All God's Creatures

by Carolyn McSparren

  He might see an eagle. I saw myself as a badger or a possum, nose to the ground, plodding along.

  Eli and I didn't really have much of a chance to catch up either before or after the ceremony, but from the little she said, I got the idea that moving to Cookeville to stay with josh's parents hadn't been the world's greatest idea.

  Eli was working part time for a small animal hospital-not her thing. Her boss treated her like a half-witted servant because she was a woman. Too reminiscent of the way her father treated her.

  I had fitted seamlessly into Dr. Parmenter's practice. He was fun to work with. I was learning a great deal. So long as I worked on small animals with the senior partner there to keep tabs on me, the clients were willing to let me treat their pets, but many of them treated me like a veterinary technician rather than a full-fledged vet with D.V.M. after my name.

  Then I started having some successes on my own. Dr. Parmenter talked about my talents as often as he could. That didn't hurt. The first time a client actually asked to see me specifically, I went home and split a bottle of Spanish champagne with Morgan and had a God-awful hangover the next morning.

  Eli, on the other hand, was miserable. I simply didn't know what to do about it.

  Morgan and I had moved into an apartment in midtown Memphis largely furnished with Late Relatives and Early Attic. It wasn't plush, but for us it was spacious and comfortable.

  Eli was confined to a furnished bedroom in a house that wasn't even hers. At least in Starkville she'd had her ratty little apartment.

  Dr. Parmenter didn't have a job to offer her, neither did anyone else I knew. Morgan ached for her as much as I did.

  I felt as though I was flaunting my happiness in the face of her misery.

  But what could I do about it?

  Chapter 5

  In which we meet Patsy and Maggie learns a lesson

  Dr. Parmenter was only in his mid-forties when I joined his practice in the late sixties. To me that was middle age. He hadn't hired a full-time associate for a while, but had made do with young vets who were between jobs or hadn't yet passed their boards.

  If anything, he was a better surgeon than he'd been the first day I met him. He was also crabbier. He put me in my place on the average of twice a day for the first six months.

  At school I had worked with the newest equipment, cutting edge meds and diagnoses, and superb surgeons. But school is not life, and a multi-million dollar university vet clinic is not your average cat and dog hospital. Despite my summers spent working for Dr. Parmenter, I had lost sight of one half of any vet's responsibility, the human being that pays the bills for his animal and who agonizes over him and loves him. Sometimes the dog or cat is the only creature a human being has to love him back. In the clinic at school we never met the client directly, so I had missed out on seeing the joy of an owner when his cat or dog miraculously recovered.

  I had also avoided seeing the desperate grief of losing one or having to say goodbye. At school I never had to worry what a procedure would cost a client. I didn't deal with quality of life issues for elderly and sick animals. I simply did the job I was assigned, so, despite all the state-of-the-art qualifications I brought to the job and the time I had spent with him before, Dr. Parmenter still had plenty of real-life experience to impart.

  He began by handing over after-hours and weekend emergency calls to me as the low man on the totem pole. Besides, he liked his Sundays free.

  I didn't mind. I was still so thrilled by the D. V. M. after my name that the idea of being called at two in the morning gave me a sense of pride. So when the telephone rang close to midnight one Saturday evening, I grabbed it quickly before Morgan waked and sat on the edge of the bed with the light off.

  "Dr. Parmenter?" a throaty female voice asked.

  "No, ma'am. This is Dr. McLain. I'm on call tonight. How can I help you?"

  "This is Patsy Dalrymple. I don't believe we've met."

  "No, but I've heard about you." You bet I had. Patsy Dalrymple had grown up in Hattiesburg, Mississippi, and had married one of the richest planters in the Delta. She lived in an enormous ante-bellum mansion outside of Red Banks, Mississippi, and also kept an apartment in Memphis on top of the Kimbrough Towers, Memphis's first and fanciest high rise apartment building. She raised and trained horses almost as successfully as her husband raised soybeans and Black Angus cattle.

  The Mississippi state line is just south of the Memphis metro area, and Arkansas is just across the Mississippi River bridge. Dr. Parmenter had clients in all three states then, as do Eli and I today. He looked after Patsy's small animals, and when he was available, her horses. He always said he enjoyed the drive down to Red Banks. It got him out of the office. There weren't quite so many country vets back then, and none with Dr. Parmenter's skill and reputation. Mrs. Dalrymple wanted the best. She was a valued client-meaning she spent a bunch of money with us.

  When I heard her voice on the phone, I snapped to attention.

  "I'm just real sorry to wake you up like this, Dr. McLain," she said in a voice that could have warned barges away from sandbars in a Mississippi River fog. "My German shepherd had a close encounter of the skunk kind a few minutes ago."

  "Oh, boy. Did it get him in the eyes?"

  "Apparently not, but it definitely got the rest of him. And there is a big ole bundle of dog there to stink, believe you me. What on earth can I do? He's smelling up the whole barn. By morning all my horses are going to smell like road kill."

  Thank God this was an easy one. "The standard de-stinker, Mrs. Dalrymple, is tomato juice. You have any tomato juice?"

  "Well, Lord, yes. I'd heard that some place. I just never believed it."

  "It's the chemicals in the tomatoes. If he's a big dog, he's going to take plenty of juice."

  "Oh, that's okay. Dan loves the stuff-Dan, my husband? If I run low I'll just open a few cans of tomato paste and add some water. I just rub it in?"

  "And rinse it out."

  "Thank you. I swear I will be forever grateful. Come on, Robespierre, let Mommy give you a nice bath."

  She hung up without saying goodbye, and I went back to bed.

  The telephone rang again at nine o'clock the following moming. "Dr. McLain? This is Patsy Dalrymple again. I know it's Sunday morning and all, but I've got a filly down here that cut her rump on something in the pasture-God knows what. I found her when I fed the horses this morning. It's going to need stitches. Can you drive down?"

  Of course I could. "Oh, and Mrs. Dalrymple, how did the tomato juice work?"

  "Well, it did take the smell out of Robespierre's coat..." She sounded hesitant.

  "Is he all right?"

  "Oh, he's fine." I heard something in her voice, but I couldn't quite decide what. So I told her I'd drive down to Red Banks at once and stitch up her horse after I cleared it with Dr. Parmenter He told me to go ahead.

  I found the back road to the Dalrymple Farm easily, then drove alongside a mile of three-rail black creosoted fence before I found a set of ornate iron gates under a sign that said, "Dalrymple Farms, Farm Entrance." So they had a separate entrance that led to the farm buildings and not the house? Like the tradesman's entrance in England. Kept the workers away from the quality.

  I wasn't all that certain Mrs. Dalrymple and I were going to get along. She was probably one of those languid Delta darlings in riding britches and jangly bracelets.

  I stopped my truck in front of the fanciest horse barn I had seen up to that point. As I climbed out, a round little woman not much taller than Eli bustled out of the barn. She had red hair, but she hadn't been born with that particular shade. Nobody had. It bristled around her head like copper shavings. I wondered how she ever dragged a comb through it.

  From the look of it, she didn't often try. She wore an oversize man's blue workshirt over a pair of threadbare jeans that barely covered dusty brown work boots. She was about my age or a little older. I figured she was probably the head groom.

  "Good mor
ning," I said. "I'm Dr. McLain. I'm looking for Mrs. Dalrymple."

  "Oh, good," she said. I knew that voice. She might sound like a Delta Darling, but she sure didn't look like one. She stuck out a hand with neatly manicured short fingernails, and shook mine long and hard. I could feel calluses on her palms. "Come on, I cross-tied the fool horse on the wash rack. I hosed the cut out real good, and she's quiet, but you better give her a shot before you try to stitch her up."

  The cut on the little bay's fat little bottom was about three inches long and fresh enough so I could stitch it without trimming off dead tissue. "Looks as if it went through the skin and the fat," I said, "but doesn't involve any muscle tissue or major blood vessels. She up to date on her tetanus shots?"

  "And everything else."

  "I'll give her a local so she won't feel the stitches." Much better than having her kick my head off when I stuck the suture needle into her.

  "Good. That way she can go straight back out into the pasture."

  I looked around me. The elegantly varnished stalls were all empty. She caught my gaze.

  "Horses belong outdoors as much as possible. I only bring them in to train them or feed them and when the weather's really nasty."

  Maybe we would get along. I had already seen too many barns where the horses were only allowed outside for a few minutes a day. Most of the show Walking Horses could endure that treatment without losing their minds, but a good many show hunters, dressage horses, and even cutting and reining horses went quietly crazy.

  They took up what I can only call autistic behavior. They would walk the same path in the stall endlessly until they wore grooves in the clay floors. Or they'd stand at the front of the stall and weave back and forth-elephants in the zoo do the same thing.

  Or become cribbers. That was bad. An unbreakable habit once established. They would grab hold of the edge of a stall-or anything else they could get their teeth into-pull back and suck in as much air as possible. Not only did it wear down their teeth, it gave them gas pains.

  Some of them simply went psychotic from boredom and loneli ness so that they became dangerous to work around.

  This mare, however, seemed normal. She stood quietly with both sides of her halter clipped to the cross ties of the wash rack, and didn't even react when I shot her to deaden the area around the wound.

  It was a fairly straightforward suture job, although I glowed when Mrs. Dalrymple remarked on how small and neat the stitches were. Good old inner-tubes never let me down. "She shouldn't even have a scar," I said.

  "May I put her back out in the pasture?" she asked when I had finished.

  "Sure."

  I expected her to attach a lead rope to the mare's halter, unclip the lines that held her in the wash rack, then lead the mare to the pasture.

  Instead, she took off her halter, hung it on a hook, and walked off.

  The mare followed her docilely. As a matter of fact, she kept her nose as close to Mrs. Dalrymple's right shoulder as she could without stepping on her heels. I watched them walk to the pasture gate. The mare waited patiently until the gate was opened, then sauntered through and trotted off to find her buddies.

  When Mrs. Dalrymple came back up the hill, I asked, "How did you do that?"

  "What? Oh, you mean Sally. All my horses are trained that way. The trick is to get away from them. Can't be done."

  "So how do you bring in a horse you want to ride?"

  She grinned. "I'll showyou." She walked back down to the pasture gate. I followed.

  She leaned over the gate and shouted in that rough Jack Daniels voice, "Soldier!"

  I could see a group of ten to fifteen horses grazing at the top of a hill a half mile away.

  Instantly, a chestnut gelding lifted his head, detached himself from the herd and trotted across the pasture toward us. When he reached the gate, Mrs. Dalrymple opened it, waited for the horse to go through, then shut it again and walked back up the hill to her barn without even looking back to check that the horse was behind her.

  He was.

  "Pretty astonishing," I said.

  "Not really. A number of trainers condition their horses that way. It's fairly simple. You just become the leader of the herd. The Plains Indians did it, the horse whisperer types can do it. Most people don't bother. It takes time and effort, but I think it's worth it."

  "Anybody ever get fractious?"

  She leaned against the gelding's shoulder and scratched his ears. He bent his neck and sighed in ecstasy. "Shoot, yeah. There's not a horse born that won't lose it given the right circumstances. I have a mare that is a saint unless a horse fly bites her. At that point she rivals any bucking bronco in any rodeo you ever saw." She grinned at me. "Want to see a trick?"

  "Sure."

  She turned to the horse. "Soldier, treat."

  The horse wriggled with pleasure. She reached into the pocket of her jeans and came out with a sugar lump, which she held out to Soldier. He took it gently between his lips. Big deal.

  "Watch," Patsy said.

  The horse held the lump of sugar motionless.

  "Okay," Patsy said, and handed him another. He added it to the first.

  She kept feeding him lumps of sugar until his jaws pooched out so far he looked like a pocket gopher.

  "Doesn't he like them?" I asked.

  "He loves them. Soldier, eat."

  The horse munched contentedly and swallowed with a beatific expression on his face.

  "He knows that if he eats the sugar immediately, he won't get any more. If he holds it in his mouth, I'll keep feeding him. At last count, we were up to twenty-two before he ate them."

  I realized this woman knew more about horses than I was likely to learn in a lifetime of equine practice. It would behoove me to let her teach me if she would. I was trying to formulate a way to ask her as we walked back to my truck.

  "You ride?" she asked.

  "I was crazy about horses when I was growing up, and I guess I still am, but the closest I ever got to a real riding horse was pony rides at the zoo when I was three."

  "You better learn."

  "I'm not certain how. I don't have much time."

  "Make time. I'll teach you. I have a lighted outdoor arena and an indoor arena for bad weather. If you have to come at night or on weekends, that's fine. Besides, I could use somebody to trail ride with. My husband Dan never seems to have time."

  "I don't have riding clothes or boots or..."

  "You can start in jeans. I have everything else including the horses. Well?"

  I nodded, absolutely elated.

  "Good, I'll call you next week and we'll set up a time. Aren't you married to Morgan McLain?"

  I nodded again.

  "I've never met him, but Dan knows him. Bring him along. Dan says he can ride."

  More than I knew. And he was my husband.

  As I limbed into my truck, the biggest German Shepherd I had ever seen trotted from the shadows at the back of the barn. I hadn't even been aware he was there. He must be as well-trained as her horses.

  "God," I whispered.

  "Dr. McLain, meet Robespierre."

  Robespierre was a delicate strawberrry pink.

  "Last night I forgot to mention that Robespierre is white." She started to laugh. "Or he was."

  I began to stammer apologies, but Patsy Dalrymple leaned over, put her hands on her chubby knees, and guffawed.

  I turned beet red. So much for my casual handling of the skunk in the night incident.

  "Next time, Dr. McLain, maybe you should ask a few more questions before you recommend a course of treatment."

  "Please let me stay and bathe him. I have some shampoo in the truck that ought to take the color right out."

  "That's okay. Robespierre thinks it's fetching, don't you, darlin'?" The dog wriggled and barked.

  "I promise it's not permanent."

  "Good thing." She laughed again and scratched the dog's ears. She was still standing there when I drove around the comer of th
e driveway and out of sight.

  That was my introduction to Patsy Dalrymple. I've tried never to forget the lesson she taught me.

  Chapter 6

  In which Morgan makes dreams come true

  Even before we married, Morgan and I spent long hours outlining plans for the McLain Clinic, a full-service veterinary clinic that we would open one day outside the suburbs of Memphis. I would be the vet, he would manage the business end.

  For me, the clinic was a dream that might come true twenty years in the future when we had substantial savings.

  My accountant father had always counseled caution. Always hedge your bets. Never sign a contract without an escape clause. Never risk more than you can afford to lose.

  Some people might consider marriage a risk. I didn't. Not with Morgan. I assumed he was every bit as fiscally conservative as my father. He was a banker; for pity's sake.

  A darned good thing he wasn't so conservative, or the McLainScheibler Clinic wouldn't exist today.

  Morgan was born to organize, manipulate, and thrust me into risky situations I'd never have considered without him. I'd had to be tough as nails to become a vet, but I was just as insecure as the next person about when it came to other areas of my life. Most of the time, I didn't allow those insecurities to show.

  A year afterwe were married, he came home one Wednesday night, dragged me into his car, and drove me out stoutheast of Memphis, past Germantown, past Collierville, and into Fayette County just far enough north of the Mississippi State line to still be in Tennessee. We turned off the highway, bumped down four or five miles of gravel road, and turned into a dirt road that led into somebody's overgrown pasture.

  "What on earth are you doing?" I asked. "I've had a long day and so have you. The people who live here aren't going to be pleased to have us show up at suppertime."

  All he did was grin and lift his eyebrows.

  We rolled to the top of a rise and into the front yard of a perfectly dreadful house. One of those amorphous ranch houses, it was painted a ghastly shade of mustard yellow and looked to have maybe twelve hundred feet inside if you included the garage.