Butcher (7 page)

New Madrid County, Missouri

M
ore than forty years ago, when he'd first come to this soil, a man in hiding, he'd selected his safe haven with the greatest care. There were, in the final analysis, only half a dozen geographical areas that beckoned. The big, teeming industrial hubs of the American Northeast, mass melting pots where accents blurred and went unnoticed; the booming Midwestern blue-collar cities like Detroit, with their ghettos and ethnic communities, and the impoverished agri-villages of the heartland and the Bible Belt South. He'd gravitated to the latter, and worked his way up the Mississippi River to a rural area in dire need of a medical clinic.

Shtolz's goal was to create an identity that could be sculpted into something invulnerable. Oddly, the cosmetic surgery he'd undergone in South America had not been a total success. The birthmark and the reshaped cheeks should have been augmented further. The eyes and mouth and ears needed to be changed, but by then time had become a pressing factor. He was one of the most hunted men living, wanted not only by the fanatical Jews but by his own people, and he'd made his way to North America without a moment to spare.

The young Boy Butcher considered many things, but while it would have been the prudent course to forsake any further work in medicine or the sciences, he'd been somewhat reassured by the lack of curiosity in him by the locals. The state of Missouri was as war ravaged and poverty stricken as parts of Europe. The small agricultural communities were in great need of farm labor and skilled artisans of any kind. Emil Shtolz could do many things well. After a short stint as a manual laborer, working every waking hour to absorb the peculiarities of idiomatic American slang, he decided on his plan of action.

It was common at the time for illegal aliens to obtain “tombstone I.D.s,” which were easily and inexpensively created. Shtolz found a number of deceased residents resting in obscure county graveyards who'd been born around the time he had. Setting up a “genealogical research firm” involved nothing more sophisticated then renting a mail box number out of the busy Memphis postal zone, and within a few weeks he'd come up with a handful of candidates. Individuals who had vanished more or less without a trace, persons without living relatives or obtainable histories. One of them particularly appealed to him because of the name.

Solomon Royal pleased him greatly because of the play on the first name. The Seal of Solomon. The Magen David. King Solomon was, indeed, a Solomon Royal. So within a few days an application was filed for a replacement birth certificate, and Emil Shtolz no longer existed.

The next step was to obtain documentation. Like the officials of his mother country, Germany, the petty bureaucrats in the U.S.A. respected paper. Using a variety of techniques ranging from mail-drop correspondence schools who sold diplomas to forged documentation, Solomon Royal became the learned and lettered Dr. Solomon Royal, complete with a fabricated past that implied he might be of Jewish descent. The truest thing in his story was the fact that he'd “escaped from the Nazis.” But Solomon Royal escaped them as they were on the brink of war, in the late 1930s.

A natural manipulator, Royal used media to build a legend to reinforce his web of lies with checkable pictorial proof. Before long there were pictures of him “taken in World War II” as he worked with American servicemen, photos captioned with dates that could then be reproduced in other stories that repeated the same mythology and cushioned and insulated the lies with another generation of journalism. As the years passed, those who knew Royal, or who had been treated by him, repeated the legend until it became part of the community folklore. Dr. Emil Shtolz, product of his own brilliant imagination, had successfully reinvented himself.

At the moment, the legend was driving slowly into a chat-covered driveway some fourteen miles from his clinic and turning off the ignition of his humble used car.

“It's Doc Royal,” the woman inside the farmhouse said in that pleased tone people reserve for the individuals for whom their affection is greatest. She turned from the window to the elderly man seated at the kitchen table. “I tell you that man has been so good to us. We could never have kept Buck home without Dr. Royal helping the way he has. He's wonderful!"

“I know he's a real blessing to this community,” the man said in a surprisingly deep, resonant voice. It was a voice used to commanding the attention of a congregation from the pulpit, and the years had not dulled its powerful thunder, but it was too loud in the small kitchen and he noticed it. “I've heard some wonderful things about him, Mrs. Jenks, I truly have."

She was pushing back the folding doors that separated the front room from the kitchen. A chrome hospital bed was the only object of furniture in the small front room and a white-haired man occupied it, staring unblinking at the ceiling.

“It's Doc Royal, honey,” she told the man in the bed. Even though they said the signals didn't get through she thought maybe sometimes he might be able to understand, so she still spoke to him as if he could comprehend.

“I thank you for the coffee and I'll just go on directly,” the man said, pushing away from the table and standing with considerable effort, old, brittle bones popping loudly. “I've got to drive to Caruthersville."

“You're welcome to stay now,” she said.

“No, no. I'll go on."

“I do appreciate you coming out like this, Brother Peterson,” she said, and they chatted amiably until the footsteps and the knocking punctuated their conversation.

“It's open. Come in,” she called, moving in the direction of the back door as it swung open.

“Hello,” the Jenks's family doctor said, coming in to the familiar kitchen. “Hello,” he said again, nodding to the man with her.

“Doc, this is Brother Peterson from Canalou,” she said, smiling at their old friend.

“Oh, we see each other around."

“We sure do, we sure do,” the older man shook hands with Dr. Royal. “I'll go on, Mrs. Jenks,” he said.

“Don't let me run you off,” Royal said.

“I've got to be going,” he responded, moving with octogenarian singleness of purpose. The woman walked to the door with him and when she got back Dr. Royal was already standing in the front room looking down at the man in bed.

“Buck asked for Budrell Peterson to preach the—” she started to say funeral but the word stuck and she said “—the service for him when it's time."

“Oh? Well, that's nice."

“Brother Peterson's Pentacostal,” she said.

“He'll give you a dandy. I heard one he preached not long ago and it was quite eloquent. Hello, Buck,” he said, putting his hand on the bare arm of the man in the bed. Fiery blue eyes blazed from a gaunt, haunted stare.

“Look who's here. I wish you'd get me out of this gol’ dang thing."

“What gol’ dang thing is that?"

“This heliocopter,” the bedfast man said, a bandaged hand weakly simulating the pattern of a spinning blade. “They land this dang thing in the field where the wolves are and stir them all up."

“You're not in a heliocopter,” the woman said sharply, “Buck, you're at home."

“That's a hydraulic lift,” Dr. Royal said, pointing to the large device that stood beside the hospital bed. “That's how Naomi gets you up to change you. You're at home, Buck."

“How many wolves you kill today?"

“Would you please fix me up with a pan of warm water?” he said to the woman.

“Sure,” she said. “He heard some coyotes by the house the other night. That's what set him off.” She went back in the kitchen.

“Them wolves hurt me,” the man said.

“We'll fix that,” Dr. Royal said. Naomi Jenks was running water. He had a syringe out and put it on the bed where the man's emaciated legs were carefully bound with soft cloth. He pushed at the man's gaunt flank very gently.

“How many wolves did you kill today?” the man repeated. Royal swiftly injected the contents of the hypo into the man's exposed anus.

He felt a surge of power akin to a sexual thrill as he returned the syringe to its case. He wished he could be present when the solution worked its way through the man. He loved working with the elderly, animals, and the very young—anything that was helpless. Nursing homes and hospices were particular favorites for his games, which for many years had acted as the surrogate for his perverted drives.

The woman came back in the room with a pan of warm, soapy water. “There you go,” she said, smiling.

He took some paper towels, tenderly cleaning the man where he'd soiled himself. The bowel movement was like an infant's, Royal was pleased to note, and he cleaned the fragile, parchment-like skin with the greatest tenderness.

Bayou Ridge

S
olomon Royal parked at the bottom of the steep incline and began his slow ascent. He was just past seventy and still in good health, physically, but it was a cold day, it was a pretty fair climb, and he took his time. The Aters house—if you could call it a house—was an old sharecropper's shack on the edge of a small farm owned by a lady who lived in Florida. Locally it was called the Lawlesses place, though Ferg Lawlesses was long deceased.

The new owner never got around to tearing the shack down. The Diamond Ranch outfit farmed the ground for its absentee owner, and their foreman had let old Mr. Aters and his family move in.

Aters was gone most of the time, a drinking man he was, and his wife, a woman in her fifties, their six children, and assorted livestock somehow survived on this piece of barren ridge. No electricity. A hand pump. Dr. Royal knew they lived rough.

He was breathing hard, blowing pretty good, by the time he reached the top. Tar paper on boards, just this side of a shanty. Coal oil smell ... kerosene. He recalled what it was like to live like this.

A girl of about ten with a dirty face opened the door for him. She had old eyes already. He entered without asking and spoke to the room, “Where is he?"

“Over here,” Mrs. Aters said. She was stout and had a doughy face with the same wary gaze as her child's. She pushed a filthy cloth back and he saw the little boy. He moved over toward him, still with his coat on, and set his bag down beside the bed.

“I need the lamp,” he said, and they moved the strong light beside him. Huge shadows shot through the room and the pungent smell took him back to another time, as he prepared to ply his trade.

“Appreciate you comin’ all the way out here. You bein’ sort of retired and all,” the woman spoke from the shadows.

“Um hm.” He bent to the task at hand. He glanced back and saw the little girl watching him. “How old are you, my dear?” She stared at him, transfixed, too shy to speak. “Hm?"

“Tell him,” the woman commanded, adding, “she's nine."

“Nine! Well, that's nice. What's your name, my sweet?” The child mumbled something. He worked with the boy. Finished. “He'll be all right.” Royal gathered up his things and as he walked by the dirty-faced girl he cupped the back of her head in his hand, looking at the stout woman and smiling.

“I think I should give all these kids of yours a good, thorough, routine checkup. Tell you what. Call the office and we'll set up a schedule for you to bring them in."

“Can't afford to,” she said simply. About the ten thousandth time he'd heard that one.

“I'm not going to charge you anything for the visits. We'll start with the little girl here. My, you are dirty. May I have a washcloth?” he asked. The woman turned, got a filthy rag from the sink, and walked heavily across the room and handed it to him.

He took it and rubbed at the dirty cheek, then permitted himself to roughly rub it across her full, pouty lips.

“That's much better. Next week I'll give you a complete examination ... no charge,” he repeated to the Aters sow, on his way out the door.

Bayou City

T
he man still walked with a sprightly step considering his age. Observing him from a distance one would find it impossible to determine either his age or occupation by watching his back as he walked. He had the gait of a person twenty years his junior, and from the shiny, black, poor-boy suit, one might have pegged him as a preacher from an impoverished congregation, a third-world missionary, or somebody down on their luck. Nobody would have surmised, from watching the back of Dr. Solomon Royal, that they were looking at one of the most successful physicians in southeast Missouri.

The man in the wrinkled and worn black suit walked briskly through the doors of Van Estes's Funeral Home.

“Howdy, Doc,” the greeter, who doubled as chief medical examiner/embalmer for Bayou City, Eddie Roddenberg, said in his professional whisper of respect.

“Howdy, Eddie.” The men smiled and the doctor went to the left, a pathway he'd traveled many scores of times. Between the two of them they'd seen more death and pain than any fifty men would normally encounter in a lifetime. Both were older men, reasonably at home with the social graces, but perhaps each sensed the aura of darkness around the other and they tended to communicate as little as possible.

“Emily,” Dr. Royal said to the first woman he saw in the room where his former patient was being viewed, “my condolences to your family.” He hugged her and she responded with the same feeling of tenderness and warmth she felt toward her own kinfolk.

He shook a few hands and walked over to the open coffin and looked at what was displayed between the two large groupings of floral arrangements. He bowed his head.

Across the room two women of the town watched him.

“What a fine man. I just love Dr. Royal. I don't know what Bayou City will ever do without him."

“He delivered me, did you know that?"

“Did he really?” The woman had to bite her tongue to keep from adding, “I didn't know he was that old."

“He's like my own family."

No he's not, he's not an alcoholic,
she thought, smiling a wicked little smile. She said, however, “Same here. The man's such a saint. I hope he never quits. You know, I hear he still goes in every day, rain or shine. You almost have to force money on him. Such a dear, sweet man."