16

THE DOE HUNTERS

It was an important event when he bought his sheep, because the blatting was the last detail needed to make him know he was at home. At first he worked the merinos with Alden, but it was apparent that Kimball was as capable with sheep as with other animals, and soon Alden was docking tails, castrating male lambs, and watching out for scab all by himself, as though he’d been a shepherd for years. It was well Rob wasn’t needed on the farm, because as word spread about the presence of a good doctor, patients summoned him to ride greater distances. Soon, he knew, he’d have to limit the area of his practice, because Nick Holden’s dream was working, and new families kept arriving in Holden’s Crossing. Nick rode over one morning to inspect the flock and pronounce it odoriferous, and stayed “to let you in on something promising. A grist mill.”

One of the new arrivals was a German named Pfersick, a miller from New Jersey. Pfersick knew where he could buy milling equipment, but he had no capital. “Nine hundred dollars should do it. I’ll put up six hundred for fifty percent of the stock. You put up three hundred for twenty-five percent—I’ll advance what you need—and we’ll give Pfersick twenty-five percent for running the business.”

Rob had paid back less than half the money he owed Nick, and he hated debt. “You’re putting out all the money, why not just take seventy-five percent?”

“I want to feather your nest until its so soft and rich you won’t be tempted to fly. You’re as much a commodity to a town as water.”

Rob J. knew it was true. When he and Alden had gone to Rock Island to buy sheep, they’d seen a handbill Nick had distributed, describing the many advantages of settling in Holden’s Crossing, among which the clinical presence of Dr. Cole had been prominent. He couldn’t see that going into the grist-mill business would compromise his position as a physician, and in the end he nodded.

“Partners!” Nick said.

They shook hands on the deal. Rob refused a huge celebratory cigar—using stogies to administer nicotine anally had dampened his appetite for tobacco. When Nick lit up, Rob said he looked the perfect banker.

“That’ll come sooner than you expect, and you’ll be among the first to know.” Nick blew smoke at the sky in satisfaction. “I’m going doe hunting in Rock Island this weekend. Care to join me?”

“Deer hunting? In Rock Island?”

“Not deer. People of the female persuasion. What do you say, old buck?”

“I stay away from brothels.”

“I’m talkin about choice private goods.”

“Sure. I’ll join you,” Rob J. said. He had tried to speak casually, but doubtless something in his voice revealed he didn’t treat such matters lightly, because Nick Holden grinned.

The Stephenson House reflected the personality of a Mississippi River town where nineteen hundred steamboats docked annually and where rafts of logs a third of a mile long often floated past. Whenever rivermen and lumberjacks had money, the hotel was noisy and sometimes violent. Nick Holden had made arrangements that were both expensive and private, a two-bedroom suite separated by a sitting-dining room. The women were cousins, both named Dawber, pleased by the fact that their patrons were professional men. Nick’s was Lettie, Rob’s was Virginia. They were small and pert, like sparrows, but they shared an arch manner that set Rob’s teeth on edge. Lettie was a widow. Virginia told him she’d never married, but that night when he became familiar with her body, he saw she’d borne children.

Next morning when the four of them met at breakfast, the women whispered together and giggled. Virginia must have told Lettie about the sheath Rob called Old Horny, and Lettie must have told Nick, because as they rode homeward, Nick mentioned it and laughed. “Why bother with those blamed things?”

“Well, disease,” Rob said mildly. “And to ward off fatherhood.”

“Spoils the pleasure.”

Had it been all that pleasurable? He acknowledged that his body and spirit had been eased, and when Nick said he had enjoyed the companionship, Rob said so had he, and agreed that they must go doe hunting again.

The next time he rode past the Schroeders’ place he saw Gus in a meadow wielding a scythe despite the amputated fingers, and they exchanged salutes. He was tempted to go right on past the Bledsoe cabin, because the woman had made it clear she considered him an intruder and the thought of her put him out of sorts. But at the last moment he turned the horse into the clearing and dismounted.

At the cabin he held his hand back before his knuckles could strike the door, because he could plainly hear from within the wailing of the child and hoarse adult screams. Bad sounds. When he tried the door, he found it unlocked. Inside, the smell was like a blow and the light was dim, but he could see Sarah Bledsoe on the floor. Next to her the baby sat, his wet face screwed up in terror so great at this final blow, the sight of a huge stranger, that no sound came from his open mouth. Rob J. wanted to pick up the child and comfort him, but as the woman screamed again, he knew his attention must go to her.

He knelt and touched her cheek. Cold sweat. “What is it, madam?”

“The cancer. Ah.”

“Where does it hurt, Mrs. Bledsoe?”

Her hands, long fingers spread, went like white spiders to her lower abdomen on both sides of her pelvis.

“A sharp or a dull pain?”

“Stabbing! Piercing! Sir. It’s … terrible!”

He feared her urine spilled from her through a fistula caused by child-bearing. If so, he could do nothing to help her.

She closed her eyes, for the evidence of her constant incontinence was in his nose and lungs with every breath.

“I must examine you.”

Doubtless she’d have objected, but when she opened her mouth, it was to cry out in fresh pain. She was stiff with tension but tractable as he molded her into a semiprone position on her left side and chest, her right knee and thigh drawn up. He could see that there was no fistula.

He had in his bag a small container of fresh white lard that he used as lubricant. “You must allow yourself no distress. I’m a physician,” he told her, but she wept more from humiliation than discomfort as the middle finger of his left hand slid into her vagina while his right hand palpated her abdomen. He tried to make the tip of his finger an eye; at first it could see nothing as he moved and probed, but as it came close to the pubic bone he found something.

And then another.

Gently he withdrew and gave her a rag to wipe herself, and went out to the brook to wash his hands.

In order to talk to her, he led her blinking into the harsh sunshine outside, and seated her on a stump with the cosseted child in her arms.

“You don’t have cancer.” He wished it could stop there. “You suffer from bladder-stone.”

“I shan’t die?”

He was held to truth. “With cancer you’d have little chance. With bladder-stone there’s decent chance.” He explained to her about the growth of mineral stones in the bladder, caused perhaps by unchanging diet and prolonged diarrhea.

“Yes. I had diarrhea for a long time after his birth. Is there a medicine?”

“No. No medicine to dissolve the stones. The little stones sometimes pass from your body with the urine, and often they have sharp edges that can tear tissue. I believe that’s why you’ve experienced bloody urine. But you have two large stones. Too large to pass.”

“Then will you cut me? For God’s sake …” she said unsteadily.

“No.” He hesitated, deciding how much she had to know. Part of the Hippocratic Oath he had taken said: I will not cut a person who is suffering from a stone. Some butchers ignored the oath and cut anyway, slicing deep into the perineum between the anus and the vulva or scrotum to open the bladder and get at the stones, leaving a few victims who eventually recovered, and many who died of peritonitis, and others who were maimed for life because an intestine or bladder muscle had been severed. “I’d go into the bladder with a surgical instrument through the urethra, the narrow canal through which you pass water. The instrument is called a lithotrite. It has two little steel pincers, like jaws, with which to remove or crush the stones.”

“Would there be pain?”

“Yes, mostly when I inserted the lithotrite and removed it. But the pain would be less than what you now suffer. If the procedure should succeed, you could be totally cured.” It was difficult admitting the greatest danger was that his skill might prove inadequate. “If, in trying to grasp the stone in the jaws of the lithotrite, I were to pinch the bladder and break it, or if I should tear the peritoneum, likely you would die of infection.” Studying her drawn face, he saw flashes of a younger, prettier woman. “You must decide if I am to try.”

In her agitation she held the baby too tightly and the boy began to cry again. Because of that, it took Rob J. a moment to realize what the word was that she had whispered.

Please.

He knew he’d need help while he performed the lithocenosis. Remembering the rigidity of her body during examination, he felt instinctively that his assistant should be a woman, and when he left Sarah Bledsoe he rode straight to the nearby farmhouse and had a talk with Alma Schroeder.

“Oh, I cannot, no never!” Poor Alma blanched. Her consternation was made worse by her genuine feeling for Sarah. “Gott im Himmel! Oh, Dr. Cole, please, I cannot.”

When he saw it was so, he assured her it didn’t diminish her. Some just couldn’t stand to see surgery. “It’s all right, Alma. I’ll find someone else.”

Riding away, he tried to think of a female in the district who might assist him, but he rejected the few possibilities, one by one. He had had enough of weeping; what he required was an intelligent woman with strong arms, a woman with a spirit that would allow her to remain steadfast in the face of suffering.

Halfway home, he turned the horse and rode in the direction of the Indian village.