Original Excerpt: The Prodigal (second in a series)

(part one)

Photo by Nick Turner

image courtesy of unsplash.com

Still seated, the middle man took out his little book and glasses once more.  "The second portion is Motor," he said, and again he read aloud:

The buzz-saw snarled and rattled in the yardAnd made dust and dropped stove-length sticks of wood,Sweet-scented stuff when the breeze drew across it.And from there those that lifted eyes could countFive mountain ranges one behind the otherUnder the sunset far into Vermont.And the saw snarled and rattled, snarled and rattled,As it ran light, or had to bear a load.And nothing happened: day was all but done.Call it a day, I wish they might have saidTo please the boy by giving him the half hourThat a boy counts so much when saved from work.His sister stood beside them in her apronTo tell them “Supper.” At the word, the saw,As if to prove saws knew what supper meant,Leaped out at the boy’s hand, or seemed to leap—He must have given the hand. However it was,Neither refused the meeting. But the hand!The boy's first outcry was a rueful laugh,As he swung toward them holding up the handHalf in appeal, but half as if to keepThe life from spilling. Then the boy saw all—Since he was old enough to know, big boyDoing a man’s work, though a child at heart—He saw all spoiled. “Don’t let him cut my hand off—The doctor, when he comes. Don’t let him, sister!”So. But the hand was gone already.The doctor put him in the dark of ether.He lay and puffed his lips out with his breath.And then—the watcher at his pulse took fright.No one believed. They listened at his heart.Little—less—nothing!—and that ended it.No more to build on there. And they, since theyWere not the one dead, turned to their affairs.

The hair rose all over my body.  Again I couldn't swallow.  He only read it once.  The lights, again, went out.

I leapt to my feet, but they grabbed me in the dark, the right-hand and left-hand men, impossible that they were so strong, they were lifting me up, taking me off my feet, and one was grabbing and pulling away from my body, against my struggles, the shoulder and right arm.

"You will have only a short time once I say 'Go,'" said the man in the middle from the darkness somewhere.  There was a low hum, and a whirr, as of a small motor spinning to life.  It sounded small, but that didn't reassure me.  Someone was pinching the skin ofmy arm.  "I want you to knock the block over."

Something was wrong.  They knew why I was here.  This wasn't the test.  They were pretending now.  I wanted to tell them everything, and plead for my life.

"The block isn't there," I shouted instead, terrified of what they would do.  A small sting, another needle, halfway between my elbow and thumb.  The light over the table came back on.  If there was a current this time, I was too distracted to remember it now.  I knewit wouldn't end with the needle. I knew something was coming. I didn't know what it was, or thought I didn't: to read me a poem aboutit first? Did they know? Was this real? Test or torture or maybe, maybe, empty threat?

The whir of the motor grew louder.  "You will need to concentrate," said the man, "as we will be unable to help you until you pass."  He was holding something, but the light on the table was too dim to see.  The motor sound was everywhere.  I was gasping and choking and crying out, crying for help, but no one could hear me.

I writhed in the grasp of the two men, but they held like statues of steel.  The middle man was grabbing my wrist, holding my arm firm in the air, near the table.  I felt the warmth of the light on the table on my hand, the hairs of my forearm.  The Middle Man was holding up the saw blade in the darkness over my head.  The whirring jumped up an octave and got louder; ready to bite.  Not an empty threat.  "This may sting," he said, and the blade entered my arm.

It was over before I was finished experiencing its beginning; a splat, skin tore, tissues parted, bone must have come away like butter under a hot knife.  My arm was taken from me about four inches below the wrist.  I cannot forget the sound it made, but I will not describe it to you.  The anticipation had been worse than the pain, because apart from the stinging, at first, there was none.  Just cold empty nothing flailing away at the stubby end of my arm.  Nothing, in the shape of my missing hand.  The instant it was done, the Middle Man said, "Go."

Go what?  I remembered what he had said, and seeing the block, but I was too busy screaming and gasping and trying to get looseto think of anything but the injury.  I felt the blood leaving me, the cold coming in, taking its place.  Soon there'd be nothing inside mebut the cold, and nothing outside me but what used to be me.

"You are running out of time Irving," said the Middle Man in the darkness.  "You are bleeding to death.  We can save your life, but first you have to knock over the block."

I moaned and whimpered, I uttered oaths, I swore vengeance in the vilest terms that came to mind.

"Look at the block Irving!" said a voice, not the voice of the Middle Man. I didn't know whose voice it was.  I wasn't sure it wasn't inside my head.  "They're trying to kill you!" I heard it say.  "Just do what they tell you!  Look at the block!"

I looked at the table, still trembling with pain, but saw no block.  Each pulse was pounding on my arm's end like a hammer through a drum.  There was no block!

"Hurry Irving," said the Middle Man, still helping to hold my arm in place, holding it towards the light and the table, sounding bored.

"You can feel it," said the voice, "even if you can't see it."

I don't know what happened.  Even now, I can look at the moment from before and after and from either side, and I am uncertain.  The nothing at the end of my arm was in the shape of a hand, and I felt it push against something else, or I should say another nothing, one that might have had the shape and texture of a wooden block.  It was a lie that told me it was true, and even if I didn't believe it, the thing that had been my hand did.

"You can feel it," said the voice.

"I can feel it," I said.  My body hurt where the men held me.  I was shuddering all through chest and spine, and very very cold.

"Knock it over," said someone, someone I hated, sounding bored.

I touched the block again.  It was firm and smooth.  I pushed against its side.  

"Knock it over," I said.  I pushed harder.  I felt it fall.

The brights came on, and I was let fall.  The floor, hard but warm.  Someone speaking, other two were blurring about, doors opened.  I imagined a tourniquet, and then blacked out.

*  *  *

Nota Bene: The text appearing above in italics is, as before, not original content. 

The poem is called Out, Out—, by Robert Frost, first published in 1916