Just North of Nowhere (20 page)

He shook off the prognosis. None of his business. He took a mental note about the headless Swede, because, damn it, he was now Doc Mouth, Storyteller, not that other.

“Funny name, 'Mouth,' guy sitting at the bar said one evening. “Name like that, figure you'd've gone to be a whatdoyou call dentist or something. Not a whatdoyoucallit...?”

“Storyteller...?

“Nah...that other. Whatchacallit?”

“Internist,” Doc said.

“Yeah. Whatchacall an internist.”

Doc smiled at the hairy man. Had he been the guy who worked on his place? “Bunch, is it? Is it ‘Bunch?’ Now you talk about names!”

Hairy man smiled back and sucked his beer. “Yeah, well, probably a story there. Yeah.”

The guy let it hang and side glanced Doc. He nudged his empty Pilsner Doc’s direction. Yeah. “Bunch,” had a way. A way of talking a local storyteller might do worse than emulate in tellin' his tales. Storyteller's got to have a voice, he figured. He’d get the story of that name. Someday he would.

Doc said, “Well 'Mouth', now, I think, is a corruption.”

Bunch's eyes squeezed closer together.

Disappointed, Doc figured, thought he had me, thought he had me figured. “German name. A name that got. As got changed. When my great grandfather came to this country, come over here I mean, they gave him, give him, another name at Ellis Island. 'Mouth' is what they called him. In German, reckon it's sumpin' else.”

“Must've done that to me, too, huh?” Bunch said. “Bunch doesn't sound like much. Or does it?”

They laughed together. Doc raised his glass to toast Bunch. “You never toast on a dry mug!” Bunch said. Doc bought the man a beer, they clinked glasses and chuckled in their guts.

“'Bunch,' Doc said, 'sounds like a heap of sumpin’ to me!'“ He laughed.

A minute later Bunch got the joke and joined.

At least Bunch looked healthy, Doc thought. No diseases he could see. Breath, nothing but booze; skin, the color of sun, wind and dirt. Lumps were cuts, bruises, scabs and work scars. No chest rattles, no rasps. Nope. Nothing wrong with Bunch. No siree. He reckoned.

The “Storyteller” shingle didn't do it. He sent fliers, placed ads in the weekly, made radio spots and ran them all through the valley.

He made a one-man stage at the end of the “story room,” the one large space in the whole Victorian warren. The stage was a steamer-trunk with a nice oriental thrown over and drooping down the sides. A couple lights let into the ceiling, hidden, focused on the stool where he’d perch to tell a tale or two, the whole surrounded by shelves of books, potted ferns, good soft carpet, big cushions. For the kids, you know. From his stool, Doc looked the length of the room to the double sliding doors and into to the hallway.

Comfortable. Yeah.

As a ten-year visitor, Doc was known. As a new resident, he was a curiosity. He was becoming a regular at the Wheel. He was a customer at the Wurst Haus. Esther at the American House – to which he now knew the word “Eats” had permanently been grafted – Esther knew precisely what pie he wanted when. “You should have took up being a diagnostician,” he said to Esther as she shoved a piece of French raisin under his nose. “A pathologist, anyhow!”

“Hm,” She said, “Something wrong with it?”

He smiled. “The opposite Esther, m’dear,” he said with his first mouthful, “Perfect!”

“Hm,” she said. “Thanks. I guess.”

Ruth at the Library knew him. Ruth, her name was and she didn't exactly trust him, he felt.
Here’s this doctor from the city, prying into people, she thinks. Okay
, he thought,
she doesn't trust most people, either
. He'd seen her kind. The stories about her he could let her in on! Ha, she'd be surprised at what a good internist could tell about a person, just looking.

He was known. And the word got out.

The Story Room was black. Light in his eyes from above, sides. He shielded his eyes. A tiny dark face looked up.
Native American
, Doc thought,
Indian blood, anyway. Round dark eyes, silent eyes. A face filled with history
, he thought. Filed the thought away. Beyond were more little faces. They looked up from the soft rug in front, from the small chairs further back. Beyond, shadowed, parents waited. They chatted and laughed among themselves. Their eyes were black holes in the gray. They waited. Kids waited. All waited to see what the heck was a Doc Mouth Storyteller.

He waited. Doc smiled at the twenty, twenty two kids. Oh Christ, right! They were waiting for a story.

What the heck could he have been? Been thinking? He had no stories. No story was there. He looked at the floor between his legs, at the good oriental carpet. He hoped he looked like he was stirrin’ up a good one, settin' up a real yarn! Figuring just the way to put it. He raised his eyes.

“There was a guy,” came out of his mouth, “just an ordinary guy. Had a good profession.”
What?
, Doc wondered,
what’d this guy do? Why mention his job? Christ!
“Cut meat for a living.”
There it was! Where’d that come from? Where?
“The meat-cutter trade got you work anywhere you went!”

What was this
, Doc wondered?
What the hell?! This story was coming but from where? Don't look too close
, he told himself, it's coming from somewhere.

“One day the meat cutter man married the woman of his dreams. She was beautiful, and ohhhh, she liked him. He liked her. He liked her kids – oh, I didn’t tell you? She had a passel of 'em! Kids of all kinds. She had one like you,” he pointed, blindly, at a spot where he knew a kid was sitting. “Like you,” he pointed to another, farther back, “and you, and you, and you...n'you, n'you, n'you, n'you...” Doc pointed to maybe a dozen places around the room. “And YOU!” he leaned down and pointed into the little Native American face he remembered.

Ah, laughter. Kid’s laughter. Giggles and squeaks, the Magic Moment.
His heart shook like a leaf fibrillating, but outside he was
doin' fine, just fine, collywobbles was all! A doctor's hands shake with nerves? Nosir. Here comes a story and he was telling it. Coming from where? No idea, but don't be countin' them teeth a gift horse's got.

“Now funny thing was, lovely as she was, cute as those kids a hers were, seemed nobody liked his wife and her kids very much. That’s hard to believe, now, isn’t it?” He paused, just a hair.

“Yeeess…” came whispering from the dark, along with a few uncertain, “Noooos”

Ah. That little pause! Timing was everything!

“So there it was: a mystery to him. She kept telling him: ‘Nobody likes me. Your brother doesn't. Your friends don't care for me. Folks you work with? They just hate me!’

“'No,' he said, and 'nah,' and 'can't be so...'

'You'll see,' his wife said.

“Pretty soon he saw. Pretty soon, he began looking at all those folk: His brother. His friends. The people he worked with. And, you know? She was right! People didn't like her. They didn't like her kids. Now, guess what? They didn't even like him. Can you imagine that?”

Doc Mouth almost stepped on it, but another sing-song “NooOOoo,” came out of the dark.

“NoOoo.” He shook his head and agreed with them.

“So he moved. Up, packed and moved like that! Wasn't near as nice where they went. The work was harder, smellier. The meat was tough and half-rotted and stringy and the people were crabby and walked around all the time like...” He made a crabby face and the kids giggled. “Like that! The house they moved to was falling down and smelled of bad things. Roof leaked, paper peeled, windows cracked and there was no heat.

“But!” he held up his finger and made a wide smiling face, “It didn't matter. He had his work, he had his beautiful wife and their wonderful kids and that was his life. He was happy!” He waited a beat. “Kind of.”

“oooOoo,” came back from the dark.

“One day his wife told him, 'I don't think we're liked here,' she said. And she told him why...”

The story rolled from him, took him over, filled the seat he sat in, it was lungs and voice, the tale was him, this story he’d never heard before.

Doc was happy.

“'These people,' his beautiful wife said, 'they hate me and my kids. They hate you too. They do. They hate us all because we're not from here. You cut the meat different from the way they're used to havin' it. They hate me because my hair is different, because I talk like our people talk back home and because I wear these pretty clothes they think crappy! Oh, love,' she said to her husband, 'oh, please, my dear, let's go back to where we come from.'

“And doggone. What do you think? What do you think they did?”

A scattering of voices. “They went.” “They go'ed.” “They should stay and make new friends 'cause...”

He let the kids express what the story was leading them to in their minds, their innocent hearts.

“Well... what they did was...” he held it for a second, “They packed up and went on back! Just like the wife said!”

He was in the zone. The story was being written on their souls, these kids. They were with him, he knew it, he knew it because... “Yeaaaa!” they said. To a one. “Yeaaaaaa!”

“The man was back home where the meat was good and folks dressed like they did and talked like they did. He was back where they liked the way he cut meat. He got a job…Like THAT!” Doc snapped his finger. It cracked. From the darkness he heard tiny fingers trying to snap like he'd done. They couldn’t. He was proud.

“He didn't make quite as much money, but he made enough. His beautiful wife, her terrific kids and he were living the life they’d been put on earth to live!

“Then, one day, he came home from work, really tired from a hard, hard day. His wife sidled up to him. She gave him his slippers, give him his pipe and his dinner. She sat him down after his meal of good meat that had been cut just right. And she said, 'I am so, so tired,' she said, 'so tired of your daddy looking at me like I killed his only son. 'I am so tired of your kin all treatin' me like I was something they wanna scrape from their shoes before comin' in the house. I can't stand it no more. Can't we move? Go to a better place this time? A place that likes me and my kids?'“

The black space was pin-silent.

The tale went on. He told the tale. The man, his beautiful wife, their terrific children wandered. To each they went and from each they came, there and back. With each move their lives grew bleaker. Here they were broke, there they were homeless, she was sick in one place, he was in jail in another, their kids had troubles, bad troubles. He told it well. It was all so surprising and so real! He was giving, giving the best he could, the most he knew how.

“One day, on the road between one place and another, the aching man, his sickly wife and their terrible, terrible children got caught in the rain. For miles and miles they walked through cold and wet. Finally, in the dark, they came to an inn. 'Maybe,' the man said – and the chilly rain dripped off his nose – ‘maybe the innkeeper'll let us sleep in his barn. I have no money for a room, not a penny for a meal, but our plight and the goodness of his heart will move him.'

“The wife glared at the warm light streaming from the windows of the inn. She shook her head. 'You are such a fool,’ she said. ‘You think they'll let us stay?’ She laughed a terrible laugh. “They do not like me here! Can't you see?! They do not like me there. Not me, not my children. They hate us because we’re poor and wet and are on this road with you, a jobless butcher who cannot cut the meat the way they want it cut!”

An ice water tingle smacked Doc in a sudden rush.
THIS story!
God, he remembered. Oh, God, he did and oh dear God he could not stop!

“‘Yes,’ the man agreed, ‘yes, wife, yes, yes, yes,’ he said. With the yeses, his hand reached for his tools, he wasn’t thinking, he just touched the knives, the cleavers and bone shears he'd carried across the world searching. Touching them, they spoke. He drew forth his longest, sharpest knife. He didn’t think about it but in a single skilled stroke he flensed the face from her head. Like that,” he said to the little Indian-like face below him. “Like that.”

That was it.

The dark wall of parents in the back of the room creaked and rumbled! He heard their voices. Some didn’t bother to whisper. Feet were moving, he heard it even on the soft, soft carpet.

He finished the story, though. He finished as the kids were lifted, dragged, one at a time or shoveled off in groups. The Story Room poured them out the sliding door. By the time the tale ended, wife, children, man, gone, all gone, slain bloody and in parts, the man’s carotid artery laid open, the long way, neatly pumping the blood that had been meant for the brain into the mud of the highway, the room was empty and the darkness real.

Doc had attended that story in the city: a husband, wife, kids, all dead in one night of terrible weakness. The guy? A laborer, a war vet. An expert at knife work. Doc had done the post mortems, foregone conclusions: multiple knife wounds, a variety of traumas. If he closed his eyes, he saw the chest spreaders, saw his measure of the snicks and nicks on the aorta, the bisected liver and detached kidney of the wife, the bone chips and shavings. The special thing was that face. The woman’s face, removed, peeled neatly like a mask for saving. Probably the man’s second to last cut. The last cut, his own, of course. But that face lying separate and apart, hidden in the bed clothes, that was the thing that blocked his memory of the night. In the end, of course, a simple Triple homicide with a suicide chaser. The cause? A 3:00 a.m. thing, a thing people took into the great silence on the edge of the knife, at the end of the pipe.