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scar.
    "Am I gonna need stitches?" Willy asked, still moaning but with less real pain in his voice.
    "We'll have to wait until the doctor gets here and let him make that decision."
    She got from her knees to her feet and had taken a couple steps towards the door when she heard the voices approach.  The children's were unmistakable.
    "It's really horrible," Donnie Kincheloe said with all the drama of an eight-year-old, putting excessive emphasis on the last word.  "I think he took his whole eye right out of his head."
    "Oh, he didn't neither," the McCrory boy insisted.  "He just got blood all over hisself."
    "We'll see, we'll see," the physician grunted, his own voice strained and breathless.
    Horace Opper came to the foot of the porch stairs and stopped.  Watching him from the doorway, Julie was struck by the man's age.  He looked so much older than he had just a week ago, when he had puffed and panted his way through setting her mother's broken arm.  Now he gasped, and he could hardly open his eyes.
    "Another accident, Miss Julie?" he asked.  He put one foot on the bottom step and hoisted himself upward.
    "Willy's caught a fishhook in his eyebrow."
    It seemed to take Opper forever to reach the door, and then he leaned against the frame, neither in nor out of the house.
    "I practically ran all the way from Nellie's." He pulled out an already soiled handkerchief to wipe his dripping face and the deep creases of his neck.  Julie turned away, half sickened by the glimpse of his filthy, sweat-stained collar.  "Oh, beg pardon, Miss Julie.  I oughtn't to speak of that place, I know.  Probably oughtn't even to go there myself, but one of the girls got beat up a bit the other night, and Nellie pays me to take care of them.  I can't afford to turn away a patient who pays."
    "I…I told you I'd pay you some every week until it was taken care of.  I have a dollar to give you today right here in my pocket."
    The physician tried to laugh, but the sound turned to a wheeze and his face purpled.
    "I don't worry about you, Miss Julie.  I know your pa'll pay me as soon as he can.  Now, let's see this young man with the fishhook in his eye."
    Opper pushed himself away from the door frame and went into the parlor where Willy waited.  Julie followed, and as she passed the stairway, she saw her mother at the top, her face registering the grogginess of one just wakened from sound sleep.
    "Is something wrong, Julie?" Katharine asked sleepily.
    Julie glanced from Willy, terrified and still very blood-stained on the parlor sofa, to her mother.  Julie climbed the stairs quickly but without panic and put one arm around Katharine's shoulders before she explained what had happened.
    "Willy's been hurt, Mama, but it's nothing serious.  He'll be fine in no time," she said softly.  "The doctor's here and will take care of him."
    Katharine seemed to lose some of her strength and slumped a bit, but Julie held on to her and gently guided her back to her room and the bed she had just left.  She must not see Willy as he was now, panicky and covered with his own blood. Katharine wasn't the sort of woman to take things like that easily, and with the victim her only son, Julie knew it was best to keep her mother away until the doctor had finished.
    "It wasn't your fault, was it, Julie?" Katharine asked.
    "Of course not!  I was here at home, and he was out fishing with the McCrory boy and Donnie Kincheloe.  I was on my way to--"
    Willy's shrieks of terror and pain cut her off and she was out the bedroom door and down the stairs like a coyote after a rabbit.  For the second time in less than half an hour, she completely forgot her father's lunch.
    When she saw the cause for Willy's cries, she reacted instinctively, without any thought at all.
    Horace Opper, breathing in heavy gasps, sat on the edge of the sofa with Willy pressed against the back cushions.  One of the physician's pudgy hands held the boy's wrists flat on his stomach, so that only