As It Was Told

As It Was Told

by

John Hulme

Smashwords Edition

Copyright 2012 John Hulme

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Table of Contents

The Night After Christmas

Goldie’s Secret

Footwear

Unto Those that Hath

Marley

Know Me

About the Author

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The Night After Christmas

It was the night after Christmas when the snow and the temperature finally stopped falling. High on the hillside, a stiff walk beyond the narrow road that turned off the side road that twisted away from the rural road that came indirectly from the nearest township, Ellen picked up her three-legged dog, Fergus, and looked out of the window of her tiny farmhouse. Idly scratching the appreciative animal behind a slightly chewed ear, she watched the full moon finally reappear through the last flurry of snowflakes and cast its silver light once more upon her small corner of this very wide world.

Not that there was much to see at the moment. Everything was white and smooth. Even the wood and tall trees at the end of her property blended seamlessly into the pasture land before it and the huge drifts of snow, blown up the hill by the vicious wind banked against the scrub oak and native pines forming one continuous, undulating and indistinguishable mass of deep, deep frozen nothingness.

Ellen sighed. It would be several days before she could dig herself out of this mess and probably even longer before the township authorities came along and plowed the winding road that led to the bottom of her property and over the small, now frozen stream that separated her from the rest of Ohio. She was totally cut off from the rest of the world and felt pleased that she had heeded all the prior warnings and stocked up with food in anticipation of a white Christmas.

She had just finished congratulating herself, and was wondering what she should do first, phone the office or warm up the coffee pot, when the lights went out. Cursing softly under her breath, she put down the dog and waited until her eyes adjusted to the moon-glow reflected off the snow outside, then felt her way into the kitchen and the fuse box on the wall by the pantry. Her curses doubled in volume and sincerity as match-light quickly revealed that all the fuses were intact and the electric meter was not turning. Not only was she cut off from the outside world the outside world had just cut her off.

Almost at once she started to feel cold. The old farmhouse in which she had lived for these last 10 years was not insulated and suffered mightily from heat in the summer and cold in the winter. It had been an annually postponed project to add extra layers of fiberglass to all the internal and external surfaces; a lack of insulation she was now suddenly starting to regret. At least she had installed extra fires and heaters in every room, but these were electric heaters and now useless.

Putting on her green, insulated coat, which had been idly passing the time over the back of a kitchen chair, Ellen rescued the three-legged Fergus from the cold tile floor and considered calling for help. At least her cell phone still worked, didn’t it? Or did it? The battery indicator icon was red; one call and the phone would need charging again! The curses were now of a deeper and of a more earthy nature. The dog tensed in her arms as it sensed the seriousness of the crisis they were both now facing.

Sorry Fungus, she said to the anxious dog, unconsciously using the pet name her father had given this little Beagle when she had rescued it from certain death the previous summer. It looks like we should start digging. Fergus whimpered as its three remaining paws touched the rapidly cooling tiles and Ellen pulled on her thick boots. A wisp of condensation hung in the air every time she breathed out.

Wrapping a scarf around her head, she was just about to open the back door, when a loud knock fell upon it. Both occupants of the kitchen jumped. Steadying her nerves, she pushed hard against the back door and forced it open against the pile of snow that had accumulated up the stone steps. There, to her amazement stood a man and a large deer, which, on second glance turned out to be a reindeer of particularly impressive size.

’Scuse me miss, the man said in a strange accent that clearly wasn’t local to that part of Ohio, but we needs some help. He waved his arm vaguely in the direction of the reindeer who was panting hard and blowing out clouds of intense condensation from it mouth and nostrils. Clearly the animal had just run a great distance, but, strangely, there were no hoof prints in the snow behind it.

Ellen switched her gaze back to the man. He was above average height but as thin as the rake standing beside the barn. No coat covered his frame, only a jacket cut from some very insubstantial green cloth, which was rubbed even thinner in a few places and had clearly seen better days. His legs at first looked naked, but a second glance showed that they were, in fact, housed in a tight fitting panty-hose-like material that accented his knobbly knees; an anatomical detail that would have provoked mirth in different circumstances.

Had a bit of an accident, like, the strange figure continued, puffing out his cheeks, which Ellen noticed immediately were bright red. A stocking cap, also green, covered a pointed head that had not been covered by natural hair for many years. But it was the eyes that now caught her attention. In the moonlight they could have been any color but blue, and they sparkled with a dancing twinkle that reminded her of fireflies swirling above the grass on a mid-summer evening.

We wuz doin’ quite well, the stranger continued, scratching the side of his pointed nose with an ungloved finger, then flicking away a small bead of moisture that had accumulated at the tip. The boss and me had just made our last delivery in this area, the large house at the end of Burghley Beck, and we wuz aheading ‘ome, like, when ole 237 here hit one of those power lines, snapped it completely in twain he did, and cut up his front leg summat fierce.

Ellen looked more closely at the reindeer and saw that the skin on the front right leg was badly torn and hanging off the bone in a thick, grisly red strip.

The boss remembered that you wuz the only veterinary for miles and miles around here and tol’ me to cum and sees you at once an’ see if you cun help us, like. He looked at Ellen and lifted his bushy eyebrows.

Ellen, now that she understood the situation, which was not uncommon in her line of work, promptly went into professional mode. Down went the protesting dog and she turned to get her bag of implements and medicines, which she conveniently kept right by the door. She was used to strangers turning up at strange times with sick or damaged animals that required her immediate attention. This was one of the penalties and blessings of being a vet in a rural practice; animals get sick or injured at the most inconvenient times.

Although she had never treated a sick reindeer before, there not being much call for this kind of expertise outside a zoo, the wound was all too familiar in a part of the country where everyone owned a horse and many of the owners thought that their animals were born show jumpers. Sewing up leg damage often paid a few bills at the end of a lean month.

Help me get the animal into the barn, she said briskly, turning to see the strange man bending down and tickling Fergus under his chin, to the obvious satisfaction of the latter. I’ll need to sew up that wound and give him some antibiotics, but it’s too cold to do that out here.

Of course, miss, replied the green-jacketed stranger, patting the dog one last time and pushing it back inside the house. S’here, s’here, he called to the reindeer who promptly raised his head from the snow and gave a low, snuffling whinny. Together the three of them staggered over to the door of the barn, which was never locked. Ellen, who her father swore weighed only 100 lbs soaking wet, had a hard time pushing her thighs against the heavy drifts, but the stranger and the reindeer seemed to glide rather than walk, and made it to the barn well before her.

Inside the barn Ellen switched on a large battery powered flashlight and took a close look at the damaged front leg. It was a very bad gash that started just below the knee and had torn a thick strip of skin and underlying tissue from the shinbone all the way down to the hoof. Blood was oozing everywhere and the clean, white bone was clearly visible.

I’m going to give your animal a sedative, she said to the owner, and I want you to pick up the other front leg and hold it firmly off the ground. She did not need to explain that this maneuver would prevent the reindeer from moving, or kicking her, or taking any kind of sudden evasive action as the stitching and repair work began.

The stranger smiled, ’Ole 237 is a good beast, 'ee is, 'ee won’t give yer any trouble. But Ellen had heard this tale too many times before from owners who thought they understood their pets, and she carried the scars to prove it. Just hold the leg off the ground, she replied grimly and went to work injecting a tranquilizer into a neck vein and a local anesthetic into the artery above the fetlock.

While the injections went to work, Ellen unwrapped a sterile packet of gauze, and began swabbing down the gaping wound with a dilute solution of water and alcohol, gently removing the dirt and small pieces of rusty wire. What did you say he hit? she asked suspiciously as she pulled free a particularly nasty looking piece of wire.

Ahh, cudn’t rightly say, the stranger replied evasively, but the boss said it looked like a high-tension power line. Hit it hard we did, ‘cos of all that snow, cudn’t see it coming until we wuz right on top of it, and poor ole 237, 'ere, 'ee was in the lead and hit it right-hard with his leg, as yer can see.

Ellen just grunted. She had heard a lot of strange tales told by owners too embarrassed to admit they had dropped their dogs out of open windows and broken all their legs. But a tale of a reindeer jumping over 200 feet high power lines was a bit extreme, even for the festive season. She assumed that the reindeer was probably part of a circus, or a Christmas show put on for the local children, and that the animal had fallen under a fence, probably while being chased by screaming infants or drunken fathers.

Deftly she picked up a sharp, curved needle and threaded it with strong silk, which these days was all plastic. Starting at the bottom of the wound she inserted the needle into the firm flesh at the side of the leg, then through the flap of torn skin, deftly pulling the two edges together. When she was sure that both met properly she gave a deceptively rapid flick of one wrist so that loose end of the silk twisted around the end of the needle, then she pulled the knot tight, repeating the dexterous move several more times until multiple knots held the stitch firmly in place.

All the way up one side of the torn leg, and then down the other side of the leg Ellen inserted and tied off a neat row of tight stitches that steadily, firmly and carefully pulled all the tissues back into their proper orientation. Only at the very bottom of the wound, closest to the hoof, did she leave a small opening which, she told the stranger, was to allow the pus to drain out as the damage healed.

Pausing only to push her soft blond hair out of her eyes, she took a quick look at the stranger whose head was very close to that of the reindeer. He was gently patting the spot between the large brown eyes of the animal and making a kind of clicking sound at the back of this throat that appeared to soothe the large animal and keep the vicious spread of horns safely out of her face.

Putting away the needle and silk thread, Ellen picked up the gauze once more and cleaned the exterior of the wound, firmly this time as she tested her needlework and made sure all the stitches were solid and holding the skin flaps together without moving or slipping. When satisfied she collected the bloody pieces of gauze and stuffed them into a plastic bag.

I’m going to coat the leg with an antiseptic and antibiotic containing salve, she said to the stranger, who nodded, clearly not understanding a word. I’ll give you some extra bandages, and over the next couple of days you must change the bandage and put on more salve at least twice a day, do you understand? Again the stranger nodded in complete lack of understanding.

Get him to your local vet right away, Ellen snorted, and bent down to slowly pad the wound with fresh gauze. Once she was sure the gauze was in place she wrapped a much longer piece of gauze round and around the leg holding the salve, gauze and stitches safe from the dirt and snow. He’ll be able to walk fine as soon as the sedative wears off, she added, finally straightening up her sore back and pushing the cramps out of her shoulders.

You can put his other leg down now. But then she saw that the stranger had not been holding the other front leg, and true to his prediction the reindeer had been a model patient during the uncomfortable and frightening procedure it had just undergone. Instead, the reindeer turned his large head in Ellen’s direction and gently poked her side with his soft nose.

See, ‘ee likes ‘ee, said the stranger with a grin. Ellen patted the nose and watched two large tears run out of the corner of two very large, very brown eyes and drop into the dirt on the barn floor. For some reason she could not explain, tears welled up in her own eyes as well, and soon joined those of the reindeer on the floor of the barn. This had never happened to her before, if you don’t count the time back in vet school where she had rescued a very wet and very damaged kitten whose eyes were even larger than the rest of its body. Or that was the way she remembered it.

To hide her embarrassment she pushed away the reindeer’s head and set about re-packing her bag. He should be fine now, she said gruffly, just make sure you get it seen to as soon as possible, that bandage won’t last more than a few hours.