“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 wereblind: 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.’Thatis 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 eartoward 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 bottomand 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.
“My ‘regular patients’ come in all shades,” Papa informed him, blotting at the wound with loose cotton and something from a bottle. “Joseph, would you find me a splint, please? If you need tools, my surgery set is in the bottom of the satchel.”
Joseph was glad to keep away. As he hunted for a suitable piece of wood, he did not hear the next few questions Papa asked or the negro’s answers. But every time he moved, or even breathed, one of the bells above him clanged. The negro was a runaway—he had to be. This must be his second attempt, or his master would never have resorted to such punishment.
“Do you have to sleep in that thing?” Papa asked.
“Haven’t slept for weeks now,” the negro muttered.
