Bryson City Secrets: Even More Tales of a Small-Town Doctor in the Smoky Mountains

by Walt Larimore, MD

  When we walked into the grill that morning, Becky was the first to see Kate. She shrieked to her husband, who was the pharmacist, “Oh, my goodness! Look who’s walkin’ into our store, John!” Suddenly I realized this was the first time I had brought Kate to the store since her surgery.

  Both Becky and “Doc” John, the longtime proprietors of the drugstore and grill, quickly walked out from behind the counter to proudly watch and comment on Kate’s new skills. It was Kate’s turn to smile from ear to ear as she walked and then turned like a Miss America contestant on the beauty pageant runway.

  “Katie!” Doc John exclaimed. “You are a beautiful sight for old, sore eyes. Choose your booth, honey. Breakfast is on me!”

  Becky and I smiled as John took Kate’s hand and escorted her to her favorite booth and helped her get situated. I walked over and sat by her. As I purposefully plopped down hard on the cushioned seat and heard the whoosh of escaping air, Kate’s side of the bench seat sprung upward, flinging her a few inches into the air as she giggled in glee.

  Before long, Becky brought our breakfast. Kate had her longtime favorite — a biscuit smothered in sausage gravy, with a side of smoked bacon and a glass of chocolate milk — while I had scrambled eggs, buttery grits, and whole wheat toast.

  I heard the front door open and looked up to see the younger John Mattox — Becky and Doc John’s son — coming in, wearing his National Park Service uniform, which looked as though he had been sleeping in it all night. He took off his ranger cap and placed it under his belt, behind his back.

  “How ya doin’, Son?” cried Doc John.

  “Doin’ all right, Pop!” called the ranger. The family resemblance was always striking to me.

  John walked over to Kate and squatted down so they were eye to eye. He and his wife, Rita, attended church with us, and he had always been fond of Kate and Scott. “Good morning, Miss Kate.”

  “Good morning, Mr. Mattox,” Kate answered, not taking her eyes off her fork as it moved toward her open mouth, carrying a large bite of biscuit and gravy.

  “You married yet, Kate?” he asked.

  The fork stopped in midair as Kate looked over at him, scowled, and then continued the advance of her fork.

  “I’ll take that as a no!” laughed John. “Mind if I join you, Doctor?”

  I looked at Kate, who vigorously nodded her approval as I answered, “We’d be pleased if you’d join us, Mr. Ranger.” John sat across from us.

  Looking over his glasses, now perched perilously on the tip of his nose, Doc John shouted across the store, “Becky, you might not want those two boys sittin’ together. Purty soon they’ll be schemin’.”

  “Mr. Pharmacist, you mind your own business or I might have to arrest you!” John shouted out over his shoulder. “Mom, I’ll take the same as the Doc. Plus, some home fries.”

  “OK, Johnny,” she answered.

  “Son, you saved any lives this week?” called out Doc John.

  “Pop, come have a seat and I’ll tell ya all about it,” John Jr. called back. He turned to me and whispered, “I gotta admit it’s been a rough week and a long night.”

  While he was waiting for his food, John Jr. began his story. “Well, we’re always having trouble with the poachers. As you know, many of the locals see the federal government as having stolen their family’s hunting land. So we have folks in the national park trapping and hunting bear, deer, turkey, and hogs all the time. Recently we’ve been having a bunch of hog poaching going on.”

  “How do you know?” I asked.

  “The main way is just hearing the gunshots at night.”

  “At night?”

  “Yep. The locals call it ‘spotlighting.’ They carry powerful spotlights and either drive the roads or hike the trails while training the lights on the edge of the meadows or stream edges. If an animal gets caught in the spotlight, it will usually freeze up. Then the spotlighter will just shoot the poor, defenseless thing. If they’re in the park, they’ll field dress the game, and we’ll find what’s left of the carcass at some later time. If they’re near a road, they just haul the whole carcass and drive off — hoping someone won’t stop them to search the car or truck.”

  “Do you catch them very often?”

  “Not really. They seem to know where we’re at and what we’re doing. The saddest thing is to find the corpse of a bear that’s had just the paws and head chopped off.”

  I was astonished. “Why’s that?” I asked.

  “Some of the locals think there are magic powers to those parts of the bear. Others sell them illegally to the Japanese, who will pay huge dollars for them. They believe that when these parts are dried and ground up into powder, it makes a powerful aphrodisiac.”

  “Really?” asked John’s dad as he slipped into the booth beside his son and began sipping a milkshake he had brought with him. “Maybe I oughta start sellin’ that stuff. I hear it’s purty profitable.”

  “Then I’d have to arrest you for sure, Pop. Probably have to send you off to federal prison and make Mom a widow who has to run this entire operation by herself. Doesn’t sound very wise to me.”

  Doc John smiled as he looked at me and then Kate. “Walt, just raise your children right, and they’ll take care of you in your old age. That’s what I always say.”

  “Old age!” exclaimed John Jr. “What makes you think you’re gonna make it to old age, Pop? What are you doing drinking a milkshake this early in the morning? You know it’s not good for your cholesterol.”

  “Son, don’t you go worryin’ about my cholesterol. It’s just fine. Now tell me about what happened last night.”

  Ranger Mattox frowned and then continued. “Well, you remember me telling you about Satan, don’t you?”

  Doc John thought for a moment and then scowled as he remembered. “You talkin’ about the gang that uses that name?”

  “Well, we’re not sure if it’s a single person or a small gang — but my guess is the latter. Anyway, they’ve been driving me crazy. You see, these kids apparently love wild hog meat better than almost anything — other than beating us rangers. And last night they beat us twice.”

  “How so?” asked Doc John.

  “Well, in the case of the first hog, we set up a baited cage, and before dark set in, a big ole hog was trapped. Then we sat up all night, figuring they’d show up to check out our trap. But, as usual, we were at the right place at the wrong time. They took one of the wild hogs right out of another live trap we had set up a few miles away. How they know where we’ve set up the traps and where we’re staking them out, I’ll never know.”

  “I don’t understand,” I remarked. “Why do you trap wild hogs?”

  John Jr. took a sip of his coffee and then explained, “You see, Walt, these wild hogs aren’t native to this area of the country — or even the United States. They were brought in back in the late 1800s and early 1900s for sport hunting. Many of the hogs are Russian wild boar. They’re known for their huge size, tusks, and their love of fighting man or dog or any other perceived enemy or danger. I’ve seen one old, nearly blind boar spend five minutes goring a tree that moved wrong in the wind. That’s why they make for great hunting — with that extra element of danger.”

  Doc John jumped in with more information. “Walt, you oughta see the damage them hogs can do. Five or six of ’em can dig up an acre of land in one night — worse than any tractor.”

  John Jr. grinned as he looked down at his pop’s belly and then back at me. “Kind of like Pop at the dinner table. They don’t leave anything behind.”

  “You be careful!” Doc John warned, feigning irritation. “Don’t you know the Good Book says you’re to honor your father and your mother?”

  John Jr. smiled and continued. “Those hogs will take out every plant in their way, including rare flowers. They have no natural predators and no real enemies, except the occasional rattler, and that’s led to a huge population of wild hogs in the park. So we set up cage traps along the park road
s to trap and then relocate the hogs to game lands outside the park where they can be hunted legally.”

  “So,” I asked, “what’s the deal with this gang? Don’t they help you by taking the hogs?”

  “Two things, Walt. The first is they don’t stop at just taking hogs, but they’ll take bear, deer, or other wildlife almost anytime at all. The other thing that just grates me is how they do it. They’ll sneak up late at night and check all our traps until they find one with a hog inside. Now I know this is hard to believe, but apparently one or more of them will climb into the cage with the hog, wrestle them down, duct-tape their legs, and carry them out of the woods like a sack of taters. We have no idea how they do it. We don’t know if they’re high on drugs or just crazy. You’ve gotta understand these are huge pigs, often weighing more than two or three hundred pounds. They can snap a man’s arm bone like a candy cane. The best I can tell is that at least one of these fellas is as strong as a bear and has no fear of anything — certainly not of rangers or wild hogs. And just to mess with us, they always leave a little sign behind as their trademark. They take some duct tape and spell out the letters S-A-T-A-N on the side of the metal trap.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “We’re not real sure. But I’ve got my suspicions. From time to time we’ll find evidence of a fire and animal sacrifices up at Bryson Place — a clearing up the Deep Creek Valley — and in a couple of other areas. Some of the rangers wonder if we’ve got some sort of weird religion operating in the area — given what appear to be ritualistic killings and the use of the name Satan.”

  “Son, you said you lost two last night. Did ‘Satan’ beat you twice in one night?” asked Doc John.

  John Jr. grinned sheepishly. “Pop, I was hopin’ you wouldn’t ask, especially in front of the doc.”

  “Well, now you’ve gotta tell it all. You know I can’t stand a secret.”

  “Pop, you remember that new ranger who transferred to the park a few months ago?”

  “If I recall correctly, you said he had a face that only a mother could love, and every time he opened his mouth to talk he usually stuck both feet in it.”

  John Jr. laughed. “You got it. His name is Randall. Walt, I don’t mean to be rude, but Ranger Randall really does scare little children and even some grownups. There’s no other way to say it. He’s ugly — bad ugly.”

  “OK,” Doc John interjected, “but what’s this got to do with your second loss of the night?”

  “I’m gettin’ to it, Pop. Just hold on.” John took a deep breath and then looked quickly around to be sure no one was listening. He lowered his voice and continued. “Last night we trapped two hogs, but the Satan gang only found the one cage. We decided we should bring the second hog back to the ranger station for safekeeping. It was embarrassing enough to lose one hog to them, but I’d be dipped if I would lose this one too.”

  “Don’t you usually just take them somewhere else and let them loose?” I asked.

  “Not until we let the state wildlife folks know — and get their go-ahead. So while we’re waiting to hear from them, we really do try to take good care of these hateful, dog-killing animals, even if we do wanna get ’em all out of the park.”

  John took another sip of coffee and then continued. “Walt, it’s just like you take care of patients you don’t particularly like. That’s how we took care of this hog. We gave it some water and covered the cage with a tarp. We did this so the disgusting ole hog wouldn’t overheat in the sun or pound his head into the cage in an attempt to escape.”

  “What’s this gotta do with Randall?” asked Doc John.

  “Pop, it was at this point that Randall drove up in his pickup and wanted to take a peek at our catch. Ranger Randall slowly lifted the tarp and stuck his ole ugly face up to the cage. I swear that hog recoiled back when his beady eyes caught a glimpse of Randall’s face. That hog had seen many an ugly face with its brothers and sisters, but I don’t think any of them compared to what it had just seen. Ranger Randall snorted, and I promise you that hog backed up against the back of the cage, cowering in fear.”

  Doc John and I were laughing so hard that other folks in the store looked over to see what the ruckus was all about.

  John, smiling, continued. “Then Randall lowered the tarp back and drove off in his truck.”

  As our laughter subsided, John said, “Pop, I know you’re not going to believe this, and Walt, you’re gonna call me a bald-faced liar, but what I’m gonna tell you is true. A few minutes after Randall peered in on that hog, I went back to check on it. When I lifted the tarp, I found that poor ole thing fallen over dead. There wasn’t a wiggle or snort left in it.”

  “You’re a fibbin’!” Doc John exclaimed.

  “Am not, Pop! I couldn’t figure out what had happened. One minute the hog was full of hate and energy — the next minute stone-cold expired. Now I’m no doctor, but I’ve never seen anything more alive and healthy than that critter. Then within minutes after Randall looked at it, it fell over dead. That’s the honest truth.”

  “You think that hog was just overheated or dehydrated?” I asked, still convinced John was getting ready to pull my leg.

  “Walt, I wondered the same thing. But it was a cool morning, and we’d given it plenty of water to drink. To tell the truth, I think that hog was already plum fearful. Then when that poor ole pig was forced to come face-to-face with Randall and his ugly face, it simply fell over dead from fright. There’s no other answer. Pure terror killed that wild animal.”

  Doc John and I smiled and gave each other a glance indicating that both of us were still suspicious.

  “Well, Son, aren’t you worried what the chief ranger is going to say when he hears you lost two hogs in one night?”

  “See, Pop, that’s the difference between you and me.”

  John Jr. paused to finish his coffee.

  “What?” inquired Doc John.

  Ranger Mattox grinned. “I’m a thinker.”

  “When’d you start doing that, Son?” Doc John quipped.

  “When I tell the chief my new plan for getting rid of all the hogs in the park without using one cage or firing one shot, he’s gonna promote me and give me a big reward.”

  “How do you figure that?” I asked.

  “I’m gonna take a picture of Randall’s face and make hundreds of copies on totally biodegradable paper. Then I’ll pay Leroy to take me up in the park plane and drop these pictures all over the park. Each time a hog sees one of these pictures, it’s gonna fall over dead. We’ll soon be rid of all these mean critters. Dogs and mere mortals will thank me forever. I’ll be a legend!”

  Doc John and I laughed again.

  “Son,” Doc John commented as he stood up, “I think you are going to be a legend.”

  “You do?”

  “Yep,” laughed Doc John. “A legend in your own mind.”

  As Doc John walked away from the table, I turned back to his son. “John, what does the park do with that meat?”

  John Jr. looked over at Kate, who was finishing her bacon biscuit. “Katie, is that about the best bacon you’ve ever had?”

  Kate looked up at the ranger and just nodded.

  “Ever wonder why Mom and Pop have the best tasting bacon this side of Asheville?” John asked as he started to get out of the booth.

  “You’re not telling me your mom and dad serve Russian boar bacon, are you?” I asked.

  John smiled as he stood up and straightened his uniform. “Walt, those of us sworn to uphold law and justice as employees of the government of these here United States of America simply cannot release highly classified information to the public.”

  “You’ve got to be kidding me, John!”

  Mattox pulled on his cap as he walked away. “Good day, Doctor. See you, Miss Kate.”

  “This is good bacon!” Kate exclaimed.

  I just smiled. I was sure I’d have a limp for the rest of the day the way my leg had just been pulled.

  ch
apter five

  AROMATHERAPY

  As I drove down the driveway from our little green house, I wondered how long it would be before we were in a new home. Barb and I had located a couple of beautiful pieces of property we were considering for purchase. We both felt we needed more room — especially because we were hoping to add a new Larimore to the clan.

  On Christmas Day of 1981, our first year in Bryson City, our second child, Scott, had been born. The next spring, Rick and I moved into our new office building, about seventy-five yards from the hospital. Our practice, primarily geared to the medically indigent and uninsured, was funded by the state as part of a North Carolina Rural Health Association grant. The formation of Mountain Family Medicine Center had, initially unbeknownst to us, created a fair amount of jealousy among the older established doctors in the community. Our modern and somewhat luxurious — at least by local standards — medical building was designed for expansion, which we later realized was incorrectly interpreted by some of the older doctors as our nonverbal and not-so-subtle message that the state had brought us in to push them out — or that we had recruited the state’s help to push them out. Consequently, doctors that we had been told were planning to retire when we moved to town dug in their heels and decided that retirement was not in their foreseeable future — at least that was the rumor on the street.

  In actuality, even if the older doctors had said to someone that they hoped to retire soon, I came to doubt that any of them ever actually would. The reason was simple. Doctors of that era were wedded to medicine in ways that younger doctors simply were not. For the older generation, long hours and little vacation time were part and parcel of the job. The fact that Rick and I took four weeks of vacation a year was anathema to most of them. That we would limit our number of office visits each day was an abomination. And letting our staff go home early enough so they could be with their families for dinner was generally viewed with abhorrence.