Potter gave him that penetrating stare again. 'You sure you weren't
bitten or scratched? Because if you were, and if there's any reason at
all to suspect rabies, you should get to a doctor now and start the
vaccine right away, tonight--'
'I'm no fool,' Eduardo said. 'I'd tell
you if there was any chance I'd been infected.'
Potter continued to stare at him.
Looking around the surgery, Eduardo said, 'You really modernized the
place from the way it was.'
'Come on,' the veterinarian said, turning to the door. 'I have
something I want to give you.'
Eduardo followed him into the hall and through another door into
Potter's private office. The vet rummaged in the drawers of a white,
enameled-metal storage cabinet and handed him a pair of pamphlets-- one
on rabies, one on bubonic plague.
'Read up on the symptoms for both,' Potter said. 'You notice anything
similar in yourself, even similar, get to your doctor.'
'Don't like doctors much.'
'That's not the point. You have a doctor?'
'Never need one.'
'Then you call me, and I'll get a doctor to you, one way or the
other.
Understand?'
'All right.'
'You'll do it?'
'Sure will.'
Potter said, 'You have a telephone out there?'
'Of course. Who doesn't have a phone these days?'
The question seemed to confirm that he had an image as a hermit and an
eccentric. Which maybe he deserved. Because now that he thought about
it, he hadn't used the phone to receive or place a call in at least
five or six months. He doubted if it'd rung more than three times in
the past year, and one of those was a wrong number.
Potter went to his desk, picked up a pen, pulled a notepad in front of
him, and wrote the number down as Eduardo recited it. He tore off
another sheet of notepaper and gave it to Eduardo because it was
imprinted with his office address and his own phone numbers.
Eduardo folded the paper into his wallet. 'What do I owe you?'
'Nothing,' Potter said. 'These weren't your pet raccoons, so why
should you pay? Rabies is a community problem.'
Potter accompanied him out to the Cherokee.
The larches rustled in the warm breeze, crickets chirruped, and a frog
croaked like a dead man trying to talk.
As he opened the driver's door, Eduardo turned to the vet and said,
'When you do that autopsy ...'
'Yes?'
'Will you look just for signs of known diseases?'
'Disease pathologies, trauma.'
'That's all?'
