Joe Cottonwood

Boy Scout Knife

I open a drawer and am face to face with a mama packrat who of quick instinct leaps to the floor, three newborns clinging to teats, flop-flop-flop. Drags them to a hole. And gone.

Beneath the nest sits my old pocketknife now rusted, soaked in life’s liquids. Wrecked. My son says “I want it.” I say “It’s ruined.” He says “I’ll fix it.” “What will you do with it?” “Cut things.” “What things?” “Things.’ For the inexplicable, he needs. As did I.

He scrubs with steel wool, oil. I demonstrate the whetstone. How to hold, fold. The blade is pitted, black, but sharp. A six-year-old with a bulging pocket, a need fulfilled, an edge that kills.

Mama rat, may your babes survive. Thrive. My son, non-scout, gentle soul, grows tall. Uses the knife for nothing at all.

Joe Cottonwood

Joe Cottonwood

First Aid

Timmy is skinny as a skink from a dysfunctional school, a sad father who beats him for having asthma, but for two weeks Timmy worships me, rookie counselor of Cabin 8. First time from inner city he meets crawdads face to face.

Timmy follows me chattering with delight at the rituals of summer camp so he is right there when Jamyl tumbles like a cartwheel from a buckeye onto his wrist creating a new joint sideways like cracking a drumstick. “Timmy!” I shout. “Run for the nurse!”

Timmy knows pain as a bird knows a cage. Speaks not a word through raucous dining hall dinner until I question him alone and he whimpers “I didn’t help. I didn’t know how. I didn’t do anything.”

Thank you, Timmy for running to fetch the nurse who arrived so fast. It was just what we needed. And you could take a class in first aid, Timmy, you could learn what to do. Who knows— you could be a doctor.

Doc Tim follows me chattering the remainder of camp. Then he busses home to his old man and I can only hope.