Speakers of the Dead Read online

  A PLUME BOOK

  SPEAKERS OF THE DEAD

  Ryan Krafthefer

  J. AARON SANDERS is associate professor of English at Columbus State University, where he teaches literature and creative writing. He holds a PhD in American literature from the University of Connecticut and an MFA in fiction from the University of Utah. His stories have appeared in the Carolina Quarterly, Gulf Coast, Quarterly West, and Beloit Fiction Journal, among others. This is his first novel.

  PLUME

  An imprint of Penguin Random House LLC

  375 Hudson Street

  New York, New York 10014

  Copyright © 2016 by J. Aaron Sanders

  Penguin supports copyright. Copyright fuels creativity, encourages diverse voices, promotes free speech, and creates a vibrant culture. Thank you for buying an authorized edition of this book and for complying with copyright laws by not reproducing, scanning, or distributing any part of it in any form without permission. You are supporting writers and allowing Penguin to continue to publish books for every reader.

  Illustration of skull © Nicolas-Henri Jacob

  REGISTERED TRADEMARK—MARCA REGISTRADA

  eBook ISBN: 978-0-14-312874-8

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Sanders, J. Aaron.

  Speakers of the dead / J. Aaron Sanders.—First edition.

  pages cm.—(A Walt Whitman mystery)

  ISBN 978-0-14-312871-7 (pbk.)

  1. Whitman, Walt, 1819-1892—Fiction. 2. Murder—Investigation—Fiction. 3. Body snatching—Fiction. I. Title.

  PS3619.A5265S64 2016

  813'.6—dc23

  2015022268

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. The author’s use of names of historical figures, places, or events are not intended to change the entirely fictional character of the work. In all other respects, any resemblance to persons living or dead is entirely coincidental.

  Version_1

  For Gareth and Eliot:

  Missing me one place search another,

  I stop somewhere waiting for you.

  CONTENTS

  About the Author

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Epigraph

  NEW YORK, 1843

  Prologue

  TWO WEEKS LATER

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Author’s Note

  Acknowledgments

  Works Consulted

  When I read the book, the biography famous,

  And is this then (said I) what the author calls a man’s life?

  And so will some one when I am dead and gone write my life?

  (As if any man really knew aught of my life,

  Why even I myself I often think know little or nothing of my real life,

  Only a few hints, a few diffused faint clews and indirections

  I seek for my own use to trace out here.)

  —Walt Whitman

  During the nineteenth century public outrage over dissection continued. There were dozens of riots or ransackings in protest against medical school dissections and/or grave robbing. In 1807 in Baltimore a mob burned down the anatomy hall at the University of Maryland. In 1824 mobs rioted every night for a week against barricaded Yale medical students after a purloined body was found at the medical school. Rioters destroyed medical school buildings at Worthington Medical College in Ohio (1839), McDowell Medical College in Missouri (1844), and Willoughby Medical College in Ohio (1847). In short, the detested scourge of body snatching plagued every state with a medical school at some point during the period from 1807 to 1890 and often produced an outraged public reaction.

  —Norman L. Cantor

  After We Die: The Life and Times of the Human Cadaver

  NEW YORK,

  1843

  Prologue

  In the dream, Elizabeth Blackwell sits opposite Jane Avery’s deathbed. She dabs Jane’s furrowed forehead with a wet cloth and whispers that all will be well. Jane tilts her head toward Elizabeth and tries to speak through her cracked lips caked in muck. Then Jane slips into an irreversible coughing fit—

  And that’s when a noise wakes Elizabeth.

  She opens her eyes, relieved. She hates that recurring dream, the helpless feeling of watching her friend die. It’s been six years since Jane Avery’s death, and not a day goes by that Elizabeth doesn’t believe she might have saved her had she been properly trained as a physician.

  The noise sounds again.

  Around her, in the dormitory of the Women’s Medical College of Manhattan, the other four students do not stir. Perhaps it was nothing.

  She closes her eyes and summons the image of Jane in her prime, her long, elegant frame and creamy skin. After Latin class at the Cincinnati English and French Academy for Young Ladies, Jane is cleaning the blackboard. She erases the word mulier. She senses Elizabeth watching, turns and smiles—

  There it is again. A metallic banging this time.

  Elizabeth reaches for her robe and slippers. She lights a candle, waking Miss Zacky in the bed next to hers.

  “Lizzy.” Miss Zacky checks her pocket watch. “It’s three in the morning, and Abraham’s trial begins at nine.”

  Abraham Stowe, cofounder of the women’s college and a married man, has been accused of manslaughter, the result of a botched abortion performed on Mary Rogers, with whom he admitted having a love affair. In his defense, and for the sake of Abraham’s wife and college cofounder, Lena, the students stayed up late preparing anatomical diagrams outlining the effects of abortion on a woman’s body. The diagrams would be compared with the Mary Rogers autopsy report, which Lena and Elizabeth believed had been altered to implicate Abraham.

  “Be that as it may, I heard a noise downstairs. I should have a look.”

  Miss Zacky groans. “You know that means I have to accompany you.”

  “I also know that you are capable of making your own decisions.”

  The two women skulk across the room into the stairwell, closing the dormitory door behind them. They make their way down the stairs past the third-floor maternity ward, all silent, then to the second-floor infirmary.

  Inside, the patient nearest the door, Mrs. Cook, sleeps soundly. Mrs. Stephens, a few beds over, also lies still. Mrs. Dowd, in the bed next to the window, shifts at the sound of their entrance. She sits u
p straight, struggles to breathe through the dehydration associated with the cholera-like symptoms that landed her in the sickroom the day before.

  Elizabeth props Mrs. Dowd with a pillow while Miss Zacky goes for laudanum.

  “There, there, Mrs. Dowd,” Elizabeth says. “Take your time.”

  But Mrs. Dowd’s deep, panicked breath can’t catch up to itself, and suffocation is closing in. Elizabeth keeps talking, rubbing her back. “You can do it,” she says.

  Mrs. Dowd’s eyes roll back, and she heaves.

  Elizabeth doesn’t hesitate. She slides onto the bed and wraps her arms around her patient. She finds the sternum and pushes hard. Nothing happens, and so she repeats the move. This time, Mrs. Dowd coughs up a bite of meat, which lands on the white sheet at the end of the bed. Elizabeth holds the woman until she catches her breath. “Didn’t quite finish our supper, did we?”

  While Elizabeth holds her upright, Miss Zacky raises the glass to Mrs. Dowd’s mouth. She struggles to swallow at first, but then works it down.

  When the laudanum takes effect, the results are swift. Mrs. Dowd’s body weight collapses into Elizabeth’s lap. She looks at Miss Zacky, who mouths the words Her eyes have closed.

  Relief washes over Elizabeth. She has the fleeting thought that healing is what God put her on earth to do. She eases out from behind her patient, tucking the blanket under the sleeping woman’s chin.

  Back in the stairwell, Miss Zacky whispers, “You’re going to be an excellent doctor, Lizzy.” Elizabeth smiles in response.

  In the dormitory now, Elizabeth observes the rise and fall of the sleeping bodies and contemplates the miracle that is a medical college for women. And it’s all thanks to Abraham and Lena Stowe. Later this morning, they’ll begin the work of proving Abraham’s innocence, and the college can return to its primary mission: to advance the welfare of women through medicine and education. Slipping beneath the covers, she lays her head on the straw pillow and closes her eyes to dream of Jane once again.

  Suddenly, loud and chaotic noises, a string of grunts and screams, ascend from the first floor.

  She glances at Miss Zacky, eyes wide. The other students pop up, one after another: Karina Emsbury, Olive Perschon, Patricia Onderdonk. What is it? they want to know, and Elizabeth bids them Wait here.

  She and Miss Zacky hurry down the stairs to the dissection room on the first floor. Elizabeth puts her ear to the door. Nothing.

  From behind her, Miss Zacky whispers, “The body snatchers . . . ?”

  A scream sounds.

  Elizabeth throws open the door, searching for signs of the fearsome resurrection men who dig up fresh graves and sell the corpses to medical colleges like this one. A single candle on the back wall illuminates the familiar sight of a large central table ringed by shelves and counters. A lone figure hunches over a body, laid out as if for dissection.

  It’s Lena Stowe, gazing down at her dead husband. His eyes and mouth are open, and his chest has been split apart, his rib cage sawed in two. Blood is everywhere. On Abraham. On Lena. On the table and floor.

  Elizabeth wraps her arms around a sobbing Lena, and while they cry together, she can’t help but stare at the monstrous carnage.

  It’s not yet morning on February 12, 1843.

  TWO WEEKS LATER

  Chapter 1

  They are going to kill her.

  Walt Whitman, reporter for the New York Aurora, is standing in the courtyard of the Tombs, with several hundred New Yorkers who have crushed past his cold, aching body for a glimpse of the execution.

  The sun is at the halfway point on its short cycle through the winter sky, and its low angle casts long shadows from west to east, shadows that cover all but the east wall of the prison. It is on this wall that Lena’s large and lonely shadow is cast as if by stage light.

  The noose dances in the harsh winter wind, and below the gallows, a layer of frost blankets the dirt. Walt pushes his way to the front of the crowd, the ice crystals crunching beneath his boots. They are all waiting for Sheriff Jack Harris to return from his meeting with Mayor Morris about whether or not to grant Mrs. Stowe a stay on her execution because of her pregnancy. Walt worries that the decision to deny the stay is a fait accompli, which is why he brought with him a sheaf of testimonials from Lena’s medical students in which they argue that the fetus has quickened, a legal problem for the city, because if the fetus has begun to move, New York would be executing two of its citizens instead of one.

  The sheriff’s coach, a new yellow phaeton, rumbles through the prison gates, around the crowd, and skids to a stop. Jack Harris’s silver hair is stuffed under a top hat, his bearded face deceptively slight compared to his stout body. By reputation, he is a man who sometimes puts instinct before protocol.

  Whitman calls out to the sheriff, and when he tries to follow the lawman, two guards block his way. He scurries back around to the front of the gallows for a better view. The arrest and trial were rushed affairs, rigged against her from the beginning, it seemed, and her defense never gained real traction with anyone but those closest to her. The students know Lena and Abraham. They spent time with them every day for months, and they saw what Walt saw: a couple who, despite their problems, had become closer. None of them even considered Lena as a suspect until Sheriff Harris arrested her.

  At the sheriff’s appearance atop the gallows, the crowd quiets.

  The silence presses down on Walt, and he fights back feelings of despair. The woman who treated him like a son is beautiful and haggard, still wearing the medical school–issued black dress and white apron stained with her husband’s blood, having refused to change since her arrest. Her long black hair ribbons stream in the wind, and her dark eyes are red and swollen. His heart aches to see her suffer like this.

  The sheriff approaches the condemned woman, her body quivering, and he whispers in her ear.

  There is a moment of nothingness—

  —and then she reels backward, emitting a preternatural scream that convulses Walt’s soul.

  Lena flails until the wiry priest powerfully grips her shoulder. “And God hath both raised up the Lord,” he calls out in his baritone voice, “and will also raise you up by his own power.”

  “But the baby!”

  Whitman rushes the stairway but is again blocked by the two guards. He shuffles backward, stands on his tiptoes. Behind him, the bloodthirsty crowd stirs.

  Harris pauses for a moment, then nods to the jailer, Little Joe, who holds Lena fast while the sheriff ties her hands behind her back.

  Walt’s heart races.

  This time Whitman charges, using his large frame to knock one guard to the side, the other to the ground, before ascending the staircase, two steps at a time.

  On the hanging platform, half a dozen coppers line the back end. There’s the priest, wide-eyed and hunched over. There’s Little Joe, twice as big as any other man in the city, and there’s Sheriff Harris. Walt holds up the leather-bound sheaf. “These medical testimonies demonstrate that Mrs. Stowe is quick with child.”

  The sheriff shakes his head. “Mr. Whitman, our medical expert reached a different conclusion.”

  A few feet away, Lena’s sobs are muted by the wind.

  Walt takes a step toward the sheriff, and two policemen meet him. “Mrs. Stowe’s colleagues disagree.”

  “Those women are not doctors.”

  The sheriff turns away, but Whitman catches him on his shoulder. “You’re a good man. I saw how you restored order after the cigar girl was murdered.”

  “The law is the law.”

  Whitman pushes a little harder. “This city does not need another controversy.”

  At the delay the crowd jitters, the kind of tottering that precedes a mob action.

  The sheriff briefly looks Walt in the eye, then gestures to two of his men, and they promptly take Walt into custody.
r />   “Her death will be on your watch,” Whitman shouts.

  Knowing that Walt has failed, Lena resumes her struggle to get free. She rolls toward the edge of the platform and nearly goes over—

  But Little Joe grabs her from behind and lifts her to her feet.

  During the commotion, Walt wrestles away, but a third man kicks him in the stomach, and the other two retake him. The pain is searing. He rolls to the side. The watchmen have the platform covered, and there are more of them on the ground for crowd control and even more at the gate. He is surrounded.

  The sheriff slips the black hood over Lena’s head and reaches for the noose, and that’s when the men holding Whitman loosen their grip just enough—

  He wiggles free, dodges Harris, and scoops up Lena, black hood and all. She is heavy in his arms, but the adrenaline drives him to brave the blockade of six men, their Colt pistols drawn, their faces blank. He charges through them, and miraculously sees daylight between him and the stairway. If he can only make it down—

  —and then the space closes, and the men are upon him. Walt clings to Lena with all his might until she whispers, her voice strong and deliberate from beneath the hood, “It’s over, Walt. You did your best.”

  He holds back his tears. “But you’re innocent.”

  “Keep the college going so our deaths are not in vain.”

  He holds her tighter.

  It takes four men to hold Whitman, and two more to pry Lena away from him. The men push him to the ground and cuff him, the metal cutting into his wrists. Walt screams, curses, thrashes about, mad with rage over what is about to happen.

  He watches as the sheriff slips the noose over Lena’s head, positions her over the trapdoor, and addresses those who condemned her to this fate: “For the murder of Abraham Stowe,” he bellows, “you have been sentenced to death by hanging, after which your body will be dissected at the Women’s Medical College of Manhattan.”

  The crowd roars.

  Walt breathes in.

  The sheriff claps three times, the lever is pulled, and the floor falls away—