The Old Vet

Parish

Chapter 15: The Old Vet

Dr. Arceneaux lives in a house on Elm Street in Vidalia, four blocks from Clem's house on Carter Street, the four blocks being the distance between the present and the past, the distance between the vet who practices and the vet who practiced, the distance that is not a distance at all but a continuity, the continuity of the practice that runs through the parish the way the river runs through the land, one vet succeeding the next the way one season succeeds the next, the succession being the nature of the thing, the nature being: The practice does not end. The vet ends. The practice continues.

Dr. Arceneaux is ninety. His name is Louis Arceneaux — the same last name as the deputy, because the parish's supply of Arceneauxs is like its supply of Thibodauxs, abundant, the names repeating across the generations the way the river repeats its course, the same channel, the same bends, the same path carved through the same soil, the names being the parish's geology, the layers of the families laid down over the centuries the way the river lays down sediment, layer by layer, generation by generation. Louis Arceneaux and Deputy Arceneaux are second cousins, or third, the exact degree of cousinship being a thing that both men know and that neither man considers important, the importance being in the name and not in the degree, the name being the bond, the bond being the parish.

Louis Arceneaux practiced veterinary medicine in Concordia Parish for thirty-four years, from 1964 to 1998. He practiced before Clem. He is the Dr. Guidry of the story that Clem tells, except that Clem's story has two predecessors — Guidry, who practiced from 1958 to 1964, six years, before leaving for a practice in Shreveport, and Arceneaux, who took over from Guidry and who practiced for thirty-four years and who was the man, the vet, the hands, for three decades and more, the three decades being the period that the parish thinks of as the Arceneaux years, the years when the practice and the man were indistinguishable, the way the practice and Clem are indistinguishable now, the indistinguishability being the mark of the long-practicing rural vet, the mark that says: This man and this place have become the same shape.

Clem visits Arceneaux on a Thursday afternoon in July. The visit is not an emergency. The visit is not a professional consultation. The visit is the thing that Clem does every few weeks, the thing that does not have a name but that has a purpose, the purpose being: the keeping of the connection. The connection between the current vet and the former vet. The connection between the practice as it is and the practice as it was. The connection that is the thread that runs from 1964 to the present, the thread being the practice's continuity, the continuity being the thing that Clem tends the way he tends the animals, by visiting, by being present, by maintaining the relationship.

The house on Elm Street is a Craftsman bungalow, built in 1941, the house that Arceneaux and his wife, Delphine, bought in 1966, two years into the practice. Delphine is dead. Delphine died in 2021. The dying is another of the parish's losses, another layer of sediment, another name subtracted from the parish's population and added to the parish's memory. Arceneaux lives alone in the house that they shared for fifty-five years, the alone-living being the condition that the parish's widowers share, the condition being: the house is the same, the rooms are the same, the furniture is the same, the absence is the only new thing, the absence occupying the space that the wife occupied, the absence sitting in the chair that the wife sat in, the absence being the presence, the presence of the gone.

Clem parks in the driveway. He walks to the porch. The porch is screened, the screening being the accommodation that every house in Concordia Parish makes to the mosquitoes, the mosquitoes being the parish's other permanent residents, the residents that arrive in April and do not leave until November, the mosquitoes being the heat's companions, the heat and the mosquitoes being the two things that the parish endures, the enduring being the parish's practice, the enduring being the character.

Arceneaux is on the porch. He is in a recliner, the recliner being the retired man's station, the station that replaces the truck, the recliner being the place from which the retired vet observes the parish that he once served, the observing being the retirement's activity, the activity of watching what you used to do, the watching being the retired man's version of the active man's doing, the watching from the recliner replacing the doing from the truck.

Arceneaux's hands are on the armrests. Clem sees the hands first, because Clem sees hands first, always, the hands being the thing he reads the way other people read faces. Arceneaux's hands are the map of the practice. The fingers are bent with the arthritis that thirty-four years of large-animal work produced, the bending being the deformation that the work carved into the joints the way the river carves the channel into the soil, the work shaping the hands the way the river shapes the land. The knuckles are swollen. The right index finger cannot straighten — the finger broken twice, once by a cow's head in a chute in 1978 and once by a horse's hoof in 1989, the breaks healed but the healing imperfect, the imperfection being the practice's signature written on the hand, the signature that says: These hands worked. These hands reached in. These hands found and held and treated and pulled and pushed and carried, and the carrying produced the damage, and the damage is the evidence.

"Clem," Arceneaux said.

"Doc," Clem said.

The Doc. The title that Clem uses for Arceneaux the way the parish uses the title for Clem, the title being the honorific that the practice bestows, the honorific that is not the medical doctor's title but the veterinarian's title, the title that the parish uses because the parish does not distinguish between the care of the animal and the care of the person, the parish using the same word — Doc — for both, the word being the recognition, the recognition of the hands that heal, regardless of the species.

Clem sits in the chair beside the recliner. The chair is a wicker chair, the partner to the recliner, the chair that Delphine sat in, the chair that is empty now except when Clem sits in it, the sitting-in being the visiting, the visiting being the keeping, the keeping of the connection.

Arceneaux does not offer coffee. Arceneaux offers whiskey. This is the difference between the active vet and the retired vet, the difference being: The active vet drinks coffee because the active vet must be alert, must be ready, must be able to drive the truck and reach into the cow and turn the calf at any hour. The retired vet drinks whiskey because the retired vet has earned the not-alertness, the not-readiness, the settling-into the afternoon that the whiskey provides, the whiskey being the retirement's beverage, the beverage of the man who no longer must.

Clem declines. He is on call. He is always on call. The always-on-call being the practice's condition, the condition that the whiskey would violate, the violation being the risk, the risk being: The phone rings. The calf is stuck. The vet must drive. The vet must be sober. The vet must be the vet.

Arceneaux pours himself two fingers of bourbon. Early Times. The bottle sits on the table between the recliner and the chair, the table holding the bottle and the glass and the ashtray that Arceneaux no longer uses because Arceneaux stopped smoking in 2015 but that sits on the table because the table has always held the ashtray and the removal of the ashtray would be the removal of the habit's artifact, the artifact being the memory, the memory of the smoking that accompanied the practice for thirty years, the smoking that Arceneaux did in the truck between calls, the cigarette in the hand that was not on the wheel, the smoking being the practice's metronome, the cigarette measuring the time between calls the way the odometer measured the distance.

"How's the parish," Arceneaux said.

"The parish is the parish," Clem said.

The answer that is not an answer and that is the complete answer, the answer that says: Nothing has changed. The parish is what the parish has always been. The cattle are in the fields. The horses are in the pastures. The goats are in the brush. The river is behind the levee. The heat is on the land. The practice is the practice. The parish is the parish.

Arceneaux nods. The nod is the understanding. The understanding of a man who gave thirty-four years to the same answer, the same parish, the same the-parish-is-the-parish, the sameness being the nature, the nature being the constancy, the constancy being the thing that the practice serves, the service being: maintain the constancy. Keep the cattle alive. Keep the horses sound. Keep the goats breathing. Keep the parish producing what the parish produces. The maintaining being the practice. The practice being the service. The service being the constancy. The constancy being the parish.

They talk. The talking is the visit's substance, the substance being the stories, the stories being the practice's archive, the archive that Arceneaux carries in the memory that the ninety-year-old mind holds, the mind that has forgotten the names of the medications he used to use (they have changed, the medications changing the way the roads changed, the gravel becoming the asphalt, the asphalt becoming the concrete, the medications evolving from the crude to the refined, from the sulfa drugs that Arceneaux used in the 1960s to the cephalosporins that Clem uses now) but that has not forgotten the stories, the stories being the things the mind refuses to release, the things the mind holds the way Clem holds the confessions, tightly, carefully, in the space where the holding is the keeping and the keeping is the love.

"I'll tell you about the first time I lost one," Arceneaux said.

The losing. The first losing. The story that every vet carries, the story of the first animal that died despite the vet's hands, despite the reaching-in and the finding and the treating, the first death that the vet witnessed not as a bystander but as the person who was supposed to prevent the death and who did not prevent it, the not-preventing being the failure, the failure being the lesson, the lesson being: You cannot save them all. The lesson that every vet learns and that no vet accepts and that the not-accepting is the thing that keeps the vet driving through the dark to the next call, the next call being the next chance, the next chance to do the thing that the last time did not work, the doing being the attempt, the attempt being the practice.

"It was 1965," Arceneaux said. "My second year. Horse. Mare. Belgian. Huge animal, 1,800 pounds. Owned by a man named Brossette who used her to pull a wagon in the sugarcane. She colicked. Brossette called me at midnight. I drove out there. The roads were not paved, Clem. You think the roads are bad now. The roads in 1965 were dirt. Pure dirt. In the summer the dirt was dust and in the winter the dirt was mud and in neither case was the dirt a road, the dirt was an aspiration, the aspiration being: Someday this will be a road. I drove the dirt in a truck that did not have four-wheel drive because four-wheel drive was an option that the practice could not afford, the practice being in its second year, the income being what the income was in 1965 in Concordia Parish, which was: not enough. The not-enough being the condition."

Clem listens. He listens the way he listens to everything, with the attention, with the reception, with the hands still on his knees, the hands still, the stillness being the listening's posture, the posture of the man who receives.

"I got there. The horse was down. Down and rolling. You know what a colicking horse looks like when it's rolling. The eyes wild. The sweat. The body trying to escape the pain by moving, the moving being the body's attempt to run from the thing inside, and you cannot run from the thing inside, you cannot outrun the torsion, you cannot outrun the displacement, you cannot outrun the gut that has twisted on itself and that is dying inside you while you roll in the dirt."

Arceneaux drinks the bourbon. The drinking is the pause, the pause that the story requires, the pause that says: The next part is the hard part.

"I did not have the tools you have, Clem. I did not have the IV fluids. I did not have the trocar. I did not have the — what do you use now? The Banamine?"

"Flunixin meglumine," Clem said. "Banamine."

"I did not have that. I had mineral oil. I had a stomach tube. I had a rectal sleeve that I had to wash and reuse because I could not afford the disposable ones, the disposable ones not existing yet in the way that they exist now. I had my hands. I had a truck on a dirt road and a horse rolling in the dark and a man standing beside the horse with the look. You know the look."

Clem knows the look.

"I tubed her. I gave her the mineral oil. I palpated her. The gut was displaced. I could feel it. The large colon was in the wrong position, the position that means: This horse needs surgery. And the surgery did not exist. Not in Concordia Parish. Not in 1965. The surgery existed at the university, at the veterinary schools, but the surgery did not exist in the field, the field being where the horse was, the field being where I was, the field being the only operating room available, and the operating room had no lights and no anesthesia and no sterile instruments and no surgeon, the surgeon being a concept that the field had not yet produced."

He pauses. He drinks. The bourbon is the medicine, the medicine that the story requires, the medicine that the telling takes.

"She died. The mare died at 4 AM. She died in the dirt, in the paddock behind Brossette's barn, and I was kneeling beside her and Brossette was standing behind me and the mare's eye was open and the eye was looking at me and the looking was not accusation, the horse not accusing, the horse not knowing that the death was the failure, the horse knowing only that the pain had stopped and the stopping of the pain was the death and the death was the relief, and the relief was in the eye, and I saw the relief, and the seeing of the relief was the thing, Clem. The seeing of the relief in the dying eye was the lesson."

Clem sits. He does not speak. The not-speaking is the space, the space that the story requires, the space that is the silence after the confession, the silence that holds the weight.

"The lesson was not: You failed. The lesson was not: You should have done more. The lesson was: The tools you have are the tools you have, and the tools change, and the practice changes, and the roads get paved and the medications get better and the surgeries become possible, but the thing does not change, the thing being the man beside the horse in the dark, the man whose hands are on the animal, the man who came when the call was made. The coming is the thing. The tools change. The coming does not change."

Arceneaux looks at Clem. The look is the look of a man who has lived the life that Clem is living and who sees in Clem's face the face he once had, the face of the active vet, the face of the man who is still in the practice, still in the truck, still on the roads, still reaching in, still finding, still holding. The look is the recognition, the recognition of the same face in a different generation, the same vocation in a different decade, the same hands doing the same work on the same animals in the same parish on the same flat land beside the same river.

"The animals haven't changed," Arceneaux said. "The people haven't changed. The roads got paved. That's about it."

The sentence that contains the thirty-four years. The sentence that is the retired vet's summary, the summary of a practice that spanned from 1964 to 1998, from the dirt roads to the asphalt, from the sulfa drugs to the cephalosporins, from the rotary phone to the cell phone, from the truck without four-wheel drive to the truck with four-wheel drive and the custom box and the refrigerated unit, the span being the change, the change being the tools, the tools being the only thing that changed.

Because the animals haven't changed. The cow still calves in the dark. The horse still colics in the field. The goat still gets pneumonia in the rain. The bodies do what the bodies have always done, the bodies producing the needs that the bodies have always produced, the needs being constant, the needs being the practice's reason, the reason being: The animals need the vet. The vet comes. The vet brings the tools that the vet has, and the tools are better now than they were in 1965, and the tools will be better in 2030 than they are now, and the bettering is the progress, the progress being the tools, and only the tools.

And the people haven't changed. The farmer still stands beside the animal with the look. The farmer still calls at 2 AM. The farmer still says: I don't know who else to call. The farmer still holds the rope with shaking hands. The farmer still confesses the thing he cannot tell anyone else while the vet works on the animal, the confessing being constant, the confessing being the human's nature, the nature not changing, the nature being: The weight must be shared, and the vet is the person beside whom the weight is shared, and the sharing is the practice, and the practice has not changed since 1964 or since 1864 or since the first man stood beside the first sick animal and the first healer came to help.

Clem sits with Arceneaux on the screened porch on Elm Street. The July heat presses on the screens. The mosquitoes hover outside the screens. The bourbon sits on the table. Arceneaux's hands rest on the armrests, the hands that practiced for thirty-four years, the hands that are bent and swollen and broken and healed, the hands that are the practice's monument, the monument more honest than any plaque or trophy or certificate, the monument being the damage that the care inflicted on the body that provided the care.

They talk about the old cases. They talk about the blizzard of 1989 — the ice storm that brought down the power lines and froze the water troughs and killed seventeen head of cattle in the parish, the seventeen being the number that Arceneaux remembers the way he remembers all the numbers, the numbers of the dead being the numbers that the vet's memory holds, the holding being the carrying, the carrying being the weight. They talk about the flood of 1973, when the river crested at sixty-one feet and the levee held but the backwater flooded the low fields and the cattle had to be moved and the moving was the chaos, the chaos of five hundred head of cattle on the parish roads in the rain, the cattle and the trucks and the trailers and the mud and the vet in the middle of it, directing the traffic of the animals the way a conductor directs the orchestra.

They talk about Delphine. They talk about her the way the parish's widowers talk about their wives, which is: through the things. Through the kitchen where she cooked. Through the garden where she grew the tomatoes that she canned every August. Through the porch where she sat in the wicker chair that Clem now sits in, the sitting being the continuing, the continuing of the wife through the furniture that held her and that now holds the visitor, the visitor being the continuation of the practice that the wife supported, the practice being the other thing that Delphine held, the holding being the marriage, the marriage being the support, the support being: She stayed. She stayed while the vet left at 2 AM. She stayed while the vet drove the dirt roads. She stayed while the vet's hands were inside the animals and the vet's body was in the parish and the vet's heart was in the house on Elm Street, the heart being the thing the vet left at home, the heart being the thing the wife kept.

"She never complained," Arceneaux said. "In thirty-four years. She never once said: You are gone too much, or: The phone rings too much, or: I did not marry a veterinarian, I married a man, and the man is gone. She never said it. She thought it. I know she thought it. But she never said it, and the not-saying was the gift, and the gift was the practice, and the practice was possible because of the gift."

Clem thinks of Renee. He thinks of Renee in the dark bedroom when the phone rings at 2 AM, Renee who learned to sleep through the phone, Renee whose sleeping-through is the same gift that Delphine's not-saying was, the gift of the wife who supports the practice by not opposing the practice, by not competing with the practice for the husband's presence, by accepting that the practice will take the husband into the dark and that the dark will return the husband and that the returning is enough.

The visit ends the way the visits always end, with Arceneaux walking Clem to the truck, the walking being slow, the slowness being the ninety-year-old body's pace, the pace that replaces the thirty-year-old body's pace, the pace that says: The body has slowed but the body is still moving, the moving being the evidence that the body is alive, the alive being the thing, the alive being the continuation.

Arceneaux stands by the truck. He puts his hand on the truck's bed, on the aluminum side of the veterinary box, the hand on the box being the touch, the touch of the retired vet on the active vet's equipment, the touch that is the connection, the connection between the practice as it was and the practice as it is, the touch being the blessing, the blessing that the old vet gives the new vet without calling it a blessing, the touch on the box saying what the mouth does not say, which is: This is the practice. This is the box. This is the truck. This is the road. Go. Do the thing. Be the hands. I cannot be the hands anymore. My hands are bent and broken and the bending and the breaking are the practice's cost and the cost was worth it and the worth is in the going, the going that I can no longer do and that you must do and that the next vet will do when you can no longer do it, the succession being the practice's nature, the nature being: The vet ends. The practice continues.

"Take care, Clem," Arceneaux said.

"You too, Doc," Clem said.

The take care. The words that are the veterinarian's words. The words that mean one thing in the common usage — be well, be safe, be healthy — and that mean another thing between two vets, the other meaning being: Take care. Take care of the animals. Take care of the parish. Take care of the practice. Take care of the thing that I gave you and that you will give to the next one, the giving being the succession, the succession being the practice's immortality, the immortality that the individual vet does not have but that the practice has, the practice outliving the vet the way the river outlives the levee, the river being the constant, the river being the thing that was here before the vet and that will be here after the vet and that the vet serves while the vet is here.

Clem drives away. In the rearview mirror, Arceneaux stands in the driveway, one hand raised, the hand that practiced for thirty-four years raised in the gesture that is not a wave but an acknowledgment, the acknowledgment that passes between the vet who was and the vet who is, the acknowledgment that says: I see you. I was you. The parish is the same. The roads got paved. The animals haven't changed. The people haven't changed. The practice hasn't changed. Go.

Clem drives. The parish unfolds. The July heat shimmers on the blacktop that was once dirt, the blacktop that Arceneaux drove on when it was dirt and that Clem drives on now that it is paved, the paving being the change, the only change, the roads getting paved.

That's about it.