After a bobcat mangled Eli’s left hand and tore up half his arm, he started acting weird. Dad said he probably felt like a freak now. But hell, he could still throw a baseball—couldn’t catch it, but he could throw it. Lucky for him, it was his off hand, not the one he writes with or uses to shoot the air gun. He could still fish if he wanted. And he still knew all those dirty jokes everyone loved at lunch.
Except he wasn’t sitting with us anymore. He was on the other side of the cafeteria, by himself. I waved, but like every day since the attack, he ignored me.
The wildcat came out of nowhere on the ride home after fishing at the dam site. Tackled Eli right off his dirt bike. I was a good fifty yards ahead, popping wheelies on my shitkicker, so I didn’t know anything had happened till I happened to glance back. I doubled back and came up on the cat, driving up on its head and over its tail with my front tire, scaring it away. But by then, Eli’s arm was torn up good. He couldn’t ride, so I threw him over the back of my bike and hauled him to the nearest house to call his dad.
He didn’t come to school for two weeks. And when he finally did, he didn’t sit with our group. After a few days of that, I decided to talk to him.
I took my lunch tray to the waste station, then walked over to his table. When I sat down across from him, I could tell he wanted to get up.
“What’s the matter with you?” I asked.
He just shrugged a little.
“Why aren’t you sitting with me and the guys anymore? Is it because of your gimpy hand or something?”
Eli and I had been friends since third grade, when we got detention on the same day. I got it for sticking a toad in Amy Westerberg’s desk—she screamed like she saw a murder—and he got it for mooning the school secretary during recess. Five minutes into detention, we were laughing and joking. Washing blackboards, cleaning erasers, and having the best time. Now, three years later, we were supposed to be best buddies. But ever since that bobcat turned his hand into the end of a dog’s meat stick, I barely heard from him. It was like the cat had taken some of the fun out of him too.
“That mangy piece of meat still hurt?” I asked.
“Yeah.”
“Oh.”
The bell rang. He stood, balancing his tray with his good hand and his maimed one underneath. I watched him walk off. He’d stopped playing video games too—couldn’t hold the controller anymore.
That night, I told Mom about the whole thing. She was grading assignments in her home office.
“Cody,” she said, looking out the big bay window in her home office, “just give him a little space. He went through something traumatic. He can’t do a lot of the things he used to.”
“Why can’t they give him a new robotic hand or something? Like on TV. Like the Bionic Man.”
“Maybe they will. You should ask him. But be gentle when you bring it up.”
She smiled and went back to grading. I went to my room and thought about Eli. I almost called him, but it didn’t seem like he wanted to hear from me.
That Saturday, I rode to the library. After some help from a librarian, I sat in the aisle flipping through medical magazines. Most of the new fake hand designs came from military guys who’d lost limbs. One hand bent with shoulder input. Another could make a fist when triggered by a certain motion. Most looked dumb and plastic, but I found one that was sleek and black, with silver tips—sci-fi cool. I made a copy and stuffed it in my backpack.
The next day at lunch, I walked straight to Eli’s table and set my tray down. Pulled out the paper, laid it in front of him, and took a bite of one of my chicken nuggets. He looked at it without touching it. I felt nervous even though it was just Eli.
“Pretty cool, yeah?” I said, pointing, finally.
He didn’t move.
“They’ve got hands that can grip stuff and everything,” I told him. “You could probably hold a controller again. Maybe even catch a baseball.”
He turned his head away. Then back. Still nothing.
“Why don’t you ask your mom?” I added. “I bet she’d help you get one. You’d be like the Six Million Dollar Man.”
He crumpled the paper and shoved it aside.
“No thanks.”
I blinked. “What? Why not?”
“I’m not your fucking science project.”
“I’m not—Jesus, I was just trying to help,” I said. The words stung like a hornet.
“I don’t need help,” he said, standing. His tray held only a napkin and an empty Coke can tipped on its side.
“Well, what do you want?” I asked. Too loud. A couple kids behind him turned. I waved them off.
Eli didn’t answer. Just walked away. I sat there with my tray, my heart jackhammering.
I stopped playing Atari because I couldn’t stop thinking about how Eli wasn’t there. Couldn’t fish, either. My rod and tackle box gathered dust in the garage. I didn’t even feel like riding my bike. But one slightly rainy Saturday, Mom told me to quit moping and kicked me out of the house.
I rode past Eli’s place on my way to the fields. He was sitting on the porch steps, one leg bouncing. I slowed. He looked up. Didn’t wave. But didn’t look away either.
I stopped.
“Hey,” I said.
“Hey.”
I walked my bike up his driveway, dropped it, and joined him on the steps. He was tossing a baseball with his good hand. Toss. Catch. Toss. Catch.
I sat a few feet away on the step below him, and a wave of sadness rolled over me. The space between us felt wider than ever.
“You remember in seventh grade when we rode to Amy Westerberg’s and hit her mailbox with a bat, then blamed it on Ethan Huss and Mario Herrera?”
He almost smiled as the rain came down lightly.
“Her dad made us fix it with duct tape and nails, and our parents made us apologize to Ethan and Mario and their folks.”
“Yeah,” he said, looking down. “I remember.”
He stopped tossing the ball and handed it to me. I turned it over in my hands. One of the seams was coming loose. I thought about all the games we’d played, all the hours with Coach Racine hollering in the dugout with a cigarette hanging from his mouth. I thought about that lightning strike in right field that nearly killed Jake Polaski. Eli had cracked, “We were that close to being a little better.”
Hundreds of practices. Thousands of times playing catch.
I held the ball out to him. He took it with his good hand, and I couldn’t help staring at his other one. It looked like Play-Doh coming out of one of those plastic pasta makers. A long scar ran from wrist to elbow.
He caught me staring.
“Looks like a turkey leg my brother pulled out of the fridge, took a bite, and put back in,” I said.
He stared at me with no reaction, and I thought I royally screwed up. Until he suddenly burst into crazy laughter, making me laugh too. We were both laughing, just like that first time in detention, and everything felt right again.
“I was scared,” he said, out of nowhere, wiping his eyes with his good hand. The laughing had stopped, and he was staring at the street as if not talking to me anymore.
“What’s that?”
“When the cat got me. I was so scared.”
“Well, shit yeah. I would be too.”
He shook his head. “At first, I couldn’t even scream. And it stared into my eyes with this look… when I finally did yell, it was like I was listening to someone else. All I could hear was myself and that wet sound of it tearing at me. I thought I was gonna die.”
I didn’t know what to say.
“I pissed myself a little.”
“Man.”
He looked at the street. “You were gone. I kept wondering where you were. Why you weren’t helping me.”
I swallowed. “Eli. I didn’t know. I was ahead. I came as soon as I heard.”
“I know.” He raised both hands and pushed down on the air like he was settling it.
A breeze kicked some leaves down the sidewalk. An older couple walked by, the man holding an umbrella over both of them.
“I’m not mad,” he said. “But I realized—you’re not always gonna be there, you know?”
“I could be—”
He raised his good hand to stop me. “We can’t. It’s just… different now. I can’t explain it. Everything feels like it’s made of glass. I don’t want to touch anything. You’re the same.” His voice went quiet. “I’m not.”
He picked at the fabric covering his mangled hand. His fingers twitched, curling like melted plastic.
“I think I’m messed up,” he said.
“Yeah you are,” I said without thinking. Then, “But I still want to hang out. Even if you
are.”
He choked out a short laugh.
“Cody?”
“Yeah?”
“Thanks for trying.”
I held out my hand. He put the hand that the cat got in mine. At first, I was shocked, but I wrapped my fingers around it and gripped it tighter. It felt strange. But I didn’t let go.
We didn’t go back to how we were. I guess that’s not how life works. But the next Monday, Eli sat with us at lunch. He didn’t tell any jokes, but he did laugh at some of mine.
I gave him a controller one night, and he figured out how to play.
Then one morning, I found a piece of paper slipped into my locker through the vent. It was another version of a robot hand with a message written in the corner: Maybe.
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About
Dave Mainelli published his short story collection, “How to Be Lonely: Stories,” with WSC Press in 2021. His work has been published in Emerging Nebraska Fiction Writers, Curbside Splendor, Fine Lines Literary Journal, and Flash Fiction magazine. He currently teaches creative writing at the University of Nebraska at Omaha and Wayne State College and is a fiction editor for The Good Life Review.
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