Small Town Doctor
by
Robert James Allison
Names, characters, and incidents depicted in this book are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental and beyond the intent of the author or the publisher. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.
First Suitor Enterprises
www.RobertJamesAllison.com
Copyright © 2013 by Robert James Allison
ISBN: 978-1-30182-142-6
September 2013
Cover photo:
Johnson, Nebraska downtown area taken by the author
All rights reserved
Table of Contents:
Title
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
End
About the Author
Chapter One
The black hearse rolled slowly down the street, like a plague creeping slowly across the land, and turned the corner. In the back, barely discernible was the tiny casket. Tiny as it should have been, because it contained only a small child. A little boy of six years old. A little boy who would never get any older. Who would never again play in the streets and run in the alleys. Who would never know what it was like to grow up to be a man.
The shame of it was that it didn’t need to happen. The boy should not have died. The man on the street corner knew that so very well. This was a small isolated town in Idaho. The closest doctor was in the big town well to the south. Also, in that same town, was the only hospital. Even ambulances had to come from a town in between, which was well south of this town. By the time the ambulance had finally arrived, the boy was already dead.
The man knew that the boy had died of shock. Rapid treatment by a competent doctor could have saved him. Just someone who knew about shock and what to do with it. Just a doctor, but none would come. The town was too small and there was no money to be made here.
In addition to the boy in the hearse, a doctor in this small isolated town could have saved many a person over the years. Some old, some young, and many in between. The dying of the young bothered the man on the street the worst. Generally, he went to the funerals out of respect for the family, at least the graveside service and he stayed off to himself, but he couldn’t go to this one. Just watching the cars following the hearse with the family members was almost more than he could bear. Another dead child was more than he could deal with right now.
How he wished he could help, but he was powerless to do so. Oh God, he prayed to himself, why have you forsaken this little town? Why have you permitted so many to die, when so little was needed to save them? Why won’t you send them a doctor? And then catching himself, for the man was a God-fearing man, despite all, he finished, your will be done. Amen.
~*~
Mike had long since decided that Idaho was cold in October.
Crossing the Rockies on a motorcycle in the fall was not a good idea. He had wanted to linger and enjoy the scenery, but the cold had driven him down from the mountains.
Now he was in Idaho and the cold here was almost as bad as in the Rockies. The altitude was increasing with each mile and what possessed him to see this part of the country in the fall he couldn’t imagine. Still, he rode onward and now upward to an unknown destination.
He rode where the spirit moved him, as he had told Jamie Sadler. He still did not know the name of the spirit. It was an indistinguishable urging that moved him from place to place. Just a feeling to go somewhere other than where he was at the time. Just a saying, he told himself, as he had told Jamie Sadler.
He had started out to see the country with no purpose other than to see the country, but occasionally he stopped for some unknown reason. He was still seeing a lot of the country, but every now and then he felt driven to go to a certain part of the country. In that area he would stop. The stop was meaningless to him. He had no inkling of why he was stopping.
After the fact of course, he could see it. West Virginia had been for Jake Sadler. Central Illinois had been for Vern Stephens, but what had led him to those places to help those people was beyond his grasp. Coincidence, he thought. Now as he shivered from the cold, he wondered, what is in Idaho, or is it Idaho? Maybe it is something, or somewhere, beyond.
No, it’s Idaho, he decided, but where and why he couldn’t fathom and in the end he didn’t care. He had no place to go, no place to be, and no one to return to. Home was where he was, but if along the way he could do some good then that was better yet. Too many years he had done no good. Now at least he felt useful, though not content.
The scenery was beautiful. The hills made building roads and driving them difficult, but it did provide for some magnificent views on the high turns. Several times in the last two hours he had pulled off when there was room, just to look at the scenery. Also to stretch his legs, which seemed to cramp more and more each mile he drove. In Illinois a 120-mile distance could be covered in just about two hours on any type of road and in less time on the interstates, but not in Idaho. He thought, I have been on this road for three and a half hours and I’m still not there. Wherever “there” is supposed to be.
At long last, after what seemed to be an eternity on the winding roads, his motorcycle popped up over a crest in a hill and below, in a long, wide valley, lay a small town. From up here it really looked small and very isolated. It has to be isolated, he decided, this is the only road in. He studied the town as he rode down in to the valley. Straightest part of the whole road, he concluded.
There appeared to be two main roads. The one he was on approached from the south and cut directly through the town, then continued on north up the other side of the valley and out of sight. A second main road came in from the east or the west, depending upon your perspective and crossed through the town intersecting the road he was now on, but both ends of it turned into more trails than roads not far out of town. There were numerous side streets connected to the two main streets, but they were primarily residential and didn’t appear to contain much in the way of businesses. He could readily identify a couple of churches, a school, some houses, a couple of two or three-story apartment buildings, and a park of sorts, but that was about all.
As he got to the edge of the town he could see that there were about three streets intersecting the one he was on before it reached the center of town and not surprisingly, the street was named “South Main”. He would have been willing to bet that the other main street’s names would be east and west Main.
He was right, they were, and when he arrived at the intersection which had a four-way stop, he saw a bank on the northeast corner and a drug store on the southeast corner. The other corners contained a gas station and a hardware store.
The gas station was his first stop. There might not be another for miles. He filled his motorcycle and went inside to pay for his gas. He got a cup of coffee and warmed his hands with it while he stood by the window to look at the town.
Across the street on a wooden bench sat a long-haired, dirty looking man. He was motionless and he simply sat and stared as the cars passed through the four-way stop. According to the sign on the edge of town there were only 1,010 residents and Mike doubted they all lived right in town. A thousand residents really did not translate into too many cars or trucks, so traffic was light, to say the least.
After several minutes he was starting to wonder why they had erected a four-way stop at the intersection. He doubted that more than two cars ever got to that intersection at once, more
than three times a day.
“Howdy.” A voice to his right said and roused him from his doubts about the four-way stop.
He turned slightly to see a middle-aged man of about medium height standing next to him looking out the window with a cup of coffee in his hand. The man had on a uniform of sorts and Mike realized it was the gas station attendant.
“Hi. Guess I was daydreaming.”
The man smiled pleasantly and held out the cup of coffee. “Here, have a refill. Getting cold early this year. Saw you staring out the window and thought you might want some company. I get bored here by myself. You probably noticed the traffic ain’t real brisk here this time of day. Name’s Brian Sloan,” the man finished as he gazed out the window.
“Mike Maltby,” Mike said as he took the coffee and continued, “thanks. I sure could use it. It was a long cold ride into town.” Then he changed the subject saying, “You know I haven’t seen two cars meet at that intersection yet. Why in the world did they put up a four-way stop?”
The man smiled, chuckled quietly, and said, “Well, there’s two reasons. First, the state give us the money to buy and erect the signs. Second, in the Spring and early Summer we get a lot of traffic through here on the way to the national park which is about 20 miles up the road. In fact, we sit right in the middle of a national forest and we have national parks all around us. This time of year though it has slowed down. Still, we will get spurts of traffic around the first part of the week and right at the end of the week, but not much in the middle of the week.”
“I see. Yes, that makes sense. It hadn’t occurred to me that traffic would come through here for the parks. Frankly, after having just spent four hours on that road I figured there must be better roads to travel to the parks.”
The man chuckled again and said, “Not only are there no better roads, there are no other roads.” Gesturing toward the road he continued, “that one goes right into the national park and on out the other side to nowhere. Part of the reason we are so isolated here is because of the parks and forests. The government don’t sell this land to anyone, they only lease it for certain purposes. Of course, the town was here before the park so we own our land, but we can’t buy any more and most of the ranchers lease their range.”
Mike was looking around the town as the station attendant talked. Finally he said, “Saw a curious looking shack behind the station here as I pulled in. What’s that shack for? A used car lot?” He didn’t want to say junkyard since the attendant might take offense and he surely hoped the shack was not the attendant’s house.
“Oh, that. Dirty Dan lives there.”
“Who?”
“Dirty Dan. At least that’s what everybody around here calls him. He’s a no-account drifter. Came walking down that road you just came down about three or four years ago. It was October and as you can tell, October is a might cold up here. We are right on the edge of the Rockies and 6,000 feet above sea level.
“Well anyway, he comes walking down that road about dark and goes to the back of my junkyard and starts setting up a make-shift shelter. I didn’t have the heart to run him off. He looked half froze. He just stayed and he keeps improving that shack just a little more all the time.
“Nobody around here pays him no mind and he don’t seem to bother anything. Never been caught stealing and sometimes he cleans up in one or more of the shops around here to make a couple of bucks. Don’t say much to anyone and no one talks to him. Can’t say as anyone around here really knows his name. Kids started calling him Dirty Dan and it stuck. Nobody I know of around here cared enough to even ask if that was his real name or not.
“Understand now. It ain’t that we don’t care about folks welfare here, but the man never asked for nothing and never volunteered no information. We all got the impression he wanted to be left alone and nothing has ever been said or done by him to change that impression. Most folks figure he’s running from the law, but he don’t seem to be the criminal type to me. Dirty Dan spends most of his days right here or near that bench over there. That’s him there now.
“He just watches the people and the cars. Like I said, he don’t say anything and don’t bother anything. Only thing that seems to spark his interest is the kids. They play in the street sometimes and he can get kind of agitated when they do that with cars around. I never have figured if it’s because he is afraid the cars will hit them or because they slow the cars down. I know it agitates him some though, because the kids say he starts crying every once in a while.
“One day I figure to look out there at that shack and see it and him gone. Or I’ll go back there for a part and see him dead beside or in his shack. From the look of him he is well past middle age, but not really old, but then with that beard and his hair so long and scraggly you can’t tell for sure. Sort of like you,” the attendant finished with a wry smile, glancing sideways at Mike.
After a minute the attendant continued, “He smells so bad nobody wants to get close enough to him to ask his age or his name.”
Mike put in, “Seems a shame for a man to waste his life like that. I wonder what brought him to this place and what keeps him here?”
The attendant looked queerly at Mike as in thought and said, “Nobody knows and nobody ever asked. Guess it’s his business. If that’s the way he wants to live, then so be it. Guess you’d know about that, huh?” the attendant finished, clearly meaning that from Mike’s appearance, his manner of living was not unlike Dirty Dan’s.
“I suppose you have a point. Can’t go around telling other people how to live, but I can’t equate that shack with living. That’s just existing.”
“I’ll give you that. Got to be as cold as a ‘well digger in Siberia’ in that shack in the winter. Well, I best be getting back to work, not that there is any, but the phone might ring,” he ended with a wink and headed for the other side of the counter.
“Thanks for the coffee,” Mike said as he walked away and then continued, “tomorrow I’ll buy.”
“Going to be here tomorrow are you?”
Mike replied absently, “Yeah, I think so.”
“Bed and Breakfast up the street. Might try there. Unless you are figuring on erecting another shack.”
Mike just smiled and walked out to his motorcycle.
It didn’t take him long to get a room lined up at the Bed and Breakfast and get settled in. Once he was finished he headed outside and up to the bench where Dirty Dan still sat motionless.
He walked boldly up to the bench and sat down. Bearing in mind the gas station attendant’s comment about Dan’s smell, he sat upwind.
Dan never looked up or in any way acknowledged his presence. After a long silence Mike said, “Not much traffic.”
There was no response.
“Getting colder by the second.”
No response.
“Nice little town.”
No response.
“Reminds me of a funeral I was once at,” Mike said lightly.
Dan jumped up, peered around furtively glancing from side to side, and said, “Funeral…now? Where?”
“No. Not here, not now. Another time, another place,” Mike responded, shocked by Dan’s response to the off-handed remark.
“Last week you mean. Yeah I seen that one. Did you see it?” But Dan didn’t wait for a response he just stared off in the distance with a faraway look in his eye and continued, “the child did not need to die. Had there been a doctor here with one-tenth of the knowledge of a first-year medical student he would have been saved. Trauma killed him. Shock. Loss of blood too rapidly and in too great a quantity coupled with a rapid drop in body temperature and reduced circulation. A doctor would have diagnosed the condition immediately. A doctor would have arranged for a blood donor and started a plasma IV with saline solution. A doctor would have warmed the body up and improved the circulation, but there was no doctor and the boy died. I was powerless to help and I desperately wanted to help.
“I live in this community and I feel it is
a part of me, but I’m not a part of it. I live on the streets and no one takes notice of me. That’s my lot in life and I accept it for what it is. That doesn’t mean that I can’t care for the residents of this town or that I’m not capable of shedding tears at their passing. Which I do. Especially, the young ones. I can’t bear to watch another child’s coffin carried by this corner. Too many have passed.”
“You talk like a doctor yourself,” Mike responded, but Dan made no indication of having heard and stepped off the curb toward the rear of the gas station and Mike guessed, his shack. When he was gone Mike realized that Dan had not been speaking to him. He had just spoken, indifferent to anyone’s presence.
Mike stared after him for a long time and then went back to the Bed and Breakfast. All the while he was struck by the contrasts in the man called Dirty Dan. From all outward appearances he seemed to be an uneducated bum with no means of support and no desire to look for a means of support. Yet he spoke like an educated man and the haunting look in his eyes when he spoke of the death of the child was chilling.
The more he thought of what Dirty Dan had said the more he was convinced that Dan was a doctor or had studied medicine. This one is too deep for me, he decided. Doctors are out of my league. Even crazy ones. Then he wondered to himself why he cared, but he already knew that answer.
Downstairs at the Bed and Breakfast, he chatted with the owner and asked nonchalantly about a doctor or medical facilities.
The owner quickly recited the situation, “Primarily, this is ranching country and most of the ranches are well spread out. The nearest hospital and doctor are 120 miles to the south. The closest ambulance service is 50 miles to the south on the same and only, main road.”
“Ever try to get a doctor to come here?” Mike asked.
“Ain’t no doctor going to come here. Too far away from the hospital. No doctor would want to try to make a living in this town. Not enough regular business and too far to get in any surgery. We’ve tried, but no one was interested. We can’t offer enough. Ain’t even a Veterinarian within 50 miles and he’s no account.”
Back in his room Mike’s brain was hard at work. He thought he might have the makings of an idea. A phone call was in order to someone who understood this type of problem. To a man who understood this kind of talk. An older man, but a wise man. “Old” doesn’t really fit Doc, he thought, Doc seemed timeless. Doc was past 70, but he didn’t look it and he certainly didn’t act it.