The Adventures of Flash Jackson Read Online Free PDF Page A

hands on me to find out exactly where the problem was—not the leg, for sure, that being the obvious one. No, it was more likely she’d say there was something out of whack with my liver, or my kidneys, or my humors weren’t in the right balance. She’d have been laughed right out of every hospital in the western hemisphere, but every time she put her hands on me I felt better right away. You could feel something coming out of her and into you, and when it stopped it was like she’d reached into your guts and shifted things around just a little bit, just enough to set things right again.
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    I was asleep when they came back. I could hear Grandma mumbling to herself like she always did, clomping across the floor in her big black shoes. Ma whispered something to her and dragged a chair over to my bed. I heard the old lady wheeze as she set herself down in it,and I got a whiff of her breath, and then of the rest of her. That woke me up, I can tell you. Jesus H. Wilson, but she was rank. I guess bathing is a trial when your only source of water is a creek. Grandma probably washed herself once a year, if that.
    I just laid there with my eyes shut. I wasn’t faking being asleep—it was dark now, but what little light there was in the room hurt my eyes, and I kind of felt like I was dreaming. I felt her run her hands over me to see where the problem was. That woman wasn’t shy, either. She gave my hooters a good squeeze and rummaged around my personal area for a moment or two, probably trying to sense whether or not I was still pure down there and when my monthly visitor was coming, waving his little red flag. That was all part of the cure, and you just had to lay there and take it. Then she kept her hands on my abdomen for a long while, and I could tell she’d found whatever it was she was looking for.
    â€œBlocked,” she said to my mother—only she said it in German. I can never remember German words off the top of my head, but when I hear them I know what they mean.
    Mother said something back to her, and then they left the bedroom and went out into the kitchen, where they talked a while longer. I guess they were arguing about where she would sleep that night—Grandma would want to go back home, and Ma wouldn’t want to drive her until morning, since it was already dark out. Finally they settled it, which means Mother won, and Grandma thumped her way up the stairs to the spare bedroom. Mother came in again to see how I was doing.
    â€œHaley?”
    â€œYes, Mother.”
    â€œHow are you?”
    â€œI feel as chipper as a corpse.”
    â€œDon’t joke about things like that,” said Mother.
    â€œSorry. Did she say what it was?”
    â€œYes. You’re constipated, that’s all.”
    I knew it. Seven times out of ten, there’s nothing wrong with you that a good crapola won’t cure.
    â€œWhat’d she say to take?”
    â€œJust eat a big salad. That should get things moving again. All that medication they gave you in the hospital slowed your system down. She said she could smell it coming out of your skin.”
    I breathed a sigh of relief.
    â€œThanks for getting her, anyway,” I said. I still had my eyes shut.
    â€œA cup of coffee might help, too.”
    â€œAll righty.”
    â€œYou want me to fix it for you now?”
    â€œWon’t it keep me up?”
    â€œYou slept all afternoon, didn’t you?”
    So I sat up and Mother made me a cup of coffee and brought me a bowl of greens from our garden, and sure enough about an hour later things got moving again. I hobbled my way into the bathroom and just let nature take its course, and almost immediately I could feel the fever lifting as all that poison left my body. God bless Thomas Crapper, who perfected the indoor toilet. I would have hated to be using an outhouse at a time like that, what with the snakes that might be crawling around under there.
    Not that