Marshlands by Matthew Olshan

told her that his own mother had insisted on breast-feeding him long after other children his age were eating solid food.
    Her eyes widened. Is that true? she asked.
    Actually, it wasn’t. His mother had disdained breast-feeding; she’d always referred to it with a wrinkle of the nose as “that procedure.” But he felt justified in telling a little lie. It made him angry to think about the money the woman was spending in the name of modernity, while her baby wasted away.
    *   *   *
    In the next room, a marshman with an oily baseball cap pulled low over his eyes sat on the edge of the examining table, sunk in thought. Before any words could be exchanged, the marshman sat bolt upright, staring straight ahead as if this were a military inspection, not a medical one.
    The cause for the visit was obvious. His left hand was wadded with stained gauze. The bandage was filthy and held in place with clear packing tape.
    He surprised the man by starting his examination not with the wound, but with a few mundane questions. Are you eating well? Are you having any trouble with your digestion? And then, leaning in, he asked whether everything was all right in the sack.
    This brought a wry grin. The marshman confided that, ever since the accident, he hadn’t really had an appetite for women.
    He played along, clucking his tongue. He said there’d been a period in his own life, after a fall from a horse, when he couldn’t perform his marital duties. His wife had packed her bags and moved to her mother’s house for three months.
    None of this was true, except for the part about the fall from the horse, which had been quite serious. The marshman perked up at the mention of riding. He asked if the doctor really rode.
    Yes, of course , he said, although not as much as I used to .
    The marshman commiserated. Back home, his uncle had been a horse trader. One of his chores as a youth had been to take his uncle’s new horses for a ride in the dunes in order to gauge their desert-worthiness. He remembered riding for hours across trackless sand. Sometimes, if the horse was strong, he’d dig in his spurs, close his eyes, and gallop blind. He said it was like being lifted up in a whirlwind.
    You must miss riding very much .
    The marshman shook his head. His flight of fancy was over. He said that he worked in a noodle shop. Sometimes the machine that cut the noodles jammed. Clearing jams was part of his job. Someone had turned it on while his hand was involved with the blade. The machine had taken his fingers, but luckily just the tip of his thumb.
    Here , he said, hastily unwinding the bandage.
    There’s no rush .
    The marshman smiled mirthlessly. It’s all right , he said, there’s no pain until the end. Before tearing off the last of the gauze, he paused for a moment to remove his cap, which was dark with sweat, and set it aside. When he ripped the last of the bandage free, his whole body convulsed. A croak came from his gaping mouth, but he didn’t cry out.
    The odor of the crusted stumps was nauseating, but the cap was hiding something worse: a ring of scars around the head, like the impression of a thorny crown.
    He knew how a marshman got scars like that. He’d watched his own soldiers wrap the razor wire and pull it tight.
    He went to the sink and ran the water until the dizziness passed. The mere sound of it was soothing. He splashed some on the back of his neck, then turned to the marshman and apologized. My heart is old and weak , he said.
    He readied a bowl of warm water and a heap of loose cotton and began to clean the stumps. The crust was stubborn, so he had the marshman soak his hand. He changed the water several times to keep it warm.
    When the suturing was finally exposed, he saw that the stitches were tight and regular, the work of a skilled amateur. Ordinary sewing thread had been used. He asked who’d done the stitching. The marshman said he’d done