Bryson City Secrets: Even More Tales of a Small-Town Doctor in the Smoky Mountains (6 page)

“Two things, Walt. The first is they don't stop at just taking hogs, but they'll take bear, deer, or other wildlife almost anytime at all. The other thing that just grates me is how they do it. They'll sneak up late at night and check all our traps until they find one with a hog inside. Now I know this is hard to believe, but apparently one or more of them will climb into the cage with the hog, wrestle them down, duct-tape their legs, and carry them out of the woods like a sack of taters. We have
no
idea how they do it. We don't know if they're high on drugs or just crazy. You've gotta understand these are
huge
pigs, often weighing more than two or three hundred pounds. They can snap a man's arm bone like a candy cane. The best I can tell is that at least one of these fellas is as strong as a bear and has no fear of anything — certainly not of rangers or wild hogs. And just to mess with us, they always leave a little sign behind as their trademark. They take some duct tape and spell out the letters S-A-T-A-N on the side of the metal trap.”

“What does
that
mean?”

“We're not real sure. But I've got my suspicions. From time to time we'll find evidence of a fire and animal sacrifices up at Bryson Place — a clearing up the Deep Creek Valley — and in a couple of other areas. Some of the rangers wonder if we've got some sort of weird religion operating in the area — given what appear to be ritualistic killings and the use of the name Satan.”

“Son, you said you lost
two
last night. Did ‘Satan' beat you twice in one night?” asked Doc John.

John Jr. grinned sheepishly. “Pop, I was hopin' you wouldn't ask, especially in front of the doc.”

“Well, now you've gotta tell it all. You know I can't stand a secret.”

“Pop, you remember that new ranger who transferred to the park a few months ago?”

“If I recall correctly, you said he had a face that only a mother could love, and every time he opened his mouth to talk he usually stuck both feet in it.”

John Jr. laughed. “You got it. His name is Randall. Walt, I don't mean to be rude, but Ranger Randall really does scare little children and even some grownups. There's no other way to say it. He's ugly —
bad
ugly.”

“OK,” Doc John interjected, “but what's this got to do with your second loss of the night?”

“I'm gettin' to it, Pop. Just hold on.” John took a deep breath and then looked quickly around to be sure no one was listening. He lowered his voice and continued. “Last night we trapped two hogs, but the Satan gang only found the one
cage. We decided we should bring the second hog back to the ranger station for safekeeping. It was embarrassing enough to lose one hog to them, but I'd be dipped if I would lose this one too.”

“Don't you usually just take them somewhere else and let them loose?” I asked.

“Not until we let the state wildlife folks know — and get their go-ahead. So while we're waiting to hear from them, we really do try to take good care of these hateful, dog-killing animals, even if we do wanna get 'em all out of the park.”

John took another sip of coffee and then continued. “Walt, it's just like you take care of patients you don't particularly like. That's how we took care of this hog. We gave it some water and covered the cage with a tarp. We did this so the disgusting ole hog wouldn't overheat in the sun or pound his head into the cage in an attempt to escape.”

“What's this gotta do with Randall?” asked Doc John.

“Pop, it was at this point that Randall drove up in his pickup and wanted to take a peek at our catch. Ranger Randall slowly lifted the tarp and stuck his ole ugly face up to the cage. I swear that hog recoiled back when his beady eyes caught a glimpse of Randall's face. That hog had seen many an ugly face with its brothers and sisters, but I don't think any of them compared to what it had just seen. Ranger Randall snorted, and I promise you that hog backed up against the back of the cage, cowering in fear.”

Doc John and I were laughing so hard that other folks in the store looked over to see what the ruckus was all about.

John, smiling, continued. “Then Randall lowered the tarp back and drove off in his truck.”

As our laughter subsided, John said, “Pop, I know you're not going to believe this, and Walt, you're gonna call me a bald-faced liar, but what I'm gonna tell you is true. A few minutes after Randall peered in on that hog, I went back to check on it. When I lifted the tarp, I found that poor ole thing fallen over dead. There wasn't a wiggle or snort left in it.”

“You're a fibbin'!” Doc John exclaimed.

“Am not, Pop! I couldn't figure out what had happened. One minute the hog was full of hate and energy — the next minute stone-cold expired. Now I'm no doctor, but I've never seen anything more alive and healthy than that critter. Then within minutes after Randall looked at it, it fell over dead. That's the honest truth.”

“You think that hog was just overheated or dehydrated?” I asked, still convinced John was getting ready to pull my leg.

“Walt, I wondered the same thing. But it was a cool morning, and we'd given it plenty of water to drink. To tell the truth, I think that hog was already plum fearful. Then when that poor ole pig was forced to come face-to-face with Randall and his ugly face, it simply fell over dead from fright. There's no other answer. Pure terror killed that wild animal.”

Doc John and I smiled and gave each other a glance indicating that both of us were still suspicious.

“Well, Son, aren't you worried what the chief ranger is going to say when he hears you lost two hogs in one night?”

“See, Pop, that's the difference between you and me.”

John Jr. paused to finish his coffee.

“What?” inquired Doc John.

Ranger Mattox grinned. “I'm a thinker.”

“When'd you start doing that, Son?” Doc John quipped.

“When I tell the chief my new plan for getting rid of all the hogs in the park without using one cage or firing one shot, he's gonna promote me and give me a big reward.”

“How do you figure that?” I asked.

“I'm gonna take a picture of Randall's face and make hundreds of copies on totally biodegradable paper. Then I'll pay Leroy to take me up in the park plane and drop these pictures all over the park. Each time a hog sees one of these pictures, it's gonna fall over dead. We'll soon be rid of all these mean critters. Dogs and mere mortals will thank me forever. I'll be a legend!”

Doc John and I laughed again.

“Son,” Doc John commented as he stood up, “I think you
are
going to be a legend.”

“You do?”

“Yep,” laughed Doc John. “A legend in your own mind.”

As Doc John walked away from the table, I turned back to his son. “John, what does the park do with that meat?”

John Jr. looked over at Kate, who was finishing her bacon biscuit. “Katie, is that about the best bacon you've ever had?”

Kate looked up at the ranger and just nodded.

“Ever wonder why Mom and Pop have the best tasting bacon this side of Asheville?” John asked as he started to get out of the booth.

“You're not telling me your mom and dad serve Russian boar bacon, are you?” I asked.

John smiled as he stood up and straightened his uniform. “Walt, those of us sworn to uphold law and justice as employees of the government of these here United States of America simply cannot release highly classified information to the public.”

“You've got to be kidding me, John!”

Mattox pulled on his cap as he walked away. “Good day, Doctor. See you, Miss Kate.”

“This
is
good bacon!” Kate exclaimed.

I just smiled. I was sure I'd have a limp for the rest of the day the way my leg had just been pulled.

chapter five

AROMATHERAPY

A
s I drove down the driveway from our little green house, I wondered how long it would be before we were in a new home. Barb and I had located a couple of beautiful pieces of property we were considering for purchase. We both felt we needed more room — especially because we were hoping to add a new Larimore to the clan.

On Christmas Day of 1981, our first year in Bryson City, our second child, Scott, had been born. The next spring, Rick and I moved into our new office building, about seventy-five yards from the hospital. Our practice, primarily geared to the medically indigent and uninsured, was funded by the state as part of a North Carolina Rural Health Association grant. The formation of Mountain Family Medicine Center had, initially unbeknownst to us, created a fair amount of jealousy among the older established doctors in the community. Our modern and somewhat luxurious — at least by local standards — medical building was designed for expansion, which we later realized was incorrectly interpreted by some of the older doctors as our nonverbal and not-so-subtle message that the state had brought us in to push them out — or that we had recruited the state's help to push them out. Consequently, doctors that we had been told were planning to retire when we moved to town dug in their heels and decided that retirement was not in their foreseeable future — at least that was the rumor on the street.

In actuality, even
if
the older doctors had said to someone that they hoped to retire soon, I came to doubt that any of them ever actually would. The reason was simple. Doctors of that era were wedded to medicine in ways that younger doctors simply were not. For the older generation, long hours and little vacation time were part and parcel of the job. The fact that Rick and I took four weeks of vacation a year was anathema to most of them. That we would limit our number of office visits each day was an abomination. And letting our staff go home early enough so they could be with their families for dinner was generally viewed with abhorrence.

But today I was looking forward to leaving the hassles of work behind to drive the forty miles of winding road along the south shore of Fontana Lake out to Fontana Resort. My friend and fishing partner John Carswell was the director of security at the resort, and I was looking forward to having a predawn breakfast at his house before heading
out on the lake to do some fishing with him. His wife, Priscilla, and their two kids had shown me the best in country hospitality more than once.

The combination of smells that swirled around me in the Car-swell kitchen was both wonderful and overwhelming — and distinctly different from the moderately malodorous medical politics I had left behind in Bryson City. My nose, like that of a bloodhound's, fixed on a particular smell I initially couldn't place. Try as I might to listen to John sharing all of the local gossip in a flurry of paragraphs, my mind was racing as I tried to identify this particular smell — one that was arousing decades-old memories.

Before I could consciously identify the aroma that was piquing my intrigue, something about the backside of Mrs. Carswell, the kitchen, and the smells transported me to a buried childhood memory. Out of my subconscious arose a memory that I could simultaneously feel and smell — intensely warm and welcome.

I was instantly transported back in time to Springfield, Illinois, on a family vacation to my maternal grandmother's home. I couldn't have been more than five years old. I was sitting in another small kitchen at another kitchen table — this one with a red-and-white- checked tablecloth — drinking a tiny cup of chocolate milk. I remember feeling loved and welcome and somewhat manly, for some reason. Maybe grandmothers do that to little boys.

Bernice, as she was called, was facing the stove. She was not just a large woman; she was huge — in fact, monstrous to a five-year- old.

“Phil and Mac, Jack and Marty, Billy [referring to my mom and dad, uncle and aunt, and younger brother], you all better get in here! Breakfast is ready, now!” she had bellowed.

She then giggled to herself, as she was wont to do. I can still see her turning toward me. I was able to feel her smile before I saw it — a radiant, heartfelt, ear-to-ear smile. She had lumbered over to the table with a plateful of fried eggs. “Walter Lee — ” (I hated to be called by my middle name, and if anyone else did it, I felt belittled and small, but she did it all the time and somehow made me feel good when she did. If there had been a grandmother's school, she would have graduated summa cum laude!).

“Walter Lee,” she repeated, “I sure hope you're hungry. I've been cooking since dawn, and just for you.”

She bent over and pinched my cheek, and she did it in a way that didn't provoke my usual five-year-old ire to such shenanigans — she could do it in love and get away with it every time. As she shuffled back to the oven, I looked down and saw the source of the shuffling sound. Immense feet housed in equally enormous pink bedroom slippers plodded across the kitchen.

It was then that I smelled it.
That
smell — warm and wonderful, sweet and powerful. Grandma approached the oven, and then she opened the oven door. The aroma exploded across the room, nearly knocking me off my chair. Homemade bread! Not just any homemade bread, but that yeasty, old-fashioned homemade bread that, as far as I was concerned, only a grandmother could make.

As Grandma pulled out the bread pans, she smiled as she held a pan up and breathed in the magnificent, glorious aroma.

“Walter Lee,” she had nearly whispered, as she looked over the top of the loaf and down at me, “this is heaven distilled into a pan. And son, I've made it just for you. Because
you
, my young man, have what it takes. I can only imagine how proud your dad must be of you. You're a mighty fine youngin'.” She was more uplifting and heartening than she could have ever imagined — at least to a small boy who savored words of affirmation.

As she turned to put the pan on the kitchen counter, she laughed and laughed, with the laughter literally rolling in waves down her body. I've never forgotten her laugh. I still smile as I think about it — and her. She was my first model of overflowing goodness — not in any sort of religious or theological sense — but just in the overflow of her joy into my life. She never complained or argued. She was blameless and pure, and she always looked out for the good in me and my brothers. As the Good Book teaches so very clearly, “Gray hair is a crown of splendor; it is attained in the way of righteousness.” To me, as a little boy, she became my first model of righteousness.