Bryson City Secrets: Even More Tales of a Small-Town Doctor in the Smoky Mountains (8 page)

“What's that?”

Carl sat down on the bench and took off his boot and sock. My spirits fell when I saw the pus and drainage on the sock. As he pulled off the sock, I could see that the ball of his foot, just at the base of the great toe, harbored a deep ulcer replete with foul odor and drainage.

“Aw, Carl. How long's that thing been there?”

“Well, Doc, I don't rightly know. You know I can't feel very well down there on my feet.”

I looked up into my friend's eyes. “Carl, if we don't jump on this pretty quickly, you could lose your foot — or even your leg. This is a real serious problem.”

Carl nodded. “What will it take to fix it?”

“Well, since you live so far from the office, and since I think this may take some professional cleaning by our physical therapists two or three times a day, it might be best for you to be in the hospital for a few days. Can you handle it?”

Carl smiled. “Swain County Hospital has some of the best vittles in the county. Guess I could stay a bit. But only if you think it's really necessary.”

John was pulling his boat up to the dock next to us, and Carl and I stood. I tried to be stern with this gentle giant of a man. “Carl, this type of sore has killed some diabetics. How 'bout you come to the hospital tomorrow, and I'll get you admitted.”

Carl sat back down and pulled on his sock and boot. As he stood up he looked down at me and said, “Doc, I think the Great Spirit is usin' you in these parts. I've come to trust you. If you think it's best, I'll come to the hospital tomorrow. But only if the fish don't bite today.”

I smiled to myself as I hopped into John's boat. “What are the chances of that, my friend?”

Carl looked over at John, and his smile spread from ear to ear. “Doc, when you fish with Carswell, it's almost a 100 percent chance they ain't gonna bite!”

Walkingstick let out a deep belly laugh as John Carswell picked up a net and began to swing it at the huge man. “You get out of here, you big lug, before you cause me any more bad luck, you hear? Get on!”

As Carl walked away, his laugh continued to echo across the cove.

“It's a good day for the fish when Carswell and Larimore are feeding them!” he yelled over his shoulder. “See you tomorrow, Doc.”

Despite aggressive physical therapy and several surgical debridements of his foot ulcer, Carl's foot worsened and finally developed gangrene, which led to Ray's having to amputate Carl's right leg just below the knee. Carl had let the infection invade his system for too long; the damage had been irreparable. However, once his diabetes and blood pressure were controlled and the infection out of his system, Carl finally began to heal. The day we discharged him to Mountain View Nursing Home for therapy was one of great relief for me and the hospital staff. There were times during his hospital stay when we thought we might lose him.

The humor and laughter brought by Carl and the friends who visited him brightened up everyone's days. More often than not, when I did rounds on Carl, his wheelchair, straining under his weight and size, would be parked at the edge of the bed of a senior citizen or small child who had just been admitted. He would warn them which nurses he thought were mean and which were nice. He'd inform them about the days of the week that had the best food and caution them about dishes to avoid like the plague (he, like me, had a particular aversion for broccoli). And he was never above a prank or two on a well-selected doctor or staff member that would always bring a dose of hilarity to the hospital.

I've decided that friendship and laughter must be two of life's sweetest ingredients. My days in Bryson City provided both — in abundance. And for Carl Walkingstick they proved a healing potion more times than I can count.

chapter seven

FIRST-DAY MEMORY

I
remember it as if it were yesterday. I was six years old, and a week before school started, Mom had taken me shopping for school clothes and supplies. The excitement the night before that first day of school had been such that I could hardly sleep. My younger brothers would be staying home with Mom, because I was grown up now — and tomorrow was going be my first day at Highland Elementary School.

After breakfast, my mom walked with me to the end of the driveway, where we were joined by other neighborhood children. You could tell all the first-graders, as we were all accompanied by our moms. And no one's dad was there.

Then the yellow bus pulled up.

“Turn around, Walter Lee!” my mom instructed. “Now smile!”

I tried, but no smile came to my lips. So Mom snapped a picture of a somber-appearing little boy, standing in front of a yellow school bus, with the driver patiently waiting, as she would have to do at virtually every stop that day.

Back then, I had no idea how special that day was to my mom. I couldn't even begin to understand the whirlwind of emotions, hopes, and dreams that collided in her mind that day. I do remember seeing tears streaming down her cheeks as she kissed me good-bye. And I remember being
terribly
embarrassed by it all.

Now, I was no rookie at this school stuff. After all, I had spent the entire previous year at University Methodist Church's kindergarten class. Although I was looking forward to my first day there, I must admit I had been a bit nervous about the whole thing. When Mom dropped me off, I was escorted to the playground by one of the teachers.

“Go ahead and join the other children, Walter,” the teacher had instructed. “When you hear the bell ring, just follow the rest of the children. Some of them were in school here last year, so they can show you what to do.”

To me that was intimidating. Just about everyone else knew what they were doing but me! So I just bypassed the kids who were playing together on the equipment and walked to the back of the playground to play by myself in one of the sandboxes. I remember that the box had a toy bulldozer and truck — they were bright-yellow Tonka trucks. I was in sandbox heaven!

However, my time of bliss was soon interrupted. I was lost in my own little world until I felt a swat on the top of my head. I spun my head around to see a freckled, pigtailed blond girl standing on the corner of the sandbox, peering down at me in apparent disgust.

“Get out of my sandbox, boy!” she ordered, pointing the way she expected me to march.

I remember getting angry, but I slowly stood up, brushing the sand from the back of my shorts and turning to face her — nose to nose. And then, looking her straight in the eye, I meekly muttered, “OK.”

She smiled at her victory, and to my relief the bell went off, beckoning all of us to the classroom.

My next memory of that little girl was the day of the class photo. There were fourteen of us in that photo — ten boys and four girls. And the most unhappy girl in that photo was the pigtailed little blond, who had been instructed to sit by me. She scowled for that picture; I smiled. Payback time was sweet for five-year-olds!

That little girl and I grew up not too far from each other. We went to junior high school, high school, and college together. We eventually became best friends. And in 1973 we were married.

I still say “OK” when she tells me to move it.

Now here we were, husband and wife for eleven years, preparing our oldest for her first day of school. The shopping for school supplies had been dutifully completed at a local variety store. Both sets of grandparents and several uncles and aunts had called to extend to Kate their best wishes with regard to this auspicious occasion.

And, bless their hearts, Pastor Ken Hicks and his wife, Tina, dropped by for a visit the evening before, and they said a special prayer of blessing for Kate as they “commissioned” her to “go into the world.”

Even Scott chipped in by making sure everyone was up an hour before the alarm was set to go off so that we'd have plenty of time for, as he put it, “our last breakfast together before Kate went off to school.” He also volunteered to wear Kate's new school backpack for her as we left the house — with KATE L. printed in red marker on white tape across the back. “Katel.” I remember thinking. “It has a nice ring to it” — and it would soon become one of Kate's nicknames.

As Barb held Kate's and Scott's hands, our family walked to the end of the driveway. The children talked and laughed, and I found myself smiling and watching — knowing that this was a moment worthy of a mental picture.

My grandfather Larimore had taught me the incredible value of what he called “mental photographs.” He told me about how he and my grandmother, too poor to be able to afford a camera early in their marriage, simply agreed, whenever they were experiencing a “Kodak moment,” to give each other a little nonverbal signal and then focus on the object of their attention or observation — “snapping” a mental photo they would keep for life.

Barb and I had taken a series of mental Kodachromes at our wedding, and we've been pleasantly surprised to learn how vivid these cerebral snapshots have remained through the years. But the most pleasant surprise was the experience of the sensations, thoughts, smells, and feelings that had accompanied that
exact
moment of each picture and how each was preserved in our mind, along with the mental picture.

On each of our wedding anniversaries, we would replay each of those pictures and laugh at the goose bumps that we each experienced again.

At Kate's birth, one of my fellow interns who had come into the delivery room to photograph the grand event forgot to remove the lens cap of the camera. When the film was taken to be developed, we had no pictures at all — nothing but black negatives. Had it not been for our mental pictures, our record of Kate's delivery would have many, many holes in it.

So it should come as no surprise that as we stood at the end of the driveway, my thoughts turned to taking some family pictures with our minds, as Barb devotedly took a series of standard 35mm pictures. I was so grateful to be there and so thankful to have, even today, pictures of my oldest child — the kinds of pictures that my dad didn't have of me.

Then the yellow bus pulled up. As it stopped, Kate leaped toward the door as it opened.

“Turn around, Katherine Lee!” Barb commanded, as I reheard in my mind's ear what my mom had said twenty-six years earlier. “Now smile!” both moms exclaimed — my mom in a dusty old memory and Kate's mom in a memory being formed at that moment.

Kate tried, as I had so long ago, to smile, but no smile came to her lips. I saw her lips quiver slightly as her mom snapped a picture of a somewhat somber-appearing little girl heading off to her first day in kindergarten while the bus driver patiently waited — as my bus driver had done so long ago. “It must be part of bus driver training,” I thought, “waiting at every stop on the first day of school, each and every year, for moms and dads to take pictures.”

At that moment, I became aware of just how special that day had been for my mom. And for the first time I began to understand that windstorm of emotions, hopes, and dreams that had collided in her mind that day — as they now collided in mine. I felt sad that my dad had missed that auspicious event in the life of our family — and deeply grateful that I could be there for ours.

I began to feel the hot tears cascade down my cheeks as I blew a kiss at my precious child. And I remember being
terribly
embarrassed by it all.

Thinking back on that moment, I now realize I should not have been.

The tears a dad spills, or should spill, for his most precious gifts are never lost, never wasted, and they should never cause awkwardness or chagrin. They are, or at least should be, one of the markers, I believe, that point to when a man has become a real man, an authentic man — one whose heart is tender toward his family, one who suddenly realizes that his child's separation from him has just begun.

At that moment, for the first time I realized that one day this little one would leave for good and cleave to another.