Free Cloudsplitter by Russell Banks Page A

that my arm had been snapped almost in two by the cut edge of the stone steps. Jason began to howl at the sight of it, for one of the bones above the wrist had torn through the flesh and sleeve, and the arm was gushing blood.
    I was in terrible pain then. I could not say anything; I could not even cry. Everything was yellow and red, as if the earth had caught fire. Jason was bawling in terror. John whispered hoarsely, “Shut up, Jason! Just shut up! You’ll bring the Old Man!” But then he saw my arm and realized that it was all up with us. “Run and get Father!” he said. “But go back up the tree way. Go through the house, tell him Owen fell from the roof and we saw him from inside. He won’t lick Owen now anyhow, and maybe he’ll let us off, too.”
    Jason did as he was told, and a moment later Father appeared, towering over me and John, his huge, dark shape blocking out the yellow sky. John stood and stepped quickly away. “He fell off the roof, Father,” he said. “We saw him from inside.”
    “Yes. So it seems,”Father said. His hands were chunked in fists on his hips, and he surveyed the scene, looking first up at the ridge of the roof, then along our route to the eave, to the maple tree and the ground.
    To John, Father said, “You and Jason came out the window and climbed down the tree to help him, did you?”
    “Yes, Father.”
    Swiftly, he descended the steps to where I lay all crumpled and broken. Crouching over me and examining my arm, he said to me, “You appear to have been sufficiently punished, Owen. I’ll not add to it. Your brothers, however, will have to wait for theirs.”
    I remember Father tearing the sleeve off my shirt and tying the scrap of cloth tightly around my arm above the elbow to stop the bleeding, talking calmly all the while to the other boys, saying to them that, because they were my elders, he held them responsible for this injury, and they were only making it worse for themselves by lying about it now. He instructed Jason to bring him some kindling sticks for a splint from the woodbox inside and a sheet from one of the beds, and then he grasped my broken arm with both his powerful hands, and when he wrenched the bones back into alignment, the pain was too much for me to bear, and I lost consciousness.
    I am recalling this event now with difficulty and almost as if it happened to another person, for it was so many years ago, and the crippled arm of the man I later became completely displaced the pain endured by the nine-year-old boy I was then. My arm did not heal straight and remained locked in a bent position, as you may have observed when we met, and all my life my left hand has worked more like a clever claw than as a proper match to its twin. It was indeed, just as Father said, my punishment. It was a permanent mark, an emblem, placed upon my body like the mark of Cain, which all could see and I myself would never be able to forget. So that, all my life, every time I reached out with both arms to pick up a lamb or shear a sheep, every time I laid a book on my lap and opened it, every time I sat down to eat or prepared to dress myself or tie my shoes or undertook some simple household task, I would remember not the pain of my fall and the long recovery and healing afterwards, but the fact of my having disobeyed and deceived Father.
    It was the last time any of us sneaked out of the house on the Sabbath, although I suspect that years later, when the event had faded into family lore, some of the younger children, Salmon, Watson, and Oliver, took their Sabbath-day turn at chancing Father’s wrath. We never spoke of it, but no doubt John and Jason were chastized severely with Father’s leather strip. Although nearly as tall as Father, especially John, who turned thirteen that year, they were boys still and slender, and Father had no compunctions then about laying on the rod. I do know that for many weeks, while I carried my arm like a dead thing in a sling, they were made