it all up to me. Lily kept Rudy’s shirt on the wound while I cleaned my hole-punched hands. Easily, I dressed them. Then I set to Perley.
“I can get you herbs,” Helen called from the kitchen.
“Don’t interrupt,” I said.
“Plantain,” Helen said. “It says so right here in the Best Practices Binder.”
“I don’t care what you wrote down in that binder of yours,” I said. “Plantain’s no good if there’s infection underneath. He could get an abscess. Yarrow might be the one. It’s antibacterial, pain-relieving, and it’ll stop the bleeding. Sage is a good disinfectant.”
“Both in the garden,” Lily said.
It was for Perley’s body that I’d quit working as a nurse and now I took it up again. He cried. He yelled. He shuddered. I attended the body I most wanted to attend. I dug out tooth fragments, cleaned, compressed, applied salve, dressed the wound. Lily held him hard from beginning to end, murmured to him, kissed his ear, smoothed and smoothed our son’s sweaty forehead. The snake had left a slick substance, some kind of rank defensive oil. It coated my arms and chest. It soaked the sheets.
Finally, when my work was done, Lily released Perley into my arms. It had been two years since she’d stopped nursing him, but as she fell back into the bloody pillows, I saw the damp circles spread from her nipples, darkening the sheet. Her new milk mingled with the snake oil.
HELEN
Perley’s wound looked like a human bite, all the little holes arranged around a circle, and Karen barked at me for iodine, tweezers, sage. I handed her the supplies, climbed up after them to watch. No one told me not to hover. No one told me anything, except how to help. In the morning we moved Perley down to the sofa. Karen stitched Perley up with her suture kit. Perley clung to Lily, who had gone liquid, salt dripping down her cheeks, milk leaking down her front. “The breast milk is good,” Karen told her. “Squeeze some into a cup so that we can use it to clean the wound.” Watching Karen push the suture through, pincer it with the needle pusher, calmly tie each graceful knot, I knew I was supposed to feel distressed, panicked even, definitely sobered. I told myself that I felt those things. But I was lying. I felt like singing.
Humming, I made breakfast. Cheerily, I clanged the pans. I melted duck fat. I unsealed a precious jar of venison. I fried extra sardines. I kept Karen and Lily full of strong coffee. I plugged in the phone and called in to work for Lily. I poured catnip tea down Perley’s throat until he spluttered. No one scolded me. No one told me to butt out. I had been seven long years with these women and their child, and this was the first time we were all in agreement.
“Should we take him to the doctor?” Lily asked, wiping her eyes into Perley’s hair.
“What could a doctor do that I’m not already doing?” Karen asked.
“What if it gets infected?” Lily asked.
“If it gets infected, I’ll give him antibiotics,” Karen said. “I can do that. Don’t worry.” She squeezed Lily’s hand. She wiped Lily’s blurred eyes with the corner of her shirt. I tried not to stare.
Perley attempted to examine his wound by straining his eyeball down toward it. This added to his new grotesqueness, eyelids half closed, eyes crossed, mouth drawn down as he tried to look at his own cheek. I brought him the shard of mirror from above the sink.
“Toxically gross,” Perley said, faint but happy. “What about school?”
“You’re not going to school,” Karen said. “You’ll stay home and rest. We need to watch and make sure this thing heals up right. We need to make sure you don’t get a fever. So just settle in.”
“Settle in where?” asked Lily. “I won’t have him stay one more night in this house until the snakes are gone.”
“Where else can he stay?” asked Karen.
“Stop crying, Mama L, I’ll camp on the pipeline with Rudy,” Perley said.
“I won’t have it,” Karen said.
“He can stay in my old camper,” I said. I waited to be rebuffed. Instead, Karen said, “There’s an idea. But it needs a little bit of work.”
“I’ll clear it out,” I surged. “I’ll do it right after breakfast.” The day was a warm wave, raising me up and tossing me toward the human family. They needed me. We were invincible. We had purpose. As comrades, we could solve any