Free The Devil's Only Friend by Mitchell Bartoy

wetness in my bare eyehole.
    She stepped closer to me and stood glowing with the promise of vengeance. “Do you remember the first time we met? That was the night I learned that my daughter Jane had been murdered. As I recall, you offered not the merest gesture of condolence.”
    I thought, I’m sorry, I’m so sorry, but I said not a word. I could not bear to look at her, and so I rolled my bitter eye to watch the slow progress of a horribly old servant as he made his way toward us from the house.
    â€œIt’s a pity you couldn’t have had more feeling for Jane. She was really … She was becoming a remarkable young woman. You should have known her. She of all people could never have deserved what happened to her.”
    I knew her. I did know her.
    â€œA surly man you are, Mr. Caudill, surly, backward, and rude. This lack of civility is the plague and bane of modern life, and again you are emblematic of this tragic … discourtesy. To present yourself in such a way—near to naked on a lady’s lawn, and so early in the morning … on the morning of Easter Sunday. But you’ll see that I am a woman of great resilience.”
    The servant came near and unfurled a coarse woolen blanket. He stooped shakily and spread it over me and walked back toward the house. It made me think at once how cold I must have been.
    â€œHow fortunate for you that I am a woman of Christian charity. You might have frozen to death if you had stumbled onto any other lawn.”
    My thinking was pretty clear by that time, and I wanted to say something sour, a bitter thank-you. But my tongue was so swollen that it filled my mouth. The blanket seemed to press on me so much that I could take only shallow breaths, and my throat began to clench and throb with panic of suffocation. It seemed that I was becoming unfrozen, and now the pain of every part of my body began to twist. I was able only to produce a blatting sound like air escaping from a dead man.
    â€œI think you’ll live, Mr. Caudill,” she said. “I think you’ll survive to feel things more deeply from this point forward. First comes the pain of childbirth, and then the attachment of love—which is really a kind of pain, to be so attached to another human being that you must yourself feel the sting of every disappointment and all the loneliness she feels each day. Then of course there is the pain of separation. A number of strong feelings—such is the lot of poor mortals. But first and last you should remember the pain, Mr. Caudill. I promise to do my part to help you remember.”
    That was all she said to me. She turned away and walked up the slope toward the house, shaking. It wasn’t long before they came to load me in the meat wagon. They gave me something to put me out, poked me in the arm. For that brief time before I winked out, I let my mind rove. If I remember right, I thought warmly of Eileen, though she was lost to me. I thought of my old man, and I wondered where I might get my hands on a gun.

CHAPTER 8
    Tuesday, April 11
    My front teeth were cracked and ragged. I couldn’t keep from running my tongue over the newly sharp edges. It didn’t hurt except when cool water sloshed into my mouth or when my breath pulled too much cool air over the broken parts. There were other places where the back teeth had chipped or where whole corners had cracked off. My fat tongue worked over the familiar smooth surfaces and the new rough ones. It was as if I’d gone away for a long time and returned to find my familiar landscape changed, as if I’d slept for twenty years. But my teeth were the least of my worries.
    Three different doctors had given me so many stitches that they couldn’t give me a real number as to how many it took to sew up all the torn skin over my arms and belly. One Jewish doctor with a bald head tried to josh with me that they wanted to bring in some new doctors to practice