Metamorphosism

Phantom limb

1867, say. Summer night. He insists on sleeping in the upstairs bedroom same as he always did. He leaves his crutch hanging from a peg in the entry way downstairs and uses the railing to climb the stairs.

At first he thinks, hopes, it's crickets that wake him. They're the first thing he hears, then the clock ticking, then his wife's even breathing. But it is his leg again, the one they cut off in the war.

Christ, was that tent a slaughterhouse. And did it stink.

He climbs back down to the porch, leaning on the railing on either side of the stairs with both hands and swinging his real leg from step to step. He's as fast as he ever was.

He sits in a chair in the cool breeze and lights up a pipe and watches the smoke disappear into the moonlight.

The leg itches, the one they cut off. Twenty times a day he catches himself reaching down to scratch it. Only to find his pantleg rolled up and pinned over the stump.

They used a saw, it was off in less than a minute, less than thirty seconds. Two burly soldiers held him while the doctor sawed it off. It must have hurt but he can't remember that. Just this itching, and this presence.

Driving to work, I think of him when I reach over to the passenger seat to whack Beta on the leg, or when I say something out loud and expect her to make some witty response, and remember she's in France.

Except, he doesn't have to drive a harp to his amputated leg in a week or two. And his leg isn't coming home in five months. And he doesn't email his leg five times a day.