Staying at the back of the tree, I started with the ropes around Hannah’s neck and worked my way down, sawing away diligently but in silence.
When the blunt knife finally made it through the last rope, Hannah fell to the ground, curled into a ball and covered her head. Her arms were all pimpled and scratched and some of the pimples were already bruising, flesh turning brown like cut apples. As she lay there, making herself small, I noticed that the back pockets of Hannah’s jeans were embroidered with cartoon characters, Sylvester the Cat on one side, Tweety Bird on the other.
I stood there not knowing what to do, clouded with shame and convinced that everything had been my fault. Looking back at that boy all these years later, I want him to bend down and scoop Hannah into his arms. But no, his biggest test in life had come to him too young. How do you make up for something like that?
At last, having exhausted her sobbing, Hannah reached out to me and I pulled her to her feet but I couldn’t look her in the eye, so my gaze fell on the cartoon ice-cream cone in the middle of her pink T-shirt. Only now the ice cream was streaked with red where once had been white, as if someone had drizzled it all over with cherry syrup.
Hannah crossed her arms and held herself as if she were cold. Patch, she said, I really want to go home now.
I felt a rush of relief at her suggestion. A plan. Home. Yes, that’s where I wanted to be, home forever. OK, this way, I said, turning around.
But as I turned, Hannah gasped and said to me, Oh my God, Patch, what happened? The back of your shirt, is that blood?
Oh, that? I said, looking over my shoulder. Yeah, I tripped on a rock. Knocked myself out cold. It was pretty bad, you know, but I’ll make it.
Such a noble show of bravado. I turned away again to conceal the sickly look on my face and then we set off, me helping Hannah through the thicket, moving branches aside for her, worried she might get jabbed in the other eye and then what would we do?
Once we reached the trail, I led the way but when we came to the edge of Jakobskill stream, I paused, waiting to help her across the rocks. Hannah had her hand over her eye and I could see she was in a lot of pain. Telling her to wait a moment, I pulled the bandana from my back pocket, washed out as much of my blood as I could and then folded the damp cloth into a sort of cold compress.
When I reached out to give it to Hannah, she just stared at me.
I took her hand by the wrist, pulling it away from her face, and started to move the wet bandana toward her. Now I had to look at the eye again. When Matthew made me look before, it had been mostly blood but now the blood was dry, brown streaks caking one side of her face. I could just about make out her eyelid, which was shut, and a line of clumped lashes. But as I moved the bandana closer, Hannah’s eyelid started to flutter and that’s when I saw something else in there among all the dried blood.
Like scrambled egg-white but only halfway cooked. I almost threw up on the spot.
This is the image that keeps coming back to me, twenty-six years and I can’t forget what I saw in that moment, the memory making me nauseated all over again.
Hannah breathed hard and flinched when the damp cloth touched her face.
Shh, I said, shhhh. OK, keep it there like that.
Hannah did what I said as I led her by the hand over the stream.
* * *
I DON’T REMEMBER ANYTHING ELSE being that hard as a kid. I remember times in my childhood when I was tired or exhausted or hurting. Nothing was truly hard. Hard is something I associate only with being an adult.
But that walk back to the bikes was hard. I wanted to curl up and surrender every second, so I tried to think only one step at a time. Whenever one foot landed in front of the other, it was another minor victory.
We didn’t talk. I offered my hand to Hannah every time the way got steep or there was a rock that needed clambering over. What would we have said?
When finally we reached Split Rock, Hannah seemed barely conscious, so I said I could take her on the back of my bike. Thank God the road to Roseborn was downhill all the way.
I had it in mind that I should take Hannah to the doctor but the only doctor I knew would’ve been another couple of miles, so as soon as I saw the first house, I freewheeled straight into the driveway. Hannah’s chin was a dead weight on my shoulder.
Coasting up to the house, I saw an old-looking lady in her kitchen holding a glass up to the sunlight, her fingers all sudsy. Seeing us, she jerked her head and soon enough came running out the front door, dish towel thrown over her shoulder, yelling, Oh my goodness, oh my God, over and over. That’s the last thing I remember because at that point everything started to go gray and speckly, the way untuned television screens used to look.
And I wouldn’t wake up, my fractured skull bandaged tight, until that particular Wednesday in the calendar of August 1982 had flipped over to Thursday.