Elizabeth was not happy about Dodd’s having caused her so much worry. Dodd tried to explain that it was his love for her, that he was trying to protect her. Elizabeth was not angry or malicious. She was simply establishing her personal ground rules for their relationship. “I love you, Dodd, and I do appreciate your concern for me. But I am not a child and I am not a helpless, sniveling woman. I am mature and responsible and very capable of taking care of myself. I know there will probably be times when I’ll need your protection but I am who I am. I must decide when that is. Please, when I want your protection, I’ll ask for it.”
Dodd wondered what it was with the Forrest boys. They all were attracted to strong, independent women. The older boys had told him that their mother was like that. Dodd had never known his mother so he assumed it was the influence of his father. All his life Dodd had wanted to be like his father. Perhaps he, and all his brothers, were more like their father than they knew. Elizabeth’s pique didn’t offend Dodd. He loved her the more for it.
There was still no definite talk of a wedding date. Dodd wanted a home and a family but he wanted most for Elizabeth Hatcher to be the female head of that family. She was younger than Dodd had been when he started his saddle tramping. He’d had a goal: to make a man of himself. He’d taken the time to do it. She had a goal. Dodd didn’t know and, frankly, Elizabeth didn’t even know exactly what that goal was, but they both had the feeling they’d know when it was accomplished. Dodd had her love and her promise. For now, that was enough.
There was an atmosphere of embarrassed shock in Carson City when the ‘plot’ became common knowledge. Josh and Herbert were particularly embarrassed and very much dismayed by their unwillingness to see what was now so obvious. Their primary concern, of course, was for Dodd. Had it not been for Pick Fillion, Dodd would be dead. But the county was also being defrauded of money and children were suffering. Josh and Herbert were community leaders. They should have paid closer attention. They should have been more perceptive. They should have seen behind that jovial, genteel, straightforward facade of Thorn’s.
Both Dodd and Elizabeth took the opportunity to chide them. Both were sure it was the cavalier attitude toward children that had blinded the men. Had they cared about children, they would have listened to Dodd and Elizabeth. Elizabeth, in particular, made it quite clear that their non-concern had cheated the taxpayers, caused children to suffer and almost cost Dodd his life. These two good men felt some remorse but remained relatively unmoved. Things had turned out well. Neither saw a reason to make a major change in his point of view. After all, no one could make the world perfect.
Bob Quinlen and Travis Butler couldn’t talk fast enough, each heaping blame on the other, on the dead Luther Morrison, and on the vanished Bill Thorn. At his trial, Quinlen’s defense was that he had been threatened and cursed by Bill Thorn and Luther Morrison. He went along with the scheme only out of fear for his family and himself. He also swore that he never appropriated for himself funds that belonged to Ormsby County.
Butler also said that he feared Thorn but said that his involvement was to try to prevent the murder. When asked why he had gone with the others to look at the corpse and had asked if it was gory, he became completely unhinged. He fell to blubbering and incoherent jabbering. Before the jury could find in his case, he hanged himself by tying one leg of his trousers to the window bars, standing the bunk on end, placing the trousers over the top so that it was high enough to hold him off the floor, tied the other leg around his neck and allowed himself to dangle there until he died. It must have taken tremendous willpower. He could easily have saved himself. He’d felt that he had really changed his ways and lived a better life. God must have noticed that. He wasn’t doing well at all with the judge. He decided to take his chances with God.
Quinlen took his sentence of twenty years stoically enough. He was on his second marriage and still had young children. His wife had taken the children and had gone back east. Nothing really mattered to him anymore.
Dodd had made frequent plans to visit Pete but the medical demands on his time had always forced a last minute cancellation. Things were improving. Other doctors had come to town but the rapid growth of Carson City and the increasing public confidence in doctors provided more business than could be handled even with the help of the new arrivals. Although Pete’s letters indicated a growing sense of belonging and love for his parents, they also included a growing sense of annoyance with Dodd. Pete was twelve now but he missed Dodd and still couldn’t understand the medical demands on Dodd’s time. He wanted to know if that Doc Bloom Dodd wrote about ever did anything. Why did Dodd have to do all the work and never come home to see Pete?
Jared and Libby were extremely proud of their boys and amazed at their quick adjustment. Pete had cried when he woke that first morning at Rokers’ and found Dodd gone. It had also taken him a while to get used to the idea that Jared and Libby were Ervin’s parents and Pete no longer had to parent and protect him. Jared and Libby were ready for some adjustment problems but none of the testings and rivalries they had thought and been warned about seemed to happen. Pete’s love for Ervin and his trust in his parents were strong enough that there was no jealousy at sharing their affection. Having lived with Dodd and the Rokers, Pete had already lost his institutional mentality and was a normal little boy, usually well behaved and loving but always mischievous and sometimes ornery. He had to be corrected as any child would and he had learned that the Forrest and Roker kind of correction was simply another way of showing their love. He didn’t always like it but he understood it.
Ervin also was a normal but mischievous little boy. He, however, was afraid of correction. He learned within a few weeks that it was not, as it had been all his previous life, accompanied by physical pain but he saw it as a kind of rejection of him. He loved his new home and he loved his brother and his mama and daddy but he was becoming afraid that he could not deserve their love. He had received little indication of approval in his life but a great deal of disapproval. He thought he was hopelessly bad. When McGurdy corrected him, he became angry and sassed back. But how can you get mad at or sass people who are as nice to you and love you like his mama and daddy did? You can’t. So he would cry at the mildest correction or even if he just thought he had fallen short in some way. During those first few weeks, he seemed to feel that he was only a guest. Pete was the son who was simply extending a tremendous kindness to a friend. He constantly deferred to Pete and waited for Jared and Libby to come to him with affection. He did not, as Pete did, go to them for a hug or other demonstrations of affection.
Jared and Libby understood that but Pete did not. Pete eventually became impatient with him and it was with indignation that Pete told Ervin at the supper table one evening, “You’re my brother, dammit, and these is your mama and daddy. Stop actin’ like a goddam orphan.”
Pete was right, of course, but he was also wrong. He thought for a minute he was dealing with Dodd when his daddy took him apart for cussing. Pete knew that his daddy meant what he said but he was like Dodd. He was firm but not mean. In a way he was easier than Dodd. His daddy just sent him to his room. After Pete thought about it, he realized why Ervin was so insecure and reticent. Pete had all that time to learn how to be loved when he was with Dodd and the Rokers. Ervin had just come from McGurdy’s. Nobody knew nothin’ about love at that place. Ervin had to learn how to be loved just like he had.
Pete didn’t get to finish supper that night. He was sorry he forgot and cussed but he was almost full anyway and his daddy didn’t take his horse away from him like Dodd used to when he cussed. One other thing was better, too. Dodd would always make sure he told Pete he was loved after he had punished the boy but Pete had had only Dodd then. Now when he or Ervin got themselves in trouble, after they’d had time to think about it, both their mama and daddy were there hugging them and saying how proud they were to have the boys as sons and telling them how much they loved them. It almost made being bad and getting punished worth it.
When that first fall came, the idea of school frightened both boys. Pete was confident in his ability to read but school had always been a source of anxiety and embarrassment to him. Ervin, too, was frightened and anxious. The night before school was to start, he wet the bed. When he woke in the morning and realized what he had done, he thought of McGurdy’s beatings and ridicule. Wetting the bed at McGurdy’s seemed to be the worst possible offense. McGurdy would make the child wear the wet night clothes to breakfast, would make the child parade around and the other children were expected to ridicule the humiliated offender who then would be soundly beaten by McGurdy in the presence of the other children. Ervin felt he had committed the final failure that made him unworthy to be a Forrest.
Since he had lived with his mama and daddy, Ervin had not been beaten but the heinousness of what he had done had been so drilled into him, he was sure that beating was its only proper consequence. He was afraid of the beating. His daddy was a much bigger man than McGurdy, but Ervin’s real pain was that he had completely failed his parents. He decided to leave before Jared and Libby found his shame. He could not face them. They had loved him so hard and he had done this awful thing to them. Just as dawn was breaking he slipped out of bed, pulled on his overalls and crept out of the house.
Libby was frantic when she went in to call the boys and found Ervin gone. Pete sleepily informed her, “Erv peeded the bed. First time he’s done that since we’ve been home. He used to do it all the time at McGurdy’s. So did I.”
Libby, her heart almost broken at what she knew Ervin was feeling, called for Jared. When Pete heard his mama say that she thought Erv had run off, he was on his feet immediately. He was scared. He loved his brother and couldn’t think of life without him but Pete had lived with McGurdy too. He understood Ervin’s fear.
Pete heard his daddy calling for Ervin. His mama was crying. “The poor child. He must be so afraid and lonely. I thought he knew we loved him. We should have tried harder.”
Pete reassured her. “Don’t cry mama. It’s not your fault. He knows but I know from how I was. It takes time. Dodd was real good to me just like you’ve been to Ervin but when you were living with McGurdy that long, you can’t think that people love you just ’cause you’re you. It wasn’t till I got hurt I come to know for sure that Dodd loved me, not the work I done… uh, did.”
It was Pete, too, who knew how to find Ervin. Reno didn’t know he was a dog. He thought he was the main Forrest on the place. He knew everything that went on. Although he had never lifted his head from his paws, he had watched Ervin leave the house and walk to the corral. Ervin had intended to catch his horse but he spooked the whole bunch of them and he was afraid the noise would wake his mama and daddy. He decided to wait until his mama took Pete to school and his Daddy was off working. Then he could just go… somewhere. He had no idea where. He hid in the woodshed.
“Where’s Erv, Reno? Find Ervie, boy.”
Reno trotted to the woodshed door and stood barking. Pete hollered at Jared who was about to mount his horse to look for the boy. “He’s in the woodshed, Daddy.”
Libby was the first to enter. Ervin cowered in the corner, in terror of the beating and tongue-lashing he was sure was coming. He didn’t know how to react to his mama’s tears and kisses. She didn’t do nothin’. Why was she saying, “I’m sorry Ervie, I’m so sorry.”?
He couldn’t understand his daddy’s tight hug and moist face. He’d just done about the worst thing a boy could do. Why weren’t they beating and yelling at him?
He did understand Pete. “You dummy. Peein’ the bed ain’t nothin’. You can wash the bed but we can’t get another you. We love you, Ervin. It ain’t what you do or don’t do. We love you.
“It took a spell for that to come to me but I learned that from Dodd. Once folks start lovin’ you, ain’t nothin’ you can do to stop them.” Ervin thought for a moment then buried his face in his daddy’s shoulder, hugged him tightly and sobbed out his relief.
That was a turning point for Ervin. He did have some problems in school but it was hard to tell how many. Libby would sit with him every evening and go over his reading and numbers. It lasted until way after Christmas. Libby thought she knew what was happening. She had talked to the teacher and had been told that Ervin was doing fine. She knew for sure when she overheard Pete ask Ervin, “Why you havin’ Mama help you with that stuff? You know all that at school.”
Ervin grinned. “Don’t you be tellin’ her. You got to have Dodd all by yourself. If Mama thinks I don’t know that stuff, I get her all by myself.”
“If you want some lovin’ from Mama, just tell her. You don’t have to be actin’ dumb.”
Libby smiled and just let Ervin play his game. He liked sitting close to her and he liked her hugs and kisses and her smell. Most of all he liked knowing that she loved him—no matter what he did or didn’t know.
School for Pete, on the other hand, turned out to be fun. As smart as he was, he realized the first day that being a Forrest was a whole lot different than being an orphan. It made him a little mad that people got treated so differently just for who they were but there was no condescension or ridicule so there was no anxiety or fear. He read almost as well as the best in the fifth grade and he never did have that much trouble with numbers. Anyway, his daddy had been showing him how to figure out if they were making a profit when they sold cattle. He knew the importance of learning. Reading was good for learning a lot of other things or getting to know what happened in really good stories, and numbers were what his daddy used and he did so want to be like his daddy.
Dodd still struggled with ambivalent feelings about his profession. He loved medicine. It was not that. It was his need to wonder each time he went on a call if this would be one for which he did not know enough.
Occasionally, he thought of going back to Harvard and devoting his life to medical research. There was so much yet to be learned and he knew that one day most of the mysteries of the human body would be revealed. He would like to contribute to that, but—he realized as he thought about it—not as much as he wanted to use the knowledge that was available to help people. That thought process had begun to relieve his ambivalence but he still wondered as he approached each call what he’d find. Would he have the medical knowledge and skill to help or would he have to rely on his increasing skill at comforting the bereaved?
Dodd knew that death was inevitable, even the tragic death of a child. He could not imagine a time in the medical future when nine-year-old Cletus Wagler could have been saved. He had been mauled by a catamount, his abdomen ripped open and a portion of his liver eaten before Zeak Wagler shot the beast. The boy was unconscious and barely alive when brought to Dodd. Dodd grieved the death of the beautiful, healthy child but he could foresee no time when medicine could save one so gravely injured. He grieved with the family but felt no frustration.
It was the Lucy Maglies that bothered him. Lucy was a beautiful, robust, fun loving fifteen-year-old. The blood poisoning started from an insignificant scratch on her leg. She couldn’t remember how she had been scratched but whatever was causing the poisoning was virulent. Dodd had been called as soon as there appeared to be a problem. He had used the carbolic acid, the poultices, had applied heat, and as a last resort had even tried the ancient bleeding technique. He was determined that she live. Before her death he had not left her side for three days.
Lucy’s parents took her death better than Dodd. For them it was God’s will but Dodd could not believe that God intended such beauties of his creation to die so young and unnecessarily. The Apostle Paul had written in Colossians, “In God are hid all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge.” So many things were blamed on God because that was so much easier than learning more about what God truly was. When one learns things, he is learning about God. Dodd thought how interesting it was that God’s will seemed to change when men took the time and effort to dig out those treasures—to learn more of God.
The thought that God was sovereign might comfort Lucy’s parents but it was the knowledge that God was omniscient that comforted Dodd. One day, because someone took the time to search out some of those treasures, the Lucys of this world would not have to die of a minor scratch at fifteen years old. Dodd was learning to accept his medical limitation but he would never learn to like it.
Dodd’s struggle with the ambiguities of his profession was more philosophical than emotional. He knew when he chose medicine that he would deal with death. He knew that death was a part of living and he knew that he would destroy himself if he allowed the trauma of his patients and their families to become his traumas or, on the other hand, if he were to become so callous that he felt nothing. He had to remain alive emotionally because each situation was different. He could have no standard reaction to death, because each death affected those left behind differently. For some it was a tragic loss. For some it was a blessed relief. For most it lay somewhere in between those extremes and, on rare occasions, it was both.
Heinrich Guttmann was probably twelve, the oldest of nine children of a hardworking but struggling German immigrant family. When a child, white-faced, heart pounding, panting for breath, came for a doctor one always knew there was a serious situation at home. Dodd had seen Hulga Guttmann around town and knew she was pregnant with her tenth baby. “You come quick, ja? Mama been tryin’ almost all day and the baby won’t come.”
The Guttmanns lived almost to Lake Tahoe. Their home was of pine logs, one room with a loft. Gunter Guttmann could not speak English, but no language was needed. Panic shown in his face and his actions and his fear had consumed his children. Dodd was met with ten pairs of anxious eyes. Even the year-old Greta seemed to sense the alarm.
The baby was turned—not normal head first, not breach. It was no problem for Dodd to put the baby in delivery position and what should have been a beautiful, healthy little girl was dead at birth. She had been too long deprived of the cushioning warmth of her mother’s water-filled womb and the cord which sustained her life was twisted around her neck so that the life-giving blood could not flow.
The children old enough to understand cried at the loss of the baby they had so long joyfully anticipated. Heinrich translated Gunter’s anxious questions about his wife’s condition. Dodd had expected these reactions. It was Hulga’s reaction that surprised him. She held and kissed and spoke to the dead infant. She said it in German. “I love you, but I cannot cry for you. God gave you to me to love while I carried you but He knew that He could care for you better than I. God knew that your papa could provide only so much and that I could do only so much. He knew that if you were here you would not have enough of anything—not enough food, not enough clothing and not enough love. He loved you and your brothers and sisters so much that He took you for Himself to care for. He can give you what your mama and papa can’t. I love you but you are not my child. You are God’s child and He, not I, shall give you a name.”
Dodd had an academic knowledge of German. He could read it well because much of the medical literature he had studied was written in German. But because of lack of opportunity for conversation he could not completely understand Hulga’s words and her dialect was certainly not the polished, classic German he had studied. Dodd could not completely understand her but no language was necessary for him to grasp the sentiment.
Hulga again kissed the baby, handed her to Gunter and mumbled a prayer of thanks both for having been allowed to love the baby and for the divine love and understanding that allowed all of them to be better cared for.
Dodd had seen many deaths but never before one that was, even to him, both a tragedy and a blessing.
As he rode back toward Carson City, he began to regret having promised Lillian that he would take dinner with Josh’s family that evening. Situations such as he had just experienced at the Guttmanns put him in a pensive mood and he would have liked to have had the time to think it through. He had, at first, been mildly offended by Elizabeth’s lame and confusing excuse for not wanting to see him that evening but he never found it possible to stay upset with Elizabeth long. He was sure she had her reason and he felt strangely guilty that she felt that she even had to offer an explanation. Since he could not see Elizabeth and had he not promised Lillian he’d come to dinner he could have had his thinking time.
It would have been pleasant to spend a quiet, thoughtful evening relaxing in his room but he had to go. Dodd smiled to himself. He was not doing at all well in the human relations department with young boys. Pete was miffed at him and took every opportunity to make Dodd aware of that in his letters. All four of Josh’s boys had become equally generous with their expressions of pique at the infrequency of Uncle Dodd’s visits to their home.
Mrs. Looney’s boarding house was peculiarly quiet that evening. Dodd was, in a way, relieved. He enjoyed Reva but he did not want to have to explain why he could not spend the evening with her. He had too much on his mind. He did, however, wonder where she was, where Mrs. Looney was, and why there was no aroma of cooking coming from the kitchen. True, the house was unusually empty right now. In fact, Dodd and Harvey were the only boarders at the present time and, although a full house was Mrs. Looney’s livelihood, she did not seem distressed by her five empty rooms. Dodd was not surprised that Harvey was not there. He had begun to spend all his evenings at the Prater home When he was not on evening duty.
Dodd bathed, shaved and dressed, and realized that it was pleasant having the house—and particularly the tub room—completely at his disposal. Removing the dust and sweat of the Nevada summer was always reposeful after a long day of house calls, soothing both his body and spirit. Often, however, he had to wait until some newly-arrived traveler quitted the tub room, and that wait only seemed to lengthen his work day. For a change, the house and its facilities were his and he was glad—so glad—that the heavy thoughts of his ride home left him as he luxuriated in solitude and convenience.
As he took a leisurely walk toward Josh’s house he was strangely at ease. It felt good not to be preoccupied with the ambiguities of his profession. He did enjoy contemplation but, as he walked, for the time free of perplexity, he told himself that he must not give so much attention to those ambiguities. Life and the status of his science were what they were. He must accept that. He must not stop learning but he must not continue to castigate himself. He was doing his best, and right now life seemed oh, so good.
Dodd’s senses recorded the empty stillness and lack of cooking odors as he entered Josh’s house but his brain had no time to give them meaning. As he opened the door, he was almost taken off his balance backward and the pressure of arms around his neck almost took his breath away. The life that moments before had seemed only good, suddenly was wonderful beyond words. He was once again hugging and being hugged by Pete.
Copyright © 2003 Gordon L. Klopfenstein