American Boy. Larry Watson
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someone would intrude on the Dunbars’ holiday for any reason but an emergency.
Nevertheless, after rising to his feet, Dr. Dunbar paused. He lifted his pocket watch from his vest, snapped it open, and gazed at it almost as if he were posing. Dr. Dunbar was a charming, confident man, and an imposing physical specimen. He was movie-star handsome—heavy browed and square jawed—and his wavy black hair was combed back tight to his skull. Amid his large features, his pencil-thin mustache was almost lost. He was six foot three, broad shouldered and barrel chested, and he moved in a way that suggested power and self-assurance. He was an impeccable dresser and he favored three-piece suits, which he purchased in Minneapolis.
Dr. Dunbar placed his watch back into his vest pocket, smiled apologetically at all of us sitting around the table, and excused himself. Because we all knew that there had to be an emergency, and because Dr. Dunbar’s departure inevitably meant that the room lost its energy, we waited in silence for his return.
Alice Dunbar was her husband’s opposite—shy, timid, and tiny. She was, however, his match in looks—a fairhaired, fine-featured beauty. When they were together in public, someone would inevitably remark on what an attractive couple the Dunbars made, and how obvious it was, from the way she gazed up at him, that Alice Dunbar adored her husband. In fact, her need for him was such that even ordinary moments could be difficult for her to manage without his direction and vigor. And so when the doctor left to answer the door, Mrs. Dunbar did nothing to sustain or stimulate the conversation. She just sat there patiently fingering the pearls of her necklace, as if counting them could substitute for counting the minutes of his absence.
He came back wearing a somber expression. “That was Deputy Greiner.” As if he needed to assess each of our ability to endure his forthcoming announcement, the doctor looked around the table. He didn’t pause long when he came to me. He knew I wouldn’t flinch.
“There’s been a shooting,” the doctor went on. “The victim is a young woman by the name of Lindahl. Louisa Lindahl?”
The name was not familiar to any of us, so Dr. Dunbar continued. “According to the deputy, it’s a strange situation. A man has confessed to the shooting and turned himself in, but we don’t have a victim.”
Dr. Dunbar paused again. “Here’s what the deputy told me. Miss Lindahl and her boyfriend—Lester Huston? That name mean anything? No? Anyway, this young couple had a quarrel, and it was heated, so heated that Huston took a shot at Miss Lindahl. He claims he was provoked, that she threw a soup can at him. And here’s the part I’m not clear on: Either Miss Lindahl tried to run away from him and he fired at her as she was fleeing, or he fired at her and then she ran. Whatever the case, she got away, but there is no doubt in Mr. Huston’s mind that he shot her. Deputy Greiner is convinced of this as well, and not only because people don’t turn themselves in for crimes they didn’t commit. He also found corroborating evidence. Huston was living in a shack on this side of Frenchman’s Forest, and when the deputy visited the scene he saw some blood on the ground. Greiner tried to follow the blood trail, but he lost it in the woods. Then he came here. He wanted me to know that Miss Lindahl is likely still out there bleeding from a gunshot wound. Or—and we certainly have to consider this possibility—she might be dead already. And now I need to decide whether to stay put, ready to treat this young woman in case they bring her here, or to join the deputy and the other men he’s rounded up for the search party. That way I could be right there to treat her in the field.”
Once again the doctor surveyed the table, looking steadily at each of us in turn. Dr. Dunbar was not a weak or indecisive man, and it was unlikely that he was actually seeking counsel. As it was, Dr. Dunbar had already gone beyond what most fathers would have done. In that time and place—a small Midwestern town buttoned up tight with the early sixties’ sense of decorum—few fathers would have shared these details with their family, much less asked for advice. A few heads of households might have called their wives aside and apprised them of the situation, but to involve the children was almost unheard of.
Nevertheless, I offered an opinion, which was testimony to my brashness rather than to any wisdom or practical judgment I might have possessed. “You could stay here,” I suggested, “and Johnny and I could try to help find her.”
“Well, there’s an idea. And not a bad one,” Dr. Dunbar said. “Well? Anyone else want to weigh in? Either in favor of Matthew’s proposal or not.”
Since I had volunteered Johnny for duty, I expected that he might speak up.
“No?” the doctor said. Then, to my surprise, he added, “All right then. We have a plan.”
The creases that appeared between Mrs. Dunbar’s eyes led me to believe that she didn’t agree, but she said nothing.
“I know you fellows are hungry,” Dr. Dunbar said, taking in the meal spread before us, “but if you want to join the search party out at Frenchman’s Forest, you’ll have to head out right away. Time is not on the side of someone bleeding from a bullet wound.”
Janet popped up out of her chair and asked, “Can we go, too?” Julia, often willing to allow her more vocal sister to speak for her, eagerly nodded her interest as well. The Dunbar twins were bright, bold little girls whose adventurous spirits made them seem more like their father than their mother.
Dr. Dunbar looked from one daughter to the other as if their request warranted serious consideration. Finally he said, “I don’t doubt that you two have eyes every bit as sharp as the boys’, but that’s just the problem. I’m afraid you might find her. And that means you might see something you wish you hadn’t. No, let’s leave this one to the boys.”
The twins looked both disappointed and relieved.
Johnny and I stood up and left the table in order to prepare for our expedition. While we put on our stocking caps, coats, and overshoes, Mrs. Dunbar assured us that a hot meal would be waiting when we returned. We were almost out the door when Dr. Dunbar called us aside.
“Now, if you do find her,” he said, “don’t try to do anything heroic.” He handed each of us a stack of gauze pads. “A bullet wound is nothing to fool with. If she’s bleeding heavily, use simple compression. No tourniquets or anything extreme.” And then he added with a smile, “And absolutely no field surgery—don’t dig out the bullet with a jackknife or anything along those lines. If you have to touch a wound, use the gauze, not your bare hands. Now go. I’ll set up an emergency room in the clinic.”
As we dressed to go out, Johnny and I were excited, almost giddy, at the prospect of adventure. But when we finally left the house we were solemn and subdued, mindful that the gauze in our pockets was meant to soak up human blood.
2.
IN THE STATE THAT BOASTED OF HAVING ten thousand lakes, Willow Falls was near none of them. Located in the southwestern corner of Minnesota, our town was closer to Sioux Falls, South Dakota, than it was to Minneapolis. We were out on the prairie, the land flat or gently undulating, sparsely populated, and mostly plowed for farming. As for recreation, the grassland was good for upland game, and a few nearby potholes and sloughs attracted wild fowl and the men who hunted them, but we were not a region of cabins on the lake. We did have a river, of course, the Willow, on whose banks the town was built. But it slowed to a trickle in dry years—of which there were many—and its falls, which gave the town its name, were in fact little more than a series of steps the river took as it stumbled over rocks and boulders near the center of town.
And if neither river nor falls merited their names, the same was true of our forest. In that part of Minnesota, only by an occasional stand of cottonwood and bur oak was the prairie interrupted—and then buckthorn, juneberry, and golden currant bushes filled in some open spaces along the river. It was a combination of these that made up Frenchman’s Forest, and without historical incident—in the nineteenth century, a trapper apparently hid in the undergrowth in order to escape a Sioux war party—the area probably never would have been named.
Frenchman’s Forest was on the north edge of town, about a mile from the Dunbars’.