Bill

My granddad Bill worked in the forests, in the mines, in construction.

He hauled logs down the Ohio River. He helped build canals in Florida. When the family lived in the Keys, he built my father a treehouse overlooking the Gulf.

One day, when he was working outside, he chopped two or three of his fingers off. Well, not the whole finger. But it was just as terrible, when the wound was so deep and so painful.

He dropped his fingers in a coal bucket. He looked over at my dad. I’m sure he told my dad, “Quick, quick — we have to get back to the house.” My dad, who was just a toddler at the time, asked my granddad to pick him up and pack him home.

Granddad used his free hand to grab him, to tuck him up under his arm. With one bleeding hand, and one bleating child, my granddad walked through the hog pen — the hog pen — to get back to the cabin.

“I’m cold,” my dad told him. My granddad bundled him up tighter. “The other end. My feet are cold.”

His feet were cold. I wonder if they were cold enough to feel numb. My granddad’s hand was certainly numb. At this point in the story, I remember, no one was able to save the tips of his fingers.

The doctor said he’d’ve been able to fix Granddad’s hand, if only they hadn’t dropped the tips in the coal bucket. If only.

I think about how important hands are. Strong hands. Big hands. Little hands. I think about Aunt Ruby’s baby, and Aunt Ruby, and my grandmother’s mother, and my grandmother, and my mother.

I feel lucky, to join hands with this circle. How lucky I am.