Lane Osborne: BODY MEMORY • Cleaver Magazine

Nonfiction by Lane Osborne
BODY MEMORY

When my family and I visited my uncle at his home weeks after he’d lost his leg, knee-down to diabetes, I tried not to stare. Not at what remained of his left leg, or the prosthesis propped in the corner with the sagging white sock and black sneaker, or the cluster of orange pill bottles on the coffee table. No, I tried not to stare at the black-sneakered foot on his good leg, toe-tapping in a rhythm that reminded me how he and my aunt used to love to dance at the local VFW, what he often called “shaking a leg.”

He slouched next to my aunt on the sofa in their den, khaki pant leg pinned at the thigh, and we started with small talk: the traffic on our trip, work, school, recent weather. But before long, the conversation turned to his surgery. As he described his doctor, the nurses, and the white-walled halls, I could picture him on that day—surgical cap, pale blue gown, a dotted line Sharpied on his left leg, reminding his doctor, “Cut here.” My uncle rubbed the end of the stump as he spoke, and I wondered if he could still feel what was missing. Muscle. Sinew. Bone. I’d read before how phantom limb syndrome affects some patients, how they can still feel their missing appendage long after it’s gone, how the body has memory.

Losing the leg was the easy part, my uncle said. He was leather-tough, a WWII Army combat veteran who lied about his age to enlist at seventeen. He was an infantryman, a foot soldier, who was awarded a Bronze Star and earned a Purple Heart and honorable discharge when he took shrapnel from enemy fire. I followed his gaze to the off-the-shelf prosthesis he could afford with his VA benefits, as he admitted that rehab is the real dadgum work, learning how to walk again. Maybe he added the words “baby steps” when he said that, or maybe now, I just imagine he did, as I wonder about the shared origins of “infantry” and “infant.”

When my uncle returned home from the war, he traded combat boots for brogans and built homes in South Carolina’s Midlands, including his cedar-sided ranch. At the end of most workdays, he’d tend to his garden in dirt-darkened sneakers—weeding, seeding, or hand-hoeing rows. Come spring, he’d slip on deck shoes, trailer his skiff to the Saluda River, and catch his limit of channel cats, crappie, bluegill, and bass so he could host fish fries for family and friends with hushpuppies, kettle chips, and slaw. Some summers, he’d travel to my aunt’s coastal hometown, where they might go barefooted at the beach, where he might wade knee-deep in the ocean, sand squishing between his toes. Autumns were often spent at their cabin in the Smokies, where, at the end of most days, I imagine he’d prop his trail-scuffed hikers on the back deck railing, interlace his fingers behind his head, and tilt his face toward the day’s last light. And every winter, when my brother, our cousins, and I were children, our uncle played Santa—red suit, broad-buckled belt, black boots—stomping into our grandmother’s great room with a gift sack slung over his shoulder.

During a conversational lull, my aunt stood from the sofa, muttering something to my uncle about help with coffee and cake in the kitchen, so he reached for his prosthesis. He unpinned his pant leg and shimmied it up until his pink thigh poked out. He stretched liner socks over the end of it, grunted as he stuffed the stump into the fake leg, and steadied himself on the sofa arm as he stood. His first few steps, shuffling limps, were tentative, as though he had to remind himself how to walk again: left, right, left. Just when it looked like he had it all under control, he stumbled. Before anyone could even react, he’d already reached out, catching my aunt by her hand and hip, nearly toppling them both over before righting himself in her arms. It was only a brief imbalance, so easily overlooked, but there was something special in that otherwise unremarkable moment, wasn’t there? Some somatic recall in the dip, the spin, the sway—their bodies settling into a close embrace as though moving to music only they could hear.

Lane Osborne earned his MFA from Warren Wilson College and teaches at Coastal Carolina University, where he serves as the faculty nonfiction editor for Waccamaw. His work, which has previously been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and was a finalist for a Rash Award in Fiction, has appeared in various journals, including Chautauqua, SmokeLong Quarterly, and storySouth.