have to do, Luke thought. I can only hope they’re truly clean.
He looked around at the gaggle of onlookers at the fence.
“Could you give me a hand?” he asked. “You,” he said pointing at the man who was hoping for an amputation. The woman who had shushed him pushed him toward the garden gate. The man approached Luke reluctantly.
“I need you to pull the axe out while I take his boot off.”
The man paled, his jokes forgotten, but he reached for the wooden handle.
“Not until I tell you, mind. And pull it straight up and out.”
Luke grasped the edges of the boot, then said “Now.”
As soon as the axe head was freed, he slid the boot off in one smooth motion, then grabbed the bundle of rags and jammed a wad of them into the wound as blood spurted out. His patient screamed.
It had only taken a few seconds to accomplish, but it had been long enough for Luke to see that the toe was almost entirely severed, attached to the foot by only a small piece of bone and a flap of skin. He would have to remove it.
He would have preferred to get the man inside and away from the prying eyes of the onlookers, but that would take too long — the sooner the severed digit was out the way, the sooner Luke could stop the bleeding.
He looked up at the man who was still standing with the axe in his hands.
“The toe’s gone,” he said. “It’s hanging by a shred. I need to finish the job, but I’ll need you to hold while I cut. Do you think you can manage that?”
“What? Oh, my toe, my toe,” the injured man wailed.
Luke ignored him.
The standing man gulped. “All right, I guess.”
“Put the axe down and kneel down, on the other side of the foot.”
The man complied.
“Now, when I take the rags away, you need to grab the toe by the end and pull it taut so I can see where I have to cut.”
“Nooooooo!” screamed the injured man.
“I haven’t actually done anything yet,” Luke pointed out to him. “Save your screams for when I do.” And then he looked at the other man. “Now.”
He held his scalpel ready with one hand and pulled the cloth away with the other. His unwilling helper gingerly grabbed the toe and lifted it away from the foot. Luke sliced. The toe detached and both his patient and his helper fainted, the latter still holding the severed digit like a purple, blood-spattered trophy.
The bleeding was easing off a bit, Luke could see, the wound starting to clot on its own. There was enough skin left, he judged, that he could suture it closed around the jutting piece of bone. He fished a needle and a length of catgut out of his bag and began coaxing the skin up around the wound, sewing it in place wherever he could find undamaged flesh.
He was halfway through the task when the man holding the toe came to again. He took one look at the grisly relic in his hand and promptly fainted again.
When he was satisfied with his handiwork, Luke enlisted the aid of a beefy neighbour, and together they carried the patient into his kitchen, where they laid him on the small bed in the corner. Luke sluiced himself off at the kitchen pump.
When he emerged into the dooryard again, the swooning assistant was gone. He had left the toe where it fell, in the middle of the yard. Luke retrieved it, wrapped it in an unused rag, and handed it to the boy.
“Bury this under a bush somewhere,” he said. “That way your Pa’s foot won’t itch so badly. I’ll check on him tomorrow.”
Satisfied with his morning’s work, he tipped his hat and left by the garden gate, suddenly feeling quite optimistic about his decision to come to Yorkville. The village was still small enough that word of his backyard surgery would spread, especially since no account of the operation would fail to include a grisly description of the toe, or the information that a grown man had fainted at the sight of it. The next time a mishap occurred, few would insist on waiting for “the old doctor” instead of accepting Luke’s attendance. The fees he brought in to the practice wouldn’t be exactly lucrative, as his old schoolmates so seemed to desire, but they would be steady and help to solidify his position as the junior partner. In spite of Dr. Christie’s unsettling office skeleton, Luke was starting to feel quite cheerful about his future prospects.
He was lost in these pleasant thoughts as he made his way back to the Christie house, so it took him a moment to realize that a voice from somewhere behind him was calling his name.
“Mr. Lewis?” the voice said again. “Is that you?”
Luke turned to discover that he had been hailed by a scrawny little man whom he was quite sure he had never seen before.
“Yes, I’m Mr. Lewis. Well … Doctor Lewis, actually.” It still seemed odd to use the title. “Could I help you?”
But the little man had a puzzled expression on his face. “I’m sorry, I’ve mistaken you for someone else. I was sure you were someone I once knew, but now that I’m closer I can see that you couldn’t possibly be him.” His brow wrinkled. “And yet you say your name is Lewis?”
“Yes. Luke Lewis. And you are…?”
“Morgan Spicer. Pleased to meet you.” Then the worry lines on his brow cleared away. “Luke Lewis? You’re Thaddeus’s son then.”
Luke sincerely hoped that his father’s reputation as a solver of crimes had not reached Yorkville. He had been forced to recount the stories of Thaddeus’s adventures far too many times. It had all happened a long time ago, though, and with any luck the memory of them had faded. His own adventure with his father, on the other hand, was known to only a handful of people. There had been none of the public acclaim that had attended the other two crimes. And then, from somewhere deep down in his mind, something stirred in his memory. Morgan Spicer. Where did he know that name from?
“I met you once,” Morgan said. “A long time ago. In Demorestville. You were about to travel west with your brother.”
And then it came to him. Spicer was a sorry little stray who had tagged along with Thaddeus on the Hallowell Circuit, in Prince Edward County. He had wanted to be a preacher, Luke recalled, but Thaddeus determined that he needed to learn how to read and write first, and offered to teach him as they rode. It was a propitious decision on his father’s part — Spicer had been instrumental in the apprehension of the murderer Isaac Simms.
“Mr. Spicer. Of course.” Luke held his hand out for Morgan to shake. “I do recall our meeting.”
“I’m sorry about the mistaken identity, but you must realize how much you look like your father.”
“Not so much these days, I’m afraid. My father has aged since my mother died.”
Spicer’s face fell. “She’s dead? Oh dear. I didn’t know. I’m so sorry. She was a nice lady.”
“She was. We all miss her sorely. But what about you? Are you a minister here?”
