Song of the Shank

Useful hours for both men, even when they disagreed. These visits revealed a side of the Doctor that Eliza had not been privy to during the many years she had known and worked with him at the Eternally Benevolent Asylum for Ill-Fated Offspring of the Sable Race, something beyond what was contained in the structure of his medical duties. (And it was her own duties in the charitable wings and halls of the establishment that by either providence or happenstance she would come into contact with Sharpe — and Tom.) Though he insisted on a limited schedule, working no more than four hours a day, four days a week, so that his private practice and research should not suffer, he was charged by his work, bright with it, padding through the wards in his white coat, the legs of his binaural stethoscope clamped around his neck. There was a practicality about his body, a man built to a purpose — the total opposite of Sharpe, the tallest man she has ever seen, even today, all angles, juxtaposition, jagged elbows jutting out, forward-pointing hatchet-like knees, and square blocky forehead and temple, aspects of person defying the uniformity of line that is supposed to define a body — moving with tireless fluidity along beds lined up like boats in a dockyard, attending to as many as 160 children at a given time. (A massive four-story building of fine recent construction, the Asylum could accommodate up to 200 orphaned children, providing them with the luxury of modern facilities — indoor toilets, sinks, and baths, gaslights — that only the city’s wealthy had access to.) But he sought to do more than heal and see to the good health of the Negro children under his care. He was determined — the greater goal — to refine their artistic and intellectual tastes through regular attendance at museums, concerts, and dramaturgical stagings. (He took all 160 children to a production of Uncle Tom’s Cabin at his own expense.) We should endeavor to expose the most unfortunate of the Race to the better class of general culture. It was clear from the atmosphere he projected that he was no ordinary person. Mrs. Shotwell and Mrs. Murray hoped that the Doctor, in his professionalism, the way he spoke and handled himself, would serve as a masculine exemplar who could illuminate the orphans’ own conditions and inspire them (the boys) to aim high and achieve.

Doctor, should we hire a music teacher? Mrs. Shotwell asked. Do you believe the reports that music can reform a bad disposition?

Eliza could not help feeling a certain strange joy whenever she had assisted the Doctor, frantically eager to carry wash pan, thread, scissors, knife, to boil the surgical instruments, prepare the opium paste, or stanch bleeding. As house matron she had earned nine dollars a month, a decent wage, but the work was exhausting even if fulfilling, the hours immense. She saw to the stocks and supplies and took daily inventory, the large brass storeroom keys kept on a five-pound iron ring; she tallied up donations, engaged the domestics, and supervised all of the other employees to ensure that they weren’t making light of their duties. Her work with Dr. McCune made up for certain agreed-upon reductions of self, for the Doctor, in his ministrations, showed an emotion deep enough to confirm her own power—They need me, irreplaceable me—a fact that made it easy for her to bend to her other labors with a quiet mind. She had spent so much time with him — month after month, one year after the next — she felt his duties had become part of her. No exaggeration to say that it was she who drummed up patients.