At this moment Dr. Ravenel brought his Hudson to a halt across the street before the Post Office, and walked over rapidly, drawing his gauntlets off. He was bareheaded; his silver aristocratic hair was thinly rumpled; his surgical gray eyes probed restlessly below the thick lenses of his spectacles. He had a famous, calm, deeply concerned face, shaven, ashen, lean, lit gravely now and then by humor.
“Oh Christ!” said Coker. “Here comes Teacher!”
“Good morning, Hugh,” he said as he entered. “Are you going into training again for the bughouse?”
“Look who’s here!” McGuire roared hospitably. “Deadeye Dick, the literary sawbones, whose private collection of gallstones is the finest in the world. When d’jew get back, son?”
“Just in time, it seems,” said Ravenel, holding a cigarette cleanly between his long surgical fingers. He looked at his watch. “I believe you have a little engagement at the Ravenel hospital in about half an hour. Is that right?”
“By God, Dick, you’re always right,” McGuire yelled enthusiastically. “What’d you tell ’em up there, boy?”
“I told them,” said Dick Ravenel, whose affection was like a flower that grew behind a wall, “that the best surgeon in America when he was sober was a lousy bum named Hugh McGuire who was always drunk.”
“Now wait, wait. Hold on a minute!” said McGuire, holding up his thick hand. “I protest, Dick. You meant well, son, but you got that mixed up. You mean the best surgeon in America when he’s not sober.”
“Did you read one of your papers?” said Coker.
“Yes,” said Dick Ravenel. “I read one on carcinoma of the liver.”
“How about one on pyorrhea of the toenails?” said McGuire. “Did you read that one?”
Harry Tugman laughed heavily, not wholly knowing why. McGuire belched into the silence loudly and was witlessly adrift for a moment.
“Literature, literature, Dick,” he returned portentously. “It’s been the ruin of many a good surgeon. You read too much, Dick. Yon Cassius hath a lean and hungry look. You know too much. The letter killeth the spirit, you know. Me—Dick, did you ever know me to take anything out that I didn’t put back? Anyway, don’t I always leave ’em something to go on with? I’m no scholar, Dick. I’ve never had your advantages. I’m a self-made butcher. I’m a carpenter, Dick. I’m an interior decorator. I’m a mechanic, a plumber, an electrician, a butcher, a tailor, a jeweller. I’m a jewel, a gem, a diamond in the rough, Dick. I’m a practical man. I take out their works, spit upon them, trim off the dirty edges, and send them on their way again. I economize, Dick; I throw away everything I can’t use, and use everything I throw away. Who made the Pope a tail-bone from his knuckle? Who made the dog howl? Aha—that’s why the governor looks so young. We are filled up with useless machinery, Dick. Efficiency, economy, power! Have you a Little Fairy in your Home? You haven’t! Then let the Gold Dust Twins do the work! Ask Ben—he knows!”
“O my God!” laughed Ben thinly, “listen to that, won’t you?”
Two doors below, directly before the Post Office, Pete Mascari rolled upward with corrugated thunder the shutters of his fruit shop. The pearl light fell coolly upon the fruity architecture, on the pyramided masonry of spit-bright winesaps, the thin sharp yellow of the Florida oranges, the purple Tokays, sawdust-bedded. There was a stale fruity odor from the shop of ripening bananas, crated apples, and the acrid tang of powder; the windows are filled with Roman candles, crossed rockets, pinwheels, squat green Happy Hooligans, and mutilating Jack Johnsons, red cannoncrackers, and tiny acrid packets of crackling spattering firecrackers. Light fell a moment on the ashen corpsiness of his face and on the liquid Sicilian poison of his eyes.
“Don’ pincha da grape. Pinch da banan’!”
A streetcar, toy-green with new Spring paint, went squareward.
“Dick,” said McGuire more soberly, “take the job, if you like.”
Ravenel shook his head.
“I’ll stand by,” said he. “I won’t operate. I’m afraid of one like this. It’s your job, drunk or sober.”
“Removing a tumor from a woman, ain’t you?” said Coker.
“No,” said Dick Ravenel, “removing a woman from a tumor.”
“Bet you it weighs fifty pounds, if it weighs an ounce,” said McGuire with sudden professional interest.
Dick Ravenel winced ever so slightly. A cool spurt of young wind, clean as a kid, flowed by him. McGuire’s meaty shoulders recoiled burlily as if from the cold shock of water. He seemed to waken.
“I’d like a bath,” he said to Dick Ravenel, “and a shave.” He rubbed his hand across his blotched hairy face.
“You can use my room, Hugh, at the hotel,” said Jeff Spaugh, looking at Ravenel somewhat eagerly.
“I’ll use the hospital,” he said.
“You’ll just have time,” said Ravenel.
“In God’s name, let’s get a start on,” he cried impatiently.
“Did you see Kelly do this one at Hopkins?” asked McGuire.
“Yes,” said Dick Ravenel, “after a very long prayer. That’s to give power to his elbow. The patient died.”
“Damn the prayers!” said McGuire. “They won’t do much good to this one. She called me a low-down lickered-up whisky-drinking bastard last night: if she still feels like that she’ll get well.”
“These mountain women take a lot of killing,” said Jeff Spaugh sagely.
“Do you want to come along?” McGuire asked Coker.
“No, thanks. I’m getting some sleep,” he answered. “The old girl took a hell of a time. I thought she’d never get through dying.”
They started to go.
“Ben,” said McGuire, with a return to his former manner, “tell the Old Man I’ll beat hell out of him if he doesn’t give Helen a rest. Is he staying sober?”
“In heaven’s name, McGuire, how should I know?” Ben burst out irritably. “Do you think that’s all I’ve got to do—watching your licker-heads?”
“That’s a great girl, boy,” said McGuire sentimentally. “One in a million.”
“Hugh, for God’s sake, come on,” cried Dick Ravenel.
The four medical men went out into the pearl light. The town emerged from the lilac darkness with a washed renascent cleanliness.
