Doc, 1947

A country doctor, exhausted from his work, makes an emergency house call in the middle of the night, in the middle of the storm.

(Note: This piece was a character sketch presented on stage by professional actors in Vermont Stage Company’s annual production of ‘Winter Tales’. The reception from this and the first story, ‘Carrie, 1918’ spurred me to begin work on my novel, Hiram Falls. This piece was edited to reflect changes developed in the overall story since 2018 when this was first performed. The audio is the author’s narration.)

December 24, 1947

Doc Fowler knows it’s foolhardy, even as he hangs up the phone call from Vera, the town operator, even as he goes in the darkness to his bureau to get his long johns, even as he hears his wife, Flo, stir and rise up from the bed and flip on the light.

“What are you doing?” Flo says.

“Vera called. She said Ernest Eastman went to the Emersons’ house to say Carrie was real sick and could they get a call to me.”

“Good God, it’s howling out there,” she says. “He walked all the way down to Emersons’?”

“I know.” Doc says. “Must not be good. I need to head up there. The Nash will never make it; I’m gonna take the sleigh.”

“It’s not a night fit for horses either,” she says. She mutters something under her breath but he doesn’t hear it, too busy getting on his wool pants and shirt. Flo puts on her robe and slippers and heads downstairs. Muttering.

“Damn fool,” she says.

“I heard that.”

“Well, you are,” she whispers back up to him. “And be quiet. We don’t want to wake up David.”

They know this routine. Flo goes down to fix a pot of coffee, gather some food, find his coat and hat, an extra blanket, maybe, while he goes into the office in the ell to get his medicines and bag and whatever else he might need. For 22 years they’ve been doing it, at all hours of the night and day, every day of the week.

Doc is 47. Tall and wiry, he walks as much as he can — to town, to patients nearby;  when he has free time he chops his own wood, works the garden with Flo, cares for the horses and rides them as often as he can. He’s a doting father and, when he can, takes David for some kind activity, fishing, hiking, skating, whatever he has time for. Doc knows physical work. He grew up on a small farm on Bickford Mountain, where his Dad and Mom still live.

His mother was the one who encouraged him to leave the farm, to go to university. She didn’t want him to go to war. One brother was enough.

He’d always been interested in science, in being a doctor, so it was an easy decision for him. Not so for his Dad. He trimmed the herd, brought in some boarders to help with chores and still hasn’t forgiven his son for leaving the farm.

Doc went to University of Vermont, then stayed on for medical school. In 1925, he took over the practice of Doc Abernethy on the edge of the upper village in Hiram Falls. To lure Doc Abernethy to Hiram Falls, the town had pooled resources and given him a house with a barn, carriage and horse team. So that was passed onto Doc Fowler. Much appreciated. He’s got a new team now; two young mares raised by Ernest Eastman. They are fine, confident horses.

Doc looks out the window and sees the snow coming down hard. This storm means business, he thinks. He feels a knot in his stomach.

In the kitchen, Flo fiddles with the radio but gets mostly static until she finds the farmers’ station and the weather. The monotone voice tells her what she already knows: the storm is going to last a while. A single, overhead bulb illuminates the room. The yellow walls make it seem warm. She likes the new lights and is glad they finally got electricity. And a phone. Both have made her life, their lives, easier. Some people in town and almost everyone outside of town don’t have either. Like Ernest and Carrie.

I wish he’d wait ’til daylight, she thinks.

Flo is a best friend of Carrie. They went to school together, shared dreams together and she was Doc’s first patient: complications with her third child, a girl. He was summoned to help the midwife. Flo went with him. Ernest was in such a tizzy, she sent him out to the barn to tend to his horses and then played with the two young Eastman boys. Everyone knew, when they thought about it later, that nothing good would come that day and so, in the years since, Carrie and Ernest have kept that child alive in their hearts but put their love into their sons and each other.

From then on, Doc made it a habit to drop in and see Carrie from time to time, knowing she still carries the grief of losing that little girl and of 1918, of course, when most of her family died in the epidemic, she all alone with her brother trying to push on.

Doc never bills Carrie and Ernest. He doesn’t hardly send anyone bills. People pay him if they can, don’t if they can’t. Sometimes they give him meat, or syrup, or a bag of potatoes, or some freshly caught trout. Sometimes they’ll show up to ask if they can do some work around the yard. Ernest comes by from time to time to tend to the horses — to check on their hooves or put on new shoes or repair a saddle or halter. Two years ago, after the second of Doc’s team had to be put down, Ernest came riding in with the two young mares. “Least I can do,” he said. There was no arguing.

Flo stares out the window and sees Doc back the Nash sedan out into the drive so the carriage can get out. He doesn’t get far before the wheels start spinning. He fills and lights the lanterns on the sleigh, gets the horses out of the stalls and hitches them up and puts the heavy blanket into the seat. The sleigh was a fancy thing in its day. All black canvas with a long sloping roof and open front, it’s gotten a little worse for wear, a little frayed. But its runners are true, its brakes strong, so Doc knows it’s up to it.

“You’re foolish,” Flo tells him as he walks in. “This is no storm to be chancing a house call up the mountain. Radio says it’ll be like this all night and most of tomorrow. Christmas day.”

“Ernest wouldn’t have gone down to Emersons’ in the middle of the night to call if it wasn’t important. Hell that’s not the kind of thing you do in a storm if you aren’t worried.”

“Be careful will you?” She hands him a canvas bag with a sandwich, several apples and a Mason jar of water. They hug. “Give my best to them.”

The horses are hesitant at first, but Doc coaxes them out the drive, onto the road and into the wind. It’s biting. The snow stings his cheeks and collects quickly on his beard. Maybe I am foolish, he thinks.

Doc’s not used to second thoughts. But lately he’s been having them. He’s been out straight — so much illness around — and he’s exhausted. He shakes the reins, more out of encouragement than direction and slides himself deeper into the corner under the canopy, out of the wind. The lanterns don’t help much; he can barely see beyond the horses’ haunches as they finally gain a rhythm as they go down Main Street. The town looks magical with its new electric street lights, so peaceful and quiet, the storefronts and houses all in shadows obscured by the snow. Soon they cross the bridge and begin heading up hill.

Bickford Farm is almost six miles from Doc’s house and is high up on the ridge. It’s a haul in a car, much less a sleigh. Doc settles in and pulls the blanket up over his back, over his wool hat and wraps it around him. The warmth feels comforting. He leans his head against the canvas canopy. The gentle pace of the horses rock Doc back and forth, back and forth and soon Doc feels his eyelids droop and then he’s asleep. Just like that.

So he does not notice as the team misses the corner turn onto Bickford Mountain Road; he does not see the team follow the road up to the right and on up Mt. Riga. It’s an easy enough mistake to make in the daytime, much less on a snowy night. The horses trudge along, heads down, making headway up the sloping, winding road in the opposite direction than intended.

Doc opens his eyes with a start. The sleigh has stopped. Snow swirls around the horses. Wide awake, alarmed, he snaps the reins, but the horses stay put. And then he sees it, sees him, a stranger standing between the two horses, stroking the snow off the brown mare’s eyelids. He turns and looks right at Doc. The sleigh lights flicker on his face: a young man of 25 or so, black hair, no hat, no gloves, a hint of a smile. There is something vaguely familiar about him.

Doc is perplexed. “Who are you?” Doc asks, out loud.

The man looks startled at first. The grey mare on the left bounces her head up, but the man holds her steady.

“Where am I?” asks Doc.

Later, when Doc thinks back on the moment, he’ll realize that he doesn’t see the man’s lips move, doesn’t hear his voice, but he experiences a conversation nonetheless.

“You’re on Mt. Riga,” the man says. “You fell asleep and didn’t make the turn to Bickford Mountain.”

“How do you know that?”

The man doesn’t answer right off. He swings himself up on the grey mare, just as smooth as can be, and turns the horses and the sleigh around.

“Got to get you to Carrie Bickford’s house,” he says. “She’s not well.”

Doc’s mind is racing, his thoughts a jumble.

“How do you know that?” he says.

“Pull the brake on a bit,” is all the man says. He pulls the brake back a bit, just enough to keep the sleigh from sliding into the horses but his mind scrambles for some sort of explanation, an answer, because it makes no sense. How did I get here? he thinks, Who is this man? Why does he not speak? Why doesn’t he just come into the sleigh to keep warm?

“Mister,” Doc yells. “Why don’t you come in here, out of the snow?”

But there is no answer. Just the sound of the wind and the runners on the road. A gust of wind swirls the snow into Doc’s face, freezing his eyelashes shut. He removes his glove and presses his warm hand against his eyes to melt the frozen lashes; blinking, he can see again. He tucks his gloveless hand under the blanket.

“Mister,” he yells again. “Come on in here. It’s way too cold for you out there.”

The man does not respond. I know everyone in town, Doc thinks. I’ve been to their houses or they’ve come to my office or I’ve seen them at school or in the diner. But I don’t know this man, though it feels like I do, or should. And why does he call Carrie by her maiden name?

The wind drives Doc to tuck further into the corner of the sleigh, his head pressed against the canvas, out of the wind.

Minutes pass into an hour; the road grows less steep. He knows where he is now, sees as the horses make the turn to Bickford Mountain. The man is still on the grey mare. As Doc feels the gentle rhythm of the horses’ pace, rocking, rocking, rocking, he falls asleep again, does not see the sky growing lighter, does not notice as they pass the Rickers, the Pinkhams, the Emersons and make it to the long drive to Bickford Farm. The horses turn in, instinctively, eager, remembering the way horses can remember where they were born and at that moment, Doc opens his eyes. He checks his watch. Good God, he thinks, ten to 7. I left four hours ago. How is that possible?

Then he notices that the man is gone.

The horses stop at the post in front of the barn and carefully, gingerly, Doc unwinds his stiff body and slides down from the sleigh. It is painful to walk. With his left hand resting on the back of the brown mare, he gimps his way to the front and pats the horses, clearing the snow from their eyes and heads. There is no snow on the back of the grey mare. He looks down the drive but there’s no sign of the stranger, no footprints.

Ernest comes bursting out, putting his coat on as he runs. “Doc, oh my God, Doc,” he shouts, “I was worried you might not make it. You’ve got to get inside. Carrie’s fever’s gotten worse. Go on in. I’ll get the horses into the barn.”

Doc walks into the warm kitchen and rubs his hands together above the cook stove. The house is strangely silent. Carrie and Ernest’s two boys have grown and left, tending to their own farms up north. He takes off his coat and boots. With a kerosene lantern in his left hand, his medical bag in his right, he climbs the narrow stairs to the main bedroom.

The smell hits him as he enters; the room is warm, too warm, and stuffy. He feels Carrie’s forehead; she is burning up. He tries to rouse her but can’t. Her breathing is raspy. Uneven. He goes to the windows and opens them wide and rushes downstairs to find some washcloths. Ernest comes back from the barn.

“We’ve got to cool her down, Ernest; get these wet with some cold water and bring them up. Wait, get some snow, too, in a bowl. I’m going to give her a shot of penicillin. I’m not sure what exactly she’s got, whether it’s the grippe or what, but this is a new drug, and if anything’s going to work it’s this. But we need to cool her down. And we’ll need to get some water in her, too.”

Doc and Ernest sit by her all morning, taking turns applying the wash cloths to her forehead. Occasionally Doc wraps some of the snow in cloth and places it under her arms, on her ankles and wrists. Ernest and Doc don’t talk; there is not much to say above the worry. The hours crawl. Finally, near 1 o’clock, she opens her eyes. She struggles to speak.

“Doc,” she says, “so good to see you.”

Her fever has broken. Doc and Ernest help her up in a chair, get her to drink some water while Ernest changes her sheets and bed clothes. Back in bed, she sits up and begins to cough.

“Get that stuff out of you,” Doc says. The color is returning in her face. She smiles and looks out the windows; frosted around the panes, the heavy snowfall still visible.

“I don’t know how you made it up here in this weather,” she says. “It’s a miracle.”

“Indeed,” says Doc, “your husband raises some fine horses.” He starts to tell her about missing the turn, about the man, but he thinks better of it, so unsure he is of how to explain it. He stays for several more hours, gets her to take some soup and some of Rina Lapsa’s medicinal tea she mixes up for him to give to patients. He gives her some aspirin, too. Mid-afternoon, he decides to head back.

“Your boys coming down for a visit?” Doc asks her.

“They hoped to, but I don’t know; the weather may make travel impossible for a couple of days.”

“They know you’ve been sick?” he asks.

“No. I don’t want to bother them.”

“Well,” Doc says, smiling, “looks like when they do come, they’ll find you among the living.”

Carrie smiles. “Merry Christmas,” she says. “And I bet David can’t wait for you to get home.”

“That’s true. Made him a sled this year. Can’t wait to give it to him.”

Out in the yard, the snowfall is easing. Ernest helps Doc into the carriage and hands him the canvas food bag with some muffins added.

“Made ’em myself,” Ernest says, and then, handing him a small flask. “A little fuel for the trip.”

Doc takes the flask. “It was a good thing you went down to Emersons’ to get a call to me, Ernest. You and Carrie should get a phone and electricity when they bring the lines up here.”

Doc snaps the reins gently and the team pulls the carriage out the drive and down the road. He looks out at the view down the mountain, marveling at the beauty, embracing the satisfaction of Carrie’s recovery. But he feels the twinge of the stranger, the rescue, of having fallen asleep, of not knowing. Doc keeps picking at his puzzlement all the way down the mountain, unsure what to tell Flo. Maybe I shouldn’t, he thinks. She’d probably say I was losing my mind.

By the time they get to the valley, it’s almost dark and Doc has decided to set aside all the strangeness of the night, to let his reasoning mind embrace what, for the moment, his imagination can’t explain. He thinks of Carrie, safe now, and of reaching home. And then he thinks again of David, of Flo, picturing them in the kitchen, Flo getting Christmas supper all ready, David asking her for the millionth time when his Dad will finally come home.

“Any moment,” Flo is probably telling him. “Any moment.”

Just then, just as he passes Old Man Fiengo’s shop, he sees something out of the corner of his eye, sees something move. It can’t be, he thinks. It is. It’s the man, the stranger. Doc sees him there leaning up against the wall between Fiengo’s and the barber shop. Smiling. Doc pulls hard on the reins, stops the sleigh and leans forward to get a better look. But there is no man. Just shadows. Doc laughs to himself. “Jeezum. Maybe I am losing my mind.”

He turns, grabs the reins and snaps them. “Giddy-up. Let’s get home.”