|
Last week, Buck Turner and son Caleb were on
the trail to Contention City when a spaceship crashed nearby. One alien
survived. They took him back to their ranch, the K-10.
The creature recovered from his injuries faster than
anybody Edith had ever seen, though it didn't seem fast to me. I found the
wait irritatingly slow. With hundreds of questions for the creature, I was
impatient for him to heal so he could do things for himself. Mainly, however,
I wanted him to learn English so I could talk to him and unveil the mystery of
his existence.
When it came to medical questions, Edith knew what
she was talking about as much as a regular doctor in the city did. She studied
medicine as avidly as some women studied a newspaper's society page. She was
game to try anything and followed the procedures step-by-step like an
instruction book always trying to figure out the sense behind them. Being
miles away from Tucson or Contention City, the patient often had no other
alternative. Additionally, it also helped that she worked for less than a
full-fledged doctor.
She'd been inspired by tragedy to take up doctoring.
Two years after she gave birth to Caleb, she delivered a baby we named
Anthony. He died in his sleep when he was but one week old.
After our second son's death, I drank more than I
had in years. Edith didn't sleep at night. When she did, she'd sob and wail
from nightmares and wake me up. I’d go sleepless right beside her. Those
nightmares continued long after the usual time when a baby starts sleeping
through the night.
Common sense led us to expect it. He'd been born
when she was only six and a half months along in her pregnancy. He started out
tiny, stayed that way, and kept getting sicker. There wasn't anything either
she, I or the doctor could do to halt the decline in his health.
From the start, Anthony had a hard time breathing.
Because of that, he had difficulty nursing. Edith fixated on the belief that
if she could have gotten him to breathe easier, he wouldn't have died.
Some people would have chalked his death up to being
God's will. Not Edith. She saw it as a calling to use her mind to fight death,
determined none of her other children were going to die. The vicious way she
challenged death reminded me of a mother bear protecting her cubs. When she
exhausted all of the books she could find about baby illnesses, she started
reading up on adult afflictions, an extension of her newfound interests.
It was a sacrifice for us to buy the books. The
Sears catalog didn't carry them. She had us travel to Tucson to speak to a
doctor who gave her the address of a medical publisher.
When they arrived, it was a problem to find time to
read them. She found herself reading them aloud to Becky and Caleb as they sat
upon her knee.
So that she could understand the Latin words in the
books, she had me give her a copy of Grey's Anatomy for our anniversary. I'd
never seen a woman so serious about anything.
"Doing this is more useful than crying,"
she said.
"And it helps me sleep better at night,
too," I rejoined. Most times, I didn't care.
Word got out how she studied medicine. The farming
and ranching families in the area came to her when they were sick. There were
no white doctors, except in Tucson, a day's hard ride. Nobody except the
foolish or desperate trusted the Indian remedies.
She wouldn’t admit it but she’d would break out
in a smile of morbid happiness when someone rode up with sickness or injury.
"What are you so happy about woman?" I said in a whisper when Clint
Dallas's boy hobbled into our living room with an ankle he twisted running
away from a rattlesnake.
"You’re mistaken. I'm not happy," she
whispered in reply.
"You're smiling. That means you’re
happy."
“I want the boy to relax.”
“Come on. He’s as relaxed as it gets.”
"I guess I want to use my skills."
"Fine. If some good comes out of that boy
hurting himself, your happiness is it."
Sometimes a month would go by where none of our
neighbors would be sick. I'd get irritated because there she'd be sitting
around reading her texts and I'd get a hankering for apple pie. I'd wish she
baked all the time like other women did. I wouldn't be entirely mad, just
irritated because I'd want pie or sweetbread or something. I'd be working the
range and there she would be sitting, reading. Reading wasn't work. I'd wish
she hadn't taken Anthony's death so hard. I'd wish for a normal wife.
It was months before it dawned on me how she
couldn't help the way she was any more than a rooster can help crowing at a
sunrise or that some dogs like stealing chickens.
Then, when I was in the middle of my wishing, Caleb
and Becky developed sicknesses and I'd thank God for Edith and her
proclivities. If anybody could help them get better, she could.
Then, six of our neighbors would show up at our door
at different times of the day to be treated for a variety of afflictions. Our
house would turn into the clinic.
After the exhausting day, Edith wanted to scream and
pull her hair out because she was needed so badly. I would too. Those people
wouldn't offer to pay anything. They'd expected it because neighbors help
neighbors. We were doing all the helping. There was no money in it because we
couldn't afford to keep bismuth, aloe pills or a lot of other medicines and
you need those. Also, there was the belief that a doctor would come to you.
Edith wasn't going to do that.
Sometimes one of the women would ride back here with
a cake or pie. That would make it all almost worth it. I knew it was the best
they could do. Nobody out there was very rich.
That night, after we'd tuckered out from exhaustion
and collapsed into bed, the Rogers boy came and begged Edith to hurry out to
their place because his daddy fell over and wouldn't wake up.
I refused to let her go see Rogers. I worried about
her safety. She was not to go anywhere after dark no matter who was dying.
That led up to the worst fight we ever had.
"You don't tell me what to do Buck
Turner!" she screamed.
"Mr. Rogers is a good man. The Lord is going to
look after him just fine. You ain’t going to be doing nobody no good when
you're dead cause some bandit killed you, are you? Not everybody is good like
you. There ain't anybody who can doctor the doctor, is there?" I said.
That shut her up. There was nothing she could say to
that.
Twelve-year-old Justin, Rogers' boy, had been sent
to fetch my wife. He spoke up: "I'll see to her."
I wanted to laugh. What could he do against an
Indian or vagabond? He didn't want to lose his daddy. I would have ridden with
them, but then who would have seen to Caleb and Becky? I had a ranch to run
and needed my sleep. They couldn't afford to pay, like the rest. Still, Edith
might be able to help him.
"I know you're a good kid, and we all need to
pray for your daddy, but you can never tell what's out there in the middle of
the night: Indians; bandits; other bad men. You all set out at first light.
It's only two hours away. You're better able to protect yourself in
daylight."
When word of what I had said spread around, nobody
ever again came for my wife in the middle of the night. I'm sure everyone
talked about me like I was some kind of an ogre. I didn't really care. Sense
was sense.
Rogers didn't die from the brain fever anyway. In
the morning, Edith gave him something to ease his suffering. He recovered on
his own. People would have said all kinds of unkind things about me if he did
die. I didn't care about that either. They wouldn't have to be raising Caleb
and Becky alone either.
Anyway, I don't think I'm that bad as a person. Some
men wouldn't have wanted their wives studying medicine, thinking they wouldn't
attend to the house. It wasn't my fault the people around here grew to depend
on her.
When she started, the house was frequently a mess
and I'd get a meager dinner at the end of a long, hard day. There wasn't much
I could say about that because Edith was still mourning Anthony and I felt
sorry for her. We had to pay Guzmán and Nunez's wives to pick up Edith's
workload and send over dinner. The women worked out things among the three of
them, becoming fast friends. She treated them and their families for free and
when they made dinner, they often bought over some.
My old friend Jedidiah Buckmaster would have never
allowed his wife to study medicine. "Don't see how any man can do that -
even you. They'll get to thinking they're the boss then. Doctoring is a man's
job. You get that out of her mind or you are going to be sorry."
Still, Jed's wife and five kids came to see Edith
when they were sick. Not Jed though. I suspect he once rode all the way to
Contention City to see a doctor for a cough that wouldn't go away rather than
be treated by my wife. He wasn't going to trust a woman. (He never said that
to me. If he had, he wouldn't have said much more, and that would have been
that. I don't believe in suffering the beliefs of fools.)
Edith was hurt how he'd ridden so far. In spite of
playing the role of a doctor, she was still very much a woman. She felt
slighted if the people in the area didn't consult her about their medical
problems. I could tell because she talked about it for days.
I told her not to worry about Jed. He has his own
opinions about women. That was just the way he was and there wasn't anybody
who could change him. If he was going to be stupid, let him make the ride, I
added. We'd been friends since our cattle driving days. We'd always been
friends. None of that was going to change.
Later, I had my fun razzing Jed about what a good
doctor my wife was and how he was stupid for riding to Contention City when he
could have gotten the treatment he needed from her. I got him thinking.
I'm proud to say I'm more practical than prideful. I
don't give a lick about what anybody thinks of me. I know it would be
downright useful having a wife who knew something about medicine. Her job made
her happy. A man with a happy wife is going to be a happy man, I say.
I ranched. She doctored. It was as good of a fit as
any in marriage and it worked for the two of us and there wasn’t anything to
be ashamed of. There wasn't anything anybody could do or say that mattered.
Ike Renner had said funny words about her "career." It gave
me yet another reason to take my shotgun down to his spread and put a few
holes in his miserable carcass. Except when the trouble affected his brood,
for children are innocents, I forbade her to go over there - or to have them
come over here. She didn't seem to mind.
She didn't go too far with her idealism. I loved
that about her.
And that there was just another example of the
Renner's stupidity. You don't go and anger the only doctor for miles around.
You never know when you might need her services.
Too many couples have marriages where they can't
talk with each other. Edith had all of the good points of a man and the
obvious attributes of a woman with just enough of their peculiarities, like
the insistence on manners, to keep me interested in her. She was a great wife.
I talked to her about the crops and the cattle and she’d tell me something
about her doctoring and what was going on in the area. When people came to her
with their problems, they’d bring news as well.
When I rescued the creature from its skyship, all of
the other subjects, except what the Renners were doing, were lost. From that
point on we talked mainly of speculations and few facts about the creature.
Not much else.
He was Edith's favorite patient of all time, though
she wouldn't have claimed a favorite. She fretted about him more than she did
me, Caleb, Becky or anybody else around here.
The books had most of the answers for all of us.
She'd have been remiss if she didn't follow the instructions. But for this
creature, "I've got to figure it out for myself," she said to me
when we were in bed at night. She made more notes to herself on the creature
than she had for any patient before.
"If he dies then this is going to be a record
of him," she said of the notes and choppy sketches she'd made. She had
planned to send them to the New York publisher we'd bought our books from.
"Good. Then maybe the publishers can pay us for
a change instead of us always paying them," I quipped. She was too
serious sometimes. I knew she might take that as a slight on her vocation.
Then: "I can see that you're really happy. You've got somebody
interesting to work on."
"I'm not happy. Just interested. He's hurt.
It's wrong to get happy cause somebody's hurt," she insisted
unconvincingly. She never admits being happy over somebody's pain.
"You're happy. Come on," I said,
chuckling. "I can see that sparkle in your eyes. It's the same in Caleb's
eyes as he was running up the hill. It can get pretty boring living out here.
Same things, varying with the seasons, day in and day out until we scream.
Same gossip. Jed Buckmaster's got a temper. Rogers gone crazy. Molly Dallas
tipples. The Renners are a pack of fools."
"Well . . . ," she said.
"Ain't no shame in admitting it."
"Well, I do wonder about where he comes
from."
"I do too. This creature falls out of the sky
and you know that there's more to the world than no rain, Renner's cheating
and stealing and the seasons."
Within a week Edith and my daughter put away the
bedpan. The women helped him get up from the straw tick and walk to the privy
or chamber pot. The creature let them know when he needed to urinate or
defecate by knocking on the wooden floor and pointing to the chamber pot.
It hurt him to move. You could tell that by the way
his eyelids shut tight and wrinkled and the way his mouth would form into an
'O' of pain when he moved.
They dressed him in one of my nightshirts. His
privates looked something like a normal man's, but smaller. He was pretty much
like a human, except for the skin tone, the eyes, the lack of facial and body
hair. He had the five fingers and five toes. They, however, were about a
quarter-again longer than ours. All of his limbs were. Also, his skin felt a
little more scaly - he didn't have the little hairs covering his body like a
man did. Also, he didn't have as much muscle as a man.
Edith noted the differences in the journal she kept
and said that to find any more differences, Edith said she'd have to dissect
him. She wished the other creature who crashed along with him hadn't
disappeared. She said she'd have found a way to get the dissection equipment
she needed, even made do with the knives she had in the kitchen. The thought
occurred to her that maybe it was all for the best - she didn't know how the
creature would feel about his friend's dead body getting cut up.
Some of the items I recovered from his skyship were
soft. Others, like the funny nails, were hard. The soft, I reasoned, was food.
It turned out that I was right. I knew very well that I might not have been.
You can eat all soft things.
There wasn't enough of those soft tubes to feed him
with for more than a month. Probably less, I guessed, once his appetite
returned. Having an accident of any kind can knock a body back for quite a
spell. Why shouldn't some stranger be the same way? He ate barely one,
one-inch tube (2.54 centimeters) each day. We just peeled the top off and
plopped the insides in his mouth. Somehow he got the ideas across to us. It
didn't look like enough food to feed a baby, but it might have been filling. I
didn't try one because it didn't look appetizing. It might have been to a
green skinned alien like that one, I figured.
He needed all of them if he was going to live.
We had no idea what we were going to do when those few
morsels ran out. I just wished that whoever or whatever took the wrecked skyship
had let me take more of that food out of it before they took it away. There were
boxes I'd left alone because I didn't have enough cord and room to strap it onto
'49er. I wished I had a wagon.
He had to get started eating human foods. We fed him a
variety of foods, trying everything, even things we wouldn't find appetizing
ourselves.
"You can't tell what someone like him will
eat," Edith reasoned.
The creature preferred grains and vegetables to meat,
becoming sick and throwing up the first time he ate a steak.
"If everybody was like that then the K-10 would
be out of business," I noted. Good thing everybody wasn’t.
Later, he was somehow able to tolerate it, trying meat
again on his own. I figured it was the flank cut I gave him before - but why
would one cut of meat be so different to someone's constitution than another? I
figured he just adapted to the food.
When it seemed he was getting enough to eat and was
getting stronger, the next challenge was learning to communicate with him, a
task Becky and Edith worked on by way of asking him about his body and where it
hurt and those other things doctors ask their patients. The creature answered
with clicks, clacks and grunts, a weird language his own.
"Can't make out that," Edith said.
"*Click**Cla-ck**Grrunt***," I replied in
mock imitation.
Two days after the crash, I rode into Contention City
to talk with Sheriff Brucker about the situation between Renner and me. Caleb,
who wanted to look at the girls, went with me.
Unlike Caleb, I wanted to get home. I was impatient to
find out about the things I salvaged from his wreckage. I had a million
questions about the creature's past that begged to be asked.
It was the first time in years I didn't feel tempted
to dawdle in the city.
©2003 StoriesByEmail.com
|
