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D oc Colvin Swain was the seventh son of a seventh son, which Ozark tradition indicates as infallibly as the daily setting of the sun that he was destined to become a physician, even in spite of himself. He was born of a Swain (it is an old, old family name not to be confused with “swain,” the name for an immature pre-imago male roosterroach, the male equivalent of “nymph”) who was the last, or seventh, swain to emerge from his mother’s easteregg, and Colvin himself emerged from his mother’s easteregg last in line following Irvin, Gavin, Alvin, Marvin, Steven, and Vincent.
If being seventh was not enough to doom him to medical practice, Colvin Swain’s name and its sake, which he never had the inclination to change, would have kept him from being a “normal” roosterroach, because the human Colvin Swain had been the greatly beloved physician to the village of Stay More in its last years of existence as a community, eons ago. Not only that, and not even to mention that Doc Swain the roosterroach had taken on Doc Swain the long-westered human’s personality, his speech, his character, and even his habit of making “house calls,” Doc Swain occupied the ruin of the old Swain clinic, on Roamin Road halfway between Holy House and Parthenon, that is, one furlong from each. The collapsing Swain clinic had no inhabitants except Doc (a widower) and a family of Daddies-long-legs who considered Doc too large to eat, and several families of Theridon tepidariorum , your ordinary house spider, whose webs had covered every corner of the interior of the clinic but who, like bats, ate only insects who flew, something Doc hadn’t done since his last escape from the Great White Mouse. Indeed, Doc was rumored to have practiced medicine on various of these arachnid housemates of his; in any case, he was on good terms with the spiders and had the run of the clinic…or rather the hobble of it, since he was missing three unregenerated gitalongs, two on one side, one on the other, lost to the bite of his nemesis, the Great White Mouse, who had ambushed him on one of his errands of mercy into the backbrush…or so he claimed, although an eyewitness had hinted that the mysterious monster-mouse might have had provocation, that Doc was seen attempting to bite off its tail to use in one of the philters or nostrums that he occasionally concocted. It was said that the tip of an albino mouse’s tail is an essential ingredient in the remedy for gout, which afflicted several of Doc’s male patients. But Doc swore the attack of the Great White Mouse upon his person was totally unprovoked, and he constantly plotted revenge.
“Heal thyself,” nobody ever said to him, but ought to have, because he was a wreck of a specimen himself. In addition to the three missing unregenerated gitalongs, his heart was irregular, his digestion faulty, his ocelli, or stargazers, were nearly blind…and he appeared to have the gout. But his mind was sound, and next to Squire Hank Ingledew he was considered the wisest sage in the world.
In fact, next to Squire Ingledew was where he wanted to be, the two old codgers preferring each other’s company to that of lesser mortals, and they could often be found together, of an evening, lounging on the porch of Doc’s clinic, watching the world go by, commenting upon it, and holding court for the various other loafers, mostly older male roosterroaches, who liked to gather there, being forbidden by Squire Hank from congregating on the porch of Parthenon, and leaving the porch of Holy House to other folk.
On any given night, after breakfast, a couple dozen or more members of this Loafer’s Court could be found lolling around Doc Swain and Squire Hank, listening to them holding forth on the ancient stories of Stay More, swapping tall tales, and waxing prophetic about their favorite subject, which was The Bomb, particularly the irreligious, anti-Rapture view of it held by many, who did not believe that Man
D oc Colvin Swain was the seventh son of a seventh son, which Ozark tradition indicates as infallibly as the daily setting of the sun that he was destined to become a physician, even in spite of himself. He was born of a Swain (it is an old, old family name not to be confused with “swain,” the name for an immature pre-imago male roosterroach, the male equivalent of “nymph”) who was the last, or seventh, swain to emerge from his mother’s easteregg, and Colvin himself emerged from his mother’s easteregg last in line following Irvin, Gavin, Alvin, Marvin, Steven, and Vincent.
If being seventh was not enough to doom him to medical practice, Colvin Swain’s name and its sake, which he never had the inclination to change, would have kept him from being a “normal” roosterroach, because the human Colvin Swain had been the greatly beloved physician to the village of Stay More in its last years of existence as a community, eons ago. Not only that, and not even to mention that Doc Swain the roosterroach had taken on Doc Swain the long-westered human’s personality, his speech, his character, and even his habit of making “house calls,” Doc Swain occupied the ruin of the old Swain clinic, on Roamin Road halfway between Holy House and Parthenon, that is, one furlong from each. The collapsing Swain clinic had no inhabitants except Doc (a widower) and a family of Daddies-long-legs who considered Doc too large to eat, and several families of Theridon tepidariorum , your ordinary house spider, whose webs had covered every corner of the interior of the clinic but who, like bats, ate only insects who flew, something Doc hadn’t done since his last escape from the Great White Mouse. Indeed, Doc was rumored to have practiced medicine on various of these arachnid housemates of his; in any case, he was on good terms with the spiders and had the run of the clinic…or rather the hobble of it, since he was missing three unregenerated gitalongs, two on one side, one on the other, lost to the bite of his nemesis, the Great White Mouse, who had ambushed him on one of his errands of mercy into the backbrush…or so he claimed, although an eyewitness had hinted that the mysterious monster-mouse might have had provocation, that Doc was seen attempting to bite off its tail to use in one of the philters or nostrums that he occasionally concocted. It was said that the tip of an albino mouse’s tail is an essential ingredient in the remedy for gout, which afflicted several of Doc’s male patients. But Doc swore the attack of the Great White Mouse upon his person was totally unprovoked, and he constantly plotted revenge.
“Heal thyself,” nobody ever said to him, but ought to have, because he was a wreck of a specimen himself. In addition to the three missing unregenerated gitalongs, his heart was irregular, his digestion faulty, his ocelli, or stargazers, were nearly blind…and he appeared to have the gout. But his mind was sound, and next to Squire Hank Ingledew he was considered the wisest sage in the world.
In fact, next to Squire Ingledew was where he wanted to be, the two old codgers preferring each other’s company to that of lesser mortals, and they could often be found together, of an evening, lounging on the porch of Doc’s clinic, watching the world go by, commenting upon it, and holding court for the various other loafers, mostly older male roosterroaches, who liked to gather there, being forbidden by Squire Hank from congregating on the porch of Parthenon, and leaving the porch of Holy House to other folk.
On any given night, after breakfast, a couple dozen or more members of this Loafer’s Court could be found lolling around Doc Swain and Squire Hank, listening to them holding forth on the ancient stories of Stay More, swapping tall tales, and waxing prophetic about their favorite subject, which was The Bomb, particularly the irreligious, anti-Rapture view of it held by many, who did not believe that Man
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