To Look and Pass

by Caldwell, Taylor;

  “Life’s a damn mess,” I said.

  “Seems to me I’ve heard that before, Jim,” he smiled. He stood up, also. He did not ask me to stay.

  “But there must be something—meaning,” I said helplessly from the depths. I did not quite understand why I said it, or what I really meant. He regarded me with something like compassion, but made no comment. He went with me to the door, and outside. I unhitched my horse and walked beside it down the rutty road. Dan went with me. An unbearable depression gripped me. It did not do to expose one’s self even to one’s self. It was profitless, like hungry teeth tearing at its own flesh. Hadn’t someone written somewhere that much thought is much weariness, and an abscess in the soul?

  I shook hands with him. Again I was conscious of the warm, strong vitality in his hand, earthy and free, of the kind and remote steadiness of his eyes. But I saw again that he was a stranger, would always be a stranger, that I could never really touch him.

  I got on my horse. I looked down at him.

  “I can come again, Dan?”

  “Yes, of course,” he replied heartily. “Soon, too.”

  I rode away. After some little distance I looked back. He was leaning on the low gate, smoking, watching after me. I waved. He waved in answer. It was like someone waving from a ship that was leaving harbor. A stranger waved.

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  It was not until I got home that I realized that we had not talked of the years between, that he had not asked me any questions of how things were with me, that he had shown no interest in what I was doing or what I was thinking. He had not asked of Livy or of anyone that we both knew. Events, years, death and life, were equally insignificant to him. Locked in the cell of himself, he had not even known that the world had gone by.

  I had no desire to see him again. I kept promising myself that I would, but I noticed that I half-subconsciously avoided the road that went by Dan’s farm. Once, at a distance, I saw on horseback a man that might have been he, and I rode hurriedly down a side road to keep from meeting him. I don’t know why I did this, at first. I was heavily wretched and unhappy. Everything had become tasteless and tedious, futile gestures while the tired feet walked in a circle. My thoughts, though vague and pointless, were exceedingly painful. Curse these people who made you think, anyway! They walked through the gates of your garden without permission, tramped over your careful little flowerbeds, looked contemptuously at your ancient, sleepy trees, pointed out that your invulnerable walls were built of sand, and that your house would not weather a storm. Their voices broke up your quiet and contented reveries; their remarks demolished your peace. They either beat drums that you did not wish to follow or killed all your little goals with gentle laughter. No wonder the world hated its reformers, its saviors, its saints, its poets, and its heroes. No wonder it killed them, burned them, beat them down, or exiled them. And it did all this, not because it did not believe them, but because in its heart it did believe them, and hated them for the agony of thought they brought to murder its peace.

  So I did not go to see Dan. If I saw him I would be unhappy, because I would be released from unthinking and pleasant peace for a little while, and I did not wish to be released. I preferred my warm prison.

  I had not told Livy of my visit to Dan. We never mentioned his name. But it was always between us like a river of fire that we pretended was not there. Gradually, as time went on, I thought less of him. Our little hospital was badly in need of funds, but finance was getting tight, and even our largest donors were giving piddling sums. If this went on, I thought desperately, we would have to close the hospital that had saved so many lives. I gave my services gratis, and a great part of my income. But still we lagged far behind. We also needed new equipment and beds. We had to hustle out patients who needed further care, and because a farmer’s wife had an incurable case of cancer which would probably take several months to kill her, we had to refuse her a bed. It was disheartening. We held bazaars, fairs, parties, and dances to obtain cash, but though these were great successes socially they barely covered expenses.

  In the fall Livy had an attack of appendicitis, and we had to rush her to Ripley because of lack of facilities in South Kenton. I had many bitter and terrified thoughts on the way to Ripley with her. If she died, it would be the fault of South Kenton. But we removed the appendix just before it ruptured, and I returned to South Kenton more than ever determined to raise funds if I went bankrupt myself. For the first time I fully realized our deficiencies; we had no circulating free library for the young people; we had no decently equipped hospital. For entertainment we had our own tight homes, the church, and the saloon. It was very bad, though no worse than other small towns of that period. I felt something should be done about it. Something was done, but in a way I did not dream of, and even though the benefits were enormous I would have gladly sacrificed them not to have had the thing happen.

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Spring came, a desperate spring for the country. It was nineteen-seven. No one who remembers that time needs explanation. I feel it was the beginning of that great cycle of social adjustment which has culminated in our present demoralized state, and that it was not, as some claim, merely a customary phenomenon, a natural ebb and flow in the tides of men.

  I was hard pressed. My patients, half of them, could not pay me anything, and even those who could pay held back as long as possible. One of the banks in Ripley, one in which I had a good portion of funds, failed. A heavy gloom settled over the whole country, and dire prophets rose then as now.

  The spring seemed depressed also, cold weather lingering well on into months that should have been warm. The roads ran with a particularly sticky and loathsome red mud, so that it sucked down my horse’s hoofs, and the prints he left brimmed with water immediately.. The atmosphere hung thick with unprecipitated drops, and the sky seemed full of gaseous clouds.

  I finally went to Willie Willams in desperation, and I told him that I wished him to write letters to my more affluent patients demanding payment. He looked at me with surprise.

  “Well, sir,” he said slowly, in his yokel’s voice, “this was never done before, Jim. Your dad never did it. After all, all these folks are your friends. We don’t send duns to our friends. Why,” he added, astounded as he thought about it, “you’ll lose every patient you had. Folks won’t even speak to you.”

  “I can’t help it,” I said recklessly. “We need money for the hospital; I need a new roof on the house. Damn it, I haven’t even paid Dr. Winslow for Livy’s operation yet, and the last letter I got from him wasn’t too delicate. In the first place the old rascal had talked about professional ethics and what not, and refused payment. But when I insisted, for he isn’t too flush himself, he didn’t say anything. Now he assumes I owe him the money. I’ve got to do something. So, get after these people.”

  “I wish you’d reconsider this, Jim,” he said hesitatingly. “It means a lot to you. Folks don’t forget. Wait a few days.”

  “Oh, all right,” I said wearily. “I’ll send them a few dozen more letters and waste stamps, and hound them like a peddler whenever I see them. Then, if they don’t cough up—”

  I had a call from an arthritic patient in the country one late afternoon, when a slow, heavy rain was falling and the air was like liquid ice. The man already owed me fifty dollars, but he was an old patient of my father’s, and I had to go. He was a farmer, poor and hopeless, living on a stony little farm six miles out. I would have to pass Dan’s farm or take another route adding more than a mile. I could let no personal delicacies stand in my way today; the weather was too foul. The air was so heavy with water that my horse began to wheeze as he plodded over the roads like soupy rivers. A little wooden bridge over a creek rumbled and shook as I went over it, and I looked down into a stream livid and dirty and swollen. Every farmhouse seemed isolated in liquid mud; every tree, with thin, belated foliage, dripped down a cold, wet burden on me. I passed Dan’s farm, but I was too sunken in my
own personal misery to give it more than an abstracted glance.

  When I turned homeward, evening was rapidly falling. The lowing of cattle rolled in hollow waves over the watery and desolate earth, and the hills had vanished in moving fog. In the west was a dull and sullen gash of gold which threw a faint saffron tint on the tops of the palely green trees and the tops of farmhouses. I shivered in my raincoat.

  Eventually I became conscious that the saffron tint seemed to take on a shade of orange, then red, that it was rising higher into the gray, dark sky. I looked bemusedly at the phenomenon, and it was not until I saw the red mounting higher, flickering, that the truth rushed in on me. Somewhere, someone’s house was burning. I spurred up my tired horse. A fire in the country was a frightful thing. There was not much anyone could do about it. The only thing one could hope was that no one was caught in the conflagration. Well, it was still daylight, and no one would be in bed; that was a thing to be thankful for, at any rate.

  I turned a bend in the road, and a terrible sight shone on me across the acres of gray and sodden fields. The valley here was smooth and level, and set in the midst of it a house in the distance was furiously burning, already a pyre of orange, scarlet and yellow flames. I could even hear the faint rumbling of it. It colored the mist that roamed over the valley; it lighted the sky, it quivered in a thousand small and shattered lakes on the earth so that they too seemed burning. What made it the more appalling was the utter silence of the evening skies and the earth, the lack of motion and voices. It was Dan’s house that was burning. There it stood, alone, a gigantic bonfire on the silent floor of the valley.

  Oh, my God! I thought dully. I pushed my horse to his limit. I passed a farmhouse, and shouted. A woman came to the door and shouted back at me that her husband and sons had already gone to the fire. I ran on. Now I passed one or two madly running figures who bellowed unintelligible things to me. By now I could hear the hoarse and prolonged roaring of the flaming house and could see the heavy columns of smoke that rose from it straight into the livid sky. So fierce were the flames that the hills in the near distance flashed out into vivid view at moments, stark and motionless, then fell into darkness as the flames sank. The whole countryside was lighted as the night fell, and I could distinctly feel the hot breath of the fire as it was carried to me on the wind.

  I arrived at full speed at the little road that led to the house, and galloped up it. I saw now that a dozen or more men were standing futilely near the house, staring at it blankly. A woman was pleading and gesticulating to each and everyone, but they stood stolidly as though they had not heard her. They turned to me as I came up, and every face was carved in bright orange against the dimness of the evening.

  The woman recognized me immediately. It was old Martha’s daughter. Before I was out of the saddle she was clutching me, her face running with tears, her cheeks smeared with soot, her hair hanging disheveled about her shoulders.

  “Doctor!” she cried desperately. “Mr. Dan’s still in there! Get him out! He’ll be burned to death!”

  “In there?” I shouted, starting to run towards the house.

  “Yes, sir!” she sobbed, running, panting, beside me. “I had the little dog upstairs, locked in a room, and the fire started, and I ran out, and Mr. Dan ran out! It seemed to start a hundred places—at once— And I told him—little dog still in the house, and—he ran back in—and didn’t come out again—! Don’t know how it started— Hundred places at once. Tried to get them to go in for him, but they won’t!”

  The house was gutted. Already the upper floor had crashed in, and black fragments, like burned bones, protruded against the orange flames. I told myself it was hopeless. Flames were pouring out like flaming waters through the sitting room windows. Hopeless. Hopeless.

  I turned in frantic despair and hate to the stolidly watching men.

  “You swine!” I screamed. “Standing there while a man burns to death! I’m going in for him! Is anyone here man enough to go with me?”

  A heavy-faced farmer shook his head. “Doc, you can’t go in there! House like a bonfire! No use goin’ in.”

  “I’ll go with you, Doc,” said a younger man suddenly, coming forward. “Mr. Hendricks paid my mortgage last year.” His face was sickly white. We went to the door, wrenched it open. Instantly black smoke poured out upon us, blinding us, choking us, overwhelming us with hellish heat. We staggered back a moment while through coughs I instructed the young man to pull his coat over his head. We went in, tongues of heat licking our exposed flesh, singeing our clothing. The uproar of flame and falling timbers was like drums in our aching ears.

  The hallway was a mass of thick smoke. The sitting room beyond flamed brilliantly with leaping and dancing flames, so violent that they lit the hallway. The stairway that led to the upper floor, burned halfway down, was smoldering, sending up showers of scarlet sparks. On the floor at the foot of the stairway lay Dan, face down, motionless, one arm thrown over his head. His clothing smoked. In the shelter of his other arm crouched a small fluffy shape, the little dog that had cost Dan his life.

  We seized Dan, unconscious of the smoldering clothing that seared our hands. Our breath was gone; we were choking and gasping and weeping. I remember distinctly how the hot floor burned through our shoes, scarred our flesh. The little dog whimpered and coughed; I seized him by the scruff of his neck, and we dragged man and dog out upon the porch. Then there were sufficient willing hands to help us with our burdens, and in a few moments we carried Dan to a little distance and laid him on the wet earth. The little dog had not been hurt at all, except that his hair was singed and filled the air with an acrid odor.

  Just when we laid Dan upon the earth, a hungry roar came from the house, and it collapsed in upon itself, the triumphant flames rushing skyward in a furious burst of crimson and yellow. So vivid was the light it made that for a great distance about the countryside was as bright as noonday.

  Old Martha’s daughter, sobbing frantically, brought me my bag, and I carefully cut the smoldering clothing from Dan’s body. He lay unconscious, stark and silent, his face upturned to the sky. The little dog crept to him, whimpering, nuzzled him, finally crouched beside him licking his flesh, and whining. From the first exposure of Dan’s body, I knew it was all over. Third-degree burns and worse. The fingers of his right hand were burned almost to the bone and hideously blackened. It was no use. The only thing I could hope for him was that he would die quickly, without gaining consciousness. However, to make sure he would not suffer too much I hastily filled my hypodermic syringe and shot a terrific quantity of morphine in the one unscorched spot I could find on his arm. I did all this mechanically, my hands not trembling, oblivious of the crowd of awed and frightened men that stood about us.

  Because of the position in which he had fallen, his face was almost untouched. I gently wiped the soot from it, prayed again that he would not recover consciousness. I could not feel anything particular; I was numb. I accepted a horse blanket that someone gave me, and we laid Dan upon it, and covered him with a coat. The fire still flared with enormous fury, and the gutted timbers fell deeper into the pit of themselves with dull crashes.

  Old Martha’s daughter knelt down beside me, wringing her hands, sobbing incoherently. The little dog whined, looked at me despairingly when his master did not respond to his lickings, and finally crept around to me and licked my hands. That simple and humble touch, grateful and pleading, unnerved me. I began to sob as I knelt there, as yet unaware of my own injuries. When I looked again, Dan’s eyes were open, unfocused yet, bewildered and groping. I bent over him.

  “All right, Dan?” I asked shakily.

  He stared at me intently for a few moments, then he smiled. “Good old Jim again,” he whispered. A spasm of agony touched his face for a moment, and then it was tranquil once more.

  “Dan, is it—is it all right?” I could hardly control my voice.

  “Not—bad,” he replied with a terrible effort.

  “Doc,” said a h
oarse voice beside me, “I got my cart here. Can we take him to town?”

  I shool my head without looking at the speaker. Though Dan had shut his eyes again he seemed to realize what had been said, and he smiled a little, ironically. Then he opened his eyes, and his lips moved. I bent over him.

  “Jim—go—Ripley National—old Mr. Semple.”

  “Yes, yes, Dan! Don’t talk.”

  My voice appeared to arouse him, and he stared at me for a long moment. I bent over him again.

  “Jim. I want to tell you something—now.”

  “Yes, Dan?”

  But instead of answering immediately, he looked intently and piercingly into my eyes, as though he were searching through the inmost refuges of my mind. There was something awful and fateful in that look. He moved his head slightly in a negative gesture.

  “No. I won’t—burden you with that—not now.”

  He was whispering through his seared lips. I almost touched them with my ear.

  “Good—old Jim. Good—old Jim. I never—Want you realize—”

  The whisper died away, then began for the last time again. “Dog—”

  “I’ve got him, Dan, I’ll take him home with me.”

  He smiled. A spasm of rigidity struck his face, passed away. When it had gone he was dead, but the smile remained, ironic, sad, yet infinitely kind.

  Then I began to weep uncontrollably, covering my face with my own burned hands, while Dan stared at the sky with dead and fearless eyes.

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  I had been burned worse than I knew, and had to stay in bed for two weeks while Dr. Winslow from Ripley took over my patients. I developed a high fever and was unconscious for two or three days. During my delirium I dreamed the dreadful scene over and over a hundred times, and I could faintly hear myself screaming And I heard Livy’s voice, calm and gentle, soothing and tender.