Appendicitis and Original Sin
By Victor Epp
If you thought the Williamsburg Address was a tall tale, you’re going to have real trouble believing this one - but I swear, this one could be true (well, mostly true as best as I can tell). I never imagined it as anything different. It’s about the time I learned about the Garden of Eden and the Original Sin. No, I didn’t learn about it in Sunday school or the bible. No Sir! I learned this lesson right there in the Hunter Hospital in downtown Teulon, Manitoba - back in ’38 when I was just about seven years old, and I’ve never forgotten it. That’s why I’m telling you about it now, before I get any older and start losing my marbles.You’d never think a sleepy little prairie town in the middle of nowhere would have such an earth-shaking revelation to make. Heck, they never even realized it themselves! No, they just muddled along like they did before and since, without so much as a how-do-you-do.
The only time before 1942 I ever remember Teulon’s population being anything other than 412 was back in ’37 when it went up to 415. Before that it was always 412 - never more - never less. A baby could be born in the Hunter Hospital one day, and before it got home, somebody'd left town. (I could never figure out why that happened). But whatever the cause, the town population was always 412 - exactly. Mind you, the numbers only counted for the town proper. Folks and goings on the other side of number 7 highway had other ways and other concerns, but that’s another story.
We didn’t live in Teulon either, so our presence had no effect on the town population, one way or the other. No, we lived north and east, by about ten miles - off highway 8. Some say we lived so far off any known highway that if the neighbors hadn’t got together to build up the old animal trail into a passable road, our house would have been about a mile off the end of the earth. Now for somebody living that far away from anything civilized, Teulon was a pretty impressive place. It had (as I said before) a hospital - the Hunter Hospital. Mind you, there wasn’t much left of old Doc. Hunter except the hospital. He’d long passed on by then, but his name was still on the building just the same. It’s still there by the way, right there on Main Street, if you’re ever passing through.
Of course, Teulon had other things in it besides the hospital. There was a general store, blacksmith shop, farm implement dealer and harness shop all rolled into one. It even had a school, which was pretty good for a small prairie town.
But to Teuloners, none of that seemed to matter a great deal. They were used to all this by now. In early ’38 though, there was an earth-shaking event that got the attention of all the townsfolk for years to come. Yep - early in ’38, right there on Main Street, right next to the bank, a wealthy Texas cattleman opened his office. The sign in the window said; ‘T. L. Biguous - Black Angus Breeder’. Now that was something to brag about - a real honest-to-God Texas cattleman with an office in downtown Teulon! There wasn’t a farmer or rancher anywhere in these parts that even so much as thought of having an office, let alone having it in town. Heck, the cows were in the pasture except at milking time so you didn’t need an office to keep track of that. If you were buying or selling livestock the only office you needed was right there in your billfold. Paying out good money for an office was just not smart', that’s all.
Rumor had it that Texans are different from most other folks. Everything in Texas is bigger - and better - and costs more money. Well, there was the proof! Now it has to be said that the Biguous land was not in the town itself. Matter of fact, it was the four sections just west of our place. That’s right - FOUR sections - 2,560 acres. Shoot, any of the local folks owning a measly quarter section those days were considered to be big time farmers. The odd one had even two quarters, but nothing like four sections all together in one place!
That was why the Teulon town folk put so much stock in T. L. Biguous and his missus and the kid. Nosiree, they weren’t going to let all that out of their bragging rights - not a Texas cattleman with four sections of land all in one place and an office in town to boot! He was theirs by gum, and so they counted the three Biguouses into their census: - four hundred thirteen, four hundred fourteen, and four hundred fifteen. That is to say - T. L., his wife Mary Lou, and five-year-old A. M. Sounds funny, I know - the names I mean. Seems Texans do that a lot with their boys and men folk. I don’t know whether they think it makes them sound important - or they just can’t be bothered to think up any real names. I never did find out either.
Well, what brought me together with the Biguous family - at least with A. M., was appendicitis - funny how you remember things like that. I was no more than seven years old, but the cold November day they took me to the Hunter Hospital is burned in my memory - my first time in a real automobile car! I guess I must have been pretty sick to cause my father to go ask old John Judd to drive us there. Turned out later to be true because somewhere between home and the hospital my appendix burst. Actually, I guess it more like blew to smithereens because Doc Goodwin couldn’t find it - only puss and poison. The last thing I remember is the ether mask going over my face.
Now, for a seven-year-old city kid this might be something you would take in stride - at least be able to understand. But for a seven-year-old hayseed who had just barely begun to master the English language: who had hardly ever been to town before let alone sick in the hospital, all this hubbub and turmoil was way beyond my grasp. On top of that, I’d never really been sick before so it was all the more confusing.
At the time I wouldn’t have known how long it took for me to wake up. Even if I did, the gravity of the situation never sunk in, which is a good thing because as it was there were already enough oddities in this place to scare the wits right out of me. The first thing was the spider web of tubes going in and coming out of different parts of my body. Now that wasn’t natural, I knew that much! There was a big one going into my belly under the bandages that was very uncomfortable, so I tried to get rid of it but the nurse caught me and gave me a stern lecture about not touching anything. I didn’t like that much. I didn’t like it much either that every morning Doc Goodwin came in and told me that if I could tell him my name, he’d give me a penny. Even if he’d explained that he was trying to monitor my delirious state of affairs, I’d have been nonplussed. I just figured he was a dumb old guy who couldn’t even remember my name from one day to the next. The fact that I was collecting a little bundle of pennies didn’t even register in my mind.
Another thing I didn’t much like was that my mother only came to visit once a week. The fact that she was busy milking cows, feeding chickens, collecting eggs, churning butter for sale, even being home for my dad and my sister was no concern of mine. She was at the hospital all too little for my liking. In fact, there was nothing much about this whole experience I had any use for.
Well, no, that’s not entirely true either. The kid in the bed next to me was a real puzzle. To start with, he talked funny - hard for me to understand. The only annoying thing about him was he talked all the time. He wouldn’t ever shut up. But between trying to figure out what he was saying half the time, and trying to learn how anybody could talk that way, he was quite tolerable. In fact, he kind of grew on me after a bit.
"Name’s A.M.," he said, "What’s yours?"
"Huh?"
"Ah sayed, mah name’s A.M. - Biguous - A.M. Biguous. What’s yours?"
Well I might be a dumb kid from the sticks, but I knew when somebody was putting on the dog, so I said, "Victor Emanuel" (after the King of Italy), and as an afterthought, "Epp." Heck, if he could put on airs, so could I. There was of course no connection between me and the King of Italy except first names, but it was always a matter of amusement to my uncles to make me sound famous, especially with a silly name like Victor, so I just threw that in. Of course, A.M. didn’t know any more about the king of Italy than I did but then, that wasn’t the point. The point was to sound important.
"You talk funny," we both said at the same time and started to laugh at the coincidence. Only I stopped right away because laughing made my stomach hurt. A.M. must have figured that out when he saw me holding it in agony because he never said anything about it.
"That really your name?" he asked, screwing up his face.
"Yep," I said, and as an afterthought, "but no Emanuel." I was starting to copy his accent.
"How come you got no name?" I wanted to know.
"Ah’ve got a name - ah told you. It’s A.M. Don’t you git it - A. M. Biguous! That’s it!"
"That’s only the first letters of your first names," I insisted. "You must have the whole ones." It didn’t make any sense to me - no sense at all.
A. M. was philosophical. "Well, that’s how we do it in Texas, leastwise for the men folk. Heck, ah don’t even know whut the A. M. stands for."
Stubborn old me. "This is Teulon, not Texas," I said glumly.
"Where you live boy?" was his next question. I told him.
"Shoot!" Actually he said ‘shee-ute’. "We’s neighbors! Hey, that’ll be some fun when we git home. We kin visit ‘n play ‘n all."
"I guess." Playing wasn’t uppermost in my mind at the moment. My stomach was hurting so bad I wanted to puke. That big tough nurse who always scared the pants off me must have seen my situation because she was right there with her white porcelain bowl. While she was at it she hauled out her big rectal thermometer and took my temperature. I didn’t dare grumble in case she might think of some other kind of torture to inflict on me. A. M. watched the whole procedure with interest, making a running commentary the whole time.
"Ah guess you’re pretty sick compared to me," he said after I was all put back into place and the nurse had left. "Ah only got a busted leg. It don’t even hurt now that ah got a cast on it."
Then it happened! Old Doc Goodwin came through the door and - right behind him was this giant. He was huge - I mean - huge! He was so big I was sure if he stood up straight, he could look right in the loft door of our barn, and that was fourteen feet off the ground according to my dad. And that wasn’t the scariest part. He was black - all over! I mean black! His face was black, his hands were black, his hair, even his eyes - except for the whites. Why I’d have bet anything he was even black underneath all his clothes! Whoa man, I’d never ever seen anything like that before! And he was coming straight at me, right behind Doc Goodwin!
"What’s your name son?" asked Doc Goodwin, peering over his glasses.
Oh no - not again! "Victor Epp."
This time it wasn’t a penny he put on the table beside me. It was a nickel. Hmm.
"This is Doctor Collins, come all the way from Chicago. I asked him to have a look at you so we can make you better sooner."
'Oh Gawd!' My mouth was frozen open and I couldn’t get my eyes back in my head. A voice inside me was saying, ‘He’s the grim reaper and I’m going to die,’ but no words would pass my lips. Even A. M. shut up just when I needed a friend. Paralyzed with outright terror, my heart sank as Doc Goodwin marched calmly from the room, leaving me alone with ‘The Angel of Death’. I think I wet myself as he sat down on the edge of the bed. He was even bigger and blacker than when he was standing. His huge hand came down softly on my forehead. When I realized I was still alive, I finally found my voice.
"H - h - how come you’re all black?" I stammered.
"Am I really black?" He acted surprised. His voice was like a soft, deep roll of thunder. I nodded numbly.
"That’s a relief," he answered. "I was afraid I’d been caught."
"Huh?"
"You sure I’m still black?" he almost whispered leaning his big face over mine. I lost my voice again and could only nod.
His broad grin and sparkling white teeth restored my confidence somewhat and of course, my curiosity. What did he mean- was he still black? I was totally confused. "You mean you’re not always black?" I wanted to know.
"Nobody’s ever seen me not be black." Doctor Collins told me sternly. I glanced over to A. M.’s bed to see that he was as wide-eyed as I was.
A thought struck me. "Are you black all over?" I wanted to know.
"I’m not sure," was the answer.
Now I was even more befuddled. "I can’t see under my clothes any more than you can. I only know I can’t be caught or I’ll turn the same color as you."
Whoa! He could change color? "How do you do that?"
"What?"
"Change color."
"You’re too young to understand about such things," he said mysteriously.
"Please tell me," I begged. "Oh c'mon, please, please, please."
"Yeah, c’mon mister, tell us!" A. M. had finally found his voice.
"Well, I shouldn’t really but, oh well alright.”
“ Let's start with what you know,” he said, addressing both of us. "What do you boys know about how God created heaven and earth, and Adam and Eve and the Garden of Eden."
Well that was one thing I knew about. Every Saturday afternoon after chores we would have to sit down at the big kitchen table and do our German lessons from a book that mother had brought with her from the old country. Then we'd have to study a passage or two from the bible so she could hold her own little private ‘Sunday school’ at home on Sunday morning. With everyone spread out so far from each other in the country, it wasn’t often that neighbors got together for Sunday service. The only time that happened was when a preacher from Winnipeg would show up maybe once every three months or so. They usually showed up more often at harvest time or pig killing time, and never left empty handed. Well the point is, one way or another you learned those things. There wasn’t much else to do - no radio other than crystal sets. Heck, there wasn’t even any electricity on the farm. So I knew about those things, and said so. Even A. M. knew about them, which kind of pleased me because now we had something else in common.
"Then you know how God created Adam from dust and blew into his nostrils and gave him life." Both of us nodded enthusiastically.
"What you didn’t know," Dr. Collins looked about as serious as he could get, "was that he made two Adams."
He looked at both of us, back and forth for effect, waiting for one of us to comment.
Now this was starting to get way out of hand, even for us boys. A. M. finally found his tongue.
"Thet ain’t right," he offered. "You mean first he made Adam and then he made Eve. Thet’s whut the Bible says."
Dr. Collins furrowed his brow. He seemed to frown more over one eye, looking at each one of us in turn. "Do either of you boys know where the Garden of Eden is?" he questioned. Both us shook our heads.
"Egyptland?" A. M. ventured questioningly.
"Ethiopia," Dr. Collins announced, giving us the once over again with that eye of his. "In the heart of darkest Africa." His booming voice was the stamp of authority.
"But," stammered A. M., "Thet’s where N - N - black people come from."
By this time I had forgotten all about my appendix, the bandages, the tubes, and the fact that my mom wasn’t there. Maybe this towering grim reaper was just plain scaring me, or maybe I was finally going to hear something I wasn’t supposed to. That was probably it. Seven-year-old boys are attracted to things they’re not supposed to hear. Excited - that’s what I was.
"That’s where black people come from and that’s where they live to this very day,” said Dr. Collins, "and now they live all over Africa. In fact, they live all over the world."
"Well then,' A. M. wanted to know, “where do white people come from?"
"From black people," Dr. Collins replied crisply. You could see a shudder go through A. M. as though he’d been dowsed with a pail of cold water.
"Thet cain’t be!" he exclaimed defiantly. "Thet jest cain’t be!"
With that he turned his attention to me, pulling my eyelids apart and peering into them, prodding at my throat and other parts of my body, totally ignoring A. M.’s complaints. He took a spatula that felt more like a grain scoop and stuck it in my mouth. To this day I gag when I think about it. There was a series of ‘Hmms’ and ‘Aaahs’ and then a booming ‘Aha!’ With that, Dr. Collins pulled out a notepad and began scribbling things. When he had done, he leaned his giant frowning face over mine and asked, "And what do you think young man?"
"I don’t know!" I blurted out.
What was I supposed to say? First of all I was still gagging from the spatula, and now my throat hurt too, and as if that wasn’t enough, I didn’t even know what the question was!
"Then I think I’m going to tell you the whole story, and then you’ll know." He glanced sideways at A. M. before continuing. "You do know that God created Adam from dust, right?"
I nodded. "And what color is dust?"
That I could answer. "Black," I said.
From the next bed A. M. piped up. "Then how’d we git to be white, I’d like to know." He was sure pushy with this big black giant.
"I’m coming to that. Now you boys see how complicated the human body is - being sick as you are. Well, it takes a lot of skill to make a human being that complicated you know. It takes practice, even for God." Dr. Collins emphasized the point by looking at each one of us before he continued.
"The first Adam he made, he wasn’t altogether satisfied with - hair was too curly. When he blew life into his nostrils and watched him move he just knew he had to make another one, so he did.
"Then he made Eve from Adam’s rib and, you know the story about what happened to them when they committed the original sin. Well maybe you don’t know the whole story. People have never liked to talk about it. That’s why it isn’t written down in the bible, but truth be told, when Adam and Eve were put out of the garden of Eden and made to work and toil in order to survive, he suddenly remembered the first Adam he had made.
“Now he had a real problem with an extra Adam on his hands, so God thought and thought what he might do. Finally he came up with the idea that he would whitewash the second Adam and Eve so as not to mix them up."
At this point Dr. Collins stopped talking. He looked at each one of us in turn with such finality that we were sure that the story was done. Suddenly A. M. piped up.
"Whut happened to the black Adam?" he wanted to know. He would have to ask!
"God couldn’t leave the black Adam by himself forever so he needed to make another Eve for him," Dr. Collins continued. "But he wasn’t going to make the same mistake twice. After all, it was the first Eve who took the apple from the snake and gave it to Adam and got them both into an eternity of trouble. No sir! He would have none of that! Instead, he made another Eve right from scratch same as he had made Adam - out of dust."
"Thet jest cain’t be," lamented A. M., "else it would be in the bible!"
"Of course it’s not in the bible", frowned Dr. Collins. "Weren’t you paying attention young man? I said, people didn’t like to talk about such things - ever."
All of this was way over my head. I had never heard anything like that before - not from my mother, not from my aunties, not from the preacher from Winnipeg, - nobody. But the importance all these adults seemed to place on such matters made me want to pay attention.
“What happened to the black Adam," I wanted to know.
"Oh, not much for a while," was Dr. Collins remark. His big face saddened a bit. "With the white Adam and Eve kicked out of the Garden of Eden, somebody had to look after things so God gave that job to the black ones. They did very well too, but wouldn’t you know it that the white Adam and Eve would still be getting into trouble. It got so bad when their son Cain slew his brother Abel - you boys know about that part don’t you?" Dr. Collins cocked his head at each of us until we nodded.
"Well, God just plain got fed up with the white folks sinning and sinning - seems they just couldn’t be trusted on their own. So God, seeing what good caretakers the black folks were, made them a deal. He said that as long as they took care of the white sinners and didn’t mess with the likes of the first Eve, no one would ever see them to be any color other than black. He would cause them to have many children and multiply all over Africa, because looking after all the white sinners on top of their gardening duties would take a lot of manpower. If they did it well, they would always be welcome in the Garden of Eden and have God’s love."
He was just about to tell us what might happen if black folks started sinnin' like white folks when Doc Goodwin came back into the room and to my bed. He was almost as tall standing up as Dr. Collins was sitting down. The worried look on his face was lost on us, but obviously not on Dr. Collins.
"I was just telling the boys here about how black people are chosen to take care of you white sinners," he said and broke into a broad grin.
Suspiciously, Doc Goodwin offered, "I hope that means you’ve found something I missed."
Dr. Collins pulled out his notebook and handed it to Doc Goodwin who glanced over it quickly and as his expression changed, he smacked his forehead with the palm of his hand, spun on his heel and marched back out.
"You see boys, we even have to look after the best of them." He heaved his giant body upwards and followed Doc Goodwin.
Well, all this looking after wasn’t just glitz and glamour as it turned out. It involved going under that sickening ether mask again and having my tonsils and adenoids cut out. That just gave me another place to hurt at, and now I could even hardly talk! Promises of vanilla flavored ice cream would have been a treat had I known what ice cream was. I found out later it was cold and made the sore throat go away. In a few days that seemed like an eternity, I started to feel considerably better and said so to Doc Goodwin, asking for more ice cream.
In a rare moment of true conversation Doc Goodwin told me that it was his friend Dr. Collins who had come up to Canada on a hunting expedition who had probably saved my life with his eagle eye and that I should be thankful to him for that. Now if you say something like that to an adult, he can appreciate the enormity of such a gift, but to a seven-year-old who only understands chickens and pigs and gophers, such a statement borders on magic. Even A. M. thought so.
Now everybody knows that young boys all have heroes. It could be Robin Hood, could be Charlemagne, even David who slew Goliath in the bible, but not for us two. Our real live hero who had saved my life was none other than the flesh and blood Doctor Collins. We wanted to be just like him.
In the several years that followed, A. M. and I thought up every possible trick our little minds could conjure up to make ourselves be black. From mud in the garden to chimney soot to casting magic spells, nothing worked permanently. All it accomplished was to get us more lectures from our mothers even though we told them the reason it was so important. We sure didn’t want to be white sinners if we could help it. Once we even stood out in the mid day sun on the road leading to Teulon and grunted and strained and groaned until we turned from red to purple to being light-headed and dizzy. That caused a change in color all right, but it had more to do with our underwear than skin tone, and it made us bigger sinners than ever, so we gave it up.
By the beginning of 1942, what with the Americans being drawn into a war with Japan, the Biguouses pulled up stakes in Teulon and headed back to Texas. The town of Teulon went quietly back to its population of 412, and the memory of my friend A. M. more or less faded into the background. Every once in a while though, he would pop into my head and I wondered whatever became of him. He was such a determined person, given to latch on to something and hang on like a bulldog. I shouldn’t have been surprised when, after nearly sixty years, a registered letter came to my door with a postmark from Ethiopia, but I was. You could have knocked me over with a feather. It was from Dr. A. M. Biguous, (Ph d. Arch. and a whole lot of other letters behind his name.) How he tracked me down after all that time I’ll never know, but he did.
It seems that day in ’38 in the Teulon hospital, Dr. Collins had sealed old A. M.’s fate and given him his calling. He had ended up in Ethiopia to find the Garden of Eden and to try and capture somebody there not being black and by God if he could help it, stop being one of those white sinners himself. He hadn’t succeeded yet, but was on to some good leads. He wanted to know how I was doing and had I found out anything? They way he put it you’d think we were still neighbors.
Well, I wrote him back and told him how good it was to hear from him and no, I hadn’t found out anything, but then I wasn’t much trying. I was much more interested in remembering old friends. By the way, I said, you write funny - no Texas accent.
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