from If Night is Falling
John Taylor
The bench formed a hexagon
...or an octagon. My father, who sometimes said that he perhaps would have preferred pursuing research in mathematics or mathematical physics instead of becoming an insurance actuary (and whose favorite subject was differential geometry), sawed up three long redwood boards, used a jig saw to make precise triangular cuts in the individual pieces, drilled holes in several places, then used big nuts and bolts to link the six (or eight) sections into a bench that could be wrapped entirely around the pin oak at the end of the backyard. The effect was not particularly refined (the redwood planks were thick, the nuts and bolts shiny), but—from a mathematical point of view—my father’s overall accomplishment was impressive.
Simply, it was too shady to sit there under the pin oak for very long. The tree and the high privet just behind it blocked out the sunlight in the late afternoon.
In fact, none of us—including my father, after he had tried out the bench once or twice—ever sat there.
His dry, calloused, hairy
...muscular hand. The itchy wool of his dark-brown suit scratching my neck and chin. The popsicle stick holding down my tongue. His peering into my eyes with a flashlight. Rapping my knees with a hammer. The scent of sweet pipe tobacco. After propping me up on the examining table, Dr. Hill would run his knuckle down my spine. Once, twice, three times.
It was Dr. Hill who saved me.
Remember Mrs. Coburn, too. She was his office nurse, who before we had a tetanus or polio shot would dip a cotton swab in mercurochrome and expertly paint a rabbit or bear—or any animal of our choosing—on our upper arms, at the exact spot where the needle would go in.