He stared blankly as his fingers absently traced
the crease that severed
the skin between his eyes. Even in the dark
corner of the mine,
where he had retreated from the body, he still
saw the glisten
of blood sprayed on the dirt floor. A coal car
rumbled by, scraping the stone
wall. He watched dust drift down from the ceiling
through the white
light of his headlamp. Then he doubled over to
take a breath and saw the hand.
Propped upward by the pile of rubble near the
wall, the hand
reached skyward, a pale stalagmite, completely
severed
from the boy’s arm. The still fingers gently
curved inward; its white
skin glowed even in the grey shadows cast by the
miner’s
lamps. It lay hidden amidst the shards of coal, a
translucent stone,
a treasure with pale pink veins, that glistened.
He clasped and lifted the hand amazed by the
clean pink nails glistening
in the dim light. He held it palm to palm as if
shaking the boy’s hand
in greeting, but all that met his gaze was his
misty breath and the stone
wall beyond. The coal car passed by again, and
he gently placed the severed
hand on top of the boy’s crumpled body. He
stumbled out of the mine,
following the body, and his hand still felt the
boy’s grasp so cold and white.
In the church, the altar cloth had a tear in the
corner, but it was white
and proper. It was important to be proper, to
have candles glisten
illuminating the hymnals, to have singing, to be
away from the mine.
As he knelt trying to pray, he remembered the boy
with his hands
choked way up on the stick, ready to swing and
sever
the sky with the ball—a ball made of rawhide sewn
around stone.
Even in children’s play there was stone.
When he knelt by the grave, tracing the name on
the plain white
headstone, he felt as if his own hand was
severed,
but as he rose, it was replaced with one that
glistened.
He walked up to the pond where the boys climbed
hand over hand
in the swaying willow branches, up in the sky, so
far from the mine.
Pebbles, round from the wear of water not sharp
from the mine’s
blast and drill, lay at his feet. He picked up a
smooth stone
turning it over and over in his hand.
Then he threw it side-arm, and it skipped seven
times leaving white
circles on the water. The wet stone glistened
in the air—for a brief moment from the earth
severed.
He looked up from the shimmering water to the
evening sky. “This hand is mine,”
he whispered as he clenched his fingers, “I
sever my life from mining stone.
My hands belong to me alone.” And in the
deepening night, his white fist glistened.
—Mary
Beth Kwasek
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