That Tiny Life

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The sawbones squats, his satchel by his knees, his back to the cart and the mules and their feedbags. He runs his forefinger along the tourniquet above Roy’s knee, rubs the pus between his fingertips and thumb, sniffs the lot, and says he’s taking Roy’s leg.

“Like shit you are,” I say. “What’s he left with it gone?”

The sawbones pushes his specs up his disjointed nose and says that if he leaves the leg attached, Roy’ll be gone. Roy’s girl, just three, explores her mouth with her fingers. Her eyes big and gold as coins. She squats in the dirt in front of some thorny shrubs, a whelp in piss-stained trousers, the night growing fathomless above the hills behind her.

Girl’s new with us. I guess it was three years ago Roy and I passed through the settlement her mother lived at with Roy on the lookout for comfort. I hope he found it, ’cause now we’re hampered with the product of said comfort — Roy fetched the girl from the mother less than a week back. Don’t know why he accepted the child, since, one, he knew the child’s age from the letter, and two, he already had that crushed toe sending stripes up his foot.

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