= C

NARRATIVE 2

Then, this happened: they found your severed thumb.

A listless troop of Eagle Scouts

far outside incorporated Halifax,

where they had no business being.

It was true, everyone had said so,

though suspicious-looking aldermen

lent the boys cheap carbines

and sundry ammunition and mean-looking blades

to clip to their belts like phones.

Come back, they said, giving them up,

miniature sacrifices marching into

the violence of everywhere else.

And you were there already, shaving

with old hubcaps and notched machetes,

line-items in the surplus of a dim, disreputable war.

You slept inside cast-off hammocks

when the nights were warm

and it was easy to believe life

was not an endlessly replicated series of visual puns.

And then in your hands

you were holding some blood,

belonging to nobody but you.

A bland nausea knotting up.

The stirrings of critters in the distant brush.

Not much else to attend you

and your stupid wound.

No orchestral fanfare set to the ticking of tape.

That would have been nice,

you thought, but a mess

within another mess, and your life besides.

It was easy to bind your hand

and cover up your thumb

with some of the cellophane that was all over.

To say a few sweet words

and then leave it on the ground,

as much use as it had ever been.

And then it was easier still to go,

that much lighter in flesh

and the blood that sped out of you.

Whenever they found you

hitching on the road's crumbling shoulder,

there was no good light

by which to see you

swear your name was very serious,

so a few them itched

to unsling their borrowed guns.

You're already dying,

they muttered and coughed and kicked

at the scant clods of grass where you stood.

You're almost out of blood.

You don't even know it.

What could you trade for your life?