ON HIS WAY to the Senate Grill for his usual afternoon pick-me-up, Benjamin Hamm, a longtime physician in Meade, turned the corner at Paint and Second Street and saw Jasper Cone a few yards ahead, bent over in the middle of the sidewalk, wiping the crud off his measuring stick with the ragged remains of an old shirt. The doctor stopped in mid-step, then backed away and crossed the street, hoping to avoid him. It wasn’t that he didn’t like the young man; he was just too busy today to get into another tedious discussion about Emerald Hollister’s intestinal worms or Jasper’s suspicions that Mrs. Castle over on Caldwell Street might be suffering from hemorrhoids. Because of his access to everyone’s privy, Jasper could at times be spot-on when it came to diagnosing certain health problems among the citizenry, but it was still, Hamm thought, an invasion of privacy if he discussed them, even with somebody in the medical field. So, for example, if the Appleby girl that lived on Piatt Avenue wanted to puke up every morsel of food she ate, or Mule Miller took up eating glass again, that was, ultimately, their own business.
The doctor had known Jasper ever since moving from Baltimore to start his medical practice. He’d no sooner hung up his shingle when the boy’s mother, a high-strung, intensely devout Catholic with a pinched face and brown, puffy eyes, sent for him. He’d had a couple of walkins that morning with minor ailments, but this was his first house call, and he was, to say the least, a little nervous. “What seems to be the problem, Mrs. Cone?” Hamm had asked, looking around the cramped parlor. Religious icons made of plaster sat in a neat row on the mantel; a few Bibles and prayer books lay open on a table in front of the horsehair sofa. A wooden shrine to the Virgin Mary, illuminated by several candles, was set up in the corner.
“It’s my son,” the woman said, a sob catching in her throat as she looked toward the narrow stairs leading to the second floor. “He’s…he’s…” she stuttered.
“Well?” Hamm said, hoping it was something easy, like constipation or a stomachache. With the ink on his medical degree barely dry, he didn’t think he was quite ready to tackle something life-threatening yet. He was sure his lack of confidence would soon go away, but a few more days to settle in before he confronted something complicated or ghastly would be a blessing.
“It’s not something a lady can talk about,” she said, wiping delicately at a tear running down her powdered cheeks. “Just look him over and you’ll see. An adjustment, that’s what he needs.”
“A what?”
“An adjustment,” she repeated. “So he’s normal.”
Shit, this must be bad, Hamm thought, as he looked down at the string of rosary beads she was squeezing in her hand. “What’s his name?” he asked.
“Jasper,” she managed to whisper right before she gave a little swoon and carefully crumpled onto the horsehair sofa.
Hamm climbed the stairway with a sense of dread. Though he really didn’t believe in a divine being anymore, he stopped near the top and crossed himself anyway, hoping for some guidance and preparing for the worst. It was inevitable, he had been told in medical school, that he would lose a patient now and then, but why did the first one have to be a child? “Just do your best,” he told himself, as he walked toward the open door at the end of the hall. However, when he entered the room he found a boy standing rigidly in front of a bed, looking quite healthy except for a frightened look on his rather plain, bony face.
“Well, lad,” Hamm said, after introducing himself, “can you tell me what’s wrong? I can’t make heads or tails out of what your—”
“I don’t want you cuttin’ on it,” Jasper interrupted.
“On what?” Hamm asked, figuring the boy must be suffering from a cyst or tumor of some kind.
After a moment’s hesitation, Jasper unbuckled his pants and let them drop to the floor. He wasn’t wearing any drawers. Hamm stood there speechless for a minute, staring at the long slab of meat hanging between the boy’s skinny legs. “So this is what your mother was talking about?” he finally said. “Your penis?”
Jasper nodded grimly, then reached down and pulled his pants back up over it. “She wants you to whack some of it off, but I’d rather you maybe tried to shrink it like those Africans do with the heads and stuff.”
Only then did the doctor realize what the woman meant by “an adjustment.” Lord, could she be serious? He glanced about the room, bare except for a small dresser and a plain wooden cross hanging on the wall above the neatly made bed and a long rifle leaning in the corner. “But why?” Hamm asked.
“To make me normal,” the boy replied. “Just like she told ye.” Then he began to tremble and a single tear flushed from one of his brown eyes and dripped off his chin onto the floor.
“Now don’t worry, son,” Hamm said. “I’m not going to touch it, let alone operate on it, I promise. How old are you?”
“Be twelve my next birthday.”
“So you’re still in school?”
The boy shook his head. “Mother won’t allow it. She says freaks shouldn’t be seen in public.”
“What about your father?”
“He got killed right after I was born,” Jasper said. “Over at the paper mill.” He turned then and pointed at the rifle. “He bought that buffalo gun just for me. You ever seen one before?”
“No, can’t say that I have.”