Not A Magician

a short story by Toon Regier

“I WANT MY TOE BACK!” Tom shouted.  

The doctor donned a pair of gloves.  “May I see it, Mister McCain?” he said.

“That’s Corporal McCain to you!” Tom barked.

The doctor smiled at Tom’s wife, who zipped open her purse.

“No, Barb!” Tom said, stuffing his fist into the purse.  “Let me give it to him.”  He lifted out a plastic sandwich sack filled with gore and offered it to the doctor.  Then he sat with Barb, panting in his anxiety, while the doctor frowned at the severed toe inside.

Gasoline fumes and the smell of grass clippings on Tom’s clothes filled the office.  Barb fanned herself.  Tom tore out handfuls of his shaggy, white hair.  “There there, Thomas,” Barb said.  “It’s only a big toe.”

“Yeah, and I’m mighty fond of it,” Tom said.

At last the doctor shook his head.  Tom said, “You mean you can’t fix it?”

“I’m afraid not,” the doctor said.

Tom scowled.  “Look, Doc,” he said, “I fought in Okinawa and Korea.” He pulled out his old military dog tags from around his neck for the doctor to see.  “I got through two wars without a scratch.  Hell, I never even been stung by a bee.  And now you’re telling me I’m gonna lose a body part in my own backyard!”

The doctor smiled softly.

Tom said, “Don’t you know how to sew a toe back on?”

“I’m sorry, Corporal McCain,” the doctor said.  He winked at Barb and snapped off his gloves.  “That toe is beyond repair.  I am a physician, not a magician.”

“Where did you go to school, young man?” Tom said.

“Hush, Thomas,” Barb said, smoothing his collar.

A nurse came and bandaged the wound while Tom frowned at a small potted cactus on the floor.  Then the doctor prescribed a pain killer and shook Tom’s hand.

“You son of a bitch!” Tom said.

The doctor gave Tom a sloppy salute and gestured toward the door where the nurse waited with a wheelchair.

Barb picked up her purse.  “Th-thank you, Doctor,” she said.  “Come, Thomas.”

Tom stood up, clutching Barb’s shoulder.  “That does it,” he whimpered.  “I’m using my next Social Security check to buy a new lawn mower—the kind that dies when you let go of the handle.”

“Be a man, Thomas,” Barb said, wiping a tear from her husband’s cheek.  She gripped his arm and nudged him toward the wheelchair; but Tom did not move.

“I was never good at yard work,” he said, his voice rising.  “I’m gonna hire a teenager to cut my grass.  Let him chop his toes off.”

The nurse coughed and left the room.

“Why don’t you mow the lawn, Barb?” Tom shouted.  “You’re the one with the green thumb.”

Barb coaxed him into the wheelchair.

“I don’t know how you make that garden of yours grow,” Tom said, “but I’ll tell you one thing: I’ll never do yard work again!” His voice rose to a howl.  “I’m gonna change my bag!” Pleased with his pun, Tom burst into a hybrid fit of giggles and sobs as Barb hurried him out the door.

In the hallway, Tom seized the shiny wheel rims in his hands, squeaking the chair to a halt.  He twisted in the seat and looked back at the doctor through his tears, sniffling and gathering composure.

“I want my toe back,” he said again.  But this time the doctor could grant the request.

Barb opened her purse.

AT HOME THAT AFTERNOON, Tom stole his wife’s purse and limped into the backyard on a crutch.  He looked at Barb’s garden with its labeled rows of vegetables—an island of order in the middle of his chaotic yard.  Barb had painted a plaque and staked it in the soil:

EXCEPT A CORN OF WHEAT FALL INTO THE GROUND AND DIE,

IT ABIDETH ALONE:

BUT IF IT DIE, IT BRINGETH FORTH MUCH FRUIT.

The scarecrow in the cucumber patch grinned at Tom with a red Marks-A-Lot mouth.  Straw in its sleeves stirred in the breeze like beckoning fingers.

It’s worth a try, Tom thought.

Turning toward the tool shed, Tom saw the lawn mower in the yard where he had left it that morning.  He froze and glared at the machine, hating it.  The mower’s bag lay in the knee-high weeds with clippings spilled from its opening—like a fat, canvass snake whose salad had disagreed with it.

Tom gritted his teeth and staggered across the yard in a wide arc, avoiding the mower.  After much fumbling and cursing in the tool shed (a flower pot fell on his foot), he emerged with a trowel.

He crept back to the garden gate, forced it open with his knee, and waded into the cucumbers.  “What’s Barb’s secret, scarecrow?” he said, winking at the stuffed pillowcase face.  Studying the straw man, he saw that one of its arms pointed to the corner of the garden where the tomatoes grew.  Tom shrugged and hobbled off in that direction.  Finding a bare spot on the ground, he knelt and began digging a hole.

“Thomas! Have you seen my purse?” Barb looked through the window and saw the open gate and her husband in the garden.  She went outside, letting the screen door slam behind her.  “Thomas!  What are you doing in there?”

Tom’s head disappeared behind some leaves.

Barb strode into the garden and found Tom hunched in the dirt with the purse dangling from his shoulder.  “I’ve been looking all over for you,” she said.  Then she noticed the bloody toe in Tom’s hand.  “For heaven’s sake what are you doing with that awful thing?”

Tom vigorously scratched an ear.  His dog tags jingled.

“You’re not going to bury it, are you?” Barb said, pointing to the hole in the ground.

Tom sniffed Barb’s finger.

“Not in my garden!” Barb said.  “Put it down.  I don’t want body parts rotting in here. You come inside right now.  And get that crutch out of the mud; I spent a fortune on it.”

Tom dropped the toe on the ground and wrung his hands in distress.

“Look at yourself, darling!” Barb said.  “You got dirt all over your bandage.  What were you thinking, coming in here?”

She helped him stand up.  Tom started to cry again.

“Please act like a man,” Barb said.  She marched Tom into the house, bolted the lock, and got a chair for him.

“Sit.”

Tom slumped in the chair, facing the window, while Barb squatted at his feet to brush dirt off the bandage.  “Do I have to keep an eye on you every minute?” Barb said.  “You’ll be lucky not to get an infection.”

Tom stared through the window and said nothing.

“You should be ashamed of yourself, the way you treated the doctor today.  You made me want to crawl into a hole and hide.”

Tom just stared.

“Forget your precious toe!  Can’t you think of something useful to do with your time?  Why don’t you work on our jigsaw puzzle?”

Tom stiffened.  He licked his lips.

Barb finished cleaning the bandage.  “There.  Now behave yourself.” She began unlacing the muddy shoe on his other foot.  “Look and see if I remembered to close the garden gate, will you Thomas?”

A low growl rose from Tom’s throat.  His eyes were narrow slits.

“Thomas?”

Barb turned around and looked outside.  Two dogs were fighting over something in the garden.

~

First published in The Rockford Review, Autumn, 2003.