window sill. I stood beside her, out of the light from the brilliant living room, and stroked and stroked her hair, speaking softly in her ear the wordless, grammarless language she’d taught me to calm horses with.
6
In September It Was Time to See the Doctor
IN SEPTEMBER IT WAS TIME TO SEE THE DOCTOR again: I drove out to the Remobilization Farm one morning during the first week of the month. Because the weather was fine, a number of the Doctor’s other patients, quite old men and women, were taking the air, seated in their wheel chairs or in the ancient cane chairs all along the porch. As usual, they greeted me a little suspiciously with their eyes; visitors of any sort, but particularly of my age, were rare at the farm, and were not welcomed cordially. Ignoring their stony glances, I went inside to pay my respects to Mrs. Dockey, the receptionist-nurse. I found her in consultation with the Doctor himself.
“Good day, Horner,” the Doctor beamed.
“Good morning, sir. Good morning, Mrs. Dockey.”
That large, masculine woman nodded shortly without speaking—her custom—and the Doctor told me to wait for him in the Progress and Advice Room, which, along with the dining room, the kitchen, the reception room, the bathroom, and the Treatment Room constituted the first floor of the old frame house. Upstairs the partitions between the original bedrooms had been removed to form two dormitories, one for the men and one for the women. The Doctor had his own small bedroom upstairs too, and there were two bathrooms. I did not know at the time where Mrs. Dockey slept, or whether she slept at the farm at all. She was a most uncommunicative woman.
I had first met the Doctor quite by chance—a rather fortunate chance—on the morning of March 17, 1951, in what passes for the grand concourse of the Pennsylvania Railroad Station in Baltimore. It happened to be the day after my twenty-eighth birthday, and I was sitting on one of the benches in the station with my suitcase beside me. I was in an unusual condition: I couldn’t move. On the previous day I had checked out of my room in the Bradford Apartment Hotel, an establishment on St. Paul and Thirty-third streets owned by the Johns Hopkins University. I had roomed there since September of the year before, when, halfheartedly, I matriculated as a graduate student at the university and began work on the degree that I was scheduled to complete the following June.
But on March 16, my birthday, with my oral examination passed but my master’s thesis not even begun, I packed my suitcase and left the room to take a trip somewhere. Because I have learned to be not much interested in causes and biographies, I shall ascribe this romantic move to simple birthday despondency, a phenomenon sufficiently familiar to enough people so that I need not explain it further. Birthday despondency, let us say, had reminded me that I had no self-convincing reason for continuing for a moment longer to do any of the things that I happened to be doing with myself as of seven o’clock in the evening of March 16, 1951. I had thirty dollars and some change in my pocket: when my suitcase was filled I hailed a taxi, went to Pennsylvania Station, and stood in the ticket line.
“Yes?” said the ticket agent when my turn came.
“Ah—this will sound theatrical to you,” I said with some embarrassment, “but I have thirty dollars or so to take a trip on. Would you mind telling me some of the places I could ride to from here for, say, twenty dollars?”
The man showed no surprise at my request. He gave me an understanding if unsympathetic look and consulted some sort of rate scales.
“You can go to Cincinnati, Ohio,” he declared. “You can go to Crestline, Ohio. And let’s see, now—you can go to Dayton, Ohio. Or Lima, Ohio. That’s a nice town. I have some of my wife’s people up around Lima, Ohio. Want to go there?”
“Cincinnati, Ohio,” I repeated, unconvinced. “Crestline, Ohio;
6
In September It Was Time to See the Doctor
IN SEPTEMBER IT WAS TIME TO SEE THE DOCTOR again: I drove out to the Remobilization Farm one morning during the first week of the month. Because the weather was fine, a number of the Doctor’s other patients, quite old men and women, were taking the air, seated in their wheel chairs or in the ancient cane chairs all along the porch. As usual, they greeted me a little suspiciously with their eyes; visitors of any sort, but particularly of my age, were rare at the farm, and were not welcomed cordially. Ignoring their stony glances, I went inside to pay my respects to Mrs. Dockey, the receptionist-nurse. I found her in consultation with the Doctor himself.
“Good day, Horner,” the Doctor beamed.
“Good morning, sir. Good morning, Mrs. Dockey.”
That large, masculine woman nodded shortly without speaking—her custom—and the Doctor told me to wait for him in the Progress and Advice Room, which, along with the dining room, the kitchen, the reception room, the bathroom, and the Treatment Room constituted the first floor of the old frame house. Upstairs the partitions between the original bedrooms had been removed to form two dormitories, one for the men and one for the women. The Doctor had his own small bedroom upstairs too, and there were two bathrooms. I did not know at the time where Mrs. Dockey slept, or whether she slept at the farm at all. She was a most uncommunicative woman.
I had first met the Doctor quite by chance—a rather fortunate chance—on the morning of March 17, 1951, in what passes for the grand concourse of the Pennsylvania Railroad Station in Baltimore. It happened to be the day after my twenty-eighth birthday, and I was sitting on one of the benches in the station with my suitcase beside me. I was in an unusual condition: I couldn’t move. On the previous day I had checked out of my room in the Bradford Apartment Hotel, an establishment on St. Paul and Thirty-third streets owned by the Johns Hopkins University. I had roomed there since September of the year before, when, halfheartedly, I matriculated as a graduate student at the university and began work on the degree that I was scheduled to complete the following June.
But on March 16, my birthday, with my oral examination passed but my master’s thesis not even begun, I packed my suitcase and left the room to take a trip somewhere. Because I have learned to be not much interested in causes and biographies, I shall ascribe this romantic move to simple birthday despondency, a phenomenon sufficiently familiar to enough people so that I need not explain it further. Birthday despondency, let us say, had reminded me that I had no self-convincing reason for continuing for a moment longer to do any of the things that I happened to be doing with myself as of seven o’clock in the evening of March 16, 1951. I had thirty dollars and some change in my pocket: when my suitcase was filled I hailed a taxi, went to Pennsylvania Station, and stood in the ticket line.
“Yes?” said the ticket agent when my turn came.
“Ah—this will sound theatrical to you,” I said with some embarrassment, “but I have thirty dollars or so to take a trip on. Would you mind telling me some of the places I could ride to from here for, say, twenty dollars?”
The man showed no surprise at my request. He gave me an understanding if unsympathetic look and consulted some sort of rate scales.
“You can go to Cincinnati, Ohio,” he declared. “You can go to Crestline, Ohio. And let’s see, now—you can go to Dayton, Ohio. Or Lima, Ohio. That’s a nice town. I have some of my wife’s people up around Lima, Ohio. Want to go there?”
“Cincinnati, Ohio,” I repeated, unconvinced. “Crestline, Ohio;
Similar Books
