Main Street (Barnes & Noble Classics Ser - Sinclair Lewis [98]
“Mrs. Westlake and Mrs. McGanum, though—they’re nice. They’ve been awfully cordial to me.”
“Well, no reason why they shouldn’t be, is there? Oh, they’re nice enough—though you can bet your bottom dollar they’re both plugging for their husbands all the time, trying to get the business. And I don’t know as I call it so damn cordial in Mrs. McGanum when I holler at her on the street and she nods back like she had a sore neck. Still, she’s all right. It’s Ma Westlake that makes the mischief, pussyfooting around all the time. But I wouldn’t trust any Westlake out of the whole lot, and while Mrs. McGanum seems square enough, you don’t never want to forget that she’s Westlake’s daughter. You bet!”
“What about Dr. Gould? Don’t you think he’s worse than either Westlake or McGanum? He’s so cheap—drinking, and playing pool, and always smoking cigars in such a cocky way—”
“That’s all right now! Terry Gould is a good deal of a tin-horn sport, but he knows a lot about medicine, and don’t you forget it for one second!”
She stared down Guy’s grin, and asked more cheerfully, “Is he honest, too?”
“Ooooooooooo! Gosh I’m sleepy!” He burrowed beneath the bedclothes in a luxurious stretch, and came up like a diver, shaking his head, as he complained, “How’s that? Who? Terry Gould honest ? Don’t start me laughing—I’m too nice and sleepy! I didn’t say he was honest. I said he had savvy enough to find the index in ‘Gray’s Anatomy,’ which is more than McGanum can do! But I didn’t say anything about his being honest. He isn’t. Terry is crooked as a dog’s hind leg. He’s done me more than one dirty trick. He told Mrs. Glorbach, seventeen miles out, that I wasn’t up-to-date in obstetrics. Fat lot of good it did him! She came right in and told me! And Terry’s lazy. He’d let a pneumonia patient choke rather than interrupt a poker game.”
“Oh no. I can’t believe—”
“Well now, I’m telling you!”
“Does he play much poker? Dr. Dillon told me that Dr. Gould wanted him to play—”
“Dillon told you what? Where’d you meet Dillon? He’s just come to town.”
“He and his wife were at Mr. Pollock’s tonight.”
“Say, uh, what’d you think of them? Didn’t Dillon strike you as pretty light-waisted?”
“Why no. He seemed intelligent. I’m sure he’s much more wide-awake than our dentist.”
“Well now, the old man is a good dentist. He knows his business. And Dillon—I wouldn’t cuddle up to the Dillons too close, if I were you. All right for Pollock, and that’s none of our business, but we—I think I’d just give the Dillons the glad hand and pass ’em up”.
“But why? He isn’t a rival.”
“That’s—all—right!” Kennicott was aggressively awake now. “He’ll work right in with Westlake and McGanum. Matter of fact, I suspect they were largely responsible for his locating here. They’ll be sending him patients, and he’ll send all that he can get hold of to them. I don’t trust anybody that’s too much hand-in-glove with Westlake. You give Dillon a shot at some fellow that’s just bought a farm here and drifts into town to get his teeth looked at, and after Dillon gets through with him, you’ll see him edging around to Westlake and McGanum, every time!”
Carol reached for her blouse, which hung on a chair by the bed. She draped it about her shoulders, and sat up studying Kennicott, her chin in her hands. In the gray light from the small electric bulb down the hall she could see that he was frowning. “Will, this is—I must get this straight. Some one said to me the other day that in towns like this, even more than in cities, all the doctors hate each other, because of the money—”
“Who said that?”
“It doesn’t matter.”
“I’ll bet a hat it was your Vida Sherwin. She’s a brainy woman, but she’d be a damn sight brainier if she kept her mouth shut and didn’t let so much of her brains ooze out that way.”
“Will! O Will! That’s horrible! Aside from the vulgarity—Some ways, Vida is my best friend. Even if she had said it. Which, as a matter of fact,