Mark,
I walked up to the bank of the river and saw a metal hoop sticking out of the water. I tried to grab it with my right hand, but it was just out of reach. I remember my fingernail barely brushing the metal. I found a stick and reached out again. Water sprayed as the stick was pulled from my hand and snapped in half.
My heart was pounding. I realized that if my arm had been a couple of inches longer I would have spent the rest of my life telling people how a beaver trap removed my hand when I was only nine years old. I would have had to learn how to write with my left hand.
The park used to be a Boy Scout camp. The remnants of a lodge building and solitary squat stone tower had somehow managed to resist falling into the swamp that had overtaken the grounds. The wind was blowing south and it brought the stench of the slaughterhouse and the meat packing plant down the river and right to us. Whenever I go back, even after all these years, that smell paints a picture.
Normally it was just me and Josh and Jake, but that day Mike had somehow tagged along. He was a wiry kid prone to outbursts of violent rage.
Mike pointed to the tower. “Bet you I can climb it,” he said smugly.
I didn’t like him, so I bet him twenty dollars he couldn’t. It was all the money I had in the cigar box under my bed; accumulated from mowing my neighbors’ lawns.
Josh found a piece of bark and Jake scratched the terms into it with a stick. I signed the bottom, certain that my brush with amputation somehow made me invincible.
Mike grabbed the ragged stones at the base of the tower and began his ascent. He was moving fast and quickly passed the highest point any of us had ever climbed. Josh and Jake turned on me and began rooting him on, urging him to make the final push. As Mike threw his leg over the top and raised his arms in victory, I grabbed the bark contract from Jake, smashed it, and pedaled off on my bike as quickly as possible. God Damn, I thought, if the trap had only torn my hand off, I never would have made that bet.
Mark—Age 29—Portland, OR
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