Phoenix
by Dale J. Sprague
Reveries
1.1998 Fall of 1963, Monroe, Washington. A friend of mine and I crashed one of the taverns, meaning we were under aged and illicitly ordered and drank beer there. It was a Thursday night, a school night, and we sat in a small old tavern drinking beer just because it was risky, something to do out of the ordinary, but that night proved to be more than just a quirky thing to do on a school night. By the end of this night, something happened that was to affect the rest of my life.
For an hour or so, we sat drinking scooners of beer. It was already late when we arrived. My friend wanted to leave, but I decided to stay and talk a while longer with one of the old patrons there. This old fella was a bulldozer operator, a "catskinner." He was too drunk to drive back home, so I cheerfully offered my car.
We drove long into the woods where he lived. He lived high up in the hills, farther than I imagined. I entered onto the rutted dirt road that led to his cabin and promptly slid into a ditch. It was late, near midnight, a school night, and I wanted to get back home. With urgency, I insisted he find a way to help me get my car out of his yardside ditch. He disappeared and soonafter, I heard the deep rumbling of a diesel engine throttling. It was very dark out, no light except from the headlights of my hapless car stuck in ditch mud.
The catskinner backed his bulldozer down along side my father’s small brand new French'made car. The bulldozer came to a rest, and he pointed to a heavy chain near his rear hitch. I threaded the chain through the front chromed bumper of the car, and then as I was doing this through the rear hitch of the bulldozer, it suddenly lurched toward me. The dozer track pulled the chain, caught between the track and the ground, forward into the hitch. I felt my right finger get pinched, and I instantly jerked it out, I had to get out of the way of the bulldozer.
The front bumper of my car was sickeningly twisting out of shape as the chain was being rapidly pulled forward by the bulldozer track. I jumped onto the bulldozer and climbed up. I found the catskinner passed out on a lever. I moved him aside and put the lever in a neutral position. I shut off the engine and hoisted him onto my shoulder, and climbed down. He was limp, heavy, and dead weight. I carried him up to his cabin and inside laid him on his bed to sleep his drunkenness off. My finger felt cold, and I looked at it. The distal digit of my right index finger was hanging, and it was bleeding profusely. I lit an oil lantern and attempted to cauterize it, but decided rather..to apply digital pressure. The catskinner was oblivious on his bed. I left and passed my front'end wrecked and ditched car to get to a hospital.
I walked a long ways and came upon a farm house. It was about two hours past midnight, and the farmer came to his back door. I was rapping on the window. Through the window, I saw the end of a double barrel shotgun appear. A flash light shown in my face, and I quickly raised my bloody hand. He opened the door, and I asked him if he would help me get to a hospital. He let me clean my hand, and soon we were on our way to Monroe Hospital. The tip of my finger couldn’t be saved. With it clipped, sown, and bandaged, and with a shot of morphine, I spent the night. The next morning I waited for my father to pick me up. He was grim and grumpy...much less than I expected.
At the time, I played the piano. I didn’t know how attached I was to my piano until I couldn’t play it. I experienced bouts of depression from playing withdraw.
Other than piano playing, before the trauma, I wrote a great deal, but I could only write for a limited time because gripping my pencil would always cramp my hand, which discouraged me from writing very much. A year later, I noticed how comfortably a pen felt in my hand. No strain. No cramping. No impediment to writing..and I always enjoy finding a way to capitalize on a liability. Even today, I appreciate how a pen fits comfortably in my right customized hand, an asset that I will always have.