OCR Text |
Show One-Armed Night Watchman Orderlies arrange his possessions: a Smith & Wesson .38 Police Special, a two-foot flashlight, handle wrapped to grip under the stump, and a thirties' steel claw, all in a greenwood box which can't be stored. Moved in the bathtub lift, he whimpered. His stump trembled, muscle gone down like a candle, and nurses could not touch him. A bellows worked through a hole carved in his throat. When he coughed, blood ran flabby over his chest, striped down his arm, and dried in slender crescents beneath his fingernails. At the end is always the dolphin-whine. Then the lonely body under the sheet, and the nurses holding sponges, peering at the wrong end. |