by Larry Watson
My mother headed for Marie’s room.
“I think she’s still sleeping,” I said.
Within minutes my mother came back out. She said, “She’s burning up, Wes. You’d better call Frank.”
My father did not question my mother’s judgment in these matters. He went for the phone.
“Wait!” I called.
Both my father and mother turned to me. I did not often demand my parents’ attention because I knew I could have it whenever I wanted it. That was part of my only-child legacy.
“Marie said she didn’t want a doctor.”
“That’s superstition, David,” said my father. “Indian superstition.”
This is as good a place as any to mention something that I would just as soon forget. My father did not like Indians. No, that’s not exactly accurate, because it implies that my father disliked Indians, which wasn’t so. He simply held them in low regard. He was not a hate-filled bigot—he probably thought he was free of prejudice!—and he could treat Indians with generosity, kindness, and respect (as he could treat every human being). Nevertheless, he believed Indians, with only a few exceptions, were ignorant, lazy, superstitious, and irresponsible. I first learned of his racism when I was seven or eight. An aunt gave me a pair of moccasins for my birthday, and my father forbade me to wear them. When I made a fuss and my mother sided with me, my father said, “He wears those and soon he’ll be as flat-footed and lazy as an Indian.” My mother gave in by supposing that he was right about flat feet. (Today I put on a pair of moccasins as soon as I come home from work, an obedient son’s belated, small act of defiance.)
“She said she doesn’t need one,” I said.
“What does she need, David? A medicine man?”
I shut up. Both my parents were capable of scorching sarcasm. I saw no reason to risk receiving any more of it.
My father was already on the phone, giving the operator my uncle’s home phone number. “Glo?” he said into the receiver. “This is Wes. Is the doctor home yet?” Gloria, my uncle’s wife, was the prettiest woman I had ever seen. (Prettier even than my mother—a significant admission for a boy to make.) Aunt Gloria was barely five feet tall, and she had silver-blond hair. She and Frank had been married five or six years but had no children. I once overheard my grandfather say to my uncle: “Is she too small to have kids? Is that it, Frank? Is the chute too tight?”
In the too-loud voice he always used on the telephone, my father said, “We’ve got a sick Indian girl over here, Frank. Gail wants to know if you can stop by.”
After a pause, my father said to my mother, “Frank wants to know what her symptoms are.”
“A high temperature. Chills. Coughing.”
My father repeated my mother’s words. Then he added, “I might as well tell you, Frank. She doesn’t want to see you. Says she doesn’t need a doctor.”
Another short pause and my father said, “She didn’t say why. My guess is she’s never been to anyone but the tribal medicine man.”
I couldn’t tell if my father was serious or making a joke.
He laughed and hung up the phone. “Frank said maybe he’d do a little dance around the bed. And if that doesn’t work he’ll try beating some drums.”
My mother didn’t laugh. “I’ll go back in with Marie.”
As soon as Uncle Frank arrived, his tie loosened and his sleeves rolled up, I felt sorry for my father. It was the way I always felt when the two of them were together. Brothers naturally invite comparison, and when comparisons were made between those two, my father was bound to suffer. And my father was, in many respects, an impressive man. He was tall, broad-shouldered, and pleasant-looking. But Frank was all this and more. He was handsome—dark, wavy hair, a jaw chiseled on such precise angles it seemed to conform to some geometric law, and he was as tall and well built as my father, but with an athletic grace my father lacked. He had been a star athlete in high school and college, and he was a genuine war hero, complete with decorations and commendations. He had been stationed at an Army field hospital on a Pacific island, and during a battle in which Allied forces were incurring a great many losses, Uncle Frank left the hospital to assist in treating and evacuating casualties. Under heavy enemy fire he carried—carried, just like in the movies—three wounded soldiers from the battlefield to safety. The story made the wire services, and somehow my grandfather got ahold of clippings from close to twenty different newspapers. (After reading one of the clippings, my father muttered, “I wonder if he was supposed to stay at the hospital.”)
Frank was witty, charming, at smiling ease with his life and everything in it. Alongside his brother my father soon seemed somewhat prosaic. Oh, stolid, surely, and steady and dependable. But inevitably, inescapably dull. Nothing glittered in my father’s wake the way it did in Uncle Frank’s.
Soon after the end of the war the town held a picnic to celebrate his homecoming. (Ostensibly the occasion was to honor all returning veterans, but really it was for Uncle Frank.) The park was jammed that day (I’m sure no event has ever gathered as many of the county’s residents in one place), and the amount and variety of food, all donated, was amazing: a roast pig, a barbecued side of beef, pots of beans, brimming bowls of coleslaw and potato salad, an array of garden vegetables, freshly baked pies and cakes, and pitchers of lemonade, urns of coffee, and barrels of beer. Once people had eaten and drunk their fill, my grandfather climbed onto a picnic table.
He didn’t call for silence. That wasn’t his way. He simply stood there, his feet planted wide, his hands on his hips. He was wearing his long buckskin jacket, the one so tanned and aged that it was almost white. He assumed that once people saw him, they would give him their attention. And they did.
He said a few words honoring all the men who served (no one from Mercer County was killed in action—not such an improbability when you consider the county’s small population—though we had our share of wounded, the worst of whom, Harold Branch, came back without his legs). Then after a long, reverent pause, Grandfather announced, “Now I’d like to bring my son up here.”
My father was standing next to me when Grandfather said that. My father did not move. Grandfather did not say, “my son the veteran,” or “my son the war hero,” or “my son the soldier.” He simply said, “my son.” And why wouldn’t the county sheriff be called on to make a small speech?
But my father didn’t move. He just stood there, like every other man in the crowd, smiling and applauding, while his brother stepped up on the table. Uncle Frank had not hesitated either; he knew immediately that Grandfather was referring to him.
Uncle Frank made a suitably brief and modest speech, saying that the war could not have been won without the sacrifices of both soldiers and those who remained at home.
At one point I looked up to see how my father was reacting to his brother’s speech. My father was not there. He had drifted back through the crowd and was picking up scraps of paper from the grass. With his bad leg, bending was difficult. He had to keep the leg stiff and bend from the waist. Then he carried these bits of paper, a piece at a time, to the fire-blackened incinerator barrel.
Uncle Frank’s talk must not have been enough for my grandfather. He climbed back up on the table and, after urging the crowd on to another minute of applause, held up his hands for silence again. “This man could have gone anywhere,” he said. “With his war record he could be practicing in Billings. In Denver. In Los Angeles. There’s not a community in the country that wouldn’t be proud to have him. But he came back to us. My son. Came back to us.”
My father kept searching for paper to pick up.
Uncle Frank put his black bag on the kitchen table. “How about something to drink, Wes? I was digging postholes this morning and I’ve been dry all day.”
My father opened the refrigerator. “Postholes? Not exactly the kind of surgery I thought you’d be doing.”
“I’m going to fence off the backyard. We’ve got two more houses going up out there. Figur
ed a fence might help us keep what little privacy we’ve got.”
I wondered what Grandpa Hayden would say about that. Though his land was fenced with barbed wire as most ranchers’ were, he still had the nineteenth-century cattleman’s open range mentality and hatred of fences. Our backyard bordered a railroad track (trains passed at least four times a day), but my father refused to put up a fence—as all our neighbors had—separating our property from the tracks.
“I’ve got cold beer in here,” said my father. “It’s old man Norgaard’s brew.” Ole Norgaard lived in a tar-paper shack on the edge of town. He had a huge garden and sold vegetables through the summer and early fall. His true specialty, however, and the business he conducted throughout the year, was brewing and selling beer. My father swore by everything Ole Norgaard produced.
Uncle Frank made a face. “I’ll pass.”
My father brought out a bottle with a rubber stopper and a wire holding it in place. “You can’t buy a better beer.” He held out the bottle.
Uncle Frank laughed and waved my father away. “Just give me a glass of water.”
My father persisted. “Ask Pop. He still drinks Ole Norgaard’s beer.”
“Okay, okay,” Frank said. “It’s great beer. It’s the world’s greatest goddamn beer. But I’ll drink Schlitz, if it’s okay with you.
My father nodded in my direction. “Not in front of the boy.” That was one of my father’s rules: no one was supposed to swear in front of my mother or me.
Uncle Frank picked up his bag. “Okay, Wes. I’ll tell you what. Let me see the patient first and then I’ll drink a bottle of Ole’s beer with you. Maybe I’ll drink two.”
Just then my mother came out of Marie’s room. “She’s in here, Frank.”
“Hello, Gail. How is the patient?”
“She’s awake. Her temperature might be down a bit.”
Frank went in and shut the door behind him. Within a minute we heard Marie shouting, “Mrs.! Mrs.!”
My mother looked quizzically at my father. He shrugged his shoulders. Marie screamed again. “No! Mrs.!”
This time my mother went to the door and knocked. “Frank? Is everything okay?”
My uncle opened the door. “She says she wants you in here, Gail.” He shook his head in disgust. “Come on in. I don’t give a damn.”
This time the door closed and the room remained silent.
“David,” my father said to me. “Why don’t we go out on the porch while the medical profession does its work.”
Our screened-in porch faced the courthouse across the street. When I was younger I used to go out there just before five o’clock on all but the coldest days to watch for my parents.
My father put his bottle of beer down on the table next to the rocking chair. I didn’t sit down; I wanted to be able to maneuver myself into the best position to hear anything coming from Marie’s room. I didn’t have to wait long. I soon heard—muffled but unmistakable—Marie shout another no.
I glanced at my father but he was staring at the courthouse.
Then two more no’s in quick-shouted succession.
My father pointed at one of the large elm trees in our front yard. “Look at that,” he said. “August, and we’ve got leaves coming down already.” He heard her. I knew he did.
Before long Uncle Frank came out to the porch. He put down his bag and stared around the room as if he had never been there before. “Nice and cool out here,” he said, tugging at his white shirt the way men do when their clothes are sticking to them from perspiration. “Maybe I should put up one of these.”
“Faces east,” my father said. “That’s the key.”
“I’ll drink that beer now.”
My father jumped up immediately.
Uncle Frank lowered his head and closed his eyes. He pinched the bridge of his nose and worked his fingers back and forth as if he were trying to straighten his nose. I heard the smack of the refrigerator door and the clink of bottles. I wanted my father to hurry. After what had just happened with Marie I didn’t want to be alone with Uncle Frank.
Without opening his eyes Frank asked, “You playing any ball this summer, David?”
I was reluctant to answer. My uncle Frank had been a local baseball star, even playing some semipro ball during the summers when he was in college and medical school. I, on the other hand, had been such an inept ball player that I had all but given it up. But since Frank and Gloria had no children I always felt some pressure to please them, to be like the son they didn’t have. I finally said, “I’ve been doing a lot of fishing.”
“Catching anything?”
“Crappies and bluegill and perch out at the lake. Some trout at the river.”
“Any size to the trout?” He finally looked up at me.
“Not really. Nine inches. Maybe a couple twelve-inchers.”
“Well, that’s pan size. You’ll have to take me out some afternoon.”
Before I could answer, my father returned, carrying a bottle of beer. “Now drink it slow,” he said. “Give it a chance.”
Frank made a big show of holding the bottle aloft and examining it before drinking.
“What was the problem with Marie?” asked my father.
“Like you said on the phone. They’re used to being treated by the medicine man. Or some old squaw. But a doctor comes around and they think he’s the evil spirit or something.”
My father shook his head. “They’re not going to make it into the twentieth century until they give up their superstitions and old ways.”
“I’m not concerned about social progress. I’m worried they’re not going to survive measles. Mumps. Pneumonia. Which is what Marie might have. I’d like to get an X-ray, but I don’t suppose there’s much chance of that.”
“Pneumonia,” said my father. “That sounds serious.”
“I can’t be sure. I’ll prescribe something just in case.”
From where I stood on the porch I could see into the living room, where my mother stood. She was staring toward the porch and standing absolutely still. Her hands were pressed together as they would be in prayer, but she held her hands to her mouth. I looked quickly behind me since her attitude was exactly like someone who has seen something frightening. Nothing was there but my father and my uncle.
“Should she be in the hospital?” asked my father.
Frank rephrased the question as if my father had somehow said it wrong. “Should she be? That depends. Would she stay there? Or would she sneak out? Would she go home? If she’s going to be in some dirty shack out on the prairie, that’s no good. Now if she were staying right here. . . .”
Bentrock did not have its own hospital. The nearest one was almost forty miles away, in North Dakota. Bentrock residents usually traveled an extra twenty miles to the hospital in Dixon, Montana.
My mother came out onto the porch to answer Frank’s question. “Yes, she’s staying here. She’s staying until she gets better.” Her voice was firm and her arms were crossed, almost as if she expected an argument.
“Or until she gets worse. You don’t want an Indian girl with pneumonia in your house, Gail.”
“As long as she’s here we can keep an eye on her.”
Frank looked over at my father. If my mother said it, it was so, yet my father’s confirmation was still necessary. “She can stay here,” he said.
“She’s staying here,” my mother said one more time. “Someone will be here or nearby.”
I couldn’t figure out why my mother seemed so angry. I had always felt she didn’t particularly care for Frank, but I had put that down to two reasons. First, he was charming, and my mother was suspicious of charm. She believed its purpose was to conceal some personal deficit or lack of substance. If your character was sound, you didn’t need charm. And second, Uncle Frank was a Hayden, and where the Haydens were concerned my mother always held something back.
Yet her comportment toward Frank had always been cordial if a little reserved. My parents and Fra
nk and Gloria went out together; they met at least once a month to play cards; they saw each other regularly at the ranch at holidays and family gatherings. When either my father or I were hurt or fell ill, we went to see Frank or he came to see us. (My mother, however, went to old Dr. Snow, the other doctor in Bentrock. She said she would feel funny seeing Frank professionally.)
Whatever the source of her irritation, Frank must have felt it too. He abruptly put down his half-finished beer and said, “I’d better be on my way. I have the feeling I might be called out to the Hollands tonight. This is her due date, and she’s usually pretty close. I’ll phone Young Drug with something for Marie. Give me a call if she gets worse.”
The three of us watched Frank bound down the walk, his long strides loose yet purposeful. After he got into his old Ford pickup (an affectation that my father made fun of by saying, “If a doctor is going to drive an old truck, maybe I should be patrolling the streets on horseback”) and drove away, my mother suggested I go outside. “I have to talk to your father,” she said. “In private.”
If I had gone back into the house—to the kitchen, to my room, out the back door, if I had left the porch and followed Frank’s steps down the front walk—I would never have heard the conversation between my father and mother, and perhaps I would have lived out my life with an illusion about my family and perhaps even the human community. Certainly I could not tell this story....
I left the porch and turned to the right and went around the corner of the house. From there I was able to crouch down and double back to the side of the porch, staying below the screen and out of my parents’ line of vision. I knew my mother was going to say something about Marie yelling when Uncle Frank was there, and I wanted to hear what she had to say.
I didn’t have to wait long.
My mother cleared her throat, and when she began to speak, her voice was steady and strong, but her pauses were off, as if she had started on the wrong breath. “The reason, Wesley, the reason Marie didn’t want to be examined by Frank is that he—he has . . . is that your brother has molested Indian girls.”
