ARTHUR BOND

Remember man named Arthur Bond had a worm in his thigh. Had it for years, got it in the swampland of Louisiana when he was a young man working in the swampland. Carried that worm for all his life in his right thigh. Sometimes for quite a spell Arthur Bond said it stayed peaceful, other times twas angry in him and raised hell in him, twas mean then and on some kind of a rampage Arthur Bond said, stung him and bit him and burnt him, Arthur Bond said, and itched and tickled and tormented him. Arthur Bond himself told us that he was a crazy man then.

He was sick a lot from the worm. Nest was in the sweetest part of the thigh, if you will look there on yourself and feel of it, there where the leg gets the softest and holds the warmth of the loin, halfway between the knee and the crouch, where it’s mellow and full and so soft, like a woman’s breast if you catch hold of it. (I have noticed that the parts of a man and a woman are a lot alike and feel the same, and why not? One God made them both, settled that in the Garden, Man and Woman created He them, though God knows it still don’t seem to be settled in some, but don’t want to get into that.)

One time worm begun to try to come out his knee, Arthur Bond said, said saw its head in a hole that had opened up in his knee. Doctors tried to pull the worm out but it broke off and drew itself back into Arthur Bond’s thigh and lived on—without a head, Arthur Bond said. Jesus Christ a headless worm. Doctors saved the head, put it in a bottle of fluid and the face was pretty, face of the worm when you looked in and saw it looking at you lolling in its fluid was like a little doll’s. Nobody, no doctor anywhere could kill out that infernal worm from the swampland of Louisiana living without a head in Arthur Bond’s pale thigh, he died with the worm, old and vile and aflourishin, in his thigh. Poor Arthur Bond, how that worm of the swampland tormented him all his life since he was eighteen and went into the ground with Arthur Bond when he was sixty-six. But the head of the worm with its pretty doll’s face still bobbles in a bottle where Arthur Bond left it when he died, to Science, at the University. Yet Arthur Bond hisself never even got to high school, idn’t that funny? Went to work in the swampland when he was fourteen. If he hadn’t gone to work in the swampland, wonder what his life would have been? Without the curse of the worm, I mean.

Anyway, what I’m thinking is that we can’t all see in a bottle the face of our buried torment. Arthur Bond was lucky? Worm made him drink until he was sodden on the ground or a lunatic in a brothel. Was Arthur Bond lucky? Worm made him vicious, wild amok in bars, beat up women. Worm took over his life, commanded his life, he had a devil in him, a rank, vile headless devil in him, directing his life. Arthur Bond, older he grew, was at the mercy of the worm, slave of the slightest wish of the worm. Let me tell you two examples. Worm seemed to take it out on women worst of all. Heat of a woman sent that thing into a crazed-out fit. Got to where women wouldn’t get close to poor Arthur Bond, they certainly didn’t want to be mashed and rolled on like a steamroller, not to mention choked to death, or twisted like an insane chiropractor was ahandlin ’em, worm’d get aholt of that leg of Arthur Bond and jerk it like a crazy dancer. Course somebody that ud awanted that kind of a thing, that kind of a fightin thing, ud a called the leg of Arthur Bond a leg of gold and sought it out; but wasn’t nobody like that come to him and guess Arthur Bond ought to have thanked God for it, he’d a died a horrible death of convulsions and probly a broken neck; people stayed away from Arthur Bond. This made Arthur Bond even more lonely and naturally led him to drink more whiskey. Whiskey was puredee wildfire to the worm. Then Arthur Bond would knock down people and break up chairs and bash a man’s head in with a bottle. When he killed a man in an alley, where he said the man accosted him to rob him and in self-defense cut half his face off with the butt of a beer bottle, he begged the doctor again to do anything, to even cut off his leg, for when he sobered up he was horrified at what the worm had done, killed a man, and he didn’t know what the thing would do next. But the doctor wouldn’t amputate. He said he wasn’t sure where the worm had his hind part, his vile tail, whether maybe twas in the very groin of Arthur Bond, maybe even in his sack and curled around his balls. Naturally the next thought was was it in his member, my God was his member now a part of the worm, it was too much to suffer and seeing that the worm could possibly take over his body, his whole flesh and body and Lord God with Arthur Bond’s head, Arthur Bond’s own head of yellow hair and green eyes, that he could finally be just the walkin worm itself with head of yellow hair and green eyes, Arthur Bond went crazy and tried to kill hisself and the worm by drinking a glass of rat poison. He was not successful and lay choking in his own bile, though it was hoped for a while that the worm was poisoned dead until it began to rustle and twinge and tingle in his thigh again, as if to say hello Arthur Bond you fool; so both lived on.

Now the worm struck in vengeance at him. Crazed by the poison it whipped him to the ground. And he died rank green and foaming. People said that in the casket the body of Arthur Bond was in such a sudden trembling from time to time under the continued whippings of the worm that the casket holding Arthur Bond rocked and jumped so much funeral home had to fasten it down to the floor with strong ropes, man’d come in from the woods with his wife to pay his two dollars a month on his Funeral Layaway Plan that the Funeral Home gives, said now what’s Arthur Bond trying to do now, crazy drunk, trying to ascend up like the Savior so they have to tie him down? Man’d had a few drinks himself and said if Savior takes up Arthur Bond what’ll he do with the rest of us in Sands County tried to live like Christians? Must surely be end of the world, ‘s wife said, if violent men are taken. Worm had triumphed so and had shrunken the body of Arthur Bond so much to skin and bones looked like it’d sucked his flesh away. Twas like they was aburying the worm that was dressed up to look like a nightmare Arthur Bond, like they was aburyin a worm awearin Arthur Bond’s body like a costume for a man.

One more thing more and I’m done talkin about it. Often wondered if the worm lives on in the man’s grave or died with him; but didn’t matter did it? somebody said. If it’s not one worm in the grave it’s another, isn’t it? somebody said. And a thought’s been in my mind that won’t vanish, and tis the following, that worms in the grave are worms of death in the dark, and the worm in Arthur Bond was a wild live thing among us all, in the light, we all seen its workings in the daylight, now that I see more about it, oh a very special fearsome thing of our life, very unusual, can’t get the word for what it seems to me it twas, can’t get it out of my mind some days, and especially nights; in my mind come to me that maybe twas put in Arthur Bond by the very hand of God, it will seem to me in my thinking then when I can’t get it out of my mind almost like, my God, almost like the worm of Arthur Bond’s got into my mind, God help me a worm in your mind, worse ten times than one in your thigh, and I was one that lessened him the most and yet seems like am now the most taken over by thoughts of him, perplexed and restless and confounded; living power of Arthur Bond living on in my mind has begun to make me wonder something about him, something sweet about him, like he is a kind of a Saint in my mind, kind of an angel; maybe twas hand of God put a struggle in Arthur Bond to pull him and throw him and lay him down, to show His mighty works like the Scriptures say, and finally let him go on, free, finally, to a new life hereafter and a better one; had to be better, couldn’t be worse’n what he had, pore Arthur Bond, was kind of a Saint; was worm God’s worm? Did God put a worm in a man’s thigh to show me something, used a worm to show me something and to win eternal life for a man in the hereafter, to be a Saint, to be an Angel, my God the workings of Jehovah’s ways, a worm to make an Angel, oh Lord why is there so much darkness in this life before we see the light of things your ways are strange your ways are dark before we see the light.