Free Prudence by David Treuer Page B

something they could not find. And they’d say
please, oh, please, please
but he wasn’t sure what it was they were looking for or asking for, and neither were they, and then they died.
    Jonathan wished that the Pines were wired for electricity, because then he could bring one of the electric fans they had in Chicago, and have a breeze whenever he wanted. You’d think this was the tropics, not the north. That’s how heavy the heat was. He turned his head again but did not lift his arms or move his body. He had not been wounded in the war. Not much more than scratches and a little trench foot, which came late and he was able to cure it by putting bandages in his boots and drying them over the Bunsen burner at the aid station. It must be a strange feeling to be shot. He turned his head quickly from side to side. “Please, oh, please, please,” he said, remembering the pleas of the soldiers under his care. He even went so far as to make the small gurgling sound in his throat that the wounded often made, as though they were thirsty, or as though swallowing air might somehow ease the pain.
    “Please, oh, please, please.”
    He felt himself stir. After a moment he reached down into his trousers. Well, why not? He shucked his pants and lay on the bed in his boxers and undershirt. He worked his penis out of his boxers. It lay long and limp on the sterile fabric, poking out of the fly as though draped and ready to be operated on. He liked it better this way. He liked not to see the angry cloud of his pubic hair and his penis rising out of it like some trunk out of the jungle canopy. It was better this way, with his underwear on. That way his penis was less like an extension of himself, with its taproot (as he knew from medical school) running deep down near his anus. With his underwear on, it was as though his penis had no origin, no ancestral soil; it emerged clean, without history, from the white cotton of his shorts.
    This would have to suffice until he got back to Chicago.
    “Please, oh, please, please.”
    He would have to wait weeks—weeks!—until he would hear those words spoken from any lips other than his own. There, after a long day with patients, he could close and lock his office door and spend some time with one of the nurses. Some of them, at least, were willing. They knew the score. Until then . . . well, he was a competent surgeon. He could operate on himself.
    Emma would be of no help. She was a good woman. A good mother and a good wife. But passion was something he was sure she never felt. There was no changing that. Worry was as close as she came to passion, and the worry was nonstop. Worry about which wildflowers to stand in which vases at which tables, or whether or not to put parsley on the finger potatoes. She had the annoying habit of standing and murmuring to herself, arranging the flowers, stepping back, taking them out, putting them back in, and giving the vase another quarter turn. And then she would stand in front of the bookcase to the side of the fireplace and tap her chin and ask herself which books the various guests might appreciate finding, as though on accident, in their cabins. Usually Emma solved these crises on her own, but if he was within earshot she could not stop herself from asking him, even though she knew he found it annoying.
    “Do you think Mrs. Norton would like
The Ambassadors
? It’s funny when you read it from the right angle,” she would say.
    “Give her D. H. Lawrence, dear.”
    “Oh, be serious, Jonathan.”
    “Then ask Felix. I’m sure he has a recommendation.”
    “Jonathan, please.”
    Please, indeed.
    Please, oh, please, please.
    Jonathan worked more diligently with his right hand, and he snuck his left under the elastic of his boxers and skirted the forest of pubic hair on the way to worry his balls.
    The phrase “ask Felix” had become a bit of a joke between them. At first it had annoyed him how she would go on and on about what Felix had done and what