American Boy. Larry Watson

Dr. Dunbar was to be forgiven for this response. I’d wanted to know about the accident itself, but he’d answered according to how his profession interpreted curiosity. “Do you know where your spleen is?”

      I shook my head. Dr. Dunbar reached over and pressed three fingers against my abdomen. He poked hard to impress me with that area’s softness and vulnerability, and to make certain I understood what he was telling me.

      “His spleen ... ruptured?”

      “The spleen’s job,” he explained, “is to filter out impurities in the blood. It’s enclosed in a thin capsule, and when that capsule ruptures, blood rushes into the abdominal cavity. When that happens, no one can survive for long.”

      Then he subtly shifted from a physician’s rough tour of anatomy to a family friend’s gentle rub. “I’m sorry, Matthew. Your father thought the world of you. He was a good man. We’ll all miss him.” Did Dr. Dunbar know these things to be true of my father, or was he simply trying to help me feel better?

      Dr. Dunbar’s strategy for breaking the news about my father’s death was unusual, but it worked as well as anything could. Detailing that fatal injury had the simultaneous—and paradoxical—effect of hitting me hard with the stark fact of his death and diffusing the force of that blow. With my stomach still tender from the pressure of the doctor’s fingers, I had to concentrate on the physical reality of death, and that diverted me momentarily from thinking about what life would be like without my father. And then on some level I was also flattered that Dr. Dunbar believed I was mature and intelligent enough to handle the hard fact of death along with its complicated physiology.

      Dr. Dunbar waited another moment to make sure of my composure, and then said, “Why don’t you get up now. Your mother needs you.”

      With Dr. Dunbar’s hand resting gently on my shoulder, we moved into the living room, where my mother sat quietly weeping. Her brother was there too, and as I walked into my mother’s arms, in the instant before my own tears commenced, I looked over at my uncle and thought, I know where the spleen is.

      Had Dr. Dunbar already seen something in me before that night, something that led him to conclude I had promise as a physician? And when I took the news of my father’s death without wincing, did he realize that I might have the ability to perform a doctor’s most difficult task—to look into someone’s eyes and give them the hardest news they could ever get? Or had I impressed him with my question about the spleen, suggesting a curiosity that could not be quelled even in the darkest moment?

      Whenever our “education” began, Johnny and I were well embarked on our unofficial course of study by the time we were teenagers. In fact, if patients consented, we were occasionally allowed to be present during a treatment or examination. When June Dunbar complained of an earache, for example, Dr. Dunbar let us look through the otoscope, and pointed out the swollen red membrane that indicated an ear infection. And he once summoned us to the clinic to witness him taking a swab of Betty Schaeffer’s niece’s throat, in order to determine if she had strep throat. Harold Schmitke gave us permission to watch while Dr. Dunbar put four stitches in Mr. Schmitke’s forehead, repairing the damage done by a storm window that had slipped from his hands. We listened to many heartbeats and breaths both deep and shallow; we tapped knees with rubber hammers and attached blood-pressure cuffs; we took pulses and temperatures and watched blood be drawn; we looked at x-rays and learned to see broken bones and lungs with pneumonia. Most of Willow Falls came to refer to us as “Dr. Dunbar’s boys,” and regarded our medical ambitions with tolerance and amusement.

      The vast majority of Dr. Dunbar’s instruction came in conversation rather than in the presence of patients. “I saw something today,” he might say, “that I haven’t encountered in years.” Then, the hook set, he’d tell us about a patient’s bulging eyes, and how they tipped him off to a thyroid condition. Or, shaking his head, he would remark, “I was afraid that finger would have to come off,” and go on to explain the circulatory problems a diabetic could face. And he once held up his hand for a long moment before describing exactly what that hand felt as he palpated an abdomen and felt the mass that led to the discovery of the tumor that killed Mr. Jensen.

      But a bullet wound! Bullet wounds were the stuff of movies and television, and then Louisa Lindahl had not accidentally shot herself while cleaning a weapon—she was the victim of a crime! I couldn’t help but think that we were about to be part of something glamorous and mysterious. And as we followed Dr. Dunbar toward his clinic, I considered the status I’d have at school, with my insider’s knowledge of the event all of Willow Falls would be talking about.

      As he opened the door to the clinic, the doctor said, “The deputy’s search party found her stumbling along Highway K. Doubled over and bleeding and nearly frozen from being out in the cold in nothing but a thin dress. I wasn’t sure whether it was more urgent to treat her for the gunshot wound or for frostbite.”

      The clinic consisted of a reception area and three small examination rooms, and Dr. Dunbar led us toward the only lighted room. Dr. Dunbar had turned up the heat to thaw out Miss Lindahl, and the corridor was dark and warm.

      “Is the deputy here?” Johnny asked.

      “He’s back at the jail. Interrogating the assailant. He’ll be back later if she’s up to answering questions.”

      In the open doorway, I had my own moment of hesitation. The blood trail that we couldn’t find in the woods was evident now, quarter- and nickel-sized drops dried to a dusty burgundy led to the examination table, where an unconscious woman lay beneath a bright lamp. She was covered with a sheet and a blanket, but her head, neck, and shoulders were bare.

      For a moment, I wondered if Dr. Dunbar had invited us into the clinic not to give us a lesson about bullet wounds, but rather to teach us about death. The young woman’s flesh was beyond pale. It was marmoreal, and I couldn’t help but think that I was looking at a corpse. And then I recognized her. For while the name Louisa Lindahl was unknown to me, the face was not.

      Burke’s Pharmacy was a popular after-school spot in town, and this young woman worked at its soda fountain, scooping ice cream, mixing phosphates, pouring Cokes, and dodging the straw wrappers frequently blown her way. She wasn’t much older than the teenage patrons, but she showed no interest in us except as customers.

      She was tall, slender, and pretty in a way unfamiliar to most of us. She wore no makeup, but her luminous skin and excellent bone structure made the lipstick and eye shadow that the girls our age had begun to wear unnecessary. Her neck was long, and her jaw was delicate but square. Her chestnut hair was not tightly pin-curled or overly coiffed, but simply tied back or piled on top of her head without regard to style or fashion. She wore faded print dresses that looked as if they came out of a grandmother’s closet, though these dresses must have been a smaller person’s hand-me-downs, for they always looked a bit too tight, and the hems and sleeves too short. And yet along with an element of aloofness, her austere, gray-eyed loveliness gave her a refined, almost aristocratic appearance, at least to my small-town eyes. These contradictions fascinated me—not only the shabby attire coupled with her regal beauty, but also the good looks with no apparent attempt to adorn or enhance them. And then there was the fact that she was a waitress, but seemed completely indifferent to pleasing people....

      No matter how those of us boys sitting at the soda fountain teased or interrogated her (the girls pretended not to notice her), she wouldn’t say much of anything beyond what her work required. And she always refused to disclose where she was from or why she had come to our town. She even resisted the entreaties and flirtations directed her way by more accomplished suitors. I was sitting at the counter one Friday afternoon, when Rick Carver took his best shot. Rick had graduated from Willow Falls High a few years before, and he was known for scoring both on and off the basketball court. Tall, blond, and possessed of an irresistible smile, Rick attended Augustana College on a scholarship, but he came home occasionally to mingle with mortals. On that day, however, he might as well have been a stammering high school freshman. After trying repeatedly to attract her interest, he finally resigned himself to failure, spun off his stool, softly cursed, and walked out of Burke’s. She didn’t even watch him go, and