Once they’d crossed Ohio, the doctor trudged back into his office, plopped into his leather chair, sighed, shook his head, and reached into the little cabinet. He poured from the bottle, knocked down a swallow, refilled his glass. He drank his seconds more slowly. Good thing Isaac was all right. Most of Overstreet’s colleagues would tell him that was because the skulls of colored are thicker than those of whites, but one day in anatomy lab, Overstreet had put that precept to test and found it wanting. Isaac likely owed his escape to his own agility and the braveness of that boy, what was his name? The doctor hoped the boy would be all right, working at Stark’s. John Stark could be stubborn and hotheaded, and there was never a time when somebody or other in town wasn’t muttering about the way he behaved toward colored. Why he’d chosen to settle in Missouri, not Kansas, Overstreet couldn’t begin to understand. Something about Stark…he seemed always troubled.
