Fracture by Michael Harper

As a child I used to climb our apple tree up close to the power lines where I could hear them crackling. My mouth-watered and fingers tingled when I imagined touching the wires. Our tree had knotty skin with crooked limbs like a witch’s arthritic fingers and rotten fruit covering the earth below it. 

One day I jumped from the high branches and landed in a crumpled pile in the grass where I huddled for a long time with my eyes fused shut. My ankle was searing. I thought if I didn’t move, I could escape time, stop the next moments from existing. 

I’d seen how long healing took. My sister’s wrist was in a cast for an entire summer when she fell off the garage roof sunbathing. We were home alone, and I ran straight to the phone, mumbling the emergency song I’d learned in school while dialing 911. I ran back out to the yard where she was swearing. 

“Don’t worry! I called 911!” 

She jumped up. “You idiot! “We can’t afford an ambulance!” 

They hadn’t taught us in school that ambulances costed money. She punched me in the shoulder with her good arm, which seemed to calm her down a little. “Go get me something to wear. I’m not going to the hospital in my bikini.”

Her cast smelled like a wet dog when Dad cut it off with a garden shears three months later. Her skin was translucent and withered next to the rest of her tanned arm. I couldn’t imagine taking that much time to heal. 

I laid in the grass, trying to ignore the pain in my ankle. When the sun started setting, I knew my efforts to halt time had failed and I dragged myself home. If I concentrated on the ground directly in front of me, I could forget about the hurt long enough to take another step. At the door I paused, shuddering with pain before taking several deep-sea diving breaths and walking through the debris of laundry Mom was folding in the living room. I strode past her all smiles and sunshine, holding it together until I got to my room where I collapsed onto the bottom bunk. My ankle pulsated. I knew something was wrong, so I did everything I could not to think about it. The rest of the summer hurt. My father thought my growth spurt had made me slower and less coordinated. I struggled in baseball that season. 

In the fall, during my physical for football, the doctor found a bump on my ankle. He wanted x-rays, which irritated Mom. While we sat in the waiting room, she called him a thief and balanced her checkbook, trying to rearrange the numbers in a way which read good news. I apologized several times and concentrated on the fish tank. 

The x-ray found the bone had broken and then healed on its own. The doctor clipped the x-ray to a brightly lit box and circled a tiny fracture. It felt like looking at my own ghost. My skin crawled as I tried to reason that these pictures were of me.  

“It’s a little off but not a big deal,” he said, using the technical precision of a small-town doctor. “I don’t see why he can’t play on it.” 

We were all relieved. 

When I told my dad about the break he was impressed. I told all my coaches, and it became a joke whenever anyone got hurt during football practice. They would yell across the field at the 12-year-old writhing on the ground, even if it’s broken you can play on it. 

Now, sometimes at night my ankle hums like a heartache. Like something I thought I forgot but randomly shows up in my soup or under my bed. The doctor said I wouldn’t have to worry about it until I was older. He never said what to do then.

Michael Harper is a MFA candidate at the University of Idaho. Previously he taught kindergarten. His most recent work has appeared in Hobart, Fugue, Variant Lit, Decomp Journal, The Headlight Review, and others. 

23 February 2024