The King is Dead (23 page)

Yes. Well, I was the Bendigo family doctor and when Dusolina got pregnant I took care of her. She had a hard time, died a few days later. Child was a great big boy, weighed almost thirteen pounds, I recollect that clearly. That was Bill's first son — your great man. Bill took little Dusolina's death hard, the way he took everything. Didn't blame me, thank the Lord — if he had, he'd have crippled me. He blamed the baby. Unbelievable, isn't it? Said the baby was a natural-born killer! And Bill said there was only one name for a natural-born killer, and that was Cain, like in the Bible. And Cain was what he had me register the baby in the Town Hall records. Only child I ever delivered by that name. That was in 1897, young man, fifty-four years ago, and I remember it as if it were yesterday …

SARA HINCHLEY

(Of the Junction Hinchleys. Trained nurse. Miss Sara is arthritic, getting anile, lives in the Connhaven Home for the Aged, private institution, where I saw her. Supported by her nephew, Lyman Hinchley, the insurance broker of Wrightsville. Was Jessica Fox's day nurse during J.F.'s fatal illness in 1932.)

That's right, sir, Nellie Hinchley was my mother. She died in … in … I don't remember. Except for my brother Will — that was my nephew Lyman's father — and myself, none of my mother's children lived. They all died in infancy, and she had seven. We were very poor, so my mother did wet-nursing, as they called it in those days. She always had a lot of milk, and after she lost one she would …

Dr. Minikin told you that? Well, of course, she wet-nursed so many, and I was just a girl … Oh, that one! Let's see, now … Mr. Bendigo's wife died delivering his first child … yes … and Mama wet-nursed the baby for a year. He had a queer name … I don't remember … But she did use to say he was the hardest she ever nursed. He'd just about suck the life out of her. What
was
his name? … Cain? Cain … Well, maybe it was. I don't remember things as good as I used to … I think Mama stopped when Mr. Bendigo got married again. Or was that with the Newbold child? …

ADELAIDE PEAGUE

(One of Cain's earliest living grade-school teachers. Now 71, retired on pension, keeps house for Millard Peague, her first cousin, of the locksmith shop at Crosstown and Foaming. Brisk and very bright, with a jaw like a ploughshare.)

I most certainly do, Mr. Queen! I'm not one to bow and scrape and forget the way it
used
to be just because a pupil of mine becomes
famous
, although frankly I don't know what he's famous for except that if he's anything like the way he
was …

No, not the Pincy Road school that Elizabeth Schoonmaker taught. The one I taught in is still standing, though of course it's not a school house any more, it's the D.A.R. headquarters …

He was an impossible child. In those days we taught the first four grades in the same room. The boys were hellions, and if a teacher didn't go about armed with a brass-edged ruler she didn't last a term … Cain Bendigo was the worst, the
worst
. He was the ringleader in every bit of mischief, and some of the things he did I simply cannot repeat. I'll bet he remembers
me
, though. Or his knuckles do …

Yes, I suppose his name had something to do with it, although I'm not one of these advanced people who test everything by psychology. He
did
hate to have me call on him, and now that I think of it, it was probably because of course I had to use his name. Did you ever hear the like? He did take a lot of joshing because his name was Cain, and any time one of the other boys ragged him about it there was a fist fight. He was big and strong for his age and he would fight at the drop of a hat. In the four years I taught him he licked every blessed boy in school, just about, and some of the girls, too! There was no nonsense about chivalry in
that
child …

Oh, he stopped them making fun of it, yes. Toward the end of the fourth grade — when Opal Marbery inherited him, thank goodness! — no, she's been dead for many years — toward the end, as I say, while he was still having plenty of fights, they weren't about his name. But he and I had a feud over it to the bitter end. I always felt that it was a very unfair thing for a child to do. After all, I couldn't help his name being Cain, could I? I had to call the little devil
something …

URIAH SCOTT
(‘
U.S.
')
WHEELER

(68, principal of Fyfield Gunnery School. Kin to the Wheelers of Hill Drive. Kept referring to his family's hero, Murdock Wheeler, Wrightsville's last surviving vet of the G.A.R., who died in 1939, as if the old fellow had been General Grant himself. Was Cain's teacher at the Gunnery School in 1911, when Cain was 14.)

My dear Mr. Queen, on the contrary I consider it an honour. I have always allowed myself to brag that I had a little something to do with shaping the character, and therefore the destiny of Mr. Bendigo. Although I've lived in Fyfield ever since coming to teach at Gunnery in 1908 as a very young man, I have always retained a soft spot in my heart for the town of my birth, and Mr. Bendigo is without doubt Wrightsville's greatest living citizen. It's high time indeed that someone like yourself collated the facts of his early life among us humble folk for posterity …

Yes, of course, about his name. Excellent point of character! His father enrolled him at Gunnery as Cain Bendigo — C-a-i-n — as nasty a trick to play on a future great man as I've ever heard of, haha! We used to joke about it in the Faculty Room. But he soon changed all that. A mere boy, sir, in a school in which discipline has always been preached and practised as a cardinal virtue. My kinsman, Murdock Wheeler, who did distinguished service for our country in the Civil War, used to say …

He changed it! Just like that. One day he marched into the Administration Office and
demanded
that the spelling of his name be changed on the school's roster from C-a-i-n to K-a-n-e. He had already begun heading his papers in his various classes with his first name in the revised spelling. He was confined to quarters for three days for his disrespectful tone and attitude. When he returned to classes, he immediately marched into the Administration Office and made the identical demand — in, I might add, haha, the identical tone! He was again punished, more severely this time. Nevertheless as soon as he was released, there he was again. His father was summoned to Fyfield. Mr. Bendigo senior, on hearing what had occurred, forbade the school authorities to alter the spelling of his son's name. The boy listened in silence. When he came to my class that very day, his first action was to head a paper ‘K-a-n-e Bendigo'. It made a very pretty problem for us! — and I must confess it was a problem we never solved. He never wrote his name ‘C-a-i-n' again, to the best of my knowledge. And when he was graduated and saw that the name on his diploma was spelled ‘C-a-i-n' — the school had no choice, you see — he marched into Principal Estey's office, tore the diploma in quarters before Dr. Estey's nose, flung the pieces on the desk, and marched out again! …

CAIAPHAS TRUSLOW

(Town Clerk. 'Aphas succeeded Amos Bluefield as Clerk after old Bluefield's death on Columbus Day eve in 1940. 'Aphas helpful throughout.)

Yep, here it is, Mr. Queen.
William M. Bendigo and Ellen Foster Wentworth, June 2, 1898
. My father knew Mr. Bendigo well. And Ellen Wentworth was the sister of old Arthur Wentworth, who was attorney for John F. Wright's father. The Wentworths were one of the real old families. All dead now …

Well, yes, except for the two younger Bendigo brothers, but they don't count, now, do they? …

About this marriage, that was Mr. Bendigo's second. His first was …

They were married in the First Congregational Church on West Livesey Street. Reason I know is I was a choir boy at the ceremony. Way I heard it, Ellen Wentworth insisted on a church wedding just because her folks were against the match. She had a lot of spunk for a girl in those days. Wasn't a soul there — not a soul in the pews, not even her family! No, there was one — Nellie Hinchley, who was holding Mr. Bendigo's first child by his first wife on her lap …

Old Mr. Blanchard was pastor then — no, no, he's been dead and gone for forty-two years — and he was so fussed he messed up the service. Mr. Bendigo got so riled at poor old Mr. Blanchard he puffed up to twice his size just holding himself in — and he looked like a mighty big man to us kids! …

Dr. PIERCE MINIKIN

… delivered the second boy, too. Different mother this time, one of the Wentworths. Ellen, her name was. Not as pretty as Dusolina. Dusolina was little and dark and had a face shaped like a valentine and big black eyes. Ellen was blonde and blue-eyed and on the skimpy side — looked a little bloodless. But she had breeding, that girl. And money, of course. Leave it to Bill Bendigo to pick up a bargain. There were lots of men from good families in Wrightsville tried to shine up to Ellen. But she wanted love. And I reckon she got it, haha! …

Oh, Bill was wild the second time, too. Not because the mother of the child died, though Ellen never was very strong and soon after developed the heart condition that in a few years made her a semi-invalid. It was because for his second child he'd made up his mind to have a girl. And damned if the baby didn't outsmart him this time, too! Turned out to be a boy again. Bill never did get over that. If he hated young Cain for being a mother-killer, he had nothing but contempt for the second boy for not turning out a girl. Wouldn't spit on him. These days a doctor would send a man like Bill to a psychiatrist, I guess. Those days all you could do was take a buggy whip to him, only Bill was too big. So when he said to me, ‘Doc Pierce, my wife has birthed a sneaky little demon who spent nine months in the womb figuring out how to cross me up, and there's only one name for a baby like that. You go down to Town Clerk Orrin Lloyd and you register this child's name as Judas Bendigo,' I tell you, young fellow, I was horrified. Said I wouldn't do any such thing and he could damned well put that curse on his own child himself. And he did. Bill Bendigo had a cruel sense of humour, and he was cruellest when he was mad …

Don't know how he squared it with Ellen. She found out pretty early in married life that there was only one boss in Bill Bendigo's house. Of course, having a heart condition … Often wondered what became of Bill's second boy. Imagine naming a boy Judas! …

MILLICENT BROOKS CHALANSKI

(69, aunt of Manager Brooks of the Hollis Hotel. Married Harry Chalanski of Low Village. Chalanski was Polish immigrant boy whom M.B. tutored in English, fell in love with, helped through State U. Their son is young Judson Chalanski who succeeded Phil Hendrix as Prosecutor of Wright County, when Hendrix went to Congress. One of the happiest
mésalliances
in Wrightsville!)

No, I will
not
call him Judas. I taught that poor child on and off for four years when Adelaide Peague and I alternated with the lower grades in the old Ridge Road school, and I could never see him without a tug at my heart. He was a frail little boy with very beautiful eyes that looked straight through you. One of the quietest children I've ever taught, the soul of patience. His eyes were always sad, and I don't wonder. He wanted to play with the other children, wanted it desperately, but there's always one child the others pick on, and Judah was that one. I was convinced it was because of his name. The other children never let him forget it. You know how mean young children can be. I could see him cringe every time the hated name was flung at him in the play yard, cringe and turn away. He never fought like the other boys. He would just go very pale when he was taunted about being a ‘traitor' and a ‘coward', go pale, and then walk away. His brother Cain, who was older, fought a lot of his battles, and it was Cain who protected him from the parochial school boys when they walked home from school.

… told his father what I thought of a man who'd give a child a name like that, while his mother sat by wrapped in lap rugs, not saying a word. Mr. Bendigo just laughed. ‘Judas is his name,' he said to me, ‘and Judas it's going to stay.' But I'd seen the look in Mrs. Bendigo's face, and that was all I needed. The next day I took the boy aside during recess and I said to him, ‘Would you like to have a new name?' His pinched little face lit up like a Christmas tree. ‘Oh, yes!' he cried. But then his face fell. ‘But my father wouldn't let me.' ‘Your father doesn't have to know anything about it,' I said. ‘Anyway, we don't have to change it much, just one letter, so that if he does see the new name on a report or something, he'll think it's simply a mistake. From now on, dear, we'll just drop the
s
and put an
h
in its place, and you'll be
Judah
Bendigo. Do you know what “Judah” means? It means someone who is praised. It's a fine name, and a famous one, too, from the Bible.' The child was so overcome he was unable to speak. He looked at me with his big, sad eyes, then his lips began to tremble and before I knew it he was in my arms, sobbing …

It didn't take the other children long. Just about one term. I called on him by his new name as frequently as I dared. By the next year they were all calling him Judah, even his brother Cain. I don't know how Mr. Bendigo took it, and I didn't care. He was going through a lot of business troubles at that time, his wife was sick — I suppose he was too busy to make an issue of it …

Dr. PIERCE MINIKIN

Let's see, remarried in '98 — the second boy was born in '99, which makes him two years younger than Cain Bendigo. The third boy was born five years after the second, which would be 1904. My Lord, Abel's forty-seven! …

Don't know, can't say, but I'll guess. My guess is the third one was an accident. I know I'd warned Bill about his wife's health, and taking it easy, but Bill being what he was …