“How’s your tunny, Temmy?” Colvin asked her as she started her second helping of custard pie.
“Huh?” she said, her full lips forming a perfect, tender, pretty-pink O, which struck him as ironic: of all the O-named girls, she alone could make her mouth into that exact pure shape. Ora and Olga and Orena had lips that were too fat and lopsided, while Oma and Olive and Opal had lips that were hardly visible, but Tenny’s lips…
He realized his slip and wondered why he was nervous around her. “How’s your tummy, Tenny?” he corrected himself. “You tole me this mornin it was a-hurtin ye bad, but I see it aint hurt yore appetite.”
“Hit’s a-killin me still, Doc,” she said. “I don’t reckon I can hardly walk, it hurts so bad, and probably I’ll be dead before sundown.”
“I misdoubt it,” he tried to assure her, but, fishing out his gold pocket watch and opening it, discovered he was already late for class. “’Scuse me, gals,” he said. “I got to run.”
His classroom was up there on the top floor of the main building, next to the auditorium, and its windows had a commanding view of the whole valley, now painted so nicely in autumn colors, a view that would provide his pupils with a relief from the tedium of the lessons. Jossie Conklin was waiting for him there outside the door, her arms full of books. “You’re late,” she said, as if he were a tardy pupil himself. Then she put the books into his arms and said, “The publisher, Mr. Henry Holt, is a good Baptist himself, and he donated a dozen of these to the school. Be sure the students take care of them.” Then she led him inside and introduced him to the twelve members of the N.C.A. freshman class, although he’d already met all of them that morning during his inspections of them. As she was finishing the introduction, the door opened, and Tenny came skipping in, her long hair streaming out behind her, and took a front-row seat. “You’re late,” Miss Jossie said to her. “Tardiness will not be tolerated in this school.” And she gave Colvin a glance to remind him that he was included in that intolerance. “Well, they’re all yours,” she said to him, and departed.
He cleared his throat. “Wal, howdy, folks,” he said, determined not to call them “boys and girls,” even though they were, ranging in age from fourteen to twenty. All he knew at that point about the course he was about to teach was that it was something you had to learn, and the only way you can learn something is to be treated as equally and civilly as Kie Raney had treated him. “Jist let me give each of y’uns a copy of this here book,” he said, but discovered after distributing the texts that he didn’t have one left for himself, so he had to look on with Tenny at her copy. The book was called The Human Body, and it was by H. Newell Martin, “Late Professor of Biology in the Johns Hopkins University and of Physiology in the Medical Faculty of the same.” Colvin was somewhat relieved for several reasons. He recalled the professor of physiology he’d met that afternoon many years ago at the Missouri Medical College, a pretty decent sort of feller. This book had a subtitle, “Its Structure and Activities and the Conditions of Its Healthy Working,” which suggested that the subject might be something that Colvin knew a few things about, since that was his line of work, more or less. The one thing he knew about “hygiene” was that it must have something to do with the ancient Greek lady Hygieia, who’d been the goddess of well-being. He’d once told Piney that if they had a baby girl he’d like to name her Hygieia, but Piney had made up her mind the baby would be a boy.
So this was simply a course in how to stay well, which all of them (except possibly Tenny) really needed to learn how to do. He ought not have too much trouble teaching these young people whatever they’d like to know about how the body works and what we ought to do to keep it running proper. He could use Kie Raney’s system of teaching that there’s both a practical reason and a pretty reason for everything. “I got a idee,” Colvin suggested. “How about let’s each of y’uns jist let yore book fall open to a page, and then you can ask me anything you like about whatever’s on it. Let’s jist go around the room, startin over here with you, Miss. What’s yore name?”
“Ophelia,” the girl said. “Folks call me Philly.”
“Wal, Philly, jist let yore book fall open and ask me anything.”
Philly took her book and let it fall open. Then she screamed, “AAAAAAHHHHHH!” and jumped out of her seat and tried to run away from it, as if a spider had landed on her. Colvin got her calmed down but he couldn’t get her to go back to her book. “Thar’s a skeleton in thar!” she said.
Sure enough, on page sixty-two was a walking spooky skeleton, looking as if he was a-coming to get you with a big grin on his face. “Folks, there’s nothing to be a-feared of,” he sought to assure them. “Hit’s only a pitcher. The pitcher is jist a-trying to show how the jiants of the body are hinged together. Did you know you’ve got two hundred bones in yore body? Now who can tell me why critters have bones?”
The youth Russ Breedlove (he of the diphallus) raised his hand and suggested that critters have bones so their skin won’t slide off, but another boy said, “A chaunk of meat has got to have bones so you could pick it up and carry it to the kitchen, and have something to gnaw on.” Philly finally came timidly back to her seat and sneaked a peek at the skeleton, and said that bones are hard and rough so’s to protect us from our enemies, or leastways scare ’em off. Finally Colvin resorted to the young lady he knew would be his star pupil. “You, Tummy,” Colvin called on her, but added, “I mean, Tenny.” Why does that gal tie up my tongue? he wondered.
“Bones is like the timbers that hold up a house or barn,” she said. She poked herself in her lovely ribs. “My ribs hold me up the way the timbers hold up the building.”
“Right,” Colvin complimented her. “But do they do anything else for your pretty torso?” The class giggled, and he was as abashed at his adjective as she was.
“I reckon they protect my lungs,” she said, “like the rest of my bones protect the rest of my innards. Bones is all we got to protect us from gittin squoze and scrunched by the cruel, mean world. But lots of times we git scrunched anyhow. I know a man who died of broken bones.”
“Bones can break, shore,” Colvin agreed. “But they’re also springy and pliable. I could jump out that winder right chonder, and maybe not break a thing.”
“LET’S SEE YE, TEACHER!” the thirteen of them chorused.
Colvin wasn’t sure he could survive the drop with all his bones intact and he realized he was getting off the track. “Wal now, if I was to break my fool neck, I’d not only fail of making my point, but I wouldn’t be around for the next part of the lesson, which is this: there’s both a practical reason and a purty reason for everything. The practical reason you’ve got a skeleton inside of you is to hold ye up and protect yore innards and get ye to moving around and about. But what could be purty about having two hundred bones? Anybody?”
The students stared at the textbook skeleton and screwed up their faces in concentration. They looked at one another. They examined their elbows and their kneecaps, their fingers and their toes; they poked their cheekbones and rapped their skulls. Finally Russ Breedlove offered, “Is it so’s folks can be sure you’re dead, if that’s all that’s left of ye?” Colvin suggested there were easier ways to determine if somebody was dead. A girl suggested that it’s mighty pretty to know you can sit up straight and walk tall because your skeleton is a-holding ye up. Various other near-the-truth answers were exchanged before Tenny held up her hand and said, “Humans are the purtiest of all God’s critters, and the reason they’re the purtiest is because of the way their skeletons stand ’em up on their hind legs and let ’em move about so’s they can do anything!”
“Except fly,” Colvin said. “Some critters can fly. How do they do that?” Because they got wings, several students said. “But what are their wings made of?” Colvin asked. Feathers, of course, the students said. “No, feathers are just the skin. The wings are bones.” He went on to ask them to speculate about the many ways that humans are indeed, as Tenny said, t
he prettiest of all God’s creatures despite their inability to fly. He asked them to discuss the prettiness of the visible bones, but none of them were able to name any visible bones, until finally Tenny said, “Fingernails? Toenails? Teeth?” Tenny’s fingernails were somewhat dirty from her kitchen work, but she had the best teeth Colvin had ever seen, if she would only smile, so he complimented her on her answer, which made her smile, and then he got them to talk about why we use our mouth bones—our teeth—to make ourselves more pleasant. Why do girls always show more teeth than boys? He also wanted to point out that the pubic arch in the female pelvis is also broader, to allow for births, and he wanted to talk about the articulations and ligaments that connect the pelvis to the legs. He wanted to talk about cartilage and foramina and vertabrae and marrow, especially about marrow, to ask if they (or Tenny) could figure out how hard bone can be alive like the rest of the body. And he wanted to talk about how diseases can hurt our bones as well as our tissues, how tuberculosis, for example, thought to affect primarily the lungs, can also attack the bones and cause their abscess. He wanted to talk about arthritis and bursitis and how drinking lots of milk might keep them from getting the osteoporosis that was stooping their grandmothers.
But Jossie Conklin came into the room and said, “This period was over fifteen minutes ago, and you have made these boys and girls tardy for English.” Colvin had time only to say, “Well, see you next week,” and make a wave of farewell.
None of his pupils made to leave. Moments passed, with Jossie glaring at them, her hands on her hips. Finally Tenny asked the principal, “How come he caint jist teach us English too?”
“Miss Leach is waiting to teach you English,” Miss Conklin said. “She is waiting to teach you that you don’t say ‘how come,’ you say ‘why’; you don’t say ‘caint,’ you say ‘can’t’; and you don’t say ‘jist,’ you say ‘just.’ Now get out of here!” After they were gone, she said to Colvin, “You’ve got a number of patients waiting for you in your office.”
Tired though he was, Colvin spent the rest of the afternoon setting broken arms and legs and meditating upon the fragility of bones. It was starting to get dark before he could put his horse, Nessus, into the buggy’s harness and prepare for the long ride home. As he was driving off, a young lady came skipping down the hill, waving her arms for him to stop, and he recognized her long, flowing hair.
“Have ye got the fatty goo, Doc?” Tenny asked.
“The which?” he asked. He was delighted to see her again, but he was weary.
“I’ve been reading our hygiene textbook,” she said. “The part on fatty goo, how a body gits ‘accumulated lactates’ in the muscles that makes ye give out and come down with fatty goo.”
He was too tired to correct her pronunciation. So instead of saying fatigue, he said, “Yeah, Temmy, I reckon I’ve got the fatty goo purty bad. It’s been a long day.”
“Can somebody die of fatty goo?” she wanted to know.
“Wal, I aint never heared of nobody a-dying of it,” he said, “although I reckon everbody when they get real old and worn out, if they haven’t already died of something else, they’ll jist die of fatty goo.”
“But not while they’re young?” she asked. “Because I think I’m a-dying of it, I’m so tard and beat out.”
“Angel, hit’s been a rough day for everbody but twice’t as bad for you, having to work in that kitchen and all. You jist git you a good night’s sleep, and them ‘accumulated lactates’ will go away.”
She would not let him go. “My old heart is calling it quits. I jist don’t have any pulse left.” She offered him her wrist.
He held her wrist. The skin was like silk, and warm, and he’d rather have sniffed her pulse than felt it. He didn’t need to drag out his pocket watch to know that her heart was beating perfectly normal. “That’s a mighty purty pulse ye got, gal,” he declared. “Purtiest pulse I ever seen. Not a bit slow nor fast, neither one. Now you jist go hit the hay.” He raised his coach whip to send Nessus onward.
“Doc!” she said, urgently. “If I don’t see ye again…or if I have to wait ’til ye come to that Other Place to see you again, in case I’ve gone to my reward when you come back next week, I jist want ye to know…I want to tell ye right here and now before I’ve quit this world, you were the nicest man I ever met!”
“Why, thank ye, Tunny,” he said. “That’s right kind of ye. But I ’spect you’ll be a-sittin on the front row of class next week, answering all the tough questions that nobody else can answer.”
She brought her other hand from behind her back. “I snuck ye a bite of supper,” she said, and gave him, wrapped between two sheets of notebook paper, a nice ham sandwich. “Have ye got fur to go? Whereabouts do ye live at?”
He told her that Stay More was a number of miles up the road, and he’d better be gittin on. “Night-night, Temmy,” he said. “Thanks for the samwich.”
She stepped up onto the buggy’s running board, as if to hang on there, threw her head at his, and gave him a big kiss meant for his cheek but landed half on his mouth, and then she was gone, and so was he.
Nessus knew the way home, and Colvin, as soon as he’d finished Tenny’s sandwich, dozed off and let the horse take the buggy home, as he had done so many times in the long-ago days when he was returning from calls paid on patients in all hours of the night. Colvin not only dozed but dreamt, and in his dream he began to give Tenny a complete physical examination from head to toe. She was totally naked for it, and her beautiful body distracted him in the process of giving her a thorough stethoscopy, followed by a bronchoscopy, a pharyngoscopy, and a laryngoscopy. While performing the latter, he heard a repeated laryngeal sound and, paying closer attention, he determined that it was simply Nessus neighing. The horse was trying to tell him that he was home. He staggered into the house and in reply to Piney’s “How was school?” he mumbled that it had given him a bad case of fatty goo. Then he hit the bed and resumed his dream, giving Tenny a fluoroscopy, an arthroscopy, and even a cystoscopy, following by a proctoscopy. In his comprehensive physical examination, he discovered that Tenny’s hymen was intact, confirming his observation that the areolae of her breasts were virginal pink, and he mused upon this exceptional circumstance, rare for an Ozark girl, unless she has no brothers or an impotent father (which in fact was the case, but Colvin didn’t know this yet).
Colvin’s complete attention to Tenny’s body was so meticulous that it prevented him from seeing any of the sundry Stay Morons who needed his attention for their ills and were trying desperately to mesh their dreams with his. The line of dreaming patients grew. The patients patiently waited for admission to his dreams, but the doctor was busy. All night long, and for several nights thereafter, the doctor was not available. People were beginning to worry whether they were dreaming properly or not. They tried catnip tea, taken warm just before bed, to help their sleep and dreams. Infusions of fresh alfalfa are supposed to help, but it was October and dried alfalfa doesn’t do the job. Nervousness and restlessness inconducive to good dreaming can also be palliated by infusions of the roots of butterfly weed, hard to locate in October because if the monarch caterpillars hadn’t chewed up the plants already, the first frost would’ve got it.
Then somebody came up with the brilliant idea that the only way to get the doctor’s attention in dreams would be to sleep in closer proximity to him. “Get up, Colvin!” Piney woke him on Saturday morning. “There are people sleeping all over our front porch!” He was irritated, being interrupted in the middle of his endoscopy of Tenny, but he got up, dressed, and went out to the front porch, and one by one began to rouse the sleepers, each of whom would blink, rub their eyes, and ask him if he was “real.”
There were even more of them sleeping there Sunday morning, spilling over into the yard, and the spectacle of all those folks dreaming up a storm at Colvin’s place caught the attention of old Jack Plowright, across the road, who, despite his spotty record of misdiagnoses and outright malpractice
, was not exactly anybody’s fool, and deduced that these were prospective patients, some of whom had been waiting so long for Doc Swain’s attention in their dreams that they were now emergency cases. Doc Plowright stepped over there and invited them to come and see if he couldn’t treat them just as well in the world of “reality” as Doc Swain was failing to do in the world of dreams.
Thus, the magical days of the dream cure came to an end. Maybe, even, there were other elements of the enchantment of the old-time Ozarks that somehow were also ceasing to exist at that moment. As a matter of fact, because elsewhere in the nation it was the beginning of what has been called the Jazz Age, perhaps the Ozarks were going to be dragged into it.
Doc Plowright had his hands full, so much so that Colvin understood it would be a violation of that old oath he had sworn to Kie Raney if he did not pitch in and offer to help. So he spent the rest of Sunday actually receiving actual patients into his actual office, curing them all, and cleaning off the porch. Sunday night he slept his first dreamless sleep in many a moon, having concluded his complete physical examination of Tenny, and thus he was moderately refreshed and eager when he arrived for work Monday morning at the Newton County Academy.
There was a long line of students waiting outside his office, and Tenny was at the head of the line. She was almost as beautiful in real life as she had been all week in his dreams. Perhaps, he reflected, in a way she was even lovelier, because she hadn’t had on a stitch of clothes in his dreams, and somehow having all the secret parts of her body covered up with a pretty cotton floral-print dress gave her an allure that she didn’t have nude.
The Nearly Complete Works, Volume 2 Page 56
