♦◊♦
After Martin finally got the artificial leg at the VA hospital, things started to change. It hurt, his leg, with this contraption that was now connected to it, that often left his skin covered with sores much worse than the measly one that started the whole mess. The throbbing made Martin feel like he had a second heartbeat. Like he was twice alive or something. He didn’t mind the pain, he kept telling himself. He liked extremes now, liked the sensations they produced in him. It was winter then, and Ernie was worried about Martin staying in the shack.
“That chunk stove won’t last the night,” Ernie said. “Can’t get enough wood in there. Do you think you’ll wake up first, or just freeze?”
Martin laughed, Ernie looked closer to 75 than 55, his skin the color of yellow chalk dust from all the booze he drank. “I’m gettin’ ready to be dead and bloated,” he’d told Martin one Wednesday morning when he was just coming off a weekend bender.
“I’ve been cold before,” Martin said. “Suppose I can take it again.”
“You best better come stay up in the house. ‘Til the weather breaks, at least.” They’d been in a real siege. The deep freeze had started in October, the snow shortly after. It wasn’t even Christmas yet, and they’d already had nearly eighteen inches—the powdery snow that falls when the temperatures are way below freezing.
“Don’t worry about it.” The fact was, the cold gave Martin a rush—made him realize he wasn’t ready to be dead and bloated yet. “If it gets too bad, I’ll bail out. Remember, I can walk now.” Still, he wasn’t quite ready to quit the cane yet. He needed to get better with his balance.
♦◊♦
“Your stump hasn’t got much surface area below the knee,” the prosthetist had told him. “I guess they wanted to save it, but they couldn’t have got much closer.”
“No shit,” Martin had replied. “You think it was my idea? A little bit more, they told me, we just need to cut a little bit more—like I used to tell Mom when I was slicing her homemade bread. Before I knew it, over half the thing was gone. Started out, it was only supposed to be a couple of toes.”
“Gangrene?”
“That’s what they told me. Should all be there in the file.” Martin eyeballed the thin folder that should have held records for the seven operations he’d had at the VA hospital.
The prosthetist was rubbing his hand down over Martin’s kneecap as if the mere motion would make Martin’s tibia grow longer. “I’ll fit you the best I can.”
In the end, the heaviness of the leg, with its metal inner workings and its willow wood exterior, when combined with Martin’s inability to get used to it, made him unable to take normal steps. He tried to lift it and put it straight in front of him for awhile. But then it started pissing him off that he couldn’t get it right. So he would drag it along, off to the side, even make a joke of it: “It’s a ball and chain holdin’ me back. Just invisible.”
Turned out it was a great conversation starter—even a turn-on for some of the ladies. He started going into the bars in town with Ernie, and got picked up on more than one occasion by women who’d moved to the barstool next to him after they’d been appalled to hear a guy say, “So, how’d you lose that leg?”
“Don’t you listen to that kind of talk,” they’d say, as they put a warm hand on top of Martin’s, leaned closer, looked him in the eye. “You deserve some sweet talk.”
Maybe he did, maybe they just felt sorry for him—what did it matter? Their flesh and their eyes were soft, and even if his new leg didn’t work right, at least the other parts of him worked fine.
♦◊♦
“I don’t know what it is with your dad,” Martin’s mom said after he called about finally getting the leg. “Can’t let up on anything. Drives me and your sister crazy.”
“You don’t have to tell me about that,” Martin said.
“And you know how he’d never buy a darned thing when you guys were here?”
“Actually, no. Except maybe when we were really little. Seems to me he took to indulging himself a good while back. Did he get you that new couch yet? The one he promised before I got drafted?”
“This Christmas.”
“Or next. Or next. Or when you’re six feet under.”
There was silence. “Sorry, Mom. I just don’t know when to stop. Guess I’ve got something in common with the old man after all.”
“More than that, I’d say. He keeps fussing about you being in that shack, did you know? Fine place for a smart boy like him, he’ll say. I could get him on over at the power company in a heartbeat. Get him a good job.
“His idea of a good job’s one that’s just like his.”
“He just wants to save you—from struggling, you know. He does make good money. And you know, like he says, Martin, you got to have money to live. You know his birthday’s coming up. I could pick you up and …”
He cut her off. “I wouldn’t be the kind of present he’d be looking for.”
“Now how do you know that? He just isn’t good at saying things right—or saying what he really means. I guess I’m not, either.”
There was roaring in the background. “What the hell’s going on, Mom? Sounds like you got a convoy in the kitchen.”
“Daddy got a chain saw.”
“And it’s in the kitchen?”
“Of course not. He’s playin’ with it in the back yard. You ought to come home and see it—see how it works. He won’t let up on it. Second time he’s been out there already this morning. I keep tellin’ him he’s got to slow down. He’s no spring chicken anymore, you know. But he says we won’t have to pay much for heat if he keeps at it.”
“Great. Then he can put even more in the bank. I’ll see ya, Mom. Take ‘er easy.” Martin could hear the roaring until he hung up the phone.
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I like this!
Nice!