Doctor Olaf van Schuler's Brain (14 page)

The sailor sat up, his eyes partially closed, lids floating over an unfocused stare. He held his right hand open, palm raised to the Fool and said, “I feel well.”

Ada clapped, her fingers flashing with diamond rings, and the audience roared with delight. Quimbly's palms burned from applauding, which he could no longer remember beginning. He turned to find Bettine, to share the thrill with a smile, but she no longer stood beside him.

“He feels well!” the Fool sang, the words tumbling like a
blessing from his lips. The day seemed brighter and warmer. Ada held forth a blue silk bag into which the sailor emptied the contents of his wallet. Her smile broadened. She held the crowd between her lovely red lips.

“Help us spread the cure, the truth,” she cried. “Help us build the baquet.”

The Fool spun beside her, his dazzling stripes blurring to form a blanket of color. “Help us build the baquet!” he echoed. “We need your help to build the baquet. Tomorrow. Tompkins Square. Tell your friends!”

The silk bag passed before Quimbly, but he had nothing to slip into it, and he looked away as Ada swept by. He had never seen a baquet, didn't even know what one looked like, but the urgency of the Fool's request filled him, and he, like the rest of the onlookers, recognized the importance of the thing. The Fool and the sailor were shaking hands now. The pier shook.

“Quimbly, chum!”

Quimbly turned, recognizing Parkhurst as if for the first time in many months. His friend wore a new beige scarf and carried a lady's handbag.

“If you made off with half what I did …” Parkhurst pulled two leather wallets from an inside pocket of his jacket along with a gold chain and an engraved locket. “And better still,” he bent close to whisper, “I heard the
Sea Witch
is docking two days hence. Loaded with gold from California!”

T
HAT NIGHT
Q
UIMBLY
was the last to arrive at the hideout, a rocky stretch of shore protected by a dozen yards of abandoned dock. Parkhurst had already begun outlining plans, and Cobb, Phineas, and John Bovee sat round him, eager to learn the nature of the coming crime. The darkness hid their faces and the color of their clothes, but Quimbly could tell them apart: John, the fat one whose back sloped like the shell of an egg; Cobb, who claimed to be eleven, though he stood no taller than a six-year-old, and Phineas, Cobb's older brother, who at fifteen was the oldest of the lot. The River Gang, they called themselves, and beside them, their upturned rowboat looked much like the surrounding boulders.

“Password?” Parkhurst said, and Quimbly knew that his friend's pale blue eyes had found his shadowy form. The Hudson met the dock post with burps and splatters of cold water that on windy nights rose high enough to catch even Parkhurst, who always sat on the largest rock.

“California.”

“You're late.”

“Don't got a watch.” Quimbly slipped under the dock and sat beside John Bovee. He didn't want to admit that he'd been eating with Bettine and her mother. The girl had found him skipping rocks, taken his hand, and brought him fireside, where Frau Klein fried eggs and served him hot cabbage and potatoes from a chipped ceramic pot. Bettine
made him lie down, and she ran her hands over him just like the Fool had the sailor a few hours before. He'd watched her fingers, the smallest encircled by a scrap of red cloth, ends tied to resemble a rose.

“No watch?” Parkhurst laughed and the other boys followed, tearing the night with their mirth. “Here, take one of mine. You can pay me later.” He tossed a cold metal oval at Quimbly, who caught it and stuck it into his one good pocket.

“We've planned it all out,” Parkhurst continued. “Wednesday, Cobb and Phineas and me and you will take the boat out, before daybreak, when it's darkest. We'll board the
Sea Witch
stern side, and slip into the hold, all of us except Cobb, who'll stay with the rowboat. He's too small to carry much anyway. And John Bovee will be on shore watch.”

“I'm always on watch,” John Bovee said.

“We need to have room for the gold.” Parkhurst bent forward and the others pulled closer to listen, “I hear there's nuggets as big as my head.”

“What if they catch you?” Cobb pulled his torn jacket tighter, the shirtsleeves dangling over his fingertips.

“Won't happen.” Parkhurst reached behind him to pull out his murder knife, which he tapped, blunt side against his knee. “First off, no one's expecting us to row out. Second, ain't no one awake at that hour, and third, if there is, I'll take care of him.”

“Me too,” Phineas said, though his words rang hollow.

Quimbly rubbed his new pocket watch. The thought of the icy Hudson terrified him, though he would never admit it, nor the fact that he couldn't swim. He was still new to the River Gang, still proving himself. He knew the boys liked him for the very reason they were wary of him: he was traveled, adventurous. To contradict this image would upset them. His words would hold less authority, and he knew what happened when one lost authority. Knew from the example of his father, a preacher now behind bars for thieving, though no one would have raised even an eyebrow had he not admitted, one drunken afternoon before his congregation, to meeting Satan. His wife, Quimbly's ma, had slept with too many dairy farmers to have much authority either. Quimbly knew better. “What about the docks?” he said.

“John'll whistle three times if he sees anything. We'll row out whichever way's safe.” Parkhurst nodded, the motion of his head and shoulder a dark blur. “Tomorrow night, we practice.”

“It's a good plan,” Phineas confirmed, brushing the dirt from his trousers and rising. “We'll be rich.”

“Wait!” Parkhurst held forth his knife, one hand on the handle, the other cradling the blade, and Phineas bent to kiss it. Cobb and John Bovee followed, then Quimbly, who, like the others, did it because it brought good luck. The
moon, just a ribbon, hung low enough that it shone blue in the metal.

“May the
Sea Witch
bring great riches.” Parkhurst looked down, as if praying, and Quimbly could make out the lines of his friend's narrow lips, which opened and closed around each word with practiced precision. Soon Parkhurst would scratch a new line beside the dozen or so that marked each meeting.

“May —” Parkhurst turned suddenly, raising his knife. “Who's there!”

Feet crunched beach gravel. All five boys turned, discovered the small, dark figure a few yards away. Within seconds Phineas held the intruder pinned between his arm and chest. “Who are you? What are you doing here?” he demanded.

“You'll wake all of New York!” Parkhurst stepped forward to take the intruder from Phineas's rough embrace. The outline of a skirt swirled, and Parkhurst leaned forward to regard the sniffling creature. “It's that German girl,” he said. “Must have followed you, Quimbly.”

“How do you know?” Quimbly stared at Bettine, but he couldn't tell if her eyes met his. She'd get him in a lot of trouble if she hadn't already.

“We all came from downtown.”

“Wasn't me.” Quimbly said, but Bettine had recognized him. She stepped tearfully beside him, her hand seeking his.

“How much she hear?” Cobb asked.

“Don't matter now,” John Bovee tossed a rock into the river, allowing the thunk to introduce his conclusion. “Now we've got to kill her.”

“She didn't understand. Can't speak a word of English.” Quimbly knocked Bettine's hand away so that she'd know not to follow him again. He raised an arm against John's intentions. Quimbly didn't much care for violence, especially to girls. And contradicting John Bovee was easy, as no one ever listened to him.

Parkhurst swung his knife. He laughed and stepped close to Bettine. Words rushed from her lips, harsh, quick, German words, the sounds tumbling over each other like children over fallen change.

“You won't say nothing to no one, you hear?” Parkhurst said and then tucked the knife into his back pocket, perhaps too quickly, because he added: “I don't want to hurt you, but I will next time.” He turned to the others. “Come on.”

“What about —” John Bovee began.

“Quimbly's sweet on her.”

“Am not,” Quimbly called as the others headed back along the waterfront. Bettine took his hand again, and he was glad for the darkness concealing his blush.

T
HE MEMORY OF
the Fool's voice drew Quimbly to Thompkins Square the next morning, after a hasty
breakfast of stale rolls and fried fish swiped from a stand. The crowd surpassed the one assembled the day before, though the dockworkers now wore clean, buttoned shirts and held children or called after ones running screaming through trampled flower beds. Even the fashionable ladies, arriving from the surrounding brownstones in white gloves and tulle-covered hats, trod upon the soil to steal a better view. The Fool knew people in high places, Quimbly decided.

The Fool wore wide gold-colored suspenders and a top hat that towered high. He seemed to dance as he pulled a dark metal rod from his traveling trunk and circled the old elm near the park's center. Ada held one of the tree's snaking roots, thick as her arm and the color of frosty soil. Her hair, fastened back in a braid and tied with blue ribbons, was shiny. She appeared tired to Quimbly, who noted her pallor and the red lips that not once turned up to smile. She bent gracefully, nodding politely when the Fool asked if she “felt it,” but her heart seemed elsewhere. The Fool, on the other hand, tied rope with zeal, dozens of eight-yard lengths that he spread along the ground to radiate from the tree trunk like the spokes of a wheel.

Quimbly leaned forward to observe the frayed end of the strand nearest him. He reached out to touch it, but a cold hand pulled him away.

“Let the sick forward.” An old woman glared at him
from a Merlin chair with large, mud-covered wheels and a padded back and footrest. Dressed head to toe in gray delaine, she looked like an insect. “Move aside, boy.”

And though Quimbly had no desire to comply, her two sons, dockworkers both of them and strong enough to heft crates of coffee and flour single-handedly, pulled him away.

“I've waited nearly two hours,” Quimbly began, but the Fool announced himself, and the crowd applauded and Quimbly fell back yet again.

“This is Ada, my lovely assistant.” The Fool's voice rose, sweet syrup to the hungry. “She will join today with the sick and find cure! For though heavenly in aspect, she is diseased. Insomnia! Nights without the pleasure of dream! Waking hours of cold darkness, solitude. Who will join with her today? Who, too, will find peace of body and mind?”

Ada tied a cord around her waist. She raised one arm and regarded the crowd with eyes made no less beautiful by the dark circles beneath them.

“We men are like magnets,” the Fool continued. “We act on other bodies, we propel matter through space. We are fluid, natural, one with all celestial — Wait!” He held his hand to the crowd. “Do not mock my words. Do not disregard their truth. Open yourselves to the force, the magnetic energy emanating from this elm. Allow it to join with
you, to flow through you, to heal your wounds and troubles. Listen to me. Listen to my words.”

The spidery gray lady grasped the rope, as did nearly a dozen others, older people mostly, aside from Ada and a young girl with a harelip. Quimbly longed to take hold of a rope as well. The Fool's words had uncovered a roughness inside him, a feeling that throbbed like an empty stomach. He felt foolish, uncertain. If he'd been a child, he'd have run to his mother.

“I've magnetized this tree with my most powerful magnet. The force will flow through you, align your humors. Remember, the magnetized compass needle points north, while its poleless counterpart spins aimlessly. Come, join me!” The Fool led the roped patients — he, pushing the old lady's wheeled chair, the others, stepping slowly, mostly with eyes closed, expectant. Forward and back. Quimbly could not look away.

“I'm healed!” a gaunt man cried, flexing his fingers in front of his eyes. One after another, the patients released their ropes, meeting Ada, who had stepped away from the tree to collect payments in her blue silk bag. The old woman attempted to rise from her wheeled chair, and the Fool put his arms around her, guiding her upward, forward.

“Once the internal harmony has faltered,” he said — he'd been speaking for some minutes now, Quimbly realized, only he couldn't remember the words —“we must reestablish the natural state. The healthy state. That is to
say, disease is nothing but interference. Matter interfering with fluid.”

“I have not felt so good in years,” the old lady said, though her legs gave way and she fell back into her cushioned seat. “Years!

“If only I had the baquet!” the Fool answered, speaking over her head to the crowd. “There's no substance more fluid, more capable of conducting, than water. But we need a baquet.”

“Help us build a baquet!” Ada echoed. And as she had the day before, she gathered contributions, this time hundreds of folded bills and silver coins.

Quimbly found a stretch of shaded ground and sat, watching strangers engage the Fool in conversation: Will it work for rheumatism? For chronic pain? For toothache? Blindness? Upset stomach? Even Quimbly could answer the questions, a boy who could neither read nor write, who stole his breakfast and slept under the stars with a rusted saucer that served as a pillow.

At last only the Fool and Ada remained, and Quimbly approached them, his hair combed as best he could with fingers, his face wiped clean with palms and spit. “I'd like to apprentice,” he said before he realized that he'd waited till all the others left in order to say just this. He could taste the words, like suckers dissolving on his tongue. An unexpected sweetness.

The Fool regarded Quimbly with a half smile. Up close
his skin looked windburned. “You could use a good bath, a bit of soap,” he said.