Dear Mother,

I’ve finally made some headway. The mayor invited me to dinner. Walked up to my office door, knocked, and talked to me in broad daylight. I’m guessing that Birch has opened some doors for me. Either that, or he’s looked at the pros and cons of trying to oust and replace me and figured he might as well give me a shot before he runs me out of town. Two months here have really made me aware of how isolated this place is. Not much to attract a doctor save for the scenery. They were lucky to have landed Birch on account of his condition and circumstances.

The actual dinner was yesterday. You remembered the old mayor as gaunt, pale and priggish, less suited to running a town than running from a headless Hessian. Apparently the town agreed; Mayor Roger Macy’s a stocky, ruddy fellow, fresh from the commissioned ranks of the Union Army. He keeps his old uniform under glass in the mayoral office above the town records, the torn sleeve on the left still bloody where his arm was shot off. “The victim of the last cannonball fired in the Battle of Gettysburg,” he told me three or four times over the course of the dinner, each time progressively drunker. He smiles every time.

Besides the stains of bloodlust here and there on his person, he seems like a solid fellow. He doesn’t trust or understand me, but he’s willing to try, which is more than I can say for several people here. Ms. Macy prepared a wonderful meal of duck and bread. The two younger children, Bob and Herschel, were quite pleasant once I assured them a fourth time that I was ‘a good guy’. I can tell the Mayor was itching to dig into me, to figure me out, make me simple. But he held back. We talked about the crops, the weather, what Old Birch is doing now that he’s ‘retired’ (I could not tell him everything, of course, but I let on that he was going travelling). Occasionally, we dipped into old war stories and politics - he’s certain that President Grant will drink himself to death before his fourth term runs out. At times he seemed like he was about to talk about all the trouble I’ve gone through since I got here, but then he laughs it off and goes into another story from his army days. I’m certain in his eyes that this was a diplomatic meeting, the kind where both sides try to obfuscate how many guns they’re willing to aim at each other if things go wrong. It’s enough to work with. I’m certain I’ll win him over.

There was less etiquette from the other inquisitive member of the Macy family: one Geraldine Macy, the mayor’s eldest. She seems to take more after the old mayor than the current, a pale beanpole in gingham. For about fifteen minutes, near the end of the meal, the mayor and his wife stepped out to the upper rooms. The mayor’s stump had started weeping again, confederate blasphemy at its most cruel. The moment her parents were out of sight, she cornered me and started peppering me with questions that’d be inconvenient to answer.

“Have you ever cut someone’s arm off?”

“Did you put it back on?”

“If I cut off my hand, could you make it run around like a rat?”

“Could you give me two more hands? I bet I’d get my work at the records office done twice as fast!”

“What’s the inside of a human look like?”

“Can you keep someone from dying without their head?”

“Can you give life to a corpse?”

“If I found you some antediluvian bones, could you make them walk around?”

“Can you make the duck we ate alive again?”

Felt a bit like I did when I realized the bleeding, singed man on my doorstop was fixing to get me killed. Like the whole town’s got me under a magnifying glass, some trying to burn me, others just gawking. Still, she’s a curious thing. I’ve tried to keep the truth of my profession hidden from the town, to prevent any unwarranted concern. I know that my work can seem ghoulish to common audiences. But she’s clearly familiar with my methods - in the same way that a mole might be familiar with the sun, or a southern master might be familiar with kindness. She talks like an excited child, but when I tried to brush her off with the vague answers you’d give a child, she dissected them with the precision of a college academic. Curious, incautious, intelligent. If these were lighter circumstances, I might take her as a student, but with the town already against me, it would be unwise to openly associate with a young, unmarried white woman. For now, I’vey placated her with the promise of more answers later on - assuming she gets her parents’ permission.

You’d like her, I think. She’s got that intensity in her that you always gravitate to, but the intensity of a student and not an admirer. You don’t need any more of those from Henshaw - not like you need another bullet in your chest - but I think you’d enjoy teaching if you could figure out the logistics of it. Can’t exactly have students turning in papers by setting them by your grave.

I miss you. It’d be nice to have someone to talk to besides Anak - that would be the frog. But justice comes to the patient. I’ll see you when this is done.