Julip: A Novel by Jim Harrison

Author:Jim Harrison [Harrison, Jim]
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Publisher: Grove Press
Published: 2008-10-06T16:00:00+00:00

III

POINTS EAST AND WEST

TO MOST, A HOSPITAL is a bright, shrill, utterly lonesome place — inhospitable, in fact. Visitors fail to make the slightest inroads on the notion that one wishes to be elsewhere, the nights full of slight but unaccountable noises, a factor of illness that penetrates even the vases of flowers, the professional smiles that you never quite forget are concealing skulls.

Brown Dog, however, was enjoying his stay after the initial post-operative discomfort natural to having a smashed kneecap put back in place and a few tendons reconnected. His only other time in the hospital, in Bozeman, Montana, had been far less pleasant for the simple reason of the subdural hematomas covering face and head. He was confident he could have handled two cowboys, but three were out of the question. Walking out of the bar for the fight, he had wrongly assumed there was a code of the West that guaranteed against gang rape. The good thing this time was that, unlike the head, you could distance yourself from your knee. It was simply there, the sharp edges of the pain dulled to a smooth roundness by drugs.

Before being wheeled into surgery he had made Teddy, who had accompanied him in the ambulance, promise to get the other half of a frozen roadkilled deer up onto the raven-feeding platform at the cabin. Teddy was strong enough to pitch the carcass up there and wouldn’t need to use a ladder. B.D. was mindful despite his inchoate pain that once you get the ravens coming in, you didn’t want to disappoint them. He liked calling to them out the cabin window and often one or two would respond, though when he tried to slip quietly outside to get closer they’d fly away. On Berry’s Sunday visits, however, there was the thrill of watching her gargle out her gaagaafhirmhs, her chortles from deep in her throat, caws, chucks, clucks, and whistles. The ravens would wheel around the yard in a state of frantic interest, resettle on the platform, and peer down at the small brown girl who spoke their language.

*

On the second day, when he was out of intensive care and ensconced in a ward with two very old, terminal men and a motorcyclist who had hit an ice patch without his helmet, B.D. enjoyed a train of visitors. Vera brought him a pint, which he slid under the mattress, and a real nice hamburger with plenty of onions wrapped in tinfoil, allowing him at his request the briefest glance of tit. Doris came with Berry but didn’t stay long because Berry immediately took to imitating the groans of the motorcyclist. Doris brought him a cold venison steak between homemade bread and a packet of salt and pepper. She said Rose still couldn’t figure out how he beat the shit out of Fred. Delmore had told Doris the real story which she thought wonderful. On the way out B.D. had Berry do her raven renditions and this brought a nurse on the run.

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