Spirit of the Place (9781101617021) by Samuel Shem Page B

she noticed, in the bed of his pickup truck, the severed head of a woman. The rest of the woman was soon found by troopers in a sharp curve of a road way out past Omi. Orville sedated Mrs. Len and went next to tend to a three-year-old boy with a popcorn kernel stuck in his ear.
    The kid was screaming. Orvy tried to be nice. He let the anxious young mother hold the scared boy as he tried to pick the kernel out with a probe. No go. Then he tried to suck it out with a sucker, also with no luck. He tried this and that, the kid increasingly frantic and wailing, the mother trying to hold him steady. At that moment Orville felt the whole world of care turn, the way it does when things go wrong and the Emergency Gods are angry. He got frustrated, irritated, and called for a nurse to strap the screaming, flailing kid down to a papoose board so he could get a better take on the ear. The mother objected. Other patients were piling up. The emergency room was taking on a surreal feel, with word of another car crash on the way in. Disasters were waiting and more were brewing out there and the Great Doctor Rose couldn’t get the damn popcorn kernel out of the kid’s ear, and everybody was getting nasty, including him.
    â€œHi there, little tyke, heh heh.”
    It was Bill, shuffling in toward the bedside, putting a hand on the mother’s shoulder and a hand on Orville’s, and breathing scallion into the air.
    â€œWhat’re you doing here?” Orville asked, but then realizing that the head nurse must have called him.
    â€œMe? Oh, I got this popcorn kernel stuck in my ear . . . Heh heh. Hi, Gloria,” Bill said to the mother and then, waving a red teddy bear at the boy, said, “Hi there, Benji boy. Got a red teddy for you here.” The boy stopped screaming and reached for it. “Y’know, Gloria, one of the hardest things in doctorin’ is getting a popcorn kernel out of a kid’s ear. It can get very frustratin’, right, Dr. Rose?”
    Orville bristled, feeling a hit of criticism. But then, feeling the warmth of Bill’s hand on his shoulder, as if now the hand itself were telling him—“Take it easy, it’s just a damn popcorn kernel”—he relaxed, and said, “Very.”
    â€œWant me to take a shot at it?” Bill offered.
    â€œBe my guest.”
    Bending over the ear, he took out of his pocket a homemade chrome and rubber thing and, still playing with the kid and the red teddy, worked the ear and with a whispering plucking sound like a string of a harp, out came the popcorn kernel. Orville was amazed, and was about to ask how the hell he’d done it when he got called away to attend to the car crash. Refreshed by Bill’s caring and skill, he took care with the victims, none of whom was badly hurt. He spoke to the families, glad to bring them good news. The Emergency Gods had come through.
    After one in the morning, he walked out of the hospital and guided the Chrysler with its liquid power steering back down to Courthouse Square. Across the way, the party was still going strong. The porch light cast an amber glow, the house was alight. Peals of laughter scurried through the tiny holes in the screen door out into the warm fall night.
    Should I go back? Orville wondered, as he pulled into his mother’s drive. No.
    Not feeling sleepy, he got a beer and came back out and sat on the porch. In the hot, still night, a kind of Indian summer’s Indian summer, a last batch of confused crickets sang out as if there were no tomorrow—which might well be, for them. Staring across the way at the party, Orville was unwilling to join in again, yet unable to get his mind off Henry Schooner.
    Henry was a mirror image of Gatsby—his past known, his present mysterious. Orville knew that Schooner had walked into the woods and joined the navy, had risen like a rocket, done tours in Vietnam, gotten his high school degree, had gone on to college