“He hasn’t had anything to eat or drink since yesterday evening,” agreed Belle.
“That’s fine. Sometimes they come in here stuffed like a Christmas turkey. Some people have no sense.”
“True. Very true.”
“Uh-huh. Okay, son, clench your fist tight while I get this needle in.”
I did and things began to get really hazy. Suddenly I remembered something and tried to sit up. “Where’s Pete? I want to see Pete.”
Belle took my head and kissed me. “There, there, Buddy! Pete couldn’t come, remember? Pete had to stay with Ricky.” I quieted down and she said gently to the others, “Our brother Peter has a sick little girl at home.”
I dropped off to sleep.
Presently I felt very cold. But I couldn’t move to reach the covers.
“How about a warm drink then?” I wanted to know. “A Tom and Jerry? Or a hot buttered bum?”
“You’re a bum!” the doctor answered. “Sleeping’s too good for him; throw the bum out!”
I tried to hook my feet around the brass rail to stop them. But this bar had no brass rail, which seemed funny, and I was flat on my back, which seemed funnier still, unless they had installed bedside service for people with no feet. I didn’t have feet, so how could I hook them under a brass rail? No hands, either. “Look, Maw, no hands!” Pete sat on my chest and wailed.
I was back in basic training . . . advanced basic, it must have been, for I was at Camp Hale at one of those silly exercises where they throw snow down your neck to make a man of you. I was having to climb the damnedest biggest mountain in all Colorado and it was all ice and I had no feet. Nevertheless, I was carrying the biggest pack anybody ever saw-I remembered that they were trying to find out if GIs could be used instead of pack mules and I had been picked because I was expendable. I wouldn’t have made it at all if little Ricky hadn’t got behind me and pushed.
The top sergeant turned and he had a face just like Belle’s and he was livid with rage. “Come on, you! I can’t afford to wait for you. I don’t care whether you make it or not. . . but you can’t sleep until you get there.”
My no-feet wouldn’t take me any farther and I fell down in the snow and it was icy warm and I did fall asleep while little Ricky wailed and begged me not to. But I had to sleep.
I woke up in bed with Belle. She was shaking me and saying, “Wake up, Dan! I can’t wait thirty years for you; a girl has to think of her future.” I tried to get up and hand her the bags of gold I had under the bed, but she was gone. . . and anyhow a Hired Girl with her face had picked all the gold up and put it in its tray on top and scurried out of the room. I tried to run after it but I had no feet, no body at all, I discovered. “I ain’t got no body, and no body cares for me. . .” The world consisted of top sergeants and work. . . so what difference did it make where you worked or how? I let them put the harness back on me and I went back to climbing that icy mountain. It was all white and beautifully rounded and if I could just climb to the rosy tip they would let me sleep, which was what I needed. But I never made it…no hands, no feet, no nothing.
There was a forest fire on the mountain. The snow did not melt, but I could feel the heat in waves beating against me while I kept on struggling. The top sergeant was leaning over me and saying, “Wake up. . . wake up. . . wake up.”
He no more than got me awake before he wanted me to sleep again. I’m vague about what happened then for a while. Part of the time I was on a table which vibrated under me and there were lights and snaky-looking equipment and lots of people. But when I was fully awake I was in a hospital bed and I felt all right except for that listless half-floating feeling you have after a Turkish bath. I had hands and feet again. But nobody would talk to me and every time I tried to ask a question a nurse would pop something into my mouth. I was massaged quite a lot.