As I Lay Dying - William Faulkner [67]
"You better get her out from back there before the old man comes," Jody says.
"If you'll stay up there in front where he pays you to stay, he wont catch nobody but me," I says.
He goes on, slow, toward the front "What you doing to her, Skeet?" he says.
"I cant tell you," I says. 'It wouldn't be ethical. You go on up there and watch."
"Say, Skeet," he says.
"Ah, go on," I says. “I aint doing nothing but filling a prescription."
"He may not do nothing about that woman back there, but if he finds you monkeying with that prescription case, he'll kick your stern clean down them cellar stairs."
"My stern has been kicked by bigger bastards than him," I says. "Go back and watch out for him, now."
So I come back. The clock said fifteen to one. She is tying the money in the handkerchief. "You aint the doctor," she says.
"Sure I am," I says. She watches me. "Is it because I look too young, or am I too handsome?" I says. "We used to have a bunch of old water-jointed doctors here," I says; "Jefferson used to be a kind of Old Doctors' Home for them. But business started falling off and folks stayed so well until one day they found out that the women wouldn't never get sick at all. So they run all the old doctors out and got us young good-looking ones that the women would like and then the women begun to get sick again and so business picked up. They're doing that all over the country. Hadn't you heard about it? Maybe it's because you aint never needed a doctor."
"I need one now," she says.
"And you come to the right one," I says. "I already told you that."
"Have you got something for it?" she says. "I got the money."
"Well," I says, "of course a doctor has to learn all sorts of things while he's learning to roll calomel; he cant help himself. But I dont know about your trouble."
"He told me I could get something. He told me I could get it at the drugstore."
"Did he tell you the name of it?" I says. "You better go back and ask him."
She quit looking at me, kind of turning the handkerchief in her hands. "I got to do something," she says.
"How bad do you want to do something?" I says. She looks at me. "Of course, a doctor learns all sorts of things folks dont think he knows. But he aint supposed to tell all he knows. It's against the law."
Up front Jody says, "Skeet."
"Excuse me a minute," I says. I went up front. "Do you see him?" I says.
"Aint you done yet?" he says. "Maybe you better come up here and watch and let me do that consulting."
"Maybe you'll lay a egg," I says. I come back. She is looking at me. "Of course you realise that I could be put in the penitentiary for doing what you want," I says. "I would lose my license and then I'd have to go to work. You realise that?"
"I aint got but ten dollars," she says. "I could bring the rest next month, maybe."
"Pooh," I says, "ten dollars? You see, I cant put no price on my knowledge and skill. Certainly not for no little paltry sawbuck."
She looks at me. She dont even blink. "What you want, then?"
The clock said four to one. So I decided I better get her out. "You guess three times and then I’ll show you," I says.
She dont even blink her eyes. 'I got to do something," she says. She looks behind her and around, then she looks toward the front. "Gimme the medicine first," she says.
"You mean, you're ready to right now?" I says. "Here?"
"Gimme the medicine first," she says.
So I took a graduated glass and kind of turned my back to her and picked out a bottle that looked all right, because a man that would keep poison setting around in a unlabelled bottle ought to be in jail, anyway. It smelled like turpentine. I poured some into the glass and give it to her. She smelled it, looking at me across the glass.
"Hit smells like turpentine," she says.
"Sure," I says. "That's just the beginning of the treatment. You come back at ten oclock tonight and I'll give you the rest of it and perform the operation."