words pt 3.
this piece was a short story I wrote for my creative writing 3111 class this past year at college titled "Injuries"
My brothers and I never really grew out of climbing trees. I was climbing trees until the day I left Topeka at 19. There was this one tree, though, right behind the old barn I nearly burned to the ground when I was sixteen and angry, that had the best branches for climbing, and it was wide and tall and sturdy. All three of us Cole boys could climb up into its limbs and disappear from the world without much effort at all. I had this particular branch that I liked to sit on, about a quarter of the way up, where I could rest my back against the trunk and peek through the leaves in the greenest part of summer and see the lake not too far out. The lake we used to throw each other in, where we used to sit and tell scary stories on its banks about the dead bodies that probably lurked beneath its surface (we were convinced that old Mr. Lyman was a cold blooded killer and stashed his victims in that lake). My older brother would always climb up the highest in that tree, and from his favorite limb up there he would yell down at me and my little brother, "We really oughtta build a tree fort up here."
It was the summer of 2001, and the Kansas heat was brutal and fierce. My older brother and I were the ones carrying the hammer and nails-- we didn't want Joe, twelve at the time, hammering his stubby little hands to the tree trunk by accident. Anything to avoid a whooping. So there we were, lugging boards and nails up into the limbs of our favorite tree, sweat dripping into our eyes despite the shade of the summer leaves. The air smelled like overgrown onion grass and barley, and we wasted away hours with that taste on our salty lips. We spent four days straight in that heat, bruising our fingers and straining our eyes in the sunlight. We had gone almost five days without any of us falling out of the tree or dropping shit on each other by accident. We were nearly injury free, which, even on five normal days, was a pretty big feat for us Cole boys. It had been mine and my older brother's intention to keep those nails and that hammer away from Joe, and thus far we thought we had accomplished that. We were working on the ladder when I realized that Joe had hammered a few nails through one of the skinnier branches just below my favorite one. I was going to sit there, needing a break from the heat and the sun. I reached up, ready to pull myself higher, and as I lowered my hand down onto that skinny branch, one of Dad's old rusted nails we had stolen from the stash in the garage went right through my palm and out the back of my hand.
It was mostly the blood that shocked little Joe. He was running around the thick base of our tree, screaming bloody murder like he'd just been stabbed in the neck, flailing his skinny arms around above his head. He screamed his high pitched scream until Jason got down there and shut him up. My older brother helped me down from the tree, as my hand shook in pain but no noise left my heat chapped lips. Jason set me down on my feet, but I wobbled, blood pouring down my palm and leaving red rivers down my wrist, dripping from my bent elbow. Jason ripped off the bottom hem of his shirt, wrapping it around my bloody hand before he scooped me up again. We were a good three mile walk from home, and our bikes were stashed a couple hundred feet away from our tree, in the shade of the old barn. I can still remember Joe crying as Jason carried me to our bikes, my skinny body slung over one of his strong shoulders. Joe was the only one with a basket on the front of his bike; he had a paper route that covered a few streets around our house. So, Jason dumped my ass into that basket and pedaled as hard as his legs would take him. I must have been knocked out a few blocks from home, because when I came to, our mama was hovering over my limp fourteen year old body on our kitchen floor, pressing a cold pack of peas to my forehead and screaming at Jason for being irresponsible.
Dr. Lewis stitched my hand, and stuck a tetanus shot in my ass and I healed pretty well. We never did tell mama about our tree fort, or that it was actually little Joe's fault that a nail went through my hand. We always figured what mama didn't know wouldn't hurt her. That's why I never told her what else happened in the summer of '01. My hand was still bandaged, sore as all get out, so I was sitting out on summer training for lacrosse and football until I got my stitches out. I was hard into sports back then, and all the way through high school. Lacrosse was my favorite though. I figured any sport where boys were given sticks and let loose on each other on a playing field was good by me. I couldn't close my hand properly around my stick with that hole through my palm, though, so I sat on the sidelines while my teammates ran suicides and watched them sweat their way through the end of a Kansas summer. I was pretty good buddies with most of the boys on that team, especially Kale and Peter Lewis, the doctor's kids. Our moms were both in the ladies' Prayer Group at church, so we had grown up spending afternoons writing bad words in chalk on the sidewalk out front and giggling as we washed them away with bottles of cream soda. Most of the other boys I was friends with were strong believers in Christ, like the good boys their mamas brought them up to be. But that suburban Topeka religion was a narrow minded one, and when the Nelson's son Gregory turned out to be gay, it was all those people could talk about. Pastor Dan even gave an entire Sunday sermon on the topic of Homosexuality in the eyes of Christ, and the ladies in Prayer Group were fanning themselves with their church programs and shifting around in their pews.
Kale and Peter Lewis were outraged. Gregory Nelson played midfield on our lacrosse team, first string, a position that both Kale and Peter had lost out on at try outs the previous spring. With rage and Christ balled up in their fists they asked Gregory to meet us out by the lake, for our usual Friday night after practice bonfire on the banks. And as I watched them throw Gregory to the ground, strip him of his clothes and beat him to blood, I stood still, and I listened to him cry. I didn't help him but I didn't help them either; but which was the lesser of the two evils? I had my first ever cell phone clasped against my palm, but I couldn't tear my eyes away long enough to dial any numbers. My bandaged hand throbbed. I watched Gregory scream and cry for help as they threw his bloody, bruised body into the shallow water on the edge of the banks. And as I stood there, while Kale and Peter high- fived each other with their knuckles beaten raw, I had to wonder if that was Christ's real intention. Of course now, that I'm grown, I know it wasn't.
That summer, when I took the bandages off my hand and got my stitches removed, the ladies in Prayer Group gasped and shook their heads because I had told them all it was stigmata.
My brothers and I never really grew out of climbing trees. I was climbing trees until the day I left Topeka at 19. There was this one tree, though, right behind the old barn I nearly burned to the ground when I was sixteen and angry, that had the best branches for climbing, and it was wide and tall and sturdy. All three of us Cole boys could climb up into its limbs and disappear from the world without much effort at all. I had this particular branch that I liked to sit on, about a quarter of the way up, where I could rest my back against the trunk and peek through the leaves in the greenest part of summer and see the lake not too far out. The lake we used to throw each other in, where we used to sit and tell scary stories on its banks about the dead bodies that probably lurked beneath its surface (we were convinced that old Mr. Lyman was a cold blooded killer and stashed his victims in that lake). My older brother would always climb up the highest in that tree, and from his favorite limb up there he would yell down at me and my little brother, "We really oughtta build a tree fort up here."
It was the summer of 2001, and the Kansas heat was brutal and fierce. My older brother and I were the ones carrying the hammer and nails-- we didn't want Joe, twelve at the time, hammering his stubby little hands to the tree trunk by accident. Anything to avoid a whooping. So there we were, lugging boards and nails up into the limbs of our favorite tree, sweat dripping into our eyes despite the shade of the summer leaves. The air smelled like overgrown onion grass and barley, and we wasted away hours with that taste on our salty lips. We spent four days straight in that heat, bruising our fingers and straining our eyes in the sunlight. We had gone almost five days without any of us falling out of the tree or dropping shit on each other by accident. We were nearly injury free, which, even on five normal days, was a pretty big feat for us Cole boys. It had been mine and my older brother's intention to keep those nails and that hammer away from Joe, and thus far we thought we had accomplished that. We were working on the ladder when I realized that Joe had hammered a few nails through one of the skinnier branches just below my favorite one. I was going to sit there, needing a break from the heat and the sun. I reached up, ready to pull myself higher, and as I lowered my hand down onto that skinny branch, one of Dad's old rusted nails we had stolen from the stash in the garage went right through my palm and out the back of my hand.
It was mostly the blood that shocked little Joe. He was running around the thick base of our tree, screaming bloody murder like he'd just been stabbed in the neck, flailing his skinny arms around above his head. He screamed his high pitched scream until Jason got down there and shut him up. My older brother helped me down from the tree, as my hand shook in pain but no noise left my heat chapped lips. Jason set me down on my feet, but I wobbled, blood pouring down my palm and leaving red rivers down my wrist, dripping from my bent elbow. Jason ripped off the bottom hem of his shirt, wrapping it around my bloody hand before he scooped me up again. We were a good three mile walk from home, and our bikes were stashed a couple hundred feet away from our tree, in the shade of the old barn. I can still remember Joe crying as Jason carried me to our bikes, my skinny body slung over one of his strong shoulders. Joe was the only one with a basket on the front of his bike; he had a paper route that covered a few streets around our house. So, Jason dumped my ass into that basket and pedaled as hard as his legs would take him. I must have been knocked out a few blocks from home, because when I came to, our mama was hovering over my limp fourteen year old body on our kitchen floor, pressing a cold pack of peas to my forehead and screaming at Jason for being irresponsible.
Dr. Lewis stitched my hand, and stuck a tetanus shot in my ass and I healed pretty well. We never did tell mama about our tree fort, or that it was actually little Joe's fault that a nail went through my hand. We always figured what mama didn't know wouldn't hurt her. That's why I never told her what else happened in the summer of '01. My hand was still bandaged, sore as all get out, so I was sitting out on summer training for lacrosse and football until I got my stitches out. I was hard into sports back then, and all the way through high school. Lacrosse was my favorite though. I figured any sport where boys were given sticks and let loose on each other on a playing field was good by me. I couldn't close my hand properly around my stick with that hole through my palm, though, so I sat on the sidelines while my teammates ran suicides and watched them sweat their way through the end of a Kansas summer. I was pretty good buddies with most of the boys on that team, especially Kale and Peter Lewis, the doctor's kids. Our moms were both in the ladies' Prayer Group at church, so we had grown up spending afternoons writing bad words in chalk on the sidewalk out front and giggling as we washed them away with bottles of cream soda. Most of the other boys I was friends with were strong believers in Christ, like the good boys their mamas brought them up to be. But that suburban Topeka religion was a narrow minded one, and when the Nelson's son Gregory turned out to be gay, it was all those people could talk about. Pastor Dan even gave an entire Sunday sermon on the topic of Homosexuality in the eyes of Christ, and the ladies in Prayer Group were fanning themselves with their church programs and shifting around in their pews.
Kale and Peter Lewis were outraged. Gregory Nelson played midfield on our lacrosse team, first string, a position that both Kale and Peter had lost out on at try outs the previous spring. With rage and Christ balled up in their fists they asked Gregory to meet us out by the lake, for our usual Friday night after practice bonfire on the banks. And as I watched them throw Gregory to the ground, strip him of his clothes and beat him to blood, I stood still, and I listened to him cry. I didn't help him but I didn't help them either; but which was the lesser of the two evils? I had my first ever cell phone clasped against my palm, but I couldn't tear my eyes away long enough to dial any numbers. My bandaged hand throbbed. I watched Gregory scream and cry for help as they threw his bloody, bruised body into the shallow water on the edge of the banks. And as I stood there, while Kale and Peter high- fived each other with their knuckles beaten raw, I had to wonder if that was Christ's real intention. Of course now, that I'm grown, I know it wasn't.
That summer, when I took the bandages off my hand and got my stitches removed, the ladies in Prayer Group gasped and shook their heads because I had told them all it was stigmata.