II
Familiar to the doctor's wife was the man with an injured
leg, driven in from the country on a Sunday afternoon and
brought to the house. He sat in a rocker in the back of a
lumber-wagon, his face pale from the anguish of the jolting.
His leg was thrust out before him, resting on a starch-box and
covered with a leather-bound horse-blanket. His drab
courageous wife drove the wagon, and she helped Kennicott
support him as he hobbled up the steps, into the house.
"Fellow cut his leg with an ax—pretty bad gash—Halvor
Nelson, nine miles out," Kennicott observed.
Carol fluttered at the back of the room, childishly excited
when she was sent to fetch towels and a basin of water.
Kennicott lifted the farmer into a chair and chuckled, "There
we are, Halvor! We'll have you out fixing fences and drinking
aquavit in a month." The farmwife sat on the couch, expressionless,
bulky in a man's dogskin coat and unplumbed layers
of jackets. The flowery silk handkerchief which she had worn
over her head now hung about her seamed neck. Her white
wool gloves lay in her lap.
Kennicott drew from the injured leg the thick red "German
sock," the innumerous other socks of gray and white wool, then
the spiral bandage. The leg was of an unwholesome dead
white, with the black hairs feeble and thin and flattened, and
the scar a puckered line of crimson. Surely, Carol shuddered,
this was not human flesh, the rosy shining tissue of the amorous
poets.
Kennicott examined the scar, smiled at Halvor and his wife,
chanted, "Fine, b' gosh! Couldn't be better!"
The Nelsons looked deprecating. The farmer nodded a cue
to his wife and she mourned:
"Vell, how much ve going to owe you, doctor?"
"I guess it'll be— Let's see: one drive out and two calls.
I guess it'll be about eleven dollars in all, Lena."
"I dunno ve can pay you yoost a little w'ile, doctor."
Kennicott lumbered over to her, patted her shoulder, roared,
"Why, Lord love you, sister, I won't worry if I never get it!
You pay me next fall, when you get your crop. . . .
Carrie! Suppose you or Bea could shake up a cup of coffee
and some cold lamb for the Nelsons? They got a long cold
drive ahead."
