Animals Don't Blush

by David R Gross

  “OK, I get it. You and Mister better come with me while I retrieve my stuff. Do you see my toothbrush anywhere? Did you see those two make tracks out of here?”

  Rosalie started laughing. “I just had a mental snapshot of you galloping down the road with your hiking shoes unlaced, your toothbrush in your mouth, your mouth foaming, your shirt flapping, and waving an ax. No wonder those two took off. They weren’t afraid of bears; it was the madman they were escaping from!”

  It proved warm enough to open the sleeping bags and continue our honeymoon. I intended to hug Rosalie all night, but after ten minutes, my arm fell asleep, my shoulder started to hurt, and I had to extricate my tingling arm. She spooned close, smiling in her sleep. Rain again pounded the tent.

  Chapter 4: The Sidney Animal Hospital

  When we arrived in Sidney, Dr. Schultz was out on calls, but Dick Mathes had some news.

  “I checked on furnished apartments for you to rent, but there’s not much to choose from.” He handed me a list of five rental property owners with their phone numbers. “Doc Schultz says you should spend the day finding a place to live and get moved in. He’ll meet you here tomorrow morning at eight.”

  I used the phone in the office to contact the people on the list. Then Rosalie and I went around to have a look. The first place was an old motel. The advertised two-bedroom apartment consisted of adjoining rooms with two tiny kitchenettes and two less-than-stellar bathrooms. The second place was in an old fourplex featuring plumbing from the thirties. The third landlady informed us she didn’t allow pets.

  The fourth place was a two-bedroom basement apartment under a small, white frame house. The entrance to the apartment was through an outside door one step down onto a small landing. To the right from the landing and up two steps was a door.

  “Where does that door go?” asked Rosalie.

  “That opens into the kitchen of the upstairs apartment,” the owner answered.

  Down fifteen steep stairs from the entrance was a landing, three-feet square. The owner opened the door with Rosalie standing on the first step up and me, stranded several steps higher, my head bent forward and pressed against the ceiling of the stairwell. The door opened directly into a combined living room/dining room sparsely furnished with a well-used sofa, a round oak pedestal table, and four wood kitchen chairs, unfinished.

  The landlady stayed in the main room while Rosalie and I inspected the place.

  “All the windows are above my head,” I murmured.

  “Yeah, dark and gloomy.” Rosalie smiled and faked shivering.

  There were base cabinets and counters against two walls of the kitchen, a pantry under the stairwell, an apartment-sized gas stove, an old refrigerator, and a stained enamel sink.

  “There’s something weird about the kitchen,” I whispered. “What is it?”

  “There aren’t any cabinets on the walls over the counters,” Rosalie whispered back.

  The bedrooms each sported a small closet, a single chest of drawers, and a sagging double bed, with open springs and cotton mattresses. I sat on each of the beds and bounced. They both protested with a horrific screech.

  The bathroom separated the two bedrooms. I flushed the toilet, ran water in the tub through the showerhead, and opened both the hot and cold water into the sink.

  “They drain OK; that’s something.”

  “Two other couples have seen the place today. If you’re interested you need to make up your minds,” the owner told us. “The dog is OK; he seems well behaved, but I’ll need a fifty-dollar deposit to cover any damage he might cause.”

  The fifth place was another basement apartment that looked to be thirty or forty years beyond its prime. We called and hurried back to the one place that was habitable and gave our new landlady a check for two hundred dollars, the first and last month’s rent and the dog deposit.

  We spent the first night in our new home trying to sleep with me wedged between the headboard and the footboard. My bulk depressed my side of the bed raising Rosalie who slid into me. I tried hugging her, my front to her back. Ten minutes passed.

  “You’re crushing me,” she complained

  I rolled onto my back. “Here lay your head on my shoulder.”

  She did and I hugged her with my left arm. After five minutes, I told her, “My arm and shoulder are asleep. This is impossible!”

  We switched sides of the bed, but it didn’t make any difference. We both finally lapsed into fitful sleep, each hugging our edge of the mattress.

  “We could each use one of the beds,” suggested Rosalie over breakfast.

  “No way.”

  “But we can’t afford to buy a decent bed.”

  “I have a solution,” I said.

  ***

  After breakfast, Rosalie delivered me to the Sidney Animal Hospital. It was ten till eight.

  “Knock ’em dead, big guy.” She kissed me. “Give me a call so I’ll know when to expect you for dinner.”

  Inside, Dr. Schultz greeted me. “Good morning, Dave. Glad you made it!” He, Don, and Dick were waiting for me. Schultz stuck out his hand. “We’ve been counting the days until your arrival.”

  I shook his hand. The slightly built, balding veterinarian seemed genuinely pleased to see me again.

  “You saw Dick yesterday. You remember Don Gordon?”

  I shook hands with both Dick and Don.

  “Don and I have several calls to make this morning, so I’m going to leave you with Dick. He’ll show you around the place again and get you familiar with what’s going on in the practice. If anybody comes in with a dog or cat, feel free to take care of it. You OK with that?”

  “Sure, whatever you think is best.”

  I watched Don drive off, Schultz in the passenger seat writing something.

  “Well, we can start here in the reception area,” Dick said. “I used to own this property. Did you know that?”

  “No, I did not.”

  “I had a boarding kennel with a pet shop and grooming business before Doc moved here. I used to vaccinate dogs and cats, castrated some tomcats, and even spayed an occasional dog. If something came in seriously sick, I put ’em to sleep. Mrs. Schultz’s old man gave me a damn good price for this property, tore everything down, and built this place. As part of the deal, I got the job as office manager. The pet supplies and pet food business we do here is still mine, along with whatever dog grooming comes along. They also built a nice two-bedroom apartment attached to the building through that door behind the reception desk. My wife and I get the apartment rent-free.”

  “I wondered where that door went.”

  We walked through the combination examination and treatment room and then into the surgery.

  “It’s as I remembered,” I observed.

  We went from the exam/treatment room into the large room, now equipped as a pharmacy/clinical laboratory/X-ray room.

  “Remember this?” asked Dick opening the door to the closet. It was painted black and fully equipped as a darkroom with a red blackout light in the ceiling fixture. “Since you were here, Doc brought in another desk and chair so you can share the office.”

  “I saw that when I made the phone calls to landlords yesterday. It’s nice.”

  We poked heads into each of the two small animal wards. There was a dog in one of the cages. I walked over, sticking my fingers through the cage door. The black, shaggy-haired mutt inside licked them, wagging an overly long tail.

  “What’s the deal with this guy?”

  “Tapeworms. I treated him last night. They’re supposed to come and pick him up this morning.”

  Back in the multipurpose room, Dick continued the tour. “Doc said you sent him a list of the new equipment you thought we needed, including the X-ray machine, so he bought this new Picker 100 MA machine, nice, huh? The rep unpacked and put it together last week. He set up the new darkroom equipment as well.”

  I walked to the machine and turned it on, playing with the settings.

&
nbsp; “This is really nice, Dick. Just as good as what we had at school. This will do very nicely.”

  “We also got all the equipment for the clinical path laboratory you wanted, including that fancy new microscope.” He pointed to the microscope covered with a plastic globe, standing on one of the counters with a laboratory stool handy.

  “None of us have had the time to figure out how to operate the X-ray machine or to learn to develop radiographs. Suppose that’ll be up to you. Doc has done some fecal exams and red and white blood cell counts with the lab stuff, but most of the rest is still in those boxes over there in the corner.”

  We went quickly through the large animal wing. A milk cow lay quietly in one of the box stalls.

  “She prolapsed after calving. They brought her in, and Doc fixed her up yesterday; should go home tomorrow.”

  Out in back, I examined the pens and holding chutes and found all the gate hinges were well oiled and in good working condition. While playing with the levers on the squeeze chute, I asked, “So, what’s the story with Don?”

  “Doc hired Don soon after he and his family moved here. Three generations of Don’s family have been helping their neighbors—pulling calves, replacing prolapsed uteruses, castrating calves and horses, and vaccinating livestock. Don and his wife live with their boys on a 120-acre farm just west of town. He has about twenty head of beef cattle grazing on ground no good for anything but pasture and raises alfalfa hay, sugar beets, barley, and oats on the sixty, or so, irrigated acres.”

  “So Dr. Schultz hired you two quacks, and he didn’t have to file charges for practicing veterinary medicine without a license against you. A win-win situation.” I smiled to show him I was teasing.

  Dick looked at me hard and then smiled his acknowledgement, or perhaps his intent to get even at first opportunity. “Doc’s deal with Don is that he gets a steady-paying job as Doc’s assistant but he can’t do any veterinary work on his own. He drives, assists with the large animals, and keeps the truck stocked. He gives me a list of drugs and supplies as they use them so I can reorder. I’m happy enough with my deal.

  “Doc’s plenty smart and a good vet, but you need to know that his wife is the real boss. My office manager title doesn’t mean much. Living right here only means my wife or I am here most of the time to answer the phone. I mostly schedule calls, run my pet shop business, look after the hospitalized animals, and clean the kennels. Don takes care of the barn and pens. Mrs. Schultz runs all the business aspects of the practice. She does the billing, keeps the books, and writes all the checks. Her family never allows anything to intervene between themselves and control of the money.”

  I stopped, turning to face Dick.

  “I just thought you should be aware of the situation. Things get a little testy between Doc and the missus sometimes. He tends to spend more time here or on calls than he does at home, and she nags him about it but complains when the practice is slow and he’s not bringing home the bucks. She was never much to look at. Her major attribute is that her old man owns just about everything worth owning in town, the bank, the grain elevators, the lumberyard, and lots of commercial real estate. The old man wanted her close so he built this place.”

  “So, are you from here, Dick? Raised here?”

  “Oh yeah, born right here in Sidney. My folks had a small place just south of town. Went all through school here, graduated from the high school in thirty-seven. Worked at the drug store until the war started and then ended up in the quartermaster corps; never even got overseas, thank goodness. Doc was in France and Germany; never talks about it. When the war ended, I came back here. I knew my wife Barbara from high school. Her folks moved here from Glendive when we were both in eighth grade. During the war, her family moved back to Glendive, and when I got back, I looked her up, and things kinda progressed from there.”

  “You have children, any family here?”

  “No kids; just never happened. My folks are both getting older, and I got a kid brother. He and his family live out in Bozeman. He’s a miner. You come from a big family?”

  “Not really. My mom and dad, a younger brother and sister, all of them still live in Phoenix.”

  “Well, you’ll find the weather here a lot different from Arizona.”

  “Expect I will, but not that much different from Colorado. I spent six years there going to school.”

  “Well, it might be a lot different out working in it, compared to going to school in it.”

  ***

  On the way home after my first day, I stopped at the lumberyard and bought some two-by-fours and two sheets of three-quarter-inch plywood. That evening, I built a raised platform five by six feet. I carried the mattress from the other bedroom and placed both mattresses on the platform. The result was a high, not so elegant, but firm and sturdy bed that remained silent when we got on it. I slept with my feet and ankles hanging over the end, but we didn’t roll into each other.

  The next two days I spent getting the X-ray machine, clinical pathology lab, and darkroom equipment all functioning properly. I wrote down the fee schedule that Dick Mathes dictated and studied a map learning how to find the major clients. Dr. Schultz allocated his two-year-old panel truck to me after taking delivery on a new truck for himself.

  Chapter 5: Wild Horses

  FOUR WEEKS AFTER SKIPPER was pronounced fit, I pulled into the hospital garage. The Joneses’ pickup, still covered with the same dried mud but fresh dust, pulled in behind me. The whole Jones family, including Skipper, was stuffed into the cab. John jumped out, smiling, extending a callused hand.

  “Hi, Doc. You doin’ OK?”

  “Yeah, John, you bet. How’s Skipper doing?”

  “Oh, she’s great, hardly limps, running all over the ranch, almost as good as new. We really appreciate what you did for her. Here’s the hundred we owe you.” He handed me two fifties.

  “Listen, our place neighbors the Simpson brothers’ ranches. You’ve heard of ’em?

  I nodded that I had.

  “When they heard about Skipper, they each chipped in fifty bucks for the pick of her first litter. They’re also my partners in a horse deal. We’ve rounded up some wild mustangs that need cutting. We’d like you to come out to the place and take care of it for us, providing, of course, you’re up to it.” He grinned.

  I ignored the challenge and walked to the pickup.

  “Hi, Kathy. Ferdie, how’re you doin’? Jenny, you’re more beautiful every time I see you.”

  The little girl scrunched down to hide behind her mother. I patted Skipper on the head, received the expected tail wag, and turned back to the rancher.

  “OK, John, I’ll level with you. I’m not apprehensive about castrating wild horses. The problem is restraining them.”

  “Not a problem, Doc. We’ve got plenty of experience. We’ll take care of restraint; all you have to do is cut ’em.”

  Everyone in the community knew Ted and Ed Simpson—professional rodeo cowboys, world-champion saddle bronc, bareback bronc, and bull riders. For the past four years, they had taken turns being champion in one or more of the three riding events, and the previous year Ted had won the All-Around World Championship of the Rodeo Cowboy’s Association.

  The free-range public lands constituting most of the North Dakota Badlands were home to feral horses. Badlands ranchers harvested the wild horses because of their value as saddle horses, rodeo stock, or dog food. More important to the ranchers, any grass the horses didn’t consume was available for their cattle. All the privately held lands were originally 160-acre homesteads, and most of the ranches were able to sustain only a hundred or so cows. The ranchers survived only if they could find extra income.

  “OK, John, when is this rodeo scheduled to happen?”

  “Dick and I already set it up for tomorrow morning. He thought you’d go for it. We’ll expect you at our place for breakfast, about six thirty.”

  Dick is getting even already, I thought.

  He drew a quick map on a
scrap of paper and then jumped into his pickup, squeezing his family against the passenger side door. They all waved as he sped out, spraying gravel. Skipper waved her tail.

  ***

  I drove east from Sidney, across the Yellowstone, and into McKensie County, North Dakota. Continuing through Cartwright, I passed a combination grocery and gas station, the school, where church services were conducted on Sundays, two frame houses, and a mobile home. Five miles later, I glanced at Jones’s map taking the road indicated. After fifteen miles of washboard dirt road, I arrived at a rusted mailbox, peppered with bullet holes. The mailbox sat on top of the corner post of a three-strand barbed wire fence. There was no name or number on the box. I turned in, rattled over the cattle guard, and followed the deep tracks that served as a road. The ranch buildings came into view as I drove over a small steep hill in second gear.

  Silhouetted against the clear sky was a disproportionately tall, two-story, wood-frame house, badly in need of paint. Corrals and a ramshackle barn stood on the opposite side of a large a dirt yard. The Joneses’ familiar Chevy was parked in the yard; next to it was a new, black, Ford pickup.

  I parked my panel truck on the other side of the Chevy as John came out of the house, a steaming mug of coffee in each hand. The two men who followed him were short and lean, with long legs and compact bodies. All three men were wearing Wranglers, wide, tooled leather belts, trophy buckles, and much-laundered, blue, Oxford, dress shirts, the collars buttoned down and long sleeves closed at the wrist. None of the three wore hats, but all had distinct lines on their foreheads separating skin rarely exposed to the elements from the remainder of their weather-beaten faces.

  “Doc, this is Ted Simpson and his brother, Ed.”

  Ted was a scant inch or so taller than his brother. His nose was majestic, perhaps an indication of some Sioux blood. His thin lips pulled into a welcoming smile. A nasty scar ran from just above his left ear down to his cheekbone, no doubt the souvenir of an engagement with a bucking animal. His brother, Ed, had no scar to mar his face.