killing tools and tried to keep Abe from seeing them; but Abe he just come right over and peeked at ‘em, handled ‘em, and called ‘em “splendid”—and so they were, barrin’ havin’ them used on your own flesh and blood and bones.
Then they got some cloths and a basin, and one thing an’ another, and set Abe right down in a chair. (No such thing as chloroform in those days, you’ll remember.) And Squire Caton was to hold an instrument that spread the eyelid wide open, while Ephe was to hold Abe’s head steady. First touch of the lancet, and first spirt of blood, and what do you think? That ornery Ephe wilted, and fell flat on the floor behind the chair!
“Squire,” said Brainard, “step around and hold his head.”
“I can hold my own head,” says Abe, as steady as you please. But Squire Caton, he straddled over Ephe and held his head between his arms, and the two handles of the eye-spreader with his hands.
It was all over in half a minute, and then Abe he leaned forward, and shook the blood off his eye-lashes, and looked straight out of that eye for the first time since he was born. And the first words he said were:
“Thank the Lord! She’s mine!”
About that time Ephe he crawled outdoors, sick as a dog; and Abe spoke up, says he:
“Now for the other eye, doctor.”
“Oh,” says the doctor, “we’d better take another day for that.”
“All right,” says Abe; “if your hands are tired of cuttin’, you can make another job of it. My face ain’t tired of bein’ cut, I can tell you.”
“Well, if you’re game, I am.”
So, if you’ll believe me, they just set to work and operated on the other eye, Abe holding his own head, as he said he would, and the squire holding the spreader. And when it was all done, the doctor was for putting a bandage on to keep things quiet till the wounds all healed up, but Abe just begged for one sight of himself, and he stood up and walked over to the clock and looked in the glass, and says he:
“So that’s the way I look, is it? Shouldn’t have known my own face—never saw it before. How long must I keep the bandage on, doctor?”
“Oh, if the eyes ain’t very sore when you wake up in the morning, you can take it off, if you’ll be careful.”
“Wake up! Do you s’pose I can sleep when such a blessing has fallen on me? I’ll lay still, but if I forget it, or you, for one minute this night, I’ll be so ashamed of myself that it’ll wake me right up!”
Then the doctor bound up his eyes and the poor boy said “Thank God!” two or three times, and they could see the tears running down his cheeks from under the cloth. Lord! It was just as pitiful as a broken-winged bird!
How about the girl? Well; it was all right for Abe—and all wrong for Ephe—all wrong for Ephe! But that’s all past and gone—past and gone. Folks come for miles and miles to see cross-eyed Abe with his eyes as straight as a loon’s leg. Doctor Brainard was a great man forever after in those parts. Everywhere else, too, by what I heard.
When the doctor and the squire come to go, Abe spoke up, blind-folded as he was, and says he:
“Doc, how much do you charge a feller for savin’ his life—making a man out of a poor wreck—doin’ what he never thought could be done but by dyin’ and goin’ to kingdom come?”
“Oh,” says Doc Brainard, says he, “that ain’t what we look at as pay practice. You didn’t call me in; I come of myself, as though it was what we call a clinic. If all goes well, and if you happen to have a barrel of apples to spare, you just send them up to Squire Caton’s house in Chicago, and I’ll call over and help eat ‘em.”
What did Abe say to that? Why, sir, he never said a word; but they do say the tears started out again, out from under the bandage and down his cheeks. But then Abe he had a five-year-old pet mare he’d raised from a colt—pretty as a picture, kind as a kitten, and fast as split lightning; and next time Doc come down Abe he just slipped out to the barn and brought the mare round and hitched her to the gate-post, and when Doc come to be going, says Abe:
“Don’t forget your nag, doctor; she’s hitched at the gate.”
Well, sir, even then Abe had the hardest kind of a time to get Doc Brainard to take that mare; and when he did ride off, leadin’ her, it wasn’t half an hour before back she came, lickety-split. Doc said she broke away from him and put for home, but I always suspected he didn’t have no use for a hoss he couldn’t sell or hire out, and couldn’t afford to keep in the village—that was what Chicago was then. But come along towards fall Abe he took her right up to town, and then the doctor’s practice had growed so much that he was pretty glad to have her; and Abe was glad to have him have her, seeing all that had come to him through havin’ eyes like other folks—that’s the school-ma’am, I mean.
How did the school-ma’am take it? Well, it was this way. After the cuttin’ Abe didn’t show up for a few days, till the inflammation got down and he’d had some practice handlin’ his eyes, so to speak. He just kept himself to himself, enjoying himself. He’d go around doin’ the chores, singin’ so you could hear him a mile. He was always great on singin’, Abe was, though ashamed to go to singin’-school with the rest. Then, when the poor boy began to feel like other folks, he went right over to where school-ma’am happened to be boardin’ round, and walked right up to her and took her by both hands, and looked her straight in the face, and said:
“Do you know me?”
Well, she kind of smiled and blushed, and then the corners of her mouth pulled down, and she pulled one hand away, and—if you believe me—that was the third time that girl cried that season, to my certain knowledge—and all for nothin’ either time!
What did she say? Why, she just said she’d have to begin all over again to get acquainted with Abe. But Ephe’s nose was out of joint, and Ephe knowed it as well as anybody, Ephe did. It was Abe’s eyes to Ephe’s nose.
Married? Oh, yes, of course; and lived on the farm as long as the old folks lived, and afterwards, too; Ephe staying right along, like the fool he always had been. That feller never did have as much sense as a last year’s bird’s nest.
Alive yet? Abe? Well, no. Might have been if it hadn’t been for Shiloh. When the war broke out Abe thought he’d ought to go, old as he was, so he went into the Sixth. Maybe you’ve seen a book written about the captain of Company K of the Sixth. It was Company K he went into—him and Ephe. And he was killed at Shiloh—just as it always seems to happen. He got killed, and his worthless brother come home. Folks thought Ephe would have liked to marry the widow, but, Lord! she never had no such an idea! Such bait as he was compared to his brother. She never chirked up, to speak of, and now she’s dead too, and Ephe he just toddles round, taking care of the children—kind of a he dry-nurse that’s about all he ever was good for, anyhow.
My name? Oh, my name’s Ephraim—Ephe they call me, for short; Ephe Dodge. Abe was my brother.
Joseph Kirkland.
II.
c24
THE DOCTOR’S OF HOYLAND.
