It was then, for the first time, that Johnny saw Doc Harris shaken. Due to complications, Marcella would now be barren for life. It was then that Johnny came to his mentor’s aid to offer to him what Doc would never himself achieve with Marcella–Johnny told Doc that the girlfriend of whom Doc had disapproved was now pregnant in Wisconsin, and due to give birth in two weeks.
Doc and Johnny flew there. Doc delivered the child in a house trailer parked in a wheat field south of Waukesha. Maggie had wanted to keep the baby, but Doc, aided in the birth by Larry Brubaker, had terrorized her into releasing the child to him, for safe delivery to a “special” orphanage for “special” children. Doc returned to Los Angeles and his wife with the child she so desperately wanted and his own “moral heir.”
Again I skipped ahead in time, only to find that time abruptly stopped, shortly after Johnny described the events of August, 1945. But there were at least a hundred sheets of paper remaining, undated but crowded with words. Johnny had inexplicably switched to red ink, and in a few moments I realized why: Johnny had sought Doc’s absolute knowledge, and Doc had given it to him in gratitude for his moral heir. Here was the story of “the literal power of life and death” that Doc had exercised over many people. Here it was, appropriately in red, for it was the story of the insane Doc Harris’s murderous ten-year career as a traveling abortionist on the underside of skid rows throughout the Midwest, armed with scalpel for cutting, cheap whiskey for anesthesia, and his own insane elitist batred as motivation.
Johnny continued to quote his teacher verbatim:
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“Of course, I knew since medical school that it was my mission and my learning process; that the power of life and death was the ultimate learning ground. I knew that if I could effectively carry out this dreadful but necessary process of birth and elimination and withstand any emotional damage it might cause, I would possess the inviolate mind and soul of a god.”
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I read on as Doc described his process of selection to an awed and finally sickened Johnny:
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“If the girls were referred to me by a lover or a pimp then, of course, they had to be allowed to live. If they were bright and charming then I performed the job with all my considerable skill and acumen. If the girls were ugly or whining or slatternly or proud of their promiscuity, then the world was of course better off without them and their offspring. Such creatures I would smother with chloroform and abort after their death–perfecting my craft to save the lives of the unfortunate young women who deserved to live. I would then drive out into the country with dead mother and unborn child and bury them, late at night, in some kind of fertile ground. I would feel very close to these young women and secure in my knowledge that they had died so that others could live.”
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Doc Harris went on to describe his abortion techniques, but I couldn’t go on. I began to weep uncontrollably and cry for Lorna. Someone rapped at my door, and I grabbed the pillow off the bed, smothered my cries and fell onto the floor thrashing and kicking convulsively. I must have fallen asleep that way, because when I awoke it was dark. The only light in the room came from a desk lamp. It took me a few seconds to recall where I was and what had happened. A scream rose up in my throat and I stifled it by holding my breath until I almost passed out.
I knew I would have to read the rest of the journal. Gradually I got to my feet and steeled myself for the task. Fearful and angry tears covered the remaining pages as I read the horrifying accounts of life and death and blood and pus and excrement, and life and death and death and death and death.
Johnny DeVries had finally become as sickened as I was, and had run to Milwaukee’s skid row with a private supply of morphine. His prose style by this time had degenerated into incoherent rambling interspersed with chemical formulas and symbols I was incapable of understanding. Fear of Doc–“The slicer! The slicer! No one is safe from the slicer!”–covered the last pages.