“And you said he was running about in an erratic manner?”
“I don’t know it was so erratic. He came right for me. He seemed to have a mission.”
“You ever seen a squirrel do this before?”
“Well, no.”
“Did he leave a note? Some indication that it might not have been rabies?”
“That’s funny, Doc.”
“Rabies. That’s what it is. You bring the squirrel’s head in?”
“It’s not in my pocket or anything. Leonard threw the squirrel, still attached to its head, into the trunk of the car. He thought it might be rabid too.”
“Then you’re the only one that doesn’t think so.”
“I don’t want to think so.”
“What we need to do is cut off the squirrel’s head, send it to a lab in Austin, let them do some research, see it’s rabid or not. In the meantime, you could go to the house and wait for symptoms. But I don’t think that’s a good idea. Let me tell you a little story, and let me warn you up front that this one doesn’t have a happy ending. My mother told me this story. In the twenties, when she was a girl, a boy she knew got bit by a raccoon. Kid was playing in the woods, some such thing. I don’t remember exactly. Doesn’t matter. He got bit by this raccoon. He got sick. He couldn’t eat, and he couldn’t drink water. He wanted water, but his body couldn’t take it. The doctor couldn’t do a thing for him. They didn’t have the medicine for rabies we have now. The boy got worse. They ended up tying him to a bed and waiting for him to die, and it was not a pretty thing. Think about it. Watching your son suffer from something like this, and it just goes on and on. Kid got so he didn’t know anybody. Laid there and messed on and wet himself, bit and snapped at them like a wild animal. Chewed off his tongue. The father finally smothered him with a pillow and everybody in the family knew it and didn’t say a goddamn word.”
“Why are you tellin’ me this?”
“Because you have been bitten by a rabid animal, and beginning right now we have to start shots. Rabies is pumping through your system, and believe me, it will not be denied. Way I see it in my head is all these little microscopic rabid dogs foaming and snapping at the air, dog-paddling through your bloodstream, heading for the brain, where they intend to devour it.”
“That’s a very interesting picture, Doc.”
“I came up with that when I was a kid and was told the rabies story. First I imagined raccoons, but since I was always hearing about dogs being the carriers, it changed to dogs.”
“What kind of dogs?”
“I don’t know. Brown ones. We haven’t got time to fuck around here, Hap. Bottom line is we don’t start shots, you go the same way as the kid, only maybe without the pillow. Right to life, all that.”
“All right. You got me convinced. You take rabies shots in the stomach, don’t you?”
“Not anymore. That’s changed. In fact, it isn’t so bad. But this is serious, my man, and we don’t want to make too light of it.”
“Couldn’t we wait until we get the results off the squirrel head? I hate shots.”
“I just gave you one.”
“Yeah, and I didn’t like it.”
“You’d have liked it less, me sewing up that wound without deadener. Listen up, Hap. We wait until the results come back, it’ll be too late. You’ll be running around on all fours and bouncing and biting the air. Trust me on this. I’m a doctor. I’ll make arrangements at the hospital.”
“Can’t we do it here?”
“I could, but they also have what I need there. And since I know you don’t have any money and I’d like to get paid, you go to the hospital I can get something out of your insurance. You do have insurance?”
“Yeah. I even overlap a bit. I’ve got insurance from the offshore work that’ll be good for a while, and I have a kind of penny-ante insurance that I’ve been managing to pay for the last few years. I don’t know it’ll do much.”
“Most of this shit insurance, which is what I figure you have, does better you go to the hospital. So give the information to my secretary when you go out, and if it’s anything we’re familiar with, we may be able to get policy information right away. If not, it’ll take a while. I want to check Leonard over too, see if he got scratched or bit. He might have and not even know it. He’s got a bite, you’ll both go to the hospital. Step on out and tell him to step on in.”
“Doc, if we got to send the squirrel’s head in for dissecting, and I’m going to take the shots before we get results, why bother?”
“Could be an epidemic. Squirrels aren’t usually the carriers. Raccoons, foxes – they’re the main culprits. But somehow it may have gotten into the squirrel population. People ought to know. Step on out and send Leonard in. We got to get this show on the road. Oh, before you go, here’s a trash bag. Get the squirrel and put it in the bag and leave it behind the reception desk. I’ll have someone pick it up.”
I gave the insurance information to the receptionist, borrowed Leonard’s car keys, got old Beebo out of the trunk and bagged him and put him in a cooler they had behind the desk. Then I sat in the waiting room and tried to read a nature magazine, but at the moment I wasn’t feeling all that kindly toward nature.
I wasn’t feeling all that kindly toward the brat that was waiting there either. His mother, a harried woman in lace-up shoes designed by the Inquisition, a long black dress, and a Pentecostal hairdo – which was a mound of brown hair tied up in a bun that looked as if it had been baked into place to contain an alien life form – was pretending to be asleep in a waiting-room chair.
Couldn’t say as I blamed her. This kid, who had torn up three magazines and drank out of all the paper cups at the water cooler and stuck his gum on the doorknob leading out of the office, wasn’t someone you wanted to look at much.
He was about eleven, and spent a lot of time scratching his red head as if it were full of lice. He had a nose that ran like an open faucet, and he was eyeing me with an intense look that reminded me of the squirrel’s expression just before it clamped its teeth on my arm. I wanted to ignore him, but I feared if I looked away he might spring.
He asked me some questions about this and that and I tried to answer politely, and in such a way as not to encourage conversation, but the kid had a knack of turning a nod into an invitation. He told me, without my asking, that he didn’t go to school, and that his parents taught him at home, and would continue to do so until LaBorde “built a Christian school.”
“A Christian school?” I said.
“You know,” said the boy, “one without niggers and atheists.”
“What about nigger atheists?” Leonard said, coming into the waiting room.
The kid eyed Leonard’s black skin as if he were trying to decide if it were real or paint. “Them’s the worst kind,” the kid said.
The Pentecostal mother opened one eye, then closed it quickly.
“How would you like me to kick your nasty little ass?” Leonard said.
“That’s child abuse,” said the little boy. “And you used a naughty word.”
“Yep,” Leonard said.
The boy studied Leonard a moment, fled to a chair next to his mother, sat there and glared at us. His mother seemed not to be breathing.
“Come on, Hap,” Leonard said. “I’m clean. Or as the doc said, no little dogs swimming through my blood. I’ll run you over to the hospital. Hey, you, you little shit-”
“What?” I said.
“Not you,” Leonard said. “Red on the head! You, kid! Get that goddamn gum off the doorknob. Now.”
The kid sidled over to the knob, peeled off the gum, put it into his mouth, slid back into the chair beside his mother. If he had been a cobra, he’d have spat venom at us. Leonard and I went out.
As Leonard drove, I said, “You got to feel sorry for a kid like that. Raised with those kind of attitudes.”
Leonard didn’t say anything.
“I mean, he’s off to a bad start. He doesn’t know any better. You talkin’ to him like that, that’s a little much, don’t you think?”
“I don’t feel sorry for him,” Leonard said. “I really was going to kick his nasty ass. I’m kinda hopin’ his mama brought him there to be put to sleep, like a sick cat.”