Montana 1948. Larry Watson
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father. He shrugged his shoulders. Marie screamed again. “No! Mrs.!”
This time my mother went to the door and knocked. “Frank? Is everything okay?”
My uncle opened the door. “She says she wants you in here, Gail.” He shook his head in disgust. “Come on in. I don’t give a damn.”
This time the door closed and the room remained silent.
“David,” my father said to me. “Why don’t we go out on the porch while the medical profession does its work.”
Our screened-in porch faced the courthouse across the street. When I was younger I used to go out there just before five o’clock on all but the coldest days to watch for my parents.
My father put his bottle of beer down on the table next to the rocking chair. I didn’t sit down; I wanted to be able to maneuver myself into the best position to hear anything coming from Marie’s room. I didn’t have to wait long. I soon heard—muffled but unmistakable—Marie shout another no.
I glanced at my father but he was staring at the courthouse.
Then two more no’s in quick-shouted succession.
My father pointed at one of the large elm trees in our front yard. “Look at that,” he said. “August, and we’ve got leaves coming down already.” He heard her. I knew he did.
Before long Uncle Frank came out to the porch. He put down his bag and stared around the room as if he had never been there before. “Nice and cool out here,” he said, tugging at his white shirt the way men do when their clothes are sticking to them from perspiration. “Maybe I should put up one of these.”
“Faces east,” my father said. “That’s the key.”
“I’ll drink that beer now.”
My father jumped up immediately.
Uncle Frank lowered his head and closed his eyes. He pinched the bridge of his nose and worked his fingers back and forth as if he were trying to straighten his nose. I heard the smack of the refrigerator door and the clink of bottles. I wanted my father to hurry. After what had just happened with Marie I didn’t want to be alone with Uncle Frank.
Without opening his eyes Frank asked, “You playing any ball this summer, David?”
I was reluctant to answer. My uncle Frank had been a local baseball star, even playing some semipro ball during the summers when he was in college and medical school. I, on the other hand, had been such an inept ball player that I had all but given it up. But since Frank and Gloria had no children I always felt some pressure to please them, to be like the son they didn’t have. I finally said, “I’ve been doing a lot of fishing.”
“Catching anything?”
“Crappies and bluegill and perch out at the lake. Some trout at the river.”
“Any size to the trout?” He finally looked up at me.
“Not really. Nine inches. Maybe a couple twelve-inchers.”
“Well, that’s pan size. You’ll have to take me out some afternoon.”
Before I could answer, my father returned, carrying a bottle of beer. “Now drink it slow,” he said. “Give it a chance.”
Frank made a big show of holding the bottle aloft and examining it before drinking.
“What was the problem with Marie?” asked my father.
“Like you said on the phone. They’re used to being treated by the medicine man. Or some old squaw. But a doctor comes around and they think he’s the evil spirit or something.”
My father shook his head. “They’re not going to make it into the twentieth century until they give up their superstitions and old ways.”
“I’m not concerned about social progress. I’m worried they’re not going to survive measles. Mumps. Pneumonia. Which is what Marie might have. I’d like to get an X-ray, but I don’t suppose there’s much chance of that.”
“Pneumonia,” said my father. “That sounds serious.”
“I can’t be sure. I’ll prescribe something just in case.”
From where I stood on the porch I could see into the living room, where my mother stood. She was staring toward the porch and standing absolutely still. Her hands were pressed together as they would be in prayer, but she held her hands to her mouth. I looked quickly behind me since her attitude was exactly like someone who has seen something frightening. Nothing was there but my father and my uncle.
“Should she be in the hospital?” asked my father.
Frank rephrased the question as if my father had somehow said it wrong. “Should she be? That depends. Would she stay there? Or would she sneak out? Would she go home? If she’s going to be in some dirty shack out on the prairie, that’s no good. Now if she were staying right here. . . .”
Bentrock did not have its own hospital. The nearest one was almost forty miles away, in North Dakota. Bentrock residents usually traveled an extra twenty miles to the hospital in Dixon, Montana.
My mother came out onto the porch to answer Frank’s question. “Yes, she’s staying here. She’s staying until she gets better.” Her voice was firm and her arms were crossed, almost as if she expected an argument.
“Or until she gets worse. You don’t want an Indian girl with pneumonia in your house, Gail.”
“As long as she’s here we can keep an eye on her.”
Frank looked over at my father. If my mother said it, it was so, yet my father’s confirmation was still necessary. “She can stay here,” he said.
“She’s staying here,” my mother said one more time. “Someone will be here or nearby.”
I couldn’t figure out why my mother seemed so angry. I had always felt she didn’t particularly care for Frank, but I had put that down to two reasons. First, he was charming, and my mother was suspicious of charm. She believed its purpose was to conceal some personal deficit or lack of substance. If your character was sound, you didn’t need charm. And second, Uncle Frank was a Hayden, and where the Haydens were concerned my mother always held something back.
Yet her comportment toward Frank had always been cordial if a little reserved. My parents and Frank and Gloria went out together; they met at least once a month to play cards; they saw each other regularly at the ranch at holidays and family gatherings. When either my father or I were hurt or fell ill, we went to see Frank or he came to see us. (My mother, however, went to old Dr. Snow, the other doctor in Bentrock. She said she would feel funny seeing Frank professionally.)
Whatever the source of her irritation, Frank must have felt it too. He abruptly put down his half-finished beer and said, “I’d better be on my way. I have the feeling I might be called out to the Hollands tonight. This is her due date, and she’s usually pretty close. I’ll phone Young Drug with something for Marie. Give me a call if she gets worse.”
The three of us watched Frank bound down the walk, his long strides loose yet purposeful. After he got into his old Ford pickup (an affectation that my father made fun of by saying, “If a doctor is going to drive an old truck, maybe I should be patrolling the streets on horseback”) and drove away, my mother suggested I go outside. “I have to talk to your father,” she said. “In private.”
If I had gone back into the house—to the kitchen, to my room, out the back door, if I had left the porch and followed Frank’s steps down the front walk—I would never have heard the conversation between my father and mother, and perhaps I would have lived out my life with an illusion about my family and perhaps even the human community. Certainly I could not tell this story....
I left the porch and turned to the right and went around the corner of the house. From there I was able to crouch down and double back to the side