"Elephants don't get syphilis. Far as I know, they don't get the clap, either." O'Doull nodded to the kid, who wasn't far wrong there, either-it was a big needle. "Bend over."
Most unwillingly, the U.S. soldier obeyed. "Shit," he muttered. "I went through the last year and a half of the war. I got a Purple Heart. And I'm more scared of your damn shot than I was of the screaming meemies."
He wasn't the first man to say something like that. With bullets and shells and rockets, you could always think they'd miss. When somebody aimed a hypodermic at your bare ass, he'd damn well connect.
And O'Doull did. The PFC let out a yip as he pressed home the needle and pressed in the plunger. "You get one on the other side three days from now. If you don't show up, you're in a lot more trouble than you are for coming down venereal. You got that?"
"Yes, sir," the kid said miserably. "Can I go now, sir?"
He really did want to escape if he was that eager to return to the clutches of his regular superiors. O'Doull couldn't do anything but stick him, but they could-and would-give him hell. Still, he wasn't quite finished here. "Not yet, son. You need to tell me the name of the woman you got it from, where she lives, and the names of any others you've screwed since. We don't want 'em passing it along to any of your buddies, you know."
"Oh, hell-uh, sir. Do I gotta?"
"You sure do. VD puts a man out of action just as much as a bullet in the leg does. So…who was she? And were there any others?"
"Damn, damn, damn," the PFC said. "There's just the one, anyway. Her name is Betsy, and she lives a couple of miles from here, on a farm outside of Montevallo."
Montevallo was a pissant little town south of Birmingham. It boasted a small college for women; O'Doull had wondered whether the soldier got his disease from a student with liberal notions. Evidently not. Montevallo also boasted a large oak called the Hangman's Tree, which had come through the war undamaged. The doctor wondered whether the tree and the college were related. The PFC wouldn't know about that, though.
"You have a last name for Miss Betsy?" O'Doull asked. The soldier shook his head. O'Doull sighed. "One of the things you'll do between now and when I stick your ass again is take some men and get her and bring her back here so we can treat her, too. Got that?"
"Yes, sir." It was hardly more than a whisper.
"You'd better have it. And now you can go," O'Doull said. The PFC slunk away. O'Doull sighed. "Boy, I enjoyed that."
"I bet," Sergeant Lord said. "Still, it beats the crap out of trying to take out a guy's spleen, doesn't it?"
"Well, yeah," O'Doull admitted. "But damn, we've had a lot of venereals since the shooting stopped." He sighed one more time. "Don't know why I'm so surprised. The guys can really go looking for pussy now, and the Confederate women know they've lost, so they'd better be nice to our troops. But I keep thinking about Donofrio, the medic you replaced. VD isn't the only thing that can happen to you."
"You told me about that before," Lord said, so politely that O'Doull knew he'd told him at least once too often. The medic went on, "I'm not going to make a fuss about any silly bitch down here."
"Well, good," O'Doull said, and wondered if it was. Would Goodson Lord make a fuss about a silly boy instead? O'Doull hoped not. If the sergeant was queer, he seemed to be discreet about it. As long as he stayed that way, well, what the hell?
Betsy came in the next day, cussing out the soldiers who brought her in a command car. She was about eighteen, with a barmaid's prettiness that wouldn't last and a barmaid's ample flesh that would turn to lard before she hit thirty. "What do you mean, I got some kind of disease?" she shouted at O'Doull.
"Sorry, miss," he said. "Private, uh, Eubanks"-he had to remember the soldier's name-"says you left him a little present. We can cure you with a couple of shots."
"I bet he didn't catch it from me. I bet the dirty son of a bitch got it somewhere else and gave it to me!" she screeched.
From the freshness of the U.S. soldier's chancre, O'Doull doubted that. Out loud, he said, "Well, you may be right," which was one of the useful phrases that weren't liable to land you in much trouble. It didn't matter one way or the other, anyhow. "I'm going to need to examine you, maybe draw some blood for a test, and give you a shot, just in case."
"What do you mean, examine me? Examine me there?" Betsy shook her head, which made blond curls flip back and forth on either side of her face. She would have seemed more alluring-to O'Doull, anyway-if she'd bathed any time lately. "You ain't gonna look up my works, pal, and that's flat, not when I never set eyes on you till just now. What kind of girl d'you reckon I am?"
Had O'Doull told the truth there, he would have had to listen to more screeching. "This is a medical necessity," he said. "I'm a doctor. I'm also a married man, in case you're wondering."
Betsy tossed her head in splendid scorn. "Like that makes a difference! I know you're just a dumb damnyankee, but I didn't think even damnyankees were that dumb."
O'Doull sighed. It didn't make any difference; he'd seen as much plenty of times in Riviиre-du-Loup. He wished he were back there now. Better-much better!-sweet Nicole than this blowsy, foul-mouthed gal. "Get up on the table, please," he said. "No stirrups, I'm afraid. It wasn't made with that in mind."
"Stirrups? What the hell are you talkin' about?" Betsy said. "And I done told you I don't want to get up there."
O'Doull's patience blew out. "Your other choice is the stockade," he snapped. "Quit fooling around and wasting my time."
"Oh, all right, goddammit, if I gotta." Betsy climbed onto the table and divested herself of her drawers. O'Doull put on rubber gloves. He felt as if he needed them more here than with most of the ordinary war wounds he'd treated. "Having fun?" she asked him as he got to work.
"In a word, no," he answered, so coldly that she not only shut up with a snap but gave him a fierce glare, which he ignored. He went on, "You've got it, all right. You ought to thank your boyfriend for getting you over here."
"Not likely!" she said, and added some verbal hot sauce to the comment.
"However you please," O'Doull told her. "Roll over onto your stomach so I can give you your first shot." Goodson Lord ceremoniously handed him a syringe.
"Will it hurt?" she asked.
"A little." O'Doull jabbed the needle home. She yipped. He didn't care. "You need to come back in three days for your second injection," he told her.
"What happens if I don't?" Betsy sure hadn't said no to PFC Eubanks-or, odds were, to a lot of guys before him-but she was cooperating with O'Doull as little as she could.
"Two things," O'Doull said. "We come and get you, and we tell your folks and everybody in Montevallo how come we came and got you."
"You wouldn't do that!"
"When it comes to getting rid of VD, we'll do whatever it takes. Dammit, this is for your own good."
"Then how come it hurts?" Betsy whined.
"If we didn't treat you, you'd hurt more down the line," O'Doull said. Actually, a lot of syphilis patients didn't have symptoms for years after the primary lesions went away. Some never did. But syphilis was also the great pretender; a lot of ills that seemed to be other things really went back to the spirochete that caused it. If you could get rid of the germ, you needed to.
"Might as well get used to it, Doc," Sergeant Lord advised. "This is what we'll see from here on out-guys with drippy faucets, guys in auto crashes, every once in a while a guy who steps on a mine or something."