Chapter 7: The Scar

I sat him down at the kitchen table under the hanging lamp and went for the first aid kit.

I had worked five years for a vet in Minneapolis, and I'd sewn up dogs, cats, and a very unhappy goat.

I had never worried over a hand the way I worried over his.

"This wants stitches," I said.

"There's no hospital that doesn't know Travis's mother."

"Then I'll do it myself," I said.

"All right."

"You don't want to ask if I'm any good?"

"I watched you pull a calf at fifteen," Nels said. "I'll take my chances."

I washed the cut with saline, and he did not flinch.

I held the edges together with strips and a dab of glue, which was how I closed a split paw.

Then I wrapped it with gauze.

My fingers were not quite steady, and I told myself it was the hour.

His palm lay open in mine, warm and heavy, with the old scar showing white through the new red.

"How did you get this one?" I asked, and touched the first one with my thumb.

I had never asked.

"The corn crib," he said. "The winter we built it."

"I remember that winter."

"Haakon dared me to walk a tin sheet across the roof," Nels said.

"Of course he did."

"I slid off the edge and grabbed the sheet to stop myself. It was sharp."

The corner of his mouth moved.

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