This is a short story I wrote recently during a wonderful short fiction class at The Loft.
It was about when I cut into my own liver that I realized how much I loved my wife. We was both lying on the kitchen table. She was out cold, my sweet Suzy, no wonder why, but I reached over to her anyway. My hands was bloody but so was the rest of the table, so I didn't think she'd mind. I put my hand on the stump of where her leg used to be and I promised her she would be a whole woman before the sun came up.
Was about two years ago now that she lost her first leg to the sweet tooth. Wasn't too long after that she lost her other foot as well. I been wheeling her around ever since. Not the kind of work I been used to, this caretaking work. Not like fixing a squeaky door or a bent axle or a busted gutter. Those kinds of fixing projects, if you take the time, that kind of fixing will stay good long enough for your grandkids to use it. That's the kind of thing I'm used to, growing up on this farm and now running the whole place myself. But people don't stay fixed like that. People get busted up and they start to take up a whole hell of a lot of time. Caretaking. Cooking, then cleaning up, then washing up, every day. Her liver went bad, and so I got to give her all kinds of medications at all times of the day and night. I been getting my old Suzy's clothes on and off every day for years, since her pain been so bad and her weight getting bigger and bigger, not being able to walk and all. That's not the kind of fixing I have a knack for.
I'm a farmer, like I said, and that means more than just bringing crops to sale. A hell of a lot more. Farming is not just a way to make a dollar, any old corn man can tell you that. It's a way of thinking. The plants and the seeds and the crop themselves ain't even half, ain't even an eighth of the work out here. It's about the tools, the machines, which can be fixed up like new if you know the way of things. If you think the right way about it. A bit of wire and a nice set of wrenches and a strong ratchet strap, and you got yourself a good clean fix that'll last for a good long time. That was the sort of fixing I wanted for my Suzy. A real gift that I knew how to give.
So I got to thinking. Ain't nothing so different between different animals, when you got down to the cuts of meat and the ways of working. We got all the same pieces as a pig or a cow, and even mostly the same genetics as corn itself. Hell, I once hitched up the engine and the front half of an old Ford onto a rusty old Cadillac and connected up all them pieces. Ran fresh as new. It's all in where you cut. All in where the pieces come back together, no matter where they came from in the first place.
It ain't no damn puzzle, really. All kinds of people know the way of it, how to cut folks up and put in or take out the right pieces. Even mix and match from different folks to make a whole person again. Some folks think that books aren't how farmers like to get their learning, that we just learn from Pappy or Uncle Joe, but that ain't true. Every country man I ever knew was sharp as a tack and had the kind of mind that could attack a problem from every sort of angle you could imagine. Big machines, small machines, animal diseases and breeding, irrigation, weather patterns, soil chemistry, all that and more goes into one good day of work out here.
So I started reading, and doing a bit of practicing here and there. I never let her on to what was going on. A stray cat here, a sick old sow there, just getting the feel of things. I learned how to cut a tendon so it would stick right back together, even if one end was from a dead chicken and the other end from a wild rabbit. I found the pancreas of a pig and practiced cutting it out, fresh, quick as lighting. An old folding knife worked best for the more finicky bit, so I made sure to sharpen her good before the big night.
I felt like a damn fool but in the end I had to choloroform my old Suzy. I took her by surprise, for sure as anything I knew she would be much too humble to accept a big gift like that from me. I've never been one for gift-giving, and she was never one for big theatrics when it came to opening presents. So I guess this was a bit strange for the both of us, all in all.
She cut open easy. I figure someone who was able to move around more might have a tougher hide, but as it was, her skin was soft and gave away easy to the knife. I hoped she would sew up just as easy. I got to dragging two pigs, one cat, and the back half of a rabbit into the kitchen, fresh killed just before I put old Suzy to sleep. It was messy work, I don't mind telling you, but damn if I didn't feel like just one hell of a good husband. How many folk would give a bit of their own flesh to their lady love? Yes, I did feel generous that night, and my love for good old Suzy never had a brighter shine to it.
When I finished with my own liver, and sewed the both of us back up, it was time to get busy on the pigs. It was the legs I had a mind to use. All them books I'd been reading showed clear as day that the mechanics of the thing was just about the same as Suzy's, so I went right in. The gristle I didn't mind so much as the bones. Ain't a bone in the world that was meant to be separated from a body. When something is real dried out, people say it's as dry as a bone, but I can tell you sure that a fresh bone is slippery as grease. Putting them all in order was a task and a half. Good thing I had the sense to keep my old Suzy under the fumed-up rag or else I'm sure that first dose would have worn off by then. I was cutting and sewing and flipping through those medical book pages til long into the night. Lucky me I ain't never returned a book late or in bad shape, so I figured I could bloody up a couple pages and not have the library beat me down too hard when I turned them all in.
Old Suzy walks a little funny now. That's alright, I say, because she can get up and go and do just whatever she likes, though it might take her a step longer than most younger folk. I'm damn proud, of course, but most times I just feel glad I could give her something I knew how to give. No different than a squeaky door or busted gutter, my old Suzy. Fixed up good.
A question for reflection: Are you made up of gifts from other people? Where do you keep those gifts inside yourself? Did you want them in the first place?
I like the easy rolling voice you wrote this piece in. The idea of home surgery, that is something I have done, on baby pigs and horses. Never thought of it for on my wife, but now that we are both on Medicare maybe I don't have to!
Healthcare in the US is getting worse day by day. Cool story, Jake!