Sweet Everlasting Read Online Free PDF Page B

had found an ancient photograph at the back of a bureau drawer, forgotten in Stoneman’s move four months ago; he found it almost impossible to reconcile the burly, robust image of the man in the picture with the stoop-shouldered, sunken-cheeked, cadaverous individual sitting beside him. But he still had a full head of white hair, about which he was touchingly vain; he combed it back from an elegant center part, and kept it neat and shiny at all times with macassar oil.
    “No, no machine tonight,” Ty admitted. “I was too tired.” His “machine” was what Stoneman insisted on calling his microscope.
    “Tired, eh?” He cackled, pulling out his battered old pipe. His disease had finally forced him to give up smoking tobacco, but he still sucked on his pipe stem. “I guess this little old practice wasn’t the rest cure you had in mind, was it, Dr. Wilkes? I guess country doctoring’s a bit more than looking at bugs through a magnifying glass, isn’t it?”
    Tyler folded his arms, crossed his ankles, and slid down on his spine, resigning himself to smiling through another harangue on the superiority of the practicing M.D. to the kind who boondoggled his time away in laboratories and clinics, staring through lenses at “bugs”—what Tyler had done, to Stoneman’s way of thinking, for the two years between his medical residency and his army enlistment. Why did he put up with this? Stoneman was right about one thing, though: being the only doctor—Schmidt the quack homeopath didn’t count—in a town of two thousand souls had turned out to be no rest cure. He’d never admit it, but he’d come to Wayne’s Crossing partly in the naive belief that he could doctor roughly halftime, and spend the other half doing what he liked best: studying the etiology of diseases. But he’d had about four complete days off since he’d gotten here, and now writing and research were confined to the odd free evening, or late at night when he was barely able to keep his eyes open.
    “A suffering patient wants action,” Stoneman droned on, jabbing at the air with his cold pipe. “He says, ‘Doc, it hurts right here,’ and he wants attention paid to that one little spot. He doesn’t want you to order blood tests, he doesn’t want to piss into a bottle so you can—” He stopped short. “What the hell is that?”
    “What?”
    “ That. When did you get a dog?” He got up with a grunt and bent over a blanket-wrapped Shadow on the floor behind the coal stove. With a gnarled hand, he drew the covers back and peered down intently. “I recognize this dog,” he said slowly. “It’s Carrie’s, isn’t it? Carrie Wiggins’?” Tyler nodded. “What’s it doing here?”
    “She brought it to me this afternoon, she and a fellow named Broom.”
    “Broom, eh? St. Vitus’ Dance—agreed?”
    “That’s what I thought,” Ty smiled, and Stoneman smiled back. They got immoderate enjoyment when they concurred in a diagnosis.
    “What’s wrong with Carrie’s dog?”
    “Broken ribs. Complications.”
    “What are you doing for it?”
    “Keeping it comfortable. Morphine sulfate and sedatives.”
    Stoneman hummed his approval, then gave Shadow a gentle pat and resumed his seat.
    “So you know Carrie—Wiggins, did you say?” Tyler asked.
    “Carrie Wiggins, sure, sure.” His gaunt, craggy face softened. “She’s a sweet child, gentle as a foal. Too good for this world, I sometimes think. I worry about her.”
    Tyler eyed him in surprise. Gruff tolerance was the softest sentiment he’d ever known Stoneman to express when speaking of a patient, or of anybody else for that matter. “Why do you worry about her?”
    “Because of Artemis, mostly—that’s her stepfather.”
    “Stepfather? Broom said he’s the one who broke the dog’s ribs.”
    Stoneman scowled. “That wouldn’t surprise me, he’s such a sorry S.O.B.”
    “What does he do for a living?”
    “Not much. He used to have a fairly good job at the mill, but