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- Story Listed as: Fiction For Adults
- Theme: Fairy Tales & Fantasy
- Subject: Fairy Tale / Folk Tale
- Published: 11/16/2018
The man with the golden hand.
Born 1951, M, from Wilmington NC, United StatesI was five the first time it happened. It scared the living daylights out of me.
My cat had taken a nasty bite from the neighbors German Sheppard. You could see her ribs, part of her intestines were hanging out, one paw- gone. I pulled my T-shirt off, making a sort of hammock to carry her home with. When my right hand circled under her body, I lifted her as gently as I could.
She meowed the most plaintive howl of pain I had ever heard. It was a cat scream that said: “Just let me die.” I couldn’t. She was MY Cat. That is when it first happened.
My hand glowed.
*****
At first I thought my tears were making the sun sort of sparkle on her fur. Then I saw that it wasn’t the sun on her fur shining, it was my hand glowing right through her body. I had to turn away. The glow was so bright that it made her body transparent to me. I don’t know where the thought to move her organs around, grow her paw back, fix the two broken ribs, and put it all back inside her (except the paw, that I put on the stump of her foreleg). I sealed it all up with a neat stitching job. One that would heal so well that you would have to have a jewelers watch to see where the wound had been.
And that was that.
The glow went away. Friendly (my cat’s name) looked up at me with almost Human Emotion. One gentle stroke of her paw on the side of my cheek (claws withdrawn), another on the other side of my face- a soft caress of her scratchy tongue; the cat equivalent of “I owe you one.” Then she jumped out of my T-shirt sling and ran off to our house.
I figured it was my imagination.
I was wrong.
*****
Cindy was twelve at the time, I was eleven. We had known each other out whole lives. She lived next door to me on a country lane that only had six houses on it. Only two of those houses had children; mine and Cindy’s. We were best buddies (still are). We spent hours by the river, more hours helping out in the barns, and still more hours walking down the mile and half path to Mr. Robert’s Country Store.
Sometimes we got lard, or a ham, or lye soap for her Mom or mine to do laundry with. Occasionally we would get dried fish, spending the whole way home discovering just how many feral cats live in those fields near our homes. It would make us laugh as the cats would attempt make a “smash and grab” at our dried fishes.
Sometimes…well…okay…most times; Mr. Robert’s would give Cindy first, then me, a candy (anytime), popsicle (summer) or a small bag of roasted chestnuts(Winter) for our long walk home. It was a great childhood, with the best childhood friend in the world to share it with.
Until…
*****
I had gone with Uncle Bruce to get feed for the two horses he kept. I was only eleven years old, but growing up in the country and my own genes combined to make me big for my age and strong for any age. Uncle Bruce still carried that shrapnel from a German 88 in his back and leg. So anytime he went for anything that weighed more than 25 pounds, he brought me or my brother Mike, or my Dad with him.
Feed bags weigh 100 lbs. I was proud that I could carry them all the way to his pickup and throw them in the back without lowering the gate. He always gave me a Silver Dollar when we got home. I always refused it.
“Dad says you are Family. You don’t charge family.”
Uncle Bruce would laugh. Then he would give me a shiny new quarter- and that I kept. It was enough for Cindy and I to go all the way to Huron on Saturday to see the Matinee at the Garden Theater. It even left a nickel for candy. I think Uncle Bruce knew about that.
We rode back to our house in his old Ford Pickup singing his favorite Hank Williams songs. My Uncle Bruce could have been a professional…I could barely carry a tune. Neither of us would have been singing if we had known what had happened to Cindy.
*****
We knew something was up when we pulled on our lane. There were two cop cars, an ambulance, and almost everyone who lived on our lane gathered in the side yard by the barn at Cindy’s house. My Uncle just drove right up.
“What happened?”
My Mom turned. I saw her face. I turned gray. I didn’t know what happened. Whatever it was, the look my mom gave me was the one you give someone you love when something has happened to someone they love. Pity, sadness, helplessness, and the pain of " know what you don’t" was written all over that look. I cried.
My Mom almost snatched me into her arms.
“Don’t look Bryan. The Doctors are doing all they can. You can’t help. We will go to the hospital when they move her there.”
I could hear in my Mom’s voice like some sort of sonic subtitle what she really meant to say: “Then onto the morgue.”
I broke free and ran into the barn.
Officer Jenkins barely had time to turn before I was past him. Cindy’s Mom was wrapped in Cindy’s Dad’s arms. I could almost feel the effort she was taking to just breathe. I looked at Cindy’s Dad eyes; I wish I hadn’t. There wasn’t anyone home. His eyes were open but he wasn’t seeing anything. Then I saw her.
Cindy.
*****
Her leg was broken in at least two places. Her arm in at least as many. That wasn’t where all the blood or misery was coming from. It took me a second to notice the four bloody tines of a hay rake sticking through her slender body. From her belly to her neck, evenly spaced, on a slight angle, every two inches was a tine sticking out a good six inches.
The tines had pierced her back, torn through her innards, and stuck straight out through the front of her chest. Blood was everywhere. It was obvious she had fallen from the Hay loft (I glanced over to see how that could have happened). She didn’t fall, the loft collapsed and she tumbled out.
Just her luck the Hay fork had been hangin on the post with its tines up, when the post broke. She must have fallen directly onto it when she fell. Just hitting it before it could fall over flat.
Little bubbles of pink blood were staining the front of her blouse, another little trickle was leaking from her lips. Lips that were already turning blue to match her skin, gave her an eerie softness against the yellow hay.
I didn’t scream.
I put my arm gently under her back. Nobody tried to stop me. As far as they were concerned she was already dead. I knew she was…almost.
I put my right hand under her back…hoping…hoping…hoping.
And then…
*****
My hand glowed. Just like with my cat. But much much brighter. Everyone had to turn away. I heard a few exclamations and Officer Jenkins say : “Sweet Jesus!” Like a prayer, not a curse. Then I didn’t hear anything. I was working.
I could see through her body. I saw the tine that went through her liver. The two piercing her lungs. The one that nicked her heart too. Her heart wasn’t beating, her lungs weren’t drawing a breath. I didn’t care. I was working.
With my left hand I pulled all four tines out of her body in one long smooth pull. They slid out with the same ease you might cut through Mrs. McCarthy’s Lemon Meringue pies. I tossed the broken hay fork behind me with its bloody spears without looking back.
I closed all the holes inside her body. I rebuilt her liver, her lungs, and restarted her heart, after carefully replacing the nick in it. I don’t know how I did, but I did it. I filled her lungs with air. I put blood back in her veins. My hand was a golden heated orb behind her.
I don’t know how long it took before I heard Cindy say:
“Bryan! I had the weirdest dream ever.”
The last thing I remember before I fainted was Officer Jenkins say:
“Well I’ll be a son of a bitch.”
*****
I am thirty one now. Cindy is thirty two. Our first baby is coming soon. We just want a healthy baby. Pink or blue, we don’t know yet. We don’t care. We like our quiet life out here on the old lane. Uncle Bruce sold us his house when my Aunt Colletta said she couldn’t take one more winter up here. They come up in the summer, we go down to Florida for a week long visit just after Christmas. Uncle Bruce gives me a silver dollar for driving all that way to visit. I take them this time.
When folks around the new fangled IGA Store on the site of old Mr. Robert’s country store from our youth, wondered why everyone seemed to both know me, and regard me with awe- they always got the same mysterious answer:
“Him? Oh he is the man with the Golden Hand."
The man with the golden hand.(Kevin Hughes)
I was five the first time it happened. It scared the living daylights out of me.
My cat had taken a nasty bite from the neighbors German Sheppard. You could see her ribs, part of her intestines were hanging out, one paw- gone. I pulled my T-shirt off, making a sort of hammock to carry her home with. When my right hand circled under her body, I lifted her as gently as I could.
She meowed the most plaintive howl of pain I had ever heard. It was a cat scream that said: “Just let me die.” I couldn’t. She was MY Cat. That is when it first happened.
My hand glowed.
*****
At first I thought my tears were making the sun sort of sparkle on her fur. Then I saw that it wasn’t the sun on her fur shining, it was my hand glowing right through her body. I had to turn away. The glow was so bright that it made her body transparent to me. I don’t know where the thought to move her organs around, grow her paw back, fix the two broken ribs, and put it all back inside her (except the paw, that I put on the stump of her foreleg). I sealed it all up with a neat stitching job. One that would heal so well that you would have to have a jewelers watch to see where the wound had been.
And that was that.
The glow went away. Friendly (my cat’s name) looked up at me with almost Human Emotion. One gentle stroke of her paw on the side of my cheek (claws withdrawn), another on the other side of my face- a soft caress of her scratchy tongue; the cat equivalent of “I owe you one.” Then she jumped out of my T-shirt sling and ran off to our house.
I figured it was my imagination.
I was wrong.
*****
Cindy was twelve at the time, I was eleven. We had known each other out whole lives. She lived next door to me on a country lane that only had six houses on it. Only two of those houses had children; mine and Cindy’s. We were best buddies (still are). We spent hours by the river, more hours helping out in the barns, and still more hours walking down the mile and half path to Mr. Robert’s Country Store.
Sometimes we got lard, or a ham, or lye soap for her Mom or mine to do laundry with. Occasionally we would get dried fish, spending the whole way home discovering just how many feral cats live in those fields near our homes. It would make us laugh as the cats would attempt make a “smash and grab” at our dried fishes.
Sometimes…well…okay…most times; Mr. Robert’s would give Cindy first, then me, a candy (anytime), popsicle (summer) or a small bag of roasted chestnuts(Winter) for our long walk home. It was a great childhood, with the best childhood friend in the world to share it with.
Until…
*****
I had gone with Uncle Bruce to get feed for the two horses he kept. I was only eleven years old, but growing up in the country and my own genes combined to make me big for my age and strong for any age. Uncle Bruce still carried that shrapnel from a German 88 in his back and leg. So anytime he went for anything that weighed more than 25 pounds, he brought me or my brother Mike, or my Dad with him.
Feed bags weigh 100 lbs. I was proud that I could carry them all the way to his pickup and throw them in the back without lowering the gate. He always gave me a Silver Dollar when we got home. I always refused it.
“Dad says you are Family. You don’t charge family.”
Uncle Bruce would laugh. Then he would give me a shiny new quarter- and that I kept. It was enough for Cindy and I to go all the way to Huron on Saturday to see the Matinee at the Garden Theater. It even left a nickel for candy. I think Uncle Bruce knew about that.
We rode back to our house in his old Ford Pickup singing his favorite Hank Williams songs. My Uncle Bruce could have been a professional…I could barely carry a tune. Neither of us would have been singing if we had known what had happened to Cindy.
*****
We knew something was up when we pulled on our lane. There were two cop cars, an ambulance, and almost everyone who lived on our lane gathered in the side yard by the barn at Cindy’s house. My Uncle just drove right up.
“What happened?”
My Mom turned. I saw her face. I turned gray. I didn’t know what happened. Whatever it was, the look my mom gave me was the one you give someone you love when something has happened to someone they love. Pity, sadness, helplessness, and the pain of " know what you don’t" was written all over that look. I cried.
My Mom almost snatched me into her arms.
“Don’t look Bryan. The Doctors are doing all they can. You can’t help. We will go to the hospital when they move her there.”
I could hear in my Mom’s voice like some sort of sonic subtitle what she really meant to say: “Then onto the morgue.”
I broke free and ran into the barn.
Officer Jenkins barely had time to turn before I was past him. Cindy’s Mom was wrapped in Cindy’s Dad’s arms. I could almost feel the effort she was taking to just breathe. I looked at Cindy’s Dad eyes; I wish I hadn’t. There wasn’t anyone home. His eyes were open but he wasn’t seeing anything. Then I saw her.
Cindy.
*****
Her leg was broken in at least two places. Her arm in at least as many. That wasn’t where all the blood or misery was coming from. It took me a second to notice the four bloody tines of a hay rake sticking through her slender body. From her belly to her neck, evenly spaced, on a slight angle, every two inches was a tine sticking out a good six inches.
The tines had pierced her back, torn through her innards, and stuck straight out through the front of her chest. Blood was everywhere. It was obvious she had fallen from the Hay loft (I glanced over to see how that could have happened). She didn’t fall, the loft collapsed and she tumbled out.
Just her luck the Hay fork had been hangin on the post with its tines up, when the post broke. She must have fallen directly onto it when she fell. Just hitting it before it could fall over flat.
Little bubbles of pink blood were staining the front of her blouse, another little trickle was leaking from her lips. Lips that were already turning blue to match her skin, gave her an eerie softness against the yellow hay.
I didn’t scream.
I put my arm gently under her back. Nobody tried to stop me. As far as they were concerned she was already dead. I knew she was…almost.
I put my right hand under her back…hoping…hoping…hoping.
And then…
*****
My hand glowed. Just like with my cat. But much much brighter. Everyone had to turn away. I heard a few exclamations and Officer Jenkins say : “Sweet Jesus!” Like a prayer, not a curse. Then I didn’t hear anything. I was working.
I could see through her body. I saw the tine that went through her liver. The two piercing her lungs. The one that nicked her heart too. Her heart wasn’t beating, her lungs weren’t drawing a breath. I didn’t care. I was working.
With my left hand I pulled all four tines out of her body in one long smooth pull. They slid out with the same ease you might cut through Mrs. McCarthy’s Lemon Meringue pies. I tossed the broken hay fork behind me with its bloody spears without looking back.
I closed all the holes inside her body. I rebuilt her liver, her lungs, and restarted her heart, after carefully replacing the nick in it. I don’t know how I did, but I did it. I filled her lungs with air. I put blood back in her veins. My hand was a golden heated orb behind her.
I don’t know how long it took before I heard Cindy say:
“Bryan! I had the weirdest dream ever.”
The last thing I remember before I fainted was Officer Jenkins say:
“Well I’ll be a son of a bitch.”
*****
I am thirty one now. Cindy is thirty two. Our first baby is coming soon. We just want a healthy baby. Pink or blue, we don’t know yet. We don’t care. We like our quiet life out here on the old lane. Uncle Bruce sold us his house when my Aunt Colletta said she couldn’t take one more winter up here. They come up in the summer, we go down to Florida for a week long visit just after Christmas. Uncle Bruce gives me a silver dollar for driving all that way to visit. I take them this time.
When folks around the new fangled IGA Store on the site of old Mr. Robert’s country store from our youth, wondered why everyone seemed to both know me, and regard me with awe- they always got the same mysterious answer:
“Him? Oh he is the man with the Golden Hand."
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