thought of lifting his legs with his arms, but when he tried reaching down, he found he couldn’t.
Damngoddamngoddamngoddamngoddamn. Jesusjesusjesus, oh, Jesusjesusjesus.
Cash and Mary had disappeared. The bathroom window now held only the backyard, broken into nine panes: the crooked little dogwood traversing the lower left pane, continuing in the upper corner of the middle pane, its crown of leaves extending over the three panes above the sash, a triangle of yellowing May sky. An anxious squirrel scooted partway down an oak and studied the ground below in a head-down position. Bone still could not move.
Someone rattled the bathroom doorknob and found it locked.
Now Bone spoke. “Help!” The words resounding on the white tiles alarmed him, and he hollered, “Help! For God’s sake! Help! I’m stuck!”
The door rattled again. “Bone?”
Mary.
Hot tears rose in his throat, and outside the window, the scene shimmered like a reflection in rippling water. He realized with ironic detachment that at least his tear ducts still operated. “I don’t know. I’ve forgotten how to move.”
“What?”
“I can’t move. I’m stuck. I need help.”
“I’ll get Cash.”
“For God’s sake, don’t bring him into it.”
But Mary was gone already, and in a few minutes it sounded as if a small, heavily booted army were mustering in the hallway.
“Bone, are you still in there?” Mary. A foolish question, but Bone replied in the affirmative. The lock clicked—someone picked it, evidently. Bone heard rather than saw Mary, Cash, and the Mexicans tumble in—his view of his own rescue confined to the little window, its frame, the yellow-painted wall, and the white tile below. No one commented on his being in the bathtub fully dressed, but they couldn’t understand why he didn’t simply step out. They seemed to believe that he’d merely been awaiting an audience before doing just that, and kept inviting him to turn around and extricate himself. Only after reiterated explanations did they accept that his inability to do so was precisely the problem.
Finally, Bone, who’d had more time to consider this calamity than anyone, said, “Just work my legs. Like a marionette.” Cash’s hands grasped Bone’s calf, bending the knee’s hinge. It took several experimental manipulations—accompanied by much onlooker advice—to get the hang of walking with someone else’s legs. As Cash lifted and planted Bone’s feet in turn, marching him in place like a life-sized toy soldier, several sets of hands assisted in turning Bone by the shoulders. Worried faces of Mary and several curious Mexicans, and the top of Cash’s head—he was still kneeling to work Bone’s legs—rotated into view. A cautious clomp of one foot across the porcelain wall, and then, carefully, precariously—ready, steady!—he swayed back dangerously like an unmoored scarecrow before they could seize his shirt to stop him from toppling—they brought his second foot alongside the first.
Once he stood on the bath mat, the spell was broken, and, lo, he could walk.
B, b
From the Semitic beth (b), “house,” e.g., Bethlehem, “house of bread.” The Greeks upended the letter, renaming it beta and, in the upper case, adding a balcony on the second floor.
Babel: The legendary site of a tower threatening to reach “unto heaven itself” until God “confounded the tongues” of man, creating the world’s profusion of languages. Tempting as it is to believe, babble does not descend from this but from baby and the Germanic suffix -le, which connotes small, repetitive actions, as in wobble, twinkle, and gobble. Babel is derived from Babylon, an ancient city whose cuneiform script was cousin of the Semitic alphabet, whence all Western European alphabets are derived.
backformation: Removing what appears to be a suffix or prefix from an existing word to form a new one. Thus, buttler is derived from butler, burgle from burglar, and more recently conversate from conversation.
barbarian: A native of a land where they aren’t as civilized as we are. From barbarikos, a derisive onomatopoeia for foreign languages, which to the Greeks sounded like baby talk or bleating sheep: hence, baa-baa-rian.
Cliché inventory compiled by Bone King during visit to the Northside Hospital Emergency Room
| Cliché item | yes | no |
| Interminable and meaningless forms to complete1 | x | |
| Time passing with gelatinous slowness while waiting to be seen by physician | x | |
| Young man with head wrapped in bloody gauze | x | |
| Suspiciously juvenile-looking physician | x | |
| Mysterious and alarming tests performed | x | |
| Phrase “overnight for observation” used | x | |
| Humiliating hospital gown that fails to cover backside | x | |
| Room with motorized hospital bed capable of achieving any angle, slope, incline, or combination thereof conceivable to Euclidean geometry, but which on no account can be made comfortable | x | |
| Flavorless hospital food served on plastic tray | x | |
| Visit from priest | x | |
| Referral to specialist with exotic-sounding name2 | x |
Notes
1. To wit: “In case of emergency contact.” What do they mean, “in case of emergency”? This is the emergency room. And the person to contact is who came with me. (Pointed this out to Mary, who was not amused.)
2. Dr. Limongello, whom everyone calls “Wonderful Dr. Lemon Jell-O.”
Although Bone was capable of navigating on his own steam once he was free of the tub, helpful hands herded him to the living room. Cash and the Mexicans stood stupefied, stiffly shifting from foot to foot, while Mary stroked Bone’s cheek with her fingertips and smoothed his hair, as if this terrible episode were somehow attributable to grooming. “Sweetheart,” she said, “what happened?”
Bone couldn’t say what had happened because he knew only that he couldn’t move, and that’s what he told her. Her kiss left a tingling spot on his forehead, like a priest’s blessing. Her dark eyes looked into each of his eyes in turn, as if trying two doors to find the unlocked one, while down her blouse he could see the silken hemispheres of her breasts. “We’re taking you
