I originally set up Orient Lodge to be ‘A literary outpost on the Internet’; a place where I would post not only commentary and news, but also fiction and poetry. Over the years, I haven’t written as much fiction or poetry as I would like. Yet last night, a story came to me, which I’ve written down this morning. All the standard disclaimers apply. This is a first draft. It is loosely based on real experiences I’ve had, but it is a work of fiction and any resemblance to real people is coincidental.

I was probably seven the first time I can remember seeing old Doc Wiley. I was walking down to the school bus stop with my brothers. The steep, one lane road was paved, but that was about it. There weren’t sidewalks, just bushes beside the road. My eldest brother pushed me into the bushes, and I thought he was trying to start a fight. Really, he was getting me out of the way of the bright green little sports car that came flying up the hill. It was old Doc Wiley, and we nicknamed his bright green little sports car, The Grasshopper.

Doc Wiley was a surgeon at the county hospital a couple towns away. He lived by himself, with his hunting dog Rosie, in the old farmhouse at the top of the hill. The kids in the neighborhood had all kinds of stories about Doc Wiley. He had been a famous surgeon in New York City, they said. He let the fame go to his head, started drinking, and ended up killing a patient in a surgery that went wrong. At least that’s what Tommy Hunter wanted all of us younger kids to believe.

For the next five years, I walked up and down the hill in all kinds of weather, snowstorms, rain, fog, and always kept my eyes open for the sudden appearance of Doc Wiley in the Grasshopper.

I guess I was probably twelve before I actually spoke with Doc Wiley. Susie Campbell, who delivered the local paper was getting too an age where other things were more interesting than trekking up and down the hill with a bag full of newspapers. I took over the paper route and started going door to door. Susie had warned me about Doc Wiley. “Don’t disturb him,” she advised. Just leave the paper. He’ll leave the money each week in an envelope.

Well, as I approached the old farmhouse, Doc Wiley’s hunting dog Rosie came tearing around the side of the house, barking up a storm. She stopped about ten or fifteen feet away, her hackles on end. She stood there, growling and flashing her teeth at me. We both stood, silently staring at each other when all of a sudden old Doc Wiley strode out of the house in a fancy long silk bathrobe.

“God damn it! What’s this racket?” he exclaimed. He turned his attention to me and asked, “who the hell are you and what are you doing on my land?”

“Umm, I’m taking over Susie’s paper route and I was just trying to deliver your newspaper,” I stammered.

Doc Wiley looked me up and down. “Well, just give me the God damned paper and be on your way,” he commanded. He looked at me. I looked at him. I looked at Rosie and I trembled.

He looked at the dog and said, “It’s okay, Rosie.” Rosie relaxed and stopped growling. In a kinder tone, he looked at me and said, “Okay. Give me the paper. Rosie won’t be a problem for you.”

I walked up and handed him the newspaper. I guess he could sense my residual fear. He reached down and patted my sun-bleached hair. “It’s okay,” he repeated. “Can I get you a soda?”

Now, I’d been warned about accepting candy, and by extension, I guess soda, from strangers, but Doc Wiley wasn’t really a stranger. He was a neighbor. He was a customer on my new paper route. I had been warned about disturbing Doc Wiley, but he had all ready been disturbed, so I agreed and followed him inside.

The living room in the old farmhouse was immaculate. It was full of very carefully arranged antiques and looked like a picture from some magazine. It was very different from the living room in my house, piled with toys and junk.

When Doc Wiley handed me the soda, I was fascinated by his hands. They were clean, well shaped, and perfectly manicured. I had a farmer’s manicure from digging in the dirt too much. A farmer’s manicure is like a French manicure, except the nail tips are black from dirt beneath the nails instead of while from nail polish on top of the nails. I self-consciously tried to hide my dirty hands.

The Doc made small talk as I drank my soda. He asked how old I was, if I had a girl friend, what I planned to do with the money I made from the newspaper route, stuff like that. I answered the questions honestly and openly and didn’t think much about it.

For the next couple of years, I stopped at Doc Wiley’s house every day, dropping off his paper. He left the money in an envelope. Sometimes, we would chat. Sometimes he would give me a nice tip.

Then one evening at dinner, my father commented, “So, Old Doc Wiley killed himself the other night.” I suspect he wanted me to know, so I wouldn’t leave newspapers to pile up on the doorstep, but my mother flashed a look at him as if to say, “we can’t talk about that in front of the kids”.

I was a curious teenager. I wanted to know how he did it and why he did it. My father said that he hung himself in his living room. He had heard that Doc Wiley had been diagnosed with some horrible terminal form of cancer. As a surgeon, he knew the pain and suffering he would go through in battling holding off a painful death and decided simply to have done with it once and for all.

The next day, Tommy Hunter had a different story. According to Tommy, Doc Wiley blew his brains out with a gun after he had been caught having an affair with one of the nurses. Tommy always exaggerated everything. I knew that Mrs. Stevenson was a nurse. She was another neighbor on the hill. She was stern and I couldn’t imaging why anyone would want to have an affair with a nurse in a crisp white uniform like Mrs. Stevenson. It was true that the nurses at the school were much nicer, but still I couldn’t understand any sort of romantic attraction to a nurse.

It also didn’t make a lot of sense to me since as I got to know Doc Wiley, I got the impression that he wasn’t really all that interested in women. He never seemed to have guests at his house, or as far as I could tell, go out on a date.

There wasn’t any sort of funeral or memorial service. His body was cremated. The old farmhouse stood empty for a few years before someone got the courage to by a house tainted by suicide.

I never thought much more about Doc Wiley until I recently visited the County Hospital. There is a plaque on the wall in memory of Doc Wiley. On the bench next to the plaque, a guy named Joe sat. I sat down next to him as I waited for my doctor’s appointment and we struck up a conversation. Joe had been a nurse at the County Hospital years ago. He was the first male nurse I remember meeting. He had been very close to old Doc Wiley and would come and sit near the plaque remembering his old friend whenever he was in town.