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neighboring docks. But soon they were sitting side by side on Ray’s dock: highly advisable as topics soon took a turn towards the confidential. Osborne knew he had a good buddy when he discovered Ray to be as comfortable discussing life’s adversities as he was debating the best lure for walleyes when the wind is out of the west.
    He found it amusing—even satisfying in a juvenile way—that this friendship irritated the hell out of his wife: “I do not understand why you speak to that man. Just look!” And she would shake an angry finger at the “disgusting view of that house trailer,” which she insisted ruined the vista from her expensive double-paned windows.
    It was Ray who, when Mary Lee insisted Osborne get rid of his patient files, jumped at the chance to help him devise a secret hiding place in the garage. Like kids building a fort they had plotted each detail with care: first the wait for Mary Lee’s weekly bridge game to take place in Minocqua, a good hour’s drive each way plus a guaranteed four to five hours devoted to brunch, cards and gossip.
    Then the hurried construction of a room they hoped to make impossible for a wife to find. Thanks to Ray hiding supplies in his truck, they got an early start and in one afternoon were able to erect a wall of plywood behind Osborne’s stored pontoon and, behind that, install a door opening from the side of the garage into the attached shed where he cleaned fish. The shed was Osborne’s sanctuary; Mary Lee wanted nothing to do with fish guts.
    When they had finished, it was Ray, younger and stronger, who helped him move the three antique oak file cabinets from storage, each drawer packed with years of patient records—records of work that he was proud of, records of more than just teeth and gums, fillings and dentures.
    “Each of these …” said Osborne stepping back after the file cabinets were in place and opening a drawer to pull out a file only to pause in embarrassment, “. well, I look at one and I feel proud … of what I’ve accomplished … I guess.” Ray had nodded. He understood.
    “Mary Lee thinks I’m crazy to hold on to these and maybe I am but—”
    “Doc, your wife saves family photos, doesn’t she?”
    “Of course,” said Osborne.
    “Well … watching your face when you open one of those files, it’s like you’ve a got a real person in your hand. It’s like … when I pick up one of my surface mud puppies, Doc … I remember the night, the moon and the forty-eight inch monster I caught … e-e-e-very moment of the ex-x-x … perience.”
    “You are exactly right, Ray. These aren’t just paper files—these are my memories.”
    Spurred on by the success of that venture and inspired by his neighbor’s outlaw ways, Osborne opted to stage an act of open rebellion by maintaining his membership in the Wisconsin Dental Society. As expected, Mary Lee went ballistic: “Paul Osborne, if you think paying five hundred dollars for an annual membership in an organization of people you no longer have a good reason to see …” She glowered.
    When Osborne reported her response that evening on the dock, Ray had shrugged and grinned and egged him on.
    Keeping that membership in the dental society was a charmed decision. It was not just that he was able to enjoy the camaraderie of the men and women, fellow professionals and colleagues—many of whom he’d known since dental school and several who had become good friends (and frequent fishing buddies) over the years—but the dental society’s monthly seminars quickly became some of his most interesting hours.
    Forensic odontology, a focus of several of the seminars, had intrigued Osborne. Having served in the military after graduating from dental school, he was grounded in the basics of dental forensics, which are based on the fact that teeth and dental restorations are the strongest elements in the human body and able to survive the destructive influences of fire and exposure to the