In which the details are revealed

Everything was going so well this morning until I started discovered that the yogurt I was eating for breakfast is not strawberry but strawberry-banana. Aw, man! I hate bananas. I ate half of it before I thought to look at the package, and once I did, was so repulsed that I had to force myself to finish. Mmmm, disgusting yogurt.

I was distracted by the memory of a conversation I had with the Keelhauler last night, in which we discussed the time that he picked up the three severed fingers of a coworker, and put them in his pocket before helping the guy off the boat. I�d never thought to ask what had happened to the fingers. Had the Keelhauler remembered to give them back?

I pondered the question as we cleaned up the dishes from dinner last night. We�re dog-sitting at a house we call the Magic Cottage, a wonderful place set among sprawling gardens and decorated with whimsical antiques. We spend a lot of time there, enjoying the fireplace and the high-speed internet access, and last night we grilled ahi tuna on the barbecue and had dinner on the deck. When we�d finished stacking the dishes, I sat down with the Keelhauler to finish the last of the wine.

�Whatever happened to that coworker�s fingers?� I asked. He is used to my questions about his work, but having lived through the events, lacks my fascination with the details.

�The last I saw,� he said, �they were riding along with the guy on the way to the hospital.� I pictured three little fingers wearing seat belts, headed off down the road. Doot doot de-doot!

�How did they get in the car?� I pressed.

�I handed them to the captain as he was driving away.� This was an unsatisfactory answer�suddenly there was a captain involved? And a car? The Keelhauler�s habit of revealing details out of order meant that I had to demand a full re-telling of the story, so that I could get it straight. For some reason, I felt that I needed to get it right, this story about someone I�ve never met, who had a horrible accident. My needing to get it right necessitated several interruptions in the narrative. Were the severed fingers whole? By way of an answer, the Keelhauler gripped three fingers on my left hand, down to the knuckles. �Picture having just that much left,� he said, and I looked at my hand with just the index finger and thumb visible.

�Down to the knuckles?� I asked, trying to envision it. He nodded. �Were the fingers all scattered all over the deck?� He didn�t remember, but I tried to egg him on into a full sense-memory. �Put yourself back on the boat and imagine yourself doing it. Did you have to chase after them?�

�I just looked down, and thought, �He�ll be needing these,� and just picked them up and put them in my pocket,� he said, miming the action. Seeing his own hand enter his pocket gave me a slight chill.

�But what did it FEEL like? Were they bleeding?� I asked.
�Not really,� he said. �The weirdest thing was watching the blood spurt out of his knuckles.� He indicated a spraying motion with his hand. �Like a squirt gun,� he added.

�Onto the deck?� I asked.

�Onto my white t-shirt that I�d given to the guy to wrap his hand in.� The Keelhauler is always ripping off his shirt to aid the bleeding. He must have put his flannel shirt back on, in order to have a pocket to put the fingers in.

�Did you put the fingers in your pocket nail-side up?� He didn�t remember. Nor did he recall whether the fingers felt warm when he handled them. He didn�t believe that the severed fingers had made a big bloodstain on the pocket of his shirt. Ink-stained engineering geeks be damned: Here is a real case for a pocket protector.

The boat had been docking at the time of the accident, and the captain had run the injured guy to his car, rather than wait for an ambulance. The Keelhauler ran after them, and as the captain put the car in gear to drive away, handed the fingers through the window.

�You just handed them to him?� I said, imagining the exchange. �Did he put them in his pocket?�
�I don�t know!� the Keelhauler said, amused but tiring of the line of questioning. �I just said, �He�s going to need these,� and the captain took them and said OK, and drove off.�

�Did they reattach the fingers?� I asked, practicing picking up a magazine, then a drink coaster, using only my thumb and forefinger.

�I don�t know. I never saw the guy again.�

I sipped my wine, imagining the aftermath. Rinsing the blood off the deck. Going back to work. I wondered if the remaining crew had talked about it much�gone over the details, counted themselves lucky for avoiding an accident.

�Was that the grossest thing you ever saw?� I asked.

�No,� he said, fixing me with a serious look, and suddenly, thinking about the squirt-gun blasts of blood, I didn�t want to hear the other story.



Star of the day. . .A. A. Fair
posted @ 10:02 a.m. on July 21, 2006 before | after

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She lay awake all night,

zzzzzzzzzzz......