31.

I got back to Maple Street in the fall of 1968 a few weeks before my draft physical.

Now that going to Canada and carving FUCK YOU no longer seemed like good options, I read through AR 40-501 again. I remembered what Arnie told me—cutting off part of my finger was the easiest way to go.

“Though remember,” Arnie had warned me, “one joint’s not enough. You have to cut off two.”

I walked over to Monroe Laner’s garage. He was my land-lord, and his garage was his woodworking shop. It was filled with flying sawdust and the screech of a saw. Monroe was bent over, pushing a piece of wood into a spinning blade.

“Mr. Laner,” I yelled.

He shut off the saw and slid his protective goggles up on his forehead. He smiled.

“About time you came to your senses and started doing some woodworking.”

I told him I wanted to even up the legs of my desk chair.

“Why don’t you just bring it over here, and I’ll do it,” he said.

“No, let me try it on my own, Mr. Laner. I’ll learn from my mistakes.”

“Ain’t that the truth,” he said and handed me a T-square and a portable circular saw made of dull gray steel.

“Be careful,” he said as I hefted the saw. “It’s old. The blade guard is missing, and it’s a lot heavier than it looks. Sometimes the trigger sticks. Here try it. You’ve got to snap it hard with your finger to get it to shut off, so be careful. This is a dangerous, old saw. It does good work, but it could cut you up pretty bad, you know.”

I squeezed the trigger. It’s kind of like a gun, I thought. How funny, but I didn’t really feel like laughing.

“Are you sure you don’t want my help?”

“I’ll be OK,” I said.

As I walked back to my little apartment that sunny afternoon in early September, I looked around and started to cry, wishing that I had any life but mine. It all seemed so unfair. Why me?

I set the saw on the little kitchen table. It seemed enormous, a tool that could cut up the whole apartment. Sterile and menacing and nasty.

Monroe Laner told me to make sure I braced whatever I cut so the saw wouldn’t slip. I put my left hand on the kitchen table. By positioning my left knee on a chair, I brought the weight of my whole body down on my left arm and hand. I set the face of the saw blade along the table’s edge. Without turning it on, I pushed the saw along that edge until it barely touched my index finger just below the second joint. I practiced that move a couple of times. The blade was so sharp that it drew a little dot of blood.

The blood surprised me. I hardly felt a thing.

I was starting to sweat, and I sat back down in the chair. Then I went to the refrigerator and popped open a bottle of Coke to calm down. My shirt was wet, soaked through with fear and self-pity.

That gray saw seemed enormous sitting on the tiny kitchen table. I started to cry again. Why was this happening to me? I wondered what Emerson would think. I walked around the apartment sobbing and whapping my left index finger against walls and bookcases and furniture to numb it.

I flipped the silver toggle switch. The saw motor turned on, slowly at first and then faster and faster.

Its handle was curved and indented with the shapes of fingers. I put my right hand on the handle and my right finger in the trigger guard. One last sob came up from my chest, and I tried to steady my breathing.

“There, there,” I said aloud, trying to be my own father. “There, there. It’ll be over in a second.”

I touched the trigger.

Errrrr, the saw screamed.

I felt cold and jerked my hands away. Humped there at the edge of the table, the saw looked like an industrial animal.

“OK, now,” I said, whapping my left index finger against the edge of the table. It was really numb. “OK, now.”

I set my left index finger on the edge of the table ahead of the saw blade. I put my left knee back on the chair and my weight down, hard, on my left arm and hand.

“OK, now.”

I touched the trigger a couple of times with my right hand.

Errrrr, the saw went. Errrrr.

I tried to look at what I was doing, but my eyes were filled with sweat and tears. I shook my head to see better.

I gave the trigger a full squeeze. The saw rose up off the table, as if it were alive. The force surprised me. I tried to control it but couldn’t, and I started to pull my left hand away.

Rrrrrrrr.

The trigger was stuck, I realized. I couldn’t stop the blade. Terrified, I dropped the saw. It fell onto the stained carpet of the kitchen floor. With its trigger still stuck, the saw rocked back and forth, an angry little beast getting free. It bounced a couple of times, once with the whirring blade up toward me—grinding teeth, a metal grin of death—then it leaned back toward the carpet, where the blade, propelled by the stuck trigger, got caught in the loops of the old kitchen carpet. The saw began crawling around the kitchen, first away from me toward the wall, but it hit the baseboard a couple of times and turned around, now doing its toothy walk toward my leg, the whine a growl as the carpet slowed the speeding blade and made the whole saw buck like an animal.

Rrrrrr. Rrrrrr.

“Oh my God,” I said, fumbling for the heavy rubber plug in the wall socket. “Oh my God.”

I pulled hard on the cord, and the saw stopped just as it got to my pants leg, ready to tear me to pieces.