The Buried Earth
by Charles Dodd White
Dying hands ultimately forced the gentleman doctor from practice. The pain seizures made the artful finesse of surgery impossible. His fingers became hooked and ruddy from the lack of circulation, as if they'd been dipped in blood. Each day sensation fled until he believed he could drive a ten penny nail though his palm without wincing. He grew old overnight, as he felt obsolescence enfold him like the smoky arms of an etherized dream.
After he grew weary of despair, the doctor pursued his hobby of gardening to beat back depression. It served him well as a therapeutic solution many years earlier when he suffered the death of his daughter in a freak automobile accident. Now, he returned to the loam of his expansive yard as though he were making an atonement for all the years lost in the routine demands of his occupation.The clinging granules of soil awakened something sacred in his skin. He eagerly returned to the garden each morning, feeling strength rise from the earth. In time, his hands regained their previous sensitivity and his premature aging reversed. Within weeks he was able to return to his practice, wielding his slender medical instruments with renewed confidence and skill. The hospital planned a tribute to celebrate this rare professional resurrection.
The occasion was greatly anticipated, and the doctor's many far flung colleagues, past and present, arranged to attend the event, flying from distant cities, one coming as far away as a separate continent. The doctor's second wife, always a gracious and canny hostess, wanted the affair to reflect the doctor's decorous personality, and said the party would be held at their home, a warm country house known and treasured by his many loyal friends.
The preparations were festive. Festoons adorned every haggard archway. That evening the guests arrived in multitudes, elated and convivial. As a bit of light humor, the doctor's wife ordered a novelty cake shaped like a patient prostrated before the scalpel. Amid a flutter of congratulations, someone handed the gentleman doctor a knife. As he leaned over the cake to make the first incision, the muscles seized in his fingers as he felt a long absence reach across the years and wring his hand.
He could feel his daughter in the room, feel her immediacy in a way he had long dismissed. He bent forward once more, trying to wrap himself in his fulsome surroundings, but the old pain returned as she persisted in his mind. Hurt danced through him. The gentleman doctor couldn't suppress a momentary grimace, pardoning himself with the knife still trapped in his hand. Hurrying past suspended toasts, he sought the weird magic of his garden.
In the lunar quiet he sank to his knees and plunged the knife into the soil, seeking the solace the earth had provided. As he raked his hands over the ground he felt the grains and pebbles sift between the cracks of his fingers as faintly as his own dead girl's whisper.
Charles Dodd White has been a marine, a journalist and a college teacher. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in Pequin, Sein und Werden, Wandering Army and others. He splits his time between Western North Carolina and Toronto, Ontario.