American Boy (3 page)

As we walked back to the car, I felt discouraged and even humiliated. We had set out with a mission and an accompanying sense of importance, but it seemed most likely that no one, and certainly not Dr. Dunbar, had ever believed we had a realistic chance of finding Louisa Lindahl. It felt now as if our expedition had merely been allowed, indulged as the behavior of children is indulged.
Let them go; what’s the harm?
And now, like children, we were coming in from our play when darkness fell.

3.

UPON RETURNING TO THE DUNBAR HOUSE, our senses were immediately assaulted. Though the meal had been prepared hours earlier, the aroma of stuffed turkey and pumpkin pie lingered, as inseparable from the house as its warmth from fire and furnace. Then Janet came bounding toward us shouting, “She’s here! She’s here!”

“Who’s here?” Johnny asked.

“The shot girl!”

Julia ran into the room just in time to correct her sister. “The girl who got shot!”

Mrs. Dunbar hurried close behind, trying to quiet the girls. But their excitement had them bouncing in place.

“Mom?” said Johnny, “what are they talking about?”

Mrs. Dunbar put her finger to her lips, as if to indicate that even his question was too loud. “They brought her here shortly after you left,” she whispered.

Johnny and I looked at each other, trying to comprehend what we’d just been told. It felt almost as if we were the victims of a practical joke.

The snow we’d stamped from our boots hadn’t even melted when Dr. Dunbar entered the room. “Well boys, sorry if your search was for naught.” He was still wearing the vest and tie he’d had on at the dining room table, but he’d exchanged his suit coat for a white lab coat.

“She’s here?” Johnny asked again.

“She is indeed.”

“How is she?” I asked. “Is she ... ?”

“She’s seen better days, I promise you that. But all in all, she’s faring pretty well.” He was smoking a cigarette, but he’d only taken a couple drags. He handed it now to Mrs. Dunbar, who smoked Chesterfields as did the doctor, but she held the cigarette as if she wasn’t quite sure what to do with it. “In fact,” he added, “I should probably get back in there. She’ll be coming around soon.”

As he turned to walk back through the house to the clinic, something came over me. I don’t really remember deciding to follow the doctor, but follow I did, as surely as if I’d been invited.

Johnny trailed along as well, but to this day I believe he was following me and not his father.

Dr. Dunbar had not gone far before he realized he was being shadowed. He slowed and looked back over his shoulder. “Yes?”

Mrs. Dunbar had also joined our little entourage, but all of us stopped now, and we stood in a small, dimly lit parlor. Back in the bright foyer, the twins were still spinning with excitement.

“What is it?” the doctor asked. I had no doubt that his question was directed to me.

I had no reply.

“Would you like to see the patient?”

Of course I wanted to see the patient, but Dr. Dunbar knew this about me before I knew it myself.

“Oh, Rex,” said Mrs. Dunbar, “do you think that’s a good idea?”

“Let’s leave it up to them. If they’d rather not, that’s just fine as well.” He turned to us. “Well?”

I was instantly ready to say yes, but I knew Johnny had to answer first.

“Is she ... okay?” he asked.

Dr. Dunbar reached inside the sleeve of his white coat and readjusted a cuff link. “She is now,” he said succinctly. “Or will be soon enough.”

“All right,” said Johnny, looking at me. “Sure.” Apprehension flickered in his eyes. He might have hoped I’d say that I wasn’t interested, but there was no chance of that.

“Very well then,” Dr. Dunbar said. “Let’s see if I can teach you something about the treatment of bullet wounds.”

As odd as this situation might seem, there was reason and precedent behind it. Both Johnny and I had expressed an interest in medicine as a career. Dr. Dunbar hadn’t prodded us in that direction, but since he made every endeavor—from casting a spinner into the river to manipulating a dislocated shoulder back into joint—look enticing, it was hardly surprising that we were drawn to his profession. Medicine might not have had as strong an appeal for Johnny as it did for me—among other possible reasons, he didn’t share my ambition to forge a life different from the one I’d been born into in Willow Falls—but once we showed an interest, Dr. Dunbar seemed eager to share his knowledge and experience with us.

I couldn’t be sure exactly when Johnny’s medical education began, but I knew to the minute when mine did. I was eight years old, and I woke on a summer night to find Dr. Dunbar sitting on the edge of my bed. I knew who he was, but only vaguely. At that point Johnny and I were only friends as part of a larger group of same-aged boys, and I didn’t associate him with the physician I’d seen for a school checkup. But that night Dr. Dunbar turned on the light beside my bed and softly spoke my name. “Matthew? Matt?” He patted my leg tenderly.

As soon as he thought I was fully awake, Dr. Dunbar said, “Matthew, your father is dead.”

I barely had time to gasp before he went on. “He was killed in an automobile accident.”

“What ... what happened?”

“He ruptured his spleen.” Dr. Dunbar was to be forgiven for this response. I’d wanted to know about the accident itself, but he’d answered according to how his profession interpreted curiosity. “Do you know where your spleen is?”

I shook my head. Dr. Dunbar reached over and pressed three fingers against my abdomen. He poked hard to impress me with that area’s softness and vulnerability, and to make certain I understood what he was telling me.

“His spleen ... ruptured?”

“The spleen’s job,” he explained, “is to filter out impurities in the blood. It’s enclosed in a thin capsule, and when that capsule ruptures, blood rushes into the abdominal cavity. When that happens, no one can survive for long.”

Then he subtly shifted from a physician’s rough tour of anatomy to a family friend’s gentle rub. “I’m sorry, Matthew. Your father thought the world of you. He was a good man. We’ll all miss him.” Did Dr. Dunbar know these things to be true of my father, or was he simply trying to help me feel better?

Dr. Dunbar’s strategy for breaking the news about my father’s death was unusual, but it worked as well as anything could. Detailing that fatal injury had the simultaneous—and paradoxical—effect of hitting me hard with the stark fact of his death and diffusing the force of that blow. With my stomach still tender from the pressure of the doctor’s fingers, I had to concentrate on the physical reality of death, and that diverted me momentarily from thinking about what life would be like without my father. And then on some level I was also flattered that Dr. Dunbar believed I was mature and intelligent enough to handle the hard fact of death along with its complicated physiology.

Dr. Dunbar waited another moment to make sure of my composure, and then said, “Why don’t you get up now. Your mother needs you.”

With Dr. Dunbar’s hand resting gently on my shoulder, we moved into the living room, where my mother sat quietly weeping. Her brother was there too, and as I walked into my mother’s arms, in the instant before my own tears commenced, I looked over at my uncle and thought,
I know where the spleen is.

Had Dr. Dunbar already seen something in me before that night, something that led him to conclude I had promise as a physician? And when I took the news of my father’s death without wincing, did he realize that I might have the ability to perform a doctor’s most difficult task—to look into someone’s eyes and give them the hardest news they could ever get? Or had I impressed him with my question about the spleen, suggesting a curiosity that could not be quelled even in the darkest moment?

Whenever our “education” began, Johnny and I were well embarked on our unofficial course of study by the time we were teenagers. In fact, if patients consented, we were occasionally allowed to be present during a treatment or examination. When June Dunbar complained of an earache, for example, Dr. Dunbar let us look through the otoscope, and pointed out the swollen red membrane that indicated an ear infection. And he once summoned us to the clinic to witness him taking a swab of Betty Schaeffer’s niece’s throat, in order to determine if she had strep throat. Harold Schmitke gave us permission to watch while Dr. Dunbar put four stitches in Mr. Schmitke’s forehead, repairing the damage done by a storm window that had slipped from his hands. We listened to many heartbeats and breaths both deep and shallow; we tapped knees with rubber hammers and attached blood-pressure cuffs; we took pulses and temperatures and watched blood be drawn; we looked at x-rays and learned to see broken bones and lungs with pneumonia. Most of Willow Falls came to refer to us as “Dr. Dunbar’s boys,” and regarded our medical ambitions with tolerance and amusement.

The vast majority of Dr. Dunbar’s instruction came in conversation rather than in the presence of patients. “I saw something today,” he might say, “that I haven’t encountered in years.” Then, the hook set, he’d tell us about a patient’s bulging eyes, and how they tipped him off to a thyroid condition. Or, shaking his head, he would remark, “I was afraid that finger would have to come off,” and go on to explain the circulatory problems a diabetic could face. And he once held up his hand for a long moment before describing exactly what that hand felt as he palpated an abdomen and felt the mass that led to the discovery of the tumor that killed Mr. Jensen.

But a bullet wound! Bullet wounds were the stuff of movies and television, and then Louisa Lindahl had not accidentally shot herself while cleaning a weapon—she was the victim of a crime! I couldn’t help but think that we were about to be part of something glamorous and mysterious. And as we followed Dr. Dunbar toward his clinic, I considered the status I’d have at school, with my insider’s knowledge of the event all of Willow Falls would be talking about.

As he opened the door to the clinic, the doctor said, “The deputy’s search party found her stumbling along Highway K. Doubled over and bleeding and nearly frozen from being out in the cold in nothing but a thin dress. I wasn’t sure whether it was more urgent to treat her for the gunshot wound or for frostbite.”

The clinic consisted of a reception area and three small examination rooms, and Dr. Dunbar led us toward the only lighted room. Dr. Dunbar had turned up the heat to thaw out Miss Lindahl, and the corridor was dark and warm.

“Is the deputy here?” Johnny asked.

“He’s back at the jail. Interrogating the assailant. He’ll be back later if she’s up to answering questions.”

In the open doorway, I had my own moment of hesitation. The blood trail that we couldn’t find in the woods was evident now, quarter- and nickel-sized drops dried to a dusty burgundy led to the examination table, where an unconscious woman lay beneath a bright lamp. She was covered with a sheet and a blanket, but her head, neck, and shoulders were bare.

For a moment, I wondered if Dr. Dunbar had invited us into the clinic not to give us a lesson about bullet wounds, but rather to teach us about death. The young woman’s flesh was beyond pale. It was marmoreal, and I couldn’t help but think that I was looking at a corpse. And then I recognized her. For while the name Louisa Lindahl was unknown to me, the face was not.

Burke’s Pharmacy was a popular after-school spot in town, and this young woman worked at its soda fountain, scooping ice cream, mixing phosphates, pouring Cokes, and dodging the straw wrappers frequently blown her way. She wasn’t much older than the teenage patrons, but she showed no interest in us except as customers.

She was tall, slender, and pretty in a way unfamiliar to most of us. She wore no makeup, but her luminous skin and excellent bone structure made the lipstick and eye shadow that the girls our age had begun to wear unnecessary. Her neck was long, and her jaw was delicate but square. Her chestnut hair was not tightly pin-curled or overly coiffed, but simply tied back or piled on top of her head without regard to style or fashion. She wore faded print dresses that looked as if they came out of a grandmother’s closet, though these dresses must have been a smaller person’s hand-me-downs, for they always looked a bit too tight, and the hems and sleeves too short. And yet along with an element of aloofness, her austere, gray-eyed loveliness gave her a refined, almost aristocratic appearance, at least to my small-town eyes. These contradictions fascinated me—not only the shabby attire coupled with her regal beauty, but also the good looks with no apparent attempt to adorn or enhance them. And then there was the fact that she was a waitress, but seemed completely indifferent to pleasing people....

No matter how those of us boys sitting at the soda fountain teased or interrogated her (the girls pretended not to notice her), she wouldn’t say much of anything beyond what her work required. And she always refused to disclose where she was from or why she had come to our town. She even resisted the entreaties and flirtations directed her way by more accomplished suitors. I was sitting at the counter one Friday afternoon, when Rick Carver took his best shot. Rick had graduated from Willow Falls High a few years before, and he was known for scoring both on and off the basketball court. Tall, blond, and possessed of an irresistible smile, Rick attended Augustana College on a scholarship, but he came home occasionally to mingle with mortals. On that day, however, he might as well have been a stammering high school freshman. After trying repeatedly to attract her interest, he finally resigned himself to failure, spun off his stool, softly cursed, and walked out of Burke’s. She didn’t even watch him go, and a part of me silently cheered.

But none of the previous impressions I had of Louisa Lindahl, none of the intriguing ambiguities or puzzling paradoxes, could possibly match the salient facts of this day:
Tarpaper shack. Lester Huston. Gunshot wound.

Dr. Dunbar led the way into the room, and we arranged ourselves at the examination table, the doctor on one side, Johnny and I on the other, and the unconscious Louisa Lindahl between us.