“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 ain’t 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 can’t help himself. But I don’t 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 don’t think he knows. But he ain’t supposed to tell all he knows. It’s against the law.”
Up front Jody says, “Skeet.”