The Butterscotch Stone

When I was 5, or maybe 6 years old, I cut off my left pinky. Understand, this was not an act of self harm, attention seeking or stupidity. What normal 5 year old could conceive of doing such a thing? Heaven knows I got a boatload of attention from it though. And my first encounter with ether dreams. And my first experience with earthly angels, which we now call nurses. And a young surgeon who was interested, more than a little, in saving my finger. Standard practice would have been to remove the mangled flesh, and make a neat serviceable stump. And I saw my father’s deeply tender side. Found that our Rambler could do 80 miles an hour in a pinch. That even sick kids can be cruel. And hospital food tastes worse than library paste mixed with buttermilk mixed with boogers. But I get ahead of myself.

I did it this way. Near our military base home, Fort Holabird, Dundalk, Maryland, was a tennis court and behind the court a building, the typical tan, non-descript one story building that military bases were filled with in the ‘50s. Between the building and the tennis court ran a path, that after a rain, seemed to rut a bit deeper each time. I used to ride my bike down there, training wheels and all, to watch the non-coms slap the ball back and forth. Once in a while, a wild swing would send a ball over the chain link fence surrounding the court, and I would run like crazy to scoop up the ball and hurl it back over. Thank you’s always followed. Or, what an arm, you see that kid throw? I think that’s why I liked to go down there. So the non-coms in shorts could see what Sergeant Dietzel’s kid was made of. So I could catch a few compliments, as well as tennis balls.

So I’d ride my bike down there, training wheels and all. And, because the rain rutted the path, it often exposed stones. Every 5 year old, or was I 6? had a rock collection. Gravel, fossils, brick corners, quartz, coal, arrowheads. Me, I found the butterscotch stone. Found it in a rut, washed smooth, washed clean, the size of, oh, of a grade A medium egg, but irregular, more cubical than ovoid, but with soft corners and a smooth texture and a creamy light brown shot through with a few streaks of pure white. Like a piece of butterscotch that you’d sucked on for a minute and took it out to look at it. It invited touch, that smooth, creamy rock.

I carried it in my pocket, my butterscotch stone.

Have I digressed again? I cut off my left little pinky when I was 5 or 6.
Down by the tennis court, in that rutted path one day, I discovered that I could park my bike, training wheels and all, over the rut till the back wheel hung suspended, free wheeling. I could spin the pedal and the back wheel spun on like a manic grindstone, a ferris wheel for bugs, or. OR! In my mind it became the ice cream machine, churning out every flavor possible, every flavor ever made, every flavor in the universe and then some. And! And, I could make it ting-ting-tung-ting-tung-ting-ting just like an ice cream truck’s bell.

Shove the pedal, spin the wheel, let a finger play the spokes, like guitar strings. Ting-ting-tung-ting-tung-ting-ting. The ice cream poured out in endless streams into an infinite number of cones for all my friends, real and imaginary. Why there was enough for the tennis players, my family, our little subdivision of brick duplexes, maybe the whole base.

Chocolate, butter brickle, vanilla, strawberry, rocky road, mint chip...did you want pineapple, peach or banana? Coming right up! Fudge cake, peppermint stripe, or orange-vanilla? No problem! Here you go. There you are. Two scoops or three or even four? This one’s for you!

Ting-ting-tung-ting-ting-tung-ting-ting.

Over the fence, the tennis ball thwocked back and forth. And I turned out torrents of the best ice cream in all of Baltimore.

The pain must have been hideous, like the scream that ripped from my throat. I can’t remember the pain. Not a bit, not to this day. One of my fingers had gone too deep between the spokes, instead of flicking it, instead of making the spoke sing. And my hand was dragged down in an instant, faster than I could blink, into the sharp edged, rusting chain guard. And in that eye blink my pinky came off midway between the first and second joint, and I collapsed shrieking to the ground.

Thank God for tennis players. They were by me in a flash, faster than Superman, who I aspired to be. How did they get there so fast? One, I heard later, ran to my house. I think. The other wrapped my mangled fingers-pinky, ring and middle- in a towel. Somehow I got home, a blur of walking, being carried, crying. And a blur of going down to the base dispensary, which was no more than an outpatient clinic, no emergency room, no surgeons, no help at all. There was my dad-holding me, carrying me in his arms, and then, in the car, speeding for Fort Meade, where the military had its pre-eminent hospital, its surgeons, x-ray, wards.

Its ether.

I never knew our Rambler, sky blue, robin’s egg blue, could go that fast. I heard later from Mom that Dad had only two tickets in his whole, entire life. Neither of them were from that night.
I watched the speedometer wiggle around 80. I leaned against Daddy, my hand in a dispensary towel, blinding white with a blue stripe and my hand throbbed. Fort Meade seemed like a big place. I was hustled here and there, my dad always next to me. Bright lights, men with clean stiff white coats that buttoned at the shoulder. My hand on an x-ray table. Sitting on Dad’s lap with his warm arms around me, his sandpaper cheek against mine and I didn’t even mind. The fading scent of Old Spice. The towel beginning to show blood. Just a spot.

And the films coming back, still dripping and those clean handsome young men in white, talking with Daddy in serious tones, him nodding, me exhausted, crying. Him putting his hand to his face and rubbing. What time was it? Time had stopped when my hand hit the chain guard.
There was another blur, another room where my clothes came off and a little gown replaced them, a starchy white thing with ties in the back and no bottoms. And then a short trip down a hall, with the tears streaming down my cheeks. Where was Daddy? Daddy? Daddy!

What child does not love his father, maybe more than life itself. Who else can be my father except my Daddy? Who else would I run to greet when he came home after work, and he would open his arms to me and smother me with a kiss and his Old Spice and his love? Who else would toss the ball for me to catch in my new glove?

Daddy? A sweet sick smell penetrated a cotton mask above my mouth. Daddy? I counted to one, two...one, two. Just like I was told. And slipped into dreams. Green skies, me in the crows nest above the pirate ship. The mast swaying like a fishing pole, like the bamboo poles we tipped over the bay in search of sunfish. One, two...The mast went this way and that, and I clung for life. But I was not afraid.

Daddy? Daddy!

I struggled out of sleep, clawed my way up through starched sheets and nausea and green skies and an unbearable thirst. And cried. I was so thirsty, I must have been Moses, fresh from the desert. My mouth was filled with sticky cotton, my tongue glued to my gums.

Daddy? I cried. Daddy?

Then a soft word, a gentle hand on my forehead, a straw to my lips and such refreshment that a drop of water brought. Sshhh, said a gentle voice. Sshh. Daddy will be here soon. Sshh. Another sip from the straw. Daddy? Softly.

I woke up in a big room. There were at least a dozen beds. High beds, but not cribs. With metal railings around them. And the lights were dim, except in one corner, a beacon of lights in just. one. corner. I had to pee so bad that I hurt. I cried, whimpered, called out. Where was I? And where was Daddy?

And there was that voice again. So soft, so kind, so gentle. Sshh. What’s wrong?

I have to go.

Footsteps patted away and back. The sheets lifted up and a cold something was placed between my knees. Sshh. Its okay. Now you can go.

And so I went. And went. And went. My ice cream machine could not have produced what I did that night.

Goodness, said that gentle voice. Was there ever a sweeter voice? You really did have to go. My bladder relieved, I drifted off to sleep again, sensing that gentle hand, that sweet voice nearby, watching over me from a bright corner.

I woke to the noises of the children’s ward of the hospital in Fort Meade Maryland. Beds down one side of the ward and up the other. At least a dozen, maybe more. Girls in wheelchairs. Boys in bed. Children at a table at the far end of the ward, having breakfast. Daddy?

It was all so strange. A nurse came around with a pill. Then another with a tray with gluey gray stuff in bowls and other, tepid things in glasses. There was a white enamel pitcher on the stand next to my bed with a little towel over the open end. Ooops. It wasn’t a pitcher. There, there was the pitcher, and in the summer time heat, it oozed drops of water down onto the table that swung over my bed. Who could eat that gray stuff? I must have. I drank every thing from the tray. There was nothing else to drink just then. I couldn’t quite reach the water. And my hand. It was all wrapped up in white gauze.

My first couple days in the Children’s ward were a blur. Doctors came in to undress my hand and murmur serious words. Nurses were always there, to scold or comfort or hold my hand or pass me a pill. My hand felt foreign, distant, wrapped like a mummy in white up to my wrist. They began getting me out of bed. And one morning the nurse brought me a pill I had never seen before and two hours later I was in the john, scampered through the wooden swinging stall doors, and parked, for a looooong time, bottom first, on the toilet.

I had visitors. Mom. My brother John. Daddy! Daddy! Fresh Old Spice, smooth cheeked, smiling. And John with his gap toothed grin. Mommy. Mommy! Enfolded in the love of family, aaah. They brought me...something. Who can remember that far back? And John got to go to the movies cuz he was so well behaved.

On visiting day, before any one arrived, we were having lunch in the playroom. Gray stuff in bowls. Warm, soupy things covered in gravy and smelling like steam tables and unknown glop. Bland vegetables soggy to the point of disintegration. And something that looked like vomit without the chunks. They called it custard. Lunch was rambunctious, kids with casts and dressings talking all at once, hospital gowns floating here and there with every gesture. One little girl took it upon herself to zing me with a handbell, when I refused her offer to take the custard off my hands. Clang. Right in the forehead. And the ricocheting bell landed in the mashed potatoes and sent gravy every which way, like a sluggish summer fly, suddenly splatted against the glass.

I screamed in pain and white shoes pattered in and out. One took the girl out, unrepentant. Another made sure my brains were still intact and ended the lunch room fiasco in seconds flat.
A few days later, the serious doctors took my dressings off. There was my finger. Black stitches holding the pinky on, I didn’t lose it after all. Later, I learned that it was hanging by a shred and an ambitious young surgeon had said, The worst that can happen is we have to go back later and take it off. So I still had my finger. It had a little crook in it, and later, when it was cold , it would hurt like crazy. But I had my finger.

I went home a few days later. Found my butterscotch stone in my room on top of the dresser. Smooth and curvaceous and warm. Stuck it in my pocket. Later, Daddy and I would go back and have the stitches taken out, and I would snuggle up by him, butterscotch stone in hand, and remember contrasts. The smooth stone and his sand paper cheek. The cool soothing hand of an angel in white, and a bell clanging off my forehead. The sweet trickle of water down my parched throat and the welcome relief of emptying my bladder. Ether and Old Spice.