Date: 2011-11-21 23:10:16+01:00

AVRAM DAVIDSON

BLUNT

Recent books of Mr. Davidsoh’s include The Boss in the Wall and the
upcoming

collections The Avram Davidson Treasury and The Investigations of Avram

Davidson.

HE HAD THE USUAL MOUNTAIN boyhood in one of those mountainous counties below the

Mason-Dixon
line -differing from most other such counties only in being one of

the few that regularly
voted Republican — where there was not much schooling;

but somewhere in the course of what
schooling there was, Huey P. Blunt read a

piece about yellow fever and the Panama Canal and
how one was conquered so the

other could be built, and he decided to be an Army doctor.

Someone {in after

years he tried to remember who first told him, but so many people had
agreed and

repeated it and everyone took it for granted it was correct} told him that the

way to do it was to enlist soon’s he was old enough and work his way up. Blunt

wasn’t
talkative and he was six months in the Army before anyone there knew of

his plans, and
before he learned what they were worth. What they were worth

officially, that is. He made
them worth something, after all, by an illegal

conversion of knowledge. He listened, he
watched, he read, he worked; and he

learned much. The Army Medical Corps taught him more
than it planned to. Blunt

had deft hands and a good memory.

After his enlistment expired he
went back to the hills, to his home country.

There was a very old man practicing medicine
there, his name was Elnathan

Wisonant, and he had never been to college either, having
picked up all his

knowledge of medicine as apprentice to his father, a “doctor” of similar
status.

At one time there were many practitioners of that kind around— it would not be

accurate
or fair to call them quacks -they represented an older tradition in

native medicine than
the A.M.A. -they supplied the only”care available at a time

when medical schools were few,
and not too well thought of, either. Gradually

they became extinct. For the last forty
years o[ his career old Wisonant had

been protected by a state law that exempted all those
in the trade at the time

the law was passed from having to meet the qualifications required
thereafter.

Blunt became his assistant, which meant that he very shortly took over most of

the hard work while old Wisonant sat by watching and advising, and speaking ill

of “college
doctors.”

“Horse-leeches,” he called them; “bumshavers, quacksalvers, peddlers of snake

oil
and pink aspirin.

“A trust, a vile and contemptible monopoly, a guild of grave robbers
aping their

betters among the natural philosophers,” he would snarl.

One morning the old
phlebotomist was found on the floor of his office, white

beard pointing to the ceiling.

Although urged by the hill people to carry on and

the hell with them city doctors and their
laws, Blunt declined. Roads were

coming into the hills, and automobiles. The day the old
man was buried from the

little church of the Foot-Washing Baptists, Blunt was approached by
the only

representative of Big Business in’ the county, the manager of a lumbering outfit

that was winding up operations, there being no forests left worth ravaging.

“We can use you
out in . ,” he said, naming a western state.

“You know I haven’t got a license,” Blunt
said. The lumberman’s reply was brief

and obscene.

“Can you set a broken leg? That’s what
counts,” he continued.

On the advice of the lumberman Blunt went out to the western state
and told the

company’s hiring agent that he was a former medical student whom lack of

finances
had forced out of school. His story, enriched with details from the

gossip of the Army
doctors, sounded reasonable; but the company was not too

particular. Few doctors were
available [or the rough life of the logging camp,

and the supply of those whom liquor,
malpractice, or conviction for criminal

abortion made available was rather short at the
time. He spent several years in

the woods before he moved on.

Once, he bought an interest in
a small town drug store, chiefly to improve his

knowledge of pharmacy. He was not a
businessman, and when his partner took to

tapping both the till and the spiritus frumenti,

Blunt did not wait for the end,

but just walked out. There are agencies that never
advertise, as their business,

though needful, is illegal. Through one of them Blunt became
le docteur on a

sisal plantation in Haiti; he added, to the professional journals to which
he

subscribed, one on tropical medicine.

All that he did, he did with seriousness and
sincerity, and as much capability

as was possible under the circumstances — which was a
great deal more than the

medical monopolists could have afforded to admit, if they had ever
known about

him. They never did, of course, because he went to places that never saw them.

Unlike the woman of Valor, who {we are assured on the best authority], Laugheth

at the Time
to Come, Blunt never even thought about it. He was in British

Honduras when the European
war broke out, but paid it little attention until the

invasion of Denmark and Norway by a
people who might have eventually become

civilized, had the British in the early part of the
previous century not

prevented the French from continuing to civilize them. Something
stirred in the

heart of Huey P. Blunt as he read the accounts of the armed parachutists

dropping
from the troubled sky. He went back to the United States and enlisted

in the Navy.

So there
was Blunt at thirty-odd: big, balding, not very talkative, not much

booklearning, no
licenses, but a lot of practical experience for a Pharmacist’s

Mate, First Class. His
advancement in rating was indefinitely postponed because

he lacked the requisite six months
duty at sea or overseas required of chief

petty officers in “non-specialized” ratings. By
the Byzantine logic of the Navy,

a Pharmacist’s Mate, 1/c —who had to know First Aid,

Minor Surgery,

Anaesthesia, Materia Medica, Anatomy, Physiology, Nursing, Hospital

Administration,

Embalming, and so on -was not considered a specialist; while

Physical Culture instructors,
whose only duty and only qualification was the

ability to direct mass push-ups, were so
considered, and were rated CPOs en

bloc. In the ordinary course of an ordinary tour of duty
in the Hospital Corps a

Ph.M. 1/c would have been certain to get sea duty, and thus, a
rating as Chief.

But Blunt’s very competence undid him. He knew too much.

“I can’t spare
you, sorry,” Dr. West told him each time he put in for sea duty.

“Long’s they know he kin
do ever detail here and do it better than enna bodda

else, Ol’ Huey goin stay here” -Tester to Pawson.

“Ol’ Huey’s a mighty good man,” Pawson said, but neither the “Ol’ Huey”

or “the

mighty good man” indicated affection. No one liked Blunt, no one disliked Blunt,

no one told any stories about Blun;, there were none to tell. Blunt had no

personality. He
was not a character. He had no existence apart from his rank—

which he did not abuse -and his skill -which, by its greatness, baffled and

discouraged speculation. If orders came
in for a Ph.M. 1/c to be shipped out,

the SMO saw to it that another one was shipped. Once

Blunt, on leave, went to

Washington, and pulled strings, but Dr. West, when he saw Blunt’s
name on the

orders, pulled more strings; and was authorized to make a substitution. The

other

First Class Mate was older than Blunt, he was married and had two

children, but he knew
incomparably less and he was lazy and inefficient; and for

these failings was destined to
die while splashing his trembling and middle-aged

legs through the lukewarm waters of a
tropical beachhead.

But before that happened, Blunt had fallen in love.

Wilma Swansoh’s
family belonged to one of the several colonies of Yankees

settled in Cataline. Besides the
usual superannuated railroad men and retired

wholesale plumbing dealers, besides the
seekers after more sunshine and health,

there was a group drawn to Cataline by the presence
of a small denominational

college that Had a Good Name. At one time it had been Southern
terminus for the

Chatauqua Circuit. Retired clergymen, retired schoolteachers and
principals,

even retired deans and presidents of other denominational colleges ismalii, had

settled in Cataline so as to take advantage of its advantages.

Mrs. Swanson said that

Cataline had everything.

“There’s this lovely old town and those beautiful oak trees and

Spanish moss.

And the lovely flowers, all the year round. There’s Mullet Bay, and the St.

George River, and the ocean — lovely swimming and fishing and boating and water

games.

There’s Vallance Beach just a short ride away, and Seminole Springs.

There’s this lovely
little college and the intellectual atmosphere it creates

here. There are some lovely
people who winter here— call them Snowbirds, if you

will, but I say that some of them are
just lovely. As for the year-round people,

well, you just won’t find a lovelier community;
that’s all. And the Colored

People are simply lovable. That’s why I say that Cataline has
everything.”

Mr. Swanson backed her up in all this, but since he had Investments locally,

naturally, he saw things from another point of view as well.

“There’s your naval stores,”

Mr. Swanson said; “your turpentine and rosin.

There’s your citrus fruit. There’s your
lumber. There’s your real estate. And I

must add,” he added, “last but not by any means
least, there’s your Sunshine and

your Clean, Fresh Air.”

Wilma had gone to Cataline College
and graduated. She had majored in Domestic

Science, that being what the aptitude test had
suggested for her.

Somehow, no young man from a lovely family had ever offered to provide

Wilma

with the domesticity. Mr. Snyder, to be sure. Mr. Snyder, a fine Christian

gentleman,
had once hinted to Mr. & Mrs. Swanson that…but then, Mr. Snyder was

getting on in years,
he had low blood pressure and a married daughter …. No.

Wilma could do better than Mr.

Snyder, lovely man though he was. There was no

hurry. Mrs. Swanson had been much older than

Wilma when she married Mr. Swanson.

Wilma was a lovely cook and had such a warm
personality, and, really, when she

took off her glasses, you could see that she had lovely
gray eyes. Only she

seldom took them off because she couldn’t see very well without them.

So Wilma

stayed at home. Then, when the war started, she had so much wanted to Do

Something,
and it was really very fortunate in its way that Miss Olauson, who

was Dr. Wondermaker’s
nurse, had joined the Army. Of course, Wilma wasn’t really

a nurse, but she had her Red

Cross card in first aid, she made even the most

nervous patients feel at ease; and besides,
there just weren’t any nurses

available for Dr. Wondermaker. But Wilma learned very quickly
and Mrs.

Wondermaker said she real1y didn’t know what Doctor would do without her,

because
she (Mrs. Wondermaker) simply had her hands full with the children.

And there was no end to
the shock of the Swanson family when Dr. Wondermaker

tried to kiss Wilma one day, in his
office. Of course, she couldn’t stay after

that. Dr. Wondermaker insisted it was all a
misunderstanding, he regarded Wilma

almost as one of his own daughters; but of course, she
couldn’t stay after that.

Fortunately, in addition to the Domestic Science courses at

Cataline College,

Wilma had studied typing. She couldn’t take dictation, but she could
type; she

had typed all of Dr. Wondermaker’s records for him. Wilma got a job in the

office
of the Dispensary at the Naval Air Station. Mrs. Swanson said that some

of the sailor boys
were really just lovely, if you got to know them, came from

very fine families, really.

Besides, Chief Shillitoe worked in that office, and

he was a very fine man, really
lovely…

At first only Ribacheck showed any interest in the new office girl. The nurses

responded to her very openly expressed admiration for nurses, ‘but only

Ribacheck {at
first) showed any interest in her as a woman. Ribacheck belonged

notoriously to the Lowest

Common Denominator school of venery, and was therefore

interested in all women as women.

The other Corpsmen claimed to find a lack of

niceness in this. Ribacheck’s taste, they
said, was All in His Mouth. Of course,

Wilma was very polite to all the men, and when

Ribacheck smiled at her, she

smiled back. In fact, as his smiles grew warmer, she allowed
herself to look

into his record book in the files. She had never heard of Poynkers Mills,

New

Jersey, ‘listed as his home town. And, heavens! she couldn’t even pronounce his

mother’s
first name. Lutherans were all right, although not perhaps quite so

much as Methodists or

Presbyterians, but what on earth could a Slovak Lutheran

be? Growing more and more dubious,
she noted that Ribacheck had once been

operated on for a varicocele. Later on she looked up
the word in the little

Gould’s medical dictionary in the office. She blushed, even though
the

definition was far from explicit enough. Would a varicocele….? Or wouldn’t

it….?

There was, of course, no one she could ask. After that Ribacheck smiled

in vain.

And then,
one day, Blunt came into the office. Wilma didn’t realize it, because

she had taken off her
glasses to clean them; but she was looking up when he came

in, and smiling in his
direction. She really had lovely gray eyes. After that

Blunt came in the office rather
often. He was exceedingly shy with women, and

found it difficult to talk small talk with
them until he knew them well, but

Wilma was a bit shy herself.

Blunt, in short, began to
court her. Before long, they had an understanding.

Mrs. Swanson said that he was really a
very lovely person. So quiet, she said.

And really, an astonishing knowledge of medicine.

After all, a First Class

Pharmacist’s Mate was almost the same as a civilian doctor,
wouldn’t you say?

Mr. Swanson said that he was one of your steady young fellows. Seemed to
know

quite a bit about your lumber, too, Mr. Swanson said. Everything was going so

smoothly
that Blunt overcame his uncertainty as to the propriety of the

invitation, and asked Wilma,
while they were walking one afternoon near the

bungalow he rented in Cataline, if she would
care to just look the place over.

She said she would.

“I hired the place already furnished,”

Huey said, leading the way. “Some of the

things are real pretty,” he said, waving his arm
at large. Wilma looked at the

pink cloth lampshades with beaded fringes, the heavy red
portieres hanging from

wooden rings.

“Mmm-hmm,” she murmured.

“But this house, like every
house, it needs a Woman’s Touch,” he said. Wilma’s

heavy cheeks turned a deeper pink.

“Oh, a
house does, it does!” she said fervently.

Huey stopped in from of a closed door. He stood
with the key in his hand and

half turned to face her.

“Now I’m going to show you something
that I haven’t ever showed another person

here before. You’re the very first, Wilma.” Her
face burned. She looked at the

faded and threadbare .carpet. She heard the key in the lock
and the click of the

light switch, and followed his feet inside. She had to take off her
glasses and

wipe her eyes.

“…and a woman who has, besides, a Scientific Background…”

Putting
back her glasses, she saw opposite her a shelf with a row of little

bottles, each one
containing something like a dried mushroom, only not quite

…. With a slight frown of
puzzlement she read the neatly typed labels.

Redund. Prep., Cumberback, Alonso T.,

Steward’s Mate 1/c

Redund.Prep., Williamson, Jno., Officer’s Cook, 3/c

Lost in pride, Blunt
fell silent and looked at his collection. Row after row,

shelf after shelf, of bottles and
jars, lined the large closet. In cold glass

wombs that would forever preserve but never
nurture them, floated homunculi, in

every stage of development up to the sixth month -after that they were always

claimed, though burial (Blunt thought} was a foolish waste.

Nobody ever asked

for an appendix; there must have been over a hundred of them. There were

tonsils, tumors, fingers, a few ears, a whole foot, several eyes. Swaying gently

in
response to distant vibration was something like a bunch of grapes, labeled

Youlihan, Bette

Lou. A shy smile on his lips, Huey reached out and touched with

a gentle finger a bottle
containing a twelve-foot tapeworm (Le Maistre,

Cleophile). He rested his hand
affectionately on a mason jar that held a scalp

of chestnut colored hair. He cleared his
throat.

“I don’t suppose that there’s another collection such as this in the whole

country,
in private hands,” he said, in his high, flat voice. “I was hoping…”

He took out a
handkerchief, spat onto a comer of it, and rubbed at a speck on a

bottle with a rather
faded-looking testicle in it.

“I was hoping that after we were married, after that, then I
was hoping that you

and me could sort of catalogue it all, together, Wilma…

“Wilma?”

He
walked rapidly through the bungalow with long strides.

“Wilma ? “

But Wilma was already on
the bus, bound, not for her home, but for the Station.

She rode in tight-mouthed
containment until the Nurses Quarters, where she

allowed herself to be helped off in a
state of convulsive hysteria. After being

drenched with aromatic spirits of ammonia, and
after weeping her dress and those

of the nurses tending her into quasi-transparency, she
retreated with cold

compresses to a darkened room. The nurses, who were fond of her, had
watched,

like everyone else at Sick Bay, the slow progress of the courtship. It was

certainly
not to be thought that Blunt, of all people, had made improper

advances; they thought that
he must have jilted the poor girl; they pressed

sympathetically for Details. They got them,
and the account of Wilma’s Terrible

Experiences strained through sobs and hiccups, spread
almost at once to Sick

Bay; and thence, to the Navy at large, gathering details at every
step…

(Pawson, for example, reported to Tester that “Ol’ Huey got a closet full o’

pickled
coilions, an’ a two-headed baby in a jar o’ formaldehyde!”)

“But what I want to know,” said

Doctor Wallop, “is she marrying him, or—?

Miss Stuart said, “According to her, Not If He’s
the Very Last Man on Earth.”

“‘She does not regard herself, nor yet wish to be regarded, in
that bony

light,’” Dr. Wallop murmured, sneaking his hand onto Miss Stuart’s kneecap. Miss

Stuart giggled.

Dr. Slide confided to Sam Mcintyre that he’d been on the point of
suggesting to

That Crazy Fool to join the Brethren, but not anymore.

A Bo’s’n’s Mate named

Blascovitch got roaring drunk and hammered at the door of

the bungalow one night, demanding
his appendix back.

Church and State, appealed to by Mr. Swanson To Do Something, declined
to do

anything. Chaplain Meyers, with a far-off look in his eye, said something about

Samson
in the Old Dispensation having made a similar collection. Chief of Police

Elsworth Smith
didn’t know of any law against it.

Blunt himself, vexed at the whole affair, put in for sea
duty once more, and Dr.

West once more refused to approve. Blunt, he patiently repeated,
was Much Too

Valuable a Man. Wilma, of course, couldn’t stay on after that. It seemed that

Huey was doomed once more to wander lonely as a cloud: but instead, he came into

his own,
at last, as a fully rounded “character”; a fabulous personality who was

known to and talked
about by everyone on the Station. In a matter of days he

became famous in Naval aviation
installations all along the coast and in bases

in Cuba, the Bahamas, and the West Indies.

Eventually his fame became a legend,

as it spread in widening circles, until he lost his
name and entered mythology.

The closet became part of it, too.

“This old Pay Clerk,” any
sailor you care to name might be saying in a bull

session, “was supposed to pay off the
whole Ship’s Company of this battle wagon

in dry dock. Only whiles he was coming aboard he
kind of stumbled and the whole

suitcase full of money fell open. Well, they pumped that dry
dock what I mean

dry, but they never could find only a part of the money. Course, he drew a

Court

and they retired him, but, funny thing, long about six months later he opened up

the
biggest damn bar and grill in Honolulu. And everybody was real surprised

because he never
had the reputation of being a saver. It just goes to show, you

never know.”

“Reminds me,”

someone else was sure to say, sooner or later, “of this old Chief

Pharmacist’s Mate, he —”

“Oh, yeah! Y’ mean the one who —”

“Hey, you wanna tell this story?…Well, like I was
saying..,

“And his wife,” the story wound up, “she took off an’ never come back; and they

say that she never would open another closet door again unless someone else was

in the
room! …. It just goes to show.”

But by that time Blunt had been obliged to hire Harold,
the Sick Bay porter, as

part-time houseman, because no Colored woman in Cataline would
enter his

bungalow — and indeed, they fled the streets for blocks around when he walked

or drove through town.

No one knew when he had started the collection. It may have begun in
some

mountain cabin filled with screams, or it may not. It could have been prompted

by a
curiosity that thought to answer mystery by amassing matter; or by a

personal idiosyncrasy
of no greater depth than one that brings some men to

collect stamps, old silver buttons, or
used trolley car transfers. Certainly, to

Blunt, each item was in its way an objet d’art.

And certainly he must have been

doing it for years without being — oh, not “caught” or

“detected” or

“discovered”: these words imply wrongdoing, and Blunt came as near to anger
as

anyone ever saw him, when he defended himself.

“People like you,” he said to Miss

Sweeting, who was trying, in her tortuous

way, to express Shock; “People like you Impede
the March of Science.”

Table of Contents

Start