Random Winds Read Free Page B

and of course you’re darker, like your mother’s family.”
    “Do you like me more than you liked him?”
    “The same. A man’s children are the same to him, like his own ten fingers.”
    They drew into the Bechtolds’ yard.
    “Wait out here, Martin,” Pa said.
    “Can’t I come in and watch?”
    “I have to change a dressing. It might make you feel bad to see the cut.”
    “No it won’t, Pa. Honestly, it won’t.”
    What his father didn’t know was that Martin had already seen much blood, having peered many a time through the shutters of a first floor window when he was supposed to be amusing himself outdoors. He had watched Pa set a compound fracture. (The little gray tip of bone pierces the flesh; the ether cone silences the screams.) He had seen the mangled stomach of a man gored by a bull. He had also seen his father wrestle down another man who had been beating his wife, and this last had impressed him most of all, although he had known it would be wise not to mention having seen it.
    “All right then, come in.”
    A scythe propped carelessly in a dark corner of the barn had sliced Jake Bechtold’s leg to the bone. Pa pulled the nightshirt up. Carefully he unwound the bandage, revealing a long, blood-encrusted gash, black and crisscrossed with stitches. He studied it for a moment.
    “It’s doing well. Better than I expected, to tell the truth. No infection, thanks be.”
    “We’re grateful to you, Doc.” Mrs. Bechtold wrung her clasped hands. “You always seen us through.”
    “Not every time, Mrs. Bechtold,” Pa said seriously.
    “Oh, that! That was in God’s hands. There wasn’t nothing you could’ve done more than you did do, Doc.”
    When they go back in the buggy, Pa sat in silence for a while. And then he broke out. “Oh, it’s hard, it can be sohard! Sometimes such awful things happen, you can’t put them out of your mind as long as you live!”
    “What awful things, Pa?”
    His father paused, as if the telling would be too difficult Then he said, “It was in my second year here, almost into the third. I never go to Bechtold’s without living it all over again the way I did just now.”
    “Was it anything you did?”
    “No, it was something I didn’t do. I wasn’t able. Jake had the flu. While I was in the bedroom examining him, their little girl, just three years old she was, pulled a wash-tub full of boiling water off the stove while her mother’s back was turned. We laid her on the kitchen table. I can still hear how she screamed. Once in my life I’d ordered a lobster. It was when I first came to this country and stayed those three days in New York City. A lobster is bright red when it’s boiled, you know, and I remember I couldn’t bring myself to eat it The child looked like that. I thought, ‘I don’t know what to do. I’m supposed to know and I don’t.’ A lot of people came running in, wailing and crying. They poured cold water on the child. I didn’t think to tell them not to, although really it wouldn’t have made any difference what they did. The child was sure to die. Finally I found something to do. I got a scissors and began to cut her clothes off.
    “Her body was one terrible blister. I couldn’t even look at the face. When I pulled off the stockings, the skin came with them in long strips, like tissue paper. I took some salve out of my bag. It had gone liquid from the hot sun, so I dribbled it all over the child’s body. Everybody was looking at me, just standing there watching, as if there were some magic in the jar of melted salve.
    “The child lay moaning on the kitchen table all that afternoon. Someone asked, ‘Why not put her in a bed?’ ‘No,’ I said. ‘Best not to lift her.’ We put a little pillow under her head. Her pulse was so faint, I don’t think she felt anything. At least I hope not. We waited. Nobody talked. I heard the cows lowing, wanting to be milked. I’ll never forget the sounds they made, they and the child’s