East of the Mountains

by David Guterson

  Dr. Peterson asked Ben to hold Rex down while she administered ketamine and Valium, leaving the needle in the dog's cephalic vein and taping the catheter to his foreleg. They watched while Rex succumbed to the Valium and fell into a wide-eyed haze. Dr. Peterson set up an IV; Ben held the dog's maw gently open while she fed in an endotracheal tube, inflated the cuff to tighten it, and tied it securely in place. She pulled the anesthesia machine closer, opened the valves to the oxygen and isoflurane canisters, then hooked up Rex's tube. Watching the meters, she made her adjustments. She leaned in close, adjusted her glasses, and finely tuned the valves. Rex went under swiftly, sagging low against the beanbag mattress, his eyelids fluttering closed. Peterson checked the valves again. "All right," she said. "Now 500 milligrams of Keflin by slow injection in the access port of the IV tube, if you want to do that."

  "I'll take care of it," said Ben.

  While he administered the antibiotic, Dr. Peterson injected a painkiller, butorphanol, subcutaneously. Then she plunged into a thorough evaluation, bringing a strong light close to her work and cutting away the field stitches. "These are very well done," she said. "They kept most of the dirt out."

  "I had to throw them one-handed," said Ben. "Otherwise, they'd be better."

  "They're good," she said. "They're excellent."

  She palpated the ligaments and tendons of the left hamstring, then pulled the razor on its retractable cord and shaved away the hair. Ben ran the hand suction for her. The skin looked badly punctured and hemorrhaged. She palpated everything one more time. "I'm looking for laxity in the joint," she said. "It seems all right. It feels pretty good. I don't think there's serious damage."

  "That's good," said Ben.

  He brushed the stitches down the drain hole. At the vet's direction, he eased the blanket free, and replaced it with a thick padded mattress of polystyrene beads. Peterson flushed the punctures with saline and scrubbed them with an iodine solution, painting the skin a garish orange. She retracted the largest hole—a true laceration, not merely a puncture—and peered inside, blinking.

  "I'll tell you what we've got here," she said. "The semitendinosus muscle is pretty badly torn up, but there's no damage to the Achilles tendon. He's a lucky dog on that score. This is something that will heal."

  "Which muscle?"

  "The semitendinosus."

  "The tendon is all right?"

  "It seems fine."

  Peterson doused the wound with more saline and applied a wet dressing of sterile gauze. Then she addressed the other wounds. "Skin-deep," she assured Ben. "There's no problem anywhere here. It's a sewing job, and we're done."

  She asked Ben to do the skin prep. He lavaged copiously with saline and scrubbed the wounds with the iodine until the skin gleamed brightly. Peterson took the dog's pulse and listened to his breathing. "All right," she said. "We're moving into my oper ating room. Why don't you carry the dog and the mattress? I'll wheel the anesthesia and bring along the IV bags."

  They settled Rex in the operating room and hooked up the heart monitor. Peterson applied the final Betadine prep and filled the lavage basin with saline. Then they opened the sterile surgery packs, the gown packs, and the lid to the cold tray, scrubbed up, put on cloth caps, and wrestled into masks, gowns, and gloves. Peterson laid blue drapes over Rex, framing the hamstring wound. From the cold tray she selected the Metzenbaum scissors. Then she went about debriding the skin, laying it asunder.

  Ben assisted with the retractors. There were bits of sand and strands of hair inside, and the vet picked at them methodically, with her fingers first and then with tweezers, breathing roughly through her nose. "In a minute here I'll irrigate," she said. "Sixty cc's at a time will do. And a 14-gauge needle."

  "I'll put it together," Ben said.

  He set it up for her. She made sure he'd done it right, and after that seemed to settle on a basic trust in him. She irrigated, watching for debris, then flushed the wound again. "It's plenty clean," she concluded. "I think we've doused the road dust here from all the way back to Vantage."

  "It looks good," Ben agreed.

  Peterson selected a sterile packet of single-ought suture material. They discussed the merits of two stitching approaches and settled on a mattress pattern. Then he watched her take the stitches, with pleasure and no small admiration for her precise and vigorous work. She threw them with adroit small turns of the wrist and took up the tension smoothly. She was accomplished in a plain and steady way. Her fingers were strong but surprisingly fluid. She didn't flag or grow restless, and she paid attention to the lay of each stitch, making fine adjustments, leaving no dimples or wrinkles.

  Ben assisted in the placing of the Penrose drain. She irrigated liberally while he opened a packet of three-ought suture for her to use subcutaneously. Standing back, she checked the meters on the anesthesia canisters. "The hard parts over," she said.

  "You're an accomplished doctor."

  "It isn't heart surgery."

  "It's not that different."

  "Not technically." She pushed, again, at the bridge of her glasses with the back of her wrist. "But I imagine it was probably more difficult for you to face whoever was out there in the waiting room when you had to deliver bad news."

  "I never liked that very much," said Ben.

  "I don't like it, either," said Dr. Peterson. "But I would guess it's harder for a doctor than a vet. As much as people love their dogs."

  She used three-ought suture to bring together the subcutaneous tissue and closed the skin with a stapler. She moved on to the shoulder blades, scrubbing again with iodine, debriding the wound to leave clean edges and irrigating with saline. She closed the shoulder blades and then the throat, while Ben watched and rubbed his side. He admired the patient tidiness of it. Dr. Peterson, the last staple inserted, surveyed her handiwork critically. Then she gave Rex a half cc of butorphanol and a dose of acepromazine, disconnected the heart monitor, backed down the valves on the anesthesia machine and, when Rex began to blink and swallow, slid the tube from his throat. Prying open an eyelid, she looked at the dog's pupil. "He'll come around soon," she said.

  They dropped their caps and gowns in a bin, and Dr. Peterson gave Ben a ten-day supply of an antibiotic, and five days' worth of a pain reliever. Then they washed and went to her office. She sat at her desk writing copious notes and spoke to him in a preoccupied fashion, her glasses low on her nose. The dog would stay overnight with her. She recommended thorough rest for the leg. The staples could be removed by his vet in Seattle, after he got home. Ten days later, limited exercise. The drains were due out in forty-eight hours, something Ben could do himself, unless he wanted his vet to. The antibiotic should run to the end, he shouldn't stop it short. Eat and drink as normal, but rest, no hunting for a while. Perhaps, with luck, come Thanksgiving, Rex would hunt birds again.

  "The dog lives to hunt," Ben told her. "It's all he ever wants to do."

  "Well, six weeks or so and he'll be doing it. But maybe you're anthropomorphizing. Maybe you live to hunt."

  "Not really," said Ben.

  Peterson slid off her glasses, rubbed her eyes with the palms of her hands, and massaged her eyelids with her fingertips, the pen still between her fingers. "So what happened to you?" she asked.

  "I just about killed myself. In Snoqualmie Pass."

  "You what, now?"

  "I hit a tree. Right at the summit. Some kids in a Volkswagen van came along and took me down to Vantage."

  "You and the dog."

  "Me and two dogs. I lost the other. I was hunting chukars out on the breaks. They ran off with some coursing hounds, and my other dog was killed."

  "Coursing hounds?"

  "Irish wolfhounds, a pack of them. They were coursing coyotes on the river breaks."

  "Irish wolfhounds," Dr. Peterson said. "That'd be Bill Hardens dogs. He's the only one around here who keeps Irish wolfhounds."

  "Bill Harden. Rides a dirt bike?"

  "I don't know. Could be. But anyway he'
s got a pack of wolfhounds. I've seen them out at dog shows."

  "He's breeding them?"

  "I'm not sure. Used to, I think. They have a good-size orchard, the Hardens, out back of Malaga there. Wolfhound Orchard, they call it."

  "Wolfhound Orchard," Ben said.

  She slid her glasses back into place and finally put her pen down. "Wolfhounds," she said. "That makes a lot of sense. The way your dog was ripped up—exactly what I'd expect to see from a run-in with Irish wolfhounds. That or a broken neck."

  "That's what happened to my other dog," said Ben. "He was too old to fight back, I guess. It might be just as well."

  "I don't know," Dr. Peterson answered. "Better old than dead."

  "Maybe," said Ben. "It's a question."

  She rocked back in her desk chair. "So you walked up here?" she asked.

  "I stitched up Rex and carried him to George. Most of the way. He walked some."

  "It's a long walk."

  "I didn't have a choice."

  "The whole thing sounds crazy."

  It is crazy.

  "This is what you get for killing little birds. Maybe you should take up golf."

  "That's a lot of walking, too, from what I understand."

  Dr. Peterson smiled. "You're up a creek," she said. "Do you have any kind of plan?"

  "Sleep," said Ben. "My plan is to sleep, like a dead man."

  "Sleep," she repeated. "Your best bet's probably two doors east, the motel just down the street over here." She pointed at the wall as if it meant something to him. "You take a right, and you're there."

  "That sounds perfect," said Ben.

  "Come by here when you wake up. It'll be two hundred and fifty dollars. And I don't take credit cards."

  "All right," said Ben. "Two fifty."

  "Two minutes' worth of open heart surgery is two hours' worth of dog surgery," Ilse Peterson declared. "That's one difference between dogs and people we didn't talk about."

  "Malpractice is bigger, too," said Ben.

  She nodded and smiled. "I'll drive you over to the motel," she said. "You look like you're ready to collapse."

  She dropped him off, and he thanked her for it, and by way of an answer she advised rest and no fretting about the dog. When he stepped from her car, a wind from the mountains struck him in the face, dry and carrying the smell of apples and of alfalfa fields put to sleep for the winter. It was a smell Ben remembered from childhood.

  He went in and set his rucksack on the floor. The boy at the front desk greeted him crisply. Young, pudgy, manicured, he moved bits of paper about with a flourish, conducting the ritual of a motel check-in as though its details were pleasurable. He took pains to angle his stapler, and laid the strips from the computer paper neatly in a plastic garbage pail. "Free coffee," he told Ben, "is right behind you. Help yourself, anytime."

  He put the room key on the counter. "What happened to your eye?" he asked.

  "I'm a boxer," Ben told him. "The senior circuit. We had a tournament in Moses Lake. The other guy looks worse."

  "I never heard of that," said the motel clerk. "Senior-circuit boxing."

  "It's a new sport," Ben told him. "Just got started a couple years ago. Everyone who does it is crazy."

  "It sounds like it," the clerk agreed.

  In the room the alarm clock was off by an hour, as though someone had forgotten about daylight saving's time. A Gideon's bible had been left on the side table, beside a placard listing local churches. On the wall behind the bed hung an oil painting of seagulls, shells, driftwood, and dunes, from the other side of the mountains.

  Ben turned the heater as high as it would go and sat on the bed in front of it. It made an enormous, clattering din, then blew cold air into the room. He still had his field jacket wrapped tightly around him, yet he felt the cold in his bones. Bent to work free of his hunting boots, their laces festooned with sharp burrs from the desert, he was suddenly aware of how much his feet hurt, of how much he wanted to get out of his boots, and he pried them off with considerable effort, then stripped off his wet socks. His feet, ghastly white, were chafed at the arches and red where his boots rubbed his heels. His toenails looked rotten.

  The heater began to work better. Ben peeled off his glasses, rubbed his eyes, and massaged his side for a while. He worked his bad knee and his arthritic ankle, took the measure of the pain in his hip, touched the cut above his eye. Every muscle felt bound up, seized, his range of motion limited, and he considered simply collapsing on the bed without a shower or food. Instead, he found the remaining bags of peanuts and the half-empty bottle of prune juice, and sat by the heater eating and drinking. When he'd finished, he looked in the double cupboard, the drawers, and the two-shelf refrigerator, but there was nothing left behind or forgotten, only a small box of baking powder and a near-empty bottle of vinegar.

  Ben ran the shower, switched on the heat lamp, and struggled out of his clothes. He took the Italian carabiner from his neck and set it on the counter. Without meaning to, he caught his image in the mirror: his naked form, at seventy-three, was not a kind thing to look on. His eye was a darkly swollen mass, the lower lid distended. His forehead, when he pulled free the bandage, looked almost as raw as it had when he'd cut it, the ruptured blood vessels still visible, the surrounding skin a sickly gray.

  He was ghostly, pale, old. The hair sprouting from his chin and head was gray and as stiff as brush bristles; a few wisps, paltry and listless, sprouted from his rounded shoulders. He was bent forward, slack-heavy in the chest. His many moles showed dark against his skin. The tautness in his muscles was gone.

  Ben stepped into the shower. The water felt so intensely hot, he stopped breathing for a moment. Yielding, he shut his eyes and let the stream wash over him. A simple, ordinary pleasure. He stayed that way, the water running down his chest, and then he washed indulgently, shampooing his hair three times.

  There was some minor key of redemption in cleanliness Ben had noted before. When he was done, and dry, his teeth duly brushed, he sat on the toilet with his head between his knees, made use of the hemorrhoid cream, and lathered his cut with Neosporin. Fearing leg cramps, he took his calcium gluconate. He slid into his long underwear, switched off every light in the room except the one beside the bed, and lay down beneath the covers with a sigh.

  It was good to be there, clean, revived, but still, at the core, he felt chilled. His side hurt, and he cursed it silently—a burning, prodding sensation. He drew up his knees to temper it and warmed his hands between his thighs, but the pain persisted despite his manipulations, and after awhile he rose. He peed and ran a fresh towel through his hair. He was suddenly occupied with the thought of his daughter, of how she might contemplate his sudden death on the arid side of the mountains. He saw her examining his credit card records, discovering that his car had been towed on Saturday, October 17, the transaction posted from North Bend, Washington, and finding that on the following day he'd taken a motel room in Quincy, 125 miles to the east. She would wonder how he had covered those miles. She would wonder what had become of his dogs. She would contact the Grant County coroner and sheriff and the man who had towed her fathers car. Renee would piece together his final hours, the way in which he'd lived them. She would hear about his swollen eye and ask questions of Ilse Peterson, who would relate the story of the wolfhounds and of the death of Tristan and the recovery of Rex, and certainly it would all seem strange. Eventually Renee would want to see the place where her father had entangled himself in barbed wire, and perhaps she would even visit William Harden, to get his view of things. Everyone would recollect a similar image: a man in dust-bitten hunting gear, filthy, hauling an overloaded rucksack on his shoulders, as smashed up and broken as a vagrant or boxer, stinking of sweat and sage. Renee would feel troubled. Something in it would not add up. The county sheriff might become involved, and suspicions might fall on Harden. They would ask questions of Bill Ward. The truth of Bens cancer might emerge.

  So the thing to do was call h
er now and tell her what had happened. That all had finally settled down, that he was safely ensconced in his motel room, the long night of Tristans death behind him, the car wreck details seen to. That he intended to hunt blue grouse west of the river—something he could do without a dog, allowing Rex time to convalesce. In a day or two, he'd tell Renee, he would bring Rex home in a rental car, they'd be back Tuesday or Wednesday. He would tell her, too, about his one good eye, how the other was swollen shut, and this would figure in her postmortem conjectures as the source of his error in spatial judgment while negotiating strands of barbed wire. His vision had been skewed, truncated, and as a result he'd bungled the fence crossing.

  Dishonesty was his policy now; but dishonesty on behalf of the living, not for his own advantage. He lied in order to leave this world as quietly as he could. Yet at the moment—more than a technicality—he had no shotgun with which to exit. He thought of buying one up in Wenatchee, but this might seem curious to his daughter: her father dead with a new gun, his old Winchester missing. That would be a mystery to her, and it certainly would be to the county sheriff, and the investigation into Bens death would deepen, and Bill Ward might be prompted to speak. Ben understood that he needed his Winchester, mainly as a prop for his suicide. But also because it had been his fathers; he did not feel right losing it.

  He picked up the phone to call Renee, but his grandson answered after one ring, and Ben wasn't ready for that. "Chris," he said, "It's you."

  "I'm over here studying. My apartment's no good. People play music all the time."

  "How is everything?"

  "They're piling on homework."

  "Merciless pedants."

  "It isn't that bad."

  Ben thought of the purpose of his call. But he didn't want to lose his grandson yet. "I remember the beginning of my third year," he said. "I don't think I slept very much."

  "I get four or five hours when I'm not on night duty."