There is something beautiful about all scars of whatever nature. A scar always means the hurt is over, the wound is closed and healed, done with.
— Harry Crews
I.
I loved my father’s body. It worried me, too. At eight years old I marveled at the dark veins of his feet, like ridged worms under the pale skin, carrying his overworked blood as he plowed the fields at home and pulled double shifts at the ceiling-tile factory. I’d cry when I saw his blistered soles, sulk if he suffered another scraped knuckle, another bruised forearm. I wanted to heal him. The little church our mother took us to in Terre Haute, Indiana, had a pastor with a malformed right arm who told the congregation that whatever physical ailments we endured in this life would be wiped away once we reached the promised land. I worried my father, who didn’t go to church, would spend the afterlife with all his scars, all his leg pains, all the aches in his lungs lodged there for eternity.
