It was from my father that I learned how to cure all the ills of the world.
It was an evening when my mother was away at work in the meat department of
a grocery in Walla Walla. My father was late cooking dinner, long after my
mother would have done, so when he finally started, the smell of those hamburgers
was so delicious. While waiting, my older brother, Billy, and I raced around
the house, from kitchen to dining room to living room, down the long hallway
in one door of the bathroom, jumping then over the bow of my brother’s
bow and arrow set which had somehow gotten wedged between the toilet and the
bathtub, out the other door, back into the kitchen, my father at the stove
flipping burgers. The racing we could do only in my mother’s absence
so we ran and ran and jumped until that time I forgot to jump, tripped on the
bow, and broke open my chin on the bathtub.
We had no big band-aides, no medium sized band-aides, all we had left were
the littlest sized band-aides, pinky finger small. That was when I learned
from my father, the technique for curing all the world’s hurts. If a
little band-aide doesn’t cover the wound, put on another, if needed,
another, and yet another. If the blood still seeps out, crisscross the band-aides.
If that is not enough add more to form a solid layer of band-aides, a big red
mass of them. Fifteen or sixteen little band-aides were all my father used.
Afterwards feed the wounded one, fill her hunger with the warm burgers. They
are delicious, nothing better, as she chews, her jaw moving up and down, up
and down, and moving right along with it, the little band-aides.
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