Sweet Everlasting (4 page)

Setting up a medical practice in Wayne’s Crossing the following year hadn’t been an act of defiance at all, regardless of what his mother believed. He’d been too enervated for defiance; he’d moved here out of inertia, not resolve. Ill and depressed, he’d come across an advertisement in the back of a medical journal for a retiring M.D.’s practice in a “small but prosperous town in sylvan setting.” After an amazingly brief exchange of letters with Benjamin M. Stoneman, M.D., he’d bought the practice, sight unseen, for the sum of $1000. Now that he’d seen it, a thousand dollars seemed low; he had more patients than he could handle, and the home and office were small but perfectly adequate to his needs. But what he knew now was that Dr. Benjamin Stoneman had sold out cheap because he didn’t expect to retire: he expected to die.

Would Stoneman pay a call this evening? Ty wondered. When the old doctor wasn’t suffering from insomnia, he was plagued with drenching night sweats, both symptomatic of his consumption, and the two conditions were sufficiently aggravating to keep him prowling around most nights until midnight or later. He probably wouldn’t come tonight, though; the snow was wet and heavy, deepening by the hour, and Stoneman’s tubercular chest “tightened up” on him in damp weather. Usually Tyler looked forward to his visits, even though they had little in common, professionally speaking, beyond the rudimentary fact that they were both M.D.’s. Stoneman was of the old school; he hadn’t studied, he’d
read
medicine forty years ago, and in Ty’s opinion his ideas hadn’t changed much since then. He didn’t own a microscope, hadn’t kept up with any of the astounding advances in epidemiology or bacteriology of the last decade, and he still argued over the validity of what he actually called the “germ theory.”

In his student days, when he was younger and more arrogant, Tyler might have felt contempt for an old has-been like Stoneman; but experience had taught him the valuable lesson that he didn’t know half as much as he thought he did, and that tolerance was probably a higher virtue than knowledge anyway. Patient after patient in his new practice had a story to tell about “the old doc’s” utterly selfless dedication. Doc Stoneman never refused a call, day or night, for anybody except drunks with headaches. Doc Stoneman sat for hours with the dying, the suffering, the bereaved. Sure, Doc Stoneman was a drunk, but as soon as he got to your house you started to feel better, just because you knew he cared. He lived in two rooms over the hardware store now, drinking and coughing, claiming he was writing his memoirs. For a man who had spent the last forty years taking care of people, he got depressingly few visitors. He was lonely. Tyler was “the young doc,” admired and esteemed and courted; but sometimes on long winter nights, he got lonely, too.

But it was getting late; in all likelihood Stoneman wouldn’t pay him a call this evening. With luck, no one would pound on the door with an emergency. Tyler had casebook work to catch up on, but his brain felt cottony tonight and it would be hard to concentrate—another lingering effect of the yellow fever. God, he was sick of being sick. The only good thing about it was that it made him more sympathetic to his patients, because before his illness he’d always taken his physical strength and mental acuity for granted. He took nothing for granted now, and like a careful surveyor he monitored every inch of progress he made on the long, excruciatingly slow road to recovery.

He put his empty cup in the sink with his dinner dishes; sometimes he washed up after himself, but tonight he felt like leaving things for his housekeeper. He would read the paper, he decided, and turn in early. He had his finger on the kitchen light switch when a knock came at the back porch door. His porch light had burned out; he squinted through the black glass, but all he could discern was the tall, dark, bundled-up form of a man. He hoped it was Stoneman, not Crystal Blubaugh’s husband sent to tell him the baby was coming early.

“Why don’t you sweep these steps? A man could kill himself trying to get up to your damn door.”

“Good evening to you, too.” Ty stepped back and Stoneman tramped in, stomping his snowy boots on Mrs. Quick’s just-waxed linoleum floor. Unasked, he shrugged out of his greatcoat and hung it up on the hook next to the door. Tyler noted without surprise the old-fashioned Prince Albert coat, striped trousers, stiff collar and tie that Stoneman wore in all weathers. He didn’t doubt that the old fool had done surgical operations in the outfit, disdaining sterile garb as foolish homages to the “germ theory.”

One useful feature of the Prince Albert coat was its deep inner pocket, from which Stoneman extracted his familiar pint bottle of gin. “You wouldn’t have a glass and some bitters around, would you, Doctor?” he inquired, as he always did, with the formal but facetious air he affected when he was drinking.

“I might.” Tyler got the required items, as well as another tepid cup of coffee for himself, and followed Stoneman into the sitting room. Stoneman automatically took the big overstuffed chair with the foot rest, leaving Tyler the narrow spindle back with the uneven front leg. Ty doubted if either of them would ever really come around to thinking of this apartment as his, not Stoneman’s, no matter how long the “new doc” might happen to occupy it.

“Not squinting into your machine tonight, I see.” Stoneman took a sip of his drink, grimaced, and relaxed back into the chair cushions, stretching his matchstick legs out toward the stove.

He looked bad tonight. Tyler had found an ancient photograph at the back of a bureau drawer, forgotten in Stoneman’s move four months ago; he found it almost impossible to reconcile the burly, robust image of the man in the picture with the stoop-shouldered, sunken-cheeked, cadaverous individual sitting beside him. But he still had a full head of white hair, about which he was touchingly vain; he combed it back from an elegant center part, and kept it neat and shiny at all times with macassar oil.

“No, no machine tonight,” Ty admitted. “I was too tired.” His “machine” was what Stoneman insisted on calling his microscope.

“Tired, eh?” He cackled, pulling out his battered old pipe. His disease had finally forced him to give up smoking tobacco, but he still sucked on his pipe stem. “I guess this little old practice wasn’t the rest cure you had in mind, was it, Dr. Wilkes? I guess country doctoring’s a bit more than looking at bugs through a magnifying glass, isn’t it?”

Tyler folded his arms, crossed his ankles, and slid down on his spine, resigning himself to smiling through another harangue on the superiority of the
practicing
M.D. to the kind who boondoggled his time away in laboratories and clinics, staring through lenses at “bugs”—what Tyler had done, to Stoneman’s way of thinking, for the two years between his medical residency and his army enlistment. Why did he put up with this? Stoneman was right about one thing, though: being the only doctor—Schmidt the quack homeopath didn’t count—in a town of two thousand souls had turned out to be no rest cure. He’d never admit it, but he’d come to Wayne’s Crossing partly in the naive belief that he could doctor roughly halftime, and spend the other half doing what he liked best: studying the etiology of diseases. But he’d had about four complete days off since he’d gotten here, and now writing and research were confined to the odd free evening, or late at night when he was barely able to keep his eyes open.

“A suffering patient wants
action,”
Stoneman droned on, jabbing at the air with his cold pipe. “He says, ‘Doc, it hurts right here,’ and he wants
attention
paid to that one little spot. He doesn’t want you to order blood tests, he doesn’t want to piss into a bottle so you can—” He stopped short. “What the hell is that?”

“What?”

“
That.
When did you get a dog?” He got up with a grunt and bent over a blanket-wrapped Shadow on the floor behind the coal stove. With a gnarled hand, he drew the covers back and peered down intently. “I recognize this dog,” he said slowly. “It’s Carrie’s, isn’t it? Carrie Wiggins’?” Tyler nodded. “What’s it doing here?”

“She brought it to me this afternoon, she and a fellow named Broom.”

“Broom, eh? St. Vitus’ Dance—agreed?”

“That’s what I thought,” Ty smiled, and Stoneman smiled back. They got immoderate enjoyment when they concurred in a diagnosis.

“What’s wrong with Carrie’s dog?”

“Broken ribs. Complications.”

“What are you doing for it?”

“Keeping it comfortable. Morphine sulfate and sedatives.”

Stoneman hummed his approval, then gave Shadow a gentle pat and resumed his seat.

“So you know Carrie—Wiggins, did you say?” Tyler asked.

“Carrie Wiggins, sure, sure.” His gaunt, craggy face softened. “She’s a sweet child, gentle as a foal. Too good for this world, I sometimes think. I worry about her.”

Tyler eyed him in surprise. Gruff tolerance was the softest sentiment he’d ever known Stoneman to express when speaking of a patient, or of anybody else for that matter. “Why do you worry about her?”

“Because of Artemis, mostly—that’s her stepfather.”

“Stepfather? Broom said he’s the one who broke the dog’s ribs.”

Stoneman scowled. “That wouldn’t surprise me, he’s such a sorry S.O.B.”

“What does he do for a living?”

“Not much. He used to have a fairly good job at the mill, but his drinking got too bad and now they only let him sweep up. Sometimes he takes odd jobs, picking stones or spreading lime in farmers’ fields. When he’s sober, he’s a pious old bastard, quoting the Bible at you like he was St. Paul. But when he’s drunk, he’s a holy terror.”

Tyler rubbed his top lip with his fingertips. “Does he mistreat the girl? Abuse her?”

“I don’t think so. I asked her that myself, and she said no.”

Relieved, he got up to stir the coals in the stove. Behind him, he heard Stoneman pour more gin into his glass. “That stuff will kill you as fast as those germs in your chest you don’t believe in,” he observed mildly.

The old doctor took a deep swallow and smacked his lips with exaggerated relish. “You’re the one who says alcohol kills germs. Can’t have it both ways, Dr. Wilkes. If it works on the outside, it must work on the inside, too.”

“That’s rubbish and you know it.”

“Why? If alcohol’s a germicide against bacteria, then it—” He broke off with a sudden choking wheeze and grabbed for his handkerchief.

Pained, Tyler listened to the phthisical coughing until it finally subsided. Stoneman sank back in his chair, gray-faced and exhausted. “Is the hemoptysis worse?” he asked in a neutral voice. Stoneman shook his head. But Ty noticed he put his handkerchief back in his pocket fast—to hide the blood?

“How did Carrie lose her voice?” he asked after a minute.

“I expect she was born that way. Congenital.”

“Any history of scarlet fever or diphtheria?”

Stoneman looked down. “Well now, I never asked her that.”

“Have you ever examined her?”

“No. Tried to once, but she wouldn’t let me touch her.”

“Why not?”

“Because that’s what she’s like. That’s just how she is. I’ve known her for about four years, and I’d say she’s as fond of me as just about anybody else around here. But she keeps to herself. Not that she’s cold, mind you—there’s a family up on Dreamy, the Haights, that probably wouldn’t survive without her. The father is so worthless and no-account, they’d starve to death if Carrie didn’t sneak food and firewood and who knows what else to them whenever Artemis’s back is turned.”

He hesitated. Slanting Tyler a gauging look, he reached into his copious inside coat pocket and took out a leather purse. From it he withdrew a yellowed piece of paper and unfolded it. He held it at arm’s length, squinting at it farsightedly, then gave up and handed it to Tyler. “Carrie left that in my mailbox the day after my daughter died.”

Tyler hid his surprise. He knew that Stoneman’s only daughter had died of a cancer of the breast two years ago. He’d heard it from others, though; until tonight Stoneman had never mentioned his family, or indeed, anything at all about his personal life.

Ty spread the paper out on his knee. The big, looping pencil scrawl had spread and faded, but he could still make out the words.

Dear Dr. Stoneman,

I’ve been crying all day for Sophie, even though I know it doesn’t make any sense. I guess it’s you I’m really crying for, because I know Sophie’s in heaven right now and she is smiling down on us, you especially, and wishing you wouldn’t grieve so. Once you told me that dying is harder on the living who are left behind. I believe it’s true, for when my father passed, and then my mother, I wept for days and days, and yet I know in my heart they went to heaven too. What I mean to say is, do not grieve so hard, please, for Sophie was good and kind, like you, and she is happy now and waiting for you. I hope you like this seed cake I made you. Please don’t work so hard now as if nothing had happened, even if it helps you to forget, because you’re not so young anymore and you need your rest. I’ll come and see you soon if you like. Your devoted friend,

Carrie Wiggins.

Tyler handed the letter back. Stoneman took it without comment, averting his face—but not before Ty saw the shine of moisture in his eyes. The sight amazed him.
Stoneman,
the most cynical old bird he’d ever known, a vigorous atheist, contemptuous of anything approaching sentimentality—turning teary-eyed over a girl’s simple expression of sympathy. Or perhaps it was only the poignant memory of his daughter’s loss. Whatever it was, Tyler had to admit that something childlike and tenderhearted in the note had affected him, too. He cleared his throat. “But she’s a loner, you say?”

“It’s more that she’s timid,” Stoneman said gruffly, pouring more gin. “Or afraid, more like—not without pretty good cause, either. This is a decent town, but it’s small and it’s got its share of small-mindedness. There’s some around here who don’t take to anybody who’s different.”

A gust of wind blew an angry handful of sleet against the window; an answering puff of smoke belched from the vent in the coal stove door. Ty shivered, even though the room was warm.