a toy store. He sat the bag down, took off the slicker and dropped it on the floor and the water pooled beneath it.
'What the fuck you doin' to my floor?' Bacon asked.
The doctor looked the place over, then looked at Bacon. 'Say what?'
'Yeah, well, all right,' Bacon said.
The doctor picked up his bag, and Bacon led him back to where Leonard lay. A moment later Bacon came from the bedroom and shut the door, said, 'He always was a dickhead. But he's a good doctor. Only lost a few dogs he's worked on, and they'd been hit real bad by cars. He do all right with horses too. He's had a lot of cats die on him, but I never did give a shit about the outcome of cats.'
'He's a veterinarian?'
'He do a little side work, it comes up. Only real black doctor lives fifty miles away, and I'll tell you now, in this rain, this being Grovetown, he wouldn't have come.'
'Great. A vet.'
Twenty minutes went by and the doctor came out of the bedroom with his big red plastic bag and sighed.
'How bad is he?' I asked.
'Looks hell of a lot worse than he is. Took a good beatin', but folks doin' it didn't do too special a job, all things considered. He's a tough sonofabitch, and he'll be all right. I worked on a hog like that once. Some kids climbed in a pen with a bunch of hogs, took baseball bats to 'em, but this old boar took a good beatin', got one of the kids down and ate part of his face 'fore the kid could get out of the pen.'
'So he'll be all right?'
'Not tomorrow, but he'll heal. Don't seem to have no real internal injuries, which surprises me.' 'He knows something about covering up, going with the flow,' I said. 'Experience.'
'I put his dick in his pants, by the way.'
'That's good,' Bacon said. 'Me and him wouldn't do it.'
'I wore gloves,' the doctor said. 'Well, let me look you over, whitey. Take off them duds.'
I could hardly rise off the couch. In fact, I couldn't. Bacon got hold of me and lifted me up. He smelled of fried foods and sweat. My muscles ached deeply and I felt ill to my stomach. Standing was the most painful thing I'd ever done next to paying taxes. I gingerly unbuttoned my shirt and the doctor helped me take it off. My skin had turned purple and black and green where I had taken shots from fists and feet. The lump on the side of my head hurt the worst.
The doctor poked and prodded, felt and looked. He said, 'That one there, that's a shoe caught you.'
'Reckon so,' I said. 'Can't say as I was takin' notes.'
'Take off your pants.'
I did. My balls were the color of plums going to rot and were doubled in size.
'You better get you some underwear,' the doctor said. 'These dudes swinging will make you see elephants.'
'I hear that,' I said. 'They aren't ruined are they?'
'No. They'll heal. Ought to get you some Epsom salts, put it in the tub with hot water and soak for an hour or so every day.' He looked at my head. 'This is really the worse shot you got. You have any memory loss?'
'I don't remember.'
'Ha. Ha,' the doc said. Nobody had a sense of humor anymore.
'Bacon, you watch him. He shows trouble remembering, repeating of phrases, then . . . well, I don't know. Give him a couple of aspirins, keep him awake.'
'Shit, man, he ain't my problem. I don't even know this guy.
He go to sleep and die, it ain't my fault. He die, it won't be on my head. I'll sleep like a lawyer. It wasn't me got him into this. Him and ole Swole Head in there is the one's crapped in their nest, not me.'
'Well, that's between you and him,' said the doc. 'He ain't none of my problem neither.'
'Sure I am,' I said. 'You're a man of medicine.'
'Just counts on animals. Someone found I was checkin' on you, they'd take my license. 'Sides, you seem all right to me.' He poked me in the ribs with his finger. 'That hurt?'
'Hell yeah.'
'Good. I'm through. You gonna live. Just stay out of trouble for a while. I tell you, both you boys, you the luckiest fellas I've seen. Ain't neither one of you look like much, but you're both tough as a roadhouse steak. The one in there, his head wasn't like that before the beatin' was it?'
'No.'
'Then he's tough, not just ugly. Y'all be all right. That's sixty dollars apiece.'
'Apiece?' I said. 'What do you charge dogs?'
'I don't charge them nothin', but their owners pay me sixty dollars apiece for a lookover like this.'
'We get anything for pain?'
'My sympathies and Bacon's aspirin. I can't be dolin' out medicine. I'm a vet.'
