Driving on the Rim

15

I HAD A NORMAL REST OF THE WEEK at work. I ignored Jinx with a smile when she said, “Go.” I had a cancellation Friday afternoon and it was taken by Pastor Rawl Pennington — he who had fed the pandemonium! — who had a sore throat and the beginnings of an infection. My sense was he had grabbed a cancellation to take my temperature on matters of the spirit. As I somewhat rigidly greeted him, my first thought was that he would try to initiate some sort of revival meeting in my office, shredding what little remained of my reputation. Rawl operated a mobile welding service subcontracted to the Burlington Northern Railroad and lived at the south end of H Street near the rodeo grounds. I swabbed the white spots in his throat to have them cultured and wrote him a prescription for antibiotics. I don’t think church would ever have come into this had I not tried to relate all the shouting on Sunday to the poor condition of his throat. He agreed with me. “Should have been toughened up by this time, don’t you think?” This was the first acknowledgment, if a bit off the wall, of my attendance at his services.

“Well, I don’t know how much of that you do.”

“Ever’ week. Say, did you get anything out of it?”

“I don’t know, I might have. I have to be honest, it wasn’t exactly a religious experience.”

“Did you feel any better?”

“I felt way better.”

“Good enough. Maybe you just need to see folks more.” At the door, I shook his powerful hand and thanked him for the advice. “Don’t worry if you can’t make it again,” he said. “It’s not for everybody.”

Before I left for home that day, I prayed at my desk. It was hardly the first time I’ve prayed, because my mother embedded that in my habits from the beginning. But I just kind of launch these petitions into the unknown, as I am hardly a person of faith. You could say I believe in that vast entirety that is not me and I find it a suitable destination for prayer. I also pray to those manifestations of the natural world that catch my eye. I have prayed to clouds, canyons, springs, at least one landslide, birds, Swimming Woman Creek, the town of Martinsdale, the Jefferson River, and so on. I’ve prayed to my old 88. After a rain, I prayed to a mud puddle. Today a pair of teal flew past the window of my office, and I directed a really heartfelt prayer to them for the people of my mother’s church. This has given me great consolation. I will go on praying. However, when McAllister’s nurse came in with a stack of Medicare forms, she wanted to know why I was kneeling by the window. I felt there was no reason to back away from my new understanding and I told her simply that I was praying to ducks. She dropped the papers on my desk and left without saying anything.

As far as patients, I was just taking what came through the door. Something was afoot with me, and no pattern of regulars had emerged recently, old regulars being notably absent. I had ranchers reluctant to come to town because they considered all towns parasites on the ranching community. I had railroaders anxious to acquire workmen’s compensation looking for someone to verify their claims of disability. It was the age of hard-to-specify complaints of the spine and neck. At least once a week, someone came to me hoping for prescription opiates, sometimes the spine-and-neck folk hunting early retirement and sometimes unemployed night owls. Every one of these small western towns had a nocturnal population, people you never saw during daylight. Generally, they were up to no good. A prairie town usually had a dense grove of trees somewhere, often a cemetery, to which the night people resorted. And most were no strangers to the legal system. One of the biggest problems was the indiscriminate making of babies, and I handed out birth control pills with the feeling of pounding sand down a rat hole. I even tried arousing a sense of responsibility in the young fathers. Of course they all professed to want nothing more than the coming child, but these young men were easily bored and the poor girls who took them at their word were soon left holding the bag. I recall one young man, a baby-faced cowboy with a baritone voice and vaguely arrogant air, who was the father of three of my patients’ babies. I may have been less diplomatic with him than was my custom, but his reply has stayed with me to this day: “I only screws them what needs screwin’.” I was so entirely flummoxed by this remark, delivered as it was with obstinacy and challenge, that I could only tell him to keep up the good work, and I saw him to the door. I failed to understand how innocent he was of irony, for he walked away in triumph, determined, I now admit, to do as I directed, and now with my blessing.

Being a doctor in a small town was a strange experience indeed because “doctor” implied affluence, though it had come to seem nothing exceptional now that the easiest money came to those who didn’t work. Still, the title retained some of its old value, and you often heard that such and such ranch was closed to hunting because it was rented to “a bunch of doctors,” even though no doctors were actually involved. Napoleon said that if it weren’t for religion the poor would kill the rich. This may be all you needed to know about any human community. The churches were the real police stations, the real keepers of law and order.

Todd Clancy visited me at home on Thursday night, bringing a couple of beers which he managed to dangle between the fingers of one large hand. He had a cigarette between his lips, his suit coat flared over his substantial belly, and his tie pulled loose from an unbuttoned shirt collar. Todd had the broad, substantial, and florid face that I somewhat unfairly associated with the name Clancy. “May I come in?” His high voice was as incongruous as Mike Tyson’s.

“You may.”

Todd followed me into my kitchen, where he unceremoniously deposited the beer.

“Mind if I sit?”

“Nope. Is this an occasion?”

“Uh-huh.”

That made me nervous. Moreover, whatever was on Todd’s mind, he didn’t seem in any hurry to speak. He appeared to think I could guess what was on his mind. I could not. It came to his attention. He said, “Do you have any idea why I’m here?”

“You needed company?”

“You really don’t know?”

“I really don’t know.”

“That makes my job tougher.”

“Todd. Rise above it.”

Todd gripped his beer, and then embedded the tip of his forefinger in the opening. He was the county prosecutor and a pretty tough guy, used to all sorts of unpleasantness, but he had a very painful time telling me that it was possible I’d be charged for negligence in the death of Tessa Larionov. I really had no reply to make but stupidly asked anyway, “Why would I do that?”

He went into his prosecutor’s number. “Why does anyone commit a crime? I only know that my job has to do with whether or not they did it, not why they did it.” I found this irritating.

He settled down a bit. “I’ve been given a job to do.”

“I have to say, I’m having trouble getting my mind around this one. I did everything I could to keep Tessa alive. Who has suggested otherwise?”

“Are you going to drink that one?”

“No, I don’t want it.”

Clancy took the other beer and immediately drank from it. “I would say that your board of directors aren’t your friends. It’s none of my business, but coming in I noticed that you’ve let all your bird feeders get empty.”

“Oh.”

“I don’t buy mine from the bird store. Just go to the elevator. Get millet, sunflower, whatever you want, at ag prices.”

“You say my colleagues at the clinic supported this?”

“Let me put it this way: they were unwilling to go up against the board. And they said you didn’t support them when they had the slowdown. They’re not too happy with you. Except that Dr. Mayhall, but I understand she’s a loose cannon.”

“That hurts.”

“Sure it does. No matter what you may have done, you’re still a human being. You have your hopes and dreams no matter what.”

“Todd, do stop.”

“You need a lawyer.”

“I have a lawyer. Niles Throckmorton.”

“Oh, for Christ’s sake. Good luck.”

Todd’s expression changed and he seemed cold as charity. It was really then that I began to take this whole thing seriously. “It’s almost eight. You want to grab something to eat? I started the day drawing up charges for the owner of the Trails End Hotel. Had a window give way and this salesman fell seven stories to the sidewalk. I don’t know why it’s supposed to be on my desk. The only applicable statute was the law of gravity, which is no respecter of persons.”

“I’m not hungry.”

“Nothing tempting? A nice chop?”

“No.”

“So, then, guess I dine alone. I have only myself to blame, bringing this news. See you in court.”

And, of course, back to work! I got very odd looks from my colleagues, however, and my remark, “No one to murder, I shall turn to healing,” produced hardly a smile. I’m accustomed to making people smile and have a complacent faith in my wit; therefore, this failure to gain a response produced a shift in my mood.

The news had yet to spread, and things were altogether normal until early afternoon. I did a couple of physicals, ordered X-rays for an ankle injury that turned out to be a sprain. The young electrician was very disappointed it wasn’t broken, and I tried to console him. I should never have told him he could go back to work immediately, as it caused him to leave in a somber mood without a word to me. I was for a moment reasonably happy, handing out SSRIs and birth control pills with abandon. I ate lunch from the coin machines in the lobby while reading Field & Stream. Things started going downhill in the middle of the afternoon with unannounced cancellations, all my appointments, really. I sat alone in my office and watched clouds in my window. As the day heated up, the clouds moved a little faster, but that was about it for celestial change — i.e., no revelations except that I began to wonder whether I was actually guilty in some way and if, after a very long time rising from my unpromising origins, I was finally ruined.

I was, of course, guilty of the crime, but the victim wasn’t Tessa. Was this a technicality? Would honesty compel me to plead no contest? I had ethical standards to guide me from time to time, but they tended to flit in and out on the winds of that day’s mood. The great difficulty lay in my feeling no guilt for what I was being accused of. The actual source of my discomfort eventually came to me. We are most of us romantic enough to imagine that the perfect partner exists for us somewhere in the world. We know this is not true, the idea that only one other human being could suffice. But it doesn’t bother us that it is untrue, and that’s the essence of romance: indifference to truth. I felt that only one person could have been my life companion and that I had failed to recognize her through obstinate want of self-knowledge. It was Tessa. Who cared if she was an utter fright? She alone had understood me, and I had failed her. But did that constitute murder? Of course, she would have driven me completely crazy and that would have seemed sufficient motivation. When I thought of a lifetime with Tessa, a crime of passion seemed not out of the question.

I believed my colleague Gary Haack was someone who might have something heartening to tell me. He was a reasonable man, a secular man, free of all social juju, levelheaded in practice and in staff meetings, a man who made few bones about the fact that work was no more than a means to an end, no matter what kind of work it was. He once told me that if he spent a decade ministering to the victims of the atomic bomb, it still would be a means to more skiing and hot-air ballooning. I don’t know why we believed this thoughtlessness gave Dr. Haack some kind of authenticity, but I expect that the Hallmark card view of medicine had come to seem cloying: the kindly old shit in pince-nez and dangling stethoscope bending over the rosy-cheeked tomboy, a worried spaniel occupying a nearby rag rug. I also thought that the fact that Haack had never particularly liked me increased the chance of his being objective. I didn’t like him either, the asshole.

He was faced away from me, toward the window and its view of restricted parking. I announced myself, and he straightened slightly at the sound of my voice. He said, “Do please leave me out of this.”

I was taken aback. Walking the corridors, I found not a single face turned in my direction — plenty of backs, though. After the first moments of paralysis and dismay, I sank into unexpected and unfamiliar rage. It came as a spiraling, helpless anguish and an abstract revulsion at my plight. But what was my plight? I was new to this pariah status and could have more readily accepted it if only a few of my patients had shown up. It also seemed to me now that self-pity was fuel for this fire and a powerful fuel it was. I don’t know if you can beat the anger and self-pity cocktail for real mayhem potential.

When I was in school I worked part-time as a telemarketer. It was surprising how many people, on hearing my message, told me to eat shit and die. Telemarketing was a distressing glimpse of human nature which I ought to have forgotten but hadn’t. It’s no damn use finding deficiencies in human nature, because sooner or later you spot them in yourself. My job was to sell candles over the phone: car candles, soy candles, church candles, scented candles, pillar candles, colored river rocks to go with your floating candles, votive candles, wedding and anniversary candles, citronella candles to keep bugs away, birthday candles. Always the same result—“Fuck you. Eat shit. Et cetera.” I’d tell them, “I know where you live, I’m gonna get you.” Then when I was an intern, I heard about people shoving candles up their rectums. I’ve had a lot of trouble with candles and they’ve given me a lot of trouble. You won’t find them in my house. I don’t know who thought them up in the first place. Poor light source anyway, and a fire hazard.

For several days, the nicest thing I heard about myself was that I was not a flight risk. On reflection, I found this offensive. After a rocky beginning, this town had tidied me up. No flight risk. No flight, period. I certainly didn’t want to go to prison.

The very thought slowly turned a leaf of dread inside. I have watched patients stare into the parking lot knowing that they were not to leave for the time being or, in other cases, ever. I found that more dreadful than violence. I’ve seen the anguish in a patient’s face when someone they were watching got in a car below their window and drove away.

You can’t leave.

I avoided my office for nearly a week. Our receptionist had organized a small pile of message slips under an old souvenir letter opener from Butchart Gardens in Victoria, British Columbia, where I had gone with a girl I thought I’d marry — two girls I thought I’d marry. There were several notes trying to explain cancellations “in view of the circumstances,” several solicitations, and one very short note. Some had left in the most extraordinary circumlocutionary style messages plump with exit strategies, in case I was acquitted. But back to the shortest of them all.

“Please call as soon as you can.” This from the crop duster. The delectable pilot. Jocelyn Boyce. I felt instinctively that it could change everything. Take this job and shove it, etc.

I stuck with my decision to use Niles Throckmorton as my lawyer. To begin with, he was so passionate about my case. Hadn’t he called when I had not even been charged with anything? Too many lawyers are inclined to gloat at the misfortune of doctors, but Niles was an old friend. Still, I was surprised at his enthusiasm. I guessed that would be a good thing, but though I am misfortunate, it is not my mission to help others gloat.

The death of my mother was a very confusing occasion. I can’t say we were close, that wasn’t it. Her periods of “rest” at various institutions increased her distance from us. At the end, adult-onset asthma, which had for a long time predisposed her to bacterial infections, resulted in one that we ultimately couldn’t control. I say “we” because for obvious reasons I didn’t want to be alone on that one, and because I sensed that she couldn’t wait to get out of here (earth) and be on her way to a better place (heaven) and was making very little effort to stay. I could see why the death of persons with those views persuades others of their truth; Mama’s peace and delight at dying gave the three attending doctors, including me, the inspirational feeling that here was a person who had just left behind a burdensome vessel, her body. Perhaps we could see how the body was an ongoing annoyance, and she seemed so glad to go. The three of us definitely felt exalted and disturbed. But my father’s ill-concealed relief gave rise to secondary confusion, though time helped me understand that the oppression of her religious views had lifted at last. After decades of faithfully attending those noisy services — which I now read as simple devotion to my mother — he never went again; and when that muscle-bound whack job of a pastor made his third importuning visit to the house, my father slammed the door in his face so vehemently that we went to the window to see if the pastor was still on his feet. Flying coattails disappearing into a four-door sedan were our reward. My father ostentatiously dusted off his hands, and that was that.

My situation, under the law, was so fraught with ambiguity that I wondered why I found it comfortable. My earnings were at an end, though I was in no peril economically, having reasonable savings and even a few investments. Stranger still was my indifference to all things my income might have provided. My eating had long been confined to basic needs, I used only one light in the house, and I had all but quit driving my car. As I walked I felt the aura of my disgrace shine out before me like the beams of headlights. Seeing familiar faces turn away fascinated me. Human entanglement was so tiresome that if we were of sound ego, we would find it exhilarating to arouse disgust in others. Besides being guilty of the death of Cody Worrell and knowing guilt was guilt, I could well accept the fact that the people of my town considered me guilty of the death of Tessa.

My mother’s Southern — that is, Ozarkian — origins afforded her several distinctions compared to neighbors, and among them was a taste for what she called without bigotry “race music,” a kind of postwar rhythm and blues that she played on our home Victrola. God knows where she got the records. And she had a source for moonshine: both my parents drank it, but not with the feral abandon associated with that substance. They treated it as a superior liqueur and sipped it on special occasions. My father said, “It’s just bourbon, but it’s handmade.” I do remember them once having more than a taste and dancing on the exhausted linoleum of our kitchen floor in modest abandon to Ike Turner’s “Rocket 88,” after which my father said plainly that he never wanted to hear that song again. My mother danced with a lot of soul and seemed faintly amused at my father’s rhythmless hopping around.

I had some success in going on about my business as though things were normal, and in an odd way they were. I even popped in at the clinic on one pretext or another, getting this and that from my office or merely amiably greeting my former colleagues. I did so often enough that at first they grew somewhat accustomed to seeing me; then they seemed to have forgotten the charges against me, and finally a bit of compassion emerged from one or two of them.

Some nights I was terrified.

I lay sweating on sheets overdue for changing and racked my brain for happier days. Often I went back to my hours as a house painter but could never quite put my finger on what I had liked about that besides its inconsequentiality. I did remember the pleasure of making something change color.

Whenever Jinx wished to see me, she always just came to my office or any other empty room I was purported to be in, as there was a certain informality about working spaces at the clinic. This time, she had our receptionist call and ask me to “stop by at my convenience.” I didn’t like the sound of that at all. But I went. I found Jinx in the consultation room she had staked out as her own, much the most commodious, and originally meant as a sort of conference room, her intense, intelligent, battle-ready face already fixed in the ominous pause that would precede her remarks and her graceful body propped against the broad, paper-stacked desk that also held the odd assortment of hats she cycled through during the week. She tried hard to avoid being beautiful, but it wasn’t working. I didn’t have to say anything. I merely raised my eyebrows inquiringly.

“Close the door.” I did. “Well, sport, it’s coming your way.”