The Teaching of Don Vaughan: A Yankee's Way of Knowledge

Poem

CHAPTER ONE

Two men, each dying in his own way, met on the east bank of the aging Okahana at the edge of the town of Wick. Almost every thing was dead dying, or dormant. The leaves were dropping from the trees, the grasses had gone off their greens and had dried, the day was slipping into night, and the fishing had gone by for the season. No sooner did the tepid sun lower to the mountain than did a chill from the north sweep into the valley, roll down the river, churn the leaves, and crack the mirror of the water. With the chill came clouds of bad omen, turgid whorls of gray driving hard across the tops of the swaying trees.

The dying fisherman groped for footing on the bank made treacherous by the rapidity of its rise and the slick of the fallen leaves. He turned toward a stand of majestic pines where several scrawny maples fought for the right to live among them. The tops of the trees stuck out in silhouette against the rapidly fading brightness of the sky, their trunks blending darkly with each other and the crest of the hill. A gray speck caught his eye. He headed toward it, unwittingly presenting himself to the first of a series of seemingly innocuous encounters during which he would be subjected to a skillful picking that would loosen the lock on his moribund soul and resurrect the invalid reposing within.

Squinting proved the speck to be gray hair blowing with the wind. He had chanced upon an old man propped against a tree, arms hanging loose at his sides, shivering from the damp upon which he sat. Protected against the encroaching night by neither hat nor jacket, his slumped body was clad only in a shirt and faded pants that wicked the ground moisture along his legs and up his wasting torso via his shirt.

Good evening! the fisherman yelled.

The old man didn’t respond. He stared past the fisherman to the river.

Are you all right? He yelled in his ear. Again there was no response.

The old man didn’t look all right to him. Although the fisherman was a pathologist and not a physician who treated patients, it didn’t take a trained eye to observe that all was not right with the man. That thin and bony body looked as though it had been unwell for some time. Out of his pant legs two thin legs ran into frayed socks whose tops stuck to his skin by dirt. The pathologist assessed the facts and considered his find to be an elderly Caucasian male, severely debilitated, undernourished, ill cared for, failing to thrive, and probably suffering senile dementia presenting as he did with such indifference to his plight.

My name is Vaughan. Doctor Donald Vaughan, he shouted, kneeling closer. I was fishing, and I’m on my way home now, but I’m worried about you. You look cold and maybe you need help. I’d like to help you.

The old man shifted his eyes from the river to the fisherman and back to the river.

He took his patient’s hand, which felt cold and clammy, and gently shook it. C A N  Y O U  H E A R  M E?  M A Y  I  H E L P  Y O U? He mouthed the words slowly and deliberately as if to give his charge the option of lip reading. It was a futile courtesy because the old man’s eyes never left the river.

i ain’t deaf, no need to yell, he said, and i don’t need no help though i ‘preciate your concern. The voice was tired and labored, but responsive to the question.

Rule out senile dementia. What are you doing here this time of day? May I take you home?

Once again the eyes shifted from the river to the fisherman and back to the river. my name is benjamin, he said as if addressing the river. i was hoping nobody would find me. leastwise not until i got done what i come here to do.

Just what is that? May I help you do it?

At a time when to the doctor time seemed short, the old man seemed to hold in contempt both time and him, for he was made to wait for his answer. Benjamin’s body remained still, head in place against the tree, feet outstretched along the grass, arms limp at his sides. Were it not for the movement of his eyes, the doctor would have thought he’d slipped into a coma, or had expired, but those eyes did move. They moved unhurriedly from the river to the fisherman, scanning him, scrutinizing every detail. When they had looked long enough and had seen what it was they wanted to see, they closed accompanied by a deep breath drawn slowly and with pain. Words formed on his lips but died unspoken. More words formed only to abort. On the third attempt the words were audible but feeble, fainter than before.

first off i should tell i got lung cancer and it spread. don’t matter none. Doc lally says i got a tricky ticker, too, so if the one don’t get me the other will. but that don’t matter none, neither. the plans i got are different, but that’s mine, thank you kindly. Having managed to say that much, he opened his eyes but barely, just enough to squint at the fisherman as if to see if he were still there.

I’d like to get you home and out of the cold. May I do that for you?

Benjamin stiffened, and his voice found force and conviction. no you can’t, goddamn it. i like it here. there may be a lot wrong with me, but i got my wits and i say i stay here. if you’re of a mind to chat a while i’ll oblige, but i ain’t going nowheres. we’d best get that straight right off.

The doctor was momentarily at a loss. The fellow needed medical attention, and someone, somewhere, must be worried and await him. Have I the right to carry him against his will? If so, where should I take him? Put him at ease. I only mean to be friendly. Lower his defenses and convince him I mean no harm. Don’t humor him, he’s not a child, and don’t lie to him, I haven’t the right. Think! Stall for time! Extend my hand to him—slowly.

Okay, okay, my friend, no one’s pushing you. I’m just worried about you, that’s all. You know you can’t stay here all night.

the hell i can’t! stayed here last night and all day today, too, he said with a rising voice. Then it softened and became wistful. i first come here when i was a Boy. i’m past eighty now so that was a spell or two ago. i guess it was, all right. caught many a walleye off this bank in all them years. hope to tell i did. s’pect i lost more than i caught, but i caught my share all the same. that piece of ground ‘cross the river there brought me lots of deer, too. even boar time they got loose from that ritzy club they had back . . . back . . . god, when did they have that club?

He wanted to be alone. He had not wanted to be found. He’d said that, yet he showed no reluctance to talk. He was speaking, but the doctor wasn’t sure that it was he who was being addressed because, although Benjamin was responding to questions, his speech had the curious quality of shifting from him to the river. His eyes looked toward the water while his conversation seemed to drift into introspection with the doctor serving as but a catalyst to set in motion Benjamin’s address to the environment. Doctor Vaughan relaxed his grip on Benjamin’s hand. His eyes followed Benjamin’s and focused on the opposite bank. He shared the view, and he listened.

"mary and i used to come here on picnics when we was first going together. don’t mean this spot in particular, but hereabouts. come to think on it, it was along this stretch of bank someplace that i proposed to her. we proposed right in them days. folks today don’t know how to propose. wasn’t no highways or dams here then. it’s hard to tell where we were. maybe it was the other side of the power station there. anyway, it was along here someplace. she didn’t waste no time saying yes, neither. ‘course we always knew we’d marry, but it was still something when i asked her. now i’m just one old Son-Of-A-Bitch with one hell of a pain in his chest, but i ain’t never able to forget the thumping in it when i asked her. in them days we got down on our knees to do the asking. leastwise i done that, she was deserving of it. she said yes right off, and right then and there i took my first advantage. our first advantage. i was so goddamn young and excited with my britches so full of pecker i didn’t stop to think any issue would come of it, but he did, and then four more after him in later years.

i don’t mean to mar her memory by saying that . . .. He began to weep. It was soft at first, but soon the tears came harder and he began to sob in pulses. He snuffed loudly and deeply, paused briefly, and continued. it’s just that it come to mind and i told it before i thought better of it. still, i ain’t sorry i said it because it’s a good memory. anyhow, all five Boys are dead now. they was a big help and comfort for some goddamn good years. they come in mighty handy to me at times . . . like the time i got laid up from being kicked by a mean Son-Of-A-Bitch i was guiding into a balky heifer. couldn’t do a lick for close to a year after that, i couldn’t, and that was a long time ago and my Boys are all gone now. i loved them like i loved my mary. He resumed weeping.

Benjamin’s face was crissed and crossed with creases wrought by time, the leathered pleats deeply weathered by breezes far chillier than the one now evaporating the tears dripping into the furrows in his ruddy cheeks. When rapid blinking didn’t stave them, he slid his eyelids shut and breathed a heavy sigh.

The doctor felt like an intruder now. He understood that Benjamin had come to the river to honor his terminal rendezvous with death. The presence of an uninvited and unwelcome stranger at this most personal of times had to be an intrusion into Benjamin’s privacy—an intrusion against which he had no effective defense. The doctor found himself to be an observer of the rarest and most personal of human experiences, the final phenomenon of nature. They faced it together, the one by appointment, the other by chance.

"you’re probably wondering what and old Fart’s doing rambling on wasting your time for. don’t matter none to me. i’ll talk if i got a mind to, and i do. i’ve always done what i wanted, for the most part leastwise, and i will as long as i got a breath in me. come a while i won’t be talking anymore—not if i do my intent i won’t. i ain’t been feeling so good lately. yesterday was bad, but today was worse. took to shivering last night. still am. one more night should do it, so if i got a point to make i should make it now. i am trying to make one, although it ain’t simple or easy.

"if i been saying my intent you’ll know that i’m part of this valley. the people that live here think that they are, too, but they ain’t, really. they live in it and they take from it, but they and the valley ain’t the same thing. it’s a hard thing for me to explain and for you to know without you living like i done, but me and the valley is the same thing. i’m part of it and it’s part of me. i guess you don’t know what i mean. no, you can’t know what i mean. you have to feel the sense of it, and maybe nobody will ever feel it. it’s a good feeling, but a hard one to tell about.

"those walleyes i was telling about, they was part of this valley. and the deer and the rest. mary and my Boys, too. i been thinking about all this since talking to Doc lally. at my age you think a lot. i been thinking that what makes things a part of this valley is having a good respect of it. not many do, you see. not many. you have to go with it when it wants going with, and you have to think that it’s as good as you are. you have to love it and everything and everyone in it. i dug into it and it gave me back a living, and without my hurting it none, neither.

things that are valley come and go without no fuss or to do. i’m looking at a spot where i know walleyes are born. right over there just before that bend, He didn’t point with his finger, although he seemed to try. it wiggled, but his arms remained at his sides. He simply nodded toward the spot upstream.

"that’s where they die, too. they don’t leave the river never. outside of when they get caught, they die and rot and stay part of the river. if they get eaten they get shit back in. same way with the deer. and this grass under me turns brown and rots and becomes part of the valley dirt that gave it life. it’s the valley’s way, and it’s my way, too, and i guess i’m coming to my point.

"coming and going should be easy. i seen deer screwing in them fields there more’n once. hope to tell i did. they done it when they got a mind to and there wasn’t no fussing about it, neither. come spring good come of it not to mention the joy of the thing in the first place. mary and i was like that. when we got the urge, that was it. no sense to wait, so we didn’t, and it didn’t matter if it was in the pasture or sitting on the porch of an evening. now i’m not saying i’m an animal, but i am saying i ain’t a hell of a lot different, neither.

"in my last hours i keep thinking of mary and them walleyes. i seen many catch them and toss them on the bank to die. now that ain’t right, and it ain’t natural. ever see fish die like that? i mean really see it? the poor little Bastards’ mouths open up, wider than you’d think they could. they just can’t use air outside of water, but they keep sucking on it while they flip over and over trying to make it back to the river again. that’s where they was meant to die. on the bank they just keep sucking and flipping until they can’t flip no more, but always they keep sucking on air they can’t breathe. if it ain’t too hot it might take fifteen minutes or more to get done what should have took no time at all. i used to whomp them on a rock straight off to get the goddamn thing done with. i don’t think they minded getting caught or dying either because that’s part of things, but dying slow on the bank was part of nothing.

"i got to thinking that the only thing that doesn’t work that way is people. mary was born here and got put back in this valley after she was done with it, but the troublesome thing was the big goddamn goings on getting the thing done. i swear she died in october. that was when wally lally told us she had a small touch of cancer. small touch my ass! i’m making my point now and you should think on it hard. there was my mary in the hospital straining and gasping for the breath she used to draw so easy without even trying. she was doing that, but that’s not the main thing. what she was really doing was trying to die, that’s what she was doing. goddamn it, she had a right to that, she was seventy-eight wasn’t she? but those Sons-O’-Bitches filled her full of tubes so that she et when she wasn’t hungry no more and pissed when the only piss she had in her was the piss they gave her through the tubes. and what come of it? she died in february only she really died in october.

i ain’t pissed much all week myself, and that’s part of my point. why fart around about dying? wasn’t it meant to get done? i’m doing it and bet your ass no one can stop it, neither. Doc lally is of a mind that I should be in the hospital and kept going a spell. pig’s ass! all my life i done what i’d a mind to and it ain’t no different now. i pick here. i pick now. i want to die natural and you or no goddamn Doctor can make me do no different. by tomorrow i’ll be part of this valley permanent and there ain’t no need for anybody to get in the middle and mess up the doing.

He kept repeating the words ain’t no need as his voice grew weaker and the words became widely spaced and too faint to be audible. Then he made a sudden noise that startled the doctor, causing him to blanche and drop Benjamin’s cold and waxy hand to the grass. The sound came rising from low in his throat, a soft bubbling that thickened to a loud gurgle before erupting into a chilling crescendo of rapidly boiling body liquid trying to get out. His lower jaw drooped as if to provide easy exit for that which was percolating within, but the boil was kept contained and did not spill over. He groaned, and he sighed, and he swallowed twice the acrid taste that had come to his mouth and no farther. His glassed-over eyes fought to remain open that he might meet this final experience face to face. There were no more words, just a long rattle in his throat each time he drew a breath and let it out.

The doctor took his hand again and called out to him. Benjamin, are you all right? As soon as he asked he realized how inane the question was. He toyed with the idea of going about his business and leaving Benjamin to his, but he was a devotee of the preservation of life and could not accept the idea of letting death walk about unchallenged.

For a man who had wasted so, Benjamin was heavy to carry. The doctor tried to hang him over his shoulder with the head and upper torso slung down over his back, but in spite of a strong grip on his legs, the old man kept sliding off the shoulder. He tried a piggyback tote, but the body was too limp to maintain the required posture. Finally, he cradled him in his arms and, leaving his fishing gear behind, made his way up the bank and across the field toward his truck, his burden bobbing up and down, swaying with each stride across the uneven field.

He carefully got Benjamin into the cab of his pick-up and secured him with the seat belt. Relieved of the weight, the doctor’s arms fell to his sides only to rise again involuntarily as they used to do when as a child he would stretch them across an open doorway to achieve just that sensation. Benjamin’s head flopped over the top of the seat where the doctor let it remain while he wiggled his own fingers to restore circulation. When he repositioned the body to be more comfortable, it let out another of its gurgles, this one louder than those before. The doctor responded to that sound of urgency by spinning the wheels in the dirt and jerking the Chevy toward a destination he hadn’t thought to select.

The old man had to live nearby because there was no car beside the road or along the field with which he could have driven there. It was inconceivable that someone would have brought him and left him. Had there been houses along the road the doctor would have stopped at each until he found Benjamin’s, but there were no houses, there were only narrow dirt roads leading from the main road into heavily wooded areas. He reasoned that he probably lived on one of those roads back in the woods where it would take a long search to find the house. If he lived alone there would be no one to claim him and take him in and care for him. Even had there been, little could have been done for the man there. He was too sick for home care.

Dr. Vaughan decided to go directly to a hospital. He preferred his own, but two things militated against it: it was thirty miles to the south, and Benjamin’s physician, Dr. Lally, didn’t practice there. There was a hospital of sorts in the village of Spafford some ten or twelve miles to the north. That’s where he would take the old Yankee. If Lally practiced there, fine; if not, so be it.

His speed of fifty miles an hour was conservative given the urgency of the mission, but it was some feat considering the character of Route 6. Also known as the Seldom Road, Route 6 began at the town of Wick and followed the river for thirty-six tortuous miles to Mooseville where it turned inward and rose another eight miles to the mountain town of Seldom where, in late fall, intrepid leaf peepers would find for sale in Art Bailey’s general store T-shirts immortalizing the road with the emblazoned inscription, I Survived The Seldom Road! The forty-four-mile stretch had fifty-two one-lane bridges and was reputed to have two hundred and three hairpin, or near hairpin, turns. Tiny bridges crossed rivulets draining the mountain and spanned numerous small crevices unworthy of wending the road around. The serpentine road had been made to follow the larger crevices in and around and out again. The shoulders that existed were bad, and the potholes cast disgrace upon the towns in which they lay.

He negotiated the turns faultlessly as the old man alternated between flopping over onto him and then onto the door with each curve in the road. Dr. Vaughan took the first bridge without slowing down. It was a mistake that would be repeated twelve times before the trip was over. Benjamin began to slip through the seat belt and slide to the floor. Without slowing down, the doctor reached for his collar and reseated him with one hand. Benjamin, however, while constrained to suffer the indignity of having been snatched and denied his cherished appointment with death only to be jostled helplessly at the hands of a stranger, was not without recourse to avenge the transgression. The low gurgle in his throat intensified in small increments until it became a deep roar just as the pent up vomit rose up and out spilling over the driver’s lap where it eased down between his legs in a warm, dense mass.

The aroma hung in the truck like a thick humidity. Too heavy to be called sharp or pungent, too dull to be stench, and too subtle to be stink, it permeated the close confines smelling like human decay. There was just enough light for it to be seen on the driver’s lap. It looked like old coffee grounds, and the doctor knew its significance. It was blood, old blood from deep within. Blood from the mouth or lungs would be bright red, indicative of freshness, but blood from the stomach or lower gut would have been partially digested before being vomited. He rolled down the window and pushed the truck up to sixty.

He knew little about the hospital. He knew that at Spafford Four Corners there was a small sign pointing the way to a hospital. It couldn’t be much of a hospital; he seldom heard it mentioned, and he wasn’t aware of it having a pathologist. He didn’t care if it was an animal hospital, he just wanted to get Benjamin there before he expired. The tires screeched as he took the right turn indicated by the sign, and Benjamin flipped back against the door