparently accepted the fact that her blockade-ru

Now they were all on their way to Jasmine.

“Our first barbecue,” Sarah remarked. “And probably the first one at Jasmine without pork.”

Buck laughed, confident a pig would be roasting somewhere on the grounds, but she didn’t have to know that. “Let them eat chicken.”

“Or beef,” she added with a sly grin. He’d have to be crazy to think he could hide anything from her. She was after all her mother’s daughter. Was it another Jewish aphorism that said if a man wanted to know what kind of wife a woman would make, he had only to look at her mother?

“Or deer meat,” Job chimed in.

“Or quail,” Janey added.

“Or catfish,” the boy sang out.

Buck laughed. “I don’t think anyone’ll go hungry. If they do, it’s their own darn fault. I’m not sure kugel will ever replace tapioca or rice pudding, though.”