The medical examiner was not so unaware that he didn't realize the causes for his attitude. His mother, for example, who had died when he was very young but not so young that he didn't remember how her body tortured her. Lung cancer. And he'd seen his father helpless to preserve her. Yes, his father the physician who was powerless when it most counted. Each day watching as she wasted. No, although he himself had long since learned to mute the power of that memory, he had not forgotten. She had been the only person close to him who'd ever died and filled him with grief. He didn't know why that should be, how his mother had made so strong a mark on him. Perhaps because he loved her, and that startled him. Because he knew a child's love had little substance. So he told himself. But if he'd really loved her, she had been the only one he ever loved. For sure, he didn't love his father. New thought: could it be that he had set out, insecure, to imitate his father, and then facing up to how he felt about the man, he had determined to annoy him? Self-defeat? His father maybe had been right. It could be that he himself had ruined his own chance to have a lucrative career just to get back at his father.
But he knew that wasn't true. He'd chosen this job because he liked it. The pleasure of practicing medicine without the obligations. His mind worked best without the setbacks of emotion. So his talents made him famous, but his life became a muddle. He could not commit himself to anyone. He had no use for friendship. People only let you down, he thought. Or die or get sick or leave. There were only different ways of losing. Better to be careful. So he concentrated exclusively on his work and lived alone and went out seldom. Personal distractions didn't matter either, he was thinking. Have a drink and just forget them.
One day he had been too busy for a shower. One day he had guessed he didn't need to shave. His pants went unpressed, his shoes unshined. He wasn't so slovenly that his manner and appearance were offensive, but the edge was off, the shimmer gone, and now in retrospect he knew that he had started acting like a loser. Self-defeat? Could it be that he had always been a loser, but that losing wasn't any good unless you first had been a winner? Had he courted his own losses? Or else could it be- he thought about this often-that when he had made his choice between the living and the dead he himself had started dying? Other people whom he worked with didn't have that problem, so the job was not at fault here. For a time he had a lover, but she couldn't tolerate his lifeless manner, and indeed he'd forced her to leave, certain that she'd one day leave him anyway. Besides, the dead were much more lovely. He would often go down to the morgue at night and, solitary, stare at certain corpses. Not the ones who were disfigured by a fire, say, or a traffic accident. But those who having died peacefully were much more radiant than they could ever have been when alive. The peace that passeth understanding. Quiet and at rest. A pewter sheen upon their faces and their bodies. Like some statues but much better. Or when working late at night, he'd pause before he cut a body open, meditating on perfection, and when he at last was forced to cut, he would do it lovingly, with care, so much so that, responsive to his care, the body gave up all its secrets. But the process took much longer each day. What before had taken two hours now would last a half a day. And sometimes all alone and working late, he'd occupy himself with just one body until the dawn.
So that was how they brought him down. Because when all his theorizing had been prolonged and exhausted, after he had put up all his layered explanations, he in time had come to understand his motives. He was fascinated by the dead, in love with them, and all he needed to discover that truth was one late hour's gentle touching of a young girl's lifeless body. He had looked up, and his supervisor had been standing in the doorway, watching him. There was no need for accusations or explanations. No word passed between them, but they both knew what had happened. One week later he resigned, effective when a person could be found to take his place, and without thinking, he went back to his birthplace, Potter's Field. His father had been dead by then, so it was easy to return. He sometimes thought that he had wanted to return since he'd first left the place, except his father would have been there. His credentials had been so impressive that he hadn't required a recommendation from his superior in Philadelphia. He'd asked; the local hospital had hired him.
And here he'd stayed, and here he had been happy. Understanding bred control. He settled in his father's house. He did his job, and he passed the time. He continued drinking but not as much as before. On occasion, he looked at Slaughter's sometimes puffy face and thought that Slaughter ought to cut back on the beer, but really it was he himself who liked the beer, and he at last had found a friend in Slaughter. Because Slaughter's life was his profession, as his own was, and a friendship based on work was something that the medical examiner could handle. People who were good at what they did, who related to you on that basis, seldom disappointed you. And besides, although this was a weakness, he had come to like the man, perhaps in part because he sensed that Slaughter felt that way toward him.
And so he frowned at it. The body of the cat down in the hollow. He stood along the rim and looked down at the mangled head, and it was blown apart, all right. Slaughter's magnum bullet had shattered the skull. There were bits of blood and brain and bone and fur that had been blasted back along the slope behind it. There were insects crawling on those pieces, on the carcass and the bloody skull, flies that clustered buzzing on the blood as well.
When he had parked his car and walked across the dusty field to reach the hollow, he had heard a noise down in there. He'd seen a dog run from the hollow, glancing furtively, its ears back, its tail low, as it had loped away. He had seen a bloody strand of sinew hanging from its mouth, and although he'd have to check the textbooks in his office, he was certain that he'd read somewhere that rabies could be passed on from the meat of tainted animals. He didn't have a gun. He wouldn't know how to use it even if he had one (that had been another block between his father and himself; his father was a hunter; he himself had not been interested). If Slaughter had been here now, the medical examiner would have been eager for Slaughter to shoot the dog. Either that or trap it. But that second way was risky, and the dog might be too clever for them. Better just to shoot it. Never mind who owned it. Never mind that he himself would want a living animal for observation and testing. That dog was a danger. It was running toward the cattle pens, and he was bothered by the damage that the dog could do if rabies were indeed the problem here. Oh, this soon the dog would not develop symptoms, but it certainly could leave the virus if it drank from where the cattle drank, and they would then contract it. He watched as the dog disappeared among the bushes by the cattle pens, as the cattle shifted slightly, brown shapes in a group across there, and he licked his lips and looked up at the summer sun.
It was noon, and he was thirsty, worn down by the heat. He'd left his suit coat in the car, had pulled down his tie and fumbled to open his top shirt button. Now he rolled his sleeves up, and he walked down into the hollow. Every sound he made was vivid to him, the dry sand crunching underneath his shoes-he never wore the cowboy boots so many of the townsfolk wore, his suits still those that he had owned back in the East-and he was positive that he would waste his time by doing tests on what was in a heap before him. There were only bits and hints of brain, and worse, they were contaminated, fly eggs on them now, corruption settling in. The cat had been a large one, black, a massive torn. He could understand why Slaughter had been startled when it suddenly came leaping at him, but he wished that Slaughter had shot it somewhere else besides the head. Well, that couldn't be changed, and for certain, he couldn't leave it here. In case it was contagious, he would have to seal it in a bag and then destroy it.