Maud Casey - The Man Who Walked Away

“It’s the swan wing, isn’t it?”

“Oh, no,” she said. “The wing is quite beautiful. You just look a little tired.” The prince sat up in the hopes of looking less tired.

“Do you know a doctor?” he asked, in as casual a tone as he could muster.

“I only know Dr. Knowall,” the young woman said, putting down her armful of wood in order to take a seat on the knoll of soft blue moss beside him. The girl was very lovely. She smelled deliciously of pine needles.

“He is my father.” And with that, she began to cry. The prince offered her his sleeve but she waved it away. “It will pass,” she said. “It always does. It’s just. .” and she began to cry harder, but eventually it did pass and she was able to tell the prince the story in its entirety.

Her father, after many exhausting, ill-paid years as a woodcutter, had grown tired of it. Around this time, a stranger passed through their village. One night, the girl returned home to discover that her father had invited this stranger to dinner. The stranger said he was a doctor and over several nights — and several hearty dinners cooked by the girl at her father’s insistence (“She is a wonderful cook,” he told the stranger, which was true, the girl assured the prince) the stranger regaled them with stories of his rich doctor’s life.

“Doctors,” he exclaimed loudly, his mouth full of beef stew, “live well.” He took another swig of wine. “They drink well too. There’s never a day they go without. Never a day they are bored.”

“How do I become a doctor?” the girl’s father asked eagerly. All his life he had worked and worked, with little to show for it except piles of wood.

“Funny you should ask,” said the stranger, raising a finger. The girl had learned over the course of several dinners that when the man raised his finger it meant he was about to embark on a lecture. He used his hands quite a bit when he spoke. The girl had also learned to serve him from across the table to avoid those quick hands.

“First,” he declared, wagging that finger, “you must buy yourself an ABC book with a cock as a frontispiece.”

“Where do I get such a book?” the girl’s father asked.

“Funny you should ask.” The man rummaged through his bag and pulled out an ABC book with a cock as a frontispiece.

Her father, the girl explained, though she loved him dearly, was easily duped. Amazed by the coincidence of the stranger having just the book he needed in his bag, the father sold his wood-hauling cart and the donkey that pulled the cart for the money to purchase the ABC book from the stranger. As soon as the transaction was complete, the stranger left under cover of the night.

The girl’s father did everything the book instructed: he purchased a smock and other clothes that pertained to medicine; he got a sign that read doctor knowall and hung it outside his home.

“This was several weeks ago,” the lovely girl said, beginning to cry again, “and there’s not been a single patient. I am the new wood-hauling cart.”

The girl was very lovely. “Perhaps,” said the prince, “perhaps I could be your father’s first patient. I am trying to stay awake long enough to watch night turn into day. Perhaps he could help me.”

“I doubt it,” the young woman said. “He isn’t a very good doctor. Still, all my father wants is to cure someone. You could help me by making him believe he cured you.”

And so Dr. Knowall gave the prince a potion and the prince gave Dr. Knowall some money and the young woman was able to buy a new wood-hauling cart and a new donkey so she no longer had to serve as both cart and donkey. And though the potion didn’t help the prince stay awake long enough to see night turn into day — in fact, it only seemed to make him sleepier — it did make him feel better.

Puff, puff went Albert’s father’s pipe. Puff, puff went the story on their little lives.

“Why did the potion make the prince feel better when it didn’t help him stay awake?” Albert asked his father. The waxy swirl of his father’s scarred cheek spun like a pinwheel in the flickering light.

Puff, puff went his father’s pipe, smoke drifting up to where the story still hung around them like a cloak.

“Does it matter?”

No, Albert thinks now, wrapped in his father’s voice. From where he lies on his bed, he can see a piece of the sky. It is the same sky that shelters the Doctor too, wherever he is. No, it doesn’t matter. All that matters is his return. If his father’s voice could return after all those lost years, the Doctor will return too, and if he returns, Albert will show him how much better he is.

Ring ( shadow ring ). The fringe of dawn appears over the trees lining the square outside the Palace of Justice and there is the clatter of merchants’ carts as night turns into day again. A sliver of moon still shines faintly in the sky as the sun comes up, evidence of the night before, and Albert remembers the Doctor has gone, that he hasn’t come right back. The warm touch of Nurse Anne’s hand on his arm startles him.

“You can’t sleep your life away.”

“The Doctor said he would be right back,” Albert says. He cannot keep it to himself any longer.

“The Doctor has gone to Paris,” she says. “He will be back. Oh, now, it’s not the end of the world. Hold out your hand.”

She places her seashells in his outstretched palm.

“Keep them for a little while,” she says, and then glides out the door and down the hall.

He sits up, brushing the wrinkles out of his slept-in clothes. He is here , he reminds himself, smelling the seashells until he has smelled the sea right out of them. But his head aches and his ears are ringing. He has started to sweat. He is so thirsty. He slides out of bed, leaving the seashells on the bedside table. There is dirt on the bedcovers from sleeping in his shoes but he cannot stay to brush it off. He cannot stay still. Trembling, he walks down the hall in search of the warmth of Marian and Walter.

“I cannot hear another word about your blackened nerves,” Marian is saying to Walter in the courtyard. “I cannot be distracted. I must be vigilant. My lack of vigilance is exactly why I’m breathing with only one lung today.”

“A morning constitutional?” Walter says when he sees Albert, taking his arm. “Why are you trembling?”

“It always begins like this,” Albert says, but he can’t explain the rest. He can’t explain what comes next. If he doesn’t explain it, maybe the urgency won’t arrive.

“Come,” and Walter takes Albert’s arm gently, not squeezing.

“Albert, you are trembling,” Marian says, taking his other arm.

“I am terribly thirsty,” he says.

“You are sweating,” Walter says, wiping his hand on Albert’s pants leg.

“Stop exaggerating, Walter,” Marian says.

“I wish I were,” says Walter.

“Let’s stroll.”

“Thank you. Yes, a stroll,” Albert says, as if such a thing were possible.

And that is how it comes to be that he, Marian on one arm and Walter on the other, walks around and around the asylum courtyard, past the vegetable garden, underneath the birch trees, past the stained-glass window where Jesus walks and walks and walks on the road to Cavalry.

“This is quite a pace you keep, Albert,” Walter says, his breathing quickening.

“It’s good to be quick,” Marian says, patting Albert’s arm, looking out of the corners of her eyes, wincing at the light around the edges of the clouds.

“Thank you,” Albert says.