Juneau: Wisdom Tree 4 Page 4

  She sits and sets her forearms on the desk, one hand on top of the other in front of her. She has an earring in each ear, two small matching diamonds.

  ‘These are not all records of our correspondence.’ She gives my father a serious look. ‘When I proved you are the one, Ken, the archives would release to you the hospital material.’

  My father is leaning forward on his chair. His reading glasses are in his hands, still in their case.

  In a movie, my character would touch his character’s shoulder now. I pull my chair forward an inch or two and settle into his peripheral vision. I have no idea what could go wrong now, or right.

  ‘First I have some items to demonstrate.’ She pulls the box over and opens the lid. ‘These are not Thomas Chandler’s, but they are 1890s. They are similar or even identical. There was a lot of similar equipment. Thomas was admitted to Saint Ann’s Hospital on October nineteen, 1895. At that time, he had with him a burnt blanket…’ She lifts a folded blanket from the box and sets it on the table. It’s coarse, murky, with a faded blue stripe along one edge. ‘A frying pan and two knives.’ She needs both hands to lift the frying pan. It’s black and bent. It looks like it’s tumbled down a river. ‘If a man has two knives, one is probably small, for fixing things, fine cutting.’

  She passes a short knife to my father. He puts it down and fumbles with his glasses case. He threads the arms of the glasses over his ears and blinks down at the knife. He picks it up again, places it across his open hand and lets it sit there, a fine tremor at his fingertips. He turns it over carefully to look at the other side. Its handle is fitted with ivory or mother-of-pearl, with the inlays attached by two loose rivets.

  ‘One knife is usually bigger, for bigger jobs.’ Again, she uses both hands for the large knife.

  Its wooden handle rattles and its blade is marked with rust. The blade and handle together are almost as long as a forearm. She sets it carefully on the table next to the blanket. My father places the small knife beside it.

  ‘Is that all he had?’ my father says.

  ‘That is all.’ Her eyes, like his, are on the array of measly goods. ‘And winter was coming.’

  ‘You couldn’t survive a winter with just those things.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Had he lost it all? Whatever else he had?’ My father slides his hand across the table and rubs the blanket delicately. ‘What was he doing? Was he a prospector?’

  ‘With only this it’s hard to tell.’ She watches him touching the blanket but makes no move to stop him. ‘He was sick by then, so…’

  She picks up the record box and tips it so that she can look inside. She lifts out a black-and-white photo, a recent print of an old image.

  ‘This is Saint Ann’s Hospital at that time.’ She sets the photo on the table. ‘The building on the right was the first, Father Althoff’s house, which he gave to the nuns. The second was built in 1888.’

  The first building is a clapboard house, part one-storey, part two-, with a long steep roof covering both parts, punctured by the metal pipes of two thin chimneys. It’s easy to imagine a room for surgery and a kitchen on the ground floor, and space for perhaps six beds upstairs. Or maybe that was the doctor’s quarters and there were stretchers downstairs for the patients. The 1888 building looks as if it’s made of whitewashed stone or brick. It’s wider and deeper than the priest’s house, and all two-storey. It is a building for a town, not a gold rush. A path leads from its front door, past the first building to an unpainted picket fence. Behind them there’s forest, pines marching up a steep slope, a fringe of bare mountain above the tree line.

  ‘Where is this?’ My father picks the photo up by its white borders to take a better look. He works his way across it bit by bit, looking in each window. ‘Can we see it?’

  ‘You know Saint Nicholas’, the Russian church?’ She checks to see that my father nods, that the reference means something. Perhaps it was her suggestion that put it on our agenda before coming here. ‘It was one block from there, corner of Fifth and Harris. But the first building…’ She reaches across to place a finger on it. My father sets the photo down again to let her do it. ‘It was replaced in 1897. The second has been gone a long time, too.’

  ‘Oh.’ My father sits back.

  His eyes are still on the picture, and he reaches forward and moves it into better light for one more look, white buildings against a mountain backdrop, long gone. Hope lifts the box and sets it aside.

  ‘But the records are not lost.’ She puts her hand on the pile of documents. ‘Some of them. There are not complete records from the 1890s, but sometimes our luck is good.’ She moves one folder aside and opens the next. ‘The notes of his admission.’ She takes out two photocopied pages and sets them next to each other on the table. ‘Tim…’ She indicates with her hand that I should move closer.

  My father shifts his chair to make room and slides the pages across so that we can both see them. The notes are longhand, in disciplined looping letters. The examination is recorded in a kind of doctor’s code, but most of the rest of it is clear enough.

  Presentation: A man of around twenty years, unkempt and unshaven, brought in with injuries consistent with a fight. Also suffering delusions and hallucinations. Sometimes he claims The Devil has been after him since Halifax, at other times since his youth in England. He claims to see men around him with lanterns in the night, and to hear the voices of miners he knows to be lost. Unable to name the day or month, but correctly states the year. Cannot account for the length of time he has been in Juneau or his purpose here. Understands he is in Juneau now. Claims the Queen’s men are after him and will string him up for diverse felonies, none committed in the District. Cannot account for his injuries or his assailants. Claims the Queen’s men ride black horses, and ride at night. Prefers to sit with a knife than to sleep. Wasted, even cachectic, but would only eat porridge once I had tasted it myself. Is willing to stay.

  ‘The Devil. Men on black horses.’ My father scowls, keeping his finger in the margin next to the part about sleeping with a knife. ‘Halifax is the Halifax in Nova Scotia, presumably. We know he made landfall there, or think he did.’ He is picturing this Thomas, lost in Alaska, lost in his head. He looks up at Hope. ‘I imagine we would call this schizophrenia now?’

  ‘I’m not a doctor, but…’ She finds a reference low down on the second page and points to it. ‘Developmental insanity. That’s the diagnosis. I googled it. It would now be schizophrenia, yes. Very likely.’

  Thomas’s injuries and other physical features are marked on a sketch of a body—a fractured left arm, an old break to the right leading to shortening by more than an inch, two new wounds to the scalp, bruising across his abdomen and to one thigh, no significant abdominal tenderness, mental processes slow, poor eye contact.

  My father takes his glasses off and rubs his forehead, pushing his fingertips back and forward, ridging the skin. However the family photo from 1890 appears—the absence of warmth, the shared commitment to no more than stillness—there would have been help there, surely. Help Thomas couldn’t expect alone, and in Alaska.

  ‘You’ve gone to a lot of trouble,’ my father says, fitting his glasses back into place and then peering over them to focus on Hope.

  ‘No trouble,’ she says. ‘I enjoy playing the sleuth from time to time.’ She smiles. ‘And you want to know.’

  My father nods and smiles, too. ‘Well, thank you.’

  Schizophrenia. It fits better than many things with the few details we know, and with his only letter home. ‘Not right in the head’ was how he put it himself, though he made more of the pneumonia and his arm fracture—‘a fall’ was how he accounted for that—and the letter was mostly to say he was alive and to ask for money.

  ‘And my days are my own since Carl passed,’ Hope is saying. ‘Mostly. My grandchildren are at school now or doing sports. Sports and ballet. Carl was my husband. He was very sick and that was a full-time thing. Anyway, this teaches me a l
ittle more about Juneau. I’m not from here originally. We met in San Diego, Carl and me. He was in the navy. So, I like these…explorations. I find myself looking at Juneau with your Thomas in my head, thinking, ‘What was he doing this day or that day? What did he do at night? Where might I find some other thing about him?’’

  ‘Well, they’re lucky to have you here,’ my father says. ‘This is marvellous, what you’ve done.’

  ‘Ken…’ She touches her document pile. ‘I’m only just beginning.’

  ‘Hope,’ he says. He points a finger into the air, like a boy scout testing the wind. On the rare occasions when I saw him lecture, it’s a gesture I noticed him use to make a point. ‘Esperanza.’

  She laughs. ‘Si. Me llamo Esperanza. But Hope is easier here, and just the same. I am from Guadalajara.’ The way she says it, the G of Guadalajara is no more than a breath. ‘Hablas Español?’

  ‘Hardly. A little. Mi no habla mucho.’ My father starts to smile, but catches it on the way out and his cheeks go pink instead. ‘Margaret, my wife, lectured in Spanish.’ It comes out sounding hesitant, as if Spanish isn’t something he should own up to. ‘We were both at the university. I went to Mexico with her. Twice. Not Guadalajara though. Sadly.’

  ‘Dad was a microbiologist.’

  My father’s head turns jerkily towards me at the sound of my voice. The move makes the legs of his chair scrape on the floor. ‘I was here all along,’ I want to tell him. ‘I’ve been here all day.’

  ‘Thomas…’ Hope says. ‘I have more.’

  She rearranges her pile of papers, as if the thread of her story’s been lost and she’s trying to pick it up again.

  ‘Ah, yes, here.’ She finds several copied sheets joined by a paperclip and hands them to my father. ‘His brother’s letter. Edward. Your grandfather…’

  ‘Yes,’ he says. ‘Yes, I know the handwriting. I had letters from him when I was a boy.’ He tugs at the paperclip, bending the corner of the pages over before slipping it off. ‘And this has been on file here all this time, this letter from him in England…’

  He sets the first page down for us both to read. The writing is a well-schooled sloping cursive. Edward had joined the bank by 1896, and would soon be a manager.

  The Medical Officer in Charge,

  St Ann’s Hospital,

  Juneau,

  District of Alaska

  Dear Sir,

  A letter has come to hand from my brother, Thomas Chandler, in which he states that he is a patient in your institution, suffering pneumonia, fractures and a weakening of the mind. In the more than two years since he sailed for Halifax, Nova Scotia on the steamship Aberdeen in the summer of 1893, this is the first word family and, by all enquiries, friends have had from him. Although glad to hear from him after this time, we are saddened to learn that he is in poor health.

  His letter, I regret to report, is somewhat confused and unnatural. I am therefore taking the liberty to ask if you would be good enough to let me know something of his personal condition, and the likelihood of his recovery.

  His father died a few months ago and I am his only brother. I am currently finalising our father’s estate. My brother will receive a modest inheritance and, at his request, with my letter to him I have advanced him a small portion of that inheritance for his personal use and settling of any debts, including any owed to your institution.

  Are you able to confirm that Thomas is presently a patient of your institution and, if so, whether or not he is committed under his own will? Are you in a position to tell me anything of his current circumstances, his state of health and his state of mind?

  I trust he has given you all a necessary account of his early life but, should that not be the case, please allow me here to provide whatever facts I may.

  As a child, a long convalescence from diphtheria interrupted my brother’s studies, but his health was otherwise unremarkable. I recall him as bright and involved in family activities, and activities on and about our farm. An incident with a farmhand occurred in his youth due, I believe, to a misunderstanding. Its details were not disclosed to me. Thomas fell from a pile of hay bales in a barn, breaking his arm and striking his head, with consequent loss of his sense of smell and, I believe, a change to his disposition. From that time, Thomas was less sociable and tended to keep his own counsel.

  I was never one for farming, and it had long been understood that Thomas would learn farm management and, in time, take up our father’s mantle. Following the incident, it was understood by both Thomas and our father that the likelihood of this occurring was much diminished.

  At eighteen, Thomas declared an intent to make his own way in the world, and to do so in Canada. While I cannot say his father gave strong endorsement to this venture, nor can I say he took any measures to prevent it. When Thomas departed from England, he did so with a sturdy chest of clothes and more than sufficient money to allow him to find his feet in Canada. He left us with the impression that we would hear from him once he ‘made good’.

  I cannot account for his requiring hospitalisation in Alaska in what appear to be straightened circumstances, other than to say that the separation from family, acquaintances and all he knew may have advanced his tendency to unsociability. Being without means can only have added to his anxieties.

  I trust these facts, slender though they are, may be of some assistance in dealing with his case. I shall be greatly obliged for any information you may be good enough to send me, and I shall be very pleased to provide you with any information you may desire.

  I am, dear Sir,

  Yours faithfully,

  Edward Chandler

  The handwriting reminds me of my father’s, as if the letter’s something he’s come up with. But this is the real thing, a man writing about his brother gone adrift, a continent and an ocean between them, and letters making their way by ship and coach and horseback. Edward writes expecting to wait, in a way that’s hard to imagine now. I’d be on a plane as soon as I could if Jenny or Rowan was in this kind of trouble. One of us would be.

  The letter covers four pages. My father skims them all, then goes back to the start to read them more closely.

  ‘Was there ever a reply? A reply from…’ He reaches for the medical report and turns to the second page, running his finger down it. ‘Doctor Steele? My grandfather never mentioned one.’

  ‘We have no record of one,’ Hope says. ‘Though outgoing correspondence often was not recorded. Doctor Steele left in early 1896. He was here only one winter.’

  My father sits back and stretches his legs under the table. He runs his fingers through his hair, raking them on his scalp and stopping to scratch the back of his head before picking up the letter again.

  ‘It’s good to have this,’ he says. ‘This and the hospital report.’

  He tidies the pages and fits the paperclip back in place.

  ‘Your grandfather tried again,’ Hope tells him. ‘There are two more letters.’

  Each is a single page. The first, eighteen months later, asks if Thomas is still a patient at Saint Ann’s and mentions a letter sent directly to him in the same post containing money. The second, a year after that, asks the same question, and asks if Thomas will ever be fit to come home.

  My father points out a line and reads it aloud. ‘‘I have young children and a position at the London City and Midland Bank from which I am unable to take the necessary leave.’’ He taps the page, and looks up at Hope and then at me. ‘It would have been a journey. A long way to come on the strength of one letter, sent years before.’ He leans back in his seat.

  ‘So, Doctor Steele is gone by early 1896,’ Hope says. I know the look on her face now. She has something. Her eyes are on my father, checking that he is with her, that he is ready. She has planned every moment, pacing each reveal like a celebrity genealogy show. ‘But then another doctor arrives. Doctor Stanton Harper. About him, we know quite a lot.’

  She tips the record box towards herself and lifts out a b
ook, a hardback with a tear in one corner of the dust jacket. The title reads Northwest of Everything and the front cover is a black-and-white photo of Juneau, pale points of tents across the mountainside, the timber-built town taking shape.

  ‘It is a novel,’ she says, ‘but it is based on truth. It is by the great-grandson of Doctor Harper.’

  She turns the book around and taps the author photo. It’s black-and-white, too, but from the 1980s, the thirty-something author gazing past the camera, curls of dark hair bursting out from under a striped beanie, his focus, perhaps, on a distant snow-capped peak.

  ‘Doctor Harper was a great correspondent.’ She sets the book on the table, Juneau picture facing up. ‘He was well-read. He kept a journal. Your Edward was not the only family member to write enquiring of a loved one. Doctor Harper was known for his letters to families, especially of the dead. He would give information about the man’s time in Juneau. He would talk to the man’s friends. He could sum up a life quite beautifully in only a paragraph. There are letters of appreciation in our records.’

  ‘But we didn’t get one. A letter from him.’ My father holds the book in both hands without shifting it from its place. The part of the dust jacket covering the spine has faded from black to grey and, at the top, it has begun to separate from the front. ‘Did Thomas not die here? Did he move on?’

  Our ancestor is slipping away. Our ancestor is living a great long life elsewhere. Or dying nearby out of sight, somewhere in the permanent trackless snow and ice beyond the wooded slopes that drop to the channel. I don’t know what my father wants, other than an answer, but a fear has surfaced in him that it has drifted beyond reach. Something. This morning he would have settled for something, and we have that already.

  ‘I can tell you he did not move on,’ Hope says. She waits until she has caught my father’s eye. ‘And to look more at his life here, we should look further at the doctor. He came first from the east—that is where he was born and trained, before setting up practice in San Francisco. This is from the book.’