Death and the little boy

A Story by bill angell

an early vist from Lady Death, the beginning of a lifetime fascination.

Zombie’s Coffee House �" table 3®

I sit quietly, watching the steam rise from the mug and intertwine with the tendrils of aromatic smoke above the glowing sticks of incense. As my mind melds with the dancing spirals of heated air and smoke visions of long, long ago begin to creep into my reality.

Perhaps it is because I grew up in the days of radio; I was eighteen before we owned our very first television set. Other than a visit to a friend’s home or to a movie, my stories came from reading, or from radio dramas. Thus, I was adept at seeing with my mind.

Suddenly, I sense the presence of an old friend and there sitting across the table is one that I have often flirted with, one who has teased me many, many times. Opening her arms to me and enticing me with her smile, her beauty, only to side step my attempt to enter her embrace.

“Not now, the time is not right”.

I smile and gaze into her eyes, deep liquid pools of promise.

“Do you remember the first time we met?” the question followed by a wink and a toss of her lovely head. “The very first time that you called me to your side and asked me to embrace you.”

“I am not certain that it was the first time I called your name, but the first memory of your coming to me is very vivid”.

“Tell me a story, Story-teller Man, tell me of your vivid memory”, and with that grin, she tilts her head and leans back into her chair.

“I am six years old and it is warm. I am playing outside in my front yard, the month is September and the year is 1945. I am in the first grade, but school is out for harvest season. But for some reason, we are not picking cotton today and I am enjoying the time, playing.”

“Perhaps it is a Sunday; the edge of our yard is filled with a stack of old lumber. The county work crew stacked it there when they replaced the bridge that spans the gravel road. It is a small bridge, but still the pile of lumber is tall enough to form an excellent platform to jump from and there are no workmen today to chase me away.”

”I run across the yard, building my speed and up the slanted lumber pile and jump as far as I can propel my body. I am sailing out from stack of two by twelve planks, flying like a bird. And then I see the plank lying on the ground and …… “.

“….. I feel the weigh of the heavy oak board holding me down, breaking my stride, and then I feel the large steel nail penetrating my bare foot. Anxiously I look at my foot and see the tip of the nail protruding from the top of my foot, almost centered.”

“I try to lift my foot, but I am securely impaled by the nail that is larger in circumference than most of my fingers. Again I try to lift the imprisoned foot, but it is firmly connected to the huge oak plank ……”

“’Mommy, come help me, I need you. Please … Mommy, please …’ but the road is too far from the house for her to hear me. I am firmly impaled, but I must free my self ….”

“I take a deep breath, bend and put my left hand around my toes, my right hand around my heel and I pull as hard as I can and I feel myself falling backward, crashing into the ground.”

“Now, we are sitting in the doctors examining room. About an hour has passed since my blind leap ended rather badly, my mother is a total wreck, but the doctor assures her that it is fortunate that the nail went completely through the foot, there should be no infection. A tetanus shot, a few days off the foot and no real harm done.”

“I am lying on my grandmother’s large soft bed; the doctor is covering the walls with papers and putting sheets over things near the bed. It has been three or four days since I was in his office and my foot is about triple normal size, ugly red lines zigzagging up my leg. The doctor has my mother and my grandparents hold me down as he firmly holds my throbbing foot in one hand and prepares to stab the foot with the scalpel gripped in the other.”

“’With the amount of pus and infection in his foot, the mess will go everywhere’ he warns as he stabs the foot.”

“A very worried look grips his face as he looks at the two tiny drops of watery blood, no pus. Within the hour we are in his car headed toward Memphis, Tennessee, ninety miles away, yet the closest major hospital, and I heard him tell my mother that we were going to this hospital to amputate my leg before the blood poisoning could spread and turn to lock-jaw.”

“’I don’t wanna go to the hospital, I don’t want my leg cut off, just let me die”.

”But as usual, nobody listens to the kid.”

“And when I saw that examining chair, with all the wheels and gears, my first ever adjustable examining chair, I was positive that it was the saw. That they were going to sit me in that chair and saw off my right leg, and then take me back home. And I was sure that I was not going to let it happen and I fought as hard as I could, but a half dozen adults really have little problem overpowering one six year-old. I was held in the chair, but I was not quiet about it, until I was finally convinced that this was not the saw.”

“And then I was taken to a room and left, and that is when I called you to come and take me away before they could cut off my leg. And you promised that you would, but to relax and see what happened first. An of course, the hospital convinced my doctor to try penicillin and after forty-eight adult shots, one every two hours night and day, I walked out of the hospital on my own two legs. But I also know that you never left my bed-side during those long hours, even when my mother was there.”

“And that Lady Death is the first time I can remember you teasing me, and then side-stepping and telling me it isn’t the right time. But I am going to get that hug and kiss one of these days”.

With a merry laugh and a wink, she stands and coyly whispers “Yes, I know, but this is not the time”.