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Short Stories & Tall Tales
Doc Hannah Goes to Town
Tom Sheehan
The small sign, hardly visible from the road, said, “Wm. Hannah, MD.” It was hand-painted, almost saying so by the quality of the script, loose, off-hand, all things tolerable. And Doc didn’t wear a tie, never wore a suit, wanted nothing ornate in a life that touched life and death, sometimes in turn. The only doctor “near to town” was thirty-five on his next birthday, unmarried, “as good looking as a man can get,” one woman had said in Caliper, Texas, a mile or so down the road. He was a born Texan, sent east by his parents to discover new things on the horizon, found doctoring, came back to settle about 100 miles from home.
“How come you haven’t moved into town yet, Doc?” Greg Thormond the banker, who often had to size up people in a hurry, sat his horse at Doc Hannah’s front door.
Thormond knew the answer before it came from Hannah, sitting on the porch waving a cup of coffee in his hand as if it was saying something to the point in question. Aromas, settling about the banker, were almost visible. He’d had been looking at the spread of Doc’s garden alongside the house, flowering the rail fence all the way in from the road to Doc’s private paradise, noting the clean corners of the small barn beyond a vegetable plot green and lush. There was no clutter about, no debris waiting on energy, no space wasted. Wind rustled in the trees. An early summer smell of honeysuckle blessed the air. He wondered if he could enjoy the place without the constant demands and pains of the bank. He decided he could, though he knew Doc Hannah had perils of his own; strange wounds on patients, late night callers, the mystery of doctor and patient knowledge, potential threats of any order.
“No dance hall out here, Greg. No saloon. No shooting on Saturday nights without fail, though I’ve heard a few shots from a distance now and then. Rifle fire. Maybe hunters after peccary in the gorge.” The coffee cup pointed out to the north.
Thormond had heard it all before. And now he thought the doctor looked ten years younger than he was. Maybe more. “He’s found some secret out here, grass all around, a clump of trees, a spread of prairie flowers,” came to him as an unsought statement.
“I’ll see you tonight, Doc. Game starts at 7 o’clock, soon as Clara clears the table. It’s her favorite night, too. Tells me all the time she’s glad the doctor comes to play cards with the others.”
“Yeh,” said Hannah, “like they’ll be gunshots from cheaters.”
“Hell, Doc, there’s not a good shot in the crowd. None of us could hit a mule if he was sitting on the gun sight.”
“You didn’t say anything about cheaters.”
“Hell, we know Harry’d cheat in a minute if he thought he could get away with it.”
“The mark of a frugal freight owner, wouldn’t you say?”
“No indecision with you, Doc, is there?” He’d never heard Doc Hannah say, “I don’t know or I don’t know about that.” About anything that came up in conversation.
“Not in this game,” Hannah said, pointing at the sign that was a standard as well as a statement all on its own.
At five minutes past 7 o’clock the six long-time poker players sat down at the banker’s dining table. He had wanted to get a real poker table but his wife wouldn’t budge on the issue. “This is not a casino Greg, no matter how many games you play here. But I am glad you can get the doctor here. The man is good company; doesn’t get locked up in the town’s messes or rumors. Strictly on an even keel. Out in the kitchen I can hear him carry on about things. Did you ask him again about moving into town?”
“Had the same answer, Clara. Same as before. There doesn’t seem to be a thing that will budge him.”
“Doesn’t he ever speak about women? Mention any of them? There are half a dozen sweet eligibles that would jump at the chance of spending time with him.”
“Doc doesn’t talk about patients, women, youngsters, old folks, and tradesmen that deal with him. That includes the livery, the undertaker, the carriage maker, the hotel owner, the saloon boss. I guess that takes care of everybody. None of them, not on a bet.”
She put her hands on her hips. “I know that from the kitchen on game night, Greg, but what about elsewhere? What does he talk about out there, out on the prairie riding that horse of his, having a drink with a friend like Bill Grissom at the store, or Harvey at the forge making those little tools he likes, those special pincers and knives? Nothing come out of that? Is he all mystery?”
“When it’s all said and done, Clara, he’s the best doc we could ever have. Bill Smithers would have lost a leg if it wasn’t for Doc, and Mabel Sanders got that little baby girl of hers because Doc stayed with her for three days.”
“That was his longest stay in town, ever,” she replied, a smile crossing her face.
The game that evening was in its late stages, Thormond slightly ahead in winnings, Doc Hannah nodding at each loss, the other players were neutral and level.
A crashing sound came from the front porch. The door burst open and a young man yelled, “Hurry, Doc, Bert Harbors’ boy Teddy’s been mangled by a runaway. He’s real hurtin’.”
Doc Hannah, grabbing his bag by the door, was running down Caliper’s main street, following the young man calling him on. “Down here, Doc, down by the livery.” The doctor, bag and all, kept pace with him.
A good-sized crowd had gathered. One woman was leaning over the ten-year old boy when Hannah knelt beside her. “He’s in bad shape, Doc. Said everything hurt before he passed out again. Blood everywhere, you’ll see.”
Hannah, noting things, checked the boy for vital signs. He stood up and pointed to two men in front of the crowd, “Get some boards for a litter. Hurry. Try the livery, out back. Strip them down if you have to.” He pointed at another man and said, “They might need some tools. Get a hammer and a pry bar for them. In the livery. On the big shelf.”
Then, his voice changing again, he addressed the crowd. “Who’s got the nearest bed, with a water pump nearby, room for me to work?” He was not being solicitous.
“My place, Doc,” the freighter’s wife said. She pointed across the road. “I’ll go on ahead. You got Harry’s and my bed. We’ll sleep in Beth’s room. She’ll go to Amie’s house.” She ran ahead as two men came from behind the livery with two wide boards. In minutes they had Teddy Harbors in the freighter’s bed. “I’ll make a pot of coffee,” the freighter’s wife said. Her name was Nellie. She put a pot of coffee on the outside stove and lit the fire.
Teddy Harbors, for 19 days, lived at the hands of Doc Hannah, in the bed of Nellie and Harry Neville. He had two broken legs, busted ribs, a broken collarbone, one wrist mangled as bad as Doc Hannah had ever seen. He’d been unconscious for the first two days as the doctor worked on him. Hannah admired the young boy without reservation.
“You’re tough, Teddy. You haven’t cried in three days,” he said at one point. “I know you’re hurting, your folks too, but we got a leg up on the whole thing.” He managed a laugh and the boy, looking at one leg in a splint, laughed with him. Hannah could have hugged the boy, who grimaced again, as he had many times.
Ever observant Greg Thormond, scene watcher, measurer of people and their actions and reactions, saw the romance begin, a small sputter, a match flicker in the far night, a breath of air. Beth Neville, daily watching Hannah minister to Teddy Harbors, marveled at his efficiency, at his attention to details, at his adaptability when he ordered or designed or had made by the blacksmith or the undertaker’s assistant a set of tools special for his current patient. He never left the boy’s side. The wings of his being beat about Beth every one of those days, and even into her lonely nights at her friend’s house down the road. Before long she was there to make breakfast for Doc Hannah, and they would sit on the small porch and share the morning between his visits inside to minister to his patient.
Across the street, in his office, Greg Thormond saw all and smiled. He could feel the small excitement within himself as he remembered his courting days, how they had started even before he knew they were well under way.
“What are you watching, boss?” his teller said one morning.
“Oh, a bit of love in the air, that’s all.”
“You’re right about that, boss. Doc Hannah plain don’t leave that boy for a minute. He’s a special man.”
“He sure is,” Thormond replied, “and getting specialer all the time.” His smile went right on past the teller, still nodding his head in admiration.
Hannah never knew that every day he was tending Teddy Harbors, town folk were tending his gardens, watering, weeding as needed, keeping the whole place neat the way the doc did. He had no idea having other things on his mind … the care and improvement in his patient for starters, and waiting, eventually, for each morning as Beth Neville would dance around the corner and come into his view.
Greg Thormond and his wife Clara, whom he had alerted to the romance, shared it all from a distance, happy for the pair.
“She’s so young,” Clara said one morning.
“So were you,” Thormond replied.
“Uh huh,” she said, hugging his arm. “Young all the way.”
They laughed in a happy unison.
Came the morning, with reports Teddy had gotten out of bed a few times for exercises, when Thormond saw Beth place her hand on top of Doc Hannah’s hand on the small table on the porch. Neither had touched their coffee for half an hour or so. The doc didn’t move his hand for a long time. Two days later, it was the doc’s hand that did the touching. Thormond knew Doc Hannah had been bitten deep. He could practically hear the announcement.
That afternoon, passersby saw Teddy Neville sitting on the porch, the sun angling down on top of him as if he was being inspected. Some of those passing immediately thought about Doc Hannah’s being in town for almost a month; some of them had worked on his property, which gave them a good feeling.
In the early evening, as the sun danced redness on the far mountain tops, Doc Hannah and Beth Neville mounted their horses and rode out of town, headed for his place.
He said, “I don’t know what it’s going to look like, Beth. It seems like it’s been forever since I pulled a weed, brought water for the plants, did anything useful.”
“Oh, I won’t mind whatever shape it’s in,” Beth said, not saying a word about the maintenance done in the past month, knowing the complete story, right down to the names of those who had participated.
When they came up the lane, off the main road, Doc Hannah immediately knew what had taken place. “Somebody besides us has taken interest in the old place, Beth. It looks spotless, and hale,” he added, looking at his flowers and vegetable garden. “It also says we’ll spend our lives here. We sure won’t have to move into town after all this.”
“Won’t bother me a bit,” she said, hugging him as the smell of flowers came from all edges of the place, “and you can still go play poker whenever you want.”
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