Down to a Soundless Sea (14 page)

Mr. Grey wormed the wheel back onto the greased axle while he talked. The effort made him grunt by way of punctuation. “You should have heard the man swear and scream at the audacity of my uninvited visit. After calling me every name he could remember, he shouted that a real doctor would be on his way, and that he would tolerate no traveling villains on his place. The old reprobate possesses the vocabulary of a ship-bound bosun. I do assure you I’ve never heard the likes of such language from anyone who wasn’t waiting to be hanged. Then the old heathen turned his extraordinary venom on this young girl. I was dumbstruck to discover the wretched creature was the ogre’s wife. The poor thing just shuddered and wept like a whipped spaniel. Pretty little waif too. Sad to see her so ill used. Well, not content to abuse the child, he rounded back on me with lewd accusations indicting my presence as having something to do with his child bride. I swear I never laid eyes on the youngster before in my life. That evil old crow is crazy, I’d bet my life on it, but he’s falling off his perch and that’s no mistake. Then suddenly the antique bushwhacker pulls a horse pistol from under his pillow and threatens to kill me if my wagon isn’t rolling out of his yard in ten seconds. I decided not to test the old man’s resolve in the matter. I bid him a brief farewell and beat a hasty and thankfully bloodless retreat. I don’t imagine many people of his acquaintance are
that lucky. His broken leg might have slowed him down a bit, but I’m grateful to the Almighty all the same. So, are you the doc the old scoundrel is waiting on?”

Doc Roberts smiled, pushed back his hat, and wiped the grit from his face with a new bandanna. “Yes, and it’s been a long pull for the two of us,” he said, indicating Daisy’s hangdog disposition. “The patient may happily mend his own damn leg for the price of a casual insult, but sometimes acute suffering may cause a being to act in a most outrageous fashion. One must refrain from sudden judgments in my line of work.”

Doc Roberts touched his hat in farewell and snapped the reins, but something came to mind and he halted to ask the peddler a question. “I believe you mentioned that you carry a reputable tincture of laudanum. Were you serious? I also stand in need of a pint bottle of dark rum, a small bottle of vanilla extract, and oil of cloves.”

The thought of making a sale after his humiliating retreat animated Mr. Grey as nothing else could. He left the hub bolt, wiped his greasy hands on a rag, and jumped into the back of his wagon.

Doc Roberts listened as the man rummaged through his stock in search of the required items. Doc was amused to hear the peddler talk to himself while he did so. After two minutes Mr. Grey emerged clutching the exact items requested. He was genuinely pleased to have been of some profitable service, perhaps the last of the day.

Because the doctor was obviously a professional man with influence, Mr. Grey thought it prudent to discount market value for his wares in hopes the doctor might return the kindness one day. Doc Roberts paid, stowed the bottles in the cart, waved good-bye, and drove on south.

The turnout to the Stoat’s ranch was framed by a warped gate that swung in the wind. It made forlorn sounds on its dying, rusty hinges. A few hundred feet down the overgrown road, Doc’s cart came to a deep depression that had once been a wide streambed centuries before. From this vantage point Doc could see neither the high road nor the house and he, in turn, could not be seen. Here Doc Roberts halted Daisy and made his preparations. From a carpetbag, he extracted a large, empty medicine bottle that still sported a cryptic medical label. He always carried such items to hold fluid samples or dispense medication. Into the bottle Doc poured a measured amount of laudanum, a healthy dash of vanilla extract, and a few drops of clove oil to give the blend a medicinal bite. Lastly he added a quarter pint of the dark rum. He recorked the concoction, shook it twice, and placed it in his medical bag. Once satisfied, he continued the short quarter mile to the house.

Daisy appeared to confront the ramshackle buildings with the same sense of trepidation that Doc Roberts was presently feeling. Emotionally unstable patients often made simple doctoring a precarious endeavor. Doc Roberts steeled himself against the darker possibilities and slowed Daisy’s pace.

There was little to differentiate the barn from the house except windows. In fact, all the outbuildings wore a shabby weatherworn pallor that gave the whole vista an air of ceaseless desiccation. One sensed the salted winds and sea mists would soon erode the bleached boards and shingles into rotting splinters. It had probably looked that way for years.

Doc guided his cart to the front of the house and called out his own name by way of introduction. He waited without dismounting and then called out again. After a few moments the door opened and a bedraggled girl stepped out on the
porch with her arms crossed guardedly across her chest. She stared up at Doc Roberts with a curious expression of childlike expectation.

Doc asked the doe-eyed girl if an injured man lay within, a man with a broken leg. He found it difficult to believe that this simple child could be anyone’s wife. The girl nodded without speaking and gestured toward the open door. Doc stepped down, unloaded his bags from the cart, and unhitched Daisy from her traces. The mare pranced away from the cart rails with a nervous skip, and Doc led her to the water trough before securing her halter to the porch rail.

The girl had placed the doctor’s things within the door and waited for his return. As he approached, Doc Roberts took a chill that made him shiver, as though he were leaving a world of warmth for a realm of frosts. He hefted his Gladstone and allowed the girl to lead him to a fetid bedroom that occupied the far end of the dilapidated house.

The wild-looking old man lay fully clothed in a stained sweater and filthy, patched overalls. He must have lain that way for days. He sweated upon an ancient mattress that sagged in the straps of a rust-chipped iron bed frame. Whatever his animated outbursts might have been with Mr. Grey, the old rancher was now quiet and obviously suffering from a level of exhaustion only chronic agony can induce.

As Doc approached, the old man’s eyes flinched and narrowed suspiciously in his direction. A hooded prospect of misgiving clouded his brow, but the pain in the man’s leg was the greater distraction, and he surrendered to it with a wincing groan.

Dr. Roberts introduced himself formally and set his bag on a rickety table placed by the bed. The old rancher’s expression
tightened with consternation, but he nodded his rawboned head in acknowledgment and then inclined it toward a bloody patch of blanket that covered his right leg. Doc Roberts lifted away the soiled covering to reveal a blood-soaked and putrid pant leg. He opened his medical bag and removed a folding instrument case. From this he withdrew surgical shears to cut away the clotted fabric. As Doc had expected from the amount of blood, the broken bone had penetrated the skin badly, and it would prove no easy task to reset the leg. The shock alone could kill a man of his years and dissipated constitution. The old man propped himself up on his elbows, but Dr. Roberts ordered him to lie back and save what little strength he had. It was obvious to the doctor that his patient was incapable of untroubled cooperation. Doc hoped the rancher’s young wife would not prove helpless as well.

Doc reached into his Gladstone and took out the concocted medicine bottle. He uncorked the stopper and handed the preparation to the old man with instructions to drink as much as he liked. It would help kill the pain and give some relief before the leg was treated. The old pike sniffed the bottle skeptically, but his eyes widened at the sweet alcoholic aroma and he took a swig.

One sip lightened the old man’s anxious expression. He next took a long gurgling pull on the bottle and lay back on his greasy pillow with a sigh of long-sought relief.

Doc Roberts announced that he would see to his horse and return in a few minutes when the medicine had taken effect. Turning to the girl standing in the door, he gave instructions to have a generous kettle of clean water boiled immediately. With that he left to attend to Daisy’s needs.

Doc retrieved a clean canvas bucket from his cart and filled
it with sweet oats. This he lashed to the hitching post for the mare’s convenience. He curried Daisy with a stiff brush while she ate and covered the grateful animal with a stable blanket against the damp sea air before returning to the house.

After Doc Roberts had washed up and returned to his patient he found the old man almost comatose. He had consumed half the bottle of adulterated rum and lay happily insensate on his rat’s nest of a mattress. Doc summoned the rancher’s wife to bring the water and assist in other small matters. When he had sheared off the pant leg, Doc washed the ugly wound thoroughly and painted the whole area with a malodorous disinfectant that stained the skin an unattractive ocher. Then Doc Roberts had the apprehensive child bride secure the patient’s right hip with heavy pressure while Doc pulled and adjusted the limb in a painfully prolonged attempt to set the withered leg properly. The problem of resetting was made more complex by the irregular nature of the break.

Luckily the old rancher’s only response to these excruciating manipulations was an occasional stupefied groan. The patient’s opiated state allowed a slight margin of error in the matter of shock, but Doc admonished the girl to see that her husband received plenty of clean water to drink at all times.

After suturing part of the muscle with catgut, Doc Roberts closed the wound with more gut, disinfected it again, and applied a clean bandage. With the girl’s hesitant assistance Doc managed to lace up the broken limb in a long, heavy-canvas and whalebone-reinforced splint. This device had been artfully manufactured by a company that made ladies’ corsets, and it retained many similarities in the manner of support and lacing.

When he had finished his ministrations, Doc Roberts repositioned the incognizant old man on the soiled mattress in
a manner that would give the greatest relief to the leg while keeping the patient as immobile as possible.

He took the opportunity to remove the old man’s pistol from under the pillow. Opiates and firearms were a bad mix, to Doc’s way of thinking. The gun was hardly the cannon the peddler had described, but Doc unloaded the revolver all the same. He sequestered the weapon and ammunition in the bottom drawer of the rickety old dresser, knowing full well the old man couldn’t possibly get at it. When Doc looked up, the girl was gone, nor could he find her in the rest of the house. He shrugged, but thought little of it.

Removing his valises to the kitchen, Doc sat at the kitchen table and set up three small bottles from his bag. Checking them for cleanliness, he arranged them on the table. From his Gladstone he withdrew a small silver funnel, the laudanum, the vanilla extract, oil of clove, a jar of distilled water, and the bottle of rum. He poured the laudanum into the bottle of rum; then, using the funnel, he filled the first bottle two-thirds of the way, the second half, and the last a third. To each of these he then added two tablespoons of vanilla, clove oil, and then topped off each bottle with the distilled water.

He corked the bottles and numbered them 1 through 3 in order of their potency and the order of their administration. Then Doc sat back, loaded his Wellington pipe, and contentedly reveled in the sweet smoke. After a few refreshing puffs, Doc pulled his medical log from the Gladstone and carefully noted down the pertinent facts of the case. Doc imagined that unless some external factor took precedence, the old man would walk with a severe limp for the rest of his life. But many unforeseen complications might yet arise that would substantially alter Doc’s generous prognosis. The old man was hardly out of
the woods, and in these unsanitary conditions the odds looked none too charitable.

Doc drew a long pull on his pipe and blew a ring of apple-flavored smoke. The floating ring was absurdly imperfect. It always was.

Reflecting upon the girl once more, Doc Roberts speculated that the rancher’s young wife had probably let her squeamish nature get the upper hand and had most likely taken herself off to recover over a bucket. Many otherwise brave people fainted dead away at the sight of a suture needle piercing flesh. Their prostrate bodies complicated matters from a medical standpoint, so Dr. Roberts usually discouraged their participation.

Suddenly the front door opened and the silent young girl entered carrying the plucked and gutted carcass of a chicken. Her hands were covered with blood and bits of clinging viscera. Doc’s speculations on the subject of squeamishness withered like his smoke rings. He smiled at the child. She smiled back.

While the rancher’s wife stoked the rusty iron stove to life, Doc explained the numbered bottles. Her husband was to have one bottle every four days in the order indicated. Did she understand? She smiled and nodded. The child bride blushed slightly and said she knew how to read too.

Doc told her that was just the ticket and went on to explain other necessary procedures to follow regarding the splint and the wound. The girl followed the explanations carefully and repeated every detail accurately when requested to. Doc was satisfied that she understood the responsibilities involved, and with a nod he carried his two bags to the cart.

Meanwhile the girl deftly cleaved the chicken into quarters,
dusted the pieces with flour, and fried the batch up in fatback, adding onions, wild mushrooms, and peppers at the end. Doc could smell the obliging fragrance while he packed and rigged his cart.

He allowed Daisy her repose until the last possible moment, but just as he was about to remove the mare’s blanket, the rancher’s wife emerged from the house with a large wooden platter of hot savory chicken and fixings. It was more than Doc Roberts was prepared to resist.

The girl motioned to the only chair on the porch and handed Doc the trencher and a fork. Like most men, Doc carried his own knife. He sat down on the ancient rocker with the generous platter athwart his knees. Moments later the girl returned with a mug of steaming, sweet coffee that he took gratefully.