The Bully of Order by Brian Hart

and worthless as you felt this morning. Not quite.
    He’d see the banker first, Hayes, the twerp. Not long ago the little man had slammed his hand in a door and broken his fifth metacarpal, and when he’d straightened the finger to splint it the banker had wept like a child. He’d seemed hard behind his desk, but with the tears he went instantly wainable. There are degrees of toughness, and from the doctor’s experience he judged women to be generally about three orders above men. Give them a reason to weep and pat their heads. And isn’t life hard. And isn’t pain painful. Your wife gave birth to a ten-pounder and didn’t so much as whimper. Not that you can compare that to the pain of a man, particularly the pinkie finger of a banker. Tearful slints, their bravery so easily abandoned, as a pocketwatch left upon the dresser.
    The inside of his derby was dry, and for this the doctor was thankful; without this he would be wrecked. Women, God, and hats. His wife’s umbrella was there behind the door, and every time he noticed it, he wanted to take his scalpel and cut hundreds of tiny slits in it and send it to her in Seattle or wherever she was now, California. He went out the door into the wet with the picture of his wife’s face sizzling on his mind. She’d stopped the world for him the first time he saw her, that’s how he chose to remember it, but in his heart he felt duped somehow. She’d set him up for this. She’d known that she would do this all along. Then it occurred to him that his children were being raised as Californians; illiterate gold chasers, opium-addicted carpet vendors. Thoughtless little brutes who would someday be arrested and hung for stabbing a store clerk with a penknife. He’d rather they be raised by wolves. But they were, weren’t they? Katherine, if nothing else, was a wolfish bitch, wasn’t she? He smiled and his blood went hot as if he’d been standing too close to the train tracks when it passed by. She scared him, his wife. She’d weakened all the parts of him that mattered. She was his bad weather, and even when she was hundreds of miles away she beat him down, eroded him like the sandcliffs on the coast.
    He went to cross Heron Street but had to wait for a goatherd to push his animals by, more goats lately and more people. The whole Harbor was filling up. He’d heard there was another doctor in town, that made four. But minus Ellstrom, well, still four, three and a half.
    He checked the Alaska Bar first, had a shot of bourbon with Persimon the choker setter gone double amputee. No news from him or the bartender, Meigs, but he didn’t have to pay for his drink. Not a bad stop. Good day, gents. Velchoff the doorman asked him about a goiter.
    â€œCome see me next week.”
    â€œWhy not sooner? It really hurts.”
    â€œDon’t whine, it causes goiters.”
    Going out the door, he replaced the hat on his head and was thankful again for silk because the silk lining of his hat reassured him and caressed him like a nurse he’d had as a child mending his fever. Sweet memories, silk kerchief. Explains why your wife walks all over you. He understood love to be glacial; it’s bigger than anything and it grinds you to bits and leaves a big hole.
    Daisy at Ed Dolan’s Eagle Dance Hall had seen Dr. Ellstrom three, maybe four days ago, post-leaning drunk, said he was drooling a little.
    â€œYou clean him out?”
    â€œNot me, but somebody was gonna if they hadn’t already. Why don’t you come upstairs and let me rub your feet.”
    â€œAnother time.”
    â€œI didn’t really mean your feet, Doc,” she whispered.
    A raised hand, unspoken promise, and back in the street, three bourbons down. There are limits to what is allowed, the doctor thought. Each man according to his fate, like barefoot height and eye color. You can’t push against the great mass of things. Life so