"Well, I was thinking a couple of weeks would-"
"Darling!" She kissed me. "That was just what I was going to say!"
There was just a little more. That last piece of the picture needed one more little push.
"What are you thinking about, darling?"
"Well, I was thinking we've always had to do kinda like people expected us to. I mean-Well, what were you thinking about?"
"You tell me first, Lou."
"No, you tell me, Amy."
"Well…"
"Well..
"Why don't we elope," we said.
We laughed, and she threw her arms around me, snuggled up against me, sort of shivery but warm; so hard but so soft. And she whispered into my ear and I whispered into hers:
"Bread and butter…"
"Bad luck, stay 'way from my darling."
17
He showed up on, well, I guess it was the following Tuesday. The Tuesday after the Saturday the bum had shown up and Amy and I had decided to elope. He was a tall, stoop-shouldered guy with a face that seemed to be all bone and yellowish tightly drawn skin. He said his name was Dr. John Smith and that he was just passing through; he was just looking around in this section, and he'd heard-he'd thought, perhaps-that the house and the practice might be on the market.
It was around nine o'clock in the morning. By rights, I should have been headed for the courthouse. But I wasn't knocking myself out, these days, to get downtown; and Dad had always laid himself out for any doctors that came around.
"I've thought about selling it, off and on," I said, "but that's about as far as it's gone. I've never taken any steps in that direction. But come in, anyway. Doctors are always welcome in this house."
I sat him down in the office and brought out a box of cigars, and got him some coffee. Then, I sat down with him and tried to visit. I can't say that I liked him much. He kept staring at me out of his big yellow eyes like I was really some sort of curiosity, something to look at instead of to talk to. But-well, doctors get funny mannerisms. They live in an I'm-the-King world, where everyone else is wrong but them.
"You're a general practitioner, Doctor Smith?" I said. "I wouldn't want to discourage you, but I'm afraid the general practice field is pretty well the monopoly here of long-established doctors. Now-I haven't thought too much about disposing of this place, but I might consider it-now, I do think there's room for a good man in pediatrics or obstetrics…"
I let it hang there, and he blinked and came out of his trance.
"As a matter of fact, I am interested in those fields, Mr. Ford. I would-uh-hesitate to call myself a specialist, but-uh-"
"I think you might find an opening here, then," I said. "What's been your experience in treating nephritis, doctor? Would you say that inoculation with measles has sufficiently proven itself as a curative agent to warrant the inherent danger?"
"Well, uh-uh-" He crossed his legs. "Yes and no."
I nodded seriously. "You feel that there are two sides to the question?"
"Well-uh-yes."
"I see," I said. "I'd never thought about it quite that way, but I can see that you're right."
"That's your-uh-specialty, Mr. Ford? Children's diseases?"
"I haven't any specialty, doctor," I laughed. "I'm living proof of the adage about the shoemaker's son going barefooted. But I've always been interested in children, and I suppose the little I do know about medicine is confined to pediatrics."
"I see. Well, uh, as a matter of fact, most of my work has been in-uh-geriatrics."
"You should do well here, then," I said. "We have a high percentage of elderly people in the population. Geriatrics, eh?"
"Well, uh, as a matter of fact…"
"You know Max Jacobsohn on Degenerative Diseases? What do you think of his theorem as to the ratio between decelerated activity and progressive senility? I can understand the basic concept, of course, but my math isn't good enough to allow me to appreciate his formulae. Perhaps you'll explain them to me?"
"Well, I-uh-it's pretty complicated…"
"I see. You feel, perhaps, that Jacobsohn's approach may be a trifle empirical? Well, I was inclined to that belief myself, for a time, but I'm afraid it may have been because my own approach was too subjective. For instance. Is the condition pathological? Is it psychopathological? Is it psycho-pathological-psychosomatic? Yes, yes, yes. It can be one or two or all three-but in varying degrees, doctor. Like it or not, we must contemplate an x factor. Now, to strike an equation-and you'll pardon me for oversimplifying-let's say that our cosine is…"
I went on smiling and talking, wishing that Max Jacobsohn was here to see him. From what I'd heard of Dr. Jacobsohn, he'd probably grab this guy by the seat of his pants and boot him out into the street.
"As a matter of fact," he interrupted me, rubbing a big bony hand across his forehead, "I have a very bad headache. What do you do for headaches, Mr. Ford."
"I never have them," I said.
"Uh, oh? I thought perhaps that studying so much, sitting up late nights when you can't-uh-sleep…"
"I never have any trouble sleeping," I said.
"You don't worry a lot? I mean that in a town such as this where there is so much gossip-uh-malicious gossip, you don't feel that people are talking about you? It doesn't-uh-seem unbearable at times?"
"You mean," I said slowly, "do I feel persecuted? Well, as a matter of fact, I do, doctor. But I never worry about it. I can't say that it doesn't bother me, but-"
"Yes? Yes, Mr. Ford?"
"Well, whenever it gets too bad, I just step out and kill a few people. I frig them to death with a barbed-wire cob I have. After that I feel fine."
I'd been trying to place him, and finally it had come to me. It's been several years since I'd seen that big ugly mug in one of the out-of-town papers, and the picture hadn't been so good a resemblance. But I remembered it, now, and some of the story I'd read about him. He'd taken his degree at the University of Edinburgh at a time when we were admitting their graduates to practice. He'd killed half a dozen people before he picked up a jerkwater Ph.D., and edged into psychiatry.
Out on the West Coast, he'd worked himself into some staff job with the police. And then a big murder case had cropped up, and he'd gotten hog-wild raw with the wrong suspects-people who had the money and influence to fight back. He hadn't lost his license, but he'd had to skip out fast. Now, well, I knew what he'd be doing now. What he'd have to be doing. Lunatics can't vote, so why should the legislature vote a lot of money for them?
"As a matter of fact-uh-" It was just beginning to soak in on him. "I think I'd better-"
"Stick around," I said. "I'll show you that corncob. Or maybe you can show me something from your collection-those Japanese sex goods you used to flash around. What'd you do with that rubber phallus you had? The one you squirted into that high school kid's face? Didn't you have time to pack it when you jumped the Coast?"
"I'm a-afraid you have me confused w-with-"
"As a matter of fact," I said, "I do. But you don't have me confused. You wouldn't know how to begin. You wouldn't know shit from wild honey, so go back and sign your report that way. Sign it shitbird. And you'd better add a footnote to the effect that the next son-of-a-bitch they send out here is going to get kicked so hard he'll be wearing his asshole for a collar."
He backed out into the hall and toward the front door, the bones in his face wobbling and twitching under the tight yellow skin. I followed him grinning.
He stuck a hand out sideways and lifted his hat from the hall tree. He put it on backwards; and I laughed and took a quick step toward him. He almost fell out the door; and I picked up his briefcase and threw it into the yard.
"Take care of yourself, doc," I said. "Take good care of your keys. If you ever lose them, you won't be able to get out."