The Wild Boy

[108 fountains]

Here is a story I wrote several years ago, but recently dusted off with a few major revisions. It's a bit on the long side, so I'll post it in sections over the next few days to make it easier to read. Hope you enjoy.


The Wild Boy


Dr. Ernest Mann viewed the hospital where he expected to work for the next twelve months with no small dismay. A low, long concrete structure that may once have been painted yellow, it lay on the northeastern edge of Bareilly Town, in Uttar Pradesh, along the Gangetic Plain of northern India. An acre and a half of empty land, encroached upon by an occasional water buffalo seeking indulgence among the weeds and mud-holes, separated the building from the main road. A pitted gravel road, choked like a clogged artery by rickshaws, bullock carts, idle pedestrians, and various specimens of canine and poultry, led from the main road to the facility’s front door. On the stained tiles at the entrance of the hospital lounged six or seven mangy dogs, scratching fleas and licking oozing sores.

Inside the doors, a ghastly odor of illness and phenol assaulted the olfactory nerves. The fifteen rooms of the three wards – one for men, one for women, and one for children – were built for an intended capacity of sixty patients, but currently the rooms held ninety-six occupants. Those with less serious diagnoses lay on straw mats on the concrete floor; the beds were reserved for the more seriously ill or for those patients rich enough to bribe the nurses. Family members stayed with the patients round the clock, rendering the already overcrowded rooms insufferable. The occupants spent most of their time batting flies away from their eyes and trying to get the attention of nurses or orderlies who made it their top priority to avoid entering the patients’ rooms at all.

At the back of the hospital, a horse-drawn cart stood under a leafy tree next to a separate asphalt road that led down to the ghats on the river where dead bodies were burned, its driver napping lazily in the shade: he had few cares or worries – he would have customers enough, he wanted only patience, and he had all the time in the world.

Dr. Mann took all this in as he made his way to the office of the hospital administrator, Dr. Narayan Acharya. Dr. Acharya was a plump, middle-aged fellow with coal black hair and a tiny mustache that seemed to grow from, rather than above, his upper lip. When he smiled, his puffy cheeks swelled, giving his countenance a rather frightful appearance. Dr. Acharya rarely smiled, however, and he was not smiling this morning.

Dr. Acharya motioned Dr. Mann to a worn sofa against a wall of the large, empty room. “Please sit down. I trust you found your quarters comfortable?”

“Yes, they are comfortable and pleasant enough,” replied Dr. Mann. “I am anxious to begin work. Dr. Choudhury, whom I studied with at Johns Hopkins, helped me select this hospital as a place where I might serve my fellow man before setting up a practice back in the United States.”

“Yes, I know Raj Choudhury’s father,” stated Dr. Acharya. “It is commendable of you to want to serve your fellow man by coming all the way to India to work at local wages, which are indeed small enough in any case, but smaller still when compared to the earnings of American doctors. As administrator and chief surgeon at this hospital, I earn the equivalent of about two thousand dollars per month. Back in the United States, how much will you earn?”

Dr. Mann was unprepared for this abrupt question, and Dr. Acharya did not wait for an answer. Instead he continued on with more than a hint of annoyance in his voice. “I will be honest with you, Dr. Mann. I opposed your internship here. Dr. Choudhury used his influence with the provincial government in Lucknow over my objections to secure for you a position here. May I ask – are there no poor areas in Baltimore or Washington, DC, where you could serve your fellow man in a land and culture more familiar to you?”

Dr. Mann was taken aback by this rather frosty reception. He stammered, “Well, of course, here there is also the allure of living in an exotic place, and I should have an opportunity to sharpen my skills at treating tropical diseases.”

“Humph!” exclaimed Dr. Acharya. “I daresay it will be a short time before the ‘allure’ of this exotic place disappears from your mind. As to tropical diseases, you will find your share of them here.”

“I’m sure you will find me dedicated and hardworking. I won’t be put off by a little heat and dust. I’m not expecting this to be a vacation in paradise. I’m here only to offer my services to you and to the people of this community.”

Dr. Acharya frowned. “I heard the same noble ideas espoused by another American doctor who came here fifteen years ago. It still upsets me to recall his smugness and his unending criticisms. He would not accept the way we do things here. He could not adjust to our flow of life. He was forever comparing us to his Western ideas of correctness. Always trying to change us, to ‘improve’ us. He left here a bitter man, leaving behind injured feelings. Yes, Dr. Mann, I opposed your internship here, but I am stuck with you now and must make the best of it. You may go to Dr. Shankar in Room 202. He’ll have a work schedule and an outline of your duties.”

“Dr. Acharya, I guarantee that you’ll be pleased with my performance here. Rest assured that you have no cause for concern about my ability to function effectively here.” Dr. Mann was about to say more, but Dr. Acharya dismissed him with a wave of his hand.

To be continued...

[108 fountains]

Within two months, Dr. Mann had familiarized himself with his new job and his new home. He was on his way to becoming an expert in rare tropical diseases. Nearly all the patients who came in for treatment carried multiple intestinal parasites – giardia, amoeba, hookworm, and roundworm leading the list. Malaria was a common illness. One day Dr. Mann tested twenty-five patients at random and was shocked to find that seven of them carried either Plasmodium vivax or Plasmodium falciparum – and two of them actually carried both species – all apparently asymptomatic. Dr. Mann estimated that at least twenty percent of the local community suffered from tuberculosis. Leprosy patients were fewer, but numerous enough that Dr. Mann learned to identify them at a glance from their thick, leathery ears and leonine facial features. The women and children of the community fared the worst under the widespread absolute poverty and resulting malnutrition. Blood counts for the average women or child on the streets of Bareilly would have warranted blood transfusions in the United States. Here, they walked around in what was considered locally to be a normal state of health.

Dr. Mann threw himself into his work, often remaining on duty for twelve or even sixteen hours per day. Given the general state of health in the community, the hospital had always been busy and overcrowded, but when it was learned that an American doctor was on the premises, admissions and visits to the emergency room soared, and many of the patients specifically requested to be seen by the American doctor. Dr. Mann found this to be exhilarating at first. He reveled in the feeling that he was really making a difference, literally saving lives. He had not forgotten, but had largely dismissed, Dr. Acharya’s frosty welcome. In fact, he rarely saw or had an opportunity to speak with Dr. Acharya except to say “Good morning,” when they occasionally crossed paths during morning rounds.

Ernest’s quarters were an upstairs suite of three fairly spacious rooms plus a tiny kitchen and bathroom in a cinderblock and concrete building that housed four families, two downstairs and two upstairs. The quarters were sparsely furnished – no carpets on the concrete floors, a wooden bed with a two-inch thick mattress, a small wooden dining table with four wooden chairs lacking cushions of any kind. Other than purchasing white and orange curtains to provide some privacy and to bestow a bit of liveliness to the bare windows, Ernest did nothing to improve his living area. He didn’t mind the austerity, however, because he spent little time in his rooms, except to sleep.

Earnest spent most of his waking hours at the hospital. He spent his leisure hours, generally the evenings and Sundays, exploring the town, finding pleasure in its numerous Hindu shrines and in the marketplace, particularly the Muslim quarter where he would often be invited to stop for a cup of strong black tea with milk and sugar or for a pull on a hookah by dark-skinned, white haired old men who spoke little or no English, but who nonetheless were eager to demonstrate kindness and hospitality to the stranger. Ernest was happy to accept the invitations for tea, but politely turned down the offers to partake of the hookah, which invariably caused onlookers to voice comments designed for the amusement of anyone within earshot. Occasionally, Ernest would observe with interest the ethnic Tharu women, who had come down from Nepal to trade silver coins for bright colored cloth, which they used to fashion their distinct, multi-colored costumes. Their chocolate brown skin set off dazzling white smiles and flashing eyes. The sexy backless blouses they wore contrasted dramatically to the Muslim women who covered themselves from head to foot in black chadors.

After sampling the dozen or so restaurants in town, Ernest contracted with the Punjabi owner of one of them – for the equivalent of seventy-five dollars per month in Indian rupees, Ernest could eat lunch and dinner, seven days a week, all he could eat. As Ernest seldom ate meat, he was happy to find a vegetarian restaurant and was delighted with its exquisite dishes – its variety of chapattis, naan, saffron rice, korma, kofta, curries, black and yellow lentils, potatoes, beans, cauliflower, squash, onions, and other delectables was endless.

The owner, Mr. Singh, appeared to be in his mid-thirties; the hints of gray in his close-cropped beard seemed premature. He always wore the same dark blue turban, sat behind a small counter near the door, and politely greeted his customers with a broad smile and a hearty “Namaskar!” Mr. Singh appeared to take unending satisfaction in directing the two barefoot waiters, young boys in their teens, by clapping his hands when a customer’s plate needed refilling. On the counter in front of Mr. Singh, a small, brass bowl full of anise seeds offered after dinner refreshment to departing customers. Ernest had picked up a few words of Hindi, and Mr. Singh knew enough English that they were able to carry on minimal conversations.

One evening, as Dr. Mann walked toward the restaurant from the hospital, he saw a boy – his age could have been anywhere from ten to fourteen years – squatting naked on the roadside. As Ernest watched, the boy leaped over the road’s open gutter towards the restaurant. There he paused at a trash can, reached in, pulled out something that might have been a piece of chapatti, put it into his mouth, and slinked away into the darkness.

To be continued...

[108 fountains]

Ernest did not get a good look at him under the shadows of the street lamps, but he could see that his hair was totally unkempt, that his naked body was streaked with mud, and that his movements were more animal-like than human. Ernest had witnessed many unusual sights since his arrival in Bareilly two months earlier, and he sometimes felt overwhelmed by the cultural differences between his adopted home and the American lifestyle he was used to, but he was totally unnerved by this sight. It was more than he was prepared to accept.

As he opened the door to the Punjabi restaurant, Ernest saw that Mr. Singh in the dark blue turban had also been observing the boy as he vanished into the night.

“Who, er… what was that?” inquired Ernest.

“That?” sniggered Mr. Singh in a contemptuous timbre. “That was nothing. That was only the wild boy.”

“The wild boy!” exclaimed Ernest. “You know him then? You’ve seen him before?”

“Of course,” replied Mr. Singh with a smile playing on his lips as if he were bemused by Ernest’s interest in the boy. “He comes around most nights. You have not seen him before?”

“No,” said Ernest, who lapsed into silence. The sight of the boy troubled him deeply; Mr. Singh’s nonchalant attitude troubled him more so.

Ernest Mann ate only half a chapatti with his fried “daal” – thick lentil soup scalded in a saucepan of hot peppers and onions sizzling in vegetable oil. He barely touched his “channa” – chic peas in a spicy curry sauce. The two teenage waiters watched Ernest pick at his food. They were usually amazed at Ernest’s voracious appetite – he generally ate five or six chapattis, and they generally were obliged to refill his little tin bowls with vegetables three or four times. Tonight they eyed each other in amusement. They had picked up enough of Ernest’s conversation with Mr. Singh to know that the wild boy had spoiled his appetite. They thought Ernest’s agitated reaction to the wild boy to be quite humorous.

“Where does he come from?” Ernest asked Mr. Singh at the counter, as he left his meal half-eaten.

“Who? The wild boy?”

“Yeah. The wild boy. Where does he come from?”

“I don’t know,” replied Mr. Singh with a shrug. “Nobody knows. He has been coming around here for a long time.”

“Doesn’t he belong to anyone? Is there no one to take care of him? No institution?”

Mr. Singh looked at Ernest with an incredulous smile. “There is no orphanage in Bareilly. Maybe there is one in Lucknow. But Lucknow is very far away.” Mr. Singh added in a defensive manner, “We let him take what he wants from the garbage. We don’t chase him away.”

To be continued...

[108 fountains]

That night, Ernest had a fitful sleep. He was haunted by visions of the wild boy slinking naked through dark alleys. The wild boy was picking unsuccessfully through empty trashcans. He searched through the filthy gutters finding not a crumb to eat. Then he found a dead rat on the roadside. He picked it up and opened his mouth. Ernest was suddenly awakened from this nightmare by the feeling of hot breath on his cheek. He opened his eyes, and the face of the wild by was inches from his own, his eyes red, and wild - like those of a frightened animal. Then the face disintegrated. The room was dark. A breeze blew the white and orange curtains up in billowing, ghostlike formations. Ernest panted to catch his breath. It had been a dream after all.

The next morning, before dawn, Ernest sipped a cup of instant coffee out on his concrete balcony overlooking a vacant field of tangled weeds and wild grasses where grazed half a dozen water buffalo, white birds perched on their rear ends picking off insects from the dry, black, hairy skin. A plaintive voice from the minaret sang “Allah akbar” – “God is great” to a long, soulful melody, drawing out the word “Allah” through several poignant, yearning notes, and then ending with the word “akbar” rather abruptly. On his first few mornings in Bareilly, the chant woke Ernest from his slumbers and rather annoyed him. More recently, he would awaken before the call and lay in his bed waiting for it. To Ernest, the beautiful, mournful plaint somehow typified what he had seen so far of India – a fantastic yet desolate place, vibrant and colorful, yet overflowing with sorrow, like the eyes of a mother forced to endure the suffering of her children. Ernest finished his coffee as the red-orange sun broke through the gray, dusty horizon.

“Please! Can’t you do something about those dogs? They don’t belong in here!” Dr. Mann said, exasperated, to Manodhari, the head nurse of the hospital. Manodhari was younger than most of the other nurses, but she had a Master’s Degree from the University of Lucknow and hence her position as head nurse. With her dark skin, unusually wavy black hair, slanting, almost Oriental eyes, curling lips and perfect teeth, she was one of the most beautiful women Dr. Mann had ever seen. He was instantly attracted to her from the moment he first saw her, and he sensed the attraction was mutual. But she was married, her husband was a mid-level official at a local bank, and she had a nine-month-old baby. Dr. Mann’s morality was stern; he knew right from wrong. He maintained a strictly business-like, professional manner with the head nurse. But at home, alone in his rooms, her gorgeous face and sensuous lips often intruded on his thoughts and filled him with longing. “Can’t you do something about those dogs?” he repeated.

Manodhari barked something in Hindi to one of the other nurses, who in turn barked something to one of the orderlies, who glanced at Dr. Mann, smiled, and sauntered away.

“There was a girl in 2C yesterday,” said Dr. Mann to Manodhari, who seemed to always hover near the nurses’ station whenever he was there. “The girl in 2C,” Dr. Mann continued, “I ordered a blood transfusion for her. Her hemoglobin was 6.6. This says she was discharged last night.” Showing the chart to Manodhari, he asked, “Is this a mistake?”

“No, it is not a mistake,” replied Manodhari in as an accommodating manner as possible. She felt his attraction to her and could not understand why his verbal interactions with her were always aloof. She liked his tallness, his very white skin, long fingers, and confident demeanor, but she felt he was sometimes a little too intense, a little too professional. She was perplexed by his coolness toward her.

“It is not a mistake,” she said in perfect English, but with an accent that caused her to be even more exotic, more attractive, and more desirable. “The Blood Bank could not find a donor, so her father took her home.”

“What?” cried Dr. Mann. “But I was present when a donor was located. I was there and saw the donor and father talking together.”

“Yes, I know,” said Manodhari, her face flushed. It seemed she was always being placed in a position where she had to explain something unpleasant to Dr. Mann. She wished she could just once have an amiable conversation with him. She wanted to talk with him about himself, get to know him, and not always have to talk about the patients.

“The donor and the father were discussing price,” she explained. “It is different here than in America or even in our big cities like Lucknow where they have the capacity to store blood. Donors here are scarce, and the patient and the donor negotiate direct payment. The father of the little girl and the donor could not agree on a price, so the father took her home.” Manodhari shrugged. She hated when that look came into Dr. Mann’s eyes.

Dr. Mann held his tongue. He could see the consternation in Manodhari’s face. He must not let out his frustrations on her, he reasoned. It wasn’t her fault. He perused the two-page record, written in Hindi with a smattering of English words. “Where is the blood type?” he asked.

“Here,” she answered, pointing to a notation midway down the second page, “B-positive.”

Dr. Mann brightened instantly. “B-positive! That’s my blood type! I can give her my blood! Where is her address?” A feeling of exaltation came over Dr. Mann. In the two months he had worked at the hospital, he had been useful, and several patients owed their lives to him. And yet, he often felt helpless, and a feeling of insignificance often gnawed at him. He had not done anything that any of his Indian colleagues could not have done. Here was a chance to save a life through his own persistence and tenacity – a chance to save a life in a truly, personal, significant way.

Manodhari’s finger glided over the first few lines of print on the chart. “No address,” she said. “Not even the name of a village.” Seeing Dr. Mann’s expression fall, she said, “I’ll call the Blood Bank. Maybe they have something.”

She dialed the number three times, and three times she hung the phone up in frustration. Then she called on her cell phone – it was more reliable than the landlines. Dr. Mann listened to her speak in rapid Hindi. He could see from the disappointment in her face that the Blood Bank had no address for the little girl either. He pictured her as he had seen her – thin, frail, spindly arms and legs, in a dirty white dress with a frayed, green collar. When he had examined her, she was silent, but her eyes beamed and a sweet, accepting, angelic smile on her lips seemed to say, “How kind of you to take notice of me!”

Manodhari laid the phone down on the desk. Dr. Mann said slowly, “She won’t survive a week.”

Manodhari touched his hand. “Perhaps she will. We gave her an injection of vitamin B complex and some iron tablets.”

[108 fountains]

It was nearly dusk when Dr. Mann departed the hospital. He walked along a wide footpath that led past several homes of the hospital’s resident doctors and administrators, then past twelve four-family apartments like his own that housed resident nurses and technicians. The path then curved sharply to the left to a final four more apartment houses. Dr. Mann’s three-room residence was on the upper floor of the very last building.

Dr. Mann waved and called “Namaskar!” in answer to the greeting from two nurses whom he recognized as he walked by. The Muslim call to prayer sounded from the nearby minaret. Thousands of tiny bats darkened the sky in an evening migration to who knows where. Ernest let his mind go blank, his senses drinking in the sights and sounds as he walked along. Then, at the spot where the path curved sharply, several dogs lolled and sniffed about.

Ernest’s adrenaline flowed instantly. He hated and feared these dogs, and they sensed it. A harsh, guttural sound from any of the Indian residents and the dogs would slink away, but whenever Ernest approached, they stayed near, growling and baring their teeth. When he walked by, they would watch intently – it appeared that the loathing and fear was mutual.

This evening was different. There were more dogs than usual – at least a dozen – and they stood up, hair bristling, blocking his path defiantly. Ernest made the sound he heard the Indians use. The dogs didn’t budge. Ernest dared not turn his back on them. He began backing away while still facing them. They grew bolder. They growled menacingly and moved forward slowly. They sensed their advantage.

Ernest increased his backward pace. The dogs ran forward, snarling and barking fiercely. In desperation, Ernest picked up a stone from the side of the path and hurled it at the dogs. It struck one square in the head. He mongrel yelped and ran away. Ernest quickly picked up two more stones and threw them at the pack. Both missed their mark, but they had the desired effect anyway. The dogs moved away off into the weeds. Ernest advanced holding a stone in each hand. The dogs stayed away, voicing their rage by hissing and growling.

Outside his apartment, Ernest found an old croquet mallet, probably discarded by the children of the family who lived in the apartment below him. He took it upstairs with him and got out his toolbox. With a hammer, he broke off the plastic head of a large Phillips screwdriver, and then pounded the long, pointed metal shaft into the head of the croquet mallet. The mallet with the sharp, protruding six-inch spike was a formidable weapon. Ernest carried it with him everywhere. It was the source of snide derision in town and at the hospital, but the dogs never came near while Ernest held it.

[108 fountains]

Over the course of the next two weeks, Ernest saw the wild boy three times more. Twice, Ernest saw the him at a distance walking in wide circles near the market place to examine the open three-foot wide gutters on either side of the street, occasionally pulling out some scrap that he deemed edible before disappearing down some small alleyway. On the third occasion, Ernest had just finished a cup of yogurt purchased at a street stall half a block away from the Punjabi restaurant where he had eaten dinner earlier. Ernest had been watching some women burn incense at a small Hindu shrine located somewhat precariously in the middle of the street. When Ernest turned to toss the empty clay cup into the gutter, he suddenly came face to face with the wild boy who had just stood up from digging something out of the opposite side.

It was only for an instant, but in that instant, Ernest absorbed every detail of the wild boy’s face in an unforgettable image. The matted hair, the brown skin smeared with… was it mud or feces? The red pimples on the forehead, the yellow, broken teeth, the dull, bloodshot eyes… In that instant, Ernest searched those eyes for any sign of human consciousness or emotion, but he was disappointed. There was an expression of surprise and of fear, but it was the look of a frightened animal, not of a Homo sapiens. The wild boy turned and ran.

Ernest ran after him. “Wait! Wait!” he cried. He had some vague notion that he would buy him a cup of yogurt. After a few paces, Ernest gave up the chase. The wild boy was nimble and had already disappeared. Ernest became aware of how ridiculous he must have looked. Several people on the road stared at him. Two girls laughed.

[108 fountains]

Manodhari had invited Ernest over for tea after work on several occasions, but he had always politely declined. Finally, she refused to take “no” for an answer. She cajoled him in her most winning and persuasive manner. When Manodhari wanted something from a man and set out to get it, she was irresistible.

At five o’clock in the afternoon on a Monday, Ernest sat on a tiny plastic chair on the porch of Manodhari’s ground floor apartment facing the footpath about halfway between the hospital and his own apartment. Manodhari served him hot Darjeeling tea with fresh milk, copious amounts of sugar, garnished with a touch of cloves.

Manodhari was pleased with herself. Her maid watched the baby indoors. Her husband would not be home for at least another hour. And she had Ernest just where she wanted him. She was charming, engaging, and whenever the conversation allowed, seductive. Ernest was on guard, but her allure was overpowering. He felt himself drawn to her, both physically and emotionally. His defenses were crumbling. She knew it, and she knew he knew she knew it.

They talked for forty-five minutes. Manodhari learned where Ernest was born and heard about his strict Christian fundamentalist upbringing. She learned that he played baseball seriously in high school, but gave it up in college after he decided to go to medical school. He still loved the game. She learned he had a pride of family, being the fourth generation of German immigrants to the United States. She thought it interesting that his favorite author was a woman, but she had difficulty appreciating his descriptions of Willa Cather’s South Dakota in the early twentieth century.

Ernest had not heard himself talk so much since his arrival in Bareilly three months earlier. He had never revealed so much of himself to anyone in a single conversation. He and Manodhari could become good friends, he decided, if only she were less attractive to him. As they spoke, he inwardly resolved never again to accept an invitation to her home unless her husband was present.

Manodhari laughed at something Ernest said. He was admiring her sparkling eyes when something in his peripheral vision caught his attention. The dogs. They were trotting down the path, tails high in the air, yelping, excited. One of them carried something in its jaws. Ernest strained to see what it was.

There was no mistaking it. It was a fetus – a human fetus. Ernest recalled that a woman in her fifth month had miscarried at the hospital that morning. Ernest rose. He grabbed his croquet mallet and took a step toward the dogs.

“No!” Manodhari held his arm to restrain him. “It’s too dangerous,” she said.

The dogs trotted down the path gaily, obviously pleased with themselves. Manodhari cleared away the tea things. Ernest noticed there were tears in her eyes. He wondered if her emotion sprung from the appalling scene they had just witnessed or simply from her disappointment at the way the afternoon had concluded.

To be continued...

[108 fountains]

The next morning, when Ernest walked down the stairs from his apartment, he smelled the decaying fetus. He stood still for a moment and considered whether he should go look for it. Behind his apartment was a wide, weedy field covered in thorny blackberry bushes and a tangling vine that Manodhari called “Be-sharam” (“Not shy”) because their flowers closed during the day and opened at night. Ernest knew the right thing to do would be to find the remains and give them a proper burial or cremation. But he also knew that cobras and other vermin crawled in those weeds. He cursed his lack of volition as he descended the stairs and turned away from the smell toward the hospital.

Manodhari avoided him during the day. He made his rounds and exchanged the usual pleasantries with the patients, the doctors, and the other nurses. No one mentioned the fetus or the dogs. Perhaps none of them knew – he doubted Manodhari would have talked about it. The orderlies must have known it was missing, or – Ernest thought it more likely – they had just thrown it in the trash in the first place and forgotten about it. In any case, the incident was not spoken of.

By the second day following, the smell had all but disappeared. As Dr. Mann walked to the hospital, however, he came upon another disturbing sight. A dog lay dead, stretched out with its back arched and its tongue hanging out next to the footpath. By the time he arrived at the hospital, Dr. Mann counted eight dead dogs along the way.

He sought out Manodhari at the hospital, but when she saw him approaching, she busied herself with something else and hurried off in the opposite direction. Dr. Mann asked another nurse who spoke English, “Do you know anything about the dead dogs outside?”

The nurse nodded and said with disinterest, “Mistress ordered them poisoned. The police set out the poisoned meat last night.”

[108 fountains]

Six weeks passed. Dr. Mann and Manodhari never spoke again of the incident, nor did she ever again invite him for tea. Their relationship had changed diametrically – he was friendlier to her than ever before and often attempted to initiate conversations, but now she remained aloof and utterly professional in her conduct towards him.

Ernest had grown accustomed to the heat and the flies and the filth of Bareilly, but the sight of the wild boy scavenging the gutters continued to disturb him. Somehow the wild boy’s existence affronted Ernest’s sense of humanity and called into question his own morality. This wild boy roaming the streets – it was wrong; it shouldn’t be.

Early one evening, before the nightly migration of bats darkened the sky, as Ernest walked towards the Punjabi restaurant, he saw the wild boy sitting next to the ditch that lay several meters to the side of the door to the hospital emergency room. As he passed by on the other side of the street, Ernest observed the wild boy. Ernest had never seen him sitting down before – he had always seen him standing, or walking, or slinking around the gutters. Ernest swallowed his revulsion, which made a poor appetizer for his dinner. He ate a chapatti and a half dish of vegetables. Later, he bought a small clay pot of yogurt, but the taste was insipid. He forwent his usual after dinner walk through the Muslim market, heading home instead to read.

As he approached the hospital, Ernest saw the wild boy on the same spot as before, except that now the wild boy was lying down. Rather than cross over to the footpath leading to his cinderblock apartment, Ernest found himself drawn hesitantly but irresistibly toward the ditch where the wild boy lay. The wild boy’s eyes were closed. Cautiously, slowly, and with a mixture of trepidation and fascination, Ernest bent over the wild boy. In the dim, horizontal glare of the fluorescent lighting coming from the open emergency room door, Ernest could see the boy plainly. His pimpled forehead was beaded with sweat. His breathing was shallow and labored. Ernest carefully and gingerly touched his wrist. The pulse was faint and rapid. The wild boy was burning with fever.

On Dr. Mann’s order, two orderlies carried the wild boy on a stretcher into the emergency room. They strapped him into a bed with leather restraints, also on Dr. Mann’s orders, so that if he boy woke up and attempted to run away, the restraints would hold him. Then Dr. Mann started an intravenous solution and took a blood sample from the wild boy.

The blood test results were dire. The white blood cell count was 27,000, indicating a severe infection. His hemoglobin was only 3.1 – Dr. Mann could scarcely believe any human could stay alive with a count as low as that. He tested his blood type – O positive, a common type. He called the blood bank, which located two donors within the hour. Dr. Mann paid the donors himself – the equivalent of about ten dollars each. During the bargaining with the donors, Dr. Mann painfully recalled the little girl whose father was unable to come to terms with his daughter’s blood donor. Had her life foundered over a similar price?

Dr. Mann stayed with the wild boy till past midnight. The wild boy had both fleas and lice. Dr. Mann had the orderlies wash him, except for his hair, which they refused to do, and dress him in a thin hospital gown. Dr. Mann would enlist Manodhari’s assistance in the morning to get the wild boy’s hair washed. He then collected blood cultures and administered the blood transfusion himself. There was no significant change in the wild boy’s condition, however, and when Dr. Mann departed to get some rest at his home, the wild boy’s prognosis was still very poor.

[108 fountains]

By six in the morning, when Dr. Mann returned to the bedside of the wild boy, the pulse was more regular and the temperature was somewhat lower. The wild boy remained unconscious, however. Dr. Mann increased the amount of antibiotic in the intravenous fluid and ordered two more transfusions.

Every two or three hours throughout the day, Dr. Mann checked for changes in the wild boy’s condition. Improvement came incrementally. Dr. Mann considered how the wild boy had come to the ditch near the emergency room entrance. The wild boy undoubtedly had seen sick people being brought in there. He must have had enough human reason to go there himself when he became ill.

Late in the afternoon, Dr. Mann went to speak with Dr. Acharya about the case. “Yes. I have heard about it,” said Dr. Acharya to Dr. Mann. “People have been talking about it.” Dr. Acharya seemed annoyed. He paced back and forth in front of his desk.

“It seems that he will recover,” stated Dr. Mann, somewhat puzzled by Dr. Acharya’s displeasure. “The question then is, what will become of him?”

“What do you mean ‘What will become of him?’” Dr. Acharya demanded. "He will be discharged of course.” And he added under his breath, “And the sooner the better.”

“Discharged!” cried Dr. Mann incredulously. “Back into the streets?”

Dr. Acharya said nothing, but continued pacing in front of his desk. The expression of annoyance on his face was evolving into one of exasperation.

Dr. Mann continued, “But is there no place for him to go? No institution in Lucknow?”

Dr. Acharya stopped his pacing and snorted, “No institution could – or would – care for him.” He took a breath to calm himself and added in a placating manner, “Perhaps if he were younger, but he’s too old and too… wild.”

“But we can’t just turn him out into the streets!” Dr. Mann protested.

“Unless you want to keep him in your home,” returned Dr. Acharya, “there is no other place for him to go.” Dr. Acharya added angrily, “This action of yours – bringing him in here, making a celebrity of him – it has created a… a disturbance. I don’t know what you were thinking. It would have been better…” Dr. Acharya stopped and bit off the conclusion of this sentence. His facial expression suggested it had an acrid taste.

Before he left the hospital in the afternoon, Dr. Mann checked on the wild boy once more. He was still unconscious, but his pulse and blood pressure were nearly normal. His fever remained extremely elevated, however, and his lips were cracked and dry.

Ernest Mann walked down the street and through the town at a rapid pace. He followed a small street that degenerated into a footpath about a mile and a half from town and led to a wood and wire shack with a corrugated tin roof. The lab technician had brought Ernest to this local whiskey house about two months earlier. The inside of the shack was dark and reeked of the damp straw that covered the dirt floor and of the fermenting rice that bubbled away in stone vats in the corners.

Ernest ordered a bottle of local whiskey and a dish of dried goat meat with hot chili peppers. He intended to get drunk, and he finished off a shot glass of whiskey in a single swallow. He lingered over the second shot, however. Ernest had never been intoxicated before, and he didn’t know how to do it – drinking to excess was immoral in his view – so instead, he sat and brooded over the developments of the past couple of days. A dark curl of smoke from the cooking fire wafted into the room as he pondered what he should do.

In the back of the wooden shack where he was seated not far from a heaping pile of rubbish and rotting vegetables, a very large, old, crooked tree spread its lifeless branches in much the same way, thought Ernest, as the beggars in Bareilly hold out their gnarled hands in the hopeless fancy that someone will bestow on them some item of worth. As dusk approached, the sky turned a deep purple. Several bald-headed vultures glided toward the tree and perched clumsily on the thicker branches. As darkness enveloped the tree, more and more vultures came to roost. By dusk, more than a hundred vultures had descended and perched in the dreadful tree. Their large bodies and distinctive, repulsive heads formed ghastly, gray silhouettes against the indigo sky.

At the moment of dusk, when the final blot of blood red sun vanished in an instant behind the deep violet clouds that rippled the ever-darkening sky, Ernest bounded outside on an impulse, arms waving and yelling at the top of his voice. The vultures spread their huge wings, called out in frightful human-like screams, and flew away en masse. The loud hammering of their wings vibrated in Ernest’s ears and then gradually faded away as the vultures disappeared into the night. Ernest stood in front of the black, bare, twisted tree for a long time afterward, his head bowed toward the ground.

To be continued...

[108 fountains]

Ernest Mann returned to Bareilly town and walked through its streets. The night markets were illuminated by bare light bulbs hung from strings of green wires strung across the narrow lanes. The market was vibrant, full of people buying, selling, trading, bargaining, gossiping, laughing, and arguing with each other in a symphony of human life and society. At a shop where Ernest had customarily bought batteries and other sundries, a brown-skinned, white-haired old man with a grizzled white beard dressed in immaculate loose white pants, white shirt, and embroidered white cap, sat smoking a hookah, appearing larger than life. Women dressed in black chadors bartered with shopkeepers over the price of brightly colored fabrics that would be tailored into fashionable clothes worn only within walled compounds. The yogurt man stood behind his pushcart with more than fifty pint-sized orange-brown clay pots full of “dahi” lined up neatly on makeshift countertops. Two small boys, dirty and dressed in rags, chased a hoop with a stick, disturbing a dog from its slumber, which awoke barking, scratching and yawning all in one motion. Ernest Mann walked past the Punjabi restaurant and saw the blue-turbaned proprietor through the window clapping his hands and giving orders to one of the barefoot, teenage waiters. In more than four months, Ernest Mann had grown accustomed to this dusty, dirty place, and familiarity breeds fondness. As he walked, Ernest Mann desperately and greedily took in every sight, sound, and smell his adopted home had to offer.

Ernest Mann entered the hospital at nearly eleven o’clock that night and headed directly to the ward where lay the wild boy. As he approached the bed, he suddenly stopped in his tracks with a gasp of surprise. The wild boy’s eyes were open. He looked at Dr. Mann with a wild, frightened expression. He struggled with the leather restraints fighting for freedom, an instinctive struggle for any animal.

Dr. Mann sat down next to the wild boy. Now that his face and hair had been washed, he seemed more human. Ernest Mann was somehow disturbed by this. He leaned forward to look more closely into the wild boy’s eyes. No, there was nothing there, no trace of reasoning, no sign of understanding, no recognition of its own human dignity. Reassured, Ernest Mann prepared the syringe. The wild boy continued to struggle against the restraints.

[108 fountains]

The next morning, Manodhari was worried. Dr. Mann did not make his usual rounds. She saw him appear only later in the morning, and then he proceeded directly to Dr. Acharya’s office. As she watched him ascend the single flight of stairs, she suddenly felt dizzy and sick to her stomach. She leaned forward, took a deep breath, and tried to convince herself that she had never been attracted to him.

Dr. Acharya did not stand up from behind his desk when Dr. Mann walked in. Instead, he motioned for Dr. Mann to have a seat on the worn, leather sofa adjacent to the desk.

Dr. Mann ignored the wave of Dr. Acharya’s hand and stood in front of the desk, his hands clasped together in front of him. He trembled slightly. “Dr. Acharya,” he began. He hesitated, swallowed, and continued, “Dr. Acharya, I have come to tell you that I cannot remain here any longer. I have decided to return to my country. I will be leaving for Delhi his afternoon.”

Dr. Acharya remained seated, motionless, and expressionless. Dr. Mann wasn’t sure if he had heard him and was on the verge of speaking again when Dr. Acharya said quietly, “Yes. That is a good decision.” He started to say more, but checked himself and remained silent.

Dr. Mann wanted to simply leave the room, but he felt a moral obligation to stay and explain himself. “You see, I cannot just accept things as they are if they are not right. If something is wrong, I have to do something – to make it right – to make it correct.”

Dr. Acharya rose, but remained behind his desk. He said, “There is no right or wrong, Dr. Mann, no good or bad. There is only flow – flow and… disturbance.” Dr. Acharya looked severely at Ernest Mann for a moment. He paused and then said dismissively, “Good day, Dr. Mann.”

Ernest Mann turned and walked out the doorway. As he walked briskly down the footpath behind the hospital toward his quarters to gather his belongings, he saw two orderlies load something stiff wrapped in a stained white sheet onto the back of a horse-drawn cart. The driver tugged at the reins and made a clicking sound in his cheeks. The horse walked slowly, its hoofs making a hollow, wooden sound on the asphalt pavement. The two orderlies trailed behind on foot. Ernest Mann watched them as they joined with the other traffic on the road down toward the river and the burning ghats.

The end

[DATo]

Greetings 108,

I have just this moment finished your story and all I can say is "WOW!" You had told me of your Peace Corps days before, and I assumed this story was written with some inspiration from your previous experiences, but, per your PM, I had no idea that so much of it was. I envy you the experiences of your life, which must have been a fascinating one, and yet I can feel the pain of seeing and being around people you cannot help beyond an average person's modest assets and abilities, and the frustrations attendant to a heart which empathizes with the unfairness of "the flow". I hold the belief that for everything good in life there is a price to be paid.

In your PM you mentioned that you thought that perhaps you had overdone the descriptions. I do NOT think you overdid the description at all. Personally I think your ability to paint the setting, characters, and even the small "incidentals" which appear in your stories is one of your strong points and one which I admire and envy. You have a natural gift for observation and, as it pertains to a writer, the ability to convey not only the literal sensory descriptions but something beyond that, which, were I a better writer would be able to articulate more concisely. Maybe the word I am searching for is "feel": the ability to place the reader directly into the heat; the smells; the colors; the omnipresent awareness of cobras; the flies; and perhaps, more abstractedly, the sense of being in an alien culture which does not in many ways conform to the worldview of the land of your birth. You accomplished this marvelously in this story as you do in all the stories you write.

I congratulate you! You succeeded in this story on all levels in my estimation and this is certainly a work which I consider publishable. I encourage you to pursue a "nonfictional novel" in the vein of Truman Capote's masterpiece in which you tell the entire story of your Peace Corps days. I would be honored to be your first customer.

[AuntShecky]

Interesting story, and to these old yet inexperienced eyes, it seems plausible. The descriptions, though overdone at times, evoke a highly specific place. The wild boy echoes of Caspar Hauser and Rima (I think her name is) in Green Mansions.

My main criticism is that the story is too long. Not only that, it takes a while to get to the title subject, the first mention of which appears in the fourth section. I wouldn't presume to advise you where to cut, but perhaps you could take a second look at the first part, which contains long passages in which the characters offer an excess of verbal exposition. For instance:


“I am anxious to begin work. Dr. Choudhury, whom I studied with at Johns Hopkins, helped me select this hospital as a place where I might serve my fellow man before setting up a practice back in the United States.”

“Yes, I know Raj Choudhury’s father,” stated Dr. Acharya. “It is commendable of you to want to serve your fellow man by coming all the way to India to work at local wages, which are indeed small enough in any case, but smaller still when compared to the earnings of American doctors. As administrator and chief surgeon at this hospital, I earn the equivalent of about two thousand dollars per month. Back in the United States, how much will you earn?”

Dr. Mann was unprepared for this abrupt question, and Dr. Acharya did not wait for an answer. Instead he continued on with more than a hint of annoyance in his voice. “I will be honest with you, Dr. Mann. I opposed your internship here. Dr. Choudhury used his influence with the provincial government in Lucknow over my objections to secure for you a position here. May I ask – are there no poor areas in Baltimore or Washington, DC, where you could serve your fellow man in a land and culture more familiar to you?”

Dr. Mann was taken aback by this rather frosty reception. He stammered, “Well, of course, here there is also the allure of living in an exotic place, and I should have an opportunity to sharpen my skills at treating tropical diseases.”

“Humph!” exclaimed Dr. Acharya. “I daresay it will be a short time before the ‘allure’ of this exotic place disappears from your mind. As to tropical diseases, you will find your share of them here.”

Conversely, don't overlook opportunities to "show" rather than "tell." This sentence in particular:

The occupants spent most of their time batting flies away from their eyes and trying to get the attention of nurses or orderlies who made it their top priority to avoid entering the patients’ rooms at all. could provide material for a vivid scene, especially if it appears later in the action, where it would make a powerful effect.

I would instead open the story with a "hook," showing a brief appearance of the title character. After that you can insert critical background information via the "drip" method, instead of slowing the story down with
background info in the dialogue. If you're reading The Power and the Glory for the January book club, you might have noticed how Graham Greene treats material for the plot. Through the eyes of the dentist, the first chapter shows us the fugitive priest (though at this pointneither the reader nor the dentist knows his true identity nor the full extent of the treacherous situation.)

Oh, and now that I have your "ear," so to speak, 108 Fountains, you should know that I share the opinion of other NitLetters in that you and your compadre, DATo, are exemplary members of this site. Not only do you offer generous and encouraging comments to the creative works of others, you accept criticism graciously and gratefully. That means a lot, believe me.

Auntie

[108 fountains]

Thanks DATo and Auntie for taking the time to read through it. I know it's long - comes in at more than 7000 words. (One option to shortening it would be to lengthen it into a novelette since there really is more than one story going on here.)

Thanks also, Auntie, for the note on Forum participation. I try to take the time to comment on at least three stories per week (usually more). I just feel it's common courtesy if I am hoping for others to comment on my work. In addition, there's a lot of really good stuff being posted here, which helps motivate me, and there's also a lot of stuff that has potential but needs work, and I like to encourage those writers to try harder.

In terms of accepting criticism myself, I have to be honest: when I first started being an active member about a year ago, I was expecting all sorts of comments saying that my stories were stunning works of genius! It didn't take long before I realized that was not going to happen. :) In fact, there was a point when I just about quit the Forum because I was getting what I perceived as only negative feedback. But I have to admit now that, while I don't always agree with the crticisms I get, I see that they're intended to be constructive and, in fact, they usually are very useful. It might be gratifying for you to know that most of the areas for improvement that you point out - as is in the case with your critique of The Wild Boy - are also areas that I also thought could still use some work. All in all, I've learned a lot from my participation in the Forum, and I feel I've become a better writer for it.

[108 fountains]

By the way, there were certain passages that I thought were rather inspired, such as when Dr. Mann asked the head nurse to do something about the dogs: "Manodhari barked something in Hindi to one of the other nurses, who in turn barked something to one of the orderlies..." -- I liked it anyway :lol: