Dog Tags (24 page)

“Yes. Westerdonck's. A lot of Westerdoncks around here. Thrown out of Holland for horse-thievery about Rembrandt's time. Been a Westerdonck killed in every war we ever had. Got a little museum down there, and talk your head off if you let them.”

“Healthy-looking place,” Benny said. “Long life.”

“Long life. Tough winters, but they're good for you. Don't feel much over twenty-one myself.”

“Lazy summers.”

“No such thing. Baby doctors are always busy, and then I'm the only doctor in the village proper. Young ones like to be up to Suffield with the electronics and the new machines.”

“Not for me,” Benny said. “Just a quiet time with some nice people. I just want to be left alone. Not vote, even.”

“Nice people. That's a tall order. Been a doctor for almost sixty years and if I had it to do again I'd be a veterinarian. Better class of patients.”

“Strong talk.”

“I get fed up with them,” Bartholomew said. “They breed like animals and drink themselves to death and then tell me human life is sacred. I take a little bourbon myself from time to time.”

“For the circulation,” Benny murmured.

“Exactly. And I have nothing against sex. Beats hell out of television. Old enough now to appreciate it. But—oh hell, I don't know, no style any more.”

“My father talks like that.”

“A doctor?”

Benny shook his head. “A tailor. A little Jewish tailor from the big city.” He stared off at the dairy cows. “I meant to ask about that. Certain troubles I will not take lightly.”

“I wouldn't worry,” Bartholomew said. “Times change. Anyway the Jew they had in mind is about four foot six with horns and a tail. Hell, boy, I suppose you're some sort of hero. Any trouble, spit in their eye.”

“By God,” Benny said. “A hero.”

“Anyway they've got the Negroes to worry about now.”

“Are there many?”

“About fifty families, over in Suffield. Some of them work at the hospital. No better than anybody else, no worse. Christ, boy, we've got some Mayflower families here I wouldn't pee on. Don't worry about that kind of thing. Look out there to your right.”

They had rounded a long curve and Benny could see back to the upper part of the valley.

“Back of that notch,” the old man said, “that's where the house is. If you come here, grab it. Highest house in a beautiful bowl, birch and pine, maples.”

“It looked pretty.”

“Pretty, hell, it's beautiful. That bowl is God's own south forty: deer and woodchucks and foxes, possums and porcupines. Every five years or so a bear passes through. Fool engineers want to put a dam in the notch so some monopoly can make a fortune selling power to the big city. Been talking about it ever since the WPA, but it won't happen. A little farther back there's a lake about half a mile across, bass there, perch, lots of little ones.”

“It's all too good,” Benny said. “There must be something wrong with it.”

“Well, there is. One movie. A rundown high school twelve miles off. No music or theaters or anything like that. For that you take a couple of days in Sodom and Gomorrah. You said your kids were about five?”

“Five and four, boy and girl. Never even saw the girl until she was two. Never even knew she was coming until she was there.”

“They're years from high school, and the grammar school's good. Small. Basic. Time they get to high school there may be a better one.”

“One thing at a time.”

“Good sense,” the old doctor said. “There's our little town again. You want to visit the hospital now?”

“If you have time.”

“Time? A man of eighty has all the time in the world.”

They drove cautiously through Misqueag and Benny noted again the drugstore, the general store, the hardware; people waved, and Bartholomew waved back, and Benny found himself waving and wondered if this were a mirage, this exotic world of slow-moving giants, of calendar babies and catalog overalls. Saturday night drunks? Would a figure pop out of the barbershop, masked and feathered, rattling gourd and pointing bone, shouting “For Christ!”? Were there Kallikaks? Antique and mysterious corruptions of the blood, foot-long earlobes? Old Doc Beer on the courthouse steps, sipping Agri-cola. No French movies, but a town whore.

The Misqueag Diner was open for business, Sylvester Burris a hustler, a black capitalist, no illusions, life is travail, and Benny scrunched across the wet gravel through a cool white morning, mist and cloud and the light rising, Benny drifting between dew and rain. The diner was classically meretricious and one of the few commercial structures Benny could abide: not an old railroad car, but chrome and fluorescence and red plastic, and honest-to-God imitation linoleum on the floor. He clumped up the cement steps and inside. Sylvester Burris, black and round, the Pinsky of a new era, suspended his sunrise ritual—slicing, dishing, setting out—to smile and say good morning. “Coffee is ready.”

Benny swung aboard an unstable stool and set his palms flat on the cool formica. Finally he lied: “Good morning.” Burris was sixty-some and they had been friends for twelve years. Burris was a widower with two grown children, Artie and Mary, and they too were Benny's friends—he thought, he hoped; Mary and Artie, it was not easy these days.

Burris set coffee, sugar and real cream before him and said, “How about ham and eggs? I was about to, myself.”

“Good.”

Burris bustled. Sounds arose, sizzles, odors. Beyond the panes light thinned, trees loomed. “How's your boy?”

“Just fine,” Benny said. “College boys. Blue jeans and no underwear. How's Artie this grand morning?”

“My son the labor leader,” Burris said. “Well, they won't strike today. I tell him not to strike at all, but they will—tomorrow, more than likely. He's got the orderlies and the janitors and some of the practical nurses, and the painters and plumbers will go out in sympathy.”

“Hallelujah,” Benny said. “Solidarity forever.”

“You may not laugh when they have you toting bedpans.”

“True. Not many patients, anyway.”

“You wouldn't refuse?”

“No,” Benny said. “Artie does his thing, I do mine.”

Burris nodded. “God bless fresh eggs! Don't think Artie isn't grateful.”

“Just keep quiet and give me some decent service,” Benny said.

Burris laughed softly. “He thanks you all the same. Just doesn't know how.”

“Oh, what did I do,” Benny said in minor but real annoyance. “Stop being grateful for nothing. What good was it? All those damn Westerdoncks and other such Calvinists. They won't even C.O. white Quakers, much less big black Artie with that fat ass in those tight black pants and those nostrils like wastebaskets.” Burris jiggled with laughter and Benny grinned. “I don't know why you laugh. He almost went to jail.”

“That's why,” Burris said. “That
almost
.”

“It was none of my doing,” Benny said. “It was those smart lawyers from the big city. Hebrews and Ethiopes. So now I have to run my own bedpans.”

“Mary'll work twice as hard.”

“Now there's a girl,” Benny said lightly.

Burris set platters on the counter and doffed his apron; he stepped around to sit beside Benny. “Oh that smells good. Oh my God that smells good! Some days I can hardly eat breakfast. But when I am hungry in the morning, food smells better than any other time.”

“Morning is the pure time,” Benny said, “before you ruin your senses. Morning's like being a virgin.”

“Son,” Burris said solemnly, “I lost my cherry in nineteen hundred and twenty-four and you cannot expect me to recall the previous state.” In some gloom he added, “I suppose I'll find it again soon.”

“A transplant,” Benny said.

“Wouldn't that be something. Well. We sure got to the subject early in the day, for a couple of old bucks.”

“We have no morals,” Benny said. “No morals.”

Sylvester mopped orange yolk with golden toast. “Ah. Morals is just when you want to and you don't.”

Momentarily Benny was breathless, hot, tremendous; he sipped coffee.

“I held my breath for a bit,” Burris said. “It was about as crazy in all respects as anything I ever heard of.”

“You never said a word. Or did you talk to Mary?”

“What word?” Burris chewed, old and tired, perhaps wise, tall and black and capable of scorn, pride, the wounding shaft.

“I'd have given almost anything,” Benny said.

“There's that almost again.”

The mizzle persisted beneath a white sky; Benny belched, and drove respectfully on the slick blacktop. The sea hissed and boiled; at the bow Nan shouted and waved, and he made out Rarotonga rising from the mist. He halted behind a school bus and peered in sleepy curiosity as Frank Cole in the police car raced toward them and past. At seven-thirty. Crime knows no season. Or Cole had a girl friend. Behind him the siren howled; he cringed and then craned: Cole semaphored. Benny sprayed gravel, swung about and followed. Cole was small, dapper, military, bald beneath the campaign hat; with hostile eyes and thin lips he was perhaps ideal, the passionless enemy, everybody's perfect pig, by the numbers, crack shot; yet in small, indolent Suffield he was an exaggeration. Furthermore, he suffered ulcers and was persuaded that these caused chronic and inexorable bad breath. In moments of drama and glory he ducked and mumbled. The siren again: Otter Branch Road. Benny experienced a tremor, a premonition, goose flesh. And this his birthday. Signs and portents. “One of these days,” he said aloud. “Hell and damnation. Death and other inconveniences.” Frank Cole skidded; Benny heeded, and rolled on slowly. He had once believed that nothing important could happen before luncheon.

He was not astonished when Cole roared into the Coughlins' driveway. Cole ejected himself from the police car and dashed for the door. Benny followed with the black bag. The storm door slammed. The house smelled like a summer camp; the washing machine was in the living room and on the mantelpiece stood a rank of tin trophies. He crossed to the bedroom. Rosalie Coughlin sat blubbering; Frank Cole was livid and furious, and jerked a thumb at the crib. The baby was named Roland after Walt Coughlin's father, and there was blood on his mouth, the lips smeared and the classic trickle at one corner, vivid crimson against the chalky skin. One eye had started from its socket. The head itself was misshapen, lopsided, and one arm was obviously broken. Benny was quite weary, and closed his eyes.

Rosalie sobbed and wailed. “Oh, Benny.”

He spoke to Cole: “Have you called an ambulance?”

Cole was outraged: “They were out. I left word.” To Rosalie he said, “Where is he?”

She shook her head.

Benny asked, “Are you all right?” She nodded. “He's alive,” Benny said. “Let's be quick.” The bag was open and he was performing. Hey, presto! Salve on the gauze, gauze on the eye, a quick strip of tape for light pressure, voilà! the deuce of clubs. He felt the head, soft, impossible to say, perhaps a fracture and perhaps riding up over the fontanel. With two tongue depressors he splinted the arm. He wiped the mouth. The good eye was closed but the baby was breathing. “A blanket,” Benny said.

Rosalie sobbed. Cole pushed her away and stripped the bed. The two men folded the blanket, an army blanket, like soldiers retiring a flag. “Rosalie. Put on a coat, quick.” Rosalie sobbed. Benny slapped her lightly, a token, and cupped her cheek in his hand. “Yes,” she burbled, and rose. Benny and Cole paused to observe; yea, on the brink of death, god damn it, she was twenty-three years old and for a season had been Miss Misqueag. She wore a sheer short nightgown doubtless mail-ordered from a dubious magazine; her nipples stared, immense, and her navel completed the triangle, and below it the darker triangle flourished. “Hurry up,” Cole said regretfully. “Damn that man.” The woman rummaged in a closet; Benny and Cole shook their heads. Benny set the baby gently on the blanket. “Christ what a piece,” Cole murmured, and Benny remembered her on another day, a dopey broad but incandescent. “She'll carry the baby,” he said. “Go fast. I'll phone ahead and be right there.” Rosalie returned in a raincoat and harem slippers, and after a moment of utter desolation, the doc and the cop and the broad staring down at the future of the race, Benny shooed them out.

They beat him to the hospital by ten minutes; Benny ran inside. “Good,” Cole said. “You don't need me, do you?”

“No,” Benny said. “Go get him.”

“I'll find him,” Cole said. “I've got the state troopers out.”

“Drunken bastard,” Benny said. “I'll call your office when I know.”

“How's it look?”

“Bad.”

“Good luck.”

Benny nodded.

“Why'd she ever marry him?” Cole asked.

“Don't ask me,” Benny said. “You're his cousin.”

“Oh hell,” Cole said. “With a hundred Westerdoncks in between.”

“She wanted fun,” Benny said.

“Christ, we all want fun,” Cole said.

“Amen.”

“Heartbeat's all right,” Bobby Grentzer reported. “Setting up a cardiogram now.”

The child was pale as death, still but for the slight, regular rise—barely more than a throb—of his frail chest. “Respiration?”

“Regular. Very shallow. Do you want a tracheotomy?”

“Not yet. I want a chest x-ray. Rod Cohn in yet?”

“On the way.”

“The eye has to go, I'm afraid. X-ray the skull. You touched?”

“Yes. Nothing obvious. You want a tap?”

“Not yet. Blood pressure?”

“Sixty over forty.”

“Damn. Could be low normal, could be low. We'll see. No i-v. Blood pressure every half-hour. If it drops to forty start an i-v and call me. Motion?”